Chapter 40

"Laney!"

"Laney!" Lily yells over Lark as they both come running toward the stables. "Laney, we made you the most perfect flowers for your hair."

They hold up a piece of lace with the wildflowers from Grant's yard woven throughout. "Will you wear them?" Lark asks, so much calmer than her younger sister.

Lily bounces in her shoes. "Please? Please?"

"So I guess Griz told you, then?"

"That you're marrying Uncle Grant? Yes. What took you so long? He got back forever ago."

I meet Grant"s eyes and smile, thinking about how we just spent our time celebrating each other. Forgetting what would be waiting here for us.

"Of course I'll wear these." I open my mouth, pretending to be shocked, but I am absolutely impressed.

"The lace was our grandma's from her wedding. And Dad said that our mama wore it at theirs, so you have to have it now."

It was the first time I heard either of them mention their mother, and the fact that they wanted to share this piece with me hit me right in the chest. How am I supposed to leave this? Leave them?

Griz wraps me in a hug. "If I was forty years younger..."

Grant laughs out, "Hands off, Griz."

He whispers to me before he lets me go, "Welcome to the family, darlin'." I swallow down the emotions that have been so intense today. Joining this family, and knowing I won't be here to enjoy them.

Hadley walks up behind the girls and plows into me, wrapping her arms around my waist. "You bagged a Foxx, you badass!"

I can't help but bark out a laugh as I scrunch up my nose. "I know."

"I get it, Grant. I want to keep her too." She smirks at him as he comes up behind me and kisses the side of my head first, and then my lips. Leaning into Hadley, he says, "Mine." Nothing else, just mine.

He scoops up Lily, and she starts giggling as they walk toward the main house. I hear him ask her, "You know I love you, my little flower?"

Hadley loops her arm with mine. "Those are fighting words, I hope he knows that."

"Oh, he knows." It feels so good—this much love between so many people.

I wrap my arm around Lark. "Will you help me tie this pretty lace into my hair?"

She smiles so brightly, so much more mature than I would have imagined a ten-year-old would be. "Are you leaving?"

"What makes you think I'm leaving?"

When we walk along the side of the house and come around to the back patio, she says, "That lady who's fighting with Uncle Ace said she came for you."

When I look up, I see Agent Bea Harper, and my stomach sinks, all the air in my lungs rushing out. She's talking with her hands moving a mile a minute at Ace. As we get closer, she notices Grant approaching ahead of me with Lily in his arms. She stops her tirade and puts her hands on her hips, locking eyes with me next. She's not happy.

"Lark, can your uncles and I have a few minutes out here?"

But it's Hadley who answers. "C'mon, girls," she sing-songs as she steers them inside.

"Bea," Grant says with a nod. But then he walks closer to me, standing tall as he intertwines his fingers with mine. A protector I hadn't realized I wanted.

She zeroes in on me, looking down at my left hand, staring at the gold band that slid onto it just a little while ago.

"You married her?" Bea asks, looking at Grant.

He looks at me first and smiles, calmly answering, "Not yet, but I will."

Glancing at me for a beat, she then shifts her glance to Ace, like somehow this is his fault or he should have stopped it.

"Don't look at me, Bea." He holds up his hands. "I just found out too."

Ace smiles at Grant, and then winks at me.

When my attention settles back to Bea, there's something I haven't figured out. Her relationship with the Foxx family. "How do you know each other? I don't understand?—"

Grant tilts his chin up higher, like he's preparing for pushback. He squeezes my hand. "You want to take that one, Bea?"

It's not lost on me the way the mood shifts, transferring the dynamic from frustration on Bea's part to a secret that seems like I'm the only person who doesn't know. She pulls out her silver case of cloves and shoves one in between her lips as she searches her suit jacket pocket for her lighter.

Lincoln wanders our way with Griz. All the Foxx men are here to listen to the truth.

Grant takes a small step closer to me, filling the silence. "What I still can't figure out is why here? Why bring her here, Bea?" He looks down at me and kisses the hand he's been holding. "I'm happy for it, but I don't get it. You would never get clearance on this if it was a legitimate WITSEC placement."

She lights her clove, pulling in deep, and taps her finger to her mouth.

"I'm waiting," Grant pushes.

Only once she's blown out a big plume of smoke that seems to linger in the midday humidity does she answer. "Because I needed a place where she would be safe."

Grant grits his teeth. "But why here? There are plenty of places you could have gone. Why Fiasco?" He points to the ground. "Why here?"

She barely lets him finish when she shouts at him, "Because I owe her!"

I look around her face for what she could mean. Owe her. Owe me?

Lincoln chimes in, "What do you me?—"

Her hand flies up, then drops to her side. "Because she stopped the person who killed Fiona."

My heart just about stops, and Grant tenses beside me.

That can't be right.

"Because she came face to face with a goddamn monster. The monster who took my daughter"s life."

My mind reels at what she's saying. It takes me a minute to really understand it. It's the same reaction coming from the men.

"She saved a victim. Ran right toward danger, pulled a damn fire alarm, and then gave a closed testimony that would have put him away."

Grant asks, "What do you mean, would have?"

I let go of his hand, feeling antsy as I work all of this out. "You're Fiona's mom?"

Grant mumbles, "Barely."

"Oh, fuck you, Grant. Don't pretend like you have any clue about what kind of relationship I had with my daughter," she says, stomping out her clove.

"Had more than clues, Bea," he barks back at her.

She closes her eyes for a second, trying to keep this from turning into an argument. "I listened to my gut. I'd been profiling Fiona's killer for years. I knew, just like you, Grant, that it wasn't some meth head in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Not with that kind of knife precision. And that piece of her that had been shredded from her back..." She shakes her head. "There was nothing she would have crawled through that would have caused that."

None of us say a word, all listening intently, knowing she has more to say.

"When I caught wind of a serial up in New York who had kept women and then saved parts, something in my gut said to look. Dig." She swallows. "So I did." She tips her chin up, attempting to keep any emotions from escaping. "There were souvenirs he kept. And he'd had a piece of skin that DNA-matched Fiona." She pulls in another breath of smoke. "She's here because he didn't have a name. No fingerprints? Fine. There are plenty of psychopaths that burn or cut them off." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "But there was no history. No digital footprint. No family or next of kin that NYPD or FBI could figure out. They didn't see it, but I did. I've been a U.S. Marshall for longer than I've been anything else. I knew in my gut, he was WITSEC."

Grant rubs the back of his neck, head shaking in disbelief. "You're telling me that the guy Laney had to enter witness protection for is an asset in fucking witness protection?"

Bea shifts her eyes around at the audience she's got, but she must realize even if she asked for this to be private, it would end up being discussed between these four men. "There have been a limited number of assets that have gone missing in the program over the years. Most of the time, it's folks that want to go back to their old lives and then end up disappearing—whatever they had been running from most likely caught up to them. But when I knew where to look, it wasn't too hard to start connecting the pieces."

Griz sits in one of the rocking chairs while Lincoln takes a seat on the stairs that lead to this stretch of patio. But both Grant and Ace stand, squared off and arms crossed now, waiting to hear the rest of it.

"He was placed in Montgomery, originally. About twenty miles from here. That was before I was leading any teams or a main point of contact. This one was smart. He knew what he was doing when he turned into state's evidence. He was the bookkeeper for crime families in both New York and Chicago. He was calculated. But I don't think they knew about his"—she clears her throat—"extracurriculars. So he snitched and made himself invincible for it. He helped put away a lot of people. Testified about what funds were being used for, where they went, and from whom they came. It was one of the largest series of organized crime arrests in decades. Long story short, when the Attorney General has that kind of history-making arrests that would collapse crime families, there's not going to be loose ends to reverse it. When he was arrested in that storage facility and there were witnesses to put him away, it gave those connected crime families ammunition to appeal, and potentially overturn."

"Attorney General wasn't going to let that happen, were they?" Griz asks.

"No." She stares at Grant for a beat, trying to hold in all the emotion this must be digging up. "We protected him. And they're still doing it too."

With a heavy exhale, Ace asks, "Now what, Bea?"

"Does Del know?" Grant interrupts.

"Not yet. I need to get her somewhere safe."

Lincoln holds up his hand. "Wait. You're telling me they let this guy go?"

"I'm telling you that I don't know. The hearing has been removed from the court schedule, and I can't seem to get anyone in the Attorney General's office to give me a straight answer. I'm not able to find a John Doe in holding or recently transferred either."

"Jesus Christ," Lincoln says, running his fingers through his hair.

Grant watches Bea with the same stoic glare as Ace, and I feel like I haven't taken a breath in minutes.

"I plan to keep my promises to you." She looks back at Grant and me. "It's going to be a little more complicated with the two of you now."

"And a dog," Grant says.

She shakes her head. "No."

I shrug, finally speaking up in all this. "Non-negotiable."