Chapter Fifteen

"You're sure about this?" Jodie said.

Dottie stood next to her, both eyeing Elle with mounting worry.

She smiled. "I am positive."

Jodie turned to Dottie. "Don't get any ideas about taking one of those cruises anytime soon. I can't do this alone."

Elle laughed. She'd turned the shop over to Jodie and given Dottie that bonus she so richly deserved. Both were thrilled. Elle had also turned over her former cover as Megan Lewis to the past. She was back to being her true self, Eleanor Holt, aka Elle. No more being a detective or an undercover agent or a spy. She was just Elle from Piney Woods, Tennessee, who wasn't sure what she intended to do next in terms of a career.

"Meg." Dottie shook her head. "Sorry. Elle, we don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything," she assured her dear friends, "just enjoy."

"You better come see us," Jodie said, her face pinched as if she might cry.

"Don't worry," Elle promised, "I will."

She waved to the two as she walked out the front entrance. She took a deep breath and felt truly free for the first time in years.

In a stunningly brazen move, Salvadori Lorenzo had arrived in Chattanooga early Wednesday morning at the crack of dawn in his private jet. Two of his thugs had shown up at the farm and forced her and Griff into a car. Elle had felt certain that their lives were over. Lorenzo's thugs had taken them to the airfield, where to her shock, Elle had spoken privately with Lorenzo. No matter that the man hadn't deserved her explanation, she told him the truth. She'd spent nearly two years protecting Ridley, and it was time the world knew that she was innocent. Lorenzo's son had discovered that Ridley had been playing both sides of the game—which she had not known at the time—and Ridley had killed him to protect his secret. All this time, Elle had thought she was protecting a fellow agent when Ridley and Wisting had been using both her and Lorenzo for their own selfish gain.

Again, she felt no sympathy whatsoever for Lorenzo. He got as good as he gave. There was an endless list of the people he had betrayed and murdered.

During the brief visit on his personal aircraft, Lorenzo had apologized for sending people to kill Elle and assured her that he would never bother her again. He claimed that though he was a ruthless man, he never ended the life of anyone who didn't deserve to die. With that, he'd left. At the time, Elle had wondered how he would feel when he discovered that in light of what she'd learned from Ridley, her former boss, former Deputy Director Arthur Wisting, had turned State's evidence against Lorenzo. A new multi-agency task force was determined to finally take him down. Hadn't proven relevant in the end, since that very next day after he'd visited Chattanooga, Elle was told that Lorenzo had vanished. With his resources, he could be anywhere in the world.

Nothing Elle could do about that. She had done her part. Her gaze landed on the man waiting for her. She smiled. Griff leaned against the passenger side of his truck.

"You ready?" he called out.

Elle took the two steps down to meet him. "You sure you want to spend an entire week away from the farm?"

"Two of Lonnie's new apprentices have it covered," Griff assured her. "He'll be keeping a close eye on things to ensure all runs smoothly." He opened the truck door. "We are taking a nice, quiet vacation in the middle of nowhere in the vicinity of Gatlinburg. No one," he said pointedly, "knows where we'll be, and I intend to keep it that way."

His mother and sister and numerous neighbors and friends had called and shown up at his door over the past few days. Several ladies with casseroles. Elle had barely kept her laughter to herself when the casseroles arrived. Basically, his home had been a regular madhouse the past few days. They had decided that a week away was necessary. It would give the story time to drop lower in the news feed and neighbors time to move on to something new to obsess about.

She chewed at her lower lip. "Raymond is going to miss me terribly."

"We'll video-chat with him every day." Griff opened the door for her to get into the truck.

Instead, she moved in next to him. "I'm not sure how much fun I'll be, injured as I am." She glanced at her bandaged shoulder. The bullet had actually missed anything important. Just a flesh wound mostly. Hurt like hell, but she was tougher than she looked.

He leaned down, brushed his lips across hers. "I have every intention of taking very, very good care of you, and then I'm going to bring you back here and show you just how good life can be."

Elle couldn't wait. This man and the life they were going to share on the farm were a dream come true.

She smiled up at him. "What're we waiting for?"

Griff helped her into the truck, and they were off.