Carson

I sat across from Josh as he leaned back on the couch in the condo I had gotten him to secretly. I was on the phone with Leland. I answered the question he had just asked me.

"Yeah, we made it. No one followed us. Let me call you on my way back."

"Sounds good, thanks, Carson," Leland said and hung up.

I pushed "end" on my phone and looked back at Josh.

"How you doing?" I asked.

He sighed. "Great, Carson. The last couple weeks have been like a dream come true."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What happened, Josh? We weren't supposed to split up. Number one rule."

"Yeah, no shit. I fucking made up that rule," he said bitterly.

I studied him. The guy was on trial for first-degree murder. I was gonna give him a break. "What happened?" I repeated.

He sighed, scrubbing his hands down his face. "You guys were on your way out with the merchandise. I was clearing the last room of the warehouse when I heard a girl crying. I thought we had missed one. I turned back and went to investigate and lights out, man. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in some abandoned house with a lump on my head the size of a beach ball. I made it home and the police were knocking at the door an hour later. That's all I know."

I took a deep breath. "Just like we thought. An ambush. Fuck. You know we went back in for you, right? We realized you were gone and went back in for you. You had disappeared like a ghost, Josh."

"I know you'd never leave a man behind. I didn't doubt that for a second."

I nodded. "He knew we were coming," I said.

Josh sighed, nodding his head. "Yeah. And he fucking shot a girl in the head, Carson."

"He's a sick fuck. We already knew that."

He frowned and then took a deep breath, lacing his fingers together behind his head and leaning back. "Yeah."

I studied him for a second. "All right. I gotta get out of here. We are going to figure this out. Dylan is working on it, we're all trying to figure this out. We're gonna get a break, okay? We've got your back."

Josh closed his eyes for beat. "Never doubted it for a second." He looked up at me. "Thanks, Carson."

I nodded and stood up. "Stay put. Anything you need will be delivered. The police know where you are, but no one else does and you cannot come near Trilogy. No going out to pick up some woman. No going next door to meet your pretty neighbor. Stay put."

"Sounds like fun," he said. "Merry Fucking Christmas," but when I frowned at him he said, "Yeah, yeah, stay put. I got it."

"Hey, beats MRE's in a cave, right?"

He chuckled softly. "Barely. But yeah."

I smiled and nodded and walked to the door. Twenty minutes later, I was pulling into the garage at Trilogy.

I walked into Leland's office later that night. "You taking off?" he asked.

I sat down in the chair across from him. "I don't know if I should. If there's anything–"

"There's not. If you stay here over the holiday, you'll just end up pacing in your office. It's better if we don't show our faces out very much. Dylan is staying here to work on the computer side, but there's nothing any of us can do to help him with that. Plus, if anything comes up, you're only six hours away. It's probably best that you get out of town."

I nodded. "All right. The girls all taken care of?"

"Yeah. I wish we had gotten them all out before the holiday. I don't like to have to keep the guards posted over Christmas. But that's the way it goes. We just didn't get the paperwork in time. Dylan did everything he could."

"I know. Sucks, but another week and it'll all be worked out."

"Right. Have a Merry Christmas, man." He stood up and walked around his desk to shake my hand and clap me on the back in a bro hug. I smiled. "You too, Leland."

"I will. Drive safely."

I nodded and walked out, closing his door behind me.

I grabbed my duffle bag out of my office and made my way to my truck. Fifteen minutes later, I was driving out of town.

I wondered where Grace was spending Christmas. She hadn't contacted me since the night I left her house. I wasn't going to harass her. I'd made it perfectly clear what I wanted. The ball was in her court. Still, that shit fucking stung. I had a shitload of stuff going on and I still couldn't stop thinking about her. I needed to get out of town.

I pressed down harder on the accelerator, putting Vegas behind me as quickly as I could.

Grace

"I swear I forgot something," I said to Alex for the fifth time.

"Sweetie, you've gone through the list. You didn't forget anything. And if you did, you can replace it when we get there. Relax." He patted my knee.

I nodded distractedly as the plane doors opened and the line of people started to move forward. "Yeah…" I trailed off as we both stood up.

Alex grabbed our small suitcases from the overhead bin and I moved out in front of him, taking the handle of mine and pulling it up so that I could wheel it behind me.

I had woken up feeling jittery and just off. Maybe I was coming down with something. I wasn't sure. I was going home for the first time in a while. I should be feeling relaxed and excited. Instead, I couldn't shake a nagging feeling that I had left something behind, that something was wrong.

It didn't help that I had tossed and turned all night, sleep evasive, unable to shut my brain off. I was over-tired, that had to be it.

Plus, I was probably just a little nervous about this trip. Alex had only met my family once when they came to Vegas when I first moved there. We had just started dating at that point and we all went out to dinner. So this was a chance for Alex to really get to know them better. Which was good… right? I bit my lip.

We made our way through the terminal. We had an hour layover before our next flight to Dayton, and so we decided to get a bite to eat at one of the restaurants near our boarding gate.

We started down an escalator and I glanced over at the people traveling upwards, an old lady catching my eye. She smiled at me and winked. I startled, something so familiar about her… I looked back at her, craning my neck as she moved upwards and away from me, but she didn't look back.

As we traveled through the large airport, we passed a little girl sketching in a notebook. Just as we walked by her, she smiled and held it up to her mother who was standing in front of her. I turned my head to see what it was and time slowed as I saw the delicate, little, yellow flower she had drawn. I snapped my head forward, time resuming, and kept walking, something warm gliding down my spine.

When we got to the terminal where our gate would be boarding, we sat down at a table at a small bagel restaurant that served soup and sandwiches, and Alex went up to the counter to order lunch.

As I sat there waiting for him, I looked around. A man sitting at a table near the entrance, with his back to me, caught my eye. Short, wheat-colored hair and broad, muscular shoulders. My heart rate picked up and I sucked in a breath. Carson? It couldn't be. How? I started to stand, just as he did too, and air lodged in my chest. As he turned toward me, deep disappointment hit me in the gut and I almost let out a sob. It wasn't him. I sank back down in my chair, my hand gripping the table edge. I stared straight ahead for several minutes, the truth of what I was feeling washing through my soul. Oh God… it hit me, sitting right in the middle of a bagel restaurant in the Atlanta airport. It was Carson I was missing. It was Carson I was wanting. Carson. The one who made me feel out of control in so many ways–the one who was anything but safe.