“Here’s the report.” Graham narrowed his eyes on the official information that had accompanied the picture. “Kevin Davis, he was actually assigned to Betts’s team and should have been with her on that last mission. There’s nothing here that states he wasn’t there. He was assumed killed in action when he didn’t return. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“Bingo,” Elijah growled.

“Trained in tactical warfare, a Ranger. Laren had him pulled the year before she was killed for the team she put together. He also has ties to the commander, Jimmy Dorne, if I remember that file myself,” Tracker murmured. “A distant blood relation, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Third cousin.” Graham read the information from the file. “Dorne’s parents raised him, though, after his own were killed.”

“Do you think Carmina’s involved?” Lyrica whispered then, suddenly terrified. “She’s there with Mom, Graham. They’ve been best friends since Carmina arrived.”

“I’ll call Timothy and Dawg,” Elijah stated, flipping his phone out and heading for the far corner of the room.

“I’ll head out, apprise the team, and get back with you tonight. We’ll see what kind of plan we can come up with to draw him out then.” Tracker headed for the door as well.

Lyrica moved quickly to her feet, turning to Graham. He could see the demand in her eyes.

“No!” He cut her off before she could speak. “Elijah will contact Timothy and Dawg. They’ll get your mother out of the house and somewhere safe while they watch Ms. Lucient. You’re not going.”

“He’s waiting for me to show myself,” she retorted, rubbing at her arms as though to warm them. “Get Mom out of the house and I’ll go in. If Carmina is in on it, then you can catch her in the act of calling him.”

“It’s too damned dangerous.” His guts were clenching, cramping with awareness of the danger she would face.

“It’s too dangerous not to,” she argued, that militant Mackay gleam of stubbornness brightening her gaze as her hands went to her hips in determination. “We can’t go on like this, Graham. At least I can’t. I want this finished.”

His teeth snapped together furiously. “Are you in that big of a hurry to leave me, Lyrica?”

She flinched as though the question were a lash laid to bare skin.

“Is it a requirement that I leave once this is over, Graham?” Her hands slid from her hips and moved instead to clasp in front of her. “I wasn’t aware there was a deadline.”

He stilled then.

Was there a deadline?

What the fuck was he going to do once it was over?

He could see the questions raging in her eyes as he stared at her, but he couldn’t make himself answer the question.

—

Lyrica swallowed tightly.

She’d known, she reminded herself. She’d known flavors didn’t last long in Graham’s life. She’d just so hoped he’d become fond of her particular taste, perhaps.

“I see.” She forced herself to say it softly, her chest clenching painfully as her eyes suddenly felt raw, the pressure behind them actually hurting as she forced herself to hold back the tears that would have filled them. “Well then, at least I know now.”

“Dammit, Lyrica,” he snarled then, anger tightening his features. “I didn’t say any of that.”

“No, you didn’t,” she agreed. “This has gone on long enough, Graham. I won’t hide any longer. I told you I couldn’t go on like this. Now it’s over. Get Mom out of there and I’m going in. I’m not hiding anymore.”

“And just what made you come to this harebrained conclusion?” he bit out furiously.

Oh, that was it.

“Harebrained?” Keeping her voice soft, well aware that Elijah was still on the other side of the room, still on the phone, she went on. “Well, excuse me for being harebrained, Graham, but it’s my life that’s on the line and on hold here, not yours.”

And it wasn’t his heart breaking in two at the knowledge that she’d never had a chance at having her love returned.

No, that was hers.

Stupid little Lyrica, always looking for rainbows where none existed.

He stepped closer, his expression tight, the gold in his eyes more subtle, like chips of gold ice. “No.” He repeated the word succinctly, pure arrogance filling every line of his face. “I will not risk you so needlessly. And don’t test me on this, sweetheart, because I can and I will lock your ass in a room somewhere until this is all over.”

Would he?

Drawing herself stiffly upright, her hands curling into fists at her sides as she shot him a disgusted look, Lyrica turned and stalked furiously from the room.

She’d be damned if she would let him order her about. That was the second time he’d threatened to lock her in a room somewhere, and she wouldn’t give him the chance to do so.

Slipping quickly to the kitchen doorway, she slid the keys to Graham’s pickup from the peg on the wall, praying he was more involved with something other than the surveillance screens on the computer monitors. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t have a clue that she’d stolen them until she was gone.

She knew the doors and windows were all electronically keyed to alert him if they were opened. But what he didn’t know was that Kye had found a way to bypass the one on her window. For Kye, slipping out of the house had been the same as slipping out from Dawg’s eagle eye had been for Lyrica. Just to see if they could get out and back in, without getting caught.

Unlike Lyrica, Kye bragged she had never been caught.

She had described to Lyrica exactly how she’d rigged the window to hold the alarm at bay and how she reconnected it once she returned.

Lyrica had no intention of returning.

She’d been aware that he’d made the resolution of the danger the deadline for their affair. And here she’d thought she had a chance—

No, she’d known better, she thought as she slid into Kye’s room and closed the door quickly behind her.

Her friend’s room sat directly over the garage, and thankfully, Graham had pulled the pickup from the garage to make room for the vehicles that needed to be hidden whenever Natches and Dawg drove to the house rather than slipping over from Dawg’s farm through the woods.

Had the pickup been in the garage, the chances of being stopped before she ever started would have been much higher.

Knowing the truck was outside the garage had determined which keys she’d taken. She should have taken the keys to his precious Viper, she thought furiously as she moved to Kye’s vanity table, stole a bobby pin, and moved quickly to the window.

Seconds later, the bobby pin, rather than the metal strip attached to the window beneath it, was completing the circuit with the electronic box. Sliding the window up, Lyrica crawled through the opening, slid to the garage roof, and within moments was shimmying down the drainpipe with the same ease she moved down the wood support posts of the inn’s wraparound porch.

She was in the truck and accelerating from the driveway in no time, racing from Graham’s house, and his life, as tears whispered down her cheeks.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought painfully. It wasn’t supposed to end when the danger to her life was over. That was supposed to be the beginning.

—

Tracker stepped from behind the garage, his eyes narrowed as the truck pulled around the corner. A heartbeat later it was speeding away from the house toward the main road and, he knew, back to the girl’s mother’s.

Pulling the phone from his vest pocket and flipping it open, he hit the contact number. He didn’t have to wait long.

“I’m in place,” Angel said in answer. “I have the nest in my sights but nothing’s moving.”

That was odd enough.

“There will be soon,” he promised her. “The bird just flew and I suspect that’s where she’s headed.”

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” she asked curiously.

Tracker chuckled at the question. “A good thing, I hope. Perhaps seeing the prey will cause the wolf to make a move. Keep an eye on things and keep me apprised.”