LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t decide whether she hated him or loved him for it.

      As directed, Meghan had avoided her apartment and run here, to the house owned by the Snyder Foundation, the one place that couldn’t be connected to her. She paced the length of the darkened living room, the old hardwood creaking beneath her feet. The midnight wind sang through the trees, ruffling new leaves and brushing branches against the old white farmhouse. Normally, the solitary sounds of the house settling for the night brought comfort. This place had a story, and though Meghan had no idea what it was, she’d love to find out. With the age on the little farm nestled in the midst of the woods, there was no telling what it had seen.

      She might not know the past, but she knew what it would see in the near future. Hope. A place where kids beaten down the way she had been could find refuge and acceptance. The bouncing from foster home to foster home would end at this front door. There would be love here, love that defied thievery or deception, that carried on no matter what mistakes the kids made or what they felt they needed to do to get attention.

      But it wouldn’t happen if Meghan couldn’t keep herself out of trouble long enough to finish the renovations. Her past had come for her, and no one would want a woman with a target on her back working with troubled children.

      At the window by the front door, Meghan lifted a slat on the plantation blinds and peeked through, hoping to see headlights but finding only moonlit shadows.

      She should have stood her ground against Isaac, should have stayed with Tate to have his back if things went south. You didn’t abandon your partner. By following Tate’s directive and fleeing instead of staying behind to see what happened, she’d certainly abandoned him.

      Except he was no longer her partner. And standing her ground would have probably gotten them both killed, especially with her edge worn off by his reappearance.

      Hard as it was, taking refuge was the right course of action. Meghan slipped the phone from her pocket and slid her thumb across the screen, concrete proof his appearance wasn’t the product of an overactive imagination. From her time chasing cybercriminals in their small clandestine army unit, she had no doubt the tech in the device could track her to the nearest meter. So where was he? She’d failed him once and believed her failure had left him dead. If her pseudoescape today had cost him his life...

      Unfamiliar nausea swirled, and she dropped the slat, dragging a finger along the grip of the revolver holstered at her hip, refusing to think anymore. To keep from being traced, she’d pulled the battery from her cell phone and locked it with Tate’s gun in the small safe in what would be her bedroom when the house was finished. She’d pulled out her own weapon, wanting the familiar heft of her Ruger. The revolver was on her at all times when she worked on the property, but it was usually to make her feel better about the remote possibility of coming across a snake.

      Her skin tightened. Kidnappers, she could handle. Snakes? They were the one foe she feared.

      Headlights danced across the front windows, and Meghan laid her hand on the pistol, heart revving, ready for confrontation. If this wasn’t Tate, things were about to get real ugly, real fast.

      The headlights flickered three times, paused, then flashed twice more.

      Tate.

      It was an old signal they’d worked out years ago, one she’d thought she’d never see again. One she’d longed for in the darkness many nights, wishing he were still alive.

      Never dreaming he actually was.

      She loosened her hold on the pistol and cracked the door open, stepping onto the wide wraparound porch. The diesel on the old pickup rattled as Tate killed the engine; then he climbed out, his figure in the moonlight a silhouette against the trees.

      Meghan stood guard at the top of the steps. What should she do? Throw her arms around him and welcome him to the land of the living? Or punch him one more good time? The war between relief and anger centered right in her stomach, twisting into a knot so tight it might never unravel.

      Tate stopped at the bottom step, almost as though he could hear the swords clashing. He was taller than her memories gave him credit for. His shoulders broader, his stance speaking of an inner strength different from the one she remembered. No longer a barely leashed weapon, this strength ran deeper, steadier, more solid. Powerful enough to handle whatever life threw at him. Even death, apparently.

      He looked up, face an interplay of shadow and light. His hair was still dark, though some very premature gray had shot through a few places. His jaw was still strong. But it was the eyes. It had always been the eyes, a clear sea green contrasted with his dark hair... In a rush, they brought back all the reasons she’d fallen in love with him in the first place.

      And those same eyes reminded her how they’d haunted her after he supposedly died, begging her to save him.

      Her grief had been for nothing. Meghan balled her fists. “I don’t know whether to hug you or shoot you.” She let the anger drip off her greeting. He deserved to hear it.

      Tate took another step but stopped before he got too close, respectful of the new chaos in her life. “I hope you don’t opt for shooting. It’s been a rough day already.” He tilted his head and surveyed the front of the house. “What is this place? I thought you had an apartment near the school.”

      “It’s not mine. Not exactly.” She was the one with questions, but she couldn’t make herself stop answering his. She’d spent four years thinking he was dead. Something inside still couldn’t process his seeming immortality and kept on operating as if this was all normal. “I’ve been hired by the Snyder Foundation. It’s going to be a group foster home when we finish renovating. The foundation bought this farm, so tracking me to it would be tough going.” Tough but not impossible, especially if the anonymous blackmailer from her past was a bigger deal than she’d thought. If her former unit was involved, things were much uglier than a simple kidnapping. They tracked cyberterrorists on the highest levels. Small-time gangsters didn’t even cross their radar.

      “Really.” Tate wore the ghost of a smile. “A foster home. Your dream come true. I’m proud of you, McGuire.”

      In spite of everything, the praise settled into the hollow places behind her rib cage. He’d remembered what was important to her, what she’d wanted to do from the time she was a little girl, shuttling to yet another foster home. It really was her dream coming true. One of them, anyway.

      The pleasure chilled, wrapping her heart in ice. She’d scuttled an entirely different, softer dream for her future when she’d walked away from the army and Tate Walker four years ago. Walked away without leaving him any clue that her side of their friendship had grown into something so much more.

      She was still staring at Tate, trying to reconcile his reality when he tipped his chin, his eyes catching hers and holding fast. It was the same jolt she’d felt when she saw him a few hours ago and realized Tate was alive. After years of grieving, he was alive. “Why aren’t you dead?”

      He blinked, then gave her a rueful smile. “You want me to be?”

      Never. The knowledge he was there in front of her wrapped around something inside and freed emotions long locked away. But the freedom brought confusion, anger and something she didn’t dare try to define.

      When she didn’t answer, he sat on the step at her feet, patting the wide wooden porch boards beside him. “Might as well have a seat, and we can both start explaining.”

      Both? As far as she was concerned, this story was all his. She might be in some unknown danger, but Tate’s continued existence trumped everything. His story came first.

      Staring at him made her head swim, made the past fold onto the present and shower her anew with grief she would never let him see. “This show’s all yours, Walker.” She settled beside him, keeping a fair space between them, sweeping her arm out to encompass the small clearing around the house. “I’ve got nowhere to be. You can talk all night.”

      “No. You can talk.” The friendly Tate vanished into investigative mode, his tone hard

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