Sebring (Unfinished Heroes #5) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,2
for her and she’s still not mine.”
Nick didn’t want to sit around listening to Turner telling tales he hoped would help Nick feel better. Turner knew no words would make that happen.
There was only one thing that would make Nick feel better.
Turner knew that too.
Which was why he asked, “You gonna stay in town?”
Fuck yes, he was gonna stay in town.
“Yeah,” Nick answered.
At that, Turner did what a lot of people were doing these days.
He studied Nick closely before he said, “Doesn’t feel like it, but with time, it’ll hurt less. It just will, Nick. Give it time and then get on with your life.”
Turner had no fucking clue what he was talking about. He didn’t know what girl Turner fell for but if she wasn’t dead, never to see her again, never to smell her hair, taste her pussy, listen to her laugh, eat the fried eggs she always broke the yolk when she flipped them over, knowing she wouldn’t give that to him or to anyone…
If he didn’t survive that then he had not one fucking clue what he was talking about.
Nick did not share this.
He just repeated, “Yeah.” Then, to turn the subject, he said, “Talked to Knight, Raid, Sylvie, Marcus, all of ’em. Had to, Eric. Their women and families were targeted. They had to know what we were doin’, why we were doin’ it and how they were gonna use anyone that was close to me or Knight in order to use him to get to me to stop us from doin’ what we were doin’. My brother and his crew also dragged my ass out of that hellhole so they had to know why I was there in the first place.”
“Not thinkin’ any of those folks will talk,” Turner muttered in reply.
He was absolutely right.
Nick nodded.
His gaze still intense, Turner stated, “We were planning an extraction, Nick.”
Nick nodded again, this time sharply.
He didn’t want to go there.
“I know you were,” he said in an effort to stop Turner from talking about it.
He did know that. Turner wouldn’t leave Nick hanging. He definitely wouldn’t leave Hettie that way.
“Your brother and his crew, they don’t have to worry about the rules like my crew does,” Turner explained. “They could go in hot. They could take those risks, no plan, flyin’ by the seat of their pants.”
“I know,” Nick replied.
“We were comin’ for you,” Turner went on. “You and Hettie.”
Nick didn’t repeat himself.
They were. It was still too late. When Knight and his crew tore in there to save his ass, they were too late too.
Too fucking late.
“Coupla weeks, we’ll go for a beer,” Turner suggested.
It was Nick’s turn to study him.
“You do that a lot with your ex-CI’s?”
Turner suddenly looked pissed. “Jesus, Sebring, the shit we been through the last coupla years, you seriously think you’re still just a confidential informant to me?”
Now that…
That felt good.
Nick had not had a habit of surrounding himself with good people.
And Turner was definitely a good man.
“Fucked thing to say,” Nick muttered.
Turner’s face again changed. He might not have any clue how bad it was but he still got where Nick’s head was at.
“Coupla weeks, buddy,” he said quietly.
Nick nodded.
Unexpectedly, Turner was whispering, “Be smart, Nick.”
Yeah. He knew.
But Special Agent Eric Turner had taught him a lot.
So he also knew Nick had some of the skills he needed to get the job done.
And she’d taught him patience.
He’d acquire the skills he didn’t have. If it took him a decade, he’d do it.
Then he’d get the job done.
* * * * *
Five Months Later
Nick stood by the river, its banks covered in tiny but bright bursts of wildflowers, the spring thaw of the mountains having subsided, the rush of water still heavy but also soothing.
He felt him coming before he came to a stop at Nick’s side.
“Me and Cassie are glad you showed,” Deacon Gates said to him.
“You put a pink bow on your dog,” Nick replied.
“I didn’t,” Deacon returned.
“Your woman put a pink bow on your dog,” Nick said then turned to look at the man at his side. “And that dog is a German shepherd. It’s a wonder every shepherd breeder in North America isn’t rushin’ this location to put a gun to your head to demand payback for that dog’s dignity.”
Deacon grinned at him, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s a wedding.”
It was.
That day, in a gazebo by a river in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Colorado Mountains, the man known throughout the dark, harsh, fetid, hostile underbelly