Page 92 of Almost Home
If I hadn’t been certain I was in love with her before this moment, this would’ve clinched it. She’d been held at gunpoint, but walked into this room asking what she could do for others. The strength it took to think of someone other than yourself in a moment like this couldn’t be overestimated, and her display of it had me resisting the very strong urge to gather her back in my arms.
“He’d tracked her phone. There wasn’t much we could’ve done to keep him away with that kind of link, but it definitely explains how he managed to find her when we had everything else locked down so tight.” Brad shifted, his face all thunder.
His team had been responsible for the tech side of Madeline’s security long before we came along, and he’d insisted on keeping that as part of his domain. We’d talk about it another time, not in front of the sheriff, but there was not a chance I’d go for splitting the defense like this again. I’d be unlikely to have a higher-profile client than Madeline Reynolds, so I wouldn’t need to worry about precedent. I’d set it now—you work with Saint, you do things our way. I should’ve insisted from the beginning, and now that was a lesson hard learned.
The sheriff slid his chair back. “This guy wasn’t going to stop until he had some face time with you, but this ended the best possible way. He put three people in danger, and we’ve got evidence out the nose. He’s going to jail for a long time, and you can all rest easy.” He turned to me and nodded. “Thanks for your call. Looking forward to working with you again.”
With that, the sheriff and his crew left to go deal with processing Taggart, and Brad, Anthony, and Madeline made their exit soon after. With the threat of Taggart gone, Madeline’s concerns had reverted to far more typical fare, though I suspected our level of vigilance would be even higher than it might’ve been considering.
Julian walked with us to the front and waited as we locked up.
“You did well, Sarah. Madeline told us how you’d tried to warn her and refused to say she was in the building.”
“I’m just glad it’s over and she’s safe. Thank you for coming when you did. You really are quite heroic.”
He shook his head, batting the compliment away. “It was nothing but adrenaline-fueled idiocy. I’m relieved we had a professional nearby to wrap things up quickly before he really lost it.”
Julian nodded to me. Never hurt to have our investor witness my skillset, but I would’ve been happy to skip this little demonstration.
“She’s right. Not everyone would’ve done something like that.” I snaked an arm around Sarah’s back.
“I’ll have to make sure Quinn knows all the details,” she said, a grin on her beautiful face.
Julian chuckled reluctantly. “I’m sure she’ll demand them. Stay safe, both of you.”
With one last look that said we’d have more debriefing another day, he left.
Sarah and I walked hand in hand to her car.
“I could give you a ride home,” she said, toying with my fingers.
“Sure. As long as you stay once we get there.”
CHAPTERFORTY-SIX
Sarah
Three days after the most insane day of my adulthood, Wilder locked the door to the office and grabbed my hand. We’d spent every spare moment together, as though both of us needed the reassurance of the other’s nearness.
We hadn’t talked about much, other than some necessary processing of the events for me. He told me his side of things—an odd text from Julian, contacting the police, and coming in hard and fast after he’d caught a glimpse of Korry holding a gun through a window.
Somehow, my brain had allowed me to accept what’d happened and instead of nightmares about what would’ve gone wrong or even simply reliving the terror of what actually happened, I found the dream version of myself learning Krav Maga and becoming some kind of stealth agent. Ridiculous, but far preferable to being held hostage by Korry night after night.
I’d seen Madeline more than once in the last few days, too. She’d shown up with a giant bouquet of flowers on Thursday and insisted she take me to lunch, so we’d scheduled that. Then I’d seen her at Rise and Shine this morning when I’d stopped in to see Sadie and hug her—she was the last of my friends I’d needed to see and reassure I was okay. Quinn had started calling me Tuesday night once she’d heard a little bit about what’d happened from Julian and I’d filled her in. The next day, long before her store Pluck normally opened its doors, she’d found me unlocking Saint Securities, Wilder by my side, and pulled me into a rough bear hug that told me exactly how worried she was even though everything was done.
For her part, Madeline seemed… relieved. Not necessarily like she had no worries but like maybe she’d been sleeping a bit more, eating a bit more. I didn’t know her well, but I couldn’t help but feel relieved for her and so thankful it’d all turned out as well as it had.
Wilder and I hadn’t discussedusbeyond simply repeating the beautiful words we’d exchanged that day. He’d been his usual contemplative, word-sparing self the last few days—perhaps even more tight-lipped than he had been before. It was like our bodies were doing the work of reassuring each other—holding hands, hugging, snuggling, nesting together in sleep. Our minds were still working their way through the insanity and that left little room for delving into the history still set on a simmer in the background.
Or maybe that was just me. Wilder had dealt with all kinds of high-intensity situations, and I couldn’t say whether this kind of quiet was typical. But he was not a verbal processor, so he wouldn’t naturally talk things through. And I knew that if I let myself talk enough, I’d eventually get around to the fact that one of my main fears was not seeing him again and not having a future with him. Yes, we loved each other, but did we want the same thing? We’d loved each other before, too, and we’d been torn apart by life’s events and my choices. I finally knew for certain what I wanted—I had to know what he thought.
I’d set my sights on this evening for my confessional and hoped it wouldn’t feel out of place for me to say what I planned to so soon after a traumatic event.
We loaded into his truck, and he took off without a word, a wrinkle of determination in his brow. It only took a minute to realize he wasn’t going to either of our apartments.
“Where are we headed?” I asked, a little fizz of anxiousness hitting that we might be meeting his family. I loved his family, wanted them to be mine someday like I had always dreamed, but I wanted time with Wilder without the pressures of work or the weirdness of the week.
“Wanted to show you something,” he said, eyes pinned to the road ahead.
