Page 160 of The Serpent's Curse

“This way,” North directed, leading the way through the eerie fog that filled the tunnel. “It’d be an awful big help if the two of you would each grab a case.” He pointed to the stack of wooden crates that his guys were already carting out of the tunnels. “We don’t have much time before the real agents show up.”

Thankfully, Esta and Harte didn’t argue or give him any trouble. Even dressed in some kind of slippery-looking scrap of a thing, Esta grabbed a crate and followed the line of men to the truck they’d parked out back. Once the crates of Nitewein were loaded up, North noticed Esta and Harte trading meaningful glances. Sirens were already singing in the distance.

North knew exactly what they were thinking, but he wasn’t about to let them go so fast, not when he was still considering what he should do about them. “Why don’t you hop on in? We can give you a lift.”

“Oh, I think we can find our own way back,” Harte said, and then offered his hand along with his thanks.

North didn’t take the outstretched hand. “I wasn’t really asking.” He narrowed his eyes a bit, still considering his options if they didn’t comply. There wasn’t any way he was letting these two get away from him, not without figuring out what they were up to. “I think we ought to catch up a bit, don’t you?” He let his gaze linger on Esta, a clear, if unspoken, challenge.

After a couple of seconds, she relented. “We are old friends, after all,” she told Harte without even so much as blinking.

Old friends… North couldn’t help but laugh, especially since they both looked like a couple of kids. Hell, it was hard to believe he’d ever been that young himself, even if he hadn’t been all that much older the last time he’d seen the two of them. But their appearance—the smooth skin of their faces, devoid of the lines that already mapped his own life’s joys and frustrations—was confirmation that Esta could do exactly what she’d threatened years ago in Denver. The question was whether North would give her that chance.

Reluctantly, Harte helped Esta up into the back of the truck, and then he hopped up himself. North followed, closing the rolling door behind them, then made his way between the crates that had been stacked along each side of the truck’s bed and knocked a couple of times on the front wall. A second later, a window opened.

“Are we all set?” the driver, Floyd, asked.

“Let’s get going,” North told him, barely getting the words out before the truck was lurching into gear. “You okay up there, Rett?” North asked the passenger, who turned to look at him with familiar mismatched eyes. Floyd was one of the local guys who was helping out on the run, but Everett was his and Maggie’s oldest boy.

Maggie had about wanted to skin North alive for taking Everett on this particular job. She still saw the boy as the fat, freckled toddler he’d once been, never mind that Everett was taller than North these days. He supposed it was a mother’s prerogative to see the babe she’d once held in her arms, but a father understood when his boy was becoming a man. And he understood that men needed something more than their mother’s apron strings. Everett spent too much time sitting in corners reading until his eyes crossed or tinkering at Maggie’s side, and not enough time out in the world, as far as North was concerned.

Not that Maggie was wrong to have her worries. The jobs they did were always dangerous—always had been—and they usually did come with some complication or another. Right then, Chicago was riskier than usual, what with the Republican Convention in town. But of all the complications he could have worried about or prepared for, North hadn’t expected this one.

Esta was studying the two of them, and North could practically feel her thinking. “He’s yours,” she said softly.

“He is,” North said, beaming at his son with a pride he never bothered to repress. The boy shook his head in response, rolling his eyes a little like he was tired of the attention.

“Then Maggie…” Esta didn’t finish, and North suspected that he understood why. Every time he thought of that night in Denver, his throat got a little tight, and he felt the fear of losing his girl all over again. It didn’t matter that she was as hale and hearty now as she ever had been.

“Maggie came through okay,” he told Esta. “The doctor George took us to saved her life.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Esta told him, and North thought she might have even meant it. “I’ve been thinking about her these last few weeks… wondering.”

Weeks? It was almost impossible to comprehend, considering that it had been years upon years for North.

“Cordelia was such a good shot,” Esta said.

“Thankfully, the doctor was better. But you’re right. Cordelia was good—too good. Maggie uses a chair now to get around.” He couldn’t stop the smile that came when he thought of his wife. “Not that it’s slowed her down one bit.”

“Then you’ve been happy?” Esta asked with a hopeful note.

“As much as anyone can be, I suspect,” he told her. “I take it you never made it back?” He kept his words vague, but from the tightening of her lips, North knew Esta understood. He didn’t miss the way Harte tensed at the question either.

Esta shook her head a little. “No. Not yet.”

“But you will.”

She didn’t immediately respond.

“We have four kids,” North told her. “Everett here’s the oldest, then we got the twins, and little Ruthie is the youngest.” He met her eyes, daring her to look away. Daring her to face what it meant if she carried through with her plan and took those lives from him.

“This lady knows Mama?” Everett asked, unaware of the tension in the back of the truck.

“I met your mother back in St. Louis,” Esta confirmed. “Your father, too. We worked together for a while.”

“That was years ago,” North said. The last thing he needed was Everett getting some idea in his head that Esta was harmless. “Back before Denver.”

From the way Everett’s mouth went tight, North knew the boy understood his meaning.

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