Chapter One

 

 

Bliss, CO

Six years later

 

Henry Flanders was a happy man. Sometimes it was hard to believe he’d once been someone else. That was what it felt like. That time when he’d been known as John Bishop was so far from this place in the mountains, from the woman humming in the kitchen as she made bread. The sound of some opera played through the house. He wasn’t a huge opera fan, but Nell loved it, so he’d grown accustomed. He was fairly certain it was La Bohème she’d put on as the soundtrack for her kitchen time.

“We’re almost out of maple syrup.”

For her vegan bread. He knew her recipe by heart and though she enjoyed making it, he’d learned how to make it as well. That bread was comfort food for his wife. He wanted to ensure she wouldn’t have to go without it when she was heavily pregnant and didn’t need to stand on her feet for the time it took to knead the bread. He moved in behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders and bringing their bodies together. He breathed her in. She was his oxygen. “I’ll put it on our list. I’m going into town tomorrow. Teeny called. My shipment came in.”

He’d gotten into woodworking lately. It was soothing. He found he enjoyed the satisfaction that came with making something with his own hands.

He wanted to make their baby’s crib, wanted to lay their sleeping child in something he’d created out of wood and love. His Nell thought he was making a present for the upcoming wedding of their friend Wolf Meyer, and he was. The lazy Susan would be embellished with the Meyer name, proclaiming the family was established this year. It would be a lovely present, but the true reason he was spending money on the new table saw was the gift he wanted to give to her.

“That’s good. Though I think it’s a lot for a saw.” She turned her head slightly so he could see her nose wrinkle. “You don’t think it’s an indulgence?”

He kissed her cheek. “I think I will make many lovely things with reclaimed wood.” She would be horrified at the thought of chopping down a tree. And honestly, he’d come around to her way of thinking. They lived in a magnificent forest. There were plenty of opportunities to use wood that would otherwise rot. “One day I’ll be good enough to make our furniture if we need it. And we’ve got the money. The new book sold well.”

She cuddled back against him. “Yes, it did. It was fun to write. I hate to admit it, but I do enjoy putting my characters in situations I would never want anyone in. I never imagined I would enjoy writing spies so much, but you do impeccable research. I suppose it’s the history professor in you.”

The history professor had never existed. The spy was the man who seemed so far away. Except when he and Nell were working on a new book. “I do like to research.”

He didn’t have to for the series Nell had recently been writing. She didn’t realize how close to the truth she was about him.

But that truth was in the past, so it didn’t matter. He was a man who built things now, and one of those things was a beautiful future with his wife.

And kid. He was going to be a dad. He felt a loopy grin cross his face. And then fade because it wasn’t the first time he’d been here.

She turned, keeping her floured hands down and away from him. “Don’t.”

He lowered his forehead to hers. “I’m just worried about you.”

He felt her head shake slightly, though because he was against her it felt like she was nuzzling him. That’s what Nell did for him. She took something that was naturally a negative and made it warm and fuzzy. “It’s not the same this time. We’re past the first six weeks. This one is going to be okay. I feel it deep inside. When I was picking herbs this morning, I felt the sun on my face, and I swear a butterfly landed right on me. My mother used to tell me that when a butterfly landed on me, it was the pixies telling me everything was all right.”

Her mother had deeply believed she’d come from another plane of existence. He’d only known Moira Finn briefly, but he’d heard Nell talk about her mother often and the challenges of growing up with a woman who perceived reality differently.

Once he would have simply called Moira Finn insane and thought the best way to deal with her was to force her to acknowledge reality. But he’d grown to learn reality could mean different things to different people if one was open minded. If thinking their unborn child was blessed by pixies made Nell more confident after two miscarriages, then he would thank the pixies.

Did they drink cream or something? Or was that brownies?

He knew too much about faery creatures, but then Nell had written a romance featuring a faery prince and a human woman, and it was his job to do all the research she needed. It was their secret—the fact that she wrote erotic romance.

And their baby was their secret. For now.

“I’m glad to hear it.” He glanced up and saw someone moving across the lawn. His first instinct was to wave at Logan Green and point him out to Nell. Logan was staying at that monstrosity of a cabin Seth Stark had built, along with Seth and Georgia Dawson. Watching those three work through their problems had been deeply entertaining for him and Nell. The last few days they’d sat on the front porch at night and listened in on the relationship drama.

Sometimes it was good to know his wife was human. Oh, she might have shaken her head and said they shouldn’t find someone else’s troubles entertaining, but she hadn’t gotten up from her chair. She’d let him rub her feet while Georgia proved she could yell really loud.

Yes, he would have pointed out to his wife that Logan was coming over, except Logan didn’t go for the front of the cabin. He moved toward the rear, and he stopped twice as though trying to ensure he hadn’t been followed.

Henry’s primary instincts took over, the ones he’d buried deep when he’d left his old life behind—the ones that told him trouble was coming.

Every instinct he had told him something was wrong.

He forced himself to move away from Nell and kept his expression as calm as possible. “I just think you do too much. Between all the housework, the writing, and everything you’ve done to help with the wedding, you need to rest more. And you haven’t been eating much.”

He walked out of the kitchen and into the small room at the back of the cabin where they did much of their work. They had two desks set up on one side. One for him and one for her. Her desk overlooked the backyard, with their vegetable garden and a view of the Rio Grande. Much of the money they’d made over the last couple of years had gone into their cabin and their property, though Nell had protested no one should own land.

He’d pointed out that if the land was for sale, who knew who could buy it? Potentially someone who would pollute or overfish or do something terrible with it. When she’d thought about the possibilities, she’d decided it was best to own the land she wanted to steward. Now they quietly owned one of the larger tracts in Bliss.

Logan moved across that land they’d purchased, and there was no mistaking the glint of metal in his right hand. Logan was dressed in the khakis that marked him as a deputy with the Bliss County Sheriff’s Department, though no one thought he would be working there for much longer. He’d been fighting the idea of being in a relationship with Georgia, of sharing her with his best friend, Seth, on a permanent basis, but there wasn’t a person in Bliss who thought Logan would win that fight.

However, it looked like there was another fight entirely playing out at that big cabin of Seth’s.

Henry watched as the door to the back of Seth’s cabin opened and a large man stepped out. He was muscular and packing. There was a gun in his shoulder holster.

A chill crept up Henry’s spine.

“I’m better.” Nell had gone back to her bread. “You worry too much, Henry. It’s perfectly normal. I’m actually quite hungry now.”

She hadn’t been for the first few weeks. It was one of the ways she’d known to take a pregnancy test.

He moved to the screen door, going light on his feet so Nell might think he was at his computer. She wanted her new hero to be a former Interpol officer, so Henry was busy pulling together all he could about the international agency. He could have simply sat her down and told her that he’d worked with them many times and they were difficult because they had all sorts of rules that tripped up an agent.

“I don’t know. I think you should see Caleb.” Logan was right in front of him now, and Henry put a finger to his lips, silently asking for quiet. If Logan had come running, he would have brought Nell into the conversation. He would have had Nell call the sheriff.

But he hadn’t. Logan had snuck up, and he clearly had his radio. So he didn’t need someone to call the sheriff. He’d likely already done it.

That meant he needed help, and not from Nell. Not from Henry either.

He needed John Bishop. There were only a few people in all the world who knew his secret, and one of them was Seth Stark. If Seth was in trouble, he would have sent Logan for him.

“I need some rest. That’s all,” Nell continued. “Caleb would try to prescribe things, and you know how I feel about big pharmaceutical companies.”

If he didn’t distract her, she would hear Logan, and then he would have to make decisions he wasn’t ready to make. He’d been able to deal with that man from Gemma’s past quietly, though he knew Caleb Burke had questions about the way the man had died.

Henry had split the man’s spine at the top of his neck. It was a neat and bloodless kill, one he’d perfected over the many years he’d worked for the CIA.

“They’re not all bad.” He said the words to get a specific reaction out of Nell, knowing she wasn’t even halfway through her kneading process.

“Not all bad? I recently read an article about this terrible company,” she began.

She would be at least five minutes. It gave him the opportunity to slip out on the deck. “What’s going on? I caught you running across the yard with a gun in hand about thirty seconds ago and then that big guy stepped out onto your porch. Have you called Nathan?”

His gut was in knots. Why now? Why was everything seeming to come to a breaking point right as he and Nell had managed to make it past that first awful six weeks of this pregnancy. He’d felt like someone was watching him, like something was bearing down on him.

Nell was going on about some pharmaceutical company with a German-sounding name as Logan leaned in. “Yeah, though I think this is your problem. You tell me something and you tell me now because my partner and my wife are being held by some sort of drug lord. Did you work for them before you came to Bliss?”

Now his gut took a deep dive and he felt bile at the back of his throat. And he knew why he’d felt eyes on him. The cartel. They’d found him? “They’re from a cartel?”

It was his worst nightmare. The Agency finding out John Bishop wasn’t dead was only his second worst-case scenario. The cartel was the worst.

How the hell had they found him? How had they figured out he wasn’t dead?

Did they know about Nell? That was the real question that went through him. Was he about to cause the death of the most precious person in the world to him?

“I could be wrong. They could be mob. They could be a traveling circus. I don’t give a shit because they’re going to kill my people and I think they’re here for you. So I’m going to ask the question and you’re going to answer. Are you on the payroll?” Logan asked the question low, his tone hard. It was the tone of a man who thought he might be about to lose everything.

Henry knew the feeling. He forced his panic back down. There was no place for it here. If the cartel was at Seth’s place, then he needed to be cold as ice. He could make this work. After all, Seth had known who he was for years. Seth had kept his secrets. Logan could keep them too.

Or the time had come and he had decisions to make.

“No. The cartel was the target. If it’s who I think it is, they were mixed up with a terrorist cell. I was CIA and then I wasn’t. Damn it. They’re supposed to think I’m dead.” Telling Logan was all right. Especially since if the cartel had Seth, Logan was about to find out how good he was at killing.

It was odd because there was no anxiety about what he was about to do. He knew how to kill quickly and quietly, and cartel assholes were fairly easy to take down. They only tended to know how to shoot things, and he didn’t intend to even let them know he was there until it was far too late to pull the trigger.

“They seem to have caught on.” Logan’s gaze went back toward the cabin as though he could see it. He couldn’t. Not standing here. “Nate’s on his way, but I don’t have time to wait so I need you to get your freak on. You owe Seth. You owe him, Henry. And you damn well know it.”

He owed the whole town of Bliss, and that meant he couldn’t hesitate. He nodded Logan’s way and walked back into his cabin, into the place where he was happy and safe. It was the place where he lied to his wife so he could stay happy and safe.

Was it the place where he would lose her?

Henry moved to his desk. It didn’t have the view Nell’s had, but it did have a view of her, and that was all he needed. He loved to watch her while she typed away at a story about true love sprinkled in with lessons on recycling and tolerance. And anal sex. He rather thought that was why they truly sold. His wife had a deliciously filthy mind.

God, he loved her, and he would do anything to protect her. He opened the drawer to his desk and found the knife he kept there. His sweet wife thought he kept it around because he was learning to whittle. The only reason she thought that was because she’d likely never seen a knife that was meant exclusively for killing. He didn’t have time to go for the guns he kept stashed away. The knife would be quieter, and if he needed a gun, then he would take one off a dead cartel guy.

He could make this work. She didn’t have to know.

“Hey, baby, Logan’s here. He says there’s a problem with the plumbing. I’m going to check it out. You knead your bread, okay? I wouldn’t want to ruin it. And I’ll turn up the music. I know you love this aria.” He used his mouse to pump up the volume on the opera that was playing through the cabin. It might mask the sound of gunfire.

Might.

“I could come and help.” She was looking over at him with the most adorable Nell expression. He’d cataloged her expressions over the years. She had twenty different smiles and only two frowns. One of those frowns was on her face now. It was her slightly disgruntled frown.

“No, baby, you stay here. It’s just a little wet work. I’ll be back in ten minutes.” He took her in for a second. She was the light of his life. “I love you, Nell.”

He forced himself to go outside and prayed he could pull this off.

 

 

An hour later he’d taken a shower and changed into some of Logan’s clothes, tossing his own in the trash because they’d gotten covered in blood. Luckily his clothes were interchangeable, and Nell rarely noticed what he was wearing so long as it was sustainable and organic.

He forced himself to move across the grass, feeling almost like he was outside his body, like he was a robot moving only because he had the programming that forced the action.

Like he used to feel every single day of his life.

Seth was going to live. Georgia had been spared the worst of it. Seth had taken the pain for her, and he’d even had a smile on his face at the end because he’d known he’d gone through the fire and come out of it with everything he could have wanted.

Henry feared his fire was about to begin.

Henry, I respect a man’s privacy. You know I do, but if something’s heading into my town, I need to know.

Thirty minutes ago, Nate had asked him about the possibility of the cartel returning to look for Henry as they’d stood in Seth’s living room surrounded by dead bodies.

Hell, sheriff. Hell is coming to Bliss, and I invited it in.

It had been explained to him that the man who’d shown up hadn’t been sure Henry was in town. He hadn’t reported back to his boss, and wouldn’t because everyone was dead. Still, he had to figure that at some point the cartel would catch on to where he was.

Should he leave?

Nell rushed out onto the porch, only stopping when she saw him walking up. She put a hand over her mouth and then ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. “What happened? I got a call from Laura. She said there was trouble at Seth’s.”

He wrapped his arms around her. God, he couldn’t leave this woman. “It was okay. Logan took care of it. I’m sorry. I didn’t take my phone with me and I had to help with the cleanup. I had to change. I got…I got some blood on my clothes.” At least he didn’t have to lie about that. “Seth is all right.”

Nell’s face turned up and there were tears in her eyes. “They were coming after Seth because of all that money he has. I’ve told him it would be better to donate it.”

Nate was giving him some time, but the sheriff wouldn’t keep quiet forever. For now Nate was allowing the idea that they weren’t sure why the cartel had shown up. They were going on the theory that they were after Seth for either money or data. Seth Stark was a tech billionaire. He was a good target for any one criminal organization that wanted money or tech. It was a believable story.

But the truth would have to come out. He’d begged Nate to give him until after the wedding. By then they should truly be past the most dangerous time in her pregnancy, and Nell had been so looking forward to the wedding. He wanted a few more weeks before he had to tell his wife everything she knew about him was a lie.

“You’re all right?” Nell clutched him close.

He kissed her forehead. “I’m fine now.”

He held his wife close because he was on borrowed time. He needed to figure a way out of the trap he was in and fast.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Nell asked, her gaze filled with uncertainty.

“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you back inside. Are you feeling okay? No cramps?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine. What happened? How close did you get?”

He kissed her again. He wasn’t sure what he would do if she lost the baby. He wasn’t sure he could survive that because she would blame him, and she would be right to.

How had he ever thought he could get away with it? How had he thought his past wouldn’t find him again? After all the blood on his hands, why had he thought he could be clean again?

“Too close,” he said, holding her again. “I’m upset, Nell. Would you mind if we sat together for a while?”

“Of course.” She gave him a squeeze. “Come on. I’ve started dinner and I’ll pour you some Scotch and we can sit and watch the river.”

It was his favorite place to be if he wasn’t in bed with her wrapped around him. He loved to sit and watch the sunset with her. “That would be nice.”

He followed his wife and prayed he could use these days to find a way to tell her he was a lie.

 

* * * *

 

“I heard it was a drug cartel.” Holly frowned as she poured a cup of chamomile tea and set it in front of Nell. “But I heard that from Marie, and she seems to think Seth has invested heavily in drug rehab centers and that’s why they came after him. I don’t think that was it.”

Laura patted her infant daughter as she rocked back and forth in the rocking chair that used to be Nell’s mother’s. “Yeah, I don’t think so either. Somehow I don’t see a cartel targeting investors in rehabs. Cam hasn’t come home yet, so I haven’t been able to grill him. I’m so tempted to go to the big house and see if I can pick up any clues. You’re sure Henry didn’t tell you anything at all?”

Nell took the tea and settled back into her place on the sofa. Laura had shown up with Holly shortly after Nate had knocked and asked Henry to come down to the station house. Nate had explained that they needed to take a more thorough report on what he’d seen now that Seth was in surgery and expected to make a full recovery. Nell had tried to go with her husband, but Henry had insisted that she rest. And Nate had insisted they go to the station rather than taking his statement here. It had been an odd exchange, with some weird tension running between the sheriff and Henry. She’d been glad when her friends had shown up on her doorstep offering to sit with her for a while.

“He told me what he knew,” Nell replied. “He was there. He went over to help Logan with a plumbing problem.” Except he hadn’t taken his tool kit. Had he? He hadn’t come back with it. She supposed he could have gone out to his shop, picked it up, and then left it behind in the chaos. He’d seemed so dazed when he’d come home. She looked to Laura. “Why would Nate need Henry to come down to the station? According to Henry, he didn’t see much. He was in the bathroom, and he hid there until the shooting was over.”

Which also didn’t sound like her husband. Henry wasn’t a violent man, but she’d never had a question in her mind that he would protect the people around him. She believed in nonviolence, but she wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t understand sometimes there was no other way. She already knew she would defend her husband and child and friends if she was forced to.

Henry wouldn’t hide. He might throw his body in front of something deadly, but he wouldn’t hide.

And that meant something was wrong with his story.

Laura patted her daughter, Sierra, on the back as the baby started to mewl. She’d only recently adopted the infant, but she was already settling into her new role as a mom. “I suppose he wants Gemma to take a long statement. You know Nate doesn’t love to type.”

“Why would he need a long statement from a man who was in the bathroom the whole time? Henry didn’t leave the bathroom until it was all over.” He’d said he’d had to help stop Seth’s bleeding, and that was how he’d gotten the blood on his clothes.

He’d seemed haunted by the whole thing. But Henry had been around blood before. He was always solid in a crisis. Something was different this time. The only other time she’d seen him so shaken was a few months before when Gemma had been in trouble.

Holly sank down beside her. “I think Nate is trying to make sure he gets everything right on this one since he’s going to have to talk to the feds. Some of the people who attacked Seth and Georgia were from other countries.”

She didn’t buy it. Something was wrong, and it made her wonder about the incident that happened before. “Do you remember when Jesse got shot?”

Laura let out a huff. “Who could forget that? Gemma’s ex-fiancé comes into town and tries to kill her because he thinks she’s working with you on a case that eventually got a presidential candidate taken out of the primaries. No. I don’t forget that easily.”

It had hit close to home because Nell had been working with the township that formed the basis of the case Gemma’s old firm had been working on. They’d been able to prove the EPA investigator was taking money under the table from the corporation that was polluting the town’s water table and causing a cluster of cancer cases. One of the primary investors had been a presidential candidate. Gemma and Nell had been able to prove that the candidate had known what was going on. The scandal caused the candidate to drop out.

But not before Jesse had been shot and Gemma and Cade had nearly died.

Holly sat down beside her. “Caleb complains regularly about how he’s taken more bullets out of Bliss citizens than all his years in war-torn countries.”

Holly and Laura shared a look, one that normally Nell would let slide as her two best friends trying to figure out how best to handle her so she didn’t go off on a protest. But this time she rather thought it was about something else.

“How did that man die? Gemma’s ex?” She’d heard the rumors and laughed them off. Because the rumor was someone had killed the man who’d shot Jesse and tried to kill Gemma. Because there was only one other person in the woods that night. By the time Nate and Cam had gotten there, the man had been dead.

“He broke his neck,” Holly said matter of factly.

Laura said nothing, but there was a tightening around her eyes.

“I heard the words internal decapitation used.” She’d overheard Max and Rye Harper talking about it at Stella’s one morning. And it wasn’t like she’d eavesdropped. Max was very loud. “That’s when the spinal cord is separated from the base of the skull. It’s a rare injury and one that doesn’t normally occur from someone tripping and falling. I believe that was the theory Nate put forward.”

“How do you know about internal decapitation?” Holly’s eyes had widened.

She felt herself flush. Not even her two best friends knew about her writing. They knew she wrote, but not what she wrote and that she’d been published. It wasn’t because she thought Holly and Laura would be shocked. They wouldn’t. Her best friends would be supportive. But when Henry had started working on the books with her, she’d liked the intimacy of it being only the two of them. They shared so much of their lives with everyone around them that having this part remain private made it even better. Those books contained her secret self, her fantasies and dreams, and sharing them with Henry alone felt right.

Henry didn’t actually write the books, but he helped her plot. He did a lot of research and was her first line editor. Henry had read everything she’d ever written.

Henry had been the one to suggest that her spy hero understood the fine art of atlanto-occipital dislocation, more popularly known as internal decapitation.

“I’m doing research for a possible book.” They knew she was always planning something.

“I thought you were writing about recycling or climate change.” Laura had sat up, shifting her now sleeping baby from her shoulder to her arms.

“I research a lot of things.” She researched the things she found interesting and let Henry teach her about things like war and which kinds of guns law enforcement would use. He’d researched everything from how to defuse a bomb to bioweapons. She worried he might be on several watchlists. It was probably a good thing they didn’t travel much. “And my research taught me that it requires a good amount of force in exactly the right place to separate the skull from the spine. There’s a reason it’s rare. It mostly happens in high-speed car accidents.”

“Why are you asking, Nell?” Laura asked before she glanced Holly’s way again.

It was obvious they’d been talking about this, too. “I think it’s odd, that’s all. I also think it’s odd that Seth had a problem with the plumbing. It was just put in.”

“Did he say what was specifically wrong?” Holly asked.

“Plumbing can go wrong at any time.” Laura continued to rock. “And it makes sense since you said he hid in the bathroom.”

Nell nodded. “That’s what he told me. Do you know when the call went in? I can’t see the front of Seth’s cabin from the kitchen. I was working on some bread and then I answered some email. That window faces the river, so I was utterly unaware anything was going on. Why didn’t Nate have his siren on?”

“I think Logan managed to get a call out before he took down the bad guys,” Laura explained. “I’m sure Nate didn’t want to alert them the police were on the way.”

Nell had gone over and over the timing in her head. “I talked to you five minutes before Henry came home. By then he’d helped with the people who’d gotten hurt, and then helped some with the cleanup. He had to take a shower and change his clothes because he got blood on them. And he was only gone for an hour and a half.”

“Nell, what are you worried about?” Laura asked, her mouth down in a frown.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit it, but she needed to talk to someone. “Have you heard the rumors? About Henry?”

Holly sighed. “I’ve told Caleb he’s insane. It’s ridiculous.”

“He’s not the only one,” Laura countered.

She’d heard the rumor from Rachel, who’d rolled her eyes and called Doctor Caleb Burke crazy for even hinting that Henry Flanders might be some sort of trained killer. She’d thought Nell would find the idea hysterical, but then Nell heard how the man had died.

Was it merely coincidental that Henry had done a ton of research on internal decapitation for her latest book, and not a few weeks later someone died that way right here in Bliss?

“I’ve heard Gemma thinks something’s wrong with Henry, too,” Nell admitted.

Holly reached out and covered Nell’s hand with hers. “No one thinks there’s anything wrong with Henry. Caleb and Gemma both have vivid imaginations, and neither of them have been here for long. What do you think happened this afternoon? Do you think Henry stormed into Seth’s cabin and took them all down? How would he have even known there was trouble?”

But that was where Logan came in. And Seth. When Henry had first come to Bliss, he’d met Logan and Seth. He’d had an oddly close relationship with Seth over the years. Henry had kept in touch with the young man while he’d gone to college and started his incredible business. “Why would Logan come to our door when he could have called? If it was an emergency, calling would have been faster.”

“You know how people are around here,” Holly countered. “They like to be friendly.”

“But he wasn’t friendly. I didn’t even hear him knock on the door. He didn’t come in or say hello to me.” It hadn’t bothered her at the time. She’d been concerned with her bread and her latest project. She found kneading bread a soothing way to think, and it wasn’t until later that she’d been struck by how odd the encounter had been.

“I still don’t understand why this is a problem.” Holly sat back. “Do you think Henry lied?”

“When he first came to Bliss he was cold.” She could still remember how cold he’d been unless his hands were on her. He’d been a bit combative with everyone he’d met in the beginning. She’d known there was a warm heart under all that ice, but it had taken a while to find it. Then he’d left and when he’d come back he’d been a different man, a warmer man. He’d been the man of her dreams.

“So was I,” Laura pointed out. “This place has a way of changing a person. Do you think Henry lied to you about who he used to be? Is that what this is about? You’ve heard the rumors and you’re worried they’re true?”

She couldn’t help but think about it. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll have a long talk with my husband,” Holly promised. “He’s always paranoid, but he usually manages to keep it to himself. If it helps, Alexei teases him about it. He thinks it’s completely ridiculous, and he was in the mob for years. If Alexei can’t tell who’s dangerous and who isn’t, then no one can. And Gemma literally worked with murder lawyers for years and didn’t see it. I think Henry is fine.”

Holly wasn’t telling her anything that hadn’t gone through her head. He hadn’t given off signals anyone had picked up. She knew Stef had vetted him.

Why was she even thinking these things? And why hadn’t she confronted Henry with her questions?

“I hid a lot of things about my past when I got here,” Laura admitted. “It certainly didn’t make me some kind of killer.”

Nell shook her head. “I didn’t say he was a killer.”

“Then what else are you worried about?” Laura sometimes got a look in her eyes that reminded Nell she’d worked for the FBI for years before she’d come to Bliss, though she hadn’t admitted that for a long time.

“I’ve never met any of Henry’s old college friends. With the singular exception of Bill, I’ve never met anyone who knew Henry before. He talks about some people he knew and they sound interesting, but he’s never offered to go see them or bring them to Bliss.” She’d known he didn’t have any family, that he’d been raised by a single mom and she was gone. No siblings or cousins.

“Not everyone is close to their work friends,” Holly pointed out. “And it’s easy to fall out of touch when there’s so much distance. Caleb doesn’t have any friends from his days in Chicago. Alexei has a cousin he talks to quite a bit, but that’s about it. All of their friends are from here now.”

“It’s pretty much the same for Rafe and Cam,” Laura agreed. “Rafe tries to reach out to his family, but I don’t think it’s going well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Laura had explained that Rafe’s family was very old fashioned, and they were giving him trouble about his unorthodox marriage. They didn’t consider it a marriage at all. “That has to be hard on Rafe.”

“It is.” Laura looked down at her sleeping child. “We thought his mom would bend when we adopted Sierra, but apparently she’s only interested in children who have her blood. I don’t know. Family can be overrated. Sometimes it’s good to make a family on your own, to choose the people who stand beside you. I think that’s what Henry’s done. He’s incredibly devoted to this town and its people.”

He was. Henry was always the first to volunteer. Was she looking for trouble where there was none?

“The rumors are getting to you,” Laura said, not unkindly. “My question to you is does it matter?”

Holly frowned Laura’s way. “Of course it matters. I would be upset if people were talking about Caleb and Alexei around town.”

“They’re always talking about Caleb.” Laura shook her head. “But it’s not the talk that bothers her, not really. Nell’s dealt with rumors all her life, but something about this one is getting to her. It’s the idea that Henry might have a darker past than he’s been willing to talk about. Does that matter? If you found out Henry wasn’t who he said he was, that he might have hidden something about his past from you—would that change how you feel about him?”

It was time to level with her closest friends. It had been so hard to not talk to them, but she could now. “I love him. I’ll always love Henry. I’m having his baby.”

Laura’s eyes widened, and Holly went still.

“Nell, are you serious?” Laura managed to get to the edge of her seat without waking the baby.

She hadn’t told anyone because she and Henry had decided to wait a while longer, but she needed to talk to her friends about this. “We’ve been trying for over a year. I’ve had a couple of miscarriages.”

She said the words simply, and this time they didn’t bring immediate tears to her eyes. She’d cried so much over those two losses.

“Caleb didn’t tell me.” Holly’s eyes filled with tears. “Does he know?”

Even in Bliss there were HIPAA rules, and Caleb followed them. The doc was awfully good at keeping his mouth closed. Even around his wife. “Of course. We went to him both times. It was very early on in both pregnancies. So early that he thinks I might not have been pregnant at all the first time.”

But she had been. She’d felt it.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Laura held Sierra close.

There had been so many reasons. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. You were getting married. At first I didn’t want to take attention away, and then I didn’t want to make anyone sad. It’s a happy time.”

“It can be both.” Holly moved closer to her. “It can be happy for us and we can still mourn with you. That’s what it means to be sisters. Like Laura said, sometimes we put together a family out of the people we love. Laura and I don’t have any family left. Not the blood kind, but you two are my sisters and that means we don’t hold things back. Not for anything. I would rather have postponed the wedding than have you go through that alone.”

“But she wasn’t. She had Henry,” Laura said quietly. “Haven’t you noticed how close he’s stayed to her the last several months? He’s hovered even more than usual, and he’s been…sad.”

He’d been mourning, too. Now he worried. Another reason to think something had been odd today. She’d offered to go with him because he didn’t like to leave her alone. But he’d told her to stay. “We’ve both had a rough time, but he’s been amazing through all of it. Now we’re pregnant again, and Caleb says everything is going well and I feel different this time. I’m further along than I’ve ever been. I think the other reason I didn’t want to tell you was that I’ve always said I wouldn’t have kids.”

She’d been rather arrogant, thinking she didn’t need the things other people seemed to. She’d proclaimed to all who would listen that she wouldn’t contribute to the world’s overpopulation, and yet here she was putting herself through great heartache for the shot at overpopulating with one more kiddo, one who looked like Henry.

“Oh, sweetie, you can change your mind.” Laura reached for her hand. “There’s nothing in the world that I want more than for you to have this feeling I have when I hold Sierra. If you want it, there’s nothing better in the world. And I’m so glad you and Henry get to have this together.”

Holly reached out, too, putting her hand over Laura’s and completing their trifecta. “You should know that I’m taking fertility treatments because we’ve decided we would like to have a kid. Just one. Caleb is unconcerned with passing on his genes, so Alexei and I are trying and Caleb is playing fertility god for us.”

“He doesn’t care?” Laura asked.

“He’s Caleb. We know we’re only going to have this one shot, and he wants Alexei to take it. He says there are too many Sommervilles in the world already. He’s gotten closer to his brother, but he still worries about the rest of his family. They can be overbearing, and they put far too much faith in genetics.” Holly shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter. I think about how amazing it would be if we all had kids close in age. It would be so nice for them to have cousins to play with.”

Now the tears did show up. They made their appearance as the sweetest vision hit her. All her life she’d been that weird kid with the single mom who thought she was a refugee from a faery plane. She’d had no family and few friends. As much as she’d adored her mother, the idea that her baby could have cousins pierced through her.

If there was one thing Bliss had taught her it was that families could be made through love and choice and pure will.

“I would love that so much,” she said.

The door came open and Henry was there alongside Cam, who’d likely driven him back since Nate had taken him to the station.

Henry’s eyes went wide at the sight of her, and he visibly paled. “Nell?”

She stood because she knew that look. She’d seen it on his face twice recently, that helpless look she’d never seen before and now seemed too familiar. “I’m fine, Henry. I’m good. I just told my best friends about the baby. I know we decided to wait but…”

Her explanation was lost as Henry crossed the distance between them and hugged her tight to his body. “I was so worried. When I saw you crying…”

He took a shaky breath and she could feel a fine tremble go through him. He’d thought she’d started bleeding because that was how he’d found her twice before.

“I’m fine. I’m good, and so is the baby.” They’d been through a lot in the past couple of weeks. Why was she pushing for more? Henry didn’t lie to her. Even when it hurt. He would do it gently, but he told her when her culinary experiments didn’t go well or when a particular color wasn’t the best on her.

He was so worried. That was why he seemed off. He was worried about her and the baby, and he’d been through something terrible. She was awful for thinking differently.

“Nell is pregnant?” Cam was a big presence in her living room. “I thought they were all about overpopulation…”

“Cameron Briggs,” Laura began.

“I meant congratulations. That’s awesome news.” Cam reached down to take his own baby. “Come on, Sierra Rose. Let’s get you home now that everything’s been sorted out. Seth has come through the surgery and everyone’s fine. We’ve survived another Bliss disaster. Holly, will you be all right driving home?”

Holly patted Nell’s back before she joined Laura and Cam at the door. “I’ll be fine. Since we moved down the river, it’s so much quicker to get here, though I do miss the valley. Nell, call me tomorrow and we’ll talk some more.”

“Or we can meet for lunch,” Laura offered. “The special at Stella’s tomorrow is eggplant parmesan, and I happen to know that Hal is doing one up with vegan cheese in case you come in.”

Henry had moved to her side, though his arm was around her. “That’s thoughtful of him.”

“I’ll see you there at noon.” Now that the news was out, she could talk about it. She had a million questions to ask about pregnancy. She could ask Holly and Rachel and Callie and Jen. Beth McNamara had recently had a baby girl. They were having a baby boom in Bliss, and she could be a part of it all.

Henry hugged her tight as the door closed behind their guests. “You’re really all right?”

This man meant the world to her. He was her everything. Pregnancy was making her paranoid, and he’d had a rough day. She held him close. “I’m perfect, and so are you. We’re all fine. I hope you don’t mind me telling Holly and Laura about the baby. I needed to talk to some women. It’s not that you…”

He interrupted her with a kiss and then let her go and locked the door. “I’m happy for you to have some women to talk to. You need your friends.” He stopped. “I want to upgrade our security. What happened at Seth’s made me think. I know we’re in a small town, but with Seth close, we might have to worry about people who want to steal from him.”

“If you think so.” She wanted him to be comfortable. If a few locks could do that, then she could handle it. “How did it go with Nate?”

“Good, but he wanted to be thorough. Logan couldn’t talk for long because he needed to be at the hospital. The same was true for Georgia, so until tomorrow I was pretty much the only one he could ask questions of. I’m sorry I left you here alone. It’s why I called Holly and Laura to see if they would come by and visit you.”

Of course he had. He always thought of her.

She forced those silly questions out of her mind. Henry was the best man she’d ever met and he wouldn’t lie to her. She wasn’t going to insult him by asking.

“I kept some dinner warm for you.” It was time to take care of her husband. “And I kept a second plate for me.” She winced. “I ate earlier, but I’m so hungry these days.”

“Then let’s get you some food. I could definitely eat.” He took her hand and led her to their kitchen table.

She sat beside her husband and let all of her worries go.

 

 

It was the next morning when she went out and found his tool kit sitting on his table in the shop. It hadn’t been moved in days. She could tell from the slight dust coating it.

It was later that day, she found the guns.