No Quick Fix (Torus Intercession 1)

“You’re certain of that,” Emery pressed him.

Huck nodded. “Absolutely.” And then he qualified, “Now, that Beretta in the hands of someone who actually knows how to use it, is deadly. I mean, once you get that first shot off, it’s just like firing the Glock. The second through however many shots, the hammer is always back which gives it the same pull. The first shot taking longer though, that’s the one Brann was banking on.”

Emery was studying my friend, unsure, trying to make sense of what he was being told.

“Anyway, that Beretta is a combat pistol; it’s not something you take to scare a SEAL in his home.”

Emery turned into me, arms around my neck, holding tight.

“You’re not helping,” I snarled at Huck under my breath, rubbing Emery’s back, clutching him against me.

Huck shrugged. “I tried.”

Glancing away from him, I stared daggers at Olivia. “Food?”

“On the way home, I saw Mariah and her mom, and they both looked kinda sad, so I gave them your food and your shake to cheer them up, and they were happy and said they could split it and that it was super nice of you.”

“Of me?”

“I said it was from you.”

I growled at her.

“Daddy said he would make you an omelet.”

“Yeah?” I said to Emery. “You’re gonna cook?”

He didn’t respond, just continued to hug me. Not that I was complaining. He could hold me for as long as he wanted.

“Are you mad?” Olivia asked me, her eyes searching my face.

“Do I look mad?”

She shook her head.

I smiled at her. “It was a nice thing you did for your friend, Livi.”

She took a breath. “I told Daddy and April to start calling me Livi again, and I told Huck to call me Livi too.”

“Oh, I’m real glad,” I admitted, easing her close to me so I could hold her.

April, who hadn’t left my side, huddled close as well.

Easy to see I was loved.

As soon as the Whitefish PD cleared out, people started coming by the house. Mal and Jules came over to meet Huck, thank him, and check on me. Mal and Huck were still talking an hour later, and Jules was with the girls, going through pictures of Andrea that she’d brought over.

Anne Stratton, bruised but hardly broken, came back to speak to Emery so they could formalize a date for her to make him an offer on officially building the resort. They disappeared into his office to hammer out the details.

Cahill Lumber moved quickly, removing Grant Cahill from the board of his own company, and Lydia took over as the interim CEO, pending an investigation into involvement on her part. I let the reporters who came by from news stations in Helena, Whitefish, and Ursa’s local paper know I had every confidence in Lydia Cahill’s innocence. Emery got an email from Lydia a couple of hours after that, informing him that she would not be seeking any monetary restitution for lost funds due to his termination of their engagement. There were, her letter went on to say, new extenuating circumstances.

“Like the fact that the entire marriage was a sham from the beginning, since Cahill was only trying to defraud his new son-in-law out of land that was rightly his!” Jules finished hotly, and loudly, arms crossed as she’d read the email over Emery’s shoulder.

Emery and I both turned to look at her.

“But that’s just a guess.”

Cahill and Duvall were driven to Helena by the Whitefish PD, who formally took jurisdiction of the case as the findings of their ME pertaining to Peter Bannon would be used during the prosecution of the case. Huck turned over his findings—the hacking he’d done—to the Whitefish PD. Both he and I would be deposed at a later date as witnesses.

David Reed would spend the night at the hospital for no good reason. It was a shoulder wound that both Huck and I had been through on more than one occasion, but he would be transferred to Helena the following day. Taken to the hospital in Whitefish, he was cuffed to his bed, with one officer in the room and two at the door. The chief of police there was taking no chances with his continued health or custody.

Taking a break from talking to everyone, I went into my bedroom and called Jared Colter. He answered on the third ring.

“Calder,” he greeted me. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Did I wake you, sir?”

“Chicago is only an hour ahead of Ursa, Calder,” my boss said snidely. “It’s only eleven here, not three in the morning. I’m not quite that old.”

“No, sir,” I replied quickly.

“Don’t treat me like I’m a fossil.”

“Yes, sir.” I sighed, smiling, because I realized, with only those few words passing between us, that he was treating me differently. He already knew I was quitting. “I called because I wanted to thank you for the opportunity you gave me. I enjoyed working for you.”