The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

“Don’t let them think you’re soft.” Someone needs his mommy. Zeke had softness in him, gentleness he kept hidden for the most part, so not to let himself be taken advantage of.

“Only where it works for me. I get to do irresponsible things like wander off and ask questions and make friends by not being a threat to anyone.” She knew that. Didn’t understand what made her want to crawl into his lap and sync her breathing with his. He moved his hand, put his arm around her and hugged her to his side. “You had a week, huh?”

He smelled of Abundance organic goat’s milk soap, like pretty much everyone else did. Her week wasn’t that bad, but his kindness was making her feel odd, squishy. Like if he squeezed her too hard, hot sticky emotion would ooze all over the place. She pulled away and stood, going to the door. “Get some sleep.”

“Still wouldn’t want to be doing this with anyone but you, Aurora Rae.”

“I’m going to make you jog tomorrow afternoon so hang on to that thought.” She switched the light off.

He groaned, and the bed did too as he rolled onto it. “You get too uncomfortable out there, just shove me over and slide in.”

No chance that was happening as oddly tempting as it sounded to cram in with him. He needed a proper night’s sleep, no interruptions, and she was off-balance enough to crave his touch. Not a good combination of factors.

Outside on the couch, she couldn’t get settled. It was essentially a plank of wood with arms and under-stuffed cushions. She got up and found a notebook and a pencil in a kitchen drawer and drew Zeke a map so he could find his cabin without her. She slid it under the close

d bedroom door because she had no intention of waking him. Then she didn’t so much toss and turn as fight her way to sleep and she was awake before Cadence appeared.

“Good morning,” Cadence said, glancing at Rory’s closed bedroom door. “He still here?”

“Do you mind? He’s exhausted.”

“He was a shock. I’m sorry I was inhospitable, but he’s so big and this is my space and I’d gotten used to being alone and I like it. Then you came, and I’m not used to you yet so he’s just too much.”

“I get it. It’s okay. We won’t do it again. I’ll be crippled permanently if I have to sleep on this couch another night.”

She’d brought a change of clothes out of her room in anticipation of letting Zeke sleep, so she washed and dressed while Cadence did her yoga routine on the porch. It wasn’t until she was upright and functioning that she noticed the bedroom door was unlatched.

When she pushed it open, it was to find the room empty, the bed made. The disappointment at not being able to spy on Zeke asleep, all his armor abandoned, made her doubt herself all over again. She needed to pull it together or she’d make a mistake that wouldn’t be so easy to recover from.

“He’s gone,” she said to Cadence, joining her on the porch, ready for her morning shift in the kitchen corner, and the moment she said it, she knew he would be. He’d promised a woman who would’ve been happy to throw him out he’d be gone before she woke, and he never broke a promise.

They walked to work together, not talking, enjoying the crisp air and splitting up at the town square. Cadence going to open the general store and Rory going to her corner. When the first kid pulled a face at her in the window she didn’t glare daggers at him. She made a face back, and when he almost fell over from laughing, she laughed too.

She was finally getting the hang of this.

Chapter Seven

Rory ran fluidly, as if her feet barely smacked the ground. Zeke tucked in a couple of paces behind her and let the poetry of her body in motion drag him towards the greenhouse in her wake.

She was just like that eagle, sure and true and efficiently beautiful.

She wore skins that vacuum-sealed against her limbs and in this place where people mostly wore their clothes till they fell off, she looked like an alien from an advanced civilization. He needed her to talk about her week, the bruises on her arm. He needed to know what they’d done to her, because she’d overreacted to seeing him in the dining hall and that was unlike her and it might’ve been a problem had she not covered so well.

It hadn’t felt at all like a problem for the few minutes he held her in his arms, felt her tremble and wanted nothing more than to keep hold of her, and that, right there, not wanting to let her go, definitely was a problem.

It wasn’t just because he’d worried about her too.

There were tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the greenhouses. The barns were locked up but that was when she told him about the keys, about his suitcase, which was waiting for him in his new cabin when he got there with her map this morning, and about calling Orrin out.

Fucking Orrin who’d not said a word about it when they’d talked on-site, even when Zeke brought up wanting to be able to protect Rosie.

“Not giving me a simple answer about where you were pissed me off,” she said, when they came to a stop beside an overgrown field, well off the beaten track. “I made a nuisance of myself. The upside was grabbing these.” She held up the large bunch of keys she’d hidden in the tangled roots of a huge tree. “Losing these must’ve stung. It’s not like they can cut keys here and if they suspected me, I’d know about it by now.”

She gestured to the first barn. “Farm equipment. The other one is a parking garage. Trucks, bikes, cars and a small bus, a couple of empty shipping containers. We now have ready access to as many getaway cars as we want. No signal jammer.” She tucked the keys back into their hiding spot. “The building on the sports field is full of bats and balls. I still need to check the clinic, school and the nursery.”

The intel was superb, not immediately useful, but necessary. The idea of her being out snooping around at night made him twitchy, and that was a problem. They were partners. Equals. Rory was a skilled professional. They knew what the job entailed and the risks of it and he had no right to any opinion about her actions unless they directly endangered him or any of the Continuers. She wouldn’t thank him for doubting her capabilities. Especially because lately she’d doubted them herself.

“It’s too obvious for the signal jammer to be in the office but I’m going to check it tonight to make sure,” she said.