Defending Everly (Mountain Mercenaries, #5)(71)

Rob: We’l be together soon, baby girl. Real soon.





Chapter Fifteen

Everly wasn’t happy to hear the reason why her sister had quit the Outdoor Club, but she was also proud of her for being aware of her surroundings and not blowing off the weird feeling. As a cop, Everly had come to rely on those odd feelings. If she was approaching a car after pulling it over and felt weird vibes, she was always extremely cautious. Same when she was on a job as a SWAT officer.

When the hair on the back of her neck stood up, she took extra precautions.

The weekend had actually turned out really fun. They’d all gone over to Ball’s house Saturday morning, after he’d fixed them a huge breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon, and cinnamon rolls. There, he’d plugged Elise’s phone into his computer and called Meat. After that was done, with Meat promising to get back to them as soon as he could, they’d all gone to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which wasn’t far from the Seven Bridges hike they’d all done together. At sixty-eight hundred feet above sea level, the mountainside conservation park was the highest zoo in America.

But more important, they had the world’s largest giraffe herd. And babies. Lots and lots of giraffe babies.

Zoos weren’t Everly’s favorite thing. She always felt sorry for the animals being penned up, but she had to admit that feeding the giraffes and watching the babies totter around on their long legs had been amazing, and fun, and she’d loved seeing Elise relaxed and smiling.

She’d had to work on Sunday, but the feeling of coming “home” afterward was something she’d never had before. Ball had dinner waiting, had already helped Elise finish her homework, and they’d spent the evening relaxing, laughing, and helping Ball with his signing.

Everly hadn’t been sure how spending nights at Ball’s house would work out. She and Elise had finally gotten into a routine at her apartment. But she shouldn’t have worried. Things were going extremely smoothly, and Everly couldn’t have been happier. Ball didn’t have any problem driving Elise in the mornings, and they all left at the same time . . . Everly for the police station, and Ball and Elise for the high school.

Somehow, instead of Elise and Everly’s argument tearing them apart, it had helped bring the sisters closer together. Elise promised to do her best not to keep any more secrets about how she was feeling in regard to the kidnapping, and Everly promised not to treat her sister like she was a kid.

Everly was more than aware that they’d been able to resolve things so quickly because of Ball. Elise liked him just as much as Everly did . . . well, maybe not quite as much.

Ball wasn’t without his flaws. He was a perfectionist. Whether it was designing websites or trying to learn new signs, he wanted everything to be perfect, and he got somewhat moody when they weren’t. He had a tendency to meddle, which had been a good thing that weekend, but Everly could see it being annoying under different circumstances. He’d been a bachelor for a very long time, and that showed in the way he burped freely and left his dirty dishes in the sink for days, and she didn’t think he’d ever mopped a floor in his life.

But really, all that was superficial stuff. The things that mattered were that he always asked how her day had gone, then listened when she answered. He never got abrupt with her sister, and she had absolutely no doubt that whether she called him in the dead of night, or when he was in the middle of doing something, he’d drop everything to get to her.

It was that bone-deep belief that she and Elise came first in his life that was the clincher for Everly. He could suck at cooking (which he didn’t), or be a slob (he wasn’t), or do a hundred other petty little things, and it wouldn’t matter. Not when she always felt as if she mattered to him.

Knowing she was quickly losing her heart to Ball, she was happy to receive a short text from him around lunchtime.

He’d heard back from Meat—who’d called and said he’d found something.

All the feel-good thoughts that had been flitting through her head all morning disappeared in a flash. She immediately called Ball.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, instead of saying hello when he answered. “What’d he find?”

“I don’t know yet. Meat just said that he wanted to talk to both of us at the same time. He had some more digging he needed to do first.”

“Oh God. Has she still been talking to that Rob guy?”

“I don’t know, but you need to stop panicking.”

That was easy for him to say.

Just then, someone blew through a stop sign in front of her, and Everly knew she had to go.

Frustrated because she really wanted to discuss more about her sister’s phone and what Meat had found, but knowing she had to do her job, she quickly said, “I have to go. Are we coming to you tonight, or are you coming to us?”

She stilled at her own words. She’d just assumed they would be staying together. And she realized that it didn’t matter where they slept. As long as she was with him, she was content.

“I’ll come to you. We’ll call Meat together. You get off at five, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll come over around four thirty, maybe keep Elise company for a while until you get home. You want us to make anything in particular for dinner?”

All thoughts of the car that had run the stop sign gone, Everly closed her eyes at the comfort his words brought her. Talking about dinner and knowing he would be there for Elise made her want to cry. She was scared to find out what Meat had discovered, but they’d deal with it . . . together.