Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(41)

Anyone who doesn’t know differently right now should never know differently. I assume your club knows how to keep quiet.”

He nodded. But there was too much missing. The moves weren’t clear. “You haven’t told me shit I didn’t know. Why here? Why Signal Bend? Nothing you’ve told me should have put you in need of protection from us. You have something else to hide, something that can hurt you.”

Again, she simply looked at him, thinking. Then: “If I tell you the rest, it stays between you and me.

Only you and me. The risk I take to tell you is huge.”

No, it wasn’t. She’d seen to that. “That’s why you got intel on us, right? So there wouldn’t be that risk?

You seem pretty f*cking safe.” She was like a completely different person. Not the prickly, bantering woman he’d met, not the wild bedmate, not the free and delightful drunk. Not the kid eating cookie cereal.

This version was calculating and eerily calm.

“I’m here to kill someone.”

Stunned, he sat there with his mouth open, unable to think what to say. Finally, words happened. “Are you telling me you’re a government assassin?”

But she shook her head. “No, this is a personal project. Someone who hurt me and mine very badly in Afghanistan and got away with it. I consider it an assassination, as do the people helping me. But legally speaking, I plan to murder him.” She smiled. “And now you can hurt me, too.”

Oh, shit. Isaac’s mind raced, trying to fit this new information into his understanding of her. And now he had a whole new set of problems related to Lilli. “Who? Someone in Signal Bend? In my town?”

“No, but someone fairly close. I wouldn’t move into the same small town as my target. There’s some modest distance between us.”

He tried to think. He knew everybody in town and virtually everybody in a radius ten miles or more around the town. Who’d been in Afghanistan? He could think of a few people, but no one he’d peg for doing something that would warrant that kind of retaliation. He took a calming breath. Stepping back from this a little, he ordered his thoughts. His club and his town were safe from her. He believed that. She had nothing to fear from him, so he had nothing to fear from her. And if what this guy did was as bad as all that, then he’d help her take the f*cker down. “You gotta tell me who he is, baby, and what he did.”

But she shook her head. “No, Isaac. You need to stay out of it. Knowing any more than what I’ve told you puts you at risk if I go down. And that puts your club and town at risk.”

“And if I want to help?”

“The people with the most vested interest are involved. There’s a plan in place, and we’re working it.”

She leaned forward. “Is that enough to trust me?”

She was sitting at his table, wearing his t-shirt, her beautiful hair long and loose, lying over her shoulder. He was falling in love with her; he’d understood that last night, watching her sleep. He wondered if the dream she had—the nightmare—had to do with this guy she was after. If someone had hurt her, Isaac wanted him dead.

He trusted her. From what he could tell, she played it straight or said why she wasn’t. And he wanted her. He wanted to be able to trust her, and he wanted her to trust him. “Yeah. I trust you. I get any of that back?”

“I trust you, Isaac. I wouldn’t have told you any of this if I didn’t. I’d have just used what I know and gotten you out of my way.”

“Jesus, Lilli. That’s cold.”

“No. It’s smart. Getting involved with you is not. But here I am.”

Isaac got up from his chair and went to squat next to hers. They had an opportunity to turn this conversation, this day, this thing between them around. He put his hands on her thigh. “Are you involved with me, Sport?”

She slid her hand under his, and he folded his fingers around it. “Yeah. Way too deep.” She leaned down and kissed him.

With a sigh, Isaac laid his forehead on her leg. “What are we gonna do about that?”

She laughed. “Why don’t you show me around your house?”

“Good idea.” He stood and held out his hand.

oOo

He showed her around the house, told her that his family had lived in it for generations. He was the first to live in it alone, in fact. The family farm had been large, but all of the arable land had been sold off, and now only the homestead, on seven acres, was left. His grandfather had been the last to work any farmland; Isaac’s father had been the last to sell it.

Lilli made several comments about the beauty of the wood pieces throughout the house, and he was glad to hear it. He was looking forward to taking her outside. But first, she wanted to look at the wall of photos. That gallery had grown for generations. Isaac was the only one not to have added a single photo.

He’d changed the frames but had not added any new pictures.

He pointed out grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and people so far removed generationally they could rightly be called ancestors. She pointed to pictures from his life, and he identified his parents and his sister. “That’s my mom. She died when I was twelve.”

“She was beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was. She hanged herself.”

Lilli turned fast, her eyes wide. He never talked about his mother—hell, his family—at all. There were patches who only knew what happened through rumor and gossip. She put her hand on his arm, and he muscled away the urge to shake her off.