Not today. But eventually.
Mack found her on the back porch, sketchbook closed in her lap, looking at the mountains. He sat beside her on the bench, offering her a tissue for her tears and a blanket for her lap.
He didn't try to fix it. Didn't offer words, didn't tell her it would get better, didn't do any of the things people did when they were uncomfortable with someone else's grief.
He just sat. Present. Solid. The way he'd sat with her on the cabin floor when she'd broken down, the way he'd sit with her for as long as she needed.
She leaned into him. He let her.
The mountains turned gold, then pink, then purple. They watched the light change and honored the life they still had.
The next day, Claire called with news. The FBI field office in Billings had been in touch. Alyssa's sketches from the debrief—the portraits of Mateo Vega, Rafael Guerrero, the enforcer, the study layout—had been entered into evidence and circulated to the federal task force. The quality had been formally noted.
The consultation she'd thought she'd lost—the contract position for forensic sketch work—was still available. It had been expanded, in fact. The Billings office wanted to discuss a longer-term arrangement: forensic sketch work for the regional joint task force, potentially including age progressions, witness composites, and crime scene reconstructions. Not a one-time consultation. A position.
Alyssa held the phone for a long moment after Claire hung up. Stared at it. Then she set it down on the kitchen counter very carefully, as if it were made of glass.
"What?" Mack asked. He was at the table, cleaning his weapon—the routine of a man whose domesticity included firearms maintenance.
"The Billings office—they want to expand my consultant role." She looked at him. "They're offering me a position, Mack. Not a one-time contract. An actual position."
He set down the cleaning rod, a grin lighting up his face. “That doesn't surprise me.”
"It surprises me."
"It shouldn't." He waved her over, and she sat in his lap. He tapped her diamond, then interlaced his fingers through hers. "You walked into a federal debrief after surviving a shooting, a blizzard, and a kidnapping, and you produced sketches that a roomful of agents called exceptional, because you're that good, Lyssa.”
She looked down at their joined hands. His scarred knuckles against hers. The ring caught the kitchen light.
He tugged gently on the band. "I'm a lucky man. Getting you back is the best thing that's happened to me in a long time."
Her throat tightened. It felt like the first green thing pushing through snow after a long winter. New growth. Fragile but insistent. Alive.
“Will we live here?” she asked.
“As long as you want. If you want something bigger or closer to Billings, we can do that, too.”
She kissed him and smiled against his lips.
He smiled back—the real one, the rare one, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look like the man she’d fallen in love with instead of the operative behind a rifle.
Outside, the Montana sky was turning the mountains into silhouettes and the horizon into a watercolor that no sketch could capture.
Inside, the kitchen was warm, the coffee was fresh, and the man she loved was holding her hand, the promise of forever attached to it.
I hope you enjoyed Mack and Alyssa’s story. Don’t miss the next book in the series, Shadow Strike, with CB and Regan, releasing May 19th! Enemies on paper. Something else in the dark.
EPILOGUE
Flathead Lake
Six months later
The canoe didn't have a hole in it.
Mack had checked. Twice.
This canoe was new. Fiberglass, no rust, no dents, no mysterious puncture in the hull. He'd bought it three weeks ago from a shop in Kalispell and strapped it to the roof of the truck himself while CB stood in the driveway and offered commentary on his knot work.