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Chapter 6
Dawn barely touched the Brentwood manor when Finn’s boots struck the marble foyer like rifle reports.
Stella opened her door to find him in tactical gear beside the grandfather clock.
“Quickly,” he commanded without glancing up. “I’m on a schedule.”
Stella planted her feet. “Not happening.‘
་་
“Move it.” He turned sharply, stride never breaking as he descended the stairs. Minutes later, the Jeep’s engine roared to life outside.
Stella pressed trembling fingers to her temple–knowing refusal would bring repercussions only Finn Reynolds could devise. She
followed.
Silence thickened like Arctic fog inside the Jeep. Finn’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the I–95 highway as if Stella were empty air.
Outside, Virginia’s forests blurred past–forty miles they drove without exchanging a single word.
At Georgetown Ice Gardens, couples laughed as men knelt to buckle their partners‘ skates. Stella struggled alone with stiff rental boots. When she finally secured the last clasp, Finn had vanished.
She scanned the rinkside café–and froze.
There he stood, bending closer than protocol allowed to a woman in a white Canada Goose parka. His hand rested on her elbow, gaze intensely focused.
The stranger turned–revealing eyes the exact shade of Celeste’s cerulean blue, lips curved in the same perfect bow.
A bitter laugh escaped her. She sat right here–flesh and blood radiating thirty years of loyalty–yet Finn’s gaze swept over her like she was battlefield debris.
When had her life become this grotesque?
Finn reappeared at the rink barrier, impatience hardening his jaw. “Why are you stationary?”
She glided onto the ice, knees wobbling. Finn maintained six feet of empty space between them as they circled.
“Bend your knees,” he recited tonelessly. “Center your
mass.
“I
The chill in his voice froze deeper than the rink’s subzero air.
Then a shriek of tearing metal.
Steila looked up as steel beams buckled like wet cardboard. Chunks of the suspended ceiling rained down.
“Structural collapse! Evacuate!”
Chaos erupted. Stella crashed hard, ankle twisting beneath her. Before she could stand-
CRACK
A concrete slab crushed her right leg. Agony detonated in her bones. She screamed Finn’s name–a sound swallowed by the roar of failing architecture.
Ten yards away, Finn gripped the Celeste–lookalike’s waist, half–carrying her toward an exit. Not once did his eyes sweep back for
Stella.
Darkness swallowed her before his silhouette vanished in the emergency floodlights.
Walter Reed’s antiseptic sting pierced her consciousness.
Disembodied medical jargon filtered through the haze, “Colonel Reynolds–your wife’s condition is critical. Compound femur fracture, shattered 7th and 8th ribs, pulmonary contusion in lower right lobe…”
Chapter 6
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Finn stood at parade rest beside her bed, medals gleaming under clinical lights. The neurosurgeon detailing her injuries might as well have been briefing troop movements.
“Understood.” Not a flicker of concern.
Pain spiked through Stella’s chest as she reached for the bedside water cup. Shattered ceramic exploded across the floor–her bandaged hands trembling too violently to hold anything.
Finn finally registered her wakefulness. “Back with us? How’s the world treating you today?”
“Alive.” The word scraped her throat raw.
Chapter 6
