For the third time.
Not that he was keeping track or anything. Hoisting two huge snowballs, he threw one at Amory as she squealed and tried to outrun it—she couldn’t—and then used his second snowball to nail Zoe.
It was the last thing he did before being jumped by both of them and tackled down to the ground, where he got snow in places that no one should get snow.
They landed in Sunshine fairly late. The plan was to keep Amory and Henry until the morning, when Parker would drive them to the Coeur d’Alene airport and put them on a plane home.
When they all walked into the reception hangar, Parker saw Kel standing at the front desk looking tense. He had another officer with him. Both locked eyes on Parker.
Parker slowed and pulled Amory aside. “Remember when you told me you called Mom and Dad?”
“Uh-huh.”
Amory was a lot of things, and guileless was one of them. She didn’t have a poker face and she couldn’t lie worth shit. She just didn’t have the conscience for it.
Which was why he knew he’d been had; it was all over her face. “You didn’t call them, did you?”
“I did,” she said, and then her face crumpled with guilt. “Just not today.”
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked quietly, eyes on Kel.
“I don’t know.” Parker ruffled his sister’s hair. “Stay here, Am, with Zoe and Henry.” And then he walked toward Kel.
Kel came forward to meet him. “Hey, turns out you were right about Carver going back to the scene of the crime. Only it wasn’t Carver himself. He’d sent back two of his militia to see if the coast was clear and we nabbed them. They squealed like good little pigs and gave up the rest of the militia’s scattered whereabouts and we found Carver with two of them holed up.”
Parker let out a relieved breath. “Damn. They got him.”
“You got him,” Kel said.
Parker knew his agency wouldn’t see it that way, but he was still more relieved than anything else because with Carver locked up, Zoe would truly be safe.
“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” Kel said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“A job. The way you handled yourself with Carver got around, your under-the-radar investigative skills, how you dealt with him here, which could’ve ended so badly. My buddy at the ATF says if your agency’s stupid enough to let you go over what happened, they want you. They have a supervisory position open in the county office about forty-five minutes from here.” He glanced over Parker’s shoulder at Zoe and then met Parker’s gaze again. “Something to think about if you were feeling the urge to stick around,” he said, reaching out his hand to shake Parker’s.
“No!” Amory yelled, and suddenly she was standing in front of Parker, arms spread wide, blocking him off from Kel. “You can’t take my brother, I won’t let you!”
Kel was tall, so tall he had to bend down to look into Amory’s panicked eyes. “You’re his sister, right? I’m a friend of your brother’s. Where do you think I’m taking him?”
“Jail!” she wailed.
“I’m not taking him to jail,” Kel said. “I’m not taking him anywhere.”
Amory blinked. “You’re not?”
“Nope.”
“Pinkie-promise?” she asked.
Kel solemnly held out his pinky finger.
Just as solemnly Amory shook it with hers.
Then Kel’s gaze met Parker’s over her head. “Think about it,” he said. He looked at Zoe then and smiled, and then he walked away.
Parker looked at Zoe and realized she’d either heard what had happened or figured it out because her eyes were warm and relieved and . . . shit. Full of pride. For him, which he wasn’t sure he deserved. He gave her a smile and then turned Amory around to face him.