Read Easy Prey (Love-Inspired Suspense) for Free Online

after her and she stopped at the door. “You want to come?”
    Sam looked at her, the fuzzy hair around his muzzle making him look almost like he had a mane. The dog cocked his head and Elise smiled. Should she have expected his company?
    Elise pulled a heavy jacket from a hook by the door. “Very well, then.” She chuckled. “After you.”
    * * *
    “This is so cool.” The kid’s eyes lit.
    Jonah’s face stretched in a smile at the excitement on Nathan’s face. The old Triumph motorcycle he was restoring sat between them in the dusty barn. In one corner was his own father’s old sixties Chevelle, and the horse stalls were piled up with rusty car parts.
    When Nathan motioned to it, Jonah immediately knew what he wanted. “Go for it.”
    Nathan touched the handles reverently. He swung his leg over and sat, grinning like it was Christmas.
    Jonah had gone into the office at seven for the meeting about Fix Tanner, and he was wiped. By tonight he was going to be dead on his feet. He’d have to go to bed early like an old man.
    Nathan squeezed the handle. If he was younger, he’d probably have been making vroom noises. It hit Jonah then. The hair, the eyes with Martin’s light in them. Jonah touched a hand to his chest where the ache of loss over his brother’s death had never really gone away.
    Eighteen years since he’d been gone, and here was Martin’s son, sitting on the bike they had bought together. The bike they had planned to fix up together when Jonah got out of the marines.
    Tears filled his eyes. He’d only been thinking about trying to show his nephew the things that were important to him. They needed to base their relationship on something other than the connection they had through Elise. To find a common ground on their own. But all he’d discovered instead was the link they had through his brother.
    Jonah and Nathan were inexorably connected. Whether they’d met each other before yesterday or not, their lives were intertwined. And while he’d expected to feel yet more sadness at all he’d lost through not knowing Nathan as he grew up, Jonah realized he had always possessed something. Even if he never knew it. Nathan had been a part of his life always. A fact that made the long years since Martin’s death—the years when he hadn’t been able to find Elise—feel a little less like a yawning chasm of loneliness.
    Jonah brushed away the heaviness and set his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Your dad loved this bike the minute he saw it.”
    Nathan looked up then, a world of hope in his eyes. “Really?”
    Jonah nodded. “Martin and I planned to work on it together.” He paused then, wondering if the kid was feeling one iota of what he was. Maybe the kid didn’t think this was a big deal, but something nagged at him to believe otherwise. To trust. “Maybe, if you want, you could help me work on it.”
    The light in Nathan’s eyes spread to his whole face. “I—” His voice cracked with emotion and he cleared his throat. “That would be cool.”
    Jonah squeezed Nathan’s shoulder. “Great.”
    * * *
    Elise backed up from the barn door. This whole experience was a bizarre mesh of not wanting to let go of her son just yet and being ecstatic that Nathan was bonding with his uncle because she loved him and wanted good things for him. It was like being pulled in two different directions, but one thing was clear. If Jonah hurt Nathan he’d see how fast she could go “mama bear.”
    The dog sat patiently beside her. Elise looked out over Jonah’s land. She could see the neighboring ranch, and the drive that stretched out at least half a mile to the road. A car pulled up by the mailbox and deposited a newspaper in the holder below Jonah’s mailbox before it drove off, disappearing between the trees.
    Elise wrapped Jonah’s coat tighter around her. She didn’t want to face the awkwardness of having to produce small talk with a man who was essentially a stranger.
    She clicked her fingers