Straight to the Heart

by Samantha Hunter

  This was going to be a long night.

  JOANNA SAT ON A KITCHEN CHAIR they had dragged into the bathroom on the first floor of Ben’s home, muttering while he helped her wash and put antiseptic on her lacerated feet. She hadn’t wanted to bother until he pointed out she was leaving bloody, dirty footprints where she walked, not to mention that she was risking infection.

  She’d tried to do it herself, but then he’d taken over, and the truth was, he was succeeding better than she. It gave her time to think, and he probably wanted to keep busy as well.

  This had been a surprise for both of them, but a far more upsetting one for Ben. If it made it easier for him to tend to her bumps and bruises, she was okay with that.

  Charlie was handcuffed to the refrigerator—her call—though he had promised not to run.

  Sure.

  There was no doubt that he was guilty of some pretty serious charges.

  “Let me talk to him first,” Ben said quietly, pressing a bandage over a particularly sore scrape.

  “No. I have to handle this by the book,” she said tightly, trying to ignore how good his hands felt on her bruised and cut foot.

  Ben sat back on his heels, packing up the medical supplies from his cabinet and handing her a pair of his clean socks.

  “Put those on. They’ll be big, but they’ll keep your feet clean, maybe see a doctor tomorrow to make sure everything’s all right.”

  Today seemed as though it had been a million years long. An hour, or a bullet or two, could change everything. Tomorrow seemed a long time away.

  Joanna knew she had to go out and talk to Charlie—find out who he was working with, and if anyone else was here with him—she couldn’t go easy on him because of his relationship with Ben. Or because of her relationship with Ben.

  Everything was still a mess, but she was going to play by the rulebook on this.

  Her heart was torn. She cared for Ben—what they had was more than sex, yes, as if sex wasn’t complicated enough—but she had a job to do, and that job meant, very likely, bringing some very serious charges against Ben’s closest friend.

  The way she saw it, there was no way for her job not to come between them.

  “Listen, I have to go in there, then I’ll have to call someone to come get him and take him into San Antonio. You understand that, right?” Marshal Stivers was still on watch at the ranch, and everyone thought it was best he maintain his status there until this was all over with. Nailing Charlie didn’t mean there weren’t more out there.

  She stood, wincing as she tested which foot hurt less, then settled her full weight on to them.

  “You need to hear what he has to say first,” Ben said, unable to keep the defensiveness out of his tone.

  “Sure, but I can’t imagine what he can say that will help much. He shot at us, Ben,” she said. “Or at me, to be specific. He probably set the fire, or he knows who did. What we have to find out is the level of his involvement. If he knows enough maybe he can cut a deal, but he’s definitely looking at doing time,” she said, putting the hard facts out there as plainly as she could. Sugarcoating it wouldn’t help.

  Ben stood very still and then nodded, though he didn’t get up from where he was sitting.

  “I know Charlie like a brother. There has to be some kind of explanation.”

  Joanna reached out hesitantly, putting a hand on his shoulder, and he paused before covering it with his own.

  Her heart ached a little, as it almost seemed like a goodbye of sorts. As she walked out to do what she had to do, he remained behind.

  “SO CHARLIE, HOW LONG HAVE you been involved in this and who do you work for? That’s really what we need to know,” Joanna said, sitting at the table and leaving the man shackled to the refrigerator.

  He looked miserable. Dirty, his face bruised, and his shirt torn from where Ben had tackled him. He hung his head, not meeting her eyes.

  Shame.

  Well, at least he could feel it, she thought, trying to shut down any sympathy for the man who made amazing chili and had played solider with Ben as a boy. Charlie had served his country, and lost a leg doing so. He’d also lied to all of them and shot at her.

  “You don’t understand. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, not really,” he said.

  “The loaded rifle in your backseat says differently. Did you start the fire at the Callahans’ as well?”

  He nodded miserably, and it became easier to harden her heart to him. How could he do such a thing to people who had taken him in since he was young?

  Not that she hadn’t seen it before.

  “You turn up some names, lead us to some bigger fish, maybe you get a reduced sentence.”

  His head snapped up. “I didn’t commit any crime! Nothing serious, anyway. I knew that fire wouldn’t do much damage, and I’m a dead-on shot. If I’d wanted to kill you or Ben, I could’ve. I was just trying to…scare you. Scare him.”

  Joanna leveled an impatient look in his direction. “And why would that be, Charlie?”

  “I’ve been trying to find a way to make him not want to testify. The fire at the house seemed to get him moving that way, and then you managed to turn him back to doing it again.”

  “How inconvenient.”

  “Yeah. He was on the edge, though, and I figured, if he was worried about you, if he thought anyone would hurt you, then he would back off for sure.”

  Joanna watched Charlie closely. Nothing in his body language suggested he was lying, but he had more to tell.

  “Why would you want Ben to renege on his testimony? Someone paying you off? Did they come to you, or did you go to them? Sell out your best friend for the right price?”

  “No!” Charlie objected vehemently.

  “Then why?” she asked again, leaning over the table, losing patience.

  Awareness prickled at the back of her neck, and she slid a look behind her, noting Ben in the doorway of the kitchen. Charlie hadn’t seen him yet.

  “They know things about me that…no one else knows. And they said they would hurt Lisa and the kids,” he confessed miserably. “As well as Ben.”

  “What kinds of things?” Joanna asked, not falling for his story.

  Charlie looked up then and noticed that Ben had stepped into the room. Joanna stepped around the table.

  “Fine, if you won’t tell me, it will be easy enough to find out later,” she said, pulling out her cell phone to call her office. They’d need to send someone either to cover Ben while she took Charlie in or to take him in themselves.

  Either way, she was tired, and it was getting harder to keep her very conflicted emotions under wraps. If she couldn’t break Charlie, she knew the marshals at headquarters would find out whatever he was hiding.

  “Charlie, is Lisa safe? The kids?” Ben asked, stopping Joanna in her tracks before she dialed.

  She caught her breath, realizing she hadn’t asked that first, which she should have. She cursed silently, kicking herself.

  “I don’t know…for the moment, yeah, but if they find out, if they know I’m busted…” Charlie said. “I don’t know what they’ll do.”

  Joanna put her phone down again, reaching for patience and softening her approach. “Enough of this, Charlie. Details, now.”

  Ben’s steadying hand squeezed her shoulder.

  “Tell us how you got involved in this, Charlie,” he said. “No matter what it is. We need to know everything.”

  “There was a guy I used to get my drugs from in Houston,” Charlie admitted, all of the air seeming to collapse from him.

  “You were an addict?” Joanna asked.

  “Yeah. Prescription pain killers. After I got out of the VA, I was sort of still messed up. The pain was less than it had been months before, but it was still there, and I started needing more than they’d give me. I started getting what I needed off the street from this guy, Joe, and before I knew it, things were going downhill fast. If it weren’t for Ben showing up, giving me a job, I probably would have end
ed up dead somewhere.”

  Joanna swung a look to Ben. “You knew about this?”

  He put his hands up, looking sincerely shocked. “No. Charlie, why would you hide something like that?”

  It was Charlie’s turn to look shocked. “How could I let you know I had a habit? How I’d failed? You’re the hero, not me. I didn’t want anyone to know. I haven’t used since I came here, I promise you that,” Charlie said, eyes on Ben, tears falling openly.

  Joanna looked away, gathering her thoughts. This wasn’t what she’d expected.

  “You could have killed her, Charlie,” Ben said flatly. “One move an inch this way or that, and she could be dead right now.”

  Joanna looked up, surprised at the level of repressed fury in his voice.

  “I wouldn’t let that happen,” Charlie said adamantly.

  “You know it doesn’t work that way. You got lucky,” Ben said, leaning in. “Someone moves a few inches, and suddenly it’s all over. Why didn’t you just come to me? About all of it? From the start? We’re like brothers. You should have called me the minute you were out of the VA. You should have told me about the threat.”

  “I know. I went through the therapy, but I still thought I’d never be any use to anyone this way,” he said, kicking his fake leg out, as if wanting to send it away from his body. “And I was so afraid for Lisa, for the kids, and that if they found out, they wouldn’t want anything else to do with me,” Charlie said, sinking to the floor, his arm still attached to the fridge handle.

  Ben looked askance at Joanna, and she knew what he wanted, reaching into her pocket and handed him the key to the cuffs. Ben crossed the kitchen and unlocked the cuffs, helping Charlie up.

  “You should have trusted me, Charlie. And you have to trust me now, and Joanna. Tell us everything you know, and maybe we can stop this before anything else bad happens.”

  Joanna tensed as Charlie took a step forward, but it was clear that Charlie wasn’t going to hurt Ben, or anybody. The look on his face told her that.

  “Let’s start with who threatened you and go from there,” she said. “Ben, can you call Lisa and have her come here with the kids right away? Don’t tell her more than you have to to get her here.”

  “No, I don’t want her to know!” Charlie said loudly, and Joanna turned to face him.

  “It’s time to deal with the people you’ve been lying to, Charlie, including Lisa. You put her and her kids, as well as Ben and me, in danger. All so that you could protect your secrets, your hopes and dreams,” she said, nailing him with a harsh look. “If you help me, tell me what I need to know, I won’t report the shots fired tonight. I believe that you were trying to miss, but you are going to take responsibility for the fire, and you are going to tell Lisa everything.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up, Charlie, and listen to the marshal, or I’ll help her haul you in myself,” Ben added coolly.

  Charlie froze, slowly nodding.

  “Okay. Okay…” he agreed, quietly sitting in a kitchen chair.

  Joanna was quiet too, meeting Ben’s serious look, and offering a quiet thanks. He could have tried to convince her to go easier on Charlie, taken his friend’s side against her, made things harder.

  He hadn’t, and that counted for a lot. It didn’t make anything she had to do now any easier, but it helped.

  She spent the next two hours taking down Charlie’s statement, and the two hours after that sitting with him and Lisa while he told her what he had just told Joanna and Ben.

  Lisa, to her credit, held up like Fort Knox. Clearly Charlie had underestimated her, as he had Ben, and he seemed to realize that when she had simply walked to him and wrapped her arms around him, crying and letting him know she would do whatever she had to do to stand by him.

  By the time a transport from San Antonio showed up to get Charlie and Lisa and take them to the safe house, Joanna was wrung dry and felt more like a relationship counselor than a law-enforcement officer. Ben had kept his distance, more or less, staying close by, listening, but he hadn’t said much since his first appearance in the kitchen. On their way out to the van, Charlie turned to Joanna.

  “Am I really going to do time?”

  She blew out a breath. “I don’t know. You would for what happened tonight, but we’re going to keep that between us. As far as the USMS is concerned, you’re voluntarily turning yourself in, so you’ll probably get probation and have to do restitution for the fire, assuming the Callahans press charges. Or who knows, you might walk away from it,” she said.

  “Why are you doing that for me? Not reporting the shooting?”

  She turned to look at him, crossing her arms over her middle and wondering if she was making the right call.

  “It’s not for you. It’s for Lisa and the kids, because if you can straighten your act out, they need you. For whatever reason, she seems willing to stick with you, so who am I to take you away from them? They’ve lost enough,” she responded. “Ben has lost enough, too. You have a chance here, Charlie. Don’t blow it again. Or I will come after you myself.”

  He nodded weakly, but she saw the relief and the promise in his eyes.

  You could never outrun yourself at seven, she thought morosely, remembering too keenly what it was like to lose a parent and not wanting Lisa’s kids to lose their second chance at having a normal home. She could pretend that didn’t influence her thinking, but it did.

  If she believed that Charlie was dangerous, truly dangerous, she’d never let it slide. But while he’d made some serious errors in judgment, she had no doubt he had truly thought he was protecting them all, and that he loved Lisa and her kids.

  “I will, I swear,” he said resolutely. “I know I was wrong, just at the time, I guess…I didn’t think they would—”

  “You underestimated them. You didn’t think Ben or Lisa would stick by you, and you had absolutely no reason to think that about them. They love you. Do you get that?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I do. And I’m going to make it up to them in whatever way I can.”

  “You can start by staying alive and telling us everything you know about the people who were on your back,” Joanna said.

  “Time to go,” the marshal driving the transport said before anyone else could say anything. Lisa offered Joanna a quick hug before helping her two still-half-asleep children.

  “Can you take Patsy?” she asked Charlie, who looked as if he’d just been given a million dollars as he lifted up the little girl and hugged her in.

  Joanna, nearly sagging in exhaustion, watched the van pull away.

  “You need sleep,” Ben said, pulling her into his arms.

  She let him. It felt too good to argue about.

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  She headed for the sofa and jerked back when her feet left the floor, realizing with a shock that Ben was carrying her toward the stairs.

  “What are you doing?” she said, pushing back against his chest.

  “You need sleep, and you’re going to get it. With me,” he said simply. “No way are you staying on the couch.”

  She should argue, Joanna thought as they climbed the steps. It was ridiculous, him carrying her like this. Her feet weren’t that sore; she could walk just fine.

  Again, she didn’t argue. She didn’t resist when he took her gun and badge and put them on the table by his massive bed, or when he helped her out of her dusty, dirty clothes, or when he stripped down to his Skivvies and crawled in beside her.

  Pulling a quilt up over them both, he hooked an arm around her waist and drew her back against him. He was warm, solid and safe.

  It was all that mattered for the moment. She snuggled back in and let herself relax. Ben was already snoring, and it wasn’t long before she gave in and joined him.

  12

  BEN WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF the night, surprised at first by the warm female body snuggled up against his, and then he remembered bringing Joanna to bed with him.

  Leaning forw
ard to nuzzle his face into her hair, he thought about the events of the night before, and found he was just as interested in getting to know this new Joanna. Joanna the marshal and Joanna the woman who was pressing her amazing backside against him in a very alluring way.

  Learning the truth about her had thrown him, but now it made her all the more intriguing, and the reason for his attraction to her became clear. He had sensed her strength, her focus and her ability all along, even though she had tried to mask them.

  His father had said he’d finally found his match, and Ben believed his dad was right.

  But she wasn’t here for the long haul. She had a job to do, a life to return to, he remembered, with a twist in his gut. It didn’t feel right to try to convince her to stay, but it didn’t feel right to let her go, either.

  What felt right at the moment was touching her.

  Sliding an arm around her waist, he nuzzled in closer and kissed the back of her neck, making her arch back more deeply against him. She turned over, facing him.

  “You okay?” she asked sleepily, but he was glad she was awake.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” he said, kissing her softly. With all that had happened before this, he felt as though now was their first time together, with no lies between them. It upped the emotional intensity, because Ben knew now that what was happening here was real. It wasn’t a fling.

  He wanted to be with Joanna Wyatt.

  Her arms linked around him and she was kissing him back. The world and thinking faded to the background as his hands busily disposed of the few scraps she wore, and she did the same for him.

  When he pressed her breasts together and drew both aroused nipples into his mouth, her fingers found his shaft and began to stroke him. He lost himself in her scent, her taste.

  He was shaking, too, when he lifted up and trailed kisses down her stomach, parting her thighs and dipping down for a kiss. She completely turned him on when her thighs clamped down on his shoulders and she ground against him, taking more.

  This was the real Joanna. Hot, passionate and strong. His Joanna. They were both lying to themselves if they thought differently.