Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9)

by Laura Griffin

  She crouched beside a tree, paralyzed with indecision and fear. Should she follow or not? Was it a lethal shot? A flesh wound? The thought of him escaping into the woods again made her rise to her feet.

  She took off following in the direction he’d gone and soon found herself surrounded by shadows. Branches lashed at her cheeks as she plowed through, looking and listening for any sign of him. Her toe caught a root and she stumbled.

  A tremendous weight slammed down on her. Her face hit the dirt and the air rushed from her lungs. She threw an elbow and managed to flip onto her back. She brought up her Glock, but a stunning blow blocked her arm and sent her gun flying.

  She reached up, frantically clawing for his eyes as his hand closed around her throat. She scratched at his face, his neck, but his arms were longer, and he had the advantage. She clawed and fought, struggling for air. Amid the pain and panic, she realized he was fighting one-handed. His right arm hung limp at his side, so her shot must have hit something important, maybe an elbow.

  She jabbed a fist at his injury and heard a pained grunt. His hand squeezed tighter around her neck, and her head started to swim as she battled for air. She felt like she was sinking, going under. Her vision tunneled, and all the grays and shadows blurred together. She felt her arms weakening, her legs. She tried to buck him off, but he was too damn heavy and she couldn’t breathe.

  She made a swipe at his injured elbow, but the blow had no power behind it, and her vision dimmed. She was suddenly filled with a blinding outrage that she was losing to him, that he controlled her, even injured, and he was going to win. Fury surged through her.

  She remembered the knife. He must have it with him. She flailed her hand around, fumbling for his sheath. His weight shifted as her fingers closed around something hard. With all her might, she jerked it from the sheath at his side and jabbed it, but he reared back. She jabbed again, connecting, and he made an animal-like grunt as he rolled off of her.

  She scrambled to her feet and charged him, falling on him with the knife, stabbing and stabbing, but he caught her around the waist and tackled her to the ground under him.

  I’m dead now. I should have run.

  He tried to pry the knife from her fingers, but she gripped it fiercely. It was her only chance. His knees were on her chest now, smashing her lungs and pressing out her air. With a frantic, smothered screech, she jerked her hand free and plunged the blade into his thigh.

  A deafening bang.

  He tipped forward, crashing down on her like a giant tree. She sucked in air and coughed and tried to move beneath him, but he was too heavy and she didn’t have the strength. She took a deep breath and heaved him off of her and onto his side.

  She scrambled away from him and stumbled to her feet. She choked and wheezed, and her lungs burned from the shock of being filled finally. She glanced around, desperately looking for her gun in the near-darkness. It couldn’t have gone far.

  She spied it at the base of a tree and snatched it up. Her arms felt like noodles, but she managed to aim her pistol at the lump on the ground.

  He lay on his side, eyes open and lifeless. His throat was a gaping exit wound, and Tara stared down at him, shaking and gasping. He was dead. Dead. But she kept her gun pointed at him as she backed away.

  “Tara!”

  She turned toward the voice. She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled rasp.

  And then Liam was there, grabbing her arm and hauling her behind a tree. He dropped to a knee beside the body and quickly confirmed his kill shot. Then he touched the hilt of the knife. “You stabbed him?” He looked up at her, and she nodded numbly.

  “Where’s M.J.?” she rasped.

  He stood up and pulled her into his arms. “Jeremy has her. She’s safe.”

  “But—”

  “She’s injured but safe.” His arms wrapped around her, and she rested her head against the wall of his chest. Even through his jacket she could feel his body vibrating with adrenaline as he squeezed her hard. “You scared me.”

  She slid her arm around him and gripped his jacket with her free hand. In her other hand she clutched her gun in a death grip.

  She heard the faint wail of sirens in the distance. She pulled away from Liam and looked around.

  How deep in the woods were they? She had no idea. The distant whump-whump of a helicopter made them tip their faces to the sky.

  “My backup,” she said.

  Liam shook his head. “Just in time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tara stepped out of the FBI building into the cold night air. The temperature had plummeted while she’d been inside, and the wind had picked up. She gazed out over the parking lot in search of a black Silverado.

  Brannon walked up beside her. “M.J.’s at County General getting her arm set.”

  “I know. I talked to her.”

  The doors behind them opened, and Ingram stepped out. The sheriff looked tired, shell-shocked. His gaze landed on Tara as he nestled his hat on his head.

  “What’s the update on Sears?” Brannon asked him.

  He cast a glance at the visitors’ lot, as if longing for his truck, and Tara knew he’d like nothing more than to dodge this conversation. He reluctantly stepped over.

  “I tracked down his wife. She’s living at her mother’s.” Ingram rubbed his chin. “Turns out she filed for divorce a year ago. The house was in foreclosure. He was knee-deep in unpaid bills.”

  A year ago. Maybe his wife leaving him was the trigger Mark had said they’d find. But who knew? He could have started before that. The triggering incident could have happened on some distant battlefield.

  “How’d she take it?” Tara asked.

  “How you’d expect, I guess. Hard.” He looked out at the parking lot. “Not that surprised, though. It was almost like she saw it coming. She said he was never right in the head since he got home. He’d been having insomnia, flashbacks. Knocked her around some. Finally she’d had it.” Ingram glanced at Tara. “I didn’t know any of that beforehand.”

  Looking into his eyes, she could tell it was the truth. He’d been blindsided. For the first time since she’d met the sheriff, he looked flummoxed.

  He glanced away, shaking his head. “I guess you never really know a man.”

  For a while they stood silently on the steps of the building. A frigid gust whipped up, breaking the quiet, and Tara zipped her jacket.

  Ingram trudged down the steps without a good-bye. Tara watched him climb into his truck and drive away.

  She took out her phone and checked it. Nothing from Liam. She looked at the lot again.

  “He left,” Brannon said. “They kicked him loose about an hour ago.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Good job today.” He turned to face her.

  “Thanks.”

  He reached up to touch the bruise on her face, and she flinched. He glanced away. “You know, you could have called me,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “You could have called me first.” He gave her a long look. “I would have had your back.”

  “I know.”

  She could see the disappointment in his eyes. Brannon, her teammate. They’d been through so much together. And he would have had her back if she’d bothered to wait for him.

  She gazed out over the parking lot and confirmed that he was right, the person she’d been hoping to see was long gone. Liam had finished his marathon interrogation and headed home, which was exactly what he should have done. Why had she expected anything else?

  Beside her, Brannon scrolled through his phone. Tara thought about what he’d said. Should she have waited? Would things have turned out differently or better? Those were the questions she’d been grappling with during her debriefing as she’d recounted the day’s events, documenting every last detail. If she’d waited for backup, Alex Sears might be alive right now to stand trial.

  And M.J. might be dead.

  She didn’
t know. She only knew that this case had done something to her, and she was a different person now from when she’d started.

  A few hours ago she’d helped kill a man. Her actions had led to his death. And when she’d seen his exit wound and watched his blood seeping into the forest floor, she’d thought how fast it had happened. She’d stood there in those woods on legs that could barely hold her, and all she could think was how undeserving he was and how it should have been worse.

  She shuddered at her own thoughts. She didn’t know how it might have ended differently if she’d waited, but it didn’t matter now. She hadn’t. She’d followed her impulse. Some might take it as proof that she wasn’t a team player. They might see it as a flaw that could one day prove fatal.

  “Well, I’m beat. How about you?” Brannon tucked his phone away.

  “Yeah.”

  “Some of us are meeting up for a beer,” he said. “Want to come?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, then.” He shook his head and smiled. “Catch you later.”

  Tara watched him leave. And then she was alone on the steps of her office building. She looked up at the night sky. Not a star in sight. She tucked her hands into her pockets and wrestled with what to do next.

  Her stuff was at the Big Pines Motel fifty minutes away.

  Her apartment was just ten minutes away. She pictured her dark window and her empty balcony.

  And then there was the third option. Her fingers closed around the object in her pocket. Liam had left it in her motel room this morning like a gift.

  Or maybe a dare.

  She took out the gate key and looked at it.

  For so long she’d thought of herself as brave. Tough. After making it through the police academy and Quantico and SWAT training, she’d felt confident, almost cocky. So sure of herself and her ability to handle anything. But it wasn’t real. In so many ways that mattered, she wasn’t tough at all, not in the slightest.

  Tara rubbed her thumb over the key. She slipped it into her pocket and walked down the steps.

  M.J. SIGNED THE last of the paperwork and pretended to listen as the nurse gave stern instructions about taking care of her cast.

  “And that should cover it. Everything clear?”

  “Yes,” M.J. croaked, cringing at the sound of her own voice.

  “All right, then. You’re all set.”

  The nurse disappeared through the curtain, leaving her alone in the exam area where she’d spent the past four hours having her cuts sutured and her arm set and then being debriefed by agents.

  M.J. stared down at her black ballet flats, the only things left of the outfit she’d worn in here. She’d traded her torn pantsuit and blouse for a set of blue surgical scrubs. Staring at her muddy shoes now, she remembered how she’d slipped beside her car the moment before the ambush.

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to do this now. Her mind was still spinning from all the questions and responses. Not to mention the pain meds. All she wanted now was to get out of here.

  The air stirred, and she opened her eyes to see Jeremy stepping through the curtain.

  “How’d you get back here?” she asked hoarsely.

  “Talked my way past the nurses.”

  Instead of commando gear, he now wore jeans and a leather jacket, and M.J. glimpsed the gun holstered at his side. Even armed, he’d somehow gotten past the hospital security guard and the federal agents in the hallway. But what was more surprising was that he’d talked his way past the nurses.

  He stepped closer. “How’s the arm?”

  “Fine.”

  “How are you?”

  She glanced down at her feet and nodded, not trusting her voice. Her uninjured arm rested on her lap, and through the veil of tears she watched him gently pick up her hand. For a moment she just sat there, absorbing the feeling of his big, warm fingers surrounding hers.

  She tugged her hand away and slid off the table. “My paperwork’s done, so I can leave now.”

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “No, it’s—” It’s what? Fine? It wasn’t fine at all. She’d come here in an ambulance. And her car had been hauled away to be processed for evidence. She glanced up, and Jeremy was watching her, patiently waiting for her to put it together.

  And then her mind was spinning for a totally different reason. He wanted to take her home. To her motel room, where her suitcase was? To his place? She felt tired and dirty and hungry and, yes, scared. And the last place she wanted to be right now was that dumpy motel. But the prospect of going home with him . . .

  What she wanted more than anything was a hot bath and a mug of tea and her own bed.

  “I’ll take you home,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him.

  She cleared her throat. “You sure? It’s a fifty-minute drive.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Both ways,” she added pointedly.

  He arched his eyebrows. “Sounds like a tough assignment.” He stepped over and picked up the brown paper bag on the counter. Her ruined clothes were inside, along with her pain meds. “This your stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grabbed her things and led her past the crowd of people bunched in the hallway, somehow shielding her from having to make eye contact with everyone and field more questions. He pushed through several sets of double doors, and then they were standing outside the hospital beside a circular driveway. M.J. stifled a shiver as she glanced around and spotted his truck along the curb. And she realized she’d never ridden in it before.

  “Jeremy, really, this is a hassle. I can get a ride with one of the other agents.”

  “Don’t.”

  She glanced up, and the look in his eyes put a lump in her still-sore throat.

  He took her hand again. “Just let me do this. Please? I need to get you home safe.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tara awoke in Liam’s bed, but this time she wasn’t alone. They were tangled together, arms and legs, and it was hard to tell where her body stopped and his began.

  She lay there wrapped in his sheets, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. The room was gray and quiet. She had no idea what time it was, and she didn’t want to.

  Her throat felt sore and parched. Slowly, she extricated herself from his arms and slipped from the bed. She crept into the bathroom and gulped down a handful of water, carefully avoiding the mirrors because she didn’t want to see her bruises. When she’d first arrived last night, he’d made her spend half an hour lying flat on his sofa with ice packs, but she knew it hadn’t done any good.

  She crept back into the bedroom, where the light had a strange quality to it. She felt drawn toward the window and gently lifted a slat in the blinds to peer out.

  Her breath caught.

  She glanced back at Liam, sprawled on his stomach now, still completely out. She took his flannel shirt from the arm of the leather chair, shrugged into it, and buttoned it up as she watched him sleep. Careful not to make a sound, she unlatched the door to the porch and stepped outside. The planks were cold under her feet as she walked to the wooden railing and looked out.

  The world was blanketed in snow. Tiny flakes drifted down from the white sky, and she gazed up, awestruck. Everything was so quiet, so utterly tranquil. She pulled Liam’s cuffs over her hands and crossed her arms against the chill as she gazed out.

  Twenty-nine winters she’d lived here, and only a handful of times had it snowed. She envisioned her grandparents’ roof covered in white, probably brighter than the aging paint on their house. She gazed across the lawn at the pines and the maples. Beyond them near the creek, she saw the lacy cypress branches that hung low over the water, and they looked like they’d been dusted with sugar.

  She shivered and pulled her arms closer. When she’d first come here, the woods had seemed dark and sinister. Now everything looked fresh and pure and otherworldly. As she stood there, t
he flurry picked up energy. She reached out her hand. Flakes landed on her palm and instantly disappeared.

  The door opened behind her, and Liam stepped out, bare-chested. He wore jeans and carried his leather jacket.

  “I had no idea it was supposed to snow overnight,” she said.

  “It wasn’t.” He settled the jacket on her shoulders, and she slipped her arms into the sleeves. “Want me to make coffee?”

  “Maybe later.”

  He slid his arms around her and tugged her back against the firm wall of his body. “How do you feel?”

  “Good.”

  He lifted the hair off her neck and planted a kiss below her ear. “I don’t believe you.”

  She snuggled closer, not wanting to argue about it. Right now she only wanted to think about his warmth and his smell and the weight of his arms around her waist.

  “Through the trees there,” she said. “Is that a dock?”

  “Yeah. I don’t have a boat, though. I sometimes use it for fishing.”

  “What’s in the creek?”

  “Catfish, mostly.”

  “My granddad used to take me to the Neches River. We caught perch.”

  He kissed the back of her neck again, and warm shivers swept over her skin as she gazed out at the trees. The wind gusted and snow flitted off the branches.

  She sighed. “It’s beautiful here.”

  “I know.” He paused. “Think you could get used to it?”

  She went still. For a moment she didn’t move or even breathe.

  He eased back and turned her to face him. His green eyes were dark and serious, and her heart was thumping.

  “Could I get used to visiting here?”

  “Living here.”

  She turned to look out again. “I don’t know, that’s . . . I mean, that’s a big step.” She looked up at him, trying to read his face for clues. “It seems fast. You barely know me. You’ve never even seen where I live.”

  “That’s not hard to fix.”

  Panic welled inside her. He was serious. “Liam . . . there’s so much you don’t know about me. And so much I don’t know about you, too. And it doesn’t make sense,” she babbled, “especially right now after everything that’s happened.”