The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  Jimmy let go of her arm and stepped forward. “I’ll need you to stay in town until the others arrive. They’ll have questions for you.”

  Logan’s stare measured the other man. “You don’t want me to do that.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. But it’s procedure.” And like Sam, Jimmy had learned his guts and his rules from Sheriff Bob. And to Sam’s father, procedure was God.

  “Very well then.” Logan inclined his head and Sam felt a spurt of relief that they wouldn’t be leaving immediately, after all.

  Though part of her wanted to run screaming toward the haven deep inside Boston, where Logan had promised they could keep her safe, an equally strong part of her wanted to run screaming in the other direction. Because while her body might be safer in the city under Logan’s protection, she knew with a certainty born of the passion they’d shared on the shoreline that her heart was safer far, far away from him.

  She’d chosen unwisely before, and each goodbye had taken a piece of her soul.

  Something told her this goodbye would take the rest of it.

  “Sam? You coming?” Jimmy’s question roused her and she was surprised to realize Logan was already gone. Angry footsteps gouged in the sand showed where he’d stalked through the narrow canyon, up toward the road where Jimmy must have parked.

  Logan’s absence relaxed her at the same time that it worried her. He’d kept her safe twice now, and she was tempted to cling.

  Because of it, she turned to Jimmy. “Is this the only way?”

  “You think I like it?” His sudden ferocity startled her, as did the fire in his eyes when he rounded on her and grabbed her arms. “You think I like knowing that I’m not good enough to protect you? That I’m not good enough to—” He broke off with an oath and released her arms. “Come on. If we don’t hurry, he’ll leave without us.”

  “Jimmy.” Sam touched his arm and felt him stiffen. “It’s not about being good enough. It’s about…” She trailed off, not sure what it was about anymore.

  “Yeah, I know.” Surprisingly, he smiled and took her hand. “It we were meant to be, we would’ve figured it out a long time ago, wouldn’t we?”

  “I think so.” She looked up into his dear face, seeing the boy inside the man. A band tightened around her heart and her stomach clenched on a beat of sadness for something that had never come to pass. She took a breath and wished things had been different, wished she had been different. “So I guess that means we’re not meant to be.”

  Why did it feel like they were breaking up? They’d never been together, never kissed as more than friends.

  But he’d been her safety net. Her fallback. The man she knew she could turn to if it came to it.

  And that, Sam realized with a start, hadn’t been fair to either of them.

  From the glint in the sheriff’s eye, he knew it, too.

  “Well.” She blew out a breath and realized that though the band around her heart had loosened, sadness lay heavy in her soul. “I guess this conversation has been too long in coming.”

  “Maybe we needed to get around to it in our own time,” Jimmy said mildly, still holding her hand. But his attention was fixed on the cliffs above, and the deeply gouged footprints in the sand. “Though I wish we’d gotten here for a different reason.”

  When he returned his gaze to her, his eyes left no question as to his meaning. He wished she weren’t in danger, wished Logan Hart had never entered their unsteady equation.

  “I know what you mean.” Sam glanced toward the path, toward the road and Jimmy’s car, where Logan awaited them. But did she really wish he’d never come to Black Horse? Did she really wish they’d never met?

  Jimmy tightened his fingers on hers. “Be careful, Sam. Please be careful.”

  She nodded. “I will. I promise.”

  But she didn’t think either of them was talking about the shooter.

  And she wasn’t sure she could keep her promise.

  THE SHERIFF INSISTED on stopping atop the cliff to look around. Logan would have rather gone back to the clinic and snagged his own truck. He wanted Samantha away from this. Now. Before she ended up like Sharilee.

  In his mind, the image of a sexy vet with luminous eyes tangled with the memory of a darker, harder woman he’d thought a hooker.

  Because of the guilt, and his impotent rage at the dangerous situation, he glared out the window of the sheriff’s car at the passing beach plums and ground his teeth. When they reached the scenic-view pulloff at the top of Third Cliff, he was the first one out of the car.

  He froze at the sight of the broken, twisted guardrail and a few uprooted beach plums where Sam’s truck had gone through.

  “It seems like there should be more,” she said, limping up beside him, both arms wrapped around her torso.

  “Yeah,” he said gruffly, “skid marks.”

  His gut twisted like the crumpled metal railing as he remembered the plunge downward, the horrible sensation of sinking. He hated small, enclosed places and the thought of drowning, but he’d held it together and gotten them out of there.

  Barely.

  His hand itched to reach for her, but he forced himself to remain still. Their kiss had been a living fantasy, their seeming connection an artifact of the situation, of the stress and the fear. She wouldn’t like the man he was.

  Hell, he didn’t like the man he was—or at least what he could recognize of himself. Before he’d joined HFH, he’d been a debonair transplant surgeon on a quick rise to the top of the Boston General hierarchy. But a case involving switched transplant organs had introduced him to HFH and their investigative teams, and he’d been immediately fascinated. Not long after, he’d joined HFH as an investigator, looking for danger, for excitement, for the opportunity to make a larger difference.

  These days, he thought of the transplant department with a hint of wistfulness.

  Sam would have liked the man he had been back then. He’d been considerate. Classy. He’d come home to his bachelor’s apartment every night except when he was in surgery. He’d dated, sometimes seriously, never quite moving beyond an occasional sleepover and a regretful parting some weeks or months later. He’d wanted a family eventually, and figured he had time yet to find his match. Back then, he’d known who he was and where he was going.

  That was the sort of man Sam needed. Not some burned out whatever he was, who woke up in a cold sweat some nights and didn’t even go to sleep others. A man who’d stood by, helpless, and seen a woman executed. A man who, like Nancy’s missing husband, might go off on assignment one day and never come home.

  “Logan? Are you okay?” Sam touched his arm, recalling him from memory. He looked over and saw the sheriff standing at the edge of the cliff, shaking his head at the place they’d driven off.

  Sam made no move to walk over to the gap. Neither did Logan. He had no wish to look over and relive that horrible moment when he’d realized the brakes had failed, that they were going over. Even now, the image and the possibilities sent ice through his soul.

  The sheriff turned away from the water, from the place where Sam’s truck rested on the ocean floor. “There’s not much to see.”

  “I’m not surprised.” Logan shoved his hands in his pockets as a reminder not to reach for the woman beside him, to comfort her, or maybe to comfort himself. “Trehern uses only the best. They’re not sloppy.”

  Yet they’d failed to neutralize their targets twice. The contradiction worried Logan, though he was grateful for the failures.

  “We’ll let the state-lab boys look at the area.” Jimmy strode back to his vehicle. “Maybe they’ll get something off the tire tracks. And we’ll see about salvaging the truck.”

  All three of them glanced to the gap where guardrail had given way to cliff. Logan pictured the rocks and the riptides, and knew it would be difficult to recover the truck. He shrugged. “That’ll only prove what we already know. The brake lines were cut.”

  Sam shivered very slightly and Jimmy
shot him a glare, but said only, “Come on. Let’s head back to the clinic. I believe you wanted to retrieve your truck.”

  But once the tense, silent drive was accomplished and Logan sat alone in his vehicle, something stopped him from turning the key and driving to the cottage, where he planned to pack fast and get the hell out.

  It wasn’t fear for Sam, who would be well guarded by Jimmy—too well guarded, in Logan’s opinion, though he had no right to the burst of jealousy. And it wasn’t fear of what might await him at the cottage, although he intended to check everything out thoroughly before opening the front door, as Viggo Jr. had a fondness for plastique and gruesome gestures.

  No, it was something more complicated than fear, though that was part of it. This emotion swelled his chest and battered his brain like nerves, but also warmed his gut like pleasure.

  “To hell with it.” Shoving aside introspection as being silly and unhelpful, he twisted the key. The truck roared to well-tuned life at the same moment his personal cell phone rang inside the glove box.

  Logan popped the compartment open and retrieved the phone, new anxiety tightening his gut. Only Cage and his family had the number.

  “Hello?”

  He heard weeping—broken, wrenching sobs that tore straight to his heart and stopped it dead.

  His fingers tightened on the phone and dread clutched his gut. “Nancy? Nance, what’s wrong?”

  “They found Stephen.”

  Chapter Five

  It took a moment for Logan’s brain to shift from thoughts of Samantha and Trehern to thoughts of his sister and her missing husband. Once they did, her words hit him with a nearly physical blow.

  Nancy and Stephen had been married less than two years. He’d been missing for three months of that time. Now Nancy’s sobs told the story.

  “Is he…” dead? But Logan couldn’t finish the question. He was too aware what Stephen’s disappearance had done to his sister, too aware of what his death might do to her normally strong will.

  “He’s alive!” At her shout, laughter mixed with the tears in her voice, incredulous, joyous laughter that left Logan far behind. His heart scrambled to catch up, to rejoice.

  “What? Where?” Even as he asked, even as he tried to share his sister’s relief, Logan was conscious of a sense of urgency, conscious of Samantha’s face peering through the wide front window of the clinic, and doubly aware of the sheriff standing behind her.

  Too close.

  “Logan? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, of course.” He repeated the important information back. “The Tehruvian government has him in custody.” Then the full import of her words registered and he focused sharply. “Tehru? Damn, Nancy, why didn’t you tell me that’s where he was?”

  Once host to HFH relief efforts ranging from medical help for victims of earthquakes and mud slides to politically neutral first-aid camps during a viciously bloody civil war, Tehru was now on the interdict list for many foreign-aid agencies. The fighting had gotten too sharp, the factions too willing to capture foreigners for ransom.

  So what had an HFH infectious-disease guy been doing there?

  “I didn’t know he was in Tehru.” A quiver behind the words betrayed fear, or maybe anger. “He couldn’t tell me where he was going. He was arrested for…I’m not even sure for what, but they’re asking for a ransom. That’s good news, they tell me. The ransom is good news. It means he’s probably alive.” Her voice broke on the last word.

  Logan let out a breath and felt his chest ache with contradictory emotions—joy that Stephen was alive, fear that he was being held in a place like Tehru. “God, I’m sorry I’m not there.”

  But he couldn’t go to Nancy and risk Viggo’s men following. He couldn’t leave Samantha here, not when her danger was his fault. And he couldn’t miss the Trehern trial, which resumed in three days. But family was family, so he said, “What can I do?”

  Something in his voice must have alerted her, or else her big-sister radar was activated, because her voice changed. “Logan, is something wrong? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about,” he said flatly, wishing it weren’t a lie. But his eighteen months undercover with Trehern had taken a toll on Nancy and their parents, and he wasn’t about to drag them back to that place again. Especially considering the news about Stephen. “Do you want me to make a few calls?”

  He’d earned some federal-sized markers in the aftermath of the Trehern sting. When the conviction went through, he’d have even more.

  If the conviction went through. If Trehern didn’t manage to kill or compromise the small pool of witnesses.

  “I want you to pray for him,” said Nancy, who had held on to more of their parents’ faith than Logan had managed. “And I want you to keep yourself safe.”

  “Will do.” They left the rest unspoken, but Nancy, the wife of an operative herself, knew the score. Logan trusted that she’d keep the knowledge from their parents, and tuck her worry for him beside that for her husband. The knowledge gave him an obscure sense of comfort, even though watching her over the past three months had helped to solidify his determination to avoid a serious relationship.

  He couldn’t ask another woman he cared about to live through such horror.

  “I’ll call when I have more news. Cage said he’d let me know the moment they’ve made a decision.” Though they both knew what the decision would be. The U.S. government—and by extension HFH—didn’t negotiate with terrorists. It would be a rescue attempt or nothing.

  “I’ll keep the phone with me.” Logan could promise her that much but nothing more, not right then. But when she murmured goodbye, he quickly said, “Nance?”

  A pause, then a tentative, curious, “What?”

  “I’m sorry Stephen got you into this.” Logan took a breath and wondered whether he was expressing sympathy for Stephen’s abduction or his own choices. But guilt rang hollow with the knowledge that if he hadn’t brought Stephen home with him after an early training op, Nancy wouldn’t be in this situation now. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you to a businessman, or a store owner or something.”

  This time the pause was longer before she said, “If he was either of those things, he wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with, would he?”

  The quiet, rational question stumped Logan for a moment. “You mean you don’t wish he’d stayed home with you?”

  She gave a watery laugh. “I’d be lying if I said that. And I’d be lying if I told you I don’t lie awake some nights, cursing him for getting on that plane, cursing him for wanting to be a hero. But you know what? That doesn’t mean I wish he was someone else.” She paused and her voice changed. “Who is she?”

  “There’s nobody,” he said quickly, even as his eyes were drawn once again to the clinic window, which was empty now. “I don’t get serious about women. You know that.”

  “I know that’s what you tell me.” Nancy’s voice softened, reminding him of the times she’d soothed him through childhood pains and chivied him through a resentful adolescence, well into her mother-hen role though she was a scant two years older than him.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “If you say so. But if it helps, the answer is no. I don’t wish Stephen was something else. He is who he is.” She stressed the present tense, as though needing to convince herself he was still alive. “And I wouldn’t change him for the world because I love him just like I love you.”

  It humbled him that even at the lowest point of her life, or maybe the highest, he wasn’t quite sure which yet, Nancy still tried to comfort him.

  “Same here, Nance.” He clicked the phone shut with a strange mix of guilt and confusion. Guilt that he couldn’t race to the military base where Nancy currently lived in protective custody, and sit with her while she waited for news—or better yet, fly to Tehru and make something happen. Confusion from her words, and from a fleeting wish that he had someone to love him as deeply as his sister loved her husband.
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br />   But pretty words aside, he didn’t completely believe her. No woman in her right mind would willingly choose to love a man who might leave for work one day and never return.

  He thought of Stephen. Of Sharilee. Of himself and the man he’d become in Trehern’s world.

  Gritting his teeth, he slammed the truck in reverse and accelerated out of the clinic driveway, away from the empty window, away from Samantha.

  But the hell of it was he knew he’d be back—to protect her, if nothing else.

  SAM FORCED HERSELF not to watch him drive away. Forced herself not to wonder who he’d been talking to on the phone, what they might have told him. It could have been a break in the case.

  It could have been a woman. Perhaps even the one who’d put those shadows in the back of his eyes and the rage in his soul. But no, he said she’d died, hadn’t he?

  She tried to remember his exact words on the beach, when he’d told her how Trehern had used a woman to punish him. And though she couldn’t remember the words, she could call back the sound of his voice and the feel of his body against hers.

  “He’s not Black Horse Beach material.” For half a second, Sam thought the words were hers, playing in her head. Then her partner, Jennifer, touched her shoulder. “He won’t stay.”

  “Of course he won’t,” Sam answered, automatically on the defensive. “Who asked him to?”

  Jen tilted her head so her straight blond hair fell free. Her clear blue eyes, clouded with worry, silently reminded Sam how long they’d been friends. What they’d been through together.

  Friends through vet school, the two had drifted apart after Jen’s marriage to a young, rising politician and Sam’s to Travis. When Jen’s marriage had crashed and burned, she had come back to Black Horse and found Sam divorced and on the verge of opening the clinic with too little money. The serendipity had seemed like a lucky break for both of them.

  It still did. Five years later, Sam had been through two more relationships and Jen none. Some days it seemed like she was waiting for something.