The Sheriff's Daughter

by Jessica Andersen

  The elevator doors opened once again. This time, he gestured her into the lobby. “Come on. Let’s check in with Security and head upstairs. I have some calls to make.”

  Sam followed, feeling more than ever that she was along for the ride here, that at all times someone else was making the decisions for her, that she was the puppet and someone else was yanking her strings.

  She bloody well hated the feeling, but didn’t think digging in her heels would help. She was Sheriff Bob’s daughter, true, but she didn’t have the foggiest clue what was going on. When the man in the garage had grabbed Logan, she’d wanted to do something, anything to help, but she’d been powerless.

  She hated that feeling, too. In fact, she hated this whole situation. She hated that Logan had come into her life, disrupted her normally peaceful existence and dragged her into the city for her own protection only to find the danger had followed them.

  Or maybe it had waited for them.

  God, she should have stayed home. She could be in the clinic right now, working with Maverick, trying to show the dog that not all humans were bad. Instead, she was here, amid the bad humans in the city while Jimmy kept watch over Jen at the clinic.

  Anger was a low-grade itch as Sam followed Logan to a second set of elevators. They rode up in a silence broken only by the rustle of expensive paper as he reread the note and cursed low.

  But she had a feeling he didn’t need to reread the single line of text. He was avoiding her.

  And with good reason. He’d come into her life and turned it upside down. She would be angry with him except that he was so obviously upset.

  He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. Yet it had, and now they needed to deal with it.

  They entered the opulent penthouse suite together, though Sam barely glanced at the rich chrome and leather furnishings and the wide windows that revealed the sweeping Boston skyline and a glitter of water.

  She spun on him, intending to relieve some of her fear and frustration, part of the roiling uncertainty that she chose to call anger. But before she could frame a complaint, or maybe a question, the words backed up in her throat at the look of torture on his face.

  He stood in the entryway, paper and envelope dangling from one hand, and looked lost. Absolutely lost.

  “I need to tell you about Trehern. About Sharilee. Then maybe you’ll understand how I know this is all part of a big game to him.”

  Any jealousy Sam might have felt at the woman’s name and the emotion behind it was burned away by Logan’s quiet grief. The rough rasp of his voice was oddly atonal, as though all the emotion had been pushed out of him. But his eyes were all emotion, lit with guilt and sadness, shadowed with the recent fight.

  And a quiet plea.

  Softening, Sam gestured him to a stiff black couch that proved to be butter-soft. “Sit. Tell me.”

  When he sat, she checked him over and found sore spots but no breaks, no real bleeding. He’d been lucky.

  Or the other man had pulled his punches.

  Part of Sam knew they should call the cops, or maybe Logan’s bosses, and report the incident in the garage. But all the reports in the world hadn’t helped yet, and it was clear Logan needed to talk.

  Besides, she wanted to hear what he had to say, needed to hear it, because maybe it would help her understand what was happening and why.

  What would come next.

  “Tell me.”

  He drew in a ragged breath. “The feds hadn’t been able to get Viggo on anything important, not really. He’d beaten charges ranging from murder to extortion and everything in between. So they started looking at the relatively unimportant things, and realized he had a fondness for prescription drugs. That was something the feds could prosecute on, so they contacted HFH and asked for a joint team. HFH agreed to send me in as a doctor and the feds agreed to send in an operative as backup. Only they wouldn’t tell me who it was.”

  His voice had gone cold, distant, as though reciting facts he’d told a thousand times. Sam supposed he had done just that, in debriefings and trial prep. But it was the grief behind the cold that grabbed her. Warned her.

  His phone rang in his jacket pocket, but he seemed not to hear it. When it fell silent after five rings, she urged, “Go on.”

  He jolted and she saw the memories crowding his eyes. Dark memories.

  “My cover played on the fact that I had been arrested as a suspect for a series of murders in BoGen’s transplant department.” Sam looked at him in surprise and a wry smile twisted his lips. “Yeah, a suspect. We had a pair of HFH operatives working on the murders. It turned out that my boss had bloody well framed me, when all along it was him selling BoGen transplant organs to the highest bidder.” He paused. “Anyway, that was my introduction to HFH.”

  His expression held a poignant mix of pride and regret. It hit Sam hard in the chest, because she recognized it. Her father looked like that when he spoke of his wife, and the career choices that had driven her away.

  Sam’s mother had wanted bright lights and fast city nights. Her father’s calling had been Black Horse Beach.

  There hadn’t been any middle ground.

  But this wasn’t about Sam’s father, and it wasn’t about the tight ache in her chest at the sight of Logan’s face, or the stab of worry that speared through her at the thought that he’d gone undercover to bring down a man the feds had been unable to catch.

  It was about his choices and how they’d come full circle.

  He continued, “We used that jail time as a hook to get me in with Viggo, and played up the suspicion that I’d been involved in the organ-selling scheme.” He glanced at her, the first time he’d truly looked at her since sitting down on the couch. “I hadn’t been, of course, but there was no way they’d look at a squeaky-clean doctor who’d graduated at the top of his class, moved straight into transplant medicine at BoGen and flirted with a few top-ten-bachelor lists.”

  The image of a young, upwardly mobile doctor was so far from the gruff, unhappy man sitting near her that Sam wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  He spread his hands. “Anyway, it took some doing, but I eventually established myself as one of Trehern’s most trusted doctors. I got him the prescription drugs he wanted and he kept me close. Too close, sometimes.”

  His face reflected what must have been a horrible year and a half. Sam didn’t even want to imagine it, but couldn’t stop the images from forming in her brain. She eased closer on the couch and touched his knee. “You don’t have to tell me this.”

  He took a deep breath. “Who better? You’ve been dragged into this, so it’s only fair you understand a bit of what’s going on.” He looked down at her hand on his knee, then covered it with his own.

  The contact brought a shock of electricity, then a low hum of warmth.

  Bad idea, she told herself. Very bad idea.

  But she didn’t move away.

  He continued, “When the end came, it was quick. I’d collected all the evidence we needed, and HFH and the feds were getting ready to pull me out. At the same time, they were going to pull out the undercover fed who’d been sent in to back me up. They’d never told me who it was—they didn’t trust I wouldn’t break the other guy’s cover.” He glanced at her. “I always thought it was William. He seemed decent, and had a good sense of humor. Damn it, I even liked him!”

  There was venom in the last sentence, a tired anger as though he’d beaten himself up over the friendship already and had laid that demon mostly to rest.

  “What happened?”

  His fingers tightened on her hand. “Even to this day, I’m not entirely sure. We were three days from dropping the hammer when it happened. Viggo got it in his head that he had a leak in the organization, and he called a meeting.” Logan’s eyes darkened. “There was a woman. Some bimbo he’d picked up at a bar and kept around for fun. I’d never had much to do with her, because Viggo was territorial.” He took a breath. “He shot her. Right in front of us. It happened
so fast, I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t even try.”

  “Oh, God.” Sam’s stomach knotted.

  “It gets worse.” He pulled his hand away and stood. Began to pace. “The feds heard the shot over the wire I was wearing and busted in not five minutes later. Nobody saw it coming. But it turned out that she’d been my backup. She was a damned fed.” His hands fisted and relaxed at his sides. “That shouldn’t make it worse—a life is a life, a death is a death. But it was worse.” He looked at her. “As they dragged the others out, I went a little nuts, screaming and cursing and trying to revive her, even though the back of her head was gone. Viggo saw that and he got this little smile on his face, as though I’d just given him a precious gift. And I had.” His eyes were molten now, with guilt and self-recrimination. “He knew how to hurt me now—by hurting a woman. He’s smart enough to know it’ll be worse if he hurts someone I know.”

  Understanding shivered through her. She’d known the danger before, it had been hard to ignore with bullets flying around and her truck at the bottom of the ocean, but the perpetrator had been obscure to her, a faceless menace that Logan had brought with him.

  Now, Trehern had a face. An ugly one.

  “What about your sister?” If anyone could be used against Logan, it was Nancy, the woman he’d spoken to so softly, so kindly. With so much love.

  Even now, the memory tugged at her.

  “I convinced her and Stephen to move onto a military base for the duration of the trial. She was safe there, even when…” He trailed off as though considering something for the first time, then shook his head. “No, no. Not even Trehern could have arranged for him to be taken in Tehru. That’s reaching.” Logan returned to the couch and sat down beside Sam, close beside her, and took both of her hands. “But when they tracked me to Black Horse Beach…when they saw us talking at your front door…that gave them leverage. I gave them leverage.”

  And finally she understood that the darkness in his eyes, the guilt and the grief wasn’t from a woman he’d loved and lost, but from a teammate he’d failed to protect.

  Someone he didn’t even know.

  But when she mentally coupled that with the disappearance of his sister’s husband, the story got a whole bunch clearer.

  Logan was trying to protect her. Not just from Trehern, but from him, from the danger he represented in his own mind.

  And perhaps he was trying to protect himself, as well.

  Something shifted in her chest. Warmth bloomed, laced through with a twist of regret as she realized that Logan was a man worthy of her respect.

  She genuinely liked him, damn it, which only made the situation more difficult.

  She’d loved her exes, but she hadn’t always liked them. What would happen if she let herself care for a man like Logan, a man she not only desired, but also liked and respected?

  A man whose work would require him to leave. A man with a worthy career, one she couldn’t ever ask him to deny.

  Heartbreak. That was the simple answer. Heartbreak.

  The phone in his pocket rang again, startling them both so they jumped away from each other on the couch. Only then did she realize how close together they’d been. How near an embrace. A mistake.

  He flipped the phone open and cleared his throat. “Hello?” After a moment of listening, he shifted his voice to crisp and businesslike. “Yeah, we’re here. And we had a visitor in the garage. William Caine. He had a message for us.” Logan paused, then nodded. “See you in ten.”

  “Your boss?” Sam asked, aware that the moment was past, the conversation over, yet not over at all. She wanted to know more about Logan, about his experiences undercover and whether he thought he could ever leave the work, ever be the committed young doctor with the bright future he’d described.

  But she wouldn’t ask, because she didn’t need to know. It wasn’t important, because as soon as the killers were caught and Trehern jailed, she’d be on her way back to Black Horse Beach, and he’d be on his way to…wherever.

  He nodded. “Zach Cage. I’m surprised he doesn’t have the others with him, but I’m sure they’re on their way.”

  Only they weren’t.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I don’t get any backup?” Disregarding seniority and protocol, Logan got right in Cage’s face. “Someone’s trying to kill us!”

  Cage didn’t even flinch. The darkly handsome hospital administrator gripped Logan’s shoulder. “The Chinatown cops will help, and we’ve got building security so tight that not even a roach can get in. But as for outside manpower, I’m tapped.”

  Impossible. HFH had a dozen pairs of high-level operatives on the payroll and ten times that in ancillary staff. There was no way they were all unavailable, unless…

  Unless something big was going down.

  Something like a rescue effort.

  Logan froze. Hell. “You’re going in after Stephen.”

  Sam’s gasp echoed in the wide room, and Cage neither confirmed nor denied Logan’s guess. He merely gestured to the couch. “Let’s sit and make a plan.”

  Logan sat, pulling Sam down beside him, not because there weren’t enough chairs, but because he bloody well wanted her beside him. He’d never told anyone else the full story of what had happened that night in Trehern’s mansion—at least not what he’d felt about it.

  Sure, he’d recited the facts a hundred times, but he’d never before admitted his feelings of failure.

  He’d failed Sharilee. He should have been smarter, quicker. But he hadn’t been, and she’d died with a surprised look on her face and his hands on her chest as he tried to keep her heart alive long after her body had failed.

  Sam sat beside him without protest. She didn’t touch him, but her warmth was a reminder that he couldn’t be two places at once. He couldn’t protect her and save Stephen both.

  But still…

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to let me fly to Tehru, are you?” Even before Cage shook his head in the negative, another thought occurred. “God, you didn’t let Nancy fly over, did you?”

  He wanted to be there when she got the news, good or bad. He wanted to be there to hold her, to cheer if the news was good. And if it wasn’t…

  He needed to be there.

  “Of course not.” Cage looked mildly disgusted. “I’m not an idiot. She’s on the base. I’d have brought her here, except for this mess Trehern has organized. So I need you to pull yourself together, take a breath, and tell me what the hell’s going on. Is it Trehern or not? Because Detective Peters and Sturgeon swear none of the organization’s usual thugs have gone missing. So either we’re dealing with a new hired gun, or something else is up.”

  “Of course it’s Trehern,” Logan snapped, irritated. But Sam’s warmth at his back made him pause a moment and remember the note.

  What if it was genuine? What if it wasn’t Viggo or his son?

  What then?

  Then someone else was trying to kill him and Sam, and they had no backup, and no other theories.

  Wordlessly, he handed over the note.

  Cage frowned and read aloud. “I didn’t order the hit.” He glanced at Logan. “Do you have any reason to believe that Viggo Jr. is telling the truth?”

  He’d thought about it briefly. “Not really. But at the same time, why would he lie? If they’ve sent men after me, then it’s for one of two reasons—to threaten me into not testifying, or to kill me so I can’t.”

  Sam stiffened at the baldness of the statement, and Logan had to restrain himself from throwing an arm across her shoulders to comfort her, or perhaps comfort them both. But that was a bad idea. She didn’t need him confusing her life any more than he already had.

  And his life was such a mess, any more confusion might make it implode.

  Cage glanced at the note again, as though he, too, wished that another sentence or two would magically appear. “What about the delivery boy?”

  “William.” A faint smile touched Logan’s lips, the ghost of a respect he ha
dn’t yet managed to kill. Damn, he wished they were on the same team. They could have been friends. “I wouldn’t exactly call him an errand boy. More like a pit bull on a mission.” Which made him think of Sam’s neighbor and the fighting dogs.

  Black Horse Beach and its local problems seemed so far away. Strangely, part of him missed it, missed the quiet and the hiss of waves on the sand. The rhythm of the town and a morning cup of coffee with people who weren’t quite strangers anymore. But missing it didn’t mean he intended to return.

  In fact, it would probably be kinder if he didn’t.

  “Can you find William? Can you get more information about Viggo Jr. and how much of the old organization he’s taken over?” Cage’s eyes asked a different set of questions.

  Are you strong enough to go back there? Will you?

  Logan gritted his teeth. If Cage had asked him the question a week ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Though he intended to go back to fieldwork eventually, he never again wanted to be undercover that deep for that long. Besides, he would need to be careful. William knew who he was and wanted something. What of the others? This could so easily become a trap.

  But with Sam’s life in danger…

  He exhaled. “If that’s what it takes. Yeah, I can find him.”

  “Good. Then do it.” Cage stood, holding the note by the corner. “I’ll take this over to the Chinatown station. They know the basics of what’s happened so far. Walk with me and I’ll tell you what I can about the rescue before you leave.”

  That confirmed Logan’s hunch. HFH was going into Tehru after his brother-in-law. God, how could he be so separated from the event? How could he not be there when Nancy needed him?

  He glanced over at Sam, knowing he was needed equally as much here. More so, because this was his mess.

  His and Sam’s.

  She rose from the couch when he did, and walked to the door with the men. Cage went ahead and waited at the elevators, giving them a discreet moment Logan wasn’t sure he wanted.

  It would have been easier just to leave. But it wouldn’t have been fair.