“We’re interested in each other. Nothing more than that right now.” Alex stared at her, daring her to say otherwise.
Sam muttered something under his breath and threw up his hands. “Look, I don’t care if you are, I’m happy for you both, but I can’t have the two of you working stings together. Understand?”
“Do you have any idea at all who left the note?” Jenna planted her hands on her hips, the flush reaching down her neck.
Alex wanted her to sit down, keep cool. The stress would only make things worse.
“No, the box is anonymous. Why?” Sam’s gaze narrowed.
“Can I see the note?” Alex knew Trevor’s handwriting. At the very least they could rule him out.
“Why?”
Jenna glanced away. She’d hated telling him. If they came out with the whole mess to the Chief, he would be obligated to look into it. And everyone would know. Alex was ninety percent sure she was being stalked, but she wasn’t. Even now, when he was damn well sure her stalker, and not Trevor, was trying to drive them apart, he could see the uncertainty in the tiny lines around her eyes and the stubborn set of her mouth.
What had her shrink said to her?
They hadn’t had enough time to cover that, yet. He prayed the doctor had good news for her.
“We aren’t positive yet,” Alex said slowly, waiting for some form of protest or another answer from her. It was time to come clean though. The Chief and the others were their people. They should be on their side.
“And? Spit it out, son.” Sam’s gaze stuck to Alex like molasses, determined to get in all the nooks and crannies of the truth.
“I think someone is stalking Jenna.”
“Stalking?” Sam blinked a few times. He was old school enough to lump stalking into petty, meaningless crimes. To him, cattle rustling was still a major offense.
Jenna smoothed her hair back and did something with her ponytail. “We don’t know for sure, but—things have been happening. It’s why I stayed at Alex’s house to start with. We didn’t mean to keep this a secret, it just happened, and we hadn’t figured out how to—to talk about it yet.”
“This as in the stalking or you two together?” Sam’s frown was never a good sign. People got fired, or worse, when he frowned.
“The stalking, but us, too.” Jenna’s shoulders sagged. Despite the flush in her cheeks, her color wasn’t right. She was too pale and too red.
“I’ve been going over Jenna’s notes, looking to see if I can’t make heads or tails of what’s going on. Right now there is no evidence we can prove, but I believe her. And I think this stalker must have tipped you off. Ransom is small. If this guy, whoever he is, lives around here, he’d know to send that note to you. That it’ll put Jenna on the outside and make her vulnerable.”
“Just tell him no.” Sam shrugged. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know.” Jenna glanced from Sam to Alex. This. This was why she hadn’t come forward.
“I believe it’s someone she met at the hospital. Maybe someone she helped. I’ve been going through the 911 calls she responded to, things we have records of on our end to see if I can make a list of potential suspects.”
“Ignore it. It’ll go away.”
“Sir—”
“Look, I know you believe you have a modern view on things and all, but here we’re simple folk. Stalking is what kids do. Boys who don’t know what no is and girls who lead them on. Tell him no. You ignore it, it’ll go away, easy as that.”
Alex stared at the chief.
What a load of bullshit.
“Now, about tonight’s operation.” Sam turned slightly and looked out the glass doors at the others milling around the ice chest.
“I’ll bow out,” Jenna said. “The team needs Alex’s leadership. I’ll just be a distraction.”
“Jenna, sir, no.” He’d never been more focused than with her at his back. There was no concern that she’d get caught up in something she couldn’t handle or that she would disobey an order. She didn’t choke. She was the best asset their SWAT team had.
“Agreed, Ms. Martin. I’ll call and have the other guy come in. Alex, be ready to get him up to speed.”
“Okay.” Jenna nodded and turned around. She didn’t even take her vest back, she just...walked away. But then again, wasn’t this what she expected to happen from going to the police?
This couldn’t be happening. Yes, he could work with any of their SWAT people, but she was his good luck charm. The touchstone that kept them all safe. Things went better when she was around. And the chief was taking her away from them.
“Sir, I think this is a mistake. Jenna has more experience than all of us put together. She is an asset to this team, taking her out of the picture will seriously hinder our ability to perform.”
“Take it easy, Alex.” Sam glanced down the hall. Jenna turned a corner and was gone, out of sight. “I’m not entirely by the book here. I’m willing to blur the lines a bit. You two can’t work the same operations together, but since she’s not technically a cop or one of our employees, she’s not bound by our code of conduct, except for the paperwork she signed.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, unless someone makes a case against it, she can work operations you aren’t part of. There aren’t a hell of a lot of paramedics with her experience. I’m not blind.”
That was a very small number. Maybe he could get the guys together, put together some sort of paperwork, a petition of sorts to get her back on their team.
“Something you want to say?” Sam’s molasses stare was everywhere.
“No, sir.”
“You still disagree?”
“I do.”
“Well, we were given free choice for a reason. Good luck tonight. We’ll talk more later.” Sam turned and strode down the hall.
Jenna was nowhere in sight. Everything in him said to go and find her, keep her safe. But if he abandoned his job, people could die tonight. Meth cook houses were dangerous. They could explode, killing everyone in that house. The neighbors could get caught in the blast. They were bad news. And Jenna could be walking straight into a trap.
“Fuck it all.” Alex jerked his cell phone out of the pocket on the front of his vest and dialed by muscle memory alone.
One ring.
“Come on you asshole.”
Two rings.
“Pick up.”
Three, four rings.
“I’m busy,” Trevor said.
“Make time.” Alex’s voice was hard, unyielding.
“What’s wrong?” A chair squeaked and the lazy tone was gone. All cop.
“It’s Jenna. Find her. Stick to her like glue. I’ll explain later, but this is important.”
“You know where she is?”
“I imagine she’s leaving the building right now.”
“On my way.”
The call ended and Alex stood in the hall, Jenna’s vest in one hand, his phone in the other. He was trusting another man with her safety when it should be him. This was how their police family should operate. The chief should have had her back, he should have believed them when they said she was in danger. Instead, the chief had just proven all her fears about coming forward with what was going on true.
He blew out a breath and punched her speed dial. It rang and rang.
“Hey, this is Jenna—”
Alex ended the call and gripped the phone tight enough the plastic case groaned.
He would not throw this phone. But damn he wanted to.
It shouldn’t be this way. Not with Jenna and the team. This wasn’t right.
They were hanging one of their own out to dry.
JENNA LEANED AGAINST her car, the weight of guilt anchoring her to the spot.
Alex was in trouble because of her. God, why had she gone to him? Why? Why had she let him help her? Why had she kissed him? She wasn’t worth endangering his career over.
She glanced around the parking lot. In the mid
dle of the afternoon it was quiet, nearly devoid of people. No audience. But... Whoever sent that note could be her stalker. And they could be watching her right now. Or had she written it herself as a way of confessing her crimes? Yeah right, she hadn’t had time and every moment of her day was accounted for. She swallowed the lump of what felt like gauze in her throat and unlocked the car.
There was no way she was going into work, not like this. People would ask questions. It was better to let the hospital staff assume she got hurt or sick, and the other medic was filling in for her. For now. The truth would come out later and she’d deal with it then, but right now she wanted to be behind a locked door with a pint of ice cream.
The only option for her was to go home for now until Alex was done with practice. They could do with some time apart, anyway.
She got into her car and fired the engine.
“Ug.”
The smell was much worse now. Almost like something had crawled inside and died. She must have left some food in the car for it to smell this bad. She rolled the windows down and gassed it out of the lot, holding her breath most of the short drive to her house.
She parked in the drive and got out, sucking in a deep breath of fresh, clean air. What she needed was a distraction and cleaning her car fit the bill. The street was empty. There were no cars. Nowhere for someone to watch her unless they were a neighbor.
Jenna shuddered and put that thought out of her mind. If it was someone who lived on her street... No. She couldn’t go there. Not right now.
She grabbed a plastic bag from some mystery gas station and began digging around under her seat, in the door pockets, gathering up all the odds and ends that had accumulated from her time avoiding home. Still, nothing that had the unique fragrance of roasted death.
Jenna climbed into the back seat. A white box, like what a small gift might be wrapped in, peaked out from under the passenger side seat. Weird. The last time she’d exchanged presents with anyone was the Secret Santa thing at the hospital and she’d gotten a bag.
She leaned down and got a whiff of something truly awful.
“Yuck.”
Her eyes watered and even breathing through her mouth, she could still taste it.
She picked up the box with two fingers and lifted the lid off the cardboard bottom.
“Oh, my God!”
Jenna dropped the box and scrambled backward out of the car. Her foot got caught on the seatbelt and she toppled out onto the driveway, landing on her bottom and rolled to her back. Her head hit the grass, saving her from a concussion.
“Oh, my God,” she chanted and pushed up to her feet.
A dark blue SUV pulled up at the curb. She whirled to face the vehicle, then back to her car. A shudder shook her from head to toe.
Who...?
“Jenna?”
She covered her mouth with her hand. Death, in all its forms, wasn’t a mystery to her. She’d seen some of the worst ways to end life, but this, it broke her heart and stabbed fear into her breast. What kind of person did that? To a little bird?
“Jenna.”
Hands grasped her shoulders. She jumped, whirling to face—Trevor.
“Oh, my God.” It was over a hundred degrees outside and yet, she was freezing. Her knees shook, teeth chattered.
“What’s wrong, Jenna? What happened?” Trevor bent at the waist and stared in her eyes.
“In the car—it’s dead.”
“What?” His hand went to his gun. “Stand by the truck.”
She nodded and crossed to his SUV.
This was ridiculous. Mortar fire hadn’t shaken her as bad as a dead bird in a box. The only reason people sent dead things was to fuck with their victim’s head. He’d—her stalker—wanted to see her open it, see how she reacted.
Jenna turned in a circle, peering into every window and bush. Was he there? It wasn’t in her head anymore. This was a person. Someone was doing this to her.
Trevor pulled on latex gloves and collected the box, her bag of trash and the little broken bird. He took what was now evidence to the back of his SUV. He wasn’t even acknowledged as a detective yet, and here he was, on his first case.
She wrapped her arms around herself and bounced on her toes. What was wrong with her? Why would someone pick her? Why would they want to scare her? What would this accomplish?
“Jenna, shit, what’s going on?” Trevor stripped off his gloves as he approached her, deep furrows marring his brow.
“Can we go inside?” Away from prying eyes.
“Yeah.” He gestured toward her door and placed his hand at the small of her back. Her keys were in his hand, probably because she’d dropped them.
Trevor let them into her house, but even once the door was shut and locked twice over, she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched. She paced the length of the living room and back again while Trevor stood at the entry, at a loss for words.
Who could it be? She thought back over the list of patients Alex had been able to put together from 911 calls, but there were others.
“Jenna, will you sit, please?”
She nodded and circled the sofa, perching in her usual spot on the far right-hand side. This was her home, her furniture and yet it was a foreign place to her now. The stalker had stolen that from her.
“What’s going on? I got a call from Alex to follow you home. Did something happen last night?”
“What?” She blinked at him. Did he think Alex did this? Because that was silly.
“You left the bar so fast, I don’t know.”
“Someone is stalking me.” She could say it without the secondary fear that it was all in her head. Now, she knew it was real. That it wasn’t just her.
Trevor pulled his phone back out and plucked the stylus from the bottom. He started jotting down notes. Like a good detective would.
She was a victim.
Jenna had never been a victim before. Even when the IED flipped their hummer, and she’d needed stitches or the shrapnel or that bad ricochet wound, she was just injured. It was a new and violating state of being. A victim. Someone had broken into her vehicle, her home, her life, without her permission. They’d made her second guess herself, fear for her mental health—and why? To get their rocks off?
Someone was speaking. She shook her head.
Trevor sat perched on the coffee table now. He stared at her with an intensity she’d never experienced before. This wasn’t Trevor her friend, it was Trevor the cop. Before Alex, he would have been the first person she called. The one she trusted. And yet, her stomach knotted up into tight, cold balls of worry at the idea of laying herself bare for another person after the chief’s indifferent attitude.
“I’m sorry, what?” She gathered the bits of herself she could and made a go at pulling herself together.
“When did this start?”
“I...um, Alex has that. Or, maybe...” She patted her pockets. “It’s in my vest. Shit. I left it with Alex. I was on auto-pilot.”
“It’s okay, I’ve already texted him to come over when they’re done. So is this what’s been going on with you and Alex?”
“Yes—no—it’s complicated.”
“Okay. Alright. Just take a deep breath and start at the beginning.”
When had it begun?
She needed the notebook to be able to tell.
“It was just a feeling at first. You know, right between your shoulder blades?”
“Yeah.”
She bit her lip. Trevor would never look at her the same after this. Once the rest of the SWAT guys found out, would she always be a victim to them?
“Jenna, I believe you. Just tell me.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.
This was her friend. The one person besides Alex she should be able to trust without limits or reasons.
“I’d come home and stuff would be moved around, but it wasn’t obvious anyone had broken in. I convinced myself it was all in my head. That I’d misplaced things or was too tired to remem
ber. I wasn’t sleeping, and then when I was sleeping I’d have these nasty nightmares. This one time I woke up...and I knew someone was in the hallway. I stopped sleeping then. I haven’t really slept in weeks. Then the other night I was walking home and freaked myself out. Alex startled me and...I tried to hit him because, well, he scared me and I thought it had to be that person, you know?”
“He does have a scary mug.”
They chuckled, and she squeezed his hand once before letting go. The sweat dampening her clothing was cold and clammy now. She tugged the ponytail holder out of her hair and ran her fingers through the strands. It relieved some pressure, but she was bound for a killer headache.
“What happened with Alex? He didn’t let that slide.”
“No, he didn’t.” She glanced away. Here it was. Everything coming out into the open. She didn’t know what Alex was to her yet. She wasn’t ready for this. “Did you tell the chief you saw us together? Last night?”
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure what was going on, so I figured I’d give you two the benefit of the doubt. You want to tell me about it?” Trevor glanced at the floor.
“Not really, not yet.”
“I just want to help.”
“I know, but...you know how you don’t want the guys to know you’re looking for Long Legs? It’s kind of the same thing. Look, I don’t expect you to get it, but there’s always been this...connection with Alex and maybe it was just being around each other or whatever, but we’re acknowledging it’s there.”
“I do not want to think about you with Myers.” Trevor shuddered and his face twisted up into a comical, grotesque mask.
“Shut up.” She slapped his knee. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. And we’d talked about giving it a few weeks before we told anyone. It’s not like we’re trying to hide. You know me.”
“And I know Alex. If he was willing to bend a rule, I’m guessing he really likes you, but—”
“No buts.” She covered her ears. It was childish and silly, but the very real truth was that she needed Alex’s support. “Just tell me, did you tell the chief?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we were in the middle of practice and the chief pulled us aside. I think the stalker outed us to him, so I left. They’ve called in the other medic.”
Fighting Redemption: A Small Town Romantic Suspense (Texas SWAT Book 1) Page 16
