His Cowboy Heart

by Jennifer Ryan

  “Does it feel that way?”

  She didn’t even have to think about it. “Actually, it feels long overdue.”

  “There’s your answer. You have a history. You trust him. He’s supportive of your needs.”

  “He knows I still have a long way to go, but he loves who I am now and encourages me to keep working to get to the person he knows I can be. The person I want to be again.”

  “PTSD is tricky. Sometimes it’s one step forward, two steps back.”

  “Sometimes it feels like three steps forward, ten back,” she complained.

  “You experienced that with Tobin’s return into your life. You weren’t ready to face him.”

  “He didn’t make it easy. In fact, he purposefully made it hard.”

  “Do you believe his actions were motivated by jealousy?”

  “Partly . . .”

  “Maybe once he’s back on base, back in the routine, absorbed in managing the cargo and people under him, he’ll settle back into a normal life. Unless he’s assigned overseas again.”

  Jamie’s body jerked with surprise. “What? No.” She leaned forward and gripped the edge of the sofa in her hands. Her fingers ached, but she didn’t care. Something pushed against her mind, but she fought it back.

  “Jamie, what is it?”

  “Why would he want to go back?” She rocked back and forth, her stomach aching with the fear and anger she couldn’t explain. “He can’t go back. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Is that what it is? You’re afraid for him?”

  “No.” She shook her head violently. “He can’t go back. Not after what he did.”

  “Jamie, calm down.”

  “He can’t go back,” she shouted.

  “Why? What did he do?”

  The question stopped her cold. A shiver raced up her spine. “What?”

  “You said he can’t go back after what he did.”

  “I meant after what happened. I don’t know why he’d want to go back after what happened.” The confusion in her mind filtered into her voice.

  “That’s not what you said, Jamie. What do you think he did?”

  “Nothing.” She stared at the wall, trying to slow the images racing through her mind. “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Porter frowned, tapping his finger to a folder in front of him. “I received word from command today about the investigation.” Dr. Porter leaned in. “Jamie, the bullet recovered from your chest came from an American rifle.”

  That something in the back of her mind pushed at her again. “So? You know that doesn’t mean anything. One of the militants could have taken it from one of our soldiers. In the heat of battle, they grabbed the nearest weapon.”

  “That’s possible, but I’m more concerned and so is command that they matched the bullet to Tobin’s rifle.”

  “No.” She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. A sharp pain pounded in her forehead. “No. It just proves that someone took his rifle from him.”

  “He didn’t say that in his debriefing.”

  “They probably didn’t ask him.”

  “They did. He said he used his weapon to fight off the militants.”

  Her stomach pitched and rolled. “He made a mistake.”

  “Jamie, do something for me.” She didn’t like the urgent tone in his voice. “Close your eyes.” She did. “Take a deep, calming breath.” It took several to actually calm her racing heart. “After the explosion, after Tobin put out the fire on your back, what did he do?”

  “He carried me to the side of one of the other vehicles and set me down away from the line of fire.”

  “What did he do then?”

  “He fired, covering me, and called in a medivac and backup from the radio in the vehicle.” She tilted her head.

  “In his debriefing he said he called for help after everyone went down.”

  Jamie shook her head. “No, that’s not right. He called right after the explosion.”

  “He’s next to you. He’s firing his weapon. What does he do next?”

  Her heart raced again as she fell back into that time. “There are men closing in. Some of our men rush forward to head them off and protect the cargo and each other. Tobin tells me to stay put and runs to join them. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to leave me. My back, it hurts so much.”

  “How do you get shot if the team is between you and the militants?”

  She didn’t know. “I’m scared for Catalina. I search for her in the group. I have my rifle and a sidearm. I can help if I have to. My back hurts so bad, but I lie on my stomach under the truck and crawl forward to see if I can pick off some of the gunmen.”

  “Do you do that?”

  Tears flood her eyes. She hadn’t frozen. She did what she had to do to protect her friends. “Yes. Yes, I do. I have no choice. I have to save them.”

  “Yes, Jamie, you have to save them.”

  “He’s there.” She reaches out like she can touch him. “The man. He jumps up on the top of the lead vehicle and he’s shooting. People are yelling and screaming, they’re falling dead. The blood. It’s everywhere.”

  “What do you do?”

  I act. “I crawl out from cover and run toward him. I’m screaming for him to stop, but he won’t stop.”

  “Jamie, why do you run from out of cover? Why would you risk your life like that when you need to cover your men?”

  “He’s killing them,” she wails, lost in the scene in her head.

  “Jamie, who shoots you?”

  She runs to the vehicle and climbs up the side, trying to get to him and stop this madness. The dark man turns to her and for the first time the bright sun catches his face, the maniacal look in his dark eyes sends a bolt of terror through her whole body the second before he fires and the bullets rip through her body. She’s falling, and he screams, “Keller!”

  For a second she sees the regret and shock in his eyes before her back slams into the ground.

  “Jamie, who shot you?” Dr. Porter’s urgent voice called her out of the past as she fell into the back of the sofa.

  “He yelled my name,” she whispered.

  Fury roared through her. She stood and went to the gun cabinet Ford placed her gun in when they got back to the house the other day. He’d ordered her to leave it there. When he was out checking cattle, she’d found the key, the clip he’d hidden in the office, the bullets, and put them all together at the bottom of the cabinet. Just in case. Now she put all the pieces together, jammed the fully loaded clip in the gun, grabbed her keys off the hook in the kitchen, and headed out the door with Dr. Porter’s raised voice calling her back, barely a whisper above the rage screaming in her mind.

  Ford ran out of the bedroom still dripping wet with his jeans on and nothing else when he heard the front door slam and Dr. Porter yelling for Jamie to come back. He picked up the laptop and stared at Dr. Porter on the screen.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Go after her. Tobin lost it during the firefight. He went blind to who he was shooting and killed his own men. He shot Jamie. She remembered what happened. She went after him.”

  Jamie’s truck roared to life outside, the tires tearing up the driveway. Zoey barked and scratched at the door to go after her. He turned to see her out the window and spotted the gun cabinet’s open door.

  “Shit. She took her gun. I’ll just bet she found the clip and bullets I hid from her. I gotta go.”

  “Call the cops. Get them over there. There’s no telling what Tobin will do to keep her quiet. The military has evidence, but without her testimony it’s all speculation.”

  “What do I do if she shoots the bastard and the cops arrest her?”

  “I’ll do everything I can to help her. She’s not in her right mind right now.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Go, Ford. Hurry, before she does something she truly can’t live with.”

  Ford tossed the laptop on the couch, ran back to his room, pulled on his boots,
grabbed a shirt out of the dresser drawer, and ran for the door, pulling the shirt on over his head as he went. He barely remembered to snatch his keys off the kitchen table before he left, feeling bad for shooing Zoey back in the house and not taking her with him.

  He needed to get to Jamie. She’d been through so much. He couldn’t imagine how she felt remembering what happened and knowing that a man she called friend had not only killed the people she cared about the most, people who had become her family, but he’d shot her, too.

  She’d kill Tobin. Ford needed to stop her before she pulled the trigger.

  She’d never be able to live with herself if she murdered her friend.

  Whether he deserved it or not.

  Chapter 32

  Tobin’s hand shook as he picked up his ringing cell phone and saw the Georgia number. Command calling to give him his orders for when he returned. He hoped. He swiped his finger across the screen to accept the call and tried to clear his anxiety-clogged throat.

  “Report to base immediately,” Lieutenant Gedetti ordered without even a hello. “Command received new information regarding Sergeant Keller’s shooting and they have some questions for you. You are ordered to report for debriefing tomorrow at ten hundred.”

  The news turned Tobin’s stomach and made his thrashing heart pound in his ears. “I’m in Montana, sir. At Sergeant Keller’s place, in fact.” The last place he should have come, but he loved Jamie and had to take his shot at making her his despite the risk.

  “Get on a plane and get back here immediately.”

  “If I can’t make it in time?” He tried to think and plan what he’d say. He could bullshit his way out of this just like he did the first time they debriefed him.

  He could still salvage this mess and keep his freedom.

  The Army would want to sweep this under the rug. God forbid they admit one of their own was responsible for the deaths of US soldiers. The press would eat them alive and plaster the story all over the news, talking about battle fatigue, PTSD, and the legitimacy of the war. The military had enough bad press. He’d use that to his advantage, because it wasn’t his fault. Those bastards attacked them. He’d had no choice but to kill those assholes. He’d gotten caught up in the melee and confusion and need to survive. None of it would have happened if not for those damn insurgents coming after them.

  If that didn’t save his ass, he’d convince them Jamie’s spotty memory and volatile mental state made her an unreliable witness.

  “You don’t show, you’ll be in violation of Article 86. Do not go AWOL. Report to the command office as ordered.”

  “I’ll be there, sir.”

  “You better be.” The lieutenant hung up.

  Tobin wanted to chuck his phone against the wall. Instead, he pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, hit himself several times in the head, then swore. He might just be royally fucked.

  Only one person could ruin everything. And she just pulled into the driveway.

  He refused to go down like this.

  Either she took his side, or he took her out.

  Chapter 33

  Jamie ran up the porch steps, the familiar gun heavy in her hand at her side, the gruesome images fresh in her mind along with the unbearable grief and betrayal ripping through her heart. She stopped short when the door opened and Tobin stood in front of her, tall, menacing, and knowing exactly why she’d come armed.

  “Your watchdog let you out of the house with that gun?” Tobin sneered and shook his head. “Did he let you keep the bullets this time?”

  She narrowed her angry gaze. “You don’t want to find out.”

  His lips tilted in a lopsided grin that held no humor. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me.”

  Jamie pulled down the front of her T-shirt. “We both know you shot me. Not once. Not twice. Three times,” she screamed. “How could you even think about going back after what you did?”

  “I can’t change that or make it right, but if you keep quiet, I can make a difference over there.”

  “A difference? You killed people.”

  His eyes narrowed with accusation. “You killed people.”

  “To save our friends,” she shot back. “The very people you shot and killed in your fever to take down our enemies.”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he shouted back at her. “Do you really think I wanted to kill them? Hell no. I couldn’t see anything but an enemy that needed to be taken down. I wanted to save you, everyone. Then I saw the bullets ripping through you. You fell away, this look of betrayal and anger in your eyes. You were bleeding on the ground and everything around me came alive as you lay there dying.” He put his hands to his head and gripped his hair, frustration and anger ripping a growl from his throat.

  “You saved me from that explosion and then you tried to kill me not five minutes later?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” he bellowed. “You have to believe that.” His eyes pleaded with her to understand. “Those were our friends. They were family. You’re the last person I would ever hurt.”

  “But you did.”

  His hands fisted at his sides and his mouth drew back in frustration. “Don’t you think I’ve agonized over it since it happened?”

  “And still you came here, knowing I wasn’t in a good place, lost in the past and the pain. Did you cause all that trouble at Ford’s place? Did you try to kill him?”

  “I wanted to keep him busy and away from you. If he was out of the way, you’d come back to me, but the fire, I panicked when I saw how close you were getting to the truth with Ford’s help, and I wanted to scare him off. I thought he’d walk in, flick the switch, and run out at the first sign of flames. He’d have another problem to deal with and lose the building and equipment. Nothing more. I didn’t set up the shovel falling across the door, or anticipate the flames getting so hot so fast.” Nothing but a calculated accident that nearly turned deadly.

  “If I hadn’t saved him, you would have killed him.”

  Tobin raked his hand over his head. “He made it out.” The relief in Tobin’s voice didn’t soften her any toward him.

  “You tried to take him away from me.” She didn’t understand how he’d shut off his heart and still claimed to want her. “All because you didn’t want me to remember.”

  “No. I didn’t want the woman I’ve loved for five long years to know what I’d done and look at me the way you’re looking at me now. I see the hate and the anger and the pain I’ve caused you and it tears me apart.”

  “Then do the right thing and turn yourself in. Tell them what you did. If it tears me up this bad grieving for our friends, I can’t imagine how you get through the day knowing what you did.”

  He shrugged. That dismissive jerk of his shoulders sent a bolt of rage through her system. Despite everything he’d said, Tobin was looking out for himself. Nothing and no one else mattered.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but people do terrible things in the name of war, and we have to live with it.”

  “Are you seriously justifying what you did?”

  “I did my job,” he barked.

  “Your job was to watch our backs, not shoot us.”

  “Yeah, well, you got yours.” He rubbed the scar on the side of his head. “You nearly bashed my skull in.”

  “What the hell do you think I want to do right now?”

  Yes, bleeding out and breathing what she’d thought were her last breaths, gun in hand, she’d fired, hitting him in the chest and his bulletproof vest. Unable to breathe from the impacts, he’d fallen close to her and tried to grab her but, out of bullets, she’d bashed him in the head with the gun butt and knocked him out. She’d fallen back and waited to die, gasping for air, dying from the burns, bullet wounds, and grief eating her alive.

  “What are you going to do?” He took a menacing step toward her.

  She gripped the gun tighter in her hand, her index finger pressed to the side but itching to squeeze the trigger
.

  “I won’t let you go back. I won’t put others in harm’s way. You have to pay for what you’ve done.”

  He stood towering over her, trying to intimidate her, and ordered, “Tell them you don’t remember. Tell them it was one of the militants. I swear to you, I won’t do anything like that again. Hell, ninety-nine percent of the time I’m on base ordering others what to do. That you and I were in that truck, that you were driving and not organizing things back at base, too . . . total fluke.”

  “A one percent chance that you’ll be called on to watch someone’s six is too great a risk for me.”

  “Keller, come on,” Tobin pleaded. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t break my heart again. If I don’t have you, the Army is all I have left. Everything I’ve worked for for the last twelve years will be wasted.” The hurt in his words didn’t deter her.

  “You threw it all away the minute you shot one of your own. And then you tried to burn Ford to death.”

  “What about you? You shot lover boy. What happens when I tell them you did that? Your future with him goes up in smoke. You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours.” Desperation tinged his words.

  She shook her head, hating that she’d put herself in this position, that what she’d done to Ford might cost her the man she loved and the life she wanted. In the end, she couldn’t live with herself if she kept quiet about what Tobin had done and what he might do again if she didn’t stop him.

  “I won’t allow you to go back.”

  “You’ll give up everything?” He bit out the words, not believing she’d really do it.

  “For the ones you killed, yes. I owe them that. They deserve that.”

  Distracted by Ford’s truck racing into the drive behind them, she didn’t see Tobin come after her until a split second before his hands grabbed the sides of her shoulders, he picked her up, and threw her off the porch steps. She flew through the air just like in her nightmare and landed on her back with a thwack on the hard packed dirt and slid to a stop. The air rushed out of her lungs. She tried to suck in a breath, but Tobin leaped down the steps and landed on her middle, making it impossible to breathe. One hand at her throat choking her, the other making a grab for the gun she tried to raise up and shoot him with. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, squeezing hard. Pain shot up her arm. He slammed her hand against the ground once, then twice, and the gun fell from her tingling fingers.