Lone Star Survivor

by Colleen Thompson

  But he had strength and will enough to squeeze off a final shot, and he pointed the SIG Sauer at Ian.

  A final shot he aimed...except not well enough.

  Chapter 16

  Andrea sat at the back of an ambulance, where a paramedic wrapped her arm, since she had refused transport to the hospital.

  “I’m not making a third trip there this week,” she told the kind-eyed woman as she improvised a sling, “not for a cut on my arm and a h-handful of torn-out hair. And especially not when—when Cassidy will never...”

  Andrea dissolved into sobs, her vision filling with the image of Cassidy sprawled on the floor, her beautiful ringlets soaked with blood. Andrea knew instinctively she would never forget the stricken look on Ian’s face when he knelt to check for a pulse. “I’m so sorry, but she’s gone.”

  “If I hadn’t fought him, hadn’t stabbed him with that needle,” Andrea had stammered.

  Ian shook his head. “It was me. He meant to shoot me.”

  Connor, too, had looked ill as he’d stared down at the two guns he’d set down on the desktop: the one he’d picked up off the floor, meaning to defend Andrea, and the one he’d pulled from Julian’s still-twitching hand before Ross had spasmed and gone still, without anyone making a move to try to help him.

  As Andrea wept, Jessie came and wrapped a protective arm around her waist. Ian and Connor were still inside going over what had happened with the chief deputy, who’d taken control of the scene until Canter could arrive, but Michael stood near the ambulance, as well, his fingers repeatedly running through his short beard and his eyes glazed with shock.

  Through her tears, Andrea noticed that the other staff members and most of the residents had ventured outside, some of them staring at the flashing lights of the ambulances, fire trucks and sheriff’s department vehicles that had responded to the call Jessie made on hearing the first gunshot. A few of the patients were pacing wildly and one appeared to be talking and gesturing to himself.

  Someone should be helping them, talking them through the strategies she, Michael and Connor had been teaching them to cope with flashbacks. Someone better equipped, but who else was there, really, with all of them in shock?

  While the paramedic questioned Michael, one of the center’s clients walked up, a wild-eyed man in his latter twenties, who was chain-smoking away his restless energy. “Is she really dead? Miss Cassidy?”

  “She and Julian Ross both are,” Jessie answered for her, the words echoing through Andrea’s hollowed heart.

  “Colonel Ross?” The chain-smoker, Kris Vargas, asked Andrea. “But why? What happened, Doc? Is it—it’s the war again, isn’t it? It’s just like Ty said. It’s followed—followed us back home.”

  As he wandered off without an answer, it occurred to Andrea that he was right, that every one of these men and women, along with Ian and Julian, had carried home a piece of the war locked inside their minds. For Ian, that memory had been overwhelming enough that his psyche could only deal with bits and pieces at a time. For Julian, it had been so unbearably shameful that he’d been willing to create a new identity and threaten or even kill to keep the secret instead of turning himself in or dealing with the psychological torment he had been exposed to.

  Intellectually, she understood it. Emotionally, she knew she never would. But that didn’t mean she had to allow herself to become another victim, not when there were people here who urgently needed her help.

  She came to her feet, intent on answering Kris, though he had already wandered off to shout the same questions at Michael.

  “You need to sit down. You’re hurt,” Jessie told her.

  “We’re all hurt. Every one of us. The question is, what do we do with our pain?”

  “Andrea, you’re in shock. The psychobabble can wait for someone else to—”

  She wiped away her tears, swallowing back her pain. “They need me now, someone they know and trust to help them. And if I’m to make it through this night, I’ll need them just as much.”

  Jessie looked as if she might argue, but Zach pulled up in his truck, then jumped out and ran to his wife.

  He pulled her into his arms, relief and worry mingling in his expression. “What the hell’s happening? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, and so’s your brother. He’s inside, talking with Canter’s second in command about the shooting that happened here tonight.”

  Zach pulled back to stare a question at his wife. “Shooting? What the hell?”

  Leaving the couple to their discussion, Andrea went to see if she could roust Michael from his shock and grief to help her. It took a few minutes, but she talked the younger counselor into refocusing on the center’s mission.

  “It’s what Cassidy would’ve wanted,” she told him, “what she would have found the strength to do if it had been one of us.”

  “You—you’re right,” he said, giving her a hug and pulling himself together.

  For the next hour or so, the two of them kept busy, recruiting support staff to do a head count and organizing client teams to offer mutual support and redirect their individual thought patterns. Ignoring her throbbing arm and aching head, Andrea spent time, too, talking to Kris and one female patient who’d been especially close to Cassidy, helping relieve their heightened states of anxiety.

  Time seemed to slow down, the lights blurring and the voices growing muffled as she worked on. She didn’t see the tall man coming up behind her, didn’t hear him even when he called her name. When finally, he caught her by her good arm and turned her toward him, she startled and cried out.

  Then she saw that it was Ian and buried her face against his broad chest, her shoulders shaking as she leaned into his strength.

  * * *

  Ian stroked Andrea’s back and hair, holding her tightly as she wept against his chest. As the evening wore down, a front had dropped the temperature and kicked up a cool wind. He felt her trembling with the chill—or possibly pain and exhaustion. Considering all she’d been through, he’d been amazed to find her out here in the first place, going from one group to another with her bloodstained arm in a sling. One of the most traumatic nights of her life, and she was pouring every scrap of her strength into helping those around her. But that strength was spent now, and she needed him, whether or not she would admit it.

  “Come on in with me now,” he said, slipping out of his own jacket to wrap it around her. “We need to get you warmed up, and anyway, Canter’s swearing he’ll come hunt you down if that’s what it takes to get your statement.”

  She shook her head. “Then let him. I’m not coming in while there’s still one client unaccounted for.” In spite of her insistence, her voice was as brittle as the dried leaves rattling past their feet. “Ty Dawson’s practically a kid, one of our most at-risk.”

  “Blond guy, right? I heard about it, but Timmerman and Michael are almost sure he’ll be found holed up in some dark corner until things quiet down. Apparently, he’s done this sort of thing before.”

  “He has, several times, but it’s still possible he could’ve been drawn outside by all these lights.”

  “The rest of the staff has stepped up and some of the patients, too, checking room by room for any sign of this guy. Zach’s in on the search, too, and Jessie’s taken charge of brewing coffee in the dining area. You could go in and keep her company while she—”

  “That’s all great, but I’m the senior staff person now. I need to make sure everyone’s safe.”

  “Listen to me, Andrea. You’re cold, you’re hurting and you’re heading in now, too—unless you’re looking to spend another night at Marston Regional. Because I swear I’m hauling you over to the ER to get that arm looked at if you don’t at least sit down and let me get you something hot to drink.”

  She pulled away from him, her brow furrowing. “T
his is exactly what Jessie was saying about you Rayford men. Give you an inch, and you want to take over a woman’s whole life. No wonder she’s been reduced to hiding her work from—”

  “I wouldn’t have to take over if you knew enough to take care of yourself.”

  “Are you suggesting you know better than I do about how I should get through this night? Exactly what is it that gives you that expertise, the Y chromosome or the Rayford blood? Or is it your vast experience in handling your own trauma?”

  Temper burned through his restraint. “You act like you forget, but I was in that room, too. I was there when Ross, Parnell—whatever you want to call the bastard—pointed that gun at me and missed. So before you start acting like you’re sorry that he did, maybe you should rethink lashing out at someone who only wants to help you.”

  She sucked in a startled breath, gaping as though she had been slapped. “I’m not—not sorry he missed you. How c-can you even think that?”

  “I don’t. Of course, I don’t. I’m sorry. It’s only— It’s been a horrible night for both of us. Let’s say we don’t end it by wounding one another.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to say such hateful things. I don’t even know where that came from.”

  “From a place of pain. And I do know from experience. After all, I’ve been lashing out at everyone, acting like a jerk since I set foot on the ranch.”

  “Everybody understood,” she said. “Even if they didn’t love the behavior, they loved you.”

  “And I love you, which is why—”

  “Why you’re backing off right now, Ian, and leaving me alone.”

  “Until you do what? Fall down with exhaustion?”

  “You don’t understand. If I stop, I’ll have to—” She ground her knuckles into her forehead. “It keeps replaying through my head, how furious it made him when I jabbed him with the needle. It was why he pulled the trigger, why poor Cassidy’s lying in that—”

  “Listen to me, Andie. We could stand here arguing all night about who set what off back in that office— whether it was me remembering that Ross was really Parnell, you reacting the way you did, Timmerman grabbing the gun, or Michael, who’s beating himself up for freezing at the crucial moment. The fact is, there’s only one guy who pulled the trigger, one man who used the master manipulator skills he developed in clandestine services to hide his shame. Parnell shot her, no one else, and he paid the price. Sad as it is, that’s where this story needs to end.”

  “But it’s not over. It can’t be, because Cassidy is gone forever— She’s dying forever, in an endless loop each time I stop for a moment. And I’ll always know I could’ve changed the way it ended. One little movement, one shift in my reaction, and I might have—”

  “You might have died, or maybe me, or one of your other friends in that room. Or all of us or maybe no one, but it really doesn’t matter because things played out the way they played out, and no amount of reliving them in your head is ever going to make it different, just like it will never change what happened to me in that cell hidden in the mountains. It will never fix what snapped inside Parnell when he was forced to watch.”

  Andrea shoved her hands into the pockets of his jacket and made a sniffling sound. “I know I’ve said those same words, or something like them, to so many others. And in my head, I know you’re right.”

  Ian stepped back to cup her face with both hands, forcing her to look into his face. “I need you to understand this, not just in your head, but in your heart before you fall into the same trap I did, blaming yourself for something totally out of your control, running it over and over in your mind how you should’ve been stronger, smarter, luckier or faster. How you don’t deserve to be the one who walked out of there alive. Because it’s not about deserving, Andie, and even if it were, I’d take a hundred bullets myself if I could only guarantee you’d come through this unscathed.”

  She pulled out the flashlight he had in his pocket, and flicked it on to look at him. “And all this time, Ian Rayford, I’ve imagined you were the one who needed my help...”

  Shielding his eyes from the beam, he said, “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve helped more than you know. And now it’s time for me to return the favor.”

  She winced and blew out a long breath. “I just need to call—C-Cassidy’s family in Colorado. How will I ever tell them?”

  “It’s all taken care of. I helped Timmerman locate her personnel file in the office, and local law enforcement there is notifying her father and her brothers. So let’s go in now, Andrea. Let’s get you off your feet.”

  As she nodded, he felt her pain so acutely it was like a stone bruise to his own soul. He felt, too, the horrific waste of the young nurse’s life, a sense of loss magnified by the grief of those who had loved Cassidy.

  He put a protective hand behind Andrea’s waist to guide her to the building’s side doors. She trudged forward like a zombie, not seeming to see anything around her—at least not until she swung the light’s beam to the left and muttered a choice word under her breath.

  “That woman—do you see her? It’s Dr. Kapur, from the hospital.”

  “Who?” Ian couldn’t recall hearing the name.

  “Julian sent her there to threaten me. She forced me to give up my passwords.”

  “When?” he asked. “How did she get past me?”

  But Andrea was already making a beeline toward a woman wearing a navy suit with what looked like a laminated ID badge clipped to her lapel. Ian pegged her as federal government before they made it within ten feet of her. Had she forged an alliance with a former colleague, or was her relationship with “Julian” personal?

  “Dr. Kapur,” Andrea called, clearly beyond caring that she was interrupting the woman’s conversation with one of the deputies.

  Kapur turned toward her, jaw dropping as she took in Andrea’s sling. “Miss Warrington, I hadn’t heard you were hurt. Could I get you some—”

  “It’s Dr. Warrington,” said Andrea, moving close enough to glare at her. “And your partner’s dead. Did you know? Or maybe the right word isn’t partner but accomplice?”

  “If you mean Julian Ross, I’ve been briefed about what happened—” Kapur nodded her thanks to Chief Deputy Browning, who tipped a nod of his own before walking off to talk to one of the men he supervised. “And I’m terribly sorry to hear about tonight’s tragedy. We’d very much hoped to have him in custody before it ever came to—”

  “In custody? Who are you?”

  “Special Agent Neela Chapal,” she said, the accent nowhere in evidence as she held up a laminated ID badge on a lanyard. “Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’ve been part of a joint task force looking into the bombing of a listening post in—”

  “You threatened me—threatened to kill Ian if I wouldn’t cooperate with Julian’s—”

  “I’m very sorry I allowed you to believe that.” Chapal spared Ian an apologetic look and shook her head. “But what I actually said was that giving me those passwords was the way to save his life. By then, you see, we strongly suspected Ross was missing clandestine services agent Davis Parnell. We just needed to prove it without tipping him off and letting him escape again—to see what he was seeing and track how he was reacting so we could arrest him before he resorted to violence to protect his secret.”

  “But he did, and now—now he’s killed Cassidy!” Andrea surged toward her, so upset that Ian wasn’t certain what she would have done had he not caught her around the waist to stop her.

  Frustrated, she turned her fury on him. “Stop it, Ian! Let go of me.”

  “Not until I know you’re not going to end up spending tonight in jail for assaulting a federal officer.”

  But as the heel of her shoe connected with his shinbone, Ian began to wonder if he was the one who was going to end up b
ruised.

  Chapter 17

  Andrea had promised to come inside once she had cooled down, and Ian finally, reluctantly backed off. She saw him gritting his teeth, clearly fighting his natural inclination to take care of her, but at least he had the good sense to know she was in no mood to be managed.

  The woman who had called herself Kapur too excused herself, saying she had to step inside out of the wind to phone in a report. As the chief deputy held the door for a pair of men wheeling a gurney toward a dark van, Andrea stood alone, a sick feeling in her stomach as she watched what was clearly a body being loaded through the vehicle’s rear doors.

  Was it Cassidy or Julian, or would both of them leave together, separated only by a pair of body bags. At the thought of it, pain sparked in Andrea’s chest, a white-hot anger so consuming that she had to turn away.

  In the tail of her vision, she caught a fleeting movement from between two parked vehicles, a flash of what she could’ve sworn was light blond hair ducking down and out of sight. Breath hitching, she jogged after the person hiding from view.

  “Tyler—Ty, is that you?” she called. The wind gusted, sending dried leaves skittering across the concrete surface. Imagining she heard receding footsteps, Andrea flicked on the flashlight again and slipped between a parked pickup and an SUV bearing the markings of the Trencher County Sheriff’s Office.

  As she hurried after the sound, her beam swept across the dark brown Tahoe’s gleaming front fender. But something about the reflection was off ever so slightly, something that had her stopping in her tracks.

  She turned, her pulse drumming a rapid-fire warning that she shouldn’t be out here alone. But that was ridiculous. With Julian dead and Kapur a legitimate government agent, Andrea told herself she no longer had anyone to fear. And Ty Dawson was no danger to her or anyone, just a troubled client in need of guidance—a boy, really, not even old enough to drink. She tried to move forward, telling herself she’d lose his trail if she didn’t hurry, but some instinct kept her rooted to the spot...