by Camy Tang
“I doubt Clay has any weapons, but G, search him anyway,” Roman said.
Clay looked ready to punch G when he made a move toward him, but Met simply raised Joslyn’s gun and pointed it at Fiona. Clay stiffened but didn’t move when G searched him. The cords stood out on his neck and his shoulders were bunched tighter than Joslyn had ever seen them.
“Frank, you rat,” Fiona hissed at him. She took a few steps toward him as if to attack him, making him backtrack toward his computers. Joslyn wondered if she’d have the opportunity to get close enough to the computer to try to upload the virus.
However, Met moved a few steps so the gun was in her direct line of sight. “Stay where you are.”
She stopped.
“I didn’t invite him here, Fiona,” Frank said. “He just showed up. I don’t know how he found me.”
“With a great deal of difficulty,” Roman said with a gusty sigh. He got up and went to fling an arm around Frank’s shoulders. “But I’m not complaining, because you’re the next best thing. If I can’t use Fiona to get Martin’s money, then I’ll happily use you.”
“You’re the one who got me into this,” Frank spat at Fiona.
“I did no such thing,” she retorted.
“Actually, Fiona, if you hadn’t escaped, then I probably wouldn’t have needed to find Frank, so it is technically your fault.” Roman squeezed Frank’s shoulder. “How are things going so far? Are we almost done?”
“I told you I can’t just press a button, and zap! You’ve got money. The Bara account is protected from stuff like that.”
Roman snapped his fingers. “Haven’t got all day, Frank.”
G had finished searching Clay and now was reaching for zip ties, probably to bind his hands together. If that happened, their chance of escaping just went into the toilet.
Clay knew it, too, because he gave Joslyn a look that she could interpret exactly. Get ready to rumble.
But Met still had Joslyn’s gun aimed at Fiona. Joslyn didn’t want to do anything that would get Fiona or Clay shot. This entire situation was out of her control. She only knew of one thing she could do.
Oh, God, she prayed, God help us! Please help us...
She wasn’t in control, but He was. She had to remember that. She either trusted God to take care of them, or she didn’t. What was it going to be?
God, I’m so scared! But I trust You.
She met Clay’s eyes and gave a tiny nod. Then she caught Fiona’s eyes, where a flicker of understanding passed over them.
Clay snapped his elbow back and hit G full in the face. At the same moment, Fiona dropped to the ground. Joslyn kicked at Met’s gun hand, knocking it away from Fiona.
The gunshot echoed through the barn. Frank yelped and leaped backward, falling on his behind. He twisted and crawled toward a dark corner, away from the fighting.
Fiona scrambled to her feet, ran to the computer and plugged in the flash drive.
Joslyn followed up her kick with pushing the flat of her palm into Met’s nose. She grabbed at the gun, but he held on tightly. With his free hand, he flailed wildly at her and his fist grazed her ear in a blow hard enough for the edges of her vision to darken. But she clung to that gun, her nails digging into the skin of his fingers.
She’d forgotten about Roman. He casually pulled a gun from inside his suit jacket and aimed it at Fiona, her back to him as she worked on one of Frank’s computers.
Joslyn couldn’t make her lungs and mouth work to call Fiona’s name. It was as if everything slowed down, and yet she couldn’t move fast enough, she couldn’t draw breath.
There was a shadow, movement, and Joslyn thought it was Frank coming out of hiding. But the figure was taller than Frank, and dressed in a dark suit. The man threw himself at Roman’s gun, just as it went off.
The sound was muffled. Joslyn’s stomach recoiled as she realized what that meant.
She’d been too distracted. Met jerked the gun hand away. Her hands were too slick with sweat, and she lost her grip, flying into the base of one of the metal shelves.
The impact jarred her back sharply, knocking the wind from her lungs. She twisted to keep Met in sight. She couldn’t let him kick her while she was down. She’d been in that position before...
But suddenly Clay was there, tackling Met to the ground. At first Joslyn thought he must have taken care of G, but then she saw the taller man darting after him.
However, Clay grabbed a length of rebar with his good hand, and it evened the fight. He swung the metal as if he knew how to handle it, and she realized he must have had some type of training at his gym.
She got to her feet in time to see Roman stepping over the man in the dark suit where he lay on the floor.
It was Fiona’s father, Martin Crowley, with red blossoming from his abdomen.
Roman raised his gun at Fiona.
Joslyn didn’t think. She launched herself at Roman and the two of them landed hard on the concrete, knocking the gun away. She twisted and without trying to get up, jammed her fingers into his eyes.
He grabbed hard at her wrists, and pain shot up her arms. Then he let go of one of them and punched her in the face.
Suddenly it wasn’t Roman, it was Tomas, his fists pounding into her again and again. He was out of control. There was nothing she could do to stop him.
“Joslyn!”
Clay’s voice cut through the pain, broke her out of the memory. It wasn’t Tomas, it was Roman. But like Tomas, he could kill her.
She wasn’t about to let him do that.
Roman had risen to one knee. She lashed out with her foot and connected hard with that upraised knee. She felt the pop of tendons.
He cried out and collapsed.
She saw the moment that Roman noticed the gun within arm’s reach.
Joslyn didn’t remember pulling her second weapon from her side flashbang holster. She took aim and fired, seeing Roman’s wide, murderous eyes and his hand swinging his gun toward her.
There was a single gunshot. From her gun.
His hand jerked back, blood spraying from the wound.
Joslyn scrambled back out of his reach, the gun still trained on him. He was swearing and nursing his bleeding hand. She registered the sounds of Clay still fighting, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off of Roman. “Fiona!”
It seemed to take a year, but suddenly Fiona had picked up Roman’s gun and pointed it at him. Joslyn then got to her feet and went to where her gun had fallen to the floor. She grabbed it and shouted, “Freeze!”
The two men hesitated when they saw her with not one, but two guns pointed at them. Clay took advantage of it to knock G out cold with a blow from the rebar.
Met only looked at her in shock. “Where—?”
Thank the Lord she’d decided to wear two flashbang holsters. Her normal one under her arm and a tiny one on the front of her bra.
Clay knocked Met out, too, with a fist to his jaw.
Only then did Joslyn lower her weapons. Her hands were shaking. No, her entire body was shaking.
And then Clay was there, taking the two guns from her. “Are you all right?” His eyes searched her, no doubt seeing the bruises from Roman’s fists.
She ignored the shaking, and all the aches in her body. She reached up, pulled his head down, and kissed him.
* * *
Clay had to get out of the barn. It smelled like blood and fried electronics and hate.
He heard a rustling behind him, the weeds being pushed aside. He smelled apricot, jasmine and cool redwoods a moment before Joslyn spoke. “Are you all right?”
“I’m—”
“Don’t tell me you’re fine. I heard what he said to you.”
Clay turned away from her.
Back in the barn,
Fiona’s strangled cry had broken his and Joslyn’s kiss, and suddenly Clay had been on his knees beside his stepfather’s bloody figure on the floor. Fiona had been pressing her hand to the side of his abdomen.
Martin had been still but pale. As he’d seen Clay, however, his face had taken on that familiar grave look, a sneer curling his lip. “You good-for-nothing,” he wheezed. “You couldn’t even protect her.”
Clay’s entire body had suddenly filled with acid, eating at him, making his vision turn into pinpoints that only saw the disdain in his stepfather’s cold eyes.
“Dad,” Fiona had almost whispered.
“Clay.” Joslyn’s cool hand had been on his shoulder, her voice in his ear. He’d smelled apricot, and it had soothed him. “I’ve called an ambulance,” she’d said.
“How long will it take them to get here?” Fiona had asked.
“They said twenty-five minutes.”
“I won’t make it,” Martin had said on a groan.
Clay had gotten up and walked away rather than saying what he really felt. He busied himself with using zipties to restrain Met and G. Richard Roman had been trying to crawl away with his busted knee and bleeding hand, but Clay caught up with him, tied his hands together and pressed a cloth to the bullet wound. Frank had disappeared entirely, which didn’t surprise Clay.
Joslyn had stayed with Martin while Fiona stood in the lane and flagged down the EMT truck, leading them on the path to the barn. Clay had suspected it by now, but the paramedics had confirmed that Martin’s wound wasn’t serious, even though the bullet hit his side. They were inside the barn prepping him for transport right now.
Joslyn touched Clay’s arm, her hand soft. He hadn’t wanted to think about her kiss while he’d been in that barn, as if his stepfather’s malice would taint the memory, but she had fit against him, had filled his empty places with her sweetness, comfort, acceptance. He’d found home in her arms.
“You saved me,” she said. “When you called my name.”
He gently caressed her cheek, which was swollen from Roman’s blows. “I was frustrated because I couldn’t get to you.”
“I’m impressed you fought off both of those guys with a broken arm and a length of rebar.”
He actually hadn’t. G had managed to get hard blows to Clay’s torso, shoulders and arms. G might have been avoiding hitting the cast because while he could inflict damage on Clay, striking the heavy plaster would have hurt his own hand. Either way, Clay had been able to avoid a really bad blow to his broken arm, but it still ached terribly. One of the paramedics had removed the plaster cast and said it had probably been rebroken in more places. He’d secured Clay’s arm in a splint and sling, and Clay agreed to follow the truck to the ER.
The barn doors opened and the EMTs came out, carrying Martin. He complained with every step they made, and Clay wondered if maybe they were being a little rougher than usual.
Fiona followed the paramedics outside, but stopped from trailing after them through the weeds to the truck and stood beside Clay and Joslyn.
“Aren’t you going with them?” Clay asked.
Fiona didn’t answer for a moment. “I guess so.” It reminded him of when she was supposed to do homework and she didn’t want to.
“He did take a bullet for you,” he said gently. “I may have problems with him, but I’m grateful to him for that.”
In the moonlight, he thought he saw tears sparkling on her lashes, but they didn’t fall. “He didn’t take it for me. He told me he took it so that I could survive to take over his business and continue his legacy.”
“Fiona, I don’t think he’d have gone to such an extreme just for his name,” Joslyn said. “I think he does care about you, in his own way.”
“Maybe.” Then Fiona sighed and headed toward the ambulance.
“Elisabeth and Liam will be here soon,” Joslyn said. “She called and said she and her FBI friends are about thirty minutes away.”
“Is there enough evidence to put Richard Roman away?”
Joslyn hesitated. “I’m not sure. There’s still evidence on Frank’s computers to put Martin away, though.”
He expected to feel some emotion at that news, but he only felt cold and flat, like coffee that had been sitting out all day. He’d overheard Martin talking to Fiona—he knew Joslyn had heard it, too. When Martin found out Clay and Joslyn were searching for Fiona and that Roman was after them, he had figured they’d be a good distraction while he tried to find Fiona on his own. He hadn’t cared about the danger they were in.
Fiona had looked horrified. In combination with other things that Martin had said tonight, it seemed Fiona was having a hard time figuring out how she felt about her father.
Clay had never heard Martin be so brutally honest before. Maybe it was the wound, especially since he hadn’t known how severe it was until the EMTs arrived. To Clay, who hadn’t seen Martin in a while, it seemed he had become even more self-focused and driven to accomplish his own agenda. Fiona had been surprised, too, so maybe he’d gotten worse only in the two years since Fiona left LA.
Clay had been silent for too long. Joslyn touched his arm again. He had the feeling she knew what he was thinking about.
“Your past has shaped who you are, but it’s not what defines you,” she said. “I’ve done some stupid things in my past, and I’m learning how to move on. You taught me that.”
“Me?” He had no idea how he’d done anything like that.
“Your strength and protectiveness made me feel brave. You made me realize not everyone’s like my ex.”
He touched the bruise on her cheek. “Did he hurt you?”
He thought she’d look away, but she met his eyes. “He did. It’s why I froze when Roman hit me.”
He couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been to face that kind of terror again.
She took a deep breath. “I lost a lot because of Tomas. He killed my father, and when I ran from him, I miscarried our baby because of the fear that he’d find me.”
The pain in her voice cut into him. He reached out to her, touching her face, folding her into his arms. “I’m so sorry.” It seemed like such a paltry thing to say. “I wish I could do something.”
“You did. I thought the counseling was going nowhere, but the past few days have shown me that I can move on. I thought I wasn’t strong enough, but tonight I realized that I just wasn’t trusting God enough to help me.”
His arms tightened around her. “I never thought much about God before I met you. We were never close.”
“What do you think of Him now?”
He cupped her face. “If God is the one giving you this strength, even after what you’ve been through, then I want that. I’ve always wanted to prove something, to find something. But all I really wanted was peace, acceptance.”
“God can give you that. And I can, too.”
He bent to kiss her, and there was that feeling again, as sweet as candy, as comforting as a hand on his head. It was like sinking to the floor in front of a fireplace, or sipping tea on a back porch. He was at rest. He was enveloped. He was home.
NINETEEN
Twelve months later
Joslyn’s lungs were burning as she climbed the hill. All she could see was brilliant blue sky above her, spindly trees around her on either side of the faint trail, and ahead of her, Clay’s backpack like a beacon, spurring her on.
“Why again are we voluntarily going more than twenty miles away from a WiFi connection?”
He turned to grin at her. “Want some cheese with that whine?”
“You’ve gotten much more snarky since you started working for Shaun O’Neill.” Head of security for the posh Joy Luck Life Hotel and Spa in Sonoma, Shaun had been quick to offer Clay a job as a security guard, which he’d taken.
“I don’t get that from Shaun,” Clay said. “I get that from Fiona. She is walking sarcasm. You should know that already.”
“She’s gotten worse since we were in LA.”
“It’s because of the trial.” Fiona had agreed to testify against her father, and the FBI had indicted him on charges of money laundering.
“Is she doing okay?” Joslyn asked. She stumbled a little over a root.
“Martin still sends her letters abusing her for her betrayal.” Clay’s voice was grim. “I think it hurts her more than she admits. But she said she’s enjoying piecing her life back together again in LA. She said she’s coming up to Sonoma next week.”
“Oh? What’s the occasion?”
“Funny you should ask that.” He’d stopped at the summit of the hill. “Come on, take a look at this.”
She panted her way to the top...and then she couldn’t breathe.
Unfolded in front of her was a small mountain lake. From their vantage point, she could see that it was completely surrounded by forests, without any trails that cut through the trees except for this one. The mountains of Tahoe were in the distance and reflected in the perfectly still water. Everything was silent, peaceful. It was like the seventh day of Creation, and everything was at rest.
Her breath came out long, low, filled with awe. “Oh, my.”
Clay’s eyes were the same glittering blue as the sky reflected in the surface of the lake. “What did I tell you? Isn’t it worth the hike?”
“Oh, yes.”
They made their way down the slope as the trail wended its way through tall fir trees down to the edge of the lake. Large rocks and boulders were scattered in the shallow water, and Joslyn could feel the intense cold even from a few feet away.
Everything smelled fresh and new, as if she’d never before smelled forest, or water, or rock. The air seemed purer. It filled her lungs and somehow made her feel lighter, fuller.
They were the only people here. It was amazing.
“Come on, take off your shoes.” Clay shucked his hiking boots and socks and waded into the water.
