Love Inspired Suspense January 2014

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Occupational hazard. Everyone gets psychoanalyzed.”

  “Going to take another crack at figuring me out?” Josh kept his tone light, but it mattered what she thought about him and how well she could see through the facade he’d erected so long ago.

  They stopped at the entrance to the company and she turned to face him, leaning her shoulder on the doorjamb. “Do you really want me to answer that? Here? Now?”

  “You think I can’t handle it?” The lock stuck as he turned the key and the door gave resistance as he pushed it open. He made one last survey of the parking lot as he ushered her inside. “I’m a company first sergeant in an infantry unit. I pass down the info guys don’t want to hear and hold them to the standards they don’t always want to be held to. There’s nothing you can say as bad as what some of them have spouted behind my back. Or as bad as some of their wives have screamed in my face.”

  “I can imagine.” Her chuckle sounded forced, echoing off the walls as she stepped into the building ahead of him. “I can remember how I felt about some of my first sergeants. Now that I’m older, the things they were doing back then make more sense.”

  “Does this mean I’ll get about a thousand apology letters from these guys in a decade or so?”

  “Only if those wild hogs around here sprout wings. But I’ll guarantee you they’ll never forget you. Just like you’ve never forgotten any of your old first sergeants. You knew who cared and who didn’t, even if you didn’t always want to admit it, right?”

  “Spot on.” Inside, he didn’t flip on the lights. Instead, he let the darkness settle around them as the door thudded shut. “And now that you’ve nailed that one, you can tell me what your psychoanalysis of this old first sergeant is.” His voice dropped huskier than he meant, but it was too late to take the words back.

  The change in Andrea’s breathing was audible in the darkness. “I don’t think anything.”

  He caught her hand. As his eyes adjusted, Josh could make out the faint outline of her. “No. You don’t have to censor yourself.” Knowing how Andrea saw him mattered more than anything Wade Cameron could have hidden in the base of a busted wall locker.

  “Okay.” She pulled in a deep breath. “You’re hiding something.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do.”

  The false anonymity of the dark room loosened his inhibitions and made him want to spill everything. In spite of the sense of danger that refused to be shaken, there was safety here between them, safety he wasn’t sure he wanted to shatter by telling her about the night her brother died. Spilling his guts onto the floor could be more dangerous than anything Andrea had faced in the past couple of days.

  That feeling made him doubly sure he shouldn’t have kissed her earlier. It had been monumentally unfair to her. The look on her face if she found out who he really was would be more than he could bear. “Sorry, Doc. You missed that one completely.” He dropped her hand in a vain effort to break the connection that grew stronger every second.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she whispered, “but there’s more to the story than you’re telling.” Her fingers brushed the scar on his arm, tightening his stomach. “You weren’t alone in that car wreck.”

  Adrenaline jolted his heart out of rhythm. “What makes you say that?”

  “The things you don’t say when you talk about the wreck. This sort of overinflated protector streak you have. Who was she?”

  The air hung heavy with an intimacy he’d never felt before. Half of him wanted to reach out and pull her to him, to spill everything and hold on tight to what existed here and now so the bad couldn’t beat its way in. The other half wanted to shove her aside and run until no one ever found him again. When her fingers tightened on his biceps, his mouth made the choice to tell her about the accident, even if he still buried everything that happened before it. “Blind date. Lauren. I barely even knew her.” Even now, he couldn’t recall her face, which only amped the wattage of his guilt.

  “Was the wreck your fault?” She swallowed so hard he could hear it. “Were you drinking?”

  The urge to smile at her assumption was trumped by how close to the truth the question was. “Not that night. Fortunately. And never again after.” Not after what he’d seen happen to Brendan that same night.

  Josh leaned a shoulder against the door, hoping it was strong enough to hold up the weight of his mistakes. “I lost control of my SUV when a tire blew and it rolled.” His voice sounded too big for the small space between them.

  Andrea’s touch trailed down his arm, raising goose bumps in its wake. She gripped his fingers, pulling them from the door handle and lacing them with her own. He hadn’t realized he was gripping so tightly until she touched him.

  “Like an idiot, I wasn’t wearing a seat belt and got thrown from the vehicle. Oddly enough, that’s probably what saved my life.” He swallowed an all-too familiar nausea.

  “She died.” There was a knowing, like she’d heard the story before and was hoping the ending would change.

  The pity didn’t anger him as it had from so many others in the past. From Andrea, it was sincere, almost like she wished she could make the outcome different. “Vehicle caught fire. I tried to get to her, but…” The memory shot phantom pain through his scarred arm. “I was too far away. The injuries to my knee and arm made me too slow.” He dragged his sight back from the nightmare of the past to the darkened silhouette of the woman in front of him. “I tried. And I couldn’t. The pain took me out. When I came around, the EMTs were there and it was over. Everybody told me she died before the fire, but that never stopped the nightmares.”

  Andrea squeezed his hand in a way that made him want to connect. The urge to close the distance between them and kiss her, to feel alive and grounded in a completely different kind of moment nearly overwhelmed him.

  “Nightmares aren’t uncommon after trauma.”

  The matter-of-fact statement dashed cold reality all over his emotions. Her interest in him was strictly clinical, and she was a threat to his sanity, ripping open boxes of memories he’d sealed shut. He had to find a switch and throw light between them. Fast.

  Josh yanked his hand from hers and backed away. “Know what? I never should have said anything.”

  “Josh…”

  “Forget it.” His fingers brushed the plate below the switch. “It’s better if—”

  The sound of a door opening somewhere in the building cut off the rest of his words.

  Beside him, Andrea gasped.

  He grabbed her wrist, grateful he hadn’t given away their position by flipping a light switch. Much longer and he’d have exposed them to whoever lurked nearby. Intuition had told him the danger wasn’t over, yet he’d dropped every guard he had. Now Andrea might pay the price.

  Without a word, he pulled her through the small room lined with wall lockers until they reached the bathroom. The sickly sweet smell of old shampoo and sweaty gym clothes weighed heavily in the stale air. Amazing it had never seemed so strong before, but in the dark, looking for a position from which he could protect Andrea, it was almost more than his stomach could handle.

  For the first time ever, Josh was grateful for every minute he’d spent in this building. By instinct, he knew exactly where to turn. Within seconds, they stood in the far corner of the room, away from the door. The only flaw with the plan was there was no way out if someone found them.

  He gripped Andrea’s shoulders as though he could look her in the eye if he tried hard enough in the blackness. “Don’t move.”

  “How’d they find us?” Far from the frightened utterance he’d expected to hear, her voice was level and calm.

  “I don’t know.” He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t worry, that he’d protect her, but it felt too much like lying. Instead, he pressed his lips to her forehead and whispered, “Wait here.” He squeezed her shoulders one more time then inched toward the door, unarmed, listening to footsteps that drew clo
ser with each breath.

  *

  Numb. That’s all she was. It felt like she was watching herself on a movie screen instead of existing in this moment. Disassociation could happen under stress, but Andrea had never known it to this degree. Terror ought to have her plastered to the floor, but all she could muster was a cold resignation that scared her even more. They were backed into a corner. If the rest of her life was going to be spent hiding in shadows, it might be better to step out now and let the insanity end tonight. Stark defeat had never been part of her makeup, but she couldn’t handle being stalked at every move, couldn’t live with the uncertainty of the whole situation. Whatever Wade had gotten into, it was bigger than she’d imagined.

  From across the room, she could hear Josh breathe. Even though his shape was difficult to discern, it was impossible to ignore his presence. This wasn’t his fight, yet there he stood, on the front lines, willing to protect her to the end.

  The idea caught her in the chest and stole her next breath. He’d been there from the first moment she’d stepped into this nightmare, walking beside her, never once hesitating to come to her defense. There wasn’t a thing she could offer him in return, not one reason for his involvement. After the story he’d just told her, it was beyond belief he hadn’t run fast in the other direction when faced with her mounting problems. Andrea blinked long and slow, then opened her eyes again, allowing herself to surrender to someone else’s help for the first time in her memory. God, I don’t know why he’s here…but thank You.

  Voices drifted to her tiny corner, though her ears buzzed too much from a surge of adrenaline to make out the words.

  Josh chuckled, the sound as out of place as a lake in the desert. “Stay here,” he whispered as he stepped closer. “Whatever you do, don’t come out.”

  When he left the room, he took all of the air with him. Andrea pressed her back against the cool wall, trying to shrink as small as possible. What was he doing? He couldn’t confront those guys head-on and unarmed.

  She blinked against light that suddenly flooded in from the hallway.

  “This is First Sergeant Walker.” Josh’s commanding voice barged into the room and pounded in her ears.

  Was he crazy? The bad guys weren’t going to care who he was. Shock fused her spine to the cinder block wall.

  Laughter came into the room next, followed by more voices. Even though Andrea figured they were both insane, the sound of Josh’s shared laughter washed over her and ebbed the tide of terror. Things were going to be okay.

  This time.

  Josh reappeared, silhouetted in the doorway. She’d missed it before, how broad his shoulders were, how his waist narrowed at his hips and cut a figure that spoke of strength and assurance.

  Hang her independence. She needed him. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she wanted to climb into someone’s arms and let them shield her from the rest of the world. Instead, Andrea pulled in a long breath and noticed the smell of old locker room for the first time. Her nose wrinkled. “It stinks in here.”

  “Well, yeah.” Josh crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the doorway. “Dozens of guys in their sweaty physical training uniforms are in and out of here every day. You ought to figure it wouldn’t smell like a European spa.”

  Andrea fought to get her feet on level ground. She’d been jerked from laughter to danger to whatever now surged between them all in the span of ten minutes. It was like someone had determined to drop all of life’s most stressful moments onto her in one evening, just to see how she’d react. “I’m guessing we’re okay?”

  “Yep. Someone saw us come in the building and called staff duty. They came over to make sure nothing hinky was going on.” He looked away from her at something up the hall. “Just about the last thing I need is them to find me hiding out in a dark bathroom with a beautiful woman. There’s no telling what kind of tales would fly around this place.”

  Beautiful woman. The words settled on her shoulders like a blanket. After the way he’d rejected her at his house and pulled away from her a few moments ago, surely he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.

  Josh straightened and crooked a finger at her. “All right, Tonto. We’ve got a wall locker to tear apart.”

  So that was it. One more whiplash. If this kept up, Andrea would either be in a neck brace or dead by the time the sun rose.

  *

  Well, now he’d done it. His mouth had gotten away from him for sure this time. First he’d told her everything he’d never said to another person, then he’d made it infinitely worse. The instant the word beautiful left his mouth it smacked her in the face. Josh had seen the way her eyes clouded and her brows drew together and knew it was the wrong thing to say. It was probably not the word she wanted to hear from a man who’d just confessed to killing a woman he’d barely known.

  The fact he was responsible for that death and that he still hadn’t told her the whole story pierced his heart with fresh pain. He had to prove he could be counted on in the clinch, and Andrea was definitely in the grip of something that could cost her her life. The last thing he needed was to let his emotions trip him up. No matter who she was, no matter that she truly was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, that feeling had to die.

  But he couldn’t stop noticing her.

  The way she trailed behind him up the hall lined with metal lockers reminded him of some of the kids he’d interacted with overseas. They were always hesitant to trust at first, wanting to get close but unsure if the American with candy and a gun was safe. That was Andrea right now, debating her safety. As she should.

  Josh stopped in front of the indicated bank of wall lockers, nearly passing them in his self-recrimination.

  Andrea stumbled and rested a hand on his back to stop herself from falling. So she’d been closer than he’d thought. Man, did she ever throw his radar off.

  Josh pretended her touch didn’t do a thing to him and studied the third locker from the showers, as Cameron had indicated. It looked like any one of the identical lockers lined up beside it. He squatted to rest on his heels and rapped the metal with his knuckles, wary of what it might contain. It hadn’t been an immediate concern before, but what if the thing were rigged? It could go off in both of their faces. “Maybe we should call the MPs.”

  She sniffed and knelt beside him. “Why? So they can accuse me of more crimes just to gauge my reaction?”

  “Since when did you become such a cynic?”

  “Since it was suggested I’m dealing drugs to a recovering addict.” She puffed her cheeks and exhaled slowly, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “I know. They have to do their job, but…” Her sigh brushed his neck. “That one cut.”

  As much as Josh wanted to reach over and pull her close, he coached his muscles against the impulse. God had a strange sense of humor, putting him in this position.

  “You’re wondering if that thing’s going to blow when you open it, aren’t you?” Her voice shook slightly.

  He nodded and tried to ignore her proximity. “Impressive mind reading. They teach you that in school?”

  “Woman’s intuition.” Andrea pressed her hands to her thighs and stood, her knees popping as she did. “Tell you what…” Without hesitation, she snapped the latch and yanked the locker open without so much as a flinch.

  Josh would never confess he blinked.

  But nothing happened. He found himself staring at the scuffed floor of a completely empty wall locker.

  “He said the bottom panel’s loose.” Andrea’s voice rained down from where she stood above him. “Get a move on that one, soldier.”

  Josh flipped her a mock salute. “That panel could be what’s rigged, you know.”

  “Man up, son. We all gotta go sometime.”

  She was cracking jokes at a time like this. Then again, she’d done it before. Must be where she hid when she was scared, behind that twinkle in her eye. Weirdest stress reaction he’d ever seen.

  “I notic
e you’re up there and I’m down here.” He stretched his arms forward, laced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Okay. I’m goin’ in.”

  No answer met his jest.

  Josh ran his hand along the sides of the panel, wishing he’d brought a screwdriver to pop the piece, but he found a notch near a bend in the back corner, just large enough to slip his finger into. “Here goes nothin’.” He hooked his finger under the base of the metal and pulled.

  *

  Andrea drew back with a shudder. How many times could she wait to die in one day? When no explosion blasted through the room, she cracked one eye open and looked down.

  Josh grinned up at her. “Looks like we’re still here.”

  Her cheeks burned. Weakness was not something she liked to show. “Yep.” She squatted beside Josh as he lifted the panel out of the way.

  Empty.

  Dust and cobwebs clung to the corners of the metal and lay on the floor underneath, but no clue greeted them.

  Dropping all the way back to sit on the floor, Andrea stared into the empty wall locker. “That’s that.” She dragged her hair over her shoulder and let the ends sift through her fingers. “Any more brilliant ideas?”

  Disappointment bit at the base of her neck. She didn’t know what she’d hoped to find there—the name of the guy who’d attacked her, maybe?—but sheer emptiness sure didn’t fit anything she’d expected.

  Josh pressed two opposite corners of the locker base against his palms and set it spinning in his hands. “We could pull the bottoms off this whole row. Maybe he counted wrong. He’s a bright kid, though. My guess is he can count to three.”

  Andrea chuckled and watched Josh flip the metal over and over. When she saw a smudge of red on the underside of the plate, she grabbed Josh’s arm.

  He froze and looked over his shoulder like a knife-wielding maniac had crept up on them.

  Without explanation, Andrea snatched the metal from his hands and flipped it over to the underside. There, in red marker, the notation 5977 WhVi D4 ran from corner to corner.