by Rachel Lee
“You’re mine,” she said quietly. “Hardly surprising since you’ve spent years in the shadows protecting people who will never know who you are. That boggles my mind, frankly. Then you protected me. More, you rescued me. So please, just don’t be hard on yourself. You did the best you could with the information you had at hand. Just tell me one thing.”
“If I can.”
“If you were so sure someone was after me, why did you walk around me rather than with me yesterday?”
“Because I was starting to have doubts.”
“About me being the target?”
“Yes. A couple of times this week, the shape shifted. Just a little. It arrested me. Other possibilities began to bother me.”
“Like what?”
“Like being watched in town and out there both. Like the fact that I couldn’t find any sign of this watcher. That indicates a certain level of training. Not impossible in the folks you have living here, but I was starting to consider other things. You’re not going to like this.”
“Like what?”
“I figured yesterday would settle the shape in my head. It did. I saw what I needed to see, and somebody took a scare shot at you. And it was a scare shot. I was never more than twenty yards from you. If someone was after you, that would have made them unlikely to act. You were safe.”
“Except from a guy who was after you. Did it occur to you that you could get killed?” Her voice grew sharp.
“Of course.”
She swore and jumped up from the table. When she reached the counter and stared out the window at the night, he followed and wrapped his arms around her.
“Just tell me,” she said, her voice tight and thin. “What if he had been after me? What if he’d shot me? Twenty yards wasn’t close enough.”
“If he’d hurt you, I’d have been after him so fast and so hard that he never would have gotten away.”
“Too late.”
“No, I don’t think so. By that point I was pretty sure that if the guy was worried about you, he wasn’t out to kill. He’d had plenty of opportunity before that.”
“Damn you,” she said quietly. “You used me as bait.”
He couldn’t explain. How could you possibly explain to someone who had never been where he’d been about how things worked, how they measured out, how rarely you were wrong if you survived? He couldn’t afford mistakes, and his only mistake here had been taking too long to figure it out.
“You were never bait. By the time we came down that mountain on Saturday, I was reasonably certain no one wanted to hurt you. Not seriously. That’s all I can say.”
“So what was chapping you? Why did you insist we break off early and come home?”
“Because I needed to reevaluate and plan.”
“And your planning included me being on that mountain with you so you could get this creep’s measure. Thank you very much.”
He couldn’t blame her for her anger. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she hauled off and socked him. She couldn’t possibly begin to see it all the ways he saw it.
“I had very little to go on,” he said finally, painfully aware of how she had stiffened in his arms. “I screwed up, I admit it. But I’d been in this town just two weeks when the stuff about the poison began to happen. I got really concerned when your car window was broken. But I sure as hell didn’t think anyone could have found me this fast. So I focused on you and the toxin. Then over the past week, a couple of things made me start to reconsider. You kept insisting the poisoner couldn’t be caught unless he was caught red-handed somehow. I was thinking he might not know that.”
“It was possible,” she admitted grudgingly.
“Of course it was. Few bad guys are actual masterminds. But why would this guy watch you in town? You weren’t taking samples here.”
“No.” But she didn’t relax at all.
“Then I sensed him out there Saturday morning. We only had a few hours of light left, and I wanted to rethink things. Plan differently. Make myself bait.”
She sucked an audible breath at that. “But you took me out there.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t going to deny it even if she consigned him to hell, a more painful prospect than he wanted to imagine.
“Why?” she repeated.
“Why? Because you wouldn’t have stayed here even if I’d told you. You were hell-bent on doing your job, and none of my concerns or cautions had slowed you down. If I had gone out there alone, you would have been right on my heels.” There, he’d said it. He suspected that being right about her wasn’t going to soften her any, though. No, she’d probably just get madder.
“You’re right,” she said finally, her voice still tight. “You’re absolutely right. I had a job to do, and you weren’t going to stop me. Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but I didn’t see how my samples should make anyone want to kill me. Not even when the worst possibilities occurred to me. So yes, I would have gone.”
Then she turned, shrugging away his arms. “Unless,” she said, her voice like steel now, “you had told me what you were really thinking.”
Now the ache in him began to give way to a simmering anger. “Even if I had told you this guy might be after me, that wouldn’t have stopped you. You wouldn’t have seen how you could have possibly made things any worse. You’d have tried to tell me not to go with you but you’d have gone up there, anyway.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again.
“Some truth would have been nice,” she said finally. “Very nice.”
“I was figuring it out as I went.”
“Sure. All wrong, apparently. Well, go on your damn hunt. Stay alive. Don’t get hurt. And don’t come back.”
He watched her storm out of the kitchen, listened to the bedroom door slam. He felt as if he had just been skinned alive.
Oddly, though, even as he wanted to roar at the universe, he realized something: the two of them were more alike than either of them had guessed. Now he knew.
* * *
Allison stared up at the ceiling in her dark bedroom. Her eyes burned like hot coals, although no tears fell. She felt as if she had been lied to, yet as she replayed the past two weeks in her mind, she couldn’t find a single lie.
Jerrod had been trying to figure it out. He knew something wasn’t right. Was it so surprising that he had settled on the poison and that the car window had seemed like a red flag to him?
Maybe it was a flag, but it had been misread. So what had sundered her, seemed to cleave her heart in two? That he had gone out there with her today not telling her that he might be at risk?
He wasn’t absolutely certain of that, either. He did seem certain that nothing bad was going to happen to her.
She actually felt a pang for him through her own pain. How must he have felt when he heard that shot and come racing her way? She hated to imagine. Then he had stayed with her to make her feel safe, when she was absolutely certain he’d wanted nothing more than to race up that mountain. But no, he had stayed, losing his chance at the shooter until he’d felt sure she was calm enough. Only then had he crept off into the brush.
Now he had to go face that again, and he was planning to do it alone.
She had known from the start that he was different, but she hadn’t guessed just how different. He was right about one thing. If he’d explained his suspicions to her this morning, she wouldn’t have stayed home. She’d have gone out there anyway, because she had a duty to her community to find out how much toxin they were facing. Plus, said that little voice that never quite left her alone, she wouldn’t have wanted him to be out there alone facing whatever he expected. Yeah, she would have gone, little use though she would have been.
So what was galling her? That he hadn’t shared his tidbit with her? He hadn’t even been sure at that point. What wa
s more, this was a guy whose lips had been sealed by years of training, duty and loyalty. Operational secrecy probably pervaded his bones.
She rolled on her side, staring at the closed door, wishing he’d barge through it and sweep her away to that Eden they had visited in the hours past. Wishing he’d just ignore her childish dismissal of him and take her to where she really wanted to be.
God, had she ever been so confused in her life? Wounded before, but never this confused. Saturday had torn open old wounds. Yesterday in the woods she had been stripped of the innate, and probably blind, belief in her own security, one shared by most of the people around her. Last night he had opened her like a treasure and remade her in a new way.
Then, in the minutes just past, he had managed to make her feel... What? Betrayed? He hadn’t betrayed her. Hurt? Why? He was so right that she would have climbed that mountain, no matter what he might have told her.
Which revealed something else about her, and she looked it straight in the eye. She could be a stubborn fool, but no way would she have let Jerrod go up there alone if he felt at risk.
Really stupid, considering how little help she would be. What did she know about this kind of thing? Nothing. Absolutely nothing in her life had prepared her for the kind of fight he was facing. She had her father’s shotgun in her attic, one that she hadn’t fired since the last time her dad had dragged her hunting while she was still in high school. She’d cleaned it a few times, but for all she knew it was utterly useless now.
So what earthly good could she be, except to call for help if he got hurt?
God! She pounded her fist in the pillow, frustrated by her own limitations and uncomfortable with her new self-knowledge. Jerrod had been giving her a lot of that. Allison today was not Allison from two weeks ago. He’d brought all that about.
Maybe that was why she was mad at him. She’d buried herself in a safe little cocoon in a safe little world, and he had ripped all that away like the illusion it was.
Why had she told him not to come back? Because she thought she could rebuild her cocoon? Hah!
Shoving out of bed, she grabbed her clothes and put them on quickly. She needed to talk to him, to tell him she hadn’t meant that, that she was just upset.
That much had to be clear. She didn’t want him to go out of here thinking she never wanted to see him again.
On stocking feet, she hurried to the kitchen. He wasn’t there. Over to the living room. No sign.
Oh, damn, damn, damn, he’d left with those last words of hers ringing in his ears. Maybe he didn’t care, but she did. She had sent a man she cared about off into a dangerous situation with the words, “Don’t come back.”
God, she hated herself.
She almost went to open the front door, but remembered the watcher might be out there.
So she went to the back door and found it unlocked. He’d left that way. Stepping out onto the back stoop, heedless of the icy cold, she tried to see if any lights were on at his place. None.
“Allison?” It was one of the city officers, a young man who had been in one of her classes only a couple of years ago.
“Where’d he go?” she asked without preamble, keeping her voice low.
He answered so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “Over to his place first.”
“Is he still there?”
“No. He left on foot about twenty minutes ago.”
“On foot?”
“That’s all I know.”
On foot. Leaving no sign to a watcher that he’d gone. She almost panicked, wondering how he was going to get to the mountains, then wondering if Gage Dalton might be in on this somehow. He seemed to be more in on it now than she was.
“Rob?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I need you to do me a favor. Would you get in trouble for coming inside?”
Her mind was made up. And she didn’t care who didn’t like it. She knew one thing for certain. Foolish or not, she couldn’t endure another round of survivor guilt. She was not going to let that man face this alone.
“I don’t think so, ma’am. I’m supposed to be watching you.”
“Then come on in. I need some help.”
* * *
Jerrod made it to the edge of town and a little beyond about the time the first gray light showed from the east. Still dark, but not for long. A minute later he heard a truck approaching. He ducked down into the ditch, in tall, dry grasses and snow, until he was certain it was Jake Madison. Then he stood up and the truck stopped for him. He climbed in, putting his rifle bag between them, barrel pointed downward.
Madison passed him a bag. “Breakfast and coffee. What the hell are you up to?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“So Gage tells me, but he was awful insistent.” Jake looked at the gun tote. “Loaded?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Too dangerous in a vehicle.”
“Thanks for breakfast.”
“I had to have some reason for going to town.” He patted another bag on the seat beside him. “Nora will be surprised.”
Jerrod swallowed a mouthful of egg and English muffin, washing it down with hot, strong coffee. “I met Nora’s father.”
“Quite an experience, isn’t he?”
“Even in a very small dose. Nate Tate doesn’t think he’d have had anything to do with your livestock being poisoned. From what little I saw, I got the same read on him.”
“I don’t think it was him. He’s got too much to lose. But I wouldn’t put it past one of those zombies of his.”
Jerrod nearly choked on muffin. He laughed. “Zombies?”
“Not a very kind way to speak of some of my neighbors, I know. Most of the folks who go to that church are a little on the far side for my taste, but they’re okay. There’s a small handful, though... Well, let’s just say there are a few of them who would drink the Jim Jones poison brew, if you get me.”
Jerrod got him, loud and clear. “So he might have told one of them to do it?”
“Probably not. But one of them might have done it on his own, all whipped up by Loftis’s rants about sin and so on. All it takes is one nut who believes he has a cause. Anyway, there are maybe a half dozen of them I keep a close eye on. So does the sheriff. They have the potential to slip a cog. The nice thing about a small town is that sooner or later you know everything. We’ll hear if one of them put that bait out because sooner or later someone’s going to be bursting and just not able to hold it in any longer.”
“Seems to be a common trait.”
“Except among folks with your training.”
Jerrod played dumb. “My training?”
“I may be just a rancher, but I can read it all over you sometimes. It’s okay. There are things we don’t talk about around here. Nate, Gage and I aren’t going to blow your cover.”
Jerrod snorted. “I’m supposed to be a civilian now.”
“I hear it takes some getting used to. So Gage said I was to take you to my barn, right? Then what?”
“I’ll hide out there until it gets dark again.”
“You could hide in my house. It’s more comfortable.”
“I’ve caused enough trouble. I don’t want to be bringing you any.”
“Some of us out here might like to help you out.”
“Some of you already have. I’m better off solo on this one. Believe me.”
He was relieved when Jake dropped the subject. Unfortunately, he still had a whole lot of hours left before nightfall. He hoped he could focus his attention where it needed to be, but he figured he was going to spend an awful lot of those hours thinking about Allison.
Last night. Her final words to him. They had penetrated his armor in ways it had never been penetrated before.
Well, he’d take care of this problem, then move on. He’d caused enough trouble already.
* * *
Allison sat at her kitchen table with Rob. She’d pumped him full of coffee and made him some toast and eggs. He seemed grateful to be inside with her, and didn’t raise any objection when she climbed into her attic and reappeared with her dad’s shotgun.
“Thinking about hunting?” he asked, carrying his plate to the sink and pouring more coffee.
“Hunting,” she repeated. “Yes. But it’s been a long time since I used this and I wondered if you could help me out.”
“Help you how?” He returned to the table and sat, running his hands over the sleek barrel and stock, where gun oil still gleamed, although it was a bit marred by dust.
“Well, I need to make sure it’s clean and safe to use.”
“Oh, I can help with that. You have a cleaning kit?”
She did, indeed, and as she opened it the odor of gun oil stung her nostrils and carried her back in time. Her dad sitting across the table from her when she was twelve, teaching her gun safety and gun care all at the same time as they prepared to hunt together for the first time. She remembered being excited and nervous about it all at once. Now she looked at the gun and wanted to cry. She missed them, would always miss them.
She could still hear him saying, “First we’ll get you some target practice, though.” She had gotten to be a good shot. Very good.
But she’d never developed a taste for hunting. She guessed that was about to change.
She sat back, watching attentively, listening as Rob explained what he was doing. He first checked to be sure there were no shells in the gun.
“This is a nice piece,” he said. “Six shots. I wouldn’t mind one of these myself.”
“My dad liked the best equipment for what he did. Always.”
Rob laughed. “Smart man.”
She noted that he seemed pleased with himself to be able to help her with this. Role reversal, with him being the teacher this time. It had to be good for his ego.
“I have some shells from years ago,” she said. “Are they still safe to use?”
“I’d get fresh, myself. You don’t want to take a chance.”
