Dead Run

by Jodie Bailey

  * * *

  Rolling onto her side, Kristin pulled the quilt higher and tucked it under her chin. Few shadows moved in the thin light. Still, too many images vied for her attention, flipping like a deck of cards. The man on the trail and in her kitchen, Specialist Cronin, Brandon Lacey...

  Her brother, the money, his motives for coming into her life...

  Lucas Murphy...

  Jesus.

  He was the One Who refused to leave her alone. Lucas had shared his past with her before, told her how he’d treated relationships, how he’d been searching and hurting as he went. Yet, here he was now, unbelievably the man who made her feel safer than any other. If he was telling her the truth about his past, then the only way he could be the man he was today was by some power beyond him.

  There was also Hoyt Alston’s story, the way Rebecca and the chaplain were both convinced God had intervened.

  The way her father had held that knife to her throat yet let her live.

  She shut her eyes against the visions, the blood, the horror. She’d managed for years to shove those images into dark places, but lately they sprang up more and more. One horrifying night overarched and shadowed her entire life.

  Maybe it was time to stop living like she was the only one who’d ever faced pain and witnessed the worst.

  Her self-reliance had been stretched thin these past few days, listening to Lucas and to the soldiers around him. They’d faced blood and horror on a daily basis. Watched friends maimed by faceless attackers, seen life end in nightmarish ways. How did anyone in the military get over what they saw in war? How did Hoyt Alston get over seeing his buddy die in front of him? Being the sole survivor?

  Survivor. She sucked in a breath that burned her lungs. Her father had relented at the last second. He’d beaten her, verbally smacked her down, yet he couldn’t kill her, even though killing was clearly something he wasn’t afraid of.

  She’d survived. But for what?

  For more than her life right now. All she did was keep busy, working from sunup to sundown, but without purpose. She pushed herself to be strong, pushed others to be strong, all in an attempt to wrestle the past into line, to stay so busy she’d fall into bed at night and sleep without dreaming.

  No joy. No fulfillment. No forgiveness.

  No surrender.

  She was tired. Tired of moving and getting nowhere. That was the very reason she hated running on a treadmill. She preferred the streets, the trails, the change of scenery and the brush of the air on her skin. But her life? One giant treadmill.

  For the first time, someone had shown her the head of the trail.

  She wasn’t sure she dared to forgive her father, dared to let go of the past and stop wrapping it around her like a moldy blanket, tainting everything in her world. Stopped acting as though she had virtue when her father hadn’t, as though she, too, didn’t need someone to save her.

  Her heart beat harder than when Lucas had kissed her, the air so heavy and thick, it felt like a blanket all its own. Warm, like love should feel when it was pure and perfect, not marked by blazing jealousy and white-hot rage. Her parents hadn’t had love or even passion. They’d based their marriage on rage. Raging desires. Raging anger.

  Kristin had sought the opposite, keeping tight control on her environment and her emotions until she felt nothing at all. Wrapping herself in unforgiveness and deadness instead of pain. Being a dead woman walking wasn’t what she’d survived for. Emptiness and nothingness weren’t her destiny.

  Maybe this was. This thing that felt like overwhelming love.

  She wanted it. All of it.

  Kristin didn’t say a word as she let go. Released her life to the One Who was waiting for her to give up, to open her hand and let Him have her. Jesus, I don’t know much about You, but... I’ve seen You work. I’ve been wrong, too, messed everything up. And You’re in charge.

  The overwhelming sense of release was almost terrifying. In her whole life, she’d never realized the weight she was dragging until she transferred it to shoulders broader than her own.

  She sat bolt upright, chills running along her arms in the best kind of way. She had to tell someone. Had to make this out loud and real.

  Lucas. She wanted to tell Lucas, but she also wanted to stay here, wrapped in this blanket of Jesus, real and present.

  She leaned against the pillows, reveling in peace. In letting go.

  In feeling.

  In a rush, the feelings hit hard. She wanted to tell Lucas because she wanted him to know, because he was important. Because yes, she got the same feeling with him that she had right now, but on a whole different level.

  She loved Lucas Murphy.

  She just didn’t know what to do with him.

  Life without Lucas was unthinkable. But life with him? After the events of the past week, they could never go back to being the friends they used to be. Kristin wasn’t even sure if she wanted that anymore. But she’d never seen a real relationship at work. Had never seen what two people who loved each other unconditionally looked like. Could she love Lucas the way she needed to?

  Let go.

  If she was letting go of everything else, she could let go of Lucas, too, and let God handle the two of them together.

  Surrender. It was harder than she’d thought to be the one not in control.

  She slid beneath the quilt and rolled onto her right side, staring at the dark wall, conscious of Lucas downstairs on the couch, almost able to sense his presence.

  So different from her father. So different from her brother. In letting go, she could see the truth for the first time. It was clear Kyle had been involved in something horrible, something he’d tangled her in and put her in danger for. Something that led Cronin and Morrissey to believe she was involved.

  The truth twisted behind her heart, but not in the stabbing pain she’d feared it would. It came this time with grief for what had never been, not longing for what she could never have.

  The more she learned, the more she knew her brother had used her. He’d spent so much time here...but he’d never talked. Never communicated once he left. Came home on his R & R and crashed at her place because he needed a bed to sleep in since he couldn’t get into the barracks during a deployment. She’d given, he’d taken.

  Except for the basement. He’d worked tirelessly down there before he deployed, finishing the walls and creating a space she’d told him was a dream of hers. Maybe it was his way of showing her love. Maybe it was guilt.

  Or maybe...

  She sat straight up again, the covers pooling over the thin sweatpants she’d worn to bed.

  Or maybe her basement was the answer to everything.

  EIGHTEEN

  Lucas hefted a hammer and stared at the basement wall. Kristin had told him dozens of times how much she loved her workout space, how it was exactly what she’d always envisioned. The pale green walls made the room lighter and turned it into a place he’d liked lifting weights in when she’d invited him.

  Now she wanted to rip everything out in an attempt to get to the bottom of her brother’s treachery. So much so that she’d sent him out to the garage at two thirty in the morning for tools and dust masks Kyle had left behind. It wasn’t like either of them was sleeping anyway, but still...

  “You’re sure you want to do this? CID probably has a way they can check behind the walls without physically tearing them out.”

  Staring at the hammer she held, Kristin surveyed the wall, her eyes grim over the white mask she wore. “I’m sure. I want this over.”

  “But what makes you think—”

  “All along, everybody’s been thinking Kyle was in the mail room, sending things out somehow. But where’s the evidence? There’s been nobody discovered on the receiving end, and everybody thinks Kyle has whate
ver it is they’re after. Cronin may not talk. Nobody knows where Morrissey is. What if we’re backward? What if Kyle was the receiver? What if he was tasked with hiding stuff until he found a buyer and then he got killed before he could deliver the goods?”

  Lucas dragged his thumb along the hammer’s claw. “CID said they were investigating him because of posts he was making on the dark web looking for buyers. Maybe he hid everything and tried to double-cross his partners.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want this finished. Kyle spent a ton of time here, insistent on putting up drywall and not letting me lift a finger to help. It makes sense he was walling something behind it.” She kept her focus on the walls, regret tingeing her expression. “It’s not like it can’t be fixed. After all, there’s ten thousand dollars upstairs, unless the investigators take it. And there’s always the insurance money he left me.” She curled her lip. “You ready?”

  He was more concerned about her readiness. If they ripped the drywall out of this entire room and found nothing, how would she react? And what would it do to the investigation if they couldn’t find Kyle’s hiding place? Something else nagged at him, too. “Where does his car fit in?”

  Kristin approached the wall and rapped a knuckle against the drywall, sounding for a stud to avoid, likely. “I don’t know. Revenge?”

  “So much of this makes no sense. Back away and think before you do something crazy. There’s too many—”

  Kristin ended his warning by raring back and smashing a hole into the drywall, embedding the head of the hammer in the wall. “Now we can quit talking.” She tilted her head from side to side and pulled the hammer free. “It’s actually kind of cathartic.” She cocked her arm again, but Lucas grabbed her wrist.

  “I’m sure there’s something that feels really good right now about smashing walls, but we need a system. You don’t want to put a hammer through a two-thousand-year-old vase.”

  “True.” She lowered her arm. “What’s the plan?”

  “Since you’re enjoying the hammer so much, drag the weight bench over and put a row of holes in the top of each piece. I can pull it apart from there.”

  The pair went to work silently for half an hour, Lucas watching Kristin as she systematically dismantled her dream. Something about her was different. He’d expected her typical hard edge, the emotionless mask he’d seen so many times. Instead, there seemed to be something relaxed about her, something less on edge. And he’d been certain a couple of times he’d seen her swipe at her eyes.

  Better not read too much into it. It was probably drywall dust. There hadn’t been any goggles in the garage.

  “Lucas.”

  The way she said his name stopped his hands on the piece of drywall he was about to rip out. He let go and stepped up onto the weight bench beside her. “You found something.”

  “There’s no insulation behind this section.” Her voice edged with tension, and she aimed the hammer at the holes she’d made in the wall. “Those all had solid insulation behind them. The minute I hammered into this one, it’s hollow.” She made another series of holes, and together they pulled apart the drywall, revealing several packages wrapped in everything from newspapers to towels to T-shirts.

  Kristin gasped and stepped off the weight bench as though the packages were radioactive, staring at the sight. Her face blanched. “Lucas. I can’t...”

  Shoving the dust mask off his head, Lucas jumped down to join her, but he kept his distance. She needed space, needed to process what he was beginning to see.

  Her breathing came rapidly as her eyes welled with tears. “He did everything they said he did. He did it and he used me and my house and he put me in danger. He pretended to be doing me a favor.” She aimed a finger at the wall, rocked more than any physical attack over the past few days had hit her. “These things are important to the Iraqi people, to their culture and their history, and my brother...” Her voice was muffled by the dust mask that still covered her mouth. “They’re in my walls. I’m living in a movie.”

  She turned toward him and, for the first time, reached for him first.

  Something hitched in Lucas’s chest. She needed him. Gently, he slipped the dust mask over her head then pulled her closer. She didn’t cry, but she drew support from him. He’d held her before, but never had she let him do the comforting. It felt...right.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice muffled into his shoulder, and she straightened, swiping a dusty finger beneath her eye and leaving a streak of gray behind. “My head won’t wrap around this. It’s unreal. There’s art and history stolen from a country and it’s in my wall.” Kristin turned away, staring at the gaping hole they’d ripped away. “And my brother is the bad guy.”

  “I know.” Lucas wanted to pull her closer again, but he stopped himself. Right now, he had to act from his mind, not from his heart. “I have to call CID and tell them what we found.”

  “I know.”

  Did she really? “They’ll question you. May rip the rest of your house apart.”

  “Lucas. I know.” Her voice was resigned, heavier than the hammers they’d wielded in their search. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “You make the call. I’m going upstairs for some water.” Without lifting her head, she trudged up the stairs, her shoulders slack, defeat he’d never seen before pulling her low.

  Lucas watched her go, torn between following her or doing what he knew he had to do...officially making her brother a bad guy, one of the toughest calls he’d ever had to make. He’d been a pain, but Kyle Coleman had also been one of his soldiers.

  Before he could even reach for his phone, it vibrated in his hip pocket. He checked the screen, adrenaline surging. Travis.

  Clearing his throat, he pulled the phone to his ear. “I don’t know why you’re calling, but Kristin and I found her brother’s stash.”

  There was a long silence before Travis inhaled audibly. “I hate to tell you, but we’ve got worse news to deal with.”

  Please, no. Lucas couldn’t handle more problems. All he wanted was to get CID to the house and get it cleared so Kristin’s life could go back to normal. More complications weren’t on the agenda. “What?”

  “Cronin isn’t as deeply involved as we thought. He was blackmailed by Morrissey to pull surveillance on Brandon Lacey.”

  “Makes sense if Lacey was—”

  “Specialist Lacey wasn’t involved.”

  Lucas sank to the weight bench and dropped his head. If Lacey wasn’t involved, then either they had two killers in the unit, or the kid had died an innocent bystander.

  “Wrong place, wrong time. Cronin said Morrissey started out asking him to keep tabs on Lacey after Kristin delivered the package to him on post. He thought Kristin’s brother had turned on him and was working with Lacey. Morrissey killed Lacey because he thought Lacey had the goods.”

  “Lacey was innocent.” Lucas was going to be sick. All he could see was Brandon Lacey’s slightly gangly, always awkward self, the goofy kid who’d morphed into a competent soldier every single time his platoon needed him. Now it looked as though his death was even more pointless than they’d thought.

  Somebody had to stop William Morrissey. He’d already crossed the line from threats to murder. There was no going back now, and that put Kristin in even deeper danger. “Any word on where Morrissey is?”

  “I got very little out of CID. But, Lucas, watch your back. He’s getting desperate. At this point, if he thinks Kristin knows anything, he’s not going to play games.”

  * * *

  “Why?” Kristin gripped the edge of the sink, the stainless steel beneath her fingers a cool contrast to her heated prayer. It was awkward, voicing the pain in her heart to Someone she couldn’t see or hear. She shut her eyes and tightened her hold on the counter. Surrender. It hadn’t bought her anything. She’d given everything up, and things shou
ld have gotten better. Shouldn’t Kyle have been innocent? Shouldn’t things have changed?

  Dropping her head, she waited for the peace she’d felt earlier. Instead of a blanket, though, she found tattered edges.

  It was still more than she’d had before. It was enough.

  Kristin dug for rational thought. Her surrender would only help her. It couldn’t magically erase the past, undo history and make her brother a good person. Surrender affected her, not Kyle or Lucas or anyone else.

  A sudden pain squeezed inside her chest, robbing her lungs of air. What had happened to Kyle? He was dead, his second chances all gone.

  On top of everything else, not this. Not now. She gulped air and regretted the glass of water she’d downed. Regretted ever eating anything in her whole life.

  Fresh air. She needed to get outside and into air lighter than the heaviness in her kitchen. Pushing for the door, she frantically pressed the buttons on the alarm keypad and burst out onto the porch, heaving air like she’d been drowning.

  She had to focus on what was right in front of her. All she had was right now, and she could deal with right now.

  Right now, there were valuable pieces hidden in her basement walls. She didn’t have to unwrap the packages to know what they were. The evidence said it all. Art and historical pieces valuable to an entire nation were hidden in her house. Kristin almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity. Not a lot of people could lay claim to that. History had never interested her, but part of her wanted to at least touch something, to be able to say she had.

  She dragged her hands through her hair. Okay, she was losing reality here. Lucas would call CID and report what they’d uncovered. She’d face questions, but she’d done nothing wrong, so there was nothing to fear. And once William Morrissey and whoever else had come after her heard the goods were no longer in her possession, well, this would be over.

  Over.

  She could have her life back. Could stop looking over her shoulder.

  Could tell Lucas she was falling in love with him.