by Jodie Bailey
For the first time, he took a second to really look at her. She was the same yet so different. Her dark hair was longer and pulled back in a ponytail. She was more toned, although the uniform could be creating an illusion of strength. Still, she appeared way too delicate to be the rescue hero he knew her to be.
And the drive to protect her was strong, no matter what their past might say.
“Why?” The word was soft, as though it leaked from a deflating balloon. Erin brushed Wyatt’s hand from her shoulder and stood taller, seeming to re-center herself. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do we,” Wyatt said. “Did you know her? Ever seen her before tonight?”
Erin shook her head slowly as though she were cataloging recent days as she answered. “No. Never. The sole connection is the car. I know it’s the same one that’s circled the parking lot a few times. There can’t be two identical cars like that one in a town this small.”
“Someone wanted you involved.” Jason had no doubt. There was no way all of this was a coincidence. He’d built his career on analyzing the details, and these added up a little too well. Somehow, Erin was a target too.
The why made no sense, though. No more than Angie running drugs did. It was a setup. It had to be.
“Normally, I’d say you’re reaching, but...” Arch Thompson was skeptical, and Jason couldn’t blame him. Arch had been a senior when Jason, Erin and Wyatt were freshmen, but in a small town, everyone was acquainted with everyone. The young police chief had always been a good guy, if a little bit cocky, but in Jason’s line of work, cocky could work for you.
“Jason.” Wyatt cut into the conversation and held up his cell phone. “There are some men outside asking for you. Apparently, Staff Sergeant Daniels is here. You’re free to go out and see them as long as you don’t feed them any details past this was a hit-and-run.”
Jason dug his fingers into his thighs. As much as he wanted to stay and make sure Erin was truly okay, the men outside needed him more. He had no doubt Seth had come to the station trying to get to his wife and no doubt the others had followed him. “Got it.” He hesitated as he passed Wyatt and Erin. “Call me if you need anything else.” Even he wasn’t sure which of the two he was talking to.
Wyatt nodded. Erin didn’t respond.
Not that he’d expected her to. The way the conversation had gone earlier, there was still a large gulf between them. One he had no idea how to bridge.
When he shoved through the door, the temperature was noticeably colder than it had been an hour or so earlier. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and strode toward the barriers at the road, where a handful of cars sat parked along the side of the road.
Only one person was in sight.
Jason ducked under the barrier and came up next to Staff Sergeant Alex “Rich” Richardson, who was leaning against the side of his pickup truck. Rich hardly acknowledged him as he scanned the wood line on the other side of the station. The vigilance never went away, even on home soil and especially tonight.
It might never go away again. He’d seen the woman who’d once been the love of his life for the first time in years. Had witnessed a speeding vehicle take aim at her. Had seen blood-soaked boots on pavement.
None of this should be happening here.
He stepped into Rich’s line of sight. “Where is everybody?”
“They went with Seth. A couple of local cops took him up the road a little ways, around the curve. Probably have him sitting in a patrol car. He was pretty...you know.”
Belligerent? Desperate? Scared? When they’d lost Fitz, Seth had been one of the worst wounded, nearly bleeding out from shrapnel to the neck. His fight, his determination, his will to live...everything had centered on Angie.
And now she was gone.
Jason tensed, his knee and shoulder protesting with another reminder of the ways life didn’t always make sense. As he stood beside Rich, he studied the driveway leading to the back of the fire station. Seth was going to need them all, but he had no idea what to say. If they were facing armed terrorists, he could take them down. A bomb factory? Been there, done that.
But a buddy who’d lost his wife?
He hadn’t felt this inept even in basic training. There weren’t courses for how to comfort a guy whose wife was dead. A wife who had been killed in a hit-and-run ten miles from home with an envelope full of meth in her hand.
Rich pounded the side of his fist against the truck. “I feel useless standing here. I’d rather be hunting the guy who did this, bringing him in so he can face what he’s done.”
“Same.”
“Lisa’s with him. She’ll know what Seth needs.”
Lisa Fitzgerald would definitely do a better job than any of the guys would. When they’d returned from Iraq and Lisa had come to meet them, Jason had tried to offer sympathy to Fitz’s wife. He’d watched her husband die. He owed her.
But he’d blown it. Had stammered a few clichés that had made her soak his shoulder with tears.
“I think—” Rich’s words dropped as a figure stepped around the back of the truck.
Jason’s muscles tensed, his fingers reflexively reaching for the weapon he no longer carried. People melting out of the darkness never meant anything good.
But as the shadow drew closer, the tension eased.
Sergeant First Class Tony Augustus lowered a soda can from his mouth, casting a guilty look at Jason.
“Caesar.” The nickname had been bestowed on Tony by a drill sergeant who’d called him Caesar Augustus. “You let your wife catch you downing caffeine, she’ll come after you. Then she’ll come after us for not stopping you.” After the incident that killed Fitz, the men had reacted in different ways. Caesar’s post-traumatic stress had nearly incapacitated him and, in an effort to curb his anxiety, his wife, Caroline, had talked him into cutting his caffeine intake.
“Yeah, well...” Caesar scrubbed his hand across his closely cropped dark hair. “Tension’s thick and I just needed...something.”
Jason could sympathize with the need for something. He’d found something at the bottom of a bottle after the incident, but while it had bought him temporary freedom from the pain, it had left him helpless to fight his thoughts when the nothingness wore off. Not only did he relive Fitz’s death and his own injuries, but he was thrown back to life in Mountain Springs before he took an oath to serve his country, to the what might have beens he’d left behind.
A few moments of oblivion weren’t worth the aftermath.
Rich thumped his fist lightly against the side of his truck, a rhythmic beat that was almost reassuring. A drummer when he was in high school, he was always tapping a rhythm. The habit had led to a lot of late-night impromptu bad karaoke sessions. His engagement to his fiancée, Amber Ransom, was a few days old. He was probably internalizing all of Seth’s reactions, knowing he’d do the same. He needed time. They all needed time.
Caesar leaned back against the truck. “Two cops were out front, talking earlier.” He tipped his head to the sky. “They’re looking at Seth.” He addressed the stars. “Not sure they’re wrong.”
Wait a second. “You don’t think...”
“Stranger things have happened after guys have seen the things we’ve seen.” Dropping his chin, Caesar pinned Jason with a hard gaze. “Don’t tell me your thoughts haven’t whacked out on you before.”
Jason’s jaw tightened. He’d had memories he wished he could erase, nightmares he’d give anything to stop...but violence? No.
Caesar shoved off of the truck and stared at the front of the fire station. “It’s not important.”
But it probably was. While a couple of guys had talked to the chaplain when they’d come home, most had opted out. A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress could wreck careers, so they buried the pain deep.
Or they blew up.
�
�What’s not important?” A familiar female voice drifted around the truck, followed by a tall, trim woman with blond hair and green eyes that held the weight of the world.
Lisa Fitzgerald.
“Nothing.” Jason let her pull him into a quick hug. Then she drew him away from Caesar to the front of the vehicle.
If she was seeking comfort, she was in the wrong place.
Instead, she kept her hand on his arm, her expression speaking fear more than pain.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Crystal.”
“Palmer’s wife?” Jason leaned around her. A small knot of people had gathered while he’d been talking to Caesar, but he couldn’t see Drew or Crystal. “Where are they?”
“He called about five minutes ago.”
“Okay...” With a gut-wrenching dread, he knew nothing good was coming.
“She had an asthma attack and...” Tears threatened to spill from Lisa’s eyes.
Jason stared across the small distance at their incomplete group. Lisa didn’t need to say any more.
Crystal Palmer was dead.
There was no way this was a coincidence. Someone was targeting his team.
Which meant Erin could be next.
* * *
Erin climbed onto the brush truck and inspected the handrail she’d been polishing when Jason interrupted her. It was tough to tell where she’d stopped and, honestly, she was too tired to care. As the sun brought a different light to the windows in the huge doors, she was glad to see the single most horrible night of her life end.
Chief Kelliher had released her hours ago, but she’d waited for the techs outside to pack and leave, just in case. More than once, she’d started to walk out the front door to offer condolences to Jason and the members of his team who’d stood tightly clustered near the road, but she’d stopped herself every time. It would likely be an intrusion, a distraction. They needed one another, not her.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway. It was a little bit early for Chief Kelliher, but he’d likely driven half the night to get back from the conference in Nashville and had probably come straight to the station.
But, for the second time, the man who walked around the truck wasn’t who she’d expected.
With a heavy sigh that served to weigh her down more, Erin turned her eyes to the ceiling. “Jason.” When she trusted herself enough to look at him, he’d stopped a few feet away. The lines around his eyes were deeper than they’d been earlier, fatigue drawing deep circles underneath.
One eyebrow arched but settled again, and his expression darkened. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if I didn’t think it was important.”
“What else could possibly—”
“Erin.”
The heavy command in his tone stopped the flow of her tirade.
Jason caught her gaze in a way he hadn’t in years...and his expression was anything but friendly. It held a hint of something she’d never seen before, something that swept chills across her skin.
With an underlying authority she’d never heard before, he broke the silence. “I think you’re in danger.”
She was in danger?
Sure she was.
The single threat Erin saw was the one standing ten feet from her. He was the one person alive who could wreck her entire world by making her want things she could never have.
Ignoring the twinge in her chest that remembered how it used to be, Erin jumped off the truck but kept her distance from the man she’d once trusted above all others. Their story was in the past. And while tonight had been horrifying, his assertion she was in danger made her think Jason was a couple of matches short of a full box. If he was referring to the text, it had nothing to do with her. It had been a decoy, a way for a killer to draw Angie Daniels to her death.
“Okay, Jason. Whatever game you’re playing, I’m leaving the field.” Erin dropped the rag into a bucket and reached for the handle. She should go home anyway. Her father would be texting again soon, trying to track her down. His demands were pretty much the extent of what she could deal with this morning. “It’s been a long night. I want to go home and sleep. Nothing else. Please, just go.”
Not wanting to risk a brush past him in the narrow space between the trucks, Erin turned and headed for the back of the ladder truck to circle around to the front of the building. It might make her seem like a coward, but no way did she want to risk contact with him, not the way her brain kept pinging back into the past every time she looked at him and definitely not when he was talking as though reality was no longer a friend of his. She’d spent eight years mending her broken heart, and the roller coaster of the past seven hours had left her spent and defenseless.
Footsteps and his hand on her bicep stopped her. “You know me well enough to know this isn’t a game.”
Erin jerked her arm from his grasp and kept walking, the first zip of fear running across her skin. She may have been moved to protect his emotions last night, but the truth was she didn’t know this Jason at all. People changed. Circumstances shaped everyone. For all she knew of this stranger, he was behind every crazy thing happening in the small town.
She had to get outside, call Wyatt, do something to get away from—
“Another wife of a guy on my team died this morning. Early. Not too long after Angie. Asthma attack.”
Erin’s footsteps dragged to a stop and the bucket hung limp in her hands. She’d heard the call for EMS on the county’s dispatch, but she’d been so involved with what was happening in front of her, she hadn’t processed it. The station in Fairview, right outside of Camp McGee, had responded. Unlike Angie’s murder, which would be all over the place as soon as the story worked its way to the news stations in Asheville, there was no way Jason would have any clue about the other death unless someone close to the deceased had told him.
Her jaw tightened. If someone wanted to hurt her, they’d missed their chance last night, because the driver of the car had a clear shot and waved off. “This has nothing to do with me.”
“Both of us know two spouses of men on my team dying at the same time would be one of the craziest coincidences in the world. And Angie’s death was no accident. Neither was someone trying to link you to it.” Jason stepped close enough for Erin to feel the warmth of his presence against her back. She dug her teeth into her lower lip as the pain of losing him swept her, as fresh as if he’d left yesterday. “Problem is, there’s more. I talked to my former chain of command about an hour ago. Late yesterday evening, my buddy Cole Dawson’s ex-wife was found dead in Roanoke, Virginia. Her roommate came home from work and she was on the couch with her car running in the garage. They were thinking accident or suicide, but... Three spouses in one day? From the same team?” His hand was warm on her shoulder as he turned her to face him. “A team whose last successful mission involved taking out some high-value targets that might cause someone to want revenge?”
Last successful mission? Erin’s thoughts tripped over the word, then stuck on what he was trying to tell her. It couldn’t be real. Life wasn’t as bizarre as the movies. “You can’t be serious. You sound ridiculous. That’s some old Bruce Willis action movie kind of stuff. The bad guys don’t get revenge the way you’re saying, not on individuals. They come after whole countries. Big targets to make a statement, not families.” He was insane. Out of his head. Nobody came to Mountain Springs to commit murder.
Except she’d seen the carnage with her own eyes a few hours earlier.
Still, there was no way. She rolled the handle of the bucket between two fingers and refused to meet his eyes. “Even if it was true, I’m your ex. Anybody trying to get revenge couldn’t care less about someone who means nothing to you.”
Everything about Jason froze. He looked as though she’d slapped him and he didn’t know how to handle the blow. But then he jerked his head to the side and continued as though
the pause never happened. “You’re forgetting Cole’s ex. The Dawsons got divorced before we did. Cole never remarried. He always said Tracy was it for him, the same way...” Jason dropped his hand from her arm. “Somehow, some way, somebody with a grudge found Tracy. And Angie and Crystal. In two different cities. And until somebody figures out how they got their intel, I can’t promise whoever this is doesn’t know about you too.”
This was too much. Between Angie’s death and Jason’s reappearance...
Erin tried to read him, to find something familiar in the man in front of her, but all she could see was a hardness around the edges that hadn’t existed before. “What happened to you overseas?” It had to have been something, because nothing else could explain the things he was saying. The story simply couldn’t be real.
His head dipped to one side, confusion clouding his gaze. “What?”
“You walk with a limp. Not much of one, but enough. I noticed it earlier. And this? This story you’re spinning?” When his mouth opened to say more, she backed farther away and dug deep for the strength to walk away, even as her heart wanted to reach out to him. “I’m about to grab my truck keys out of the office. You’re going to walk out ahead of me without saying another word. Because if you don’t, I’m having Wyatt come back to handle you and your crazy talk. Don’t speak to me again.” Because I don’t have what it takes to remember why it all went wrong in the first place.
When she turned, he didn’t follow. Jason had always been the pragmatic one, the levelheaded one, while she’d been the one wanting to run away and do crazy things like eloping in South Carolina. To think a mind as solid and steady as his had cracked...
Her throat ached. She’d heard about men coming home broken, different... She’d simply never imagined it would happen to Jason. He’d always been the strongest man she knew.
Without pausing, she dropped the bucket next to the row of wall lockers and swept into the office, snatching her keys from the corner of the desk and holding them so tightly they dug into her palms. If he didn’t leave as she’d asked, she’d...she’d...
