A SEAL's Vow (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 2)

by Cora Seton

  “Sort of. This guy’s M.O. is to be opportunistic. He won’t go after Nora in plain sight of other people, but he obviously does his homework and takes chances when he gets them. We’re hoping to catch him trailing Nora before he ever gets the chance to attack her. Chance Creek’s sheriff’s department doesn’t have the manpower to watch the ranch on an ongoing basis, and we’ve got too few men to keep an eye on everything all the time so we’ll give this a try and see if we can draw him out. Walker will be in contact with the unit at all times. Don’t worry; we’ve got all our bases covered. This guy, whoever he is, is an amateur. He’s going to make a mistake.”

  Nora realized she wouldn’t feel any safer remaining here. Not with the smell of smoke in the air from the charred remains of the second tiny house. She was off-kilter and anxious. “I’ll stick to Walker like glue,” she assured the others. “Any stalker won’t stand a chance.”

  Jericho answered all of Riley’s and Savannah’s concerns. Avery helped Nora jot down a quick list of supplies they needed. There were a lot of them, and Nora was too jittery to think straight. She was sure she’d forgotten several things, but when Avery pointed out she’d written down onions twice, she decided it was time to go. They’d simply have to walk up and down all the aisles in the grocery store so they didn’t miss anything.

  After several rounds of hugs and “be carefuls” from Riley and Savannah, Nora was relieved when they finally got in the truck and left Westfield behind. She settled in happily, feeling safe on the bench seat between Avery and Walker. Renata had insisted they take William, too, and he sat behind them in the extended cab, filming everything.

  Avery kept turning around.

  “I don’t see anyone. I thought a cop car was supposed to follow us.”

  “The sheriff is following us. If you saw him, so would our mark. He’ll hang back,” Walker said.

  “I don’t see anyone else, either. I don’t think your stalker is following us, Nora.”

  “Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t there.”

  Nora’s relief at leaving the ranch disappeared. Walker was right. Whoever it was had managed to sneak into their house several times without them noticing. Into her tent, too.

  He’d burned down a house.

  It seemed improbable that the sun would rise and shine brightly today after the night they’d been through, but it had done so in a sky so blue it dazzled her. Gradually her anxiety dimmed again and anger took its place. First her stalker had stolen her self-confidence, then he’d stolen her career and now he was stealing Westfield and the life she’d tried to build here.

  That stopped right now, she decided. She wasn’t going to hand over her future to him. She’d let the fire chief and sheriff do their investigating, and the men of Base Camp keep her safe. Meanwhile, she’d act like she always did.

  In the store, she walked purposefully with her shoulders thrown back, refusing to skulk through the aisles looking constantly over her shoulders. When her dress raised the eyebrows of the other customers, she met their gazes head on and refused to be the first one to look away. At all times she was aware of Avery by her side and Walker a pace behind them, his eagle eyes taking everything in. William trailed Walker. Walker ignored him.

  She glanced at her list, wondering what she was forgetting.

  “There are the beans. Which kind do you need?” Avery interrupted her thoughts.

  “Black beans. Lots of them. The way people keep flooding into the ranch, we’d better make enough tacos to feed half the town. We’re going to do veggie ones and beef ones, so we’ll need a bunch of ground beef, too.”

  They bent to make their choices, then moved on to pick out tortillas, ground beef and sour cream. Cab met up with them in the dairy aisle.

  “No one followed us?” Walker asked him.

  The sheriff shook his head. “Not that I saw. I’ll stick close, though.”

  “We’ve only got a couple more things to find.” Nora scanned the list again. After all they’d gone through to get to the store, so she didn’t want to forget anything.

  Concentrating, she followed Avery through the rest of the aisles, ticking things off the list as they found them, and pointing to items she hadn’t even considered before she saw them. Still, something was nagging at her. Something she’d miss if she went home without it.

  “That’s it,” Avery declared fifteen minutes later. “We’ve seen everything.”

  Not everything, Nora thought. Not the thing she was forgetting. It was beginning to drive her crazy. But with three other people waiting for her to declare their trip done, there was nothing for it but to head for the till.

  “We’ll probably need to come here again in the next few days,” Nora told Walker as she pushed the cart toward the front of the store. “I know I’ve forgotten something. Sorry,” she added. “This isn’t a good time to be disorganized.”

  “Oh, Walker’s used to it,” Avery said with a laugh. “You should see me trying to get ready to help him each morning. I get almost to the barn and then have to turn around and go back for my gloves or my apron. He calls me Avery Latefoot instead of Avery Lightfoot.”

  Nora turned to Walker in surprise, in time to see him freeze for half a second—the Walker equivalent of embarrassment. He recovered so quickly she would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking at him so closely.

  “Walker told a joke?” Cab’s laugh boomed out. “Didn’t know you had it in you, buddy.” He slapped Walker on the back.

  Avery touched Walker’s hand. “He’s a very surprising man.”

  Avery’s admiration for the big man was so clear, Nora wanted to reach out and shield her. She was going to get hurt. Sue had said—

  A woman’s roar of outrage cut across all their chatter and the soft pop music playing in the background of the grocery store. Nora froze. Avery ducked, and both men spun into motion. Walker swept Nora and Avery behind him, and drew a gun Nora hadn’t known he was carrying. Cab reached for his sidearm, already breaking into a run toward the sound. William pressed himself up against the shelves and held his camera in front of him like a shield.

  Cab didn’t have to go far.

  Sue Norton stormed forward, all five feet of her quivering with rage. Nora had never seen the Crow woman betray much emotion, so the spectacle in front of her was all the more shocking.

  “Walker Norton, you’re shaming your family, your ancestors and the very land you dare walk on. How can you do it? How?”

  Cab, the closest to her, lifted his hand from his holstered weapon. “Sue, this isn’t the time.”

  “Put that idiotic gun away before I take it away.” Sue ignored Cab and confronted her grandson. “You want to end up dead like your father? Or do you think if you kill enough people you’ll somehow set things right? Let the dead avenge the dead.”

  William straightened and pushed forward to capture the argument on film.

  Nora exchanged a look with Avery. Her heart still pounding with shock, she straightened, and Avery did, too. She couldn’t see Walker’s face, but he stood stock-still and let his grandmother’s words pour over him.

  “Put it away!” Sue swatted at the gun, and Walker yanked it back, then thrust it into a shoulder holster hidden under his light jacket. “Guns. Always guns with you. And now women. White women.” She said something in a language Nora couldn’t understand.

  “Sue, you gotta calm down.” Cab moved closer but kept sweeping the store with his gaze, alert for any trouble.

  Sue turned and swatted him. “Stay out of Crow business. This isn’t your jurisdiction, Sheriff.”

  “You’re not on Crow land,” Cab retorted.

  If Sue had been angry before, now she was furious. “Not on Crow land? Everywhere you look is Crow land. Everywhere you serve is Crow land—” She struck Cab again.

  “Stop it,” Avery cried. “Cab’s not the one you’re mad at!”

  Sue turned on Avery. “You got that right. Keep your hands off my grandson. Yo
u don’t belong here. None of you belong here.”

  “Grandma.” Walker finally found his voice.

  “Sue, let’s take this outside, shall we?” Cab said.

  Taco seasoning.

  Nora had no idea why the missing item suddenly popped into her mind, but there it was. Taco seasoning. Without it, the tacos she was supposed to serve tonight to all the people who’d come to help them would be a bust.

  Sue hit Walker this time—a hard swat. “Always with the white girls. Always. What’s wrong with you men? Why are you turning your back on—”

  Nora glanced from the argument in front of her to the ethnic food aisle only steps away. She could see jars of salsa from here. The spice packets had to be just a few feet farther away. She could be there and back before anyone noticed, and with the gathered crowd she’d be perfectly safe.

  She edged back, keeping one eye on her friends and the cameraman avidly filming them. Most of the shoppers in the store had been drawn to the front by the argument. They stood peeking out from other aisles, or stood at the tills and gaped at Sue.

  “She’s something,” a white-haired woman told her friend. “Maybe I oughta yell at my grandson like that. Maybe then he’d remember to mow my lawn once in a while.”

  “Good luck,” her companion said. “She’s right; they don’t make men like they used to.”

  Nora edged around them and into the ethnic food aisle. There it was. Right there. Just another three feet….two…one—

  “Gotcha,” said a familiar voice.

  The world went dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‡

  Clay shifted again on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room at the Chance Creek sheriff’s office, where they’d been sitting for several hours.

  “Why are we sitting here if the sheriff is somewhere else?” Dell asked him again. “Waste of time.”

  “This is where they want us, so this is where we’ll stay,” Clay said, but he knew what his father meant. He wanted to be back at the ranch—guarding Nora. He told himself there were plenty of men there to do that job, but it didn’t help calm his nerves. He couldn’t believe how much she’d held back from him. It was his fault, really. He’d assumed from everything she’d said that her stalker was ancient history. He’d never asked if she’d seen anything unusual since she’d come to Westfield.

  He’d let her down.

  “Just a few more minutes,” the receptionist said, but she’d been saying that for the last hour, and Clay didn’t believe it any more than Dell probably did.

  “Waste of time,” Dell said again.

  Clay fought against the urge to snap at him. That wouldn’t accomplish anything, but he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. He didn’t understand how he’d become his father’s babysitter. If anything, his mom should be here.

  His mom.

  Clay pulled out his phone and typed a quick and enigmatic text to her. “At the sheriff’s office with Dad.” That ought to hook her. He waited, counting the seconds.

  “Be right over,” she texted back.

  Clay bit back a grin. Time to hand over the problem of his father once and for all.

  Ten minutes later, Lizette arrived. Five foot five, with short curly hair and a pleasant face, she normally lit up any room she entered, but today she looked like thunder.

  “Dell Pickett, what did you do?” She stormed into the waiting room and turned from one to the other of them. Dell stood up. So did Clay.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Then it’s you?” She turned on Clay.

  “Not me. I’m innocent,” Clay began, but Lizette snorted.

  “Innocent, my ass. When have either of you ever been anything but trouble?”

  “Now, Lizette—”

  “Don’t Lizette me. I’ve waited for years for you to become the man I wanted to live with. All you’ve done is put it off and make excuses. I thought kicking you out would bring you to your senses but I was wrong again. I suppose you expect me to bail you out?”

  “Mom—”

  “Forget it! I’ve had it—with both of you. How can two intelligent men be so goddamn stupid?”

  “I’ve applied to every damn job in a fifty-mile radius,” Dell roared suddenly. “Not just construction, but gas stations, grocery stores, fast-food joints. None of them want me. I’m doing my best!”

  Clay held his breath. He’d heard his parents fight before, but not like this. He understood his mother’s frustration—and his father’s—but he didn’t want a bad economy or a lost job to tear his family apart. His father had been far too baffled by the arson for Clay to keep believing he was the perpetrator. Dell wasn’t good at subterfuge. Still, he didn’t know what to say to diffuse the situation.

  “For the last time!” Lizette yelled back. “I don’t want you to take another construction job, or a handyman job, and I sure as shootin’ don’t want to see you bagging groceries when I go to shop!”

  “Then what do you want? Because I don’t know what to do here!” Dell’s voice snagged at the top of his range, and Clay swallowed hard. He couldn’t stand to watch his father come undone. He wanted to back away—to get the hell out of there—but there was nowhere to go.

  “I don’t want to tell you!” Lizette’s eyes shone with tears. “I want you to have the guts to look in your heart, see what you’re passionate about and make it happen! Jesus, Dell. When are you going to get it?” Without another word she stormed out, leaving Dell and Clay to stare at each other.

  “She keeps saying that. I have no idea what she means.” Dell turned, too, and walked toward the front door.

  “Mr. Pickett.” The receptionist, who’d watched everything openmouthed, stood. “Mr. Pickett, you’re not supposed to leave.”

  Dell ignored her and walked out the door. Clay quickly followed him. “Dad? Where are you going?”

  “Back to Base Camp. I’m getting my things. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “You can’t do that.” Clay caught up to him as Dell opened the truck door and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “I’m not staying.”

  Clay decided Cab could find them as easily at Base Camp as he could at the sheriff’s office. He got in and backed out, turned the truck around and headed toward the ranch.

  “You can’t leave Base Camp,” he said when they finally pulled in the dusty lane.

  “Fine.” Dell got out when they parked and slammed the door behind him. He stalked toward the tents past the bunkhouse, where a group of men had gathered. Clay recognized faces from town he hadn’t seen in years. Others were more familiar from the weeks he’d been back in Chance Creek. They must have heard about the fire and come to lend a hand with the clean-up. “Get out of my way,” Dell said.

  “Aren’t you the one who started the fire?” one of the ranchers demanded.

  “Hell, no,” Dell said, starting toward him.

  Not another fight. Clay ran to break it up before things got out of hand, but yanked out his cell phone when it buzzed in his pocket.

  “Hey, make it quick,” he said as Dell and the rancher began to size each other up.

  “Walker here. Clay… I lost her.”

  Something hard beneath her. Aching head. Dark. A musty smell of aging wood.

  As Nora came around, she had no idea how to piece together these clues to form an image of her whereabouts. When she tried to move, she found her hands were bound behind her back. She lay on her side on a wooden floor that hadn’t been cleaned in… years, maybe.

  She blinked the dust out of her eyes and lifted her head, recognizing the old one-room schoolhouse where she and Clay had made love for the first time. A dull ache blossomed at the back of her head. She didn’t think she’d been struck, though. She had a dim memory of a voice. Something sharp.

  As if triggered by the memory, a tiny prick of pain in her neck made everything swing into focus. He’d stuck her with something. A needle.

  He…


  Nora sucked in a breath.

  Andrew Pennsley.

  Andrew. Why…?

  She struggled to a sitting position, an exercise in frustration without the use of her hands. Finally upright, her mouth tasting like chalk and ash, she tried to figure it out. Andrew, a fellow teacher back in Baltimore. What was he doing in Chance Creek?

  Why had he…?

  In a flash, her stupidity became all too clear. All this time she’d blamed a student for stalking her. She’d spent day after day in her classroom scanning the eyes that looked back at her, looking for guilt. Or hate. Or something to indicate who was tormenting her.

  But it had never been a student. It had been a teacher.

  Andrew.

  She’d never even considered him.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid.

  Of course it was Andrew. Two years ago, right after her mother passed away, she’d been asked to team-teach a group of eleventh graders. Dazed with pain and loss, she’d welcomed the chance to share the work with another teacher, and she’d been happy to be paired with a man who took his job as seriously as she did. Andrew, a Social Studies teacher, was known as a man who could control his classroom—as well as hold his students’ attention. It had all been a big relief until he asked her out. Nora didn’t dislike him. He simply wasn’t her type, and she’d been too hurt by her mother’s passing to want to be with anyone at the time.

  She’d explained all that to him when she turned him down, and thought Andrew had understood. He waved away her apologies, and they’d gone on to teach together for the remainder of the year. The small awkwardness of the situation paled beside losing her mother, and Nora hadn’t given it another thought. The following year when they’d been asked to team-teach again, Andrew had agreed, but Nora had declined, and instead had taken over a twelfth grade English position. Andrew paired up with her replacement. He nodded at her when they met in the hall, and she smiled back.

  Problem solved.

  Except as Nora’s eyes adjusted and she took in her surroundings—the dirty floor, the huddle of old-fashioned desks, the boarded up windows—she realized the problem had never been solved after all.