by Jodie Bailey
Then he’d hesitated, had had a silent conversation across the room with Jason’s friend Rich...
And he’d turned away. Slowly. Deliberately. Back to the window and the street below without even saying a word.
It had been half an hour since he shut her out. Erin had since returned to the scene of the fire to oversee the start of cleanup.
Life would be easier if they’d all leave. Jenna’s head felt like it was going to explode. She needed her hiking boots and a tent, a trek to the high country, something...
Whatever had happened last night at Christa’s or today in her shop when Wyatt had extended his hand, asking her for something she still couldn’t quite decipher, was dead now.
She’d been right all along. He had a job to do. The emotions that had tilted her world had been nothing more than a vanishing moment for him.
Why should Wyatt be different than every man who’d come and gone from her mother’s life? She was the same Genevieve Brady. She could change her name, but she couldn’t change who she fundamentally was. Something in her repelled everyone around her, including her own mother, who had never been able to stand by her daughters for more than a few weeks at a time before she needed to run off and find love and excitement somewhere else.
A rustle from near the front door broke off her pity party.
Rich backed away from the window overlooking the alley and twisted his head to one side, then to the other. He checked the holster at his side and glanced at Jenna before he turned to Wyatt. “I’m going to go outside, check with the guys on the perimeter, see if I can get a word in with Erin or someone on her crew, see what they know. I’ll be back in a few.” He opened the door and was halfway out when he looked over his shoulder in Wyatt’s direction. “You know what needs to be done.”
When the door shut behind him, Jenna leaned forward slightly, bracing herself for a peek at Wyatt. He still stood at the window looking at the street, but the line of his shoulders was a wall, his neck muscles corded with a tension that expressed his emotions quite clearly.
He’d turned his back on her—literally and figuratively—but she couldn’t turn hers on him. He might not care about her, but she couldn’t turn off or ignore what she felt for him. Letting go of her mug, she pushed away from the counter and poured him a cup of coffee from the carafe Shelley had sent from her shop downstairs, then grabbed her own coffee and padded across the room. She kept her eyes on the burden she carried, averted from the window. She didn’t want to see the destruction, wanted to pretend her dreams still stood the way they were painted in her mind, pristine and unmarred by reality. Tomorrow would come soon enough, and then she’d have to face the carnage and look to the future. Tonight, she couldn’t acknowledge there might not be a future to look toward.
Careful not to touch Wyatt, she reached around him and set the mug on the wide windowsill in front of him.
He glanced at her offering. “Thanks.”
Jenna hesitated. A few hours ago, she might have rested her hand on his shoulder, let him know she was there for him. Now?
Now she had to remember who she was and why there could never be anything between them. Between her and anybody. Thanks for the reminder, God. You meant for me to do this on my own. At this point, maybe God was tired of her and had quit listening. It would explain why her world was burning around her.
Backing off, Jenna sat on the end of the couch farthest from Wyatt, drawing her feet beneath her and staring at the painting above the mantel. Again. She was living in Groundhog Day. “Is this how it’s going to be?”
She didn’t have to look at Wyatt to know he’d tensed impossibly more. It was an almost palpable motion that tightened the air in the entire apartment. “How what’s going to be?” His voice stretched across the words until they almost snapped.
“Somebody always watching. Me always hiding. Never having a life unless I run. And even then, always looking over my shoulder.”
“We’re going to end this. I made you a promise.”
“You know you can’t keep it.”
Everything froze. It was almost as if time stopped and solidified Wyatt into a statue. He didn’t even breathe. When he did, it was shallow, almost.
“They’re going to keep coming at me. Over and over. Until they win. You take care of one, there’s going to be more. You find one, another will—”
“I get it. I’m a failure. You don’t have to drive it home.” He bit off the words like a bitter pill he had to swallow.
“I never said you were a failure.”
“You didn’t have to.” He never turned, but in the reflection of the window, she could see he was watching her and not the street. “The man bursting into your apartment and holding a gun on you? My fault. You nearly getting shot? My fault. The fire today? My—”
“How can you say the blame for any of those things falls on you?” He couldn’t take responsibility for what evil men were doing. They were after her, not him. All he’d done was put himself in the line of fire to protect her.
“I can say it because it’s true. I was slow to act. And not for the first time. It’s exactly like the time I let...” He braced his hands on either side of the window and stared toward her shop, seeing things she couldn’t. “Never mind. It is what it is. I can’t do this with you.”
Dread slicked along her throat and pooled in her stomach, turning her few sips of coffee into ice. “You can’t do what?” She set her mug on the table and stood, hands shaking. “You’re backing off, turning me over to someone else.”
“No.”
“Then what is it you can’t do?” He was talking in circles, giant riddles she couldn’t solve. On top of everything else swirling in her mind, she didn’t need him adding to the confusion. Not that he hadn’t already. Now he was putting it into ever more circuitous words.
His fingers tightened on the window frame, and he kept his eyes on the outside. “You can’t stay here, you know.”
Fine. He wasn’t going to answer. Fine. Fine. Fine. She didn’t deserve to know anyway. All she’d done was put him in danger. If she really cared about him, she’d ask for someone else, would let him off the hook.
But fear kept her from asking Wyatt to leave. She didn’t really know any of the other officers very well. She definitely didn’t trust the federal agents outside. She’d met them only once and they were entirely too by the book for her. The way she’d once thought Wyatt was. If her world was going to rock again and she was going to have to leave the safety of everything she knew, she wanted something solid with her for as far as she could carry it. She wanted Wyatt, even if he was rejecting her as hard as he could.
Sinking onto the couch, she reached for her mug and cradled it in her hands. She couldn’t make herself take a sip. Her stomach would surely revolt, but she needed the warmth in her hands, the reminder she’d once had a sister who’d loved her...until Jenna had shoved her away.
The handmade clock she’d bought from Larissa Nielsen ticked off more seconds than she cared to count before Wyatt pulled his phone from his pocket and read the screen. “Chief Thompson’s coming. He’s got Agent Nance with him.” He finally looked over his shoulder at her, finally met her eyes.
And his expression told her the news they brought with them would not be good.
* * *
Jenna was killing him.
Wyatt braced one hand on the window frame and scrubbed the other along his jaw, scraping a couple of days’ worth of beard. No, it wasn’t fair to blame this on her. The situation was killing him.
His muscles physically ached with the need to walk across the room, sit on the couch next to Jenna and shield her. No words, just presence. No need to talk about how much pain twisted in his chest over not being able to hold her.
Rich’s footsteps on the stairs reinforced the common sense he’d laid on Wyatt earlier. Distance. Distance was the only way t
o keep her safe. Not that it was doing him any good. He was focused more on trying not to think of her than he was when he was thinking of her.
Whatever that meant.
He unlocked the door, then returned to his station as Rich entered, followed by the chief and Agent Nance.
When the door was firmly closed behind him, Chief Thompson broke the silence. “You can stand down, Wyatt. I’ve got enough men downstairs, and this conversation involves you.”
Wyatt’s eyebrows drew together, and he turned from the window, wary about letting his guard slip. He’d been Jenna’s primary protector from the start. Were they about to relieve him of this duty now?
She was watching him from her perch on the edge of the couch. As strong as he knew she was, it was clear to anyone this was taking a toll. The lines around her eyes were deep. Her mouth was tight. And she was looking straight at Wyatt with a gaze filled with uncertainty and pain.
Pain he’d caused by jerking her emotions back and forth.
He glanced at Rich. The man was right. His emotions were going to keep him from effectively protecting Jenna.
But Rich was also wrong. It was too late to squelch his feelings now. They were already firmly in place, and they were going to affect him no matter what. Nothing was going to make him back off and let someone else watch over her. His emotions were the very thing that would make him take twice as many precautions as a man who cared nothing for her.
He couldn’t tell her any of those things, not while things were so far out of his control, but he also couldn’t leave her to stand on her own.
Securing his pistol in its holster, he edged around Agent Nance and settled onto the couch beside Jenna, not touching her but close enough to offer his support. From the steel in the agent’s gaze, she was going to need it.
The federal agent was looking at Jenna as though she was the guilty party. It was all Wyatt could do not to reach over and take her hand.
Even Chief Thompson’s expression was grim as he settled into a side chair, watching Jenna and Wyatt.
Agent Nance stayed standing, though he backed up to lean against the fireplace. “I assume you’d like us to continue calling you Ms. Clark?”
They knew who she really was. Wyatt’s heart ached for her.
Jenna lifted her head, her expression guarded. “Yes.”
“I believe Chief Thompson told you earlier your sister’s car accident was no accident.”
“He did.” Her voice was thin, weaker than the water she poured into her coffeepot every day. They had to end this soon, or Jenna might crumble. Please, Lord, don’t let there be any more blows coming her way.
“We have several issues at play here.” Agent Nance tugged his phone from a holster on his hip and ran his thumb along the screen before turning to Wyatt. “Officer Stephens, you played a major role in the investigation of the truck found on Overton Road?”
“Yes.” This was heading in a direction he didn’t want to go. If they were tying Amy’s death to the truck they’d found, that could only mean—
“We have a problem.” Chief Thompson sat forward in the chair and braced his elbows on his knees, eyes intent on Jenna, then on Wyatt. “Agent Nance has been briefing me on their investigation into the men who murdered Jenna’s sister.”
“Grant Meyer.” She whispered the name, but it was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
The chief motioned for Agent Nance to take the other chair across from the couch.
Nance hesitated, then took a seat, never breaking his attention from Jenna. “Grant Meyer went into the wind after your sister’s murder.”
Jenna flinched, but no one acted as if they noticed. Wyatt laid a hand on her shoulder. This guy could really use a little more tact. He bit the inside of his lip. Now he could see why Jenna nearly ripped him apart when he’d been delivering horrible news to Erin a few months earlier.
“Meyer had quite the empire in Texas. He’d engineered a Texas circuit to move people around the state. Some of his employees were in debt bondage. He shipped them over from Mexico and multiple countries in South America, then forced them to work off the debt in his businesses. Did you know any of this?”
“No.”
“What did you know about Logan Cutter’s involvement?”
Jenna’s mouth opened, then closed, nothing more than a small squeak escaping. She looked at Wyatt, seeming to seek support, before she swallowed and her voice returned, stronger this time. “Nothing about his involvement with Grant Meyer until I was told of it yesterday. Right before I... Before I ran from him, I found out...” She looked at Wyatt again, ran her tongue across her top lip, then stared at the floor. The silence in the room hung heavy. It was clear Nance was going to wait until she said it. “He was buying women.”
“And you had no idea?”
“None.” The pain in her eyes was enough to undo every man in the room. Even Chief Thompson, who worked hard to temper the compassion lying close to the surface, looked wounded.
Agent Nance appeared to be unaffected. He sat in the chair, watching Jenna with a look that bordered on disinterest.
But Wyatt recognized it. Underneath the bored expression he was searching, waiting for her to give him something only he knew he was looking for.
And he’d do whatever it took to get it.
Wyatt wanted to punch him in the nose.
As a law-enforcement officer, he understood, but his understanding didn’t stop him from wanting to put an end to this. He shifted, but a quick look from the chief settled him. Let this play out. Don’t interfere.
It was killing him.
Agent Nance glanced at his phone. “Logan Cutter was murdered in his home two days before he was supposed to testify against Grant Meyer. He’d made a deal to reduce his sentence in exchange for his testimony.”
Jenna inhaled sharply. “So it’s true. He really was moving people, not equipment?”
“You really didn’t know?”
Jenna choked on something that sounded like a cross between a hysterical laugh and a sob. “I told you. I had no idea. He cut me off from everyone I knew. I let him take me away from my sister. It didn’t even cross my mind he wasn’t just...in love with me enough to want me all to himself. Until he hit me, I had no idea what he was doing to me, let alone to anyone else. He didn’t let me see the other side of his life. In fact, he controlled everything I saw and everyone I talked to. He...” Her hands covered her eyes. “I didn’t know him at all. And he didn’t care about me at all.” She edged the barest inch away from Wyatt.
With a sharp, stinging clarity, he knew. She expected every man to treat her like Cutter had. Like her mother had. To not care about her. To see her as less than human.
Even Wyatt.
He shot a hard look at Rich. He couldn’t let her believe she was worth nothing to him.
Nance caught his attention, leaning forward in his chair. “You mean to—”
“What exactly is the problem Chief Thompson mentioned, sir?” Wyatt wasn’t going to let Nance grill Jenna until she fell apart. She’d had enough.
Nance glared at him. Wyatt had overstepped, the small-town cop running over the federal investigator.
He didn’t care.
Chief Thompson intervened. “The men we took into custody at Christa’s farm are talking. They work for Grant Meyer. He’s purchased land north of town under an alias, looking to create a stop on a north-south pipeline, exactly like you suspected all along, Wyatt. One of his men spotted Jenna, who looks—”
“Exactly like her sister.” Wyatt sat on the couch and stared at the painting of Anson’s Ridge above the fireplace. “How does something like that happen? What kind of huge coincidence brought him to the same place Jenna ran?”
“No coincidence.” For the first time, Nance looked compassionate, but he squelched it so fast Wyatt wasn’t sure he
’d seen correctly. “Ms. Clark, your real name is Genevieve Brady. Who helped you get a new identity? Who helped you move here?”
She gasped. “No. No. No.” It was almost as though she couldn’t think enough to say any more. “He would never point them to me.”
“Anthony Reynolds didn’t reveal your location.”
“You know about Anthony?”
A slight smile tipped Agent Nance’s lips, then vanished. “Anthony Reynolds has worked for us for years. We’ve fed him resources, new papers and identities, in return for information. He led us to a lot of bad people, including Logan Cutter. However, we had no idea he’d used those resources to make you disappear until one of our agents spotted you while we were here investigating the truck. We knew Amy Brady’s twin sister had vanished, but we were working under the assumption that Cutter had killed you.”
Jenna gasped, then dug her teeth into her lip. She was probably thinking how close their suspicions had almost been to the truth.
Wyatt wanted to ask Nance to step outside and have a conversation about tact.
“The thing is...” Nance scratched his cheek, then shifted his phone to his thigh. “Anthony Reynolds tucked you away here in Mountain Springs because he knew the area. He was hiding you from Logan Cutter, not from Grant Meyer, who’d been scouting here over a decade ago until he decided the area was too remote. He had Reynolds do the legwork when he was first checking out this area. Problem was, when he went underground, he had to rely on his past intel, so he went with what he’d already researched and started to look in this area again.”
“And Anthony didn’t warn me?”
“Anthony Reynolds is currently in protective custody in a secure location. Someone ratted him out to Meyer.” There was another flash of compassion. “We need to get you into hiding as well. Fast. Word is out about you living here, and Meyer has offered his men a reward for your sister. He doesn’t have a lot of men left, but every one of them is after Amy Brady. We’re going to put you in a safe house.” He turned to Wyatt. “You’re going with her. We have a place—”
