Shielded in the Shadows

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Glancing toward the sky as he drove, he didn’t see a single cloud. Hadn’t noticed any that morning, either. But he still felt like smiling.

  “They think I’m seeing someone.”

  She dropped the bomb on him right when he was starting to feel better. And yet...he didn’t feel himself exploding. He just felt...still okay.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing, which is why they think that. What was I going to say? I’m in a sexually responsible situation?” She paused. “Frankly, I’m just as good with them drawing their own conclusions for now. It’ll keep them off my back for a while. They mean well. And I love them dearly. But if I want to be single for the rest of my life and raise a family that way, then that’s my business.”

  He agreed. Completely. Was glad to hear her say the words aloud—confirmation that they were both still on the same page. A little bit of disappointment was to be expected. In his world, with the choices he’d made for himself, it was a given.

  “But, Jayden? Just so you know...if I ever was going to change my mind about the single part, which I haven’t, it would be with you.”

  She disconnected before he could get words past the constriction in his throat.

  * * *

  Emma was on edge, filled with too much energy to be comfortable lying around after less than a day at home. She’d begun working from bed while she’d still been in the hospital, having a coworker submit an emergency motion to put off her trial a week, and going over other hearings that had to be postponed, or turned over to someone else.

  Once she got home, she took her computer to bed with her—other than at night when Jayden climbed in beside her. Just to sleep, he announced. No sex for at least another forty-eight hours. His wishes, not doctor’s orders.

  She’d wanted to ask for a postponement of the previously agreed upon date for the end of their fling, but didn’t.

  It seemed like her accident, as horrible as it had been, might have had a great gift hiding in there, too. When she’d woken in her hospital room to see Jayden there, sitting alone with her, holding her hand...

  He’d let go after that one squeeze, but he’d been there. Holding her hand.

  Like she mattered to him.

  And she’d known, opening her eyes and seeing him, that she’d felt better just seeing his face.

  What it all meant, she didn’t know. Didn’t even want to guess. Or hope. She just wanted to go with the flow. Maybe it was Ms. Shadow rearing her head, but it didn’t feel that way to Emma. Over the past couple of days—since Jayden had left Sunday morning—she’d been free from her war with her lesser self.

  Could be she was changing. Healing from the past. Learning who she was. Finding peace with her place in the world.

  Could be, though, she was off on the wild side, falling in love with the wrong guy, and would end up face-planted in a well of self-disgust again.

  This time really seemed different, though. She wasn’t frantic. Or refusing to listen to the “mother” voice inside her.

  She’d give it a few days. See what happened. And how she felt.

  In the meantime, she’d called Chantel, asked about the teenage boy who’d lived in Suzie’s old neighborhood four years before.

  The detective called back Thursday afternoon. Emma was showered, in shorts and a cropped black shirt at her desk, feeling fine, other than a bit of pulling at the incision site on her forehead. Her hair covered the cut, which she was told to leave unbandaged now. Other than the stitches, and residual moments of panic when she relived that night on the road two days before, she was pretty much fully recovered. She’d even driven to the grocery store for some veggies for lunch.

  “My guys talked to seven different households in that neighborhood, all of whom had been there for more than four years, and not one of them was aware of a teenage boy living in the neighborhood back then,” Chantel said.

  Getting up from her desk, Emma walked to the window, looked out at her pool. She hadn’t been out to it since the night a trespasser had entered her yard and vandalized her sliding-glass door. Her pool guy had been there...

  He had a key to the back gate. Could he have been the one who’d—

  No. There was absolutely nothing he’d need her to “leave alone.” And he was as short as she was.

  There’d been no teenage boy in Suzie’s neighborhood?

  “I don’t get it.” She broke the silence that had fallen on the line. “Suzie didn’t feed me that information. She’d have never mentioned the kid before I specifically asked the question.”

  “Did her answer seem hesitant?” Chantel asked. “Like she was making it up as she went along? Maybe to throw you off someone else?”

  Because what if there was someone else? Someone who knew of Bill’s crimes and was trying to frame him?

  “No,” she said, disappointed that they didn’t have their answer. Emma interviewed and questioned people every single day. Witnesses, defendants, even expert witnesses and police officers. She was pretty good at figuring out when someone was lying to her...

  “She gave instances, like she was reliving them,” she told Chantel. “She’d smile, one time she almost started to cry, as she talked about the kid. And what Bill would have done to him, an innocent boy.”

  “What does Jayden have to say about it?”

  “Nothing. I asked him not to question Bill about it, to protect Suzie. I sure don’t want him going after her because she talked to me...”

  “My guys tell me that Jayden was in the neighborhood Tuesday morning. He talked to at least a couple of the families we talked to.”

  Everything within Emma froze. Jayden Powell had had no reason to be in that neighborhood. His job was to keep an eye on Bill Heber. Period. So what had he been doing, talking to Heber’s old neighbors? After she’d told him about the kid? He was a wild man. A man who didn’t follow protocol unless it suited him. He did what he believed he needed to do to get the job done, no matter the ramifications to himself.

  He was a man who lived for his work. Lived his work. To give offenders second chances.

  Just how much would he do to protect Bill’s? He’d admitted the case was personal to him.

  Had she let Shadow blind her to the truth? Was Jayden going to protect Bill at all cost?

  Back at her desk, she forced herself to focus. “What did he ask them?”

  “Just what we did...about any teenager who might have been in the neighborhood. It sounds like he only hit up a couple of houses and left, like he was on the street no more than five minutes or so.”

  Chantel didn’t sound at all worried. To the contrary, her tone held...admiration. Could Jayden have been in the neighborhood to find dirt on Bill? To corroborate Suzie’s story in the only way he could, since Emma had made him promise not to talk to Bill himself?

  Emma just wished, since the information about the kid had come from her, that Jayden had told her about his plans. That he’d included her.

  He was under no professional obligation to do so.

  But that didn’t stop her from being disappointed that he hadn’t.

  * * *

  Jayden stopped to pick up dinner from his favorite beachside bistro on the way home Thursday evening. Other than the huge fact that they were no closer to finding out who’d tried to run Emma off the road Tuesday night, he’d had a fairly decent week. The parole board had upheld his recommendation that Luke Lincoln’s parole be revoked. For the time being, the offender was sitting in a jail cell and his wife and daughter had returned home to resume their lives.

  Harold Wallace and his son had had some good news, too. The boy was being charged as a juvenile with battery of an officer, not attempted murder, and while he’d be serving time in detention, his sentence would much less than it might have been. And Harold and his girlfriend, who were planning to get married within a cou
ple of weeks, would have visitation rights.

  And Jayden’s self-mandated, forty-eight hours of no sex with Emma, just to be sure there were no adverse reactions to her head injury, was up...if she felt the same way. He waved to the officer who’d been watching her home while Jayden was at work, and let himself into the house with the key she’d given him.

  He only had the key until she was no longer a target. Still, it felt damned good, using it. As long as he was making her happy by doing so. It couldn’t be about him. He couldn’t lose sight of his mission. Or he’d lose the ability to see any good in himself. Any honor in his life. He’d made himself a promise—his life was not to enjoy. His life would only be used to serve others. How could he reach out for fullness when he’d been responsible for preventing someone else from experiencing any more life?

  There’d been no forward movement on Emma’s case. Chantel and everyone else involved had reached major frustration levels. Emma hadn’t been able to put any identifiers on the truck and, even with the incident being broadcast on the local news, no one had seen the accident. They’d found skid marks on the road. Knew the truck had newer tires on it, but make and model—it could have been any of more than a thousand trucks in the city of Santa Raquel alone.

  The sex between him and Emma was mind-blowing that night. He took more care to be gentle, to rein himself in, even when Emma tried to get him to play harder. And yet, when they climaxed, looking into each other’s eyes, he could have sworn their bodies left the bed for a second. Nuts, he knew. But there it was.

  Friday night was more of the same. Their coupling was maybe not as quiet, yet when they reached their peaks, the waves came again and again, prolonging the ecstasy so long, emotions crept in with the physical bliss to escalate the satisfaction in a way he’d never before known.

  Normally they went right to sleep afterward. After the out-of-body experience he’d just had, he wasn’t ready for sleep, but was loath to say anything to Emma. Was she finding their time together as odd as he was? As powerful?

  Instead of waning, his passion just seemed to be procreating.

  The idea brought a wave of panic. Passion drained from his system. It was an understood rule of life. Something he counted on.

  “I have to ask you something.” Her words didn’t ease his discomfort any.

  “Of course,” he said, bracing himself.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you followed up on what I told you Suzie said about the kid in the neighborhood?”

  He wanted the answer to be obvious. Something like, because he’d been under no professional obligation to do so.

  “How do you know I did?” He was disappointed in the lameness of his question as he lay there on his back in the dark. He and Emma didn’t cuddle when they slept.

  “I told Chantel about it and when her guys went to question everyone in the neighborhood, you’d already been there.”

  “I only talked to a couple of guys.” Like that made any difference? Or in any way spoke to her original question? Why hadn’t he told her?

  “I know. I’ve actually known for a couple of days.”

  Turning his head, he tried to read her expression in the darkness. “And you’re only bringing it up now?”

  “It’s been bugging me. I tried to let it go, but I think I really need to know.”

  Need to know. He was lying in quicksand. More dangerous than quicksand because while it might swallow him up, it wasn’t going to kill him. No, he’d be left lying there with no way to save himself from making another grave mistake—breaking the promise he’d made to himself in a deal that allowed him to live with what he’d once been.

  “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to think that I was overstepping my position.”

  “Even though you did.”

  “It was the night of the accident,” he said, trying to figure it all out. “I had new information where Bill was concerned, if what Suzie had just told you was true. You’d almost been killed. I had to know if I was wrong and Bill was involved.”

  “He is involved, Jayden. I’m sure of it.” She took a breath. “I know the evidence is mostly still just circumstantial, but it’s strongly circumstantial. And if we could get Suzie’s testimony... She wanted to talk to me...she had more to say when she was sitting there facing me again. She just didn’t have the courage to say it.”

  “There was no teenage boy in the neighborhood,” he told her. “Chantel’s people talked to a lot more people than I did, and I’m sure she told you as much.”

  “I think there was a boy, just not on their street. We’re honing in on just that one street. Maybe he lived on the next block over. Or behind them. The way Suzie talked about him—the specifics and emotion involved—I’m sure there was a young man. And that she’s protecting him.”

  He wasn’t so sure, though he understood her perspective. He didn’t like that they couldn’t find any other obvious suspects for targeting Emma, but something was not adding up in her scenario.

  “What if Suzie’s been lying to you all along?”

  Emma sat straight up in bed. “She’s the victim here, Jayden, and now you’re trying to make her out to be a liar? We’ve seen the X-rays, read the expert testimony, in addition to her own. The case is about who hit her, remember?”

  Stepping into the shorts and T-shirt she’d put on first thing in the morning, she headed for the door.

  He hadn’t meant, in any way, to say that Suzie wasn’t the victim. Only that she wasn’t being straight with them about the circumstances of her abuse. Because she was scared to death, probably. He wasn’t so much faulting her as he was trying to get to the whole truth so they could make the right arrest and protect not only Suzie but Emma, too.

  He didn’t get up and go tell her so. He got up, grabbed a blanket and pillow off the spare bed and went out to the couch instead.

  She was pissed at him.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  Chapter 21

  It only took Emma a couple of minutes, and a cooler mind, to calm down.

  Shaking her head, she leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over her middle, and listened as Jayden moved out to the couch. She didn’t blame him. She was letting emotion get in the way of work.

  He’d made the absolute right choice to go hard after Bill, to use whatever information he had to find some proof that would allow them to put Bill’s sorry ass in jail. He did what she’d have done. What she’d have wanted him to do.

  He hadn’t told her because he hadn’t wanted her to know he’d stepped out of line?

  She straightened. Wait a minute.

  So...she’d been letting emotions, personal emotions, cloud her judgment when she’d been hurt that he hadn’t told her what he’d done.

  But he’d not told her...for the exact same reason! He’d been letting personal emotions cloud his judgment.

  They both were developing feelings and letting those emotions interfere!

  She stood there alone, absorbing her discovery. What in hell did they do now?

  They had to at least talk about it. That much was clear.

  To discuss options. Probabilities.

  Whether or not there were any possibilities for their fling to turn into something else.

  It was way too soon to tell anything for sure, of course. But should they at least discuss opening some doors? As long as they were both putting everything on the table, keeping their eyes wide open?

  Was there a way to have a long-term situation?

  Or possibly even a family, down the road, without the marriage? Or even living together?

  Maybe she could still inseminate as planned, raise her child, and he’d be like an “uncle” who visited often. Could she do that?

  Or was that more of the “too wild” thinking that got her into trouble?

  Was it possible—could
she even open the door to the possibility—that she’d been rash in her decision to never have another long-term partnership?

  Or was Ms. Shadow in control? Messing with her head. Trying to convince her she could have all these things. Just like Ms. Shadow had led her to the back of Keith’s bike all those years ago.

  The only answer she had at the moment was that she couldn’t leave Jayden lying on the couch. Couldn’t leave them both hanging there with her stomping out leading to awkwardness in the morning. It was exactly the kind of thing they were trying to avoid.

  She owed him an apology.

  “Jayden?” Forgoing lights, she sat on the end of the couch, her hip against the balled-up blanket. He’d pulled on his jeans and was lying there flat on his back.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry. I overstepped.”

  “You’re fine. It was a valid question.”

  “Not really. Not with what we signed up for.”

  “Maybe that was unrealistic.”

  So he was seeing that, too. The relief was heady. Not nearly as much as being in his arms, but in a really cool way, just the same.

  Scooting so that her hip pressed against his feet, she put her hand on the blanket covering them. Liking the cozy feel of them.

  “Maybe we should talk about that.” Darkness gave her courage. Or, could she hope, the side of herself that she normally tamped down was finally finding a way to live in the world with her without hurting her or others?

  “I’m listening.”

  He was open to having a conversation, then? The whole idea was new to her, at least to her conscious self. The accident, the scare of it mainly, had changed her. Opened her eyes to the vibrancy of life.

  Waking to see him there...the way that had felt...she couldn’t deny what that had shown her.

  “Maybe this...thing...isn’t just sexual. Maybe we really like each other, too.” She tried out the words, for her own sake as much as his. They were charting new territory together. That’s how relationships worked.