Fatal Response

Everything could have been different if he’d understood her side of the story. But he never had and, in the end, he’d simply thrown up his hands and walked away.

Hands shaking, Erin grabbed the pot from the coffee maker and turned on the water in the sink to fill it, but she misjudged the distance and clanked the metal carafe against the faucet, dropping it with a clatter.

There wasn’t enough reserve left to care. Instead, she lowered her chin to her chest and stared at the gray tile floor.

Her eyes slipped shut against the mist threatening to build into full-on tears. She was not crying. Not now. Never where anyone might see.

“I see you’re handling tonight’s events well.”

Erin jumped at the deep masculine voice behind her, then relaxed when she found the source. “Tonight’s not the night to sneak up on me, Wyatt.”

Her cousin bent and grabbed the pot, then set it in the sink. The badge on his black Mountain Springs Police Department jacket gleamed in the fluorescent lights overhead. “Wasn’t trying to. You just looked like you could use some—”

“I don’t need help.” Snatching the carafe, she shoved it under the water and waited for it to fill. “I need coffee. You want coffee?” Truth was, with her hands shaking and mind racing, coffee was the last thing she needed, but it would give her something to do until he left. Wyatt Stephens had a way of figuring out all of her hidden secrets. It was one of the reasons her cousin was the only person who knew she’d once been married to Jason. If she’d tried to keep him in the dark, he’d have figured it out. He read her almost as well as Jason did.

The difference was, Wyatt’s ability to read her mind came from growing up together. Jason’s came from a whole other kind of relationship.

Erin balled her fists to keep from digging her fingers into her scalp. She didn’t need Jason Barnes in her headspace.

“I just got here, but I wanted to check on you before I headed to the crime scene.” Wyatt laid a hand on her shoulder to keep her from turning her back fully to him. “You want to talk about it? What you saw—”

“Was something I couldn’t stop.” Her stomach knotted as the horrible crunching thud seemed to echo in the room. She didn’t want to talk about the collision either. A woman was dead because Erin hadn’t been able to rescue her. It was her job. She’d failed.

“That’s twice you’ve cut me off in the past thirty seconds.” With a gentle tug, Wyatt turned her to face him. He took the carafe from her hand and set it behind her on the counter. “What else is happening? You don’t usually—”

“I don’t usually see helpless women get purposely mowed down.”

“That’s three times.”

With a sigh, Erin pulled away from her cousin’s grip and leaned back against the counter, shoving her hands into her pockets as she stared at the black leather couch across the room. “Jason’s here.”

It took a second for the name to register, but she could tell when it sank in. Wyatt’s chin lifted slightly. “Why?”

“I have no idea.” Erin ran over the brief encounter, leaving out the part where the sight of him had driven her back half a decade.

“Did he say how long he’s staying?”

She shook her head as her phone vibrated in the thigh pocket of her navy blue uniform pants. After pulling it out, she read the screen.

Heard there was some excitement. You headed home early? We’re out of coffee.

Why was her father awake at 1:12 a.m.? And why couldn’t he, just once, ask about her? She was half tempted to shoot back an I’m fine, Dad, thanks for asking.

Instead, Erin shoved her phone into her pocket while Wyatt watched with a raised eyebrow.

“You could head home, you know.”

“Chief Kelliher is on his way back from out of town, so I’m in charge even if the station is offline during the investigation. I’d rather stay here anyway. At least then there’d be a chance at sleep instead of...” Instead of cleaning whatever mess her father had decided to leave for her, running through the inevitable argument about why she didn’t find a regular day job, then mowing the huge two-acre lawn before she could drop into her own bed.

“Move out, Erin. Make him stand on his own two feet and stop treating you like his personal servant.”

It was the same thing he’d been preaching since she’d turned eighteen. Jason had echoed him every time. The difference was, Jason had a greater stake in her moving out than Wyatt ever had.

Neither of them understood she couldn’t simply walk away, so she’d stopped arguing. It was her fault her father suffered from the medical issues that held him back in life.

Her father had never liked Jason, had deemed him trouble from the start. Maybe Erin should have listened instead of suggesting they elope the day after high school graduation...and drive to South Carolina in style in her father’s prized ’68 Camaro.

On the way home, a drunk driver ran them off the road at the bridge over Wisdom Creek. They’d tumbled down the embankment and come to rest in the creek, leaving the car destroyed, Jason with a concussion, and Erin with a broken leg and busted ribs.

Her father blamed Jason, and his anger skyrocketed, blowing in an explosion when Jason came to the house the day she got home from the hospital. Before either of them could confess their elopement, Erin’s father had collapsed, the combination of his diabetes and his anger making him the victim of a stroke that had forced him into months of rehab and Erin into silence about her marriage.

It was her responsibility to take care of her father, but the one man who should have understood and supported her the most had never been able to understand. Jason had pushed her to tell the truth about their marriage so they could stop sneaking stolen moments together. He wanted to tell her father, to have her leave home and move in with him.

No, Jason had never understood. Her father had needed to be stronger first. Another blowup could have killed him.

She had to make it up to her father for wrecking his car and his life.

And he never let her forget it.

The radio on Wyatt’s shoulder crackled. He tipped his head to listen, then glanced toward the door. “I have to go, but if you need me, I’m—”

“Only a phone call away?”

“That’s four.” Wyatt turned and walked out, his footsteps echoing through the outer office and into the hallway.

Erin stood in the tiny kitchen, lips pursed. There was too much energy in her twitching muscles. She needed to put them to work.

She strode through the office and across the hall into the bay. The low murmur of voices filtered in through the garage doors at the back of the building, but the distance was mercifully too far to pick out words.

The engine still gleamed from her earlier restlessness, so she grabbed her supplies and walked to the end of the row where the brush truck stood. Her lone footsteps echoed off the high ceiling, the familiarity as comforting as her own heartbeat. No matter what happened in her life, a firefighter was what she was meant to be. She knew it in silences like this as well as she knew it in turnout gear facing a fully engulfed structure.

A small smile edged up her face for the first time in hours, and she let her fingers trail along the side of the large red utility vehicle. She inspected hoses and dials, then dug into the bucket for an old toothbrush. Might as well hit those spots where nobody ever remembered to clean.

She was standing on the running board polishing a handrail when a door opened on the other side of the building. Footsteps, slow but steady, paced toward her.

It was probably Wyatt. He had never been able to understand I don’t want to talk.

Lowering her hand, Erin grabbed the rail and turned, but she kept her place as she checked her watch. Over an hour on the truck. No wonder her neck ached as much as her heart.

The man who rounded the front of the ladder truck wasn’t her cousin.

Jason.

Her fingers tightened on the handrail while she fought to keep her expression impassive, but her insides jolted at his unexpected appearance. In the fullness of the overhead lights, he was everything she remembered and a whole lot more. Those blue eyes had first caught her attention over a decade earlier. While they held concern, they lacked the warmth she’d once enjoyed. Instead, they were wiser and darker, as though they’d absorbed everything he’d seen on his many deployments. His thick sandy-blond hair was longer on the top, tousled, but the smooth skin at his neck said it had been recently cut.

He’d filled out over the past few years, his shoulders broader, his chest firmer beneath his creamy beige sweater. And while it was impossible, he even seemed to be a couple of inches taller.

His height made her glad she’d stayed on her perch on the brush truck. He’d always towered over her by several inches.

Warmth breezed through her with the memory. She’d loved the way her head tucked beneath his chin when he held her. It made her feel protected, like nothing could touch her. The outside world and all its troubles had always drifted far away.

“You okay?”

She blinked twice, warmth morphing to embarrassment. She was staring at him. Had been for who knew how long. Balling her free hand, Erin dug her nails into her palm and turned back to the truck, inspecting an invisible spot on a coupling. “I’m fine.”

“And that’s why you’re polishing chrome in the dead of night?”

Jason’s voice held a knowing it shouldn’t. How often had he found her at the station doing the same thing? He’d always known where she’d run after an argument. He’d always found her.

Yeah. There would be no making up tonight or ever again. At least not with Jason Barnes.

She had to remind herself why it hadn’t worked between them. He’d repeatedly tried to force her hand with her father, refusing to understand why she couldn’t tell her dad the truth about their marriage. Jason had fought against her, not with her, and certainly not for her.

Armed with her catalog of reasons he was every bad idea in the world, she faced him. “What are you doing back in town?”

“Stationed at Camp McGee as an instructor. Got here about a month ago.”

“A month. Were you going to warn me?” The words bit as the emotions of the night congealed into an overarching anger she couldn’t harness. Jumping from the truck, she prepared to pour out every tirade she’d ever practiced in her mind.

But footsteps on the other side of the bay stopped her.

Jason turned toward the sound at the same time she did.

Wyatt rounded the corner with police chief Arch Thompson at his side, their expressions grim.

Erin tensed. Whatever was coming, it was clear...

Her world was about to tilt again.

* * *

“Meth?” Erin eyed the evidence bag police chief Arch Thompson held at his side.

The whole night was spinning faster, circling with all of the ferocity of a whirlpool that threatened to drag her under. Now it had bled into the small dayroom of the fire station. Her home away from home had been invaded by the carnage outside, with Chief Thompson adding more pieces to a story spinning so far out of control it was ceasing to make sense.

Tall and slim, Thompson looked more like a pro basketball player than a small-town police chief. But tonight, his typically smiling eyes were dark and troubled. He stood between the kitchenette and the couch in the dayroom, Wyatt beside him, the two men dominating the space. “Afraid so. And even more, there’s—”

“No.” Jason had been standing by the back door, silently watching the men. The rigid set of his shoulders and the corded muscles in his neck held a tension Erin hadn’t seen since their last face-to-face conversation, right before he walked out the door forever. “No. Angie wasn’t a courier. I’d have known. We’d have known.”

Who was we? For the hundredth time in two hours, Erin wondered who Angie was to Jason. He seemed to walk a tightrope in his grief, one that fell to anger on one side and sorrow on the other. Underneath it all, though, there was an underlying something she couldn’t quite get a read on. The full story was bigger than he was letting on.

“Erin says the suspect vehicle came by the station a few times, but has never hung around. She also says she saw Angie Daniels exit her vehicle tonight and hold up this envelope. Without testing I can’t be a hundred percent positive, but having had more than our fair share of busts lately, I’m almost certain. This is crystal meth.” Chief Thompson lifted the bag higher. “Convince me she was innocent.”

Jason scrubbed his hand over his hair, his expression drawn. “Angie was a straight arrow. A volunteer who kept spouses in the loop when the soldiers were deployed. One of those people who never had a bad mood. Nothing she ever did or said points to this.”

“Why would she get out of the car telling me not to ‘hurt him’?” The words were out before Erin could stop them. She had to say something, to defend the woman she’d failed to save. If she continued to keep silent, she’d find herself across the room with her arms around her ex-husband, trying to comfort him in the loss of whoever this woman was to him. It didn’t settle well with her heart or with her stomach, if she was being perfectly honest. But no matter what had happened in the past or who they were now, she couldn’t let Jason stand by and listen to more accusations against someone he obviously cared about. “And she was scared. Of me. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“She could have been high.” Wyatt’s voice was low, almost as though he didn’t want to say the words. When Jason straightened as though he was going to argue, Wyatt held up his hand to stop him. “I have to ask the hard question here, Jason, the one we’re all thinking. Angie Daniels was married to your teammate, but you’re awfully invested in this.” He swallowed hard, glanced at Erin, then back at Jason. “Were the two of you—”

“No.” The emphatic tone in Jason’s voice left no room for argument.

Relief made Erin grab for the back of the couch, but recrimination soon followed. A woman was dead. Was she really concerned about how much Jason cared? Now? Lord, give me back my right mind. She sure wasn’t getting through this night without His help.

Sinking to the edge of a recliner a few feet away from Erin, Jason rested his elbows on his knees and let his hands hang. He stared at the wall for a long time, almost as though he was watching a movie no one else in the room could see.

Chief Thompson shifted but said nothing as Wyatt leveled a hard gaze on Jason, the unspoken request for an explanation hanging heavy in the air. The two men had been best friends in high school, practically family after Jason’s parents abandoned him and he filed for emancipation rather than go into the foster system. That had to be the reason Wyatt was here now, because Jason was hurting and he couldn’t stand not to be there for the man who had been closer than a brother.

Although as far as Erin knew, the two hadn’t spoken since Jason joined the army eight years earlier. When Jason left town for the army, he’d cut ties with everyone and left a lot of pain behind. The only one who knew how deeply personal it had been for Erin was Wyatt, and they’d done their best to carry each other through.

“We’re a tight team. Tighter than most after...” Jason’s voice seemed to come from far away, as though what he was saying came from deep inside, from a hidden place he didn’t access often. “Six months ago, we had an incident where our commander was killed. Master Sergeant Jonathan Fitzgerald. Most of us were wounded, some worse than others.” When he lifted his head, it was to look straight at Erin. “There’s the short version of how a bunch of us were sent to Camp McGee. The army believes our experiences can help train other teams.”

Not to mention give them time stateside to heal. The pain of what Jason wasn’t saying seared Erin. There was definitely more to his story, and it bled out slowly in what he couldn’t talk about. “It’s made you a tighter family.”

Though the words were soft, Jason caught them. He nodded a silent thank you, then stood and turned back to the two police officers. “There’s nothing else to tell unless you know something else you need to tell me.”

The quick look the chief and Wyatt exchanged made Erin brace herself against the back of the couch. The drugs were half of the issue.

“What?” Jason had seen it too.

“Mrs. Daniels’s cell phone was unlocked, and there were messages indicating she’d been running drugs for a while. But her last message was the one we’re concerned with now. It directed her to deliver the package to the firefighter on duty at the station by midnight, or someone would kill her husband.”

THREE

“What?” Erin wavered, her fingers digging into the black leather sofa she’d been leaning against.

Instinctively, Jason reached for her, but he drew back as Wyatt stepped around him and laid a hand on Erin’s shoulder.

Jason stood down. Right. He got it. Erin wasn’t his to take care of anymore.

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.