Fatal Response

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...

Cry. His brokenness would break her.

But his footsteps didn’t pause as he headed up the hall. The outside door opened and shut softly and the building fell silent.

Erin dropped her chin to her chest and stared at the scuffed toes of her black boots, feeling as though her spine couldn’t support her any longer. Last night had been too long, too much of a breakneck ride down the mountain at top speed. She couldn’t do any more. And if she didn’t get out of this building in the next ten seconds, she was going to fall to pieces.

Maybe she’d make the drive home slowly with the windows down. Maybe last night would blow away somewhere into the fall mountain mist.

When she broke through the door into the early morning light, she scanned the parking lot, half expecting to see Jason waiting.

The small front lot was empty.

She’d deny until her last breath that his departure left her with a hint of disappointment. It was for the best. He was gone. Hopefully for good, the way he should have been when their divorce was final.

Jerking open the door to the Bronco, Erin climbed in and reached for the seat belt as she angled her foot toward the brake. Her heel rolled on something and an all-too-familiar sound paralyzed her, cold terror icing her movements and driving the world into slow motion.

No. There was no way. None. She had to be dreaming. Or hallucinating.

Tilting her head, she looked at her foot, throat dry, head pounding...

And found a rattlesnake beneath the heel of her boot.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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