by Jodie Bailey
“‘O ye of little faith.’ Trust the process. If God intended you to be together, you will be, just like Jenna and Wyatt.”
“What about you and Amber?” Sam turned and leaned against the counter, watching the back of Rich’s head. He wasn’t trying to be mean. It was a genuine question. “Why is it some dreams we want work out and some dreams...” Die.
Rich sniffed and turned around, hooking his elbow over the back of his chair. “Can’t answer that. Can only say that I spent months blaming myself for what Fitz’s wife did to Amber. I took the blame for her murder. I should have been there. I should have done more. I should have seen it coming. Fact is, there was nothing I could have done. It was Jenna that finally helped me see the truth. Take that little conversation you and Amy just had and mush it all together and you get a point both of you said with your mouths but neither of you is actually living in your lives. Forgiveness, Maldonado. You have to forgive yourself.”
“I blew it. I wasn’t enough for Lindsay. I didn’t take any of her feelings into account. And I was too late to save Devin Wallace. Even his brother blamed me and rightly so.” Rich had heard the story. In fact, he was the only one Sam had poured the truth about Devin’s death out to, not long after it happened, needing to have someone hear him lay out his sins, possibly offer him some sort of atonement.
“So you were supposed to know ahead of time that this Wallace character was going to break the rules. Maldonado, that was all on him. He knew better than to reach out to old contacts. You guys briefed him over and over against it. He’s the one who did wrong. You did what you could to save him. And as for Lindsay—” Rich shrugged as though he didn’t know what to say “—you both messed that one up. But if I remember right, that was in your pre-Jesus days. I’m guessing if you and Lindsay were still married, you’d both handle everything differently.”
Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at Amy’s tightly closed door. “Maybe.” When Rich leveled him with one of those looks he’d used on the battlefield more than once to muster the troops, Sam gave up. “Okay, yes.”
Draining his cup, Rich set it on the table and stood. He pulled his coat from the back of the chair and shrugged it on. “I’m going out to keep an eye on things. As for you, you have two choices.”
“You know you only outranked me by a couple of months when we were in the army, so you really can’t give me ultimatums here.”
“I still outranked you.” Rich zipped his jacket and checked his pistol at his hip. “You either hit the rack and get some sleep or you talk to Amy and you guys hash this out once and for all. Because if you keep tying yourself up in knots and wasting your mental energy on this, then you really are going to miss the thing that gets her killed.”
FOURTEEN
You’re in love with her.
The words, spoken in an unfamiliar male voice—probably Rich’s—had drifted through the door where Amy still sat with her head buried between her knees. Whatever the conversation was before and after those words, she hadn’t been able to make it out. But those five words had come through as clearly as if Rich had spoken them in her ear.
You’re in love with her.
The conversation after his statement hadn’t been audible, although she’d strained to hear it. She’d finally given up and folded in half again. They couldn’t have been talking about her. Maybe Sam was still in love with his ex-wife. Or maybe he had feelings for Dana, who was graceful and intelligent in a way Amy envied.
But if either of those other women had Sam’s heart, he wouldn’t have kissed her. He was a better man than that. After all that she and Sam had been through, after the way he’d looked at her just now in the small kitchen, as though he’d wanted to repeat the kiss from the night before...
And she’d have let him repeat it. Gladly. More than once. For the rest of her life even.
As much as she wanted to sink into that dream and live there, she couldn’t. Everything was wrong. Sam didn’t understand her truth. He was blinded to the reality of who she was. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man built a life with, and after all that Sam had been through with Lindsay, he deserved better. Something in him seemed to yearn for a white-picket-fence kind of life, and it was likely the mix of his failed marriage, his time in the military and the childhood he had never spoken to her about.
Amy’s life was destined to be lived in secret, never secure, always looking over her shoulder. Sam couldn’t stay in his calling with the marshals and settle down with her wherever she landed next. It would be impossible.
God, why? She pressed her forehead tighter against her knees until her head throbbed. Why would God bring her a man like Sam when she couldn’t be with him? When she was no better than her mother, searching for a fairy tale?
And no matter what Sam said, she couldn’t forgive herself for what she’d done. Maybe Jesus could, but she wasn’t Jesus. She had no lens through which to see herself other than her own, and it was faulty. And what she saw was a guilty woman, one who was responsible for dozens of blackmail and trafficking victims. One who should have opened her eyes and realized what was happening sooner.
You did what was right as soon as you found out what was going on. How could you have known sooner what Meyer and Cutter were up to?
Amy lifted her head, replaying Sam’s words, really inspecting the past for the first time since she’d left El Paso. How could she have known sooner? Grant had kept a set of coded books separate from the main accounts Amy worked with at the spa. She’d have never known they existed if Layla hadn’t told her about them. Everything she’d learned had come from Layla, who’d trusted her enough to tell her the truth, who had trusted Amy with her life.
One tear ran down her cheek, followed by another. It was as though Sam’s words had unlocked something she didn’t know she’d hidden away. She’d sought God’s forgiveness over and over, and she knew He told the truth in the Bible. If she truly believed the way she claimed, then she trusted the sacrifice Jesus had made on her behalf. She was forgiven, and she’d do well to accept forgiveness from Him as well as from herself.
Could she truly forgive herself? Was there really freedom for her instead of condemnation?
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”
The words were nearly as clear as if they’d been spoken aloud. Condemnation. She’d been punishing herself, insisting she deserved to be punished, which meant Christ’s sacrifice equaled nothing in her life.
The bottom fell out of her pain and nearly stole her breath. She’d been living a lie in more ways than one. The worst kind of lie, refusing to believe that Jesus could forgive her.
Oh, God. I am so, so sorry. For the first time in her life, she understood grace. She didn’t get what she deserved. She got to be free.
The front door of the cabin slammed shut, drawing her into the present, into a lighter feeling and a clearer view of not only herself but of the world. Amy pressed her hands against the floor and shoved herself up along the door, then wiped her face with the hem of her sweatshirt.
The hem of Sam’s sweatshirt. It even smelled like him, like that something she’d come to identify with him over the past few months, a scent that lingered in her apartment long after he and Edgecombe left after their meetings.
It nearly made her cry all over again, but she swallowed the tears and faced the door. She might not be able to tell him how she felt, that he’d taken another piece of her heart with him every time she’d seen him, but she could tell him she understood what he had been telling her earlier...that she wasn’t to blame. That she was forgiven.
She turned the knob gently and pulled the door open a sliver, peering through the crack to make certain the mysterious Rich was gone.
Sam was alone in the room, sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. He stared at the floor and didn’t seem to hear Amy as she pulled the door the
rest of the way open and eased into the living area.
When she stepped forward, one of the floorboards creaked under her foot, alerting him to her presence.
Sam lifted his head, then stood, watching her warily as though he thought she might be about to unleash another arrow at him. He shoved his hands in his pockets, a gesture of uncertainty she wasn’t used to seeing in him.
She’d done this to him, had made him feel off balance by aiming for his jugular with that comment earlier, before she’d stormed out and shut the door on him. The thought that she’d caused him pain stuck in her chest, a pain she wasn’t sure how to dislodge. She only knew she had to make it right in the best way she could. Swallowing her pride, she shoved her hands into the pockets on the front of his sweatshirt and forced herself to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. What I said earlier...” She raised her eyebrows and tried to give him a reassuring smile that likely looked more like a grimace. “You were right, and I was wrong. I was self-centered, only seeing things from my point of view, punishing myself and refusing to see that anyone else was involved or that anyone else was hurting.”
Sam stared at her, seeming to read something in her posture or in her expression. Finally, he stepped around the coffee table and walked toward her, each step he took echoing in her heartbeat. Faster. “No, you were right. I wasn’t doing a great job of forgiving myself either.” The look in his eye matched the expression he’d worn before, both at his headquarters and only a few moments before.
It was a look that said he wasn’t going to be content with being her protector or her friend. A look that said she could have everything she dreamed with him...if circumstances were different.
No matter either of their feelings, she was a witness and he was a marshal. She’d be someone new by next week and he’d still be Sam saving the world.
When he stopped in front of her, he looked down at her but didn’t reach for her.
It didn’t matter. His presence was enough. Amy forgot everything that mattered. There was only Sam. Only this moment and this cabin.
Maybe they could successfully hide out in this cabin from the world forever. After all, no one knew they were here.
She dipped her chin away from Sam, not wanting to meet his eye. She could hide forever but he couldn’t. He had a life, and it involved saving other people who weren’t her. She squared her shoulders, bolstering herself to make the hardest speech of her life. “Sam, we should probably talk about—”
“Get down!” Sam grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her behind him, reaching for the gun at his hip in the same motion. “Someone’s at the window.”
Glass shattered behind Amy as Sam shoved her toward the living room. She whirled as she stumbled, catching herself on the arm of the horrible flowered sofa. The window near the kitchen was gone. A shadow moved outside, and a large gray object flew through the window, landing in the center of the room between her and Sam. It hummed and buzzed, throwing off bits of black shrapnel as it landed.
The buzz grew louder as the shrapnel grew thicker.
Not a bomb. Not shrapnel. Wasps. Amy cried out as the first sharp pain bit into her hand.
She stared at the welt as Sam called her name. Her ears rang. Dark spots danced before her eyes. Her throat itched and ached. Amy dropped to the floor and curled into a ball, praying no more would sting her.
Her breath wheezed as the world darkened. She tried to cry out to Sam but nothing escaped her lips that were tingling and swelling. More stings didn’t matter.
She was deathly allergic. One was enough to kill her.
* * *
Sam froze, staring at the huge wasp nest as Amy dropped to the floor. Self-preservation demanded he run.
Amy’s presence demanded he stay. She cried out twice as he dove into the fray, reaching for the back of her sweatshirt to drag her out of the way. “Hang on. I’ve got you.” He dragged her toward the open door to her bedroom, trying to outrace the stinging wasps. His wrist burned with a sting, and another quickly followed on his hand. While bees could kill him, he’d been stung by a wasp and never had a reaction to one. He prayed he wouldn’t have one now.
But Amy...
I didn’t even get to grab my go-bag or my EpiPen. She’d lamented the loss of her go-bag when he’d first picked her up and he’d teased her about keeping one. But she was without her epinephrine and his was on the couch in his own go-bag, a forest of wasps between them.
“Sam...” Amy’s voice came to him, weak and slurred. “I got...” She tried to lift her hand and he saw it, the angry red welt on her palm. She’d been stung, and the way her words were slowing and her body weight growing heavier, she wasn’t as blessed as he was.
She was allergic to wasps. He had to move fast.
As Sam reached her room and prepared to drag her inside and slam the door, Rich burst through the front door. “I heard the glass, but I was on the other side of the house and—” He muttered something and swatted the air. “What in the—”
Sam nearly collapsed in relief. Amy was fading fast. “Toss me my bag on the couch. Grab the two vests off of the chair and bring them.” If they had to move out, he wanted Amy and him both in bulletproof vests as soon as they left the hospital. “Bring the truck around to the back to Amy’s window. We’re going to have to risk the hospital. We’ll go through the window. She can’t get stung again.”
“I can try to catch who did this. They have to be close.” Rich slid the backpack across the floor.
“I need you behind the wheel.” Sam slammed the bedroom door and smashed two more wasps crawling on his sweatshirt, the only thing protecting Amy from more stings.
She tried to ball up on the floor, her eyes never leaving Sam’s face. Already, her lips were swelling. She tried to move her mouth, but nothing came out.
His first instinct was to pull her to him and comfort her, but that moment of comfort could cost her life.
Wrenching himself away from her, Sam tore open his backpack and dug through the main compartment, his fingers blessedly closing around the epinephrine injector. Popping the safety cap, he pulled back and drove the injector into Amy’s thigh.
She flinched but didn’t react otherwise. He held the injector in place for a few seconds, then pulled it out and tossed it aside. Sitting next to Amy, he drew her to his chest, praying frantically it would only take one injection to bring her around. He didn’t have a second dose and he needed to be able to move her into Rich’s truck. If she was dead weight, it would be harder.
And if the injection didn’t work, she’d be dead before they ever reached a hospital. Her forty-two seconds were almost gone.
Gradually, her muscles took on her weight and Amy wasn’t so heavy in his arms. The wheezing eased, but the shaking started. She shuddered against him as the epinephrine hit her system. At least she was breathing. But they had to move quickly. The injection could wear off. In spite of the risks involved in moving her while someone was clearly in the woods, he had to get her to an emergency room.
Outside the window, Rich parked the truck close to the house and jumped out. He opened the rear door, then turned and pounded on the window. Reluctantly, Sam laid Amy on the cot and shoved the window open. “Anyone out there?”
“Not that I can see. Either they’re trying to flush you guys out or they figured the wasps would do the job. You holding up?” He scanned the area as he spoke, watching for movement.
Hefting Amy, Sam held her close. He rushed to the window. “You’re going to be okay. We’re getting you out of here.”
“No. I’ll be fine.” She struggled slightly against him. “We can’t leave here. It’s not safe.”
“And you’re not in the clear.” As Sam reached the window, Rich held out his arms to receive Amy. Sam drew her closer for a moment before he passed her to Rich. “I’m not losing you this way. We’ve got you.” He held his breath as Rich took h
er, praying gunshots wouldn’t fire from the woods. The angle Rich had parked the truck left little room for a shot, but still...
Still, he hadn’t seen a wasp attack coming either. So clearly, he wasn’t the best judge of the lengths Amy’s would-be killer would take to destroy her.
Sam scrambled out the window and into the backseat of the truck, with Rich gunning the engine before Sam even had the door closed behind him. He buckled Amy and himself in as she sagged against him, praying they’d make it in time.
Praying his lack of vigilance hadn’t killed her.
FIFTEEN
Amy blinked awake and tried to focus on something in the bright hospital room, but everything blurred together under the blinding lights. The beige walls, the gray tile floors, the white blanket... They swirled together into one big blob of nothing. She let her eyes slip shut again. It felt like hours since anything in her world had been clear. The last memory in focus was the sharp, burning sting as a wasp found her hand and delivered it’s kill shot.
Everything since that moment—coming into consciousness in Sam’s arms, the wild drive down the mountain to the hospital, her examination in the ER—it had all felt as though it had happened to someone else, someone who didn’t live in her body. She’d have thought she was dreaming if not for the dull pain where the IV had been in her hand.
She’d drifted in and out, fighting to stay awake, preferring sleep, because it didn’t hurt so bad or feel so disconnected. She groaned and tried to open her eyes again, praying it wouldn’t hurt this time.