Backcountry Escape (Badlands Cops Book 3)

by Nicole Helm

  “Am I about to have an illicit dream?”

  She tilted her head up, giving him a skeptical if amused look. “I don’t think so.”

  “Darn.” He tried to move, but it all hurt too much. “What are you doing sitting on the floor? I can’t see you down there.”

  She got to her feet, moving a few steps down the length of the bed so he could look up at her without having to crane his neck.

  It hit him now, safe at home in his childhood bed, in a way it hadn’t back in that cave. “You saved my life.” He’d been prepared to die, if she was okay, but instead she’d stepped in and saved him.

  It awed him straight through. Even if she didn’t seem all that pleased.

  She looked down at her hands. “People keep saying that. I don’t remember much of it, to be honest. It just kind of happened.” She shrugged helplessly.

  She was too pale. She looked frail, like she had in that cave. Shaken and in shock, though she had a better grip on it now. She still wasn’t...Felicity.

  “Why don’t you come sit down?”

  She didn’t. She just stood there, staring at him as if figuring out some great mystery. “Liza said you wanted to come see me. She said you had to be sedated.”

  He tried to shift in the bed, but just ended up wincing in pain. “Liza exaggerates. God, you smell good. Come here.” He patted the bed next to him.

  She studied the small spot, lips pursed, then carefully eased a hip next to him on the bed.

  “If you wanted to, you know, caress my forehead again, weep a little over my wounds, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

  He managed to get a snort out of her. Not quite a laugh, but an improvement to the seriousness. And even better, she drifted her fingers across his forehead.

  They stayed like that for a few minutes, her moving her fingers back and forth on his forehead, a kind of balm even painkillers didn’t offer.

  And since it was making him relax, and he was too tired, too hurt to fight it, he reached up for a handful of her T-shirt and pulled her down until they were nose to nose. Then he kissed her, with all that softness.

  She kissed him back, and something in her shifted or relaxed. Lightened, like a weight lifted. At least it seemed to him.

  She pulled back a fraction, green eyes studying him with a kind of meaningfulness that might have sent him running far away if he could. But he couldn’t. He was pretty much stuck here, and she made him feel...

  She made him feel. Which meant it was time for a joke. “Still like it without all the mortal danger clouding your judgment?”

  Her mouth curved, and she didn’t back away. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  “What’s wrong, Red?”

  She exhaled shakily. “I don’t know. They can’t find my father.”

  “If Ace put him up to everything, that’s not so bad, is it?”

  “I guess.” She swallowed, searching his face as if the answers she needed were somewhere in him. “He could be dead out there. Because of me.”

  “You could have been dead a long time ago because of him. No matter what he did or didn’t do in this moment. What happened to him, he brought upon himself.”

  She sat so still, didn’t suck in a breath or let one out. It was as if she froze completely. But after a moment or so of that incomprehensible reaction, she gave a small nod. “You should rest,” she said, easing away.

  “You’re looking a bit like you could use some yourself.”

  “I tried.” She lifted her shoulders, then dropped them. “I can’t.”

  He pulled her close and tugged the covers up around them both. “Give it a shot.”

  And they both slept.

  Chapter Sixteen

  As the next few days passed, everything was a bustle of activity.

  Ace was going back to jail, more charges heaped on him. It would be harder and harder for him to hurt people on the outside. Though she knew no one fully believed he was powerless in jail, it was still safer having him there than in the hospital. And she knew the Wyatts were hoping the attempted murder charges would get him transferred to a federal prison.

  She hoped so, too, but while they waited for the bureaucratic tape to be cleared up, Gage was healing. All the Wyatts were still insisting he stay out at the ranch instead of his apartment in town, but everyone knew he wouldn’t acquiesce that much longer, nor would he need to.

  The police had canceled the warrant for Felicity’s arrest, which had been a relief on every level. And, best of all, she’d been cleared to go back to work starting Monday.

  Added to that back-to-normal, she seemed to have come out on the other side of this whole ordeal with something almost like a boyfriend, though she hesitated to say that word aloud, especially since they hadn’t exactly told anyone about them.

  Still, while she stayed at the Knight Ranch and Gage healed at the Reaves Ranch and everything cleared up, they took walks, exchanged kisses and had gone for a picnic lunch yesterday.

  The Wyatts treated her like some kind of conquering hero, and somehow shooting Ace, even if she hadn’t killed him, seemed to get it through everyone’s head that she was not still the shy, stuttering Felicity.

  Everything was fine and good. Better than it had been before this whole nightmare started.

  Except that her father was missing. And while there was an APB out for him, and he was considered a missing person and a person of interest in a murder investigation, there was no trace of Michael Harrison. Even with Jamison and Cody and even Brady spending time searching for him.

  It was like being stuck in limbo. Had she killed her father, no matter how inadvertently? Or was he still out there? And would that make him dangerous?

  Felicity had no answers, and no one else seemed too concerned about it, so Felicity could only pretend that life was good.

  She seemed to be fooling everyone—even Liza—that she was happy as a clam. With Ace out of the hospital and back in jail as of this morning, the Wyatts were darn near jovial. So much so that they were having a big family dinner, complete with the Knights.

  It was raucous and good. Felicity had hoped the large group of people in Grandma Pauline’s kitchen would make her feel better. Instead, the noise and cheer was just making her feel more like she’d lost her mind somewhere in that cave.

  She forced herself to smile, even forced herself to eat, though her stomach roiled and cramped at the idea.

  She didn’t know why she couldn’t let it go. Why she couldn’t have some well-deserved celebration like everyone else in the room.

  Except, their father was in jail. Hers was mysteriously missing.

  He had to be alive or they would have found him. Why would he be alive and hiding? Was it because he thought he’d be blamed for the murder? Was it because he’d lied to her and he had murdered someone—his own daughter at that?

  Felicity’s head pounded with all the what-ifs and emotions they stirred up. When Grandma Pauline brought out dessert, Felicity excused herself, pretending she needed to use the bathroom.

  She headed away from the dining room, bypassed the bathroom, and went toward the rarely used front door, instead. There was a rickety old porch swing out there. It didn’t get much use, but sometimes Grandma Pauline did her mending there when she didn’t have enough people to cook for.

  Felicity lowered herself onto it. She needed to get it together, but she didn’t know how.

  She should be happy. She should be ecstatic. Maybe concern was normal, but...

  It was just that she knew the Badlands. She knew what it would have taken to survive, if hurt. He hadn’t even been able to stand when she’d left him there.

  Left him to die.

  Somehow Ace was alive and her father, who probably hadn’t killed that woman—her sister—was dead because of her.

  Maybe the woman wasn’t even her sister. Her father h
ad said he hadn’t identified any body. Tucker had looked into that, interviewing the morgue employees. None had been able to confirm or deny that Michael had been the one to identify the body. Might have been, or it might have been someone pretending to be him.

  Felicity closed her eyes and let herself rock on the swing. She heard the dogs clatter up onto the porch and she leaned forward to pet them, trying to find some comfort there.

  Something had to change. She couldn’t go on pretending. Eventually she’d just explode.

  But her feelings didn’t seem to want to listen to her rational thoughts, and she simply felt stuck in this awful place of...

  Guilt.

  She turned her head toward the door when she heard it creep open, forced all her heavy thoughts away as Gage stepped out onto the porch.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her there, or even confused. “Got room on that swing?”

  Felicity managed her fake smile. “Of course.”

  Gage slid into the seat next to her, draped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. He petted one of the dogs that put its head on Gage’s thigh. “That smile’s getting a little rough around the edges, Red. You might want to just let it go.”

  Somehow he made it easy to do. The smile died and she let herself lean into him. She didn’t know how to explain what was going on inside of her, but he didn’t seem to need her to.

  “I know you’re worried your father’s still out there.”

  She wrinkled her nose. Okay, he didn’t need to see through her that easily. “It’s fine.”

  “If it was fine you’d be inside or enjoying even half of this shindig. Do you think he’s going to come after you or something?”

  Wouldn’t that make things easy? Well, maybe not easy, but different. It made more sense than guilt. “Maybe.”

  “Ah.”

  She tilted her head up to look at him. “Ah what?”

  “It isn’t that they haven’t found him, and that he may be alive. It’s that he might be dead. And you’d have to blame yourself.”

  She blinked at him, then looked out at the late summer sunset. “Neither are particularly positive potential outcomes, Gage.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around how you’re feeling guilty for doing what you had to do to someone who made your childhood a living hell. Who could have made it a lot worse if the state hadn’t stepped in.”

  She was supposed to blame him for that. And maybe he would have been bad enough to kill her back then. She only had hazy memories of living with him. She’d done her best to push them away when she’d been younger, and now they were hard to access.

  She could remember pain. Hiding. Fear and confusion, but it was hard to attribute it to a specific face. All those reactions and impulses had come back easily enough when he’d been after her, but it still hadn’t been the same.

  The monster from her childhood was a faceless one. The man she’d left to die had been flesh and blood. She knew that didn’t make sense, that it wasn’t right, but it was all inside of her anyway.

  She inhaled and let the breath out just like her therapist had taught her. “I—I don’t like the i-idea I used the Badlands against him.” The deep breathing didn’t take away the stutter in the moment, but she’d gotten her feelings off her chest.

  “Oh, Felicity,” he said on a chuckle as he leaned his temple on the top of her head. “Leave it to you.”

  She slumped in the seat, but his arms stayed tight around her. “It sounds stupid,” she muttered.

  “No, it sounds like you. And I get it. It isn’t like I don’t understand. I can stand over here and think you shouldn’t feel guilty that you might have left your father to the fate of the Badlands, since I know what he did to you. But I didn’t experience what he did to you. Hell, everything we had with Ace is fifty kinds of warped. I wanted him to die, but I’m not sure it would have been any kind of relief if he did.”

  It was strange to have someone give words to feelings she didn’t know how to articulate, but that’s just what Gage did. When he did, it helped her find her own words. “I hate feeling this way, but I don’t know how to make it stop. Not until I know for sure. Everyone expects me to be happy, and I just—”

  “Sweetheart, you don’t have to pretend to be happy just because everyone expects you to be. And let’s be clear, Dev never expects anyone to be happy.”

  She managed a true smile at that. “I should be happy.”

  “If you’re not, you should take your time to get right inside.” He squeezed her shoulders again. “Give yourself a few breaks. We clawed our way through a rough few days there—it’s okay if you’re not ready to jump right back into normal life.”

  “You are not my normal life.” This, him... She liked it, more than liked. But it didn’t feel like her life to have a hot guy want to spend time with her, to slip his arm around her, to kiss her brainless.

  “I am now,” he said firmly.

  It didn’t fix her problems, but that determined sincerity eased some of the tightness. She’d still have to deal with whatever had happened with her father once they found him, but she’d have someone who understood the complexity of emotions over it...right next to her.

  She tilted her head up. “You sound pretty sure about that.”

  He tapped her chin. “I am.”

  It was nice. Something and someone to be sure about, so she pressed her lips to his. He kissed her back, but he let her lead. He seemed to know the difference—when she wanted to be swept away, when she needed to be in control of something.

  More than that, she understood the same about him. When he was content to sit back, and when he needed to push forward on something.

  She sank into that kiss. Pushing forward. She’d been sitting around sulking, basically, but that was over. She had to act. She had to grab her life—her life. Why did bad men get to rule her life?

  Not anymore.

  She pulled away a fraction. “Are you going back to your apartment tonight?”

  “Um.” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Maybe we should.” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. Instead, she pressed her mouth to his again. When he deepened the kiss, pulled her so close she could scarcely catch a breath, she figured that was a yes.

  The door creaked open, and though Felicity jumped back, Gage kept his arms around her and gave a withering look to Brady, who was staring at them with bugged-out eyes and a wide-open mouth.

  “Help you?” Gage prompted.

  “Grandma Pauline told me to—um.” Brady cleared his throat. “Well.” He rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked embarrassed, which was kind of funny.

  Felicity couldn’t remember Brady ever looking embarrassed or uncomfortable. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him with any elevated emotion, and it solidified what she’d been finding with Gage.

  Brady was, on the surface, easy and nice. But Gage was... Real. To her. Likely Brady would find someone to be real for, but it wasn’t her.

  “Grandma Pauline wants to shove us full of dessert,” she supplied for him.

  Brady did not look directly at them, still sitting on the swing with their arms around each other. “Yeah.”

  “Ready, Red?” Gage asked, giving her hair a little tug.

  She was ready. Ready to stop wallowing and wondering and actually do something. A few somethings, in fact. She got to her feet. “You bet.”

  * * *

  GAGE MOVED TO follow Felicity, but Brady stepped in between them, allowing Felicity to move forward and stopping Gage from following.

  Gage couldn’t say he expected the censure on his brother’s face, but seeing it now wasn’t such a grand surprise. Brady had a lot of internal rules—not just for himself, but for everyone.

&n
bsp; “Looks like I’m staying outside to talk to my twin brother, darlin’. You go on inside.”

  Felicity gave him a disapproving look. “Don’t do that. You don’t have to do that.” She turned to Brady. “And you don’t have to do whatever it is you have it in your head to do.”

  Brady’s expression remained carefully blank. “If you’ll excuse us, Felicity.”

  She rolled her eyes, muttered something about Wyatt men and headed inside.

  Gage matched Brady’s pose—stuffing his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. He gave a cursory glance at the dogs sitting between them, tails wagging. “Nice night,” he offered blandly.

  “What exactly are you doing here?”

  “Well, Brady, as I’ve known you to do the same with a handful of pretty women, I’m going to let you spell that one out yourself.”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  Gage might have had patience for Brady’s lectures if he wasn’t grappling with something bigger, broader than he was particularly ready for. “She’s not your responsibility. And she certainly doesn’t need your protection. Not from me.”

  “No. She isn’t and doesn’t. She isn’t your responsibility, either.”

  “And that means what exactly?”

  “What is this?” Brady gestured helplessly. “Felicity?”

  “Yes, Felicity.” He didn’t have doubts there. Maybe he had some doubts about himself, about how right or ready he was for what he felt, but his feelings were there. And Felicity was too important to allow himself or Brady or anyone to convince him he should run away from them.

  “You can’t fool around with one of the Knight girls. I never thought I’d have to tell you that. Duke only tolerates Cody at this point because he’s Brianna’s father, not because Duke approves of Nina and Cody. I don’t think he has any reason to tolerate you fooling around with Felicity.”

  Gage was about to make a joke, even opened his mouth to do it. But Felicity had told him he didn’t have to do that, and he’d known what she meant. Not to make a joke to diffuse tension. Not to be Gage about it, all things considered.