“Stop. Allie, stop.” Max wrapped his arms around her, drew her into him as she trembled. “We’re going to figure this out. I refuse to believe it’s going to end as badly as you’re thinking. This isn’t about Hope. She’s a weapon they’re using against you. They want you angry, they want you not thinking straight. This isn’t about hurting her. It’s about hurting you. For whatever reason, Nicole and Patrick want you to hurt.”
“Why?” She let him hold her, let him rock her, because for now, in this basement of solitude she’d created, she could surrender. “Why do they want to hurt me? What happened to Tyler wasn’t my fault! I didn’t even know. I never even visited him.” Was that it? Should she have? Was that the mistake she’d made that led to all this?
“You need to come to terms with the fact you might never get the answers you need,” Max whispered. “But, in the meantime, did you get enough of a workout that you can focus again?” He cradled her head against his chest. “Or do you need to have me again? Because I’m not adverse to it. I’ve heard practice actually does make perfect.”
“If we practice much more, we might kill each other.” Allie managed a light chuckle. She held on to him, her anchor. Her tether. She couldn’t imagine going through this without him, could barely remember what it had been like before they met, except now she knew just how lonely she’d been. Now he was part of her, and not just her body. But part of her heart. “I think I could do with a shower, though.” She tilted her chin back. “I have a fairly large one upstairs. If you’d like to give it a try.”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t be sure if the uncertainty shining in his eyes was a teasing glint or not. “I don’t have the best of relationships with slippery surfaces.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m an expert in traction.” She popped up and kissed him quickly. “Race you upstairs.”
She pushed off him hard enough to have him tumbling back on the mat. Allie took the stairs two at a time, half afraid he wouldn’t follow. Equally worried he would.
Her life had always been divided into two: before Chloe’s murder and after.
Now the rest of her life would be divided again thanks to Max.
What would she do if there was an after?
Chapter 15
“Either we’ve somehow hive-minded in the last couple of hours or you’re thinking so loud I can hear you.” Max tightened his arms around Allie and drew her more snugly against him in her bed. He curled around her. The warmth and comfort of her body pressed into him and brought a sense of peace he hadn’t felt, well, ever.
“Sorry.” Allie reached for the two phones sitting faceup on her nightstand. He slid his fingers down her arm, through her fingers, and drew her away. “Max—”
“We both know they’ll light up the second you get a message or a call.” Hopefully not a new countdown clock. Every second that ticked by felt like a stab to the heart. “Let it be, Allie.” Even as he wished for her to push all thoughts of Hope and Nicole and Patrick aside, he couldn’t. It wasn’t Allie’s spinning wheels keeping him awake. It was the unending sensation that the ride they were all on had absolutely no mapped-out path. Just twists and turns and motion-sickness-inducing drops. Then again, Allie did possess an amazing capacity for diverting his attention. She wiggled her backside against him and he groaned. “Let that be, too.”
In the dim light of her table lamp, he saw her turn her head and smile. She broke his hold and turned over. She rested her head in the crook of his shoulder, draped her arm over his waist. Despite their rather vigorous physical activity, her body was still as tight as a rubber band being stretched to its limits. Max drew light fingers up and down her spine, willing her to relax.
“I’m thinking now is a good time to ask exactly what you have against therapists?”
And there went any hope of him relaxing. “Don’t tell me this was all some erotic ruse to get me to open up.”
“Hmm.” She nestled into him, pushed a leg between his. “Maybe. Why do you hate us?”
“I don’t hate all of you.” His mind raced, searching for an escape from this discussion. “Just one or two in particular.”
“Is this where you tell me what happened in Florida?” She traced lazy circles on his chest. “Why did you get forced out of your job?”
“You mean your supersleuthing friends haven’t told you?” Given the background checks that had been run in the last few days, he couldn’t imagine one of them hadn’t uncovered the truth.
“Jack hinted at some disciplinary issues, which honestly didn’t surprise me. But he didn’t have any details. At least not ones he shared.” She lifted her head and stroked the side of his face. “Your friends were very loyal, Max. No one had a bad word to say about you when Jack reached out.”
“Then he didn’t speak to the right people.” He wanted to make a joke out of it, needed to, but the truth was, even now, despite losing the job he’d loved, he didn’t regret what he’d done. He caught her hand in his, brought it up to his mouth and kissed her fingers to soften the truth. He owed her that much. “I assaulted my captain. Well, the interim captain who came in when ours was injured.”
“Assaulted how?” She asked the question so casually, it was as if they were discussing what leftovers she might have stashed in her fridge.
He drew his chin back, raised his brows. “You want the how rather than the why?” That didn’t quite track with what he knew about her.
“I’ll take a wild guess at the why and say he hurt someone you care about. How much damage did you do?”
“Not as much as I would have liked. Enough that I could have faced felony charges.” And he would have served his time gladly. “Yes, I know how that sounds. Especially to a shri—psychologist.” He corrected himself and earned a grateful smile. “I broke his jaw and his nose. Cracked a couple of ribs. He survived. Can’t say the same thing for three of my friends.”
She was quiet then, her expression unchanging as she processed his admission. “Tell me what happened.”
Was this the therapist talking or the woman he was sleeping with? He couldn’t be sure. Did it matter? Apparently not, since his normal trepidation about venturing too deep into this topic had yet to manifest itself and drive him into silence.
“We were on day twelve of fighting a wildfire, trying to get a handle on it. Not easy given the shortage of rain in the last few years. I don’t know that there’s any way to describe the conditions a wildfire presents, if anyone can ever understand what fighting it entails unless you’ve done it.” He realized how that must sound and cringed.
“No offense taken. Go on.”
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or concerned she automatically took his word for things. “When our CO was injured, they brought in a new guy, one of those newly promoted eager beavers who kept being moved up to get him out of people’s way. At the time, the fire was pretty well contained so the higher-ups didn’t figure he could do much damage. I went to catch a few hours of sleep and when they woke me up—” He could still smell the smoke, feel the panicked hammering of his heart when he’d looked into his partner’s eyes and knew, he knew something had gone very, very wrong. “Turned out he had negligible experience with wildfires, but he was the only one of rank in the area they could pull in at the last minute. He was only supposed to be in charge for a couple of hours.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m beginning to understand already.”
“He sent three of my buddies to an area we’d already contained, told them to plow it under even though the wind advisory put that area at significant risk for a flare-up. He ignored the report, ignored the warnings and sent them anyway. We had a skeleton crew, so there wasn’t anyone high enough up in rank to challenge him. They were just kids. They trusted him.” Max didn’t realize how hard he’d been squeezing Allie’s hand. He tried to relax, to loosen his ho
ld, but all he could feel were those flames exploding around him as he’d choked on the smoke that had coated the air in a thick, suffocating layer. “The winds can shift on a dime. There’s no warning and nothing you can do to stop it. Next thing I remember hearing was their screams.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, turned his head on the pillow and tried to shift away. Allie held on, turned her hand in his and gripped harder.
“Go on.” Her gentle urging was like a balm to the burns on his heart. “Get it out, Max. It’s the only way you can finally start to put it behind you.”
As if that were possible. “We managed to pull Bixby free after he dived in to get to them, but he had burns over fifty percent of his body. Solo and Princeton didn’t make it out.”
“And you blamed the interim captain.”
“You better believe it.” He still did and the anger burned like a torch inside of him. “Maybe if he’d shown an ounce of remorse or taken the tiniest bit of responsibility, I’d have let it go and settled for doing everything I could to make sure he would never work a fire line again. Instead, at the hearings he chose to play the martyr, blame the communications system, said he’d been given the wrong report and that he didn’t know about the wind change until it was too late. It didn’t matter three other people testified they’d seen the report both before and after him. What mattered is the committee was loaded with people this guy had worked with for years. I was sitting there, in the front row, listening to him denigrate our unit, my men. My friends. He blamed them for their own deaths and injuries. When he finished, he stood up, turned and looked at me.” Max took a deep breath. “Then he smiled.”
Anger sparked like flint in her eyes. “That’s when you punched him.”
“Don’t ask me if I regret it because I don’t.”
“I didn’t think for a second you did. Except you must miss it. The firefighting.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged again. There were days when he didn’t know what to do with himself. He just felt so useless, and when sirens sounded, his first instinct was to suit up. “If that’s the price I had to pay to make sure he would never be in a command position again, it was worth it. That was the deal I struck—go quietly with a severance package in exchange for him being prohibited from ever having any say or oversight again. Last I heard he’d gone to work for a lobbyist in Washington.”
“Unless I’m missing something, none of this explains your issues with mental health professionals like myself.”
“Not like you.” Surprised he actually meant it, Max shifted his focus to her, to her beautiful face, that crop of hair that felt like silk in his fingers. How had she become so important, so vital, so fast? “You listen. You discuss. You exchange ideas, but you don’t lecture or tell someone how they’re supposed to feel. You don’t come in with an agenda but with a curiosity for the truth in the hopes of helping people. You don’t presume to understand and placate your patients. Do you?”
“No. In my mind, that would do more damage than good. You’d be lying to them. The patient should always come first.”
“Exactly. But Bixby was sent to see a woman who didn’t see anything more than a patient number. I don’t think she even tried. She just gave him whatever meds she thought were appropriate. So he changed doctors. Who prescribed more meds. From then on, whenever I saw him, he never seemed to be doing better. And then he just stopped. Everything. Therapy, going out, spending time with his family.” He angled his chin down, caught the sympathy in her eyes and, for the first time since they’d buried Bixby, he accepted it without question. “He overdosed a few months ago. On purpose. Left a note for his wife and kids, checked himself into a motel and just went to sleep. In the room, they found six different anti-anxiety prescriptions from four different doctors. None of them bothered to check with the others. They just gave him a bottle and sent him on his way.”
“I’m so sorry, Max.” Allie moved up and pressed her mouth to his.
“Did they even try to help him? Was there something I could have done, something I should have said—”
“I don’t know the answer to that. And I’m sorry to be a realist, but you never will. I’m betting you know that.” She placed her hand against his chest. “And that’s what’s breaking your heart. I wish I’d been there. I wish I could have tried to help. I’m so sorry you lost your friends.”
“Me, too.” The next breath he took felt clean, pure. Like stepping into a morning rain that washed away the past. “All of it. They were great guys.”
“I’m also glad you came out here to start over. With your brother and Hope.” She stopped there, as if uncertain what to say. What to admit next as she searched his face for an answer.
He knew the feeling. Things had shifted for him, completely turned upside-down, and right now, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else or with anyone other than her. “Don’t forget about the spunky psychologist who has an amazingly talented—”
She stopped him with a kiss and he felt her smile against his mouth.
“Mind. I was going to say mind.” He let go of her hand so he could slip his hands into her hair. “I absolutely love your mind.” Max kissed her again, rolled her under him and, as she opened herself to him again, he surrendered to the fall, landing be damned.
* * *
“Come on, Allie! Over here, hurry!”
Allie opened her eyes against the barely there morning sun, streams of light bursting across the field of knee-high grass and sprigs of wild violets. She turned, searched, listened. That voice. She hadn’t heard it in years, for almost as long as she could remember and yet...
She knew that voice.
“Over here, Allie!”
Joy sprung into Allie’s chest as she turned and walked toward the giant oak tree that loomed over the field like an ancient guardian. A flash of color—red, almost the color of ripe strawberries—drew her closer and she picked up speed. Began to run.
“Chloe!” She burst across the field, her body singing with excitement and anticipation. Blades of grass and chaotic weeds reached out to catch her, to tangle around her legs, but she kicked them free. “Chloe, I hear you! Where are you?”
Nothing. No response. Allie stopped, lay her hand flat against the rough bark of the tree trunk. Dreaming, she told herself. She was dreaming. That dull pounding, slow, slow, steady beat, was the echo of her heartbeat while her mind projected her heart’s one wish.
But it wouldn’t come true. Allie pressed a hand against her mouth. It couldn’t come true. Chloe was dead. Gone. Had been for two decades. And yet, here she was, in this field where Allie’s life had both ended and begun.
“Oh, Chloe.” Tears blurred her vision as she lifted her face to the sun. “I miss you so much.”
“Here I am, silly.”
Allie spun around.
There Chloe Evans stood in the faded overalls and bright-colored T-shirt, her mismatched shoes and crooked pigtails. The red of her hair glimmered in the sunlight. Her smile lit her entire face.
“Chloe?” Allie reached out and grabbed hold, her breath skipping when she could actually feel her friend fold into her arms and return her embrace. “Chloe, I’ve missed you so much.” Allie shut her eyes, afraid for when she opened them and Chloe would be gone again. She stepped back, keeping a hold of the small hands that had clapped and clung and snapped with her own. “We’ve all missed you.”
“I know. But I’ve always been here,” Chloe said in that matter-of-fact tone she had. She grinned, exposed her crooked front teeth. “I’ve always been with all of you. You and Eden and Simone. You grew up without me.”
Allie nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. Why are we here? This was where we found you.”
“I had to come show you. Time’s running out, Allie. You have to save her.”
“Hope? You know about Hope?” Allie swiped the tears of
f her cheeks. “I don’t know where she is. Can you tell me?”
“I already have.” She tugged on Allie’s hand and led her around the tree. A thick outcropping of bushes stretched and meandered, brambles and branches crisscrossing their way through the wild field. “You don’t have to be sad, Allie. Not anymore. Please don’t be sad about me.”
“I can’t help it. You were my best friend.” Allie didn’t want to walk any farther; she just wanted to sit and talk with her friend. “Where have you been?”
“Right here.” Chloe pressed her hand against Allie’s chest. “I never went anywhere. But you can stop worrying about me now. All of you.”
“It was Tyler who hurt you, wasn’t it?” The anger hit her full bore and nearly drove her to her knees. “He was my friend, my foster brother, and he did this to you.” He took her from them.
Chloe nodded. “He didn’t mean it. He was scared. He knew he shouldn’t have taken me, but he was lonely and then...” Chloe shook her head. “He hurt so much, Allie. He was in so much pain.” She pulled the collar of her shirt down and displayed red welts in the shape of fingermarks. “I heard him crying when I couldn’t breathe. But then I didn’t hurt. But he did. And he was so, so sorry.”
“But why?” Allie blinked more tears. “Why did he take you?” Bells chimed in the distance.
Chloe pulled her hand free, backed away as she searched the sky. “You need to wake up, Allie. You have to find Hope. Now. She needs you. She’s in danger.”
Chloe took a step back and then another. And another. Until she faded from sight.
“No, Chloe, wait!”
“Chloe!” Allie shot up and reached for her friend, but found only the early-morning darkness of her bedroom. She put a hand over her mouth to catch the sob as she tucked her knees into her chest. Cold, so cold she shivered. And then Max was there, arms around her as he turned her toward him.
Gone in the Night Page 19