Every Last Reason

by Christa Wick

  "I've had to take it before," I said as guilt began to crowd my anger. "I was working on an accident scene—"

  "I don't need to know. Sit back down."

  Damn! There was no emotion in this man.

  "I have a video that you're going to watch before we talk."

  My muscles tightened. I shook my head. What did a video have to do with anything?

  Emerson drew a hard breath, scooped the computer from the table and stalked his way toward me. I backed up until I ran into one of three reading couches in the room. Emerson brought his hand down on my shoulder, the touch light but the contact making me collapse. My bottom hit the cushion. Air rushed out and up, carrying with it a trace of lilac that reminded me of his mother.

  Dropping the computer on my lap, Emerson sat next to me. He reached into his pocket and removed a set of earbuds.

  "Put these on."

  I studied him as I complied. Sitting this close to the light, I noticed details that had escaped me at the library table. Rips in the black t-shirt he wore revealed more bruising. Professional and other impulses rushed through me, forcing me to reach out and grab the bottom hem of his shirt.

  He eased away.

  "That's how we got into this mess," he softly joked.

  Or at least I thought he was joking. Once upon a time, I had also thought we were friends.

  One thing was clear. Someone had unleashed a beating on him.

  "You're hurt."

  Emerson blocked my hand as I reached for him again. Guiding my finger, he forced me to press the key that started the video.

  Dark, grainy images played onscreen. Two men fought in a cage. One was bald, his scalp patchy as if the skin had been shaved. He was late thirties, I guessed, and a giant. His opponent was younger, scrawny. Stickman versus the Hulk, I mused. Not a film I would see—but this was real life and Emerson wasn't giving me a choice.

  Onscreen, Hulk dragged Stickman the length of the cage. He jammed Stickman into the corner, jerked him up and down as the kid screamed in agony from what looked like barbed wire wrapped around the support pole.

  Blood flowed down Stickman's chest. I saw it as he was slammed to the ground. He struggled to get up, but the giant sat on his back. Big hands grabbed hold of Stickman's head. Up, down, over and over, bone meeting concrete as Hulk bashed his opponent's skull against the floor. There was no struggle after the first smack. On the third, an involuntary spasm jerked Stickman's body from head to foot.

  That's when I knew he was dead despite the abuse continuing.

  I prided myself on having a strong stomach. I had seen both EMT and nursing students smarter than me wash out when they got their first glimpse of exposed flesh, of all the red meat hiding within the human body.

  This—I couldn't take. It wasn't the gore turning my stomach upside down. It was the hate.

  I shoved the laptop at Emerson, pulled the earbuds out and threw them onto the floor. Perspiration broke across my skin. My heart thumped and wheezed inside my chest.

  "Why did you make me watch that?"

  I wanted to scream the question, but he had shoved me into a straitjacket with his appeal to keep his mother and little niece out of things. I didn't want the woman or child to see Emerson busted up, didn't want Caiden to see my own distress. And, no doubt in my mind, my son would be the first to hear me if I started shouting.

  Putting the computer aside, Emerson took hold of my hands. The contact shocked me. I couldn't remember him touching me since before my move to Montana, not even the random casual contact of being in a room full of his relatives, the massive ranch house straining to contain a family that insisted on increasing its numbers year after year. Four new wives, babies, now Caiden, and then there was me—the one always looking for the door out because I knew I didn't belong.

  There had been touching before. Nothing inappropriate. Never did he give the impression that he forgot I was married or didn't care that I was. It had all been casual contact between friends. Then whatever had existed between us dried up overnight. Hell, I had even heard the occasional snippet when Maddy was on the phone and Emerson referred to me not by name but by my role in Maddy's life.

  Like he was talking about a stranger.

  With fresh anger and hurt controlling my muscles, I tried to jerk my hands from Emerson's grip. He held them tighter, drew me close enough that I could smell his aftershave hiding beneath the engine grease and something that reminded me of the antiseptic I used at the clinic.

  "Why did you make me watch that?" I repeated. "Is that how you got hurt? In one of those cages?"

  The questions left me in breathless whispers.

  "Is that why you have to take an ARV?"

  Releasing me, Emerson raised his hands in the air, but not in surrender.

  "You need to know two things, Delia."

  I hesitated, then nodded even though I had a list of questions longer than my leg. I also had a few choice words to throw at the man once my emotions stopped whiz-banging all around the room.

  "One, these are very bad men," he said.

  I tossed my head back like he was some kind of idiot who thought I was an idiot, too. A man had just died in that grainy footage. People I couldn't see beyond the cage had shouted their approval at the violence, screamed for more. I didn't need Emerson providing a voiceover to tell me what it all meant.

  "Secondly, there are approximately half a dozen or more bad men just like them who are currently looking for you."

  7

  Delia

  I shook my head at him. His assertion was preposterous. No one bothered kidnapping fluffy girls. That was half my excuse for eating cake—hell, it was my best excuse for eating cake.

  "Do you remember Hatchet—Stitches from this morning—saying 'train' over and over? Do you understand what 'pulling a train' is?"

  Bile forced its way up my throat. I put a hand out to steady myself. I meant to grab the back of the couch but found myself clutching Emerson's shoulder.

  A sharp wince twisted one side of his mouth but he didn't try to pull free.

  "You're wounded," I growled. "And you haven't seen anyone other than to get that prescription and have a little antiseptic thrown on. Take your shirt off."

  Emerson's dark blue eyes widened. His lips parted slightly. It should have mesmerized me for a second or longer, should have fueled a few thoughts when I was alone. But I wasn't studying him with the female part of my brain. This was the student nurse looking at him, the EMT, and, yes, a frightened woman desperately searching for a serious distraction before I broke down in tears.

  Sliding away from me until he was backed up against the arm of the couch, Emerson tried to wave away my demand.

  "I can't return all patched up," he argued. "No one in these gangs goes to a hospital with an injury that would trigger a duty to report."

  I moved the laptop to the table then planted my knees on the couch. My body loomed over him as I glared down.

  "You really want to convince me, then take it off and show me how dangerous these men are." I stopped, pointed at the laptop. "That could be some kind of crappy movie for all I know."

  His brows knitted in argument, but he reached down and grabbed the bottom hem of his ripped t-shirt.

  "Uhh…"

  "Yeah, I thought so," I softly sniped. "Lift your arms as best you can."

  I peeled the shirt from him as he obeyed the order.

  "Now stand."

  He argued with a sigh and a roll of his eyes, but stood and presented his bare torso for inspection. I guided him closer to the table lamp.

  My fingers explored the edge of a bruise shaped like the sole of a boot, the tread's pattern embedded in his flesh. This was across the upper right side of his back. On the middle-to-lower left, a different sole pattern covered exactly where a well-placed kidney punch might land.

  "Have you urinated since this happened?"

  Another sigh, sarcasm coating his tone when he answered.

  "I'm not pissing
blood, Doc."

  I considered giving him a good push, but there wasn't a big enough patch of skin on his back to make contact with and not hurt him.

  "Let me see your chest."

  Emerson turned, gaze locked on the ceiling, firm lips twisted in a shape that looked like he was fighting back a smile.

  I reprimanded him, my voice soft.

  "This isn't funny."

  "Not in the least," he agreed as my fingers carefully ran along his ribs, probing for any hint of a fracture.

  "You should have had x-rays at a minimum."

  Gaze hurrying past the small, hard nipples, I gasped.

  "What did they puncture you with?"

  His mouth lost its amused shape.

  "Syringe, hence the ARVs."

  "This didn't happen in the cage."

  His hand gestured with a sweep along his chest and the hard abdominal muscles that I would have drooled over if they had been in a magazine and it had been someone other than the man who had basically ignored my entire existence once he left Boston.

  "None of this happened in the cage," he answered. "I easily choked Hatchet out in the first few minutes. This was his buddies pissed that I won."

  He stopped, pointed at the fat bruise along his chin.

  "Except for this. This was the chapter president right after he condemned Hatchet to more cage fights."

  Grabbing me by the shoulders, Emerson stepped forward until his bare chest brushed against my breasts.

  "Tonight was an exception. Usually, they fight to the death and the winner goes into a holding pen until it's finally him dead on the concrete. That guy, the winner in the video? He was kept prisoner in one of the east coast chapters. There's a video with a time stamp three months later. His opponent tore the barbed wire off the pole with his bare hands and used it to fatally strangle the man."

  My bottom lip trembled as unwanted images stampeded through my mind.

  "I don't understand why you're here, though. Did I out you?"

  He shook his head.

  "Hatchet sent a team to follow you home from the clinic and grab you. Junker—the chapter president—caught us arguing about it."

  I buried my face in my hands, talked into them as I shielded myself from Emerson's gaze.

  "But it's over now, right? That Hatchet guy is in a cage. They won't bother looking for—"

  Emerson pulled my hands down, let them fall to my sides. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out an evidence bag with a scrap of paper in it.

  "After Junker knocked me out to keep secret the location of the warehouse where they fight, some of Hatchet's buddies worked me over while I was unconscious. The syringe was what they used to pin this to my chest."

  You fight like a cop

  We will find the bitch

  We will train the bitch

  We will kill the bitch

  I started to sway as I read the depraved and hateful words. I had been following protocol at the clinic, protocol meant to keep the patient and staff safe in a small space filled with scalpels, scissors and other sharp objects.

  Body still weaving erratically, I returned the bag to Emerson.

  "This is where it gets ugly," he sighed.

  I matched his sigh with a snort. It was already ugly, almost as ugly as I had ever experienced.

  He pulled me onto the couch, his chest still bare, his hard body too close to my much softer one for me not to notice despite being distraught. He took my hands in his, tried to gentle his gaze as he delivered the bad news.

  "It's not safe for you to return to the clinic…or campus. The bikers may track you there. They may track you to your apartment, too. They will intimidate your neighbors, find out you have a son and learn where he goes to school."

  I jerked my hands from his grip and wrapped them around my head. "Caiden has been doing so well in school this year."

  After thinking about my son, I thought about myself.

  "It will take a year to get back into clinicals—if they even let me return."

  I shook my head some more, brushing at Emerson's hands as he tried to take hold of me. He should have left it to Maddy to explain to me. His trying to act like there was some kind of personal connection between us, coupled with all the damn touching, was just pouring salt over it all.

  Salt or kerosene.

  "Delia—" He growled my name, then dipped his head and swallowed, his voice softer when he spoke again.

  "Hatchet's buddies couldn't blame their president. So they're blaming outsiders. Me…you…they may be lowlifes, but they are determined. However crude their tactics for finding things out, they are effective. Also, for the next few weeks, they've got nothing better to do."

  "I can't start over," I said.

  "I'm sorry—"

  I shook my head. I wanted to hit him, but he was already hurt. The last, and only, time I had punched someone was in high school. Some girl who had ripped a handful of hair out of Maddy's scalp and written vile words on her skin with permanent marker that had taken a week to finally fade.

  My hands balled into fists. I shook my head a little harder. Losing control of my breathing, I gasped for air.

  "You're having a panic—"

  I swatted at Emerson's hands as he tried to grab me again.

  "Fuck you."

  That earned me another growl, a growl that had double the emotion of his lame attempt at an apology.

  Wrapping his arms around my waist, Emerson dragged me onto his lap and held me in a bear hug. I wiggled, tried to get my hands free.

  "Don't make me hit you," I snapped.

  He stared at me, gaze stony for a second before his entire body softened.

  "If you need to, go ahead. I can hardly hurt worse."

  8

  Emerson

  I watched in silence as the fury drained from Delia. Her arms went slack. Her head landed on my shoulder and remained. For a few seconds, that's all it was—her head resting against my shoulder. Then she melted into me. Tracing the lines of the tattooed snake slithering down my spine, she lifted her head just enough to catch my side gaze.

  "It looks like you've had this for at least a decade. But you haven't."

  "Six months," I answered. "Took a lot of work to make it look old—at least a hundred hours in one chair or another getting poked by a needle or singed during laser treatment to age it."

  "That pretty much defines the concept of dedication," she said, pulling back to stare at me with those singularly gray eyes. "You'll take these bikers down. After that, the FBI will put you in charge of Minneapolis."

  "I'll take them down," I agreed.

  I wasn't ready to think about what happened after. And Delia didn't need to know that the Bureau had offered me the Minneapolis job within months of her arrival in Montana.

  The offer had been my reward for bringing down Troy Sprankle. The man had controlled in excess of a billion dollars annually in illegal drugs, guns, and human flesh. The local gangs he supplied didn't even know his identity. Instead, they dealt with Sprankle's top lieutenant—Jimmy Dawson.

  On the streets, Dawson was known only as Reaper.

  Instead of accepting the Minneapolis position, I aimed higher. I formulated an operation to cripple the Steel Tide's west coast chapters and made sure I was the plan's linchpin. Once the operation succeeded, I would get a bigger field office and, more importantly, be first in line when it was time to choose the next director of the Bureau's Criminal Investigative Division.

  I knew I could do it, too. The arrests of Sprankle and Reaper created a power vacuum in the west coast pipeline of illicit offerings. I bore a striking resemblance to Reaper and knew as much about the man as anyone on the streets. I could handle myself as if I was ex-Army and had the required expertise in weapons and Jiu-Jitsu.

  So I stayed in Billings, repeatedly telling myself it was all so I would be the next CID division director.

  Now? I just wanted Delia to be safe and happy. With or without me.

  Wi
thout me, of course. I had no reason to think she wanted me. Our time together in Boston had been perfectly respectable. She never gave a hint she wanted more. Never said a word about how Ken's lengthy deployments were grinding her down. It still hurt to remember how Delia's gorgeous gray eyes would shine whenever her husband was due to ship home.

  And how they dulled again when he invariably left a few weeks later.

  Delia straightened, slid off my lap and settled on the couch half a cushion away, her cheeks colored a pale rose.

  "I'll make everything right with the school," I promised.

  She shook her head, shrugged one shoulder.

  "That's a Maddy move," I joked.

  "Wrong shoulder," she said, the words and tone listless.

  I could see the shimmer of tears building. I closed the distance between us. Knowing how I felt, I didn't want to touch her. But she needed to be touched, didn't have anyone else to do it. That was something I had never understood in Boston, not quite realizing that Maddy shared the same condition as Caiden. When Ken was gone—and he was usually gone—there was no one to hold Delia, no shoulder to cry on but her own.

  I curled a hand around the back of her neck. The other landed atop her knee. She shook her head, tried to wave me away as more tears welled in her sweet eyes. I lifted the hand I touched her knee with, molded it against her full cheek. It struck me again how she really did have the most beautiful gaze. Her hair was down, too, the big blond curls bouncing around her shoulders and down her back.

  "Delia…" I leaned in despite my better nature shouting at me to pull back. I meant to warn her, to give her a chance to object. But she blinked, a tear splashing first against her cheek then landing against my lips.

  I fell forward that last quarter inch until my mouth touched hers. Feeling Delia melt, I cinched her closer. I wove my fingers through her thick tresses, using my hold to control the tilt of her head as my teeth teased at her lips.

  She opened to me, a sigh escaping before the kiss turned carnal with the hungry invasion of my tongue inside her mouth. Gasping, she broke away, then returned with force, nipping at my bottom lip and chin. Her breasts swelled and pushed against me, everything between us getting bigger and bigger as passion heated our flesh.