by Dana Mentink
Sweat broke out on his brow and he realized he was holding his breath. He forced out an exhalation, unable to take his eyes off the woman he’d hoped would become his wife.
Chad was a quiet person, silent as much as he was allowed to be, but now the word would not stay inside him. “Dory,” he said, too quietly for her to hear. Remnants of the anger that had burned him internally for five long years boiled afresh.
He’d not spoken again, but she turned as if she sensed him there.
She scanned above her, fighting the setting sun, which made it difficult for her to make him out at first. Then her eyes riveted on him, widening, her mouth slackening in shock.
As he wondered what he should say, someone else detached from the rocky shadows.
“Watch out,” he yelled.
His shout was lost in the blast of a gunshot.
TWO
Two shots. Three. The fourth came so close, Dory could hear the whine of the bullet punching through the air. She made herself as small a target as possible, tumbling behind a lip of rock. A shard scraped her wrist. Electricity ricocheted through her nerves both at the gunshot and the sight of the man she’d glimpsed staring down at her.
Chad. She was mistaken, she told herself. But the facts insisted otherwise. Eyes the color of dark chocolate under thick brows, full lips and the familiar battered cowboy hat. She wondered if it still showed the message she’d inked under the band after their junior prom. You are my everything.
It was wrong, she knew now. No one could be her everything but God. The lesson had been excruciating to learn.
The sight of Chad had turned her steel resolve to glass, weakening from the aftershock of seeing him.
What did you expect, Dory? Did you really think you could find out the truth about Blaze without running into Chad? He still lived in Driftwood, after all, a small ranching town where secrets were hard to keep. She’d intended to find proof that Blaze, the teen who’d supposedly drowned in the boat sinking, was very much alive. Once she made the ID, she’d hand the matter over to the police to delve deeper.
Never, ever, had she meant to clap eyes on Chad Jaggert again.
Shock turned to irritation, and anger licked at her throat. What was he doing here now? Right in the middle of her pursuit? How had everything gone so colossally wrong? Tempting as it was to try to sort out the messy bundle, there was a more urgent matter than Chad.
She darted a look around the edge of stone. The shooter was concealed now, probably tucked safely behind the massive split rock with the tree growing out of it. She scanned the area for options. Behind was a crevasse big enough for her to cut back through, but she was not sure if it dead-ended or led to a possible escape. Alternately, if she could distract the shooter for a moment, she’d be able to sprint the hundred feet to the cover of a rock pile. From there she’d have a better view. Some private eyes she’d met carried concealed weapons, but she’d never felt comfortable with that. Now she second-guessed her decision.
Would Chad have had the sense to hole up somewhere? She had a flashback to their dating days when they’d come upon a burning car in a ravine with the door wedged shut. Chad had not hesitated for one second as he’d gotten off his horse and smashed the driver’s window with a rock before pulling out the screaming mom and two terrified kids. No, Chad would not back down from the situation, she thought with a sinking stomach.
The hair on the back of her neck rose as a figure blotted out the faint stream of moonlight. She whirled, still in a crouch, to find Chad Jaggert not three feet away. The scream died in her throat. In an effort to get control of her somersaulting senses, she feigned calm. “Go back the way you came.”
His gaze bored into her, down to the deepest parts, the still depths that she kept locked away even from herself. He was silent for the longest moment before he half turned.
Dory almost sagged in relief. He was leaving, just like she’d asked. The sharp pain that lanced her heart puzzled her. Why, when he’d left her so long ago, should it hurt when he did so again? Especially when that was exactly what she wanted—for him to ride away along whatever trail had brought him here.
When he suddenly about-faced and reached for her, she almost jumped.
His fingers locked around her wrist.
She jerked tight, hoping he could not feel the pulse pounding through her veins. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting you out of here.”
His voice, the deep baritone she hadn’t heard in years, sounded as familiar as a favorite song. Knock it off, Dory. “You’re not going to manhandle me.”
He looked momentarily stricken, his gaze flicking to his hand as if he hadn’t realized he was touching her. “I don’t...”
“Let go—” she started to say just as another two shots drilled into the rock above her right shoulder, peppering them both with sharp bits. Stifling a scream, she crouched even lower and scurried after him through the crevasse. The rock walls pressed in on either side, narrowing in places until they had to scuttle sideways as they rushed on. Clouds drifted over the moon, which slowed their passage along the stony ground. She watched her feet to keep from stumbling.
He stopped once when he banged his head, but he clamped his lips tight and did not utter a sound. Silent, just like she remembered. Chad, her quiet cowboy. But when they were in love all those years ago and he’d laughed, really let loose in those infrequent moments, the joy lit up his soul and hers, too.
Don’t go down that torn-up old road, she told herself. There was nothing in that direction but pain.
They emerged higher up and scooted along until they found a spot screened completely by scrub, but with a better vantage point. They lay on their stomachs, peering into the darkness, and she tried to ignore the fact that his shoulder pressed against hers. He wriggled as he pulled a cell from his back pocket.
“No signal here,” she said.
“Figured I might still be able to send a text.”
The night closed in around them. A cool breeze snaked down her back.
“Why’s he shooting at you?” Chad asked.
“Maybe he’s shooting at you.”
His eyebrow arched. “You gonna make this difficult?”
She fired a look back at him. “You made this difficult, Chad. You intruded on this situation. I had it handled.”
“Yeah? Got a gun on you somewhere?”
She didn’t dare drop her head. “There are other ways to make an ID.”
“An ID? What’s all that talk?” He scowled. “Thought you were a paralegal in your dad’s firm.”
She caught the hostile inflection when he spoke about her father.
“I’m a private investigator now.” She was gratified at his sharp intake of breath, the widening of his thickly lashed eyes, until his face split into a mischievous grin.
“Dear Old Dad must have loved that career choice.”
She glared at him, but his smile remained.
“At least he can’t blame that decision on me,” Chad said.
Not trusting herself to speak, Dory eased up to a sitting position, still crouched behind the branches, and he did the same. Ignoring him, she plotted her next move.
“So who’s the shooter? Some cheating husband you’re tracking?”
“Chad, it really isn’t your concern. Go back.”
He let loose with a derisive snort. “And leave you here to get shot?”
“I’m not going to get shot.”
“So sure of that? Why?”
“Because I’m good at what I do, and he’s got a six-shot revolver. He stole the gun with only one magazine from a guy at a halfway house, and he’s got zero money for more ammo.”
Chad gaped. “How do you know all that?”
She couldn’t help enjoying his surprise. “Like I said, I’m good at what I do.” It took all
her self-possession not to look at him, instead scanning the steep slope below for the fastest way to get from their hiding place to her fugitive’s position.
He laid a palm on her arm, firmly but with gentleness. She almost closed her eyes against the agony that contact awakened. “You can’t go down there. He could have another gun.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re going to possibly get shot on an ‘I don’t think so’?” He shook his head once, in the same decisive way she’d known him to do when they were dating. “No way.”
She detached herself with a jerk. “Chad,” she said, “you don’t get to tell me what to do. I take care of myself.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That much I already know.”
The comment stung. Five years ago, she’d given the police the truth, enough that they’d convicted Chad’s father of boating under the influence and causing the death of Mary Robertson and her stepson, Blaze. She couldn’t have done otherwise. Yes, she’d shared too much information with a man who’d later turned out to be a reporter, but she’d been naive. She bit back the mass of anger building inside as she considered Chad.
“This doesn’t concern you.” Not until I have all the pieces put together. “Go home.”
In typical Chad fashion, he didn’t reply right away. She almost believed she’d convinced him, but when she started her downward creep, keeping to the cover of the clumped grasses as best she could, Chad started right down behind her.
She suppressed a groan of pure despair.
Chad Jaggert could not become involved in this. She would never reveal what he’d walked away from all those years ago.
Her decision, her secret, their daughter.
* * *
Dory moved so fast that Chad had to scramble to keep up with her. He was surprised his addled brain could manage the task. All sorts of strange emotions bumbled around inside him like a runaway tumbleweed.
“Go back to your ranch. I don’t want you here, okay?” Her voice was a whispered shout.
Though a dozen responses stampeded Chad’s head as he crept along in her wake, they refused to assemble themselves into anything helpful. Words weren’t his strong suit. Dory’d always been able to talk circles around him. Her honey-colored eyes when she glanced at him were unreadable, strange yet so familiar. The lush curve of her mouth drew into an angry line. When she stopped to get her bearings, he fired off the most obvious question.
“What are you planning to do?”
“My job,” she snapped back. “Now go away.”
“Who are you after?”
He could still pick up the slight arch of her delicate brow, the one that meant she was ready to tell him off in no uncertain terms. Instead she blew out a breath, staring into the canyon that was dissolving into darkness. When she turned back to him, she pulled off the black baseball cap, finger-combed her hair away from her cheeks and settled the cap on her head again.
It took him right back to summer days at the shore, piloting his father’s twenty-five-foot fishing boat, The Second Wind, into the chill waters of Roughwater Harbor. That summer after they’d graduated high school, they would swim and then she’d lay on the deck to dry. Her hair was as luminous as the interior of an abalone shell. There hadn’t been another place in the world he’d rather be than on that boat...until the accident that killed two of his father’s clients.
He remembered arriving on the dock late, after a morning spent with Dory, looking out across the choppy waters of the harbor and seeing The Second Wind on its side. He recalled the terror he’d felt, leaping into the motorboat and flying across the water to find his father bobbing unconscious in a life vest. Friend and sometimes deckhand Tom Rourke swam in a panic with the limp body of Mary Robertson in his arms. Blaze, her stepson, was gone, swept out to sea.
Dory was about to plunge onward again when he tried once more. “Who are you after?”
“It’s not the time to discuss it.”
He stopped and she did, too. “You tell me right now, or I’m not leaving.” He could not read her expression completely, but he knew her well enough to discern that she both believed the threat and resented his making it.
“Who are you after, Dory?” he repeated.
“This isn’t your business. Why are you here, anyway?”
“My question first.”
She folded her arms. “I’m working a case.”
“Your private-eye job?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
She shoved her hands into her pockets. “Can’t you just leave it be?”
“Nope. So tell me or I stick to you like a barnacle on a boat.”
She almost smiled. Almost. “A barnacle?”
He nodded solemnly. “On a boat.”
All traces of humor vanished. “You’re costing me time.”
“So get to the truth, instead of trying to put me off.”
She inhaled and blew out a breath. “You’re not giving me any choice.”
“Sure I am. Tell or I stay. That’s a choice.”
She rolled her eyes, a frown furrowing her forehead. He saw her come to some sort of a difficult decision. “It’s going to be a shock,” she said finally.
A tiny quiver of fear wriggled through his gut. Something big had brought her here. Something dangerous.
“I’m after Blaze Turner.”
She’d spoken softly, but the name sounded in his ears like the boom of thunder. “What?” he managed to choke out.
“You heard me.”
He’d heard, but he couldn’t believe it.
Blaze, Mary Robertson’s stepson? The man who’d fallen from his father’s boat five years prior and was presumed drowned? Chad was suddenly back there again, hauling his father into the overloaded motorboat, as Tom did the same with Mary. Rocky had been unresponsive but breathing. Mary had been deathly still, water coursing from her limp hair over a face as pale as the white-topped waves.
I can’t find Blaze, Tom Rourke had shouted as he’d tried desperately to perform CPR on Mary, hands shaking with each compression. Chad fought the wind-driven waves, desperate for any sign of the missing man. The weather had proved his enemy, an incoming storm heaving the water into foamy mountains that hammered the craft and dragged the boat debris in the direction of the open ocean.
His brain told him he’d somehow misunderstood her. But there was no mistaking Dory’s seriously steely expression.
Blaze Turner was alive.
THREE
Chad was so shocked by her revelation that he stopped short. If things had been different between them, she might have reached out a hand to ground him. There was nothing, she knew, she could have said that would have unnerved him more. Except, perhaps, the one secret about them having a daughter that she would never tell him. Ever.
“Explain,” he finally demanded, voice hoarse.
She started along the rocky trail then paused and turned back. “I can’t go into it now. There’s no time.” But his look cut at her, the twin strands of pain and disbelief glowing in his chocolate irises.
Dory gave herself a moment to pare down her mountain of suspicion and data to the barest essentials. “Okay. I was at the police station in Sand Dune, filing a report for a client, when a couple of the cops brought in a guy they’d arrested for robbing someone at an ATM. There was a witness seen in the bank’s video who may or may not have had something to do with planning the robbery. He was identified by a local as Brian Upton, but the cops couldn’t locate him to get a statement.”
“What does that have to do with—”
She held up a finger to stop him.
He winced but didn’t interrupt this time.
“The local said Brian mentioned he was heading to the Driftwood area.”
“Still doesn’t prove—”
Chad arched a dubious eyebrow.
“He has a tattoo of a spider on the back of his neck.”
She saw his eyes widen.
“Lots of people might—”
She cut him off again. “A tarantula inked in blue with yellow eyes.”
His mouth opened but he didn’t speak.
“I wanted to be completely sure before I took it to the police.”
It was as if Chad hadn’t heard her. “So you’re saying that all these years Blaze was pretending to be dead?” His dark gaze roamed the rocky ground until it riveted to hers. “Why?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”
His eyebrow quirked with a second question that harpooned her soul. “Why would you care?”
And suddenly the years fell away and she was an almost-twenty-year-old, staring at the man whose love had turned to anger, his devotion to dismissal. It was the moment her heart disintegrated into tiny grains of sand. The day she’d started trying to figure out how to live without him.
She remembered their conversation, how his dark eyes had been pools of bottomless brown...
How could you tell the police my father’s drinking was out of control? He’s being accused of boating under the influence and manslaughter.
I told the truth, Chad. I didn’t want to hurt him or you.
Yeah? I’m sure your daddy urged you to run right on down and spill everything you knew. You gave them plenty of backstory.
My dad works for the DA’s office. He’s an officer of the court. I couldn’t...
He’s a hateful meddler who never wanted me in your life and he’s jumping for joy right now.
Things had only gotten worse from there. So much worse in ways he didn’t even know about.
Dory forced down the leaden lump in her throat. “So now you know what I know. I’m going after him to get a positive ID. Alone.”