“Thank you.” Brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear, she stepped toward the tablet still glowing from the coffee table and bent to read the screen. “The deputy you asked to look into a viable suspect from the construction crew didn’t find anything tangible. No motives, no sudden influx in bank deposits, or connections between the Rip City Bomber and any of them. Nothing more than a few parking tickets and one DUI.” She swiped her index finger across the screen to continue through the report. “The chemical composition of the courtroom bomb matches the makeup of the Rip City Bomber devices. Looks like Marshal Cove’s leading theory is Rosaline Eyler is trying to sway the jury in her favor. Prove whoever set off those four bombs around the city is still out there while she’s behind bars.”
Jonah forced himself back into the headspace to work this case and cleared his throat. “You’re the one prosecuting the case, Counselor. You’ve seen the evidence. Investigators logged four empty beakers with ammonium nitrate residue from Rosalind’s laboratory into evidence after the Portland Police Bureau connected four victims from the bombings back to the pharmaceutical company they worked for. She’s a former chemist who ensured anyone who’d used her research to get promoted above her didn’t make it out of the explosions alive. Along with twenty-eight other innocent victims. Rosalind Eyler is intelligent, determined and doesn’t care how many people she has to hurt to get what she wants, but she made a mistake. She got caught. It’s not hard to imagine her work didn’t end with that fourth explosion. She wants to finish what she started, and she’ll do whatever it takes ensure she can.”
“Makes sense.” Seconds passed. Maybe a minute before Madison moved. “You know, I’ve prosecuted over one hundred and fifty cases for the DA’s office. I’ve put away murderers, abusers and drug dealers and made sure every single one of them answered for what they’ve done.”
Crackling fire from the stove highlighted and shadowed the angles of her features as she read the rest of the report. Vulnerability swirled in her gaze as she turned toward him, something he’d never witnessed from the deputy district attorney before. Tears glittered with help from the flames in the stove, and his fingers automatically flexed into fists. Ready to confront whatever nightmares had put them there for her. “Every day I walk out of those courthouse doors, I can’t help but wonder if I did enough to make a difference. I wonder if there’d been a prosecutor driven and strategic enough, someone who could see the threat my father posed to his own wife and daughter, that things would’ve been different. That instead of being afraid for her own life, my mother would’ve been happy, that she would’ve had the ability to see that I was right there waiting for her to choose to be with me instead of crawling back to him over and over again. I wanted someone to fight for me. Just once.”
Jonah had tried fighting for her—for them—and she’d pushed him away. Didn’t she see that?
“I don’t care who’s behind this.” The vulnerability vanished, the prosecutor he’d come to admire in the courtroom taking her place. “I’m not going to let them stop me for being here for my son or for being the prosecutor the next little girl in my situation needs.” She took the seat he’d vacated a few minutes ago and pulled the tablet into her lap. “The construction crew might not have any connections to the Rip City Bomber on the surface, but that doesn’t mean someone else who had access to that courtroom won’t.”
This, right here, the late nights, the careful poring over of case files, the orders-in from restaurants around the courthouse... This was Madison in her element. Didn’t matter how tired she’d get, how long she’d gone without eating, how many times he’d tried to convince her to take a break, she wouldn’t quit until she was positive about the next step she had to take in the case. All those assignments to escort her from the courthouse had started out exactly like this. Dark, quiet, just the two of them. She’d always have a homemade crossword puzzle waiting for him to solve to keep him from getting bored while she worked, but what she failed to realize was that he’d been the one to ask for as many judicial security assignments as he could get. Until one night as he’d walked her to her vehicle, she’d hesitated getting in, turned to face him and pulled him in for a kiss he’d never seen coming. She’d changed everything.
Madison pulled the coffee table closer, never taking her eyes off the tablet screen. It was going to be a long night, and there wasn’t anything he could do or say to slow her down. Jonah headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll get today’s crossword from the paper.”
* * *
A POP FROM the wood-burning stove ripped her from unconsciousness.
Madison blinked against the onslaught of incoming sunlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the main living space. Closing one eye in an automatic attempt to dim the sudden blindness, she searched the living room where she and Jonah had spent a good portion of the night narrowing down a list of suspects motivated to trigger that device in the courtroom. The one she almost hadn’t survived. The couch where she last remembered him sitting was empty, a blanket thrown off to one side.
He’d stayed up with her through the night. Just like he had countless times when he’d been assigned to escort her out of the courthouse the past few years. Before she’d ruined everything.
Pushing upright in the chair, she stretched her neck to one side. A power cord now ran from the tablet she’d been working on that had died a few hours into her deep dive into the case. Lucky for her, she’d practically memorized everything she needed to know about the Rip City Bomber investigation and had been able to switch over to pen and paper to keep running through all the new angles. Except there was a possibility whoever’d set that bomb in the courtroom was merely hiding behind Rosalind Eyler’s name and not connected to the former chemist at all. At least not directly. Or Rosalind had lied about not having an accomplice to help her get her revenge.
No. There had to be something more going on here. The Rip City Bomber’s attacks had followed a pattern. One explosion every month until Rosalind had been caught, and this one didn’t fit.
Too many suspects. Not enough motive for any of them, but she and Jonah had been able to narrow down the list considerably by eliminating financial backers of the company hired for the new construction of the courthouse. That still left the possibility the Rip City Bomber herself had been involved, however far-fetched considering Rosalind Eyler had been arrested six months ago. Madison couldn’t discount a copycat, a partner or a grieving family member who felt they didn’t have any other option to find justice, but a motive for wanting her dead had yet to jump out at them.
“Oh, good. You’re up.” That voice. His voice. It slid through her, reaching into all the dark corners she’d cut herself off from years ago, and lit up her insides. He set a steaming mug of slightly browned tea on the coffee table, the scent familiar and comforting. Greek tea with lemon and honey. Her favorite. But there was no reason he’d have it here, and this tea wasn’t on grocery shelves. “I was worried my online order of dill pickle chips wouldn’t get here before you came out of your coma.”
“I was snoring, wasn’t I?” Running one hand back through her hair, she reached for the mug. Heat tunneled deep into her hands and up her arms, but the embarrassment of knowing she’d once again fallen into a situation where he’d had to suffer through her relentless snoring rose into her neck and face.
“Not too bad.” His rich, deep laugh swirled through her as he took his seat on the couch across from her. With his own mug in hand, he looked every bit the man she’d gotten to know after she’d woken up beside him in bed one morning. Quick to smile, playful at times and sexy as hell. So different from the marshal he put on for the world. “Enough for me to remember to add earplugs to my order before I hit Submit.”
“I’m sorry. It’s worse now with the baby. He’s always trying to find ways to evacuate my lungs for more space.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and Madison physically felt the atmosphere chan
ge between them. Just as it had that night she’d taken him back to her house. With one lapse in judgment, she’d suffocated what she’d considered her only real friendship and turned it into something neither of them had been prepared for. She adjusted to accommodate the pins and needles climbing up the foot under her opposite thigh and took a sip of her tea. Perfect amount of honey and lemon to bring her back into the real world.
She shouldn’t have kissed him last night. She’d just...needed to forget the memories of fire and debris and blood. If only for a few seconds. But she hadn’t worked to get away from her father’s control only to be trapped by another man, this one with a gut-wrenching smile and a claim to the life growing inside her. No matter how much a deep part of her battled to let her defenses down, to remember what it’d felt like to be the center of Jonah’s entire world that night, she couldn’t make that mistake again. Her future counted on it.
“I’m used to working through the night, but I’ll make sure to keep the snoring behind closed doors as long as we’re stuck here together.” She stood, mug in hand, as she maneuvered her way back toward the kitchen. “Does one of these massive rooms have a desk I can take over? Might be easier for you to get some sleep if I quarantine myself somewhere upstairs.”
Setting her nearly full mug on the cool granite of the kitchen island, she forced herself to breathe evenly as awareness spiked her blood pressure higher. She didn’t have to turn around, didn’t have to face him to know he’d followed her during her retreat.
“Maddi, we’ve already tried that, remember? For five months,” he said. “But you know as well as I do that no amount of hiding is going to solve anything between us.”
She did know that. Because no matter how many times she’d dodged having to speak to him in the courthouse, no matter how many times she’d declined his calls, this tension between them wasn’t going to fix itself. She wasn’t sure what would, but she didn’t have the energy to confront the truth now. “Is that because you’ll still be able to hear me snoring through the door?”
Warm hands framed her hips, and it took everything she had left not to lean back, to give in, to...have him take care of her for a little while. She stared at the cup of tea he’d made her, determined to hold her ground. To prove she could. To prove he didn’t have this invisible, illogical grip on her she’d never be able to escape. His breath wisped across the oversensitized skin of her neck and face. “You snore as loud as a chain saw, but you’re not a bear in heat.”
Laughter burst from her chest, and the hollow, controlled, perfectionistic piece of herself she’d used to drive herself into the DA’s office threatened to break. This was how it’d always been between them. Him on one side of a blade, her on the other. Their professional interests had brought them into each other’s perfectly balanced ecosystem, but too much one way and she’d tip. She’d lose herself and everything she believed in. He was right before. He wasn’t her father, and there hadn’t ever been a single moment when she’d feared for her safety—not physically—with Jonah, but the thought of relying on someone else, of depending on them not to hurt her when she’d been wrong so many times before, was too much. Her smile faded as she put her shields back in place. Madison turned in his hands, faced him as she’d face any defendant in the courtroom, and stared up at him. “Tell me why you want to co-parent this baby with me, Jonah. Why do you keep pushing me to see things your way? Why is it important to you? And keep in mind ‘because that’s the way it’s supposed to be’ isn’t an argument you can win.”
A sudden coolness swept across his expression. Not stoic or guarded as she’d expected but something deeper, something that almost...stunned her. His palms fell away from her hips, and he took one step back in retreat. In her next breath, he offered her his hand. “Let me show you.”
“Okay.” Four simple words, but she couldn’t decipher the meaning behind them. Slipping her hand into his, she let him lead her around the base of the massive grand staircase and up to the second level. Light-colored wood branched off toward each of the bedrooms as Jonah tugged her into the wing of the cabin she hadn’t gotten a chance to explore for herself. Two bedrooms were positioned on this side of the house.
He headed straight for the only door that’d been closed. Hesitation tensed the muscles across his shoulders and pulled the fresh gauze she’d patched over his wound above the collar of his shirt. “We’ve known each other a long time, but no one, not even the other marshals in my district, know about this.”
Light speared into the hallway as he pushed the door wide and waited for her to step inside. Dust floated like falling snowflakes as she rounded the door frame, so distracting from the rest of the space. Every inch of the room had been meticulously designed. From the white dresser and curtains, to the artwork positioned above a crib on the largest wall. A glider in deep-colored fabric pulled at her attention as she struggled to control her breathing.
A nursery.
“I don’t... I don’t understand. What is this?” This didn’t make sense. Her fingers curled into fists as she took in the smallest details and tried to counter the sudden image of her sitting in that damn glider with their son. Heat flared across her skin as she turned on him. “You built a nursery for our baby knowing I wanted to raise him on my own. This is why you’ve been pushing me to give in to what you want? Because you already put together a place for him to sleep?”
Had this been the reason he’d brought her here after the attack? All this time, she’d believed he had been giving her space, that he respected her decision, but that wasn’t it at all. He’d been waiting for the moment to reveal what he wanted when it came to raising their child. How could she have been so stupid? They’d been friends for years, but she’d never truly known the man standing in front of her. “If you think you can win a custody battle with me in court, you have no idea—”
“I didn’t put this nursery together for our son, Maddi.” His voice hollowed as he stared out over the top of her head, and her stomach twisted. “I built it for my first son a few years ago. Right before he died.”
CHAPTER FIVE
He hadn’t told anyone. Hadn’t revealed it to the FBI when it’d happened. He’d simply packed up his belongings in the small room he’d taken over at Shindand Air Base seventy-five miles from the Iranian border and gotten on a plane to come home. But he’d been too late. He forced himself back into the moment, back from the anger, the desperation, the loss clawing him to shreds inside. Back into this room he hadn’t stepped inside since he’d buried his son. It’d been easy to fall into the comforting black hole of numbness he’d found over the years, to pretend he’d moved on and grieved. Until he’d met Madison.
Color drained from her face, her mouth parted. “You never told me you had a son.”
“I don’t.” The finality of that statement hit him as hard as a punch to the gut and left him just as breathless. Jonah studied the gold animal figures on the dresser he’d spent hours searching for across the city two days before he’d left for Afghanistan. A giraffe. An elephant. This nursery was supposed to be a safe place for Noah. Instead it’d been where he’d died. “Not anymore.”
“I’m so sorry, Jonah. I had no idea.” Her voice softened, keeping him anchored. Supported. Still dressed in the oversize T-shirt and sweats she’d borrowed from his closet, Madison smoothed her hands over her growing belly and accentuated the roundness of her pregnancy. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“I wasn’t here.” The last memories he had of his son now were the ones he wanted to forget. The phone call telling him Noah had passed away, the race to the airstrip, the long flight across the ocean. He swiped his hand across his face to keep the grief at bay, to protect himself from feeling that pain again, but the past twenty-four hours had destroyed his defenses. “My entire life I’ve known I wanted a family. I wanted what my parents had. Not just a marriage but a friendship, someone I could wake up next to every morning and
be thankful she was part of my life. Someone I could laugh with and raise children with, but working for the FBI kept me on the road ninety percent of the time. It was hard to meet people in my line of work. Most of the time we’re running toward the explosions, not away from them, so that tends to put a damper on long-term relationships. I wasn’t ready to give up my career and I’d accepted a life partner probably wouldn’t be in the cards for me, but I still felt like there was a part of me missing. So I looked into adoption.” He exhaled hard, fighting to gain some kind of control. “Miraculously, a teenage birth mother chose me to adopt her baby. I was there with her when she gave birth. I was the first one to hold him. I got to hear him cry for the first time. He was...everything, and after a couple of days of observation in the hospital, I was able to take him home.”
Madison slipped her hand into his and squeezed, eliciting a similar effect in his chest as he swallowed the swelling in his throat. “What was his name?”
“Noah. We had two weeks together before the FBI assigned me to Afghanistan, and I loved every minute of it. I felt like the missing piece I’d been living with my whole life didn’t hurt as much.” He lowered his gaze to the floor, watching specks of dust dance between them. “As much as I hated the idea of leaving him with my parents for three months, Afghanistan would’ve been my last assignment for the Bureau. As soon as I got home, I’d planned on putting in my resignation, and Noah and I could live out here full-time.” He nodded. “I was five days into my assignment when my mom called me with the news.”
Madison’s spine straightened a bit more. “How did it happen?”
He remembered every word out of his mother’s mouth, every hitch in her breathing over the staticky line, every sob that escaped her chest. She hadn’t been able to even say the words until he’d begged her to tell him what was wrong. “He’d passed away in his sleep in the middle of the night. Peacefully, as far as the medical examiner was able to tell, but she couldn’t tell me any more than that without doing an autopsy. Sudden infant death syndrome. Something I hadn’t known existed until it’d happened to my own son.”
Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 5