Search and Defend

by Nichole Severn

  Holden swung the SUV into the emergency room driveway and shouldered out of the vehicle. Blood crusted to his suit jacket and tie, but he didn’t give a damn about the fact he hadn’t packed a change of clothes before he’d raced to intercept the bastard determined to ruin his life. In reality, he understood exactly how Faith and Hope were feeling in that moment as he wrenched open the back driver’s side door, their small, beautiful faces pressed against the window. Georgia Weller had been married to his partner for four years, had had two beautiful children with Jack before he’d been murdered, but she’d always been the center of Holden’s world. And he’d have to live with that betrayal for the rest of his life. “Help! We need help out there!”

  Two nurses burst from the automatic double glass doors and rushed toward the vehicle. Stepping out of the way, Holden fought every instinct to stay at Georgia’s side as emergency personnel strapped oxygen over her nose and mouth and loaded her onto the gurney. He couldn’t leave the girls alone. Not after what they’d witnessed, and he wasn’t going to hand them off to local police or a social worker either. He’d gotten them into this mess. He sure as hell was going to fix it. “She’s been shot. Fifteen minutes ago. The bullet is still inside. Please, help her.”

  The acidic bite of guilt spread across his tongue as he settled on the edge of the backseat, his breathing becoming more shallow. Movement registered from inside the vehicle as Faith and Hope crawled over the second row of seats and one-by-one set their chins on his shoulders. One second. Two. He maneuvered his arms around each of their small bodies and drew them into his side. They’d had already lost one parent, but he’d be damned if he let them lose another.

  *

  She couldn’t move.

  The soft electric beeping of something close by intensified the pressure at the base of her skull. Gravity had increased its hold on every inch of Georgia’s body as though she were slowly being pulled down into quicksand. That couldn’t be right. She struggled to open her eyes, even though she wanted to return to the dream, the one where Holden had come back, had fought to protect her and the girls.

  Her skin crawled with the sensation of ants underneath, but something kept her from scratching when she reached with one hand. She opened her eyes. Sunlight beamed through the window to her right, a cushioned bench just beneath that with toys, blankets, and pillows strewn all over it. Faith and Hope’s blankets. Their toys. The lights overhead had been turned off, but she recognized her daughters’ belongings. And the IV attached to the back of her hand.

  Which meant… It’d been real. It’d all been real.

  Someone had broken into her home, had tried to kill them, and she and the girls had run. It hadn’t been a dream her brain had conjured. She’d been shot, the dull ache in her lower abdominals more intense as awareness returned to her body.

  She swallowed around the panic clawing through her, fighting to sit upright, but the deep pain in her belly intensified. She’d left her girls unprotected. She had to get to them. “Faith? Hope?”

  “They’re here, Georgia. They’re fine.” The rough, graveled voice that’d haunted her dreams for the past two years urged her heart rate to slow. Callused fingers slipped into her hand, warm, inviting. Tempting. Dark, styled hair stood on end to balance out the thick beard around his jawline, and her hand tingled to reach out and confirm how soft it’d feel between her fingers. She hadn’t imagined him either. He was here. Holden locked deep chocolate brown eyes on her, the two sleeping girls in his arms—one on each side—refusing to move, and the space behind her chest tightened at the sight. “Everything’s okay. You’re safe. The girls are safe. They just wanted to make sure you weren’t alone when you woke up.”

  Dryness coated the inside of her mouth, but whether it was a side effect of whatever pain medication they’d given her or having Holden here, she didn’t know. She blinked to clear a million racing thoughts from her head and tried to focus on one at a time. She hadn’t sustained a head injury. She remembered every second after she’d heard the front door splinter under force. She’d been careful not to wake the girls and gone for the gun safe beneath her bed. In seconds, she’d found Holden—in all his intense, confident glory—standing at the top of her stairs. He shouldn’t have been there. He’d disappeared after Jack’s funeral and promised her and the girls they’d be safer without him in their lives. Right when she’d needed him the most. “What… What are you doing here?”

  “I know how this looks, but I didn’t want to leave them with the police or a social worker while you were in surgery, and they insisted on staying with you. I had one of my teammates run back to your house to get their things and a bag for you.” He squeezed her hand, his body heat working to undo years of loneliness and tears from losing not just her husband that night but the only other person who hurt as much as she had when Jack had been killed. But it’d take a lot more than holding her hand to make up for what he’d done. “And Faith—”

  “No.” Georgia tugged her hand free. Her throat burned, the delicate skin more sensitive than she remembered before she’d lost consciousness. Surgery... They’d have needed to intubate her. Or maybe the soreness was from the fact her entire body had turned into one giant electrified nerve ending with Holden this close? Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She’d survived a gunshot, and she wanted to know who the hell had pulled the trigger. Who’d come after her and the girls, and why? “Someone broke into my house, Holden. They pointed a gun at my children less than minute after you broke in. Why are you here?”

  “He said he was going to take you from me.” Holden shook his head, the collar of his suit jacket crusted with mud, and everything inside of her froze. “He told me he was going to hunt you down and make me pay for what I’d done. So I called in a favor from my boss to get your location, got on a plane, and didn’t look back. I wasn’t going to let him add your name to his list of victims. Yours or the girls’. Not when I could save you.”

  What he’d done? Guilt laced his words, the kind anyone with a few credits of psychology would’ve been able to pick up on, but this guilt had dragged her and her daughters into a shoot-out in their own home. The home where Holden had promised they would be safe from the backlash of his and Jack’s last case. “Holden, what have you’ve gotten us into?”

  She and the girls were just starting to heal, to move on with their lives, and now there was a chance she’d have to uproot her family all over again. She couldn’t do that to Faith and Hope. Not again.

  “It’s him, Georgia.” His voice dropped into dangerous territory but felt so out of place as he tightened his hold around her girls. “The man who broke into your house last night, who shot you… It’s the same bastard who shot and killed Jack.”

  The pull of blood draining from her face and neck made her lightheaded, the spike in her heart rate registering on the monitor beside the bed.

  “You told me…” She licked her lips, but no amount of distraction could keep her from facing the truth of what he’d just said. Holden Marsten was many things. Defensive, isolated, obsessive, but a liar wasn’t one of them. Jack and Holden had been partners within FBI ranks for years. They’d worked countless cases together, searched for the missing across the country while watching each others’ backs, but their last case had ended with more than one victim: a woman named Lyla Wright. She’d been killed by her abductor mere minutes before Holden and Jack were able to locate her, and then a few days later, Georgia’s husband. As payback for not reaching the victim in time. And now Jack’s killer was back. Lyla’s husband had come to finish what he’d started two years ago, and Holden had brought him straight to their front door. Georgia shook her head, but it did nothing to dispel the fear spreading through her. Locking her jaw against the rush of tears welling in her eyes, she studied her girls asleep in Holden’s arms, and her heart ached. “I don’t understand. He blamed you and Jack for not getting to his wife in time. Why would he come after me and the girls?”

  “B
ecause he wants to hurt me, Georgia. He wants me to feel exactly as he did when he lost his wife to a killer.” Holden pressed his mouth against the top of Hope’s head then shoved to his feet with both of her daughters in his arms as though their weight meant nothing. “He knows how much it’d hurt for me to lose you—all of you—and I’m not going to wait around for that to happen. So I’m getting you the hell out of here before he has the chance.”

  Chapter Three

  The bastard wouldn’t lay another hand on Georgia or the girls. Ever.

  Postcard scenes slipped by as Holden turned east onto the 79 leading out of Northfield, Minnesota. Orange, red, yellow, and brown foliage held tight to the last remnants of fall, the surrounding buildings almost as vibrant as the trees lining the streets. In a town of only 20,000 residents and 8.61 square miles of land, it was easy to picture himself jogging along the raw asphalt path to their right that led deeper into a grouping of large trees, or taking Faith and Hope to the park up ahead in order to give Georgia break from their constant complaints about having to share their toys. Hell, even the last few remaining signs for the town’s annual outdoor heritage festival from back in September, The Defeat of Jesse James Days, tore at the edges of the hole in his chest. This was the kind of town he could settle down in, be happy in with a wife, a couple of kids. For a long time, he could picture the faces of his future family so clearly, had memorized their smiles and the light in their eyes when he’d walked through the door at the end of the day, but he’d buried those fantasies a long time ago.

  Holden studied Georgia in the passenger side seat as she shifted. Because the wife, the kids in his fantasy… They didn’t belong to him. They’d been Jack’s.

  “Where are we going?” The small lines between her brows deepened. Georgia hadn’t said more than a few words to him, mostly in response to his questions, and the hollowness he’d lived with since walking out of her life—out of Faith and Hope’s lives—spread. He’d gotten her out of the hospital, but there was a risk her wound could become infected. He had to get her somewhere safe, somewhere she could recover.

  “Blackhawk has a couple safe houses in Minneapolis operatives are allowed to utilize when our clients need somewhere to stay off the grid.” He tried to keep his grip around the steering wheel loose. Hell, he’d come so close to losing her. For the few seconds her blood had slipped between her fingers, he’d been helpless. Just as he’d been helpless when Jack had been gunned down right beside him. Torn between hunting the bastard who’d pulled the trigger and getting his partner help, Holden had made the wrong choice to follow the shooter and lost everyone he’d cared about in a matter of minutes. He’d lived with that weight since that night, but as long as the shooter was still out there, he’d protect Georgia and the girls for the rest of his life if that was what was required of him.

  “Is that all I am to you? A client? What we are?” Clear green eyes remained focused out the windshield of his SUV while the girls chatted between themselves in the back seat. The same seat he’d had to lay their mother across after she’d been shot, but he couldn’t focus on that right now. Couldn’t add to the nightmares he relived each and every time he closed his eyes.

  His mouth opened. The words wouldn’t come. Hell, no. She was more. Always had been, but she was his partner’s widow. No matter how much he wanted their situation to be different, he wouldn’t cross that line. Not after she and the girls had already been through so much. Not when his feelings could put them in even more danger. And not when he was the reason Jack wasn’t here to protect them himself. “Georgia—”

  “You said we were safe.” The bite in her words heated the skin beneath his collar. “That’s why you left after Jack’s funeral, wasn’t it? Had us relocated somewhere you didn’t have to see us? The job was done, and you didn’t have to shoulder the weight of your partner’s family anymore. You could finally move on with your life, and you didn’t have to look back at the people who reminded you of who you lost that night.” The weight of her attention pressurized the air in his lungs, but he didn’t dare face her. Couldn’t. Her voice softened. “I stood in the middle of the kitchen after the funeral, in the house where Jack and I built our family, and I realized right then nothing would be the same, but at least we still had you. The girls would still have their dad’s best friend around when they missed Jack. You’d still bring them donuts in the morning. You’d sit at the table with them, and I’d bring you a cup of coffee before your day started. Just like every morning before he’d died. Until we lost you, too.” Her shoulders rose on a deep inhale in his peripheral vision as she turned toward the passenger side window. “We were hurting, Holden. We needed you. I needed you, and I know I’m professionally trained to deal with this kind of resentment, and I should be able to convince myself to move on, but I haven’t. Not for that.”

  “I’m sorry. For all of it.” He didn’t know what else to say. Everything inside of him heated. She resented him. The SUV bounced as they crossed onto the beginning of the bridge over Cannon River, and Holden forced himself to take a deep breath. There’d been a lot of reasons to leave Washington, the FBI, everything and everyone after Jack’s death in order to move on with his life, but none of them had anything to do with not wanting the responsibility of taking care of these girls. If anything, he’d wanted to be a bigger part of their lives. Too much.

  Georgia deserved the truth. This conscientious, beautiful, dedicated creature he hadn’t been able to forget. No matter how many times he’d tried, how many assignments he’d taken on to occupy his thoughts, she’d always been there. Whether he’d realized it or not, she’d become part of him over the years. Those breakfasts together before he and Jack had gone into the office, the laughing, the jokes, the food fights with the girls, her in her stained sweatpants and t-shirts with her hair piled high in a messed bun. That was when he’d fallen in love with her. Holden’s stomach knotted. He’d fallen in love with his partner’s wife, and he hated himself more every day because of it. And after the funeral, that internal hatred had only grown stronger.

  Until he’d recognized her voice in that hallway as she’d threatened to shoot him.

  In a single moment, the days apart had disappeared as though he’d never left, and he realized then keeping his distance hadn’t done a damn bit to relieve the ache of wanting her. He chanced a glance in her direction, catching the sun reflect off those mesmerizing green eyes. Sliding his hand into hers against her thigh, he nodded. “I’m here now, okay? For as long as you need. I’m not going any—”

  A vehicle ahead of them grew larger through the windshield in his peripheral vision. Ripping his hand from Georgia’s, he twisted the wheel the steering wheel to avoid an impact right as the box truck slammed into them headfirst.

  *

  Momentum snapped her body forward, the seat belt crushing the air from her lungs and tearing at the stitches in her lower abdominals. The air bag fought to cut off her oxygen as it exploded in her face, the powder coating her mouth and tongue. Screams from the back seat pierced through the haze after the vehicle settled. Steam rose from the SUV’s hood over the top of the bag. The windshield had been cracked, but she could clearly make out the vehicle on the other side of the glass. The truck had swerved right into them. Was the driver all right? Had they fallen asleep at the wheel or suffered a stroke? Georgia couldn’t chance getting out of the SUV to evaluate the situation and any injuries. Not until she knew her family was safe. She twisted in her seat to check the girls. They’d been fastened into their car seat and booster, but if experience and education had taught her anything, it was some wounds weren’t physical. “Faith. Hope? Girls, please tell me you’re okay.”

  “Yes,” Faith said. Tears swelled in Hope’s wide green eyes, but Georgia didn’t want to chance removing either of the girls from their seats. Not until they were given medical clearance by the fire department or paramedics.

  “Hope, baby, it’s okay. We’re okay. See? Faith and Mommy are here.
And Holden’s here. He’s—” Her hand brushed against Holden’s arm, and something wet clung onto her skin. Blood. Georgia slid her gaze up his arm, tracking the trail to the laceration above his right eyebrow. “Holden?”

  No answer.

  “Holden, can you hear me?” His air bag hadn’t gone off. He must’ve hit the steering wheel during the crash, and she still had no idea if the other driver had survived. She wasn’t a medical doctor. She treated trauma through the use of eye movement direction, but her instincts screamed for her to do something—anything—she could to help him. Only… Moving him might make any internal injuries he’d sustained worse. Her hands shook as she set one against his arm and the other toward the middle of his thigh. Bulky muscle pressed into her palms as she physically searched him for any other signs of injury, and instant fear arced through her nervous system. Pulling back, she ran trembling fingers through her hair. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Holden had saved her life—her girls’ lives—less than twelve hours ago. She wasn’t going to let him die here. Couldn’t. “Stay with me. Don’t you dare leave us again.”

  The rumble of the cargo truck’s engine vibrated through the SUV, revving higher and higher. Metal protested with a high-pitched scream as the driver of the other vehicle used his truck to push them backward, and the entire SUV jerked in response.