The Perfect Outsider

by Loreth Anne White

  He could not lose her now.

  He could not let her die thinking he was evil, a traitor.

  “June,” he whispered, emotion burning in his eyes, panic licking through his stomach.

  “Wake up, June. Stay with me.”

  She moaned, and her eyes flickered open. Relief punched through his chest. Jesse worked quickly to take off her shirt. There was an ugly gouge through the outside of the flesh on her upper arm. God, she was lucky—the bullet had only ripped through flesh.

  “Sonya!” he yelled. “Tiffany!”

  The two women came running. “Get me June’s first-aid stuff! Get me a bowl of hot water, cloths. Hurry!”

  June was delirious, moaning.

  “Stay with me, girl, hang in. I love you, you know that? You’re not going to get away from me now.”

  * * *

  Jesse cleaned and disinfected her wound, his own basic first-aid training kicking in. He pulled the edges of skin tightly together with adhesive butterfly sutures from June’s kit, and he bound her arm firmly with a bandage.

  With a cool, damp cloth he wiped her face.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Hey,” he said, his chest cramping with relief. “You’re going to be okay. You got lucky—it’s a flesh wound.”

  “The children—”

  “Everyone is safe, June. We got the bad guys.” He smiled.

  But she was not looking right. He needed to get her medical attention. Sonya brought him a fresh shirt for June.

  “Is she going to be okay?” said Sonya.

  He nodded. “But I want to get her to the hospital.”

  “No.” June’s voice was hoarse as she grabbed his arm. “Not the hospital in Cold Plains. I can’t go there, not after this attack. None of us can go into Cold Plains right now.”

  “June, your pulse is weak, something’s going on with you—”

  She shook her head. “It’s just a flesh wound. I’ll be fine.” Confusion crossed her face suddenly. “Jesse—the radio in your hand. You were guiding those men in.”

  “No,” he said gently. “It was Molly. I was in the kitchen when I saw her outside talking on the radio. I’d just grabbed it from her when you came out the door.”

  “She…can’t be. Not Molly.”

  “I’m afraid so, June.”

  She frowned, a confused look entering her eyes.

  “She must have infiltrated via your rescue system,” he said. “My guess is that she didn’t expect to arrive at a house outside of cell-phone range, and that the plan was for her to call in her location. But once here, she had no way of letting the men on the outside know where she was without blowing her cover. I believe that’s why she hiked out to the end of the valley the other day, when she encountered the bears. She might have gotten enough of a signal to let them know the safe-house radio frequency, or they got lucky and tuned in.”

  “That means there could be more men coming, Jesse,” she whispered.

  He took her hand in his.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But there’s also a chance those two henchmen didn’t have a chance to pass on information about the safe house.”

  Her eyelids fluttered closed and she sighed deeply.

  “So…tired,” she whispered. “So…very tired.”

  Jesse glanced at Sonya, who was standing to the side. She looked as worried as he felt.

  “June?” he said, turning back to her.

  Silence.

  “I think she’s fallen asleep,” said Sonya.

  “I’m going to fetch Dr. Black,” Jesse said, standing up. “And then I’m going to get the FBI. Watch her, Sonya.” Emotion choked his voice. “Don’t let anything happened to her, and stay off the radios, okay? I’ll tell the others to stand guard.”

  * * *

  He took June’s shotgun and several boxes of shells from the cabinet. Thrusting them into a pack, he hurried to the utility room where Molly Rigg and Lumpy Smithers were now being held.

  He knocked on the door.

  Tyler opened it. Jesse stepped in. The utility room was tiny, rock walls, stone floors, no windows, vented from above. Using June’s climbing rope, the men had managed to tie both Lumpy and Molly—whom Davis had found not far from the safe house—to the heavy plumbing that ran along the bottom of one wall.

  “Lumpy said he wants to talk to the feds,” Davis said quietly in Jesse’s ear. “He’s broken up about Samuel wanting him to leave Jason to die. I think he’s done being a Devotee. Agent Hawk Bledsoe might actually get something concrete out of him he can use against Samuel.”

  Jesse glanced at Molly. Her face was tight with rage. He doubted she was going to break in a hurry.

  “I’m going to fetch Rafe Black and Agent Bledsoe,” he told them. “Once Dr. Black has looked at June, he can take a look at Lumpy here. Have you got a cell phone I can use to contact Bledsoe?”

  “Take mine.” Davis handed Jesse his phone.

  “Thanks. I’ll call ahead for Black to be ready to roll as soon as I get there. I’ll call Bledsoe on my way down.”

  “Both their numbers are in my contact list,” Davis said. “If you go into town via the south trail you’ll actually hit Bledsoe and Carly’s ranch before you hit town.”

  As Jesse left the room Molly yelled at him: “You sick SOB—Samuel will find us! His men will find us! This place, June, they’re the evil among us. She and this house go against everything the Devotees are trying to build. She’s like a cancer!”

  Her voice faded as Jesse made his way down the stone passage, urgency mounting in him.

  But, as he went, Jesse tried to temper his anger at the kid. She’d been indoctrinated by a sick sociopath. Yes, she was dangerous, but she needed help, too. She was also a victim of Samuel’s.

  Just as his young brother-in-law, Michael, was a victim.

  And Jessie knew now that he’d promised Annie on her deathbed to come to Cold Plains and get Michael out.

  When he stepped out the door with his twelve-gauge and his pack, the sky was already black and low with clouds, and rain was beginning to spit. Thunder rumbled in the hills.

  * * *

  By the time Jesse was out of the tunnel and the canyon on the other side, the rain was coming down hard and the wind was whipping debris down from the treetops. He moved fast along the south trail with the aid of a headlamp and his GPS. He was now certain of who he was. He trusted his law- enforcement training and his experience in the wilderness, and his sense of purpose was clear and fierce, as was his sense of justice.

  He had a brother-in-law somewhere down in that town—he could see lights through the rain and trees now. His duty was to keep a vow to his deceased wife—a woman he’d always cared for but had struggled to love since her infidelity. And now there was June, a woman he did love, her well-being hanging by a thread.

  Thunder crashed and a bolt of lightning forked across the black dawn over Cold Plains; like an omen, thought Jesse, because the wrath of justice was going to strike down Samuel Grayson and his perfectly evil little community. Thunder growled again and echoed into the mountains. Jesse could now make out lights from what must be Hawk and Carly Bledsoe’s ranch house. He bent into the wind, face wet, muscles burning as he began to jog down the last stretch of meadow trail that led to the ranch. Rain was pelting horizontally at him as he banged on the door.

  More lights went on inside the house.

  The door swung open.

  A tall, muscular man with sandy-blond hair and brown eyes stood in the doorway. The man’s hand went to his hip where he had a pistol holstered.

  “Agent Hawk Bledsoe?” said Jesse.

  Hawk identified himself, eyes narrowing.

  “My name is Jesse Grainger.” And it felt damn good to say it. “I’ve just come from the safe house run by June Farrow—she’s been shot. They’ve been attacked by henchmen.”

  Hawk motioned him inside.

  Quickly, Jesse explained who he was, why he’d come and how the two men had attacked
the cave house. “One man went down when I returned fire. The other is being held captive in a utility room along with the Devotee mole.”

  As Jesse explained that he was on his way to fetch Dr. Rafe Black, two men and two women appeared behind Hawk. He introduced one of the women as Carly, his wife, and the others as his team of FBI agents assigned to the Samuel Grayson investigation.

  “I mapped my route from the cave house,” Jesse said, handing Hawk his GPS. “All you have to do is follow the waypoints. When you go into the rock crevasse, it narrows to what appears to be a dead end. Move the creepers aside, and you’ll expose the opening to the cave with a tunnel leading off the back. Go through the tunnel until it pops out into Hidden Valley on the other side. The cave house is at the end of a boardwalk that leads from the tunnel.”

  Carly was pulling on a rain jacket as Jesse spoke. “I’ll take you to Dr. Black’s in my SUV,” she said. “Telephone lines and the cell tower are down because of lightning strikes.”

  She flung open the door and, pulling up her hood, began to run through the pelting rain to a vehicle. Jesse followed her.

  Thunder clapped as she opened the driver’s door, her face white in the simultaneous flash of lightning. The lights inside the house dimmed and flickered. Urgency kicked through Jesse.

  By the time they pulled up outside Rafe and Darcy’s place, water was running in rivers over the roads. Jesse banged on the doctor’s door.

  Rafe flung open the door, eyes sharp with adrenaline. “Did you find Devin?”

  “No, Rafe, not yet. It’s June—she’s been shot. It’s a flesh wound but I’m worried about her. Something else is going on—can you come to the safe house?”

  The disappointment in the doctor’s eyes was keen, but he barely blinked as he hurried to pull on some gear and grab his kit. Darcy stood in the lit doorway watching them pull off.

  Tires skidded on mud as Carly struggled to get the SUV as far up a logging track as the vehicle could go in order to make the hike shorter.

  “That’s one good thing about this weather,” said Jesse as they climbed out of her vehicle, pulling up their hoods. “There’s no one around to see us.”

  “Good luck,” Carly called behind them as they started up the trail. “Be careful!”

  The concern in her voice was sharp, and Jesse felt a sense of kinship, of being part of a greater team, something he’d been missing for a long, long time.

  Carly left her headlights on, lighting their way until they disappeared into the trees.

  Rafe, Jesse noted, was fit, and although remaining cautious in wilderness terrain in the dark storm, the two of them moved quickly.

  It was not long before they were at the cave entrance.

  * * *

  Jesse watched as Rafe finished suturing June’s wound. Hawk and his team had arrived ahead of Jesse and Rafe, and were now busy with the captives in the utility room.

  “Does she need to go to the hospital?” Jesse asked the doctor, still worried about June’s sheet-white complexion and the deeply bruised look under her eyes.

  “I’m fine,” June murmured.

  “I’m asking the doc, not you,” Jesse said with a big, forced smile, thinking that even her voice seemed flat, listless. And he didn’t like the way she was avoiding eye contact with him.

  He had to tell her, now, about who he was. She still didn’t know.

  Rafe packed up his medical kit. “I’ll be back in a while to check on you, June,” he said as he worked with practiced calm, “after I take a look at Lumpy Smithers. Sounds like he might have broken a few ribs. And I’m going to check in on Tyler’s baby while I’m here.”

  Lacy, the twins and the baby were safely back in the house, and Jesse heard the ache in Rafe’s voice and knew he was thinking of his own son. He followed Rafe out of the room and took him aside in the kitchen.

  “Rafe, what’s really going on with her?”

  Rafe set his bag on the counter. “June has been putting herself under extreme mental and physical stress, day in and day out for over three months now. I think her system is just giving in under the strain. I wouldn’t rule out critical-incident stress, either. She might need counseling herself, Jesse. More than anything, June needs to rest.”

  “I don’t think she knows how to stop.”

  Rafe nodded. “She needs help, Jesse. She needs someone to take over for her for a while, and insist she put her feet up.”

  Jesse snorted. “Like June is going to allow anyone to take over and give orders.”

  “Someone has to.” Rafe shook his head and picked up his bag. “I’ve told June to take it easy, but she’s dogged in her drive to help others. Sometimes I think she’s just as trapped by it all as the Devotees are by Samuel.”

  “It’s because of her husband and child.”

  “I know,” Rafe said. “And I get it. I’m just as driven to find my own son as she is to set right the perceived wrongs of her past.”

  * * *

  Emotion burned in Jesse’s chest as he watched the doctor go down the passage toward the utility room. Rafe had summed it up. He was a good man and an astute doctor. There were a lot of good people mixed up in this net of Samuel Grayson’s.

  Jesse opened the door to June’s room.

  “Hey,” he said gently.

  She turned her head on the pillow away from him, and something dropped like a stone in his stomach.

  He came up to the bed, sat down on the edge and tried to take her hand. She moved it away, still not looking at him. Eager, however, nuzzled against Jesse’s leg, clearly worried about his mistress. Jesse stroked his soft fur instead.

  “Hawk Bledsoe has things under control,” he told her. “He’s hopeful he can get Lumpy to give him something on Samuel.”

  She said nothing.

  Exasperation, worry, whispered through him.

  “June, we’re going to win this.”

  She turned her head, looked at him. His heart sank at the pallor in her face, the vacancy in her eyes.

  “We?” she said quietly.

  “Yes, June. You and me.”

  “You’re wet,” she said, looking a little confused again.

  He snorted. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there, worse than the night you found me. June, listen—”

  “Lacy and the twins, the baby?”

  “They’re all fine. We saved everyone.”

  Her eyes moistened and she bit her lip.

  “June, I have something to tell—”

  Hawk gave a knock and entered the room. Jesse cursed silently.

  “You doing okay, June?” said the agent.

  She nodded. “Thanks for coming, Hawk. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  He smiled as he came forward, his brown eyes guarded but friendly. The man exuded a cop’s air of authority and confidence.

  “You can thank Jesse,” said Hawk. “Landlines and the cell tower went down in the storm. Jesse hiked down the south trail and came banging on our door at the ranch in the thick of it all. Carly drove him down to get Doc Black while we headed straight here using his GPS mapping.”

  June frowned, glanced at Jesse. “You fetched Hawk?”

  “Looks as though we might get Lumpy Smithers to turn on Mayor Rufus Kittridge and Monica Pearl in a plea bargain,” Hawk interjected. “Lumpy was close to Jason Barnes and he feels betrayed by Samuel wanting him to let Barnes die. If we can charge Kittridge and Pearl, Samuel’s two militia leaders, we might finally get something from them to pin on Samuel. It would help if we could locate Samuel’s twin, Micah. He was the one who started this ball rolling, saying he could help us take his brother down.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Jesse.

  Hawk gave a half shrug. “He vanished into thin air. No leads on him at all. Perhaps Samuel got to him first.”

  “What about Molly Rigg?” June said, trying to edge herself higher up to sit back against the pillows.

  “As tough-talking as that kid is, once we start interrogati
ng her, I have a feeling she’s going to give.”

  “Promise me you’ll allow Molly access to counseling, deprogramming, legal advice, before you interrogate her,” June said, and Jesse’s heart hurt for her—even in her weakened state she was still worried for others.

  “Of course,” said Hawk. “I’ve seen firsthand with Mia what a cult can do to a loved one, and how deprogramming can work like a switch—I believe in what you do, June, can’t thank you enough, none of us can.”

  “Did Sonya show you around the safe house?” said June.

  “She did—I’m impressed. And from what Lumpy and Molly are saying, no one beyond the two of them now knows the location of the cave house—it’s still secure to the best of my knowledge.” He turned to Jesse, paused, a grave and businesslike look entering his already-serious features.

  “When you’re ready, Jesse, we’ve got some procedural stuff to go through with you.”

  Jesse nodded.

  He’d shot and killed two men in self-defense since his arrival in Cold Plains. One of them was lying dead outside right now. There would be consequences that would need to be legally addressed, statements made and taken.

  He waited for Hawk to exit, then he got up and closed the door, desperate for a moment of privacy with June.

  “Jesse,” June said quietly, turning her head away from him as if she couldn’t bear even to look at his face. “I need to be alone.”

  He came and sat back down on the bed beside her.

  “Please,” she said.

  “I’m not going anywhere, June. Not anymore. I remembered. Everything.”

  She turned her head, met his gaze.

  “Everything?” she whispered.

  “I know who I am, June.”

  A nervousness crept into her eyes.

  Emotion suddenly crackled hard and fierce into his chest, and he took her hand in his. “And I know there is a place in my life for you.”

  Chapter 11

  June met his gaze. His energy was palpable, his eyes fierce with a kind of fervor she’d not seen in him before, and she was suddenly afraid of what he was going to say. She’d wanted so desperately to allow herself to love him, but in taking the risk she’d seen just how raw she still was about loss, and how much she could still be hurt. June wasn’t sure she could ever give herself wholly over to someone again, or if she even wanted to try. The cost of losing again was too high for her.