Her eyes lifted as though searching the files in her mind. Then she blinked them closed. “Dark, I think.”
“Carter didn’t use his name?” Drury asked.
With her eyes still closed, Cora thought a moment and then said, “When the man first approached, he said, ‘Dexter,’ as though he was surprised to see him.”
No last name. Drury met Deputy Chandler’s glance with the significance of that. Brycen didn’t seem moved one way or the other. No last name meant it would be harder for them to find the man.
“Why is the man important?” Cora asked. “Does he have something to do with why Trooper Nichols shot me?”
More than Cora had seen the man go up to Carter. There had to be another reason.
“Did Carter mention anything to you about the domestic violence call my husband went on before he was murdered?” Drury asked. “Did he ever talk about his murder at all?”
Cora nodded slowly and slightly, growing tired. “He did talk about that. He said my attack happened around the same time and...” She thought some more. “I asked him if there were any other calls and he said a few, one his partner—the man murdered—your husband—went on by himself.”
“He said that? Noah went on the call alone?”
As the deputy put his hand on her shoulder as though in comfort, Cora said, “Yes. And he seemed to regret telling me. I thought he wasn’t supposed to talk about the investigation with me so I didn’t make a fuss over it.”
Drury checked Brycen for a reaction but he just continued to watch and listen.
“Noah did go alone, Cora,” she said, “but that’s not what Carter put in his report. He falsified the report.”
“Well.” Cora blinked tiredly. “That explains why he shot me, I suppose. Why wait, though? Why didn’t he shoot me before?” She looked at Brycen for an answer.
“I wasn’t onto him back then,” he said. “Now he’s a desperate man trying to erase evidence or anyone who can testify against him.”
Cora nodded slowly. “So, he’ll come after me again.”
“No,” Brycen said, no doubt in his tone. “I won’t allow him to get another chance. You’re safe now, and I’ll make sure Carter knows you’ve already told me all you know. He’ll have no reason to come after you. He’ll be more concerned with escaping me.”
Cora smiled as much as her energy would allow. “I knew you were different. As soon as I met you at the restaurant, I felt it. You were different than Carter.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He grinned.
“It was meant as one.” She didn’t open her eyes.
“We should let you get some rest,” Deputy Chandler said. “We’re all glad to hear you’re going to fully recover.”
“You can add me to that list.” She laughed slightly and winced in pain.
“Thank you, Cora,” Drury said.
Brycen moved around the bed and she preceded him out the door. The deputy said his farewell and followed.
Outside the room, the deputy faced them. “I’ll contact the FBI and see what they have on any wanted men named Dexter.”
“Thanks,” Brycen said. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Appreciate that.”
Drury gave a wave and started down the hall. But she stopped short when she recognized Mr. Jefferson and his daughter, Avery, walking down the hall. Kayla’s father and her sister.
“Mr. Jefferson. Avery,” she said.
Mr. Jefferson stopped walking and stared at Brycen in surprise and then disgust. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Cora Parker is part of my investigation.”
“Do you know Cora?” Drury asked.
“What’s it to you?” Mr. Jefferson snapped.
“Excuse me?” She stepped right up to him and his daughter. “I suggest you speak respectfully to me rather than passing judgment when you don’t even know me.”
He blinked as though realizing how far he’d allowed his control to slip.
“How do you know Cora?” Drury asked.
The deputy moved closer, more of a presence to ensure no one lost their cool.
“She’s my friend,” Avery said. “We went to the same school.”
“Well. Anchorage is a big enough city, but small enough it would appear.”
“We’d appreciate it if you’d take him and go,” Mr. Jefferson glanced at the deputy. “We don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“Why?” Drury asked. “I find it hard to believe you didn’t know Brycen would want to talk to Cora. She was attacked close to the time my husband was murdered.”
“Yes, we were aware of that. But why would Cora’s assault be related to his murder?” Mr. Jefferson stopped and looked at Brycen. “You always did exaggerate everything. Looking under rocks that have nothing under them. Now look at you. You’re back and we could lose another person we care about.”
The man’s ire stirred anew and Drury wondered if he’d rant some more when the deputy stepped between the two, putting his hand on Mr. Jefferson’s chest.
“Take a step back, please,” Deputy Chandler said.
He did, glowering at Brycen.
“Kayla never told me about Cora and Avery being friends,” Brycen said.
“Cora is like a second daughter to us. Kayla never told you because all you were interested in is yourself!” Mr. Jefferson moved around Deputy Chandler.
“Mr. Jefferson?” Brycen called.
He stopped in the hospital room doorway, hand on the doorframe.
“Cora is going to recover.”
With a dismissing grunt, Mr. Jefferson dropped his hand and went into the room, Avery having already gone there.
“What kind of trouble does he think you’re causing?” Deputy Chandler asked.
Drury predicted Brycen’s response before he started to turn away.
“We’ll be in touch, Deputy,” Brycen said.
Drury caught the deputy’s perplexed look. “It’s a touchy subject for him.” She held up her hand in farewell and followed Brycen toward the elevators.
Waiting for the doors to open, she changed her mind about leaving with him just yet. “I have to use the restroom. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
He pressed the down button and before he could say anything, she headed back down the hall.
Rounding a corner, she saw Deputy Chandler leaning against the opposite wall from Cora’s room.
“You’re back,” he said with a smile.
“You’re staying?” she asked.
“Until one of my troopers shows up. I’ve been keeping Cora under guard given someone tried to kill her.”
Of course, she should have thought of that. “That’s good of you.” She glanced back toward the hospital room. “Excuse me.”
She peeked her head in and saw Avery talking to Cora, who both looked and sounded exhausted.
Mr. Jefferson put his hand on Cora’s shoulder. “You get some rest. We’ll be back.”
Ducking back out of the room, she waited for him and Avery to leave, facing the door and ignoring the deputy’s curious observation. A trooper walked up to him and they started talking, the deputy looking her way once before Mr. Jefferson appeared in the hall.
“Mrs. Decoteau?” he queried, looking even more perplexed than the deputy had.
“I had to come back and ask you why you both still blame Brycen for Kayla’s death when it was a car accident,” she said. “Why do you?”
Mr. Jefferson shared a reluctant glance with his daughter, who offered no input. “The accident happened because someone started chasing him. Danger follows him everywhere he goes.”
“He’s a homicide detective. Are you suggesting he not do that?”
His mouth crimped in a disagreeing frown before he said, “He takes what he does too far.”
“That’s what makes him good at what he does.” She searched his eyes and then Avery’s for indications that they realized how unrealistic their hatred was. All she found was anger in Mr. Jeffe
rson. Avery averted her eyes.
“Kayla would be alive if not for him.” Mr. Jefferson’s bad attitude came out again.
“You’ve said that. And she might still be alive if she never met him, but she did. She loved him. Maybe the problem here is your regret for not supporting her more.”
He blinked, slow and full of cynicism.
“You had your idea of what she should be doing with her life, and she had something different in mind. What you’re missing, though, is Kayla was happy. I think you both know she loved him,” Drury said. “But did you know he also married her and that’s where they had just come from when the criminal started chasing them?”
Avery perked up with that. “What?”
Her father paled some and seemed shocked.
“Oh, I guess not. Because Brycen never told anyone. You didn’t give him a chance. You were too quick to pass judgment. Or should I say, too quick to pass blame onto him for your own guilt?”
“How dare you.” Mr. Jefferson stepped toward her.
Drury held up her hand at Deputy Chandler, who took a step toward them, his trooper watching the confrontation with him. The deputy stopped.
She said to Mr. Jefferson in an even, honest tone, “Brycen Cage is a decent man. He’s smart and honest and doesn’t deserve the garbage you throw at him. He’ll find the man who shot Cora. But he’ll get no thanks from you. I wish I could tell him you weren’t worth a single thought or speck of regret and he’d listen. He actually cares about what you think. You, Mr. Jefferson, a man who drove him out of Alaska because you can’t forgive yourself for the way you treated Kayla before she died. I don’t even have to know what transpired between you. I just know it wasn’t Brycen’s fault. He cared for Kayla. Loved her. He didn’t mean for her to die. Nor did he want her to.”
“Now, you wait just a—”
Drury turned to Avery and cut Mr. Jefferson off. “That goes for you, too, Avery.” Avery’s mouth opened as though she considered responding and Mr. Jefferson ramrod stiff with insult.
Drury checked the deputy, who listened without moving to interfere, and faced the two again. “Have either of you stopped to think what losing Kayla did to Brycen? Did you ever think he grieved along with you? No. You didn’t. What do you think it did to him to know a criminal he’d been after caused her death? When you blamed him, he let you because he felt responsible. He agreed with you. Feeling as though he killed Kayla tore him apart. Don’t you see?”
Avery closed her mouth and Mr. Jefferson’s defensive stance softened a fraction. They had never considered how Brycen felt losing Kayla. Maybe they’d thought it to themselves a time or two, but they had never allowed the possibility to take shape. They’d clung to hatred and blame.
“Kayla’s death affects him to this day,” she said. “He’s only just now coming to terms with it. And if he hadn’t come back to Alaska, I’m convinced he never would have overcome the blame.” She searched each of their eyes, trying to find answers. “Why didn’t you ever consider his side of such a tragedy? You both should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Avery glanced at her father. She must have followed his lead. Mr. Jefferson didn’t respond.
“Do me a favor,” Drury said. “Stay away from Brycen. And if you see him again like today, keep your mouths shut and your unfair judgments to yourselves.” They’d told him to stay away plenty of times. It was time somebody told them to do the same.
With a wave to the deputy, Drury started down the hall. Heading for the elevator, she spotted Brycen still standing there, hands in his pant pockets, waiting for her with wry scrutiny and taking her breath away.
“You passed the bathroom,” he said.
He seemed to know what she had done. “I lied. I went to give Avery and her father a piece of my mind.”
“I figured as much. Drury, I wish you wouldn’t have done that.” They stepped onto the elevator and Brycen pressed the ground floor button. “It does no good.”
“It did do some good. You’ve never told them you loved Kayla and grieved when she died. You let them wallow in their judgments of you until it festered into what it is now, just as bitter and hateful—maybe more so—as back then.”
“I let them?”
The elevator doors opened and she walked with him to the exit. “Enabled.”
“I did try to tell them that. They wouldn’t listen.”
“You should have tried again.”
“By the time I left Alaska, it was too late. Nothing I said would have changed their minds.”
Maybe they’d change them now, with a stranger telling them the truth. If they looked inside their hearts, they’d feel it jabbing. But they’d have to let it go, to let it outside their own private thoughts, in order to move past their loss.
“You should try talking to them again,” she said as he held the door for her, drawing her attention to his muscular arm.
“I’m not going to talk to them. They’ll just attack me again.”
She walked beside him, catching how his gaze ran down to her legs. “I don’t mean for them. For you. So you can finally put it all behind you.”
Almost to the SUV, he stopped. “It will never be behind me.”
Because he did blame himself. Drury felt terrible for him, and angrier than ever with Avery and her father.
She raised her hand and touched the side of his face, just long enough to show how much she cared and how much she’d like him to hear this. Hear it, and believe it. “Kayla’s death wasn’t your fault, Brycen.”
“Just let it go, Drury.”
She caressed his face, running her finger over his lips, letting him know how much she truly did care, and it had nothing to do with Avery and her father.
He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers.
Then her cell phone rang. Thinking the caller could be Junior, she took it from her pocket. Not Junior. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
Brycen must have noticed her guarded curiosity. He waited while the caller spoke.
“I warned you.”
“Who is this?”
“The person you’re after is Dexter Watts,” the man said. His voice sounded familiar.
“You’re the man who intercepted me at the airport,” she said as it dawned on her. “Why are you helping us?”
“He’s got a shipment coming in tonight. The boat dock at Melvin Cummingses’ place. Be there, and don’t go alone. Bring your friends from the FBI. I told you that you can’t do this alone. If you don’t listen to anything else I say, listen to that.”
“Wait a minute, how do you know all of this? Why do you keep talking to me and not Brycen? Who—”
The man disconnected.
She looked at Brycen. “That man who talked to me at the airport just said there’s a shipment arriving at the Cummingses’ boat dock tonight. He gave me the trafficker’s name, too. Dexter Watts. He knew we were in touch with the FBI.”
“Dexter Watts?” Brycen said incredulously.
“You know him?”
An abrupt explosion pushed her backward and Brycen toward her. Knocked off her feet, she landed on her rear and Brycen broke his fall on top of her. He rolled off her and sat beside her, staring with her at his SUV engulfed in a ball of flames.
Brycen got up from where he’d fallen and came to her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” A little scratched from the fall but all right. She took his offered hand and he helped her stand.
Catching sight of a moving pickup truck with a man in the passenger seat aiming a gun, she yelled, “Gun!” just as gunfire erupted and the windshield of the car next to them shattered.
Brycen tackled Drury, rolling her between the car that had been struck and the one next to it. She crouched with her back against the door while Brycen took out his pistol and peered over the hood. He had to duck as another gunshot rang out.
The truck’s engine revved and grew louder. They were driving toward them!
Drury remained crouched with Brycen as they ran in the other direction, weaving between parked vehicles. At a parked pickup truck, Brycen paused to aim. He fired once.
Drury saw the passenger of the truck slump. Sickened, she ran again with him with the parked cars their cover.
Pausing once again, Brycen searched for the truck. Drury didn’t hear it chasing them anymore. Had the driver given up?
Then Brycen turned to her, his eyes sharp, hard and focused. “I need you to stay here.”
“Wha—”
“They’ve stopped and two of them are coming for us. I’ll stop them. You wait here.”
She nodded. She wasn’t armed and she couldn’t fight three grown men. But could Brycen? Apprehension churned as he ran toward the men.
Crawling to the edge of the truck, she saw him stay out of sight as the first man approached. The three had spread out, one going wide to presumably flank them while his partners came straight in and from the other flanking side.
Brycen intercepted the man coming straight for them. Hiding behind an Escalade, he moved out just as the man crept forward. One dance-like kick of his leg along with an upward chop of his arm both tripped the man and knocked his gun up. Brycen jabbed the man in the throat and that sent him down.
Checking all around her, not seeing any of the other men, she popped her head up and saw the downed man wasn’t moving. She lowered herself behind the protection of the vehicle, listening.
A gunshot cracked and she flinched. Brycen. Was he all right?” She slowly rose enough to look, seeing nothing through the parked cars.
The sound of footsteps to her left made her stifle a quick, frightened breath. She ran low around the front of the parked car to the other side, then moved slow and silent to the rear of the next vehicle.
She heard someone stepping along the far side of the car she’d just left. Squeezing her eyes shut, she debated over whether she should keep moving. Someone ran past her. She opened her eyes and saw Brycen rush the man she’d heard. He swung his gun toward him just as Brycen fired. The man jerked backward and fell.
Drury moved so she could see what was going on.
The man lay on his back and moved his gun toward Brycen. He must be wearing a bulletproof vest.
Brycen fired again, this time marking the man’s head.
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