by Misty Evans
She couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t even bear to think about it. Everything she cared about was here at the ranch. The dogs, the horses, her house. Add Mitch and Will to that, and she had a lot to lose.
Mitch took the gun from her lap and set it on the table, then drew her to her feet. “Will and I have both been in more dire circumstances than this. We know how to handle ourselves. Instead of worrying about the two of us, I want you to concentrate on the man outside. The one who hurt Danika. We don’t know for sure who he is, but we know what he wants. To scare you. Analyze him, Emma. Tell me what motivates him, what kind of person he is. What are the chinks in his armor?”
The feel of his hands holding onto her was as satisfying as the chocolate, but he was right—she needed to do something. Worrying about what could happen wouldn’t prevent Mitch and Will from getting hurt. What might help was figuring out how to outthink the bastard who was screwing with her world.
Sitting back, she rustled up her conviction, her mind seizing on the productivity of evaluating her stalker. Everyone had telltale methods, approaches, and techniques, especially established criminals. If she took each incident and broke it down…
The couple of M&Ms still in her hand were melting, smears of green, red, and blue on her palm and fingers. “I need a minute to think. Some paper and a pencil too.”
Mitch released her and she rinsed her hand in the sink, then took the gun and let him escort her upstairs to her office.
At her desk, she pulled out a yellow tablet—her favorite medium for freeing her brain. Starting in the center of the page, she drew a circle for her attacker, then a line, radiating out from that with a smaller circle attached. She labeled that one with the first incident: the break-in.
Another line. Another circle. On and on she went, drawing and writing down everything she could remember. The man in the woods, Linda’s phone call, the red words on Chris’s cell wall.
After several minutes of analyzing, she sat back and tapped the pencil on the pad. “First of all, his goal is to terrorize me, not kill me. At least not yet. There are three possibilities as to why.” She ticked the options off on her fingers. “Either he’s waiting for permission from someone to kill me, he’s alone and not able to take on you and Will, or he’s playing a cat and mouse game with me.”
Mitch stared out the window, his eagle eyes sweeping over everything. “What’s your gut say?”
“All three, actually.”
He glanced back at her. “All three?”
She stared at her notes. “He’s keeping me on tenterhooks, but he’s waiting for something. Either for me to be alone or for someone, Chris, perhaps, to give him the go-ahead to kill me. In most cases, the head honcho—such as Chris or Linda—would want to do the killing. At the very least, they’d want to watch.”
“Jesus.”
The softness of his voice brought her head up. His eyes were troubled, unsettled.
“You wanted an analysis. This is it. My stalker is waiting for Chris, and/or Linda, to get here. We’ve established that Linda is indeed capable of murder. Chris as well. Meanwhile, whoever is outside is going to terrorize me and try to take out you and Will. He’s probably a survivalist like you thought. He obviously knows stealth, knows how to use a knife, knows how to instill fear.”
Mitch turned back to the window. “Here comes Will now.”
“With my truck?”
A shake of his head dashed the spurt of hope. “On foot.”
“So my stalker disabled that vehicle too.”
“That would be my guess.” He punched the wall. “Dammit.”
Abandoning her freestyle circles, she took her gun and followed Mitch down the stairs, her pulse kicking hard.
Her refuge had been turned into a place of fear, of death.
“So what are his weaknesses?” Mitch said as they jogged down to meet up with Will. “This guy outside. How do I stop him?”
The dogs, having followed the two of them up to her office, barreled down the stairs, pushing by her. Breathing deep to keep her voice from shaking, she resolved not to let whoever her stalker was control her.
Easier said than done.
“A person who likes to instill fear in others is often scared themselves. He wants to be in control so he feels powerful. Take away his power and he ceases to be able to control the situation. Survivalists, too, often feel powerless so they plan for every outcome, including the end of the world. Their name says it all—they’ll do anything to survive.”
They entered the kitchen and Mitch unlocked the door for Will.
“No go,” Will said, shaking his head. He was out of breath from running all the way to his cabin on the outskirts of the property and back. “He stuck a knife in all four of the truck’s tires, just like yours. I checked the juvie van. Someone punctured the gas tank. It’s going nowhere.”
She expected Mitch to swear or punch something again. Instead he smiled. “I’m so going to enjoy making that little weasel pay for this.”
Will leaned back on the counter. His hair and clothes were matted to his body from the rain. “You and me, both, brother. I found some tracks. Size 11 and a half boot. Give or take the half.”
“Combat boot?”
A nod. “Or someone playing at military. The treads look like desert boots that any idiot can get at the local farm supply store.”
“Desert tread isn’t ideal in the woods, even when there’s been a drought.”
Another nod. “By the way, there’s a ranger station a couple of miles inside the park on that south entrance you two were checking out. The park service hasn’t used it in years, and from what I can gleam from the news, the fires never touched it.”
Emma handed him a towel from the stack she had on the dryer. “How do you know about that?”
Will looked sheepish. “I might have stayed there for bit of time before I showed up on your doorstep looking for a job. Hadn’t thought of it until now.”
He’d been homeless when she took him in, but when he’d come to her that day with nothing but his backpack and his belief in bad luck, he’d been clean and polite. He’d also been honest with her about his PTSD and his need for a quiet environment. He’d wanted to be productive and he had a way with animals. After her own bad experiences with people and situations, her distrust had reared its ugly head. Yet Will had won her over almost instantly when he’d taken Lady under his care.
“You think our unsub might be using it as a landing pad?” Mitch asked.
Unsub. Unknown Subject. Emma knew the term from her days in the courtroom.
Will roughed his hair with the towel. “I think there’s more than one of them now. The one that paid us a visit the other day and a second who rode in on the Danika crazy train.”
Emma held her tongue over the crazy comment.
“Which might explain why we couldn’t find any evidence of the visit from our first unsub,” Mitch said, rubbing his chin, “but the second one just left two bodies and some footprints behind.”
“Two different stalkers.” Emma nodded her head, a rush of excitement taking hold. “One well-versed in subterfuge, the other not. One with violent tendencies, the other not. Why didn’t I think of that? It makes total sense.”
Mitch pulled his gun from its holster and checked its chamber and clip. His focus jumped to her briefly, then to Will. “My teammates will be here within the hour. All we have to do is keep our visitors at bay. Once backup arrives, we’ll get Emma out of here and hunt down these bastards.”
Will pushed off the counter. At his feet, Lady whimpered and raised a paw to scratch at his leg. He reached down and rubbed the top of her head. “I’d like to be in on the hunt.”
Something passed between Will and Mitch that made Emma shiver. The two men in her kitchen weren’t afraid to kill. They’d probably both seen more bloodshed than she could imagine.
She didn’t want to imagine it. The horrors that haunted these two would bring most people to their knees.
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Mitch nodded at Will. “You stay here, man the entry points. I’ll take Emma upstairs where I can keep an eye on the entire sector.”
They were trapped. Sitting ducks. A volatile cocktail of fear and anger pushed through her veins. “What about me?” she asked. “What can I do?”
He took her hand and drew her with him to the stairs. “You know that telescope you have in the attic?”
She swallowed, her feet feeling like leaden weights as she climbed after him. “Of course.”
He waited until they reached the top of the landing, Salt and Pepper ever their constant companions. “You’re the lookout for my team. Train your scope on the southern horizon and look for incoming cars.”
Emma felt for her pistol in her waistband at her back. The metal was cool, such a contrast to Mitch’s warm hand. There were possibly two men out there who wanted to do her harm. Possibly harm Mitch and Will. The horses, the dogs. No way would she allow that to happen, no matter how scared she was. No matter whether or not help was on the way.
Squeezing his hand, she gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ll draw the curtain over the window so only the lens peeks out. The unsubs will never see me.”
He kissed her back, a soft, quick kiss that meant as much as the deep, soul-sucking ones he’d given her the night before. He touched her forehead with his. “I swear to you, I will get you out of this.”
Her hand brushed his waist. “I know you will.”
He wasn’t a goddamn bodyguard.
An investigator, an analyzer, an undercover operative—hell, yeah. Mitch had been all of those things. Shortly after Mac’s death, he’d donned fake personas and went head-to-head with crime lords and terrorists. His anger and grief had been so acute, pretending to be someone else had been the only way he’d kept himself from blowing out his own brains.
More recently, he’d found his calling working with criminal profiles, predicting outcomes and using statistics and algorithms to stop the bad guys for NI. All from the cool, calm, detached space behind his computer screen.
He protected people on a broad scale, shutting down criminal organizations from the top down. Pulling the plug on terrorist groups, stopping wars from the safety of information, facts, intelligence gathering. He didn’t tackle one-on-one projects like this.
Because when you had to look the person counting on you in the eye, keeping them safe made you vulnerable.
Sweat dotted the back of his neck. His face felt flushed, his hands shaky as he made the rounds upstairs, checking out the windows for any sign of their visitors. The place was eerily quiet, soft rain still falling and running down the glass. He’d secured Emma in the attic, giving her the blow-off task of watching for Coop and the others riding to her rescue.
Because he couldn’t be her knight in shining armor. If he could somehow conjure up a way to get her off the ranch and into that goddamn safe house, he would do it, but there was no way. The vehicles were disabled. He couldn’t take the chance of putting her on a horse now and exposing her to whoever was out there, because she was correct—the first visitor might have been a control freak whose assignment was simply to terrorize her, but this latest addition had taken that to a new level and killed a guard in order to make the threat very clear. Regardless, none of the horses were up to the trek out of the valley and into town.
He’d already tried getting the sheriff back out there. A stressed out, overworked, and underpaid secretary had taken the call, assuring him there were officers in the area but all of them were busy assisting highway patrols with the traffic, especially after the road rage incident. While some of the wildfires were now under control, several outliers continued to burn. Christmas morning had started out somewhat peacefully for rest of the world, but here, people were trying to get back to their homes.
“Someone will be with you shortly,” she’d said.
Translation: go screw yourself.
Cooper, Celina, Nelson, and the new gal were bound to be there soon. Dupé had ordered an FBI escort to help clear the way, and had sent a curt text that he, himself, would be there within the hour.
All Mitch had to do was keep Emma inside and safe until they arrived.
The only problem was the itch under his skin that reminded him of all the ways this could end badly before his rescue team arrived. As rain dribbled down the window, he tried to stay focused on scanning the yard, the barns, the outlying woods, but his mind kept flashing back to the Christmas five years ago. To the desert and the heat and the look in Mac’s eyes right before the building exploded into a hundred jagged pieces of heartbreak and grief.
Not now. He couldn’t risk having an episode and ending up with his ass on the floor. Another reason he shouldn’t be a bodyguard. He never knew when he was going to have a flashback that incapacitated him.
You know how to bury things deep in order to keep functioning, Agent Holden.
Emma’s words throbbed inside his brain. He put his hands up, holding onto his head, feeling the ache there that had come back with a fury. It pulsed with his heartbeat, the same ache of sorrow making his chest tight.
He needed fucking therapy, but he also knew that he wanted it from Emma. She was the only person who could help him, he was sure of it. Would she agree? Probably not, knowing her. She’d already stressed that you couldn’t be friends with your therapist. Lovers was definitely out of the question.
His phone rang, sounding distant and indistinct. At first, it didn’t even register as his, the sound so far away. He was lost inside his head again, trying to suppress the old, haunting memories, and wrestling with the hope trying to flare to life inside his chest. A state that offered nothing but familiarity, but sometimes the devil you knew and understood was more comforting, safer, than the devil you didn’t.
I know Emma. She’ll help me.
Brrrring. The phone blared again, sounding louder this time. Mitch lowered his hands from his head and reached for it, hitting the talk button before he even had it to his ear. “Yeah.”
“Mitchy?”
Shit. “Hi, mom. I can’t talk right now.”
“Of course, you can’t. You never can, can you? Always working.” Her voice was resigned. She knew he was avoiding her. “I know you won’t come and see me today, and if you are working, you’re only doing it to keep the demons at bay. Mac wouldn’t want that, Mitchy. He would want you to forgive yourself and move on. Find someone to share the holiday with. It’s okay for you to go on with your life.”
Mitchy. His mom hadn’t called him that since he was eight. He started to give her the usual blow off, but couldn’t form the words. Five years was a long time to keep putting one foot in front of the other while his heart was still back there at that bomb site. “I really am working, Mom, but I… I’m not unhappy.”
The truth knocked around inside of him like a pinball. Happiness. Such a fleeting, no-good emotion. Yet, here he was, in the middle of a goatfuck and he was happy on some deep, foolish level.
“I’m glad to hear it,” his mother responded. She sounded sad, though, rather than relieved. “I’m going to go now. One of these days, stop and see me before I die, okay?”
And there it was. The rub. The thing his mother always did. Act like she wanted to talk to him—that she actually cared about him—and then passively-aggressively turn it around so it was really about her. Adding to his guilt and reminding him how disappointed she was in him.
She was sneaky with it. If you hadn’t grown up with her subtle manipulations, they were easy to miss. With him, she’d become less subtle over the past few years and always, always used the threat of dying as a knife jab.
Mac’s face swam in front of his eyes. Sweat poured down the back of his neck. He wiped at it and considered hanging up on her.
But that was the old way of dealing with his past. Emma had made him see that he could look at life with fresh perspective. “You know why I don’t visit you, Mom?”
His question seemed to surprise her. She stuttere
d, then fell silent.
Well, that was a first. When had his mother ever been speechless?
“I don’t visit you because all you can do is talk about yourself. I could handle talking about Mac, even though it kills me to think about him, but no. I have to listen to how hard your life is without him, your precious son, who would still be here if it wasn’t for me. Guess what? I’m here, and I’m your son too. It’s my fault what happened, but there’s no changing it. I can’t go back and undo it and I’ve died a thousand times over wishing I could. I can’t give Mac back to you, Momma, but I’m here. And I still need my mother sometimes. I need you to forgive me.”
The silence on the other end was deafening. His mother said nothing.
He swallowed hard and shook his head at the ceiling, fighting the pressure behind his eyes. His voice came out rough, barely there. “We have nothing to talk about, Mom, until you’re ready to forgive me. Have a nice life.”
It killed him to hang up, but he did after another pause from his mother’s end, heavy with indignation and awkwardness. A simple touch of his thumb to the screen and he severed his connection to her. To that part of his life.
He was still staring at the screen and the words ‘Call Ended’ when a soft voice spoke from behind him.
“Mitch?”
He whirled around to find Emma in the doorway, a frown on her face. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
His chest hurt but felt strangely lighter. Just seeing her, hearing her voice, soothed the rawness in his chest. “Everything’s fine.” It was too soon for Cooper and the SCVC cavalry to be there. “What’s up? Did you see someone coming down the lane?”
She shook her head. “Not exactly, but… I think you better come see this.”
Foreboding cramping his guts, he followed her out of the office and up the attic stairs.
Chapter Eighteen