South Dakota Showdown (Badlands Cops Series Book 1)

by Nicole Helm

  Jamison tried not to let it get to him, but it was living proof he’d gone soft. He’d been sure they wouldn’t bother, so certain he knew what they were planning and how to defeat them. His stomach twisted and pitched at all the ways he’d been wrong—and all he might still miscalculate before this fool’s mission was over.

  “Grandma Pauline is going to kick your butt,” Liza said with some amusement. The sunset was a splash of brilliant colors behind her. A sure sign a storm would roll in halfway through the night.

  All they had were the packs on their back.

  Kick his butt? Grandma was going to skin him. If they made it out of this alive. For the first time he fully understood why Liza had been so scared, why she’d come to him as a last resort. Lives were on the line—in a way they hadn’t been as much when they’d been kids—or at least in a way he hadn’t fully grasped when he’d been a teenager full of self-righteous outrage.

  Worst of all, Liza didn’t seem any kind of surprised. She’d warned him, hadn’t she? He could only stare at the wreckage and wonder...

  He’d saved his five brothers, and Liza for as long as she’d let that last. The Wyatt boys had built lives of their own, and while they hadn’t brought down the Sons, they’d survived them. Escaped them. It was supposed to be enough. After Dev’s close call, Jamison had told himself it was.

  It burned like acid in his gut that he’d done exactly what Liza had told him not to do: underestimate the Sons. All because once upon a time he’d considered escape a win.

  It had taken all of his thirty-seven years, but he finally accepted wholly and fully that escape and survival weren’t a win. Not fully. Not yet.

  “They’re not the Sons you used to know, Jamison,” Liza said softly. As if she was comforting him instead of saying “I told you so.”

  He’d kept tabs, though. He’d watched. How could he not have seen they were different now? Bolder. Surer. Far more dangerous.

  “You have to know what unchecked power does to men,” Liza continued, as if every emotion and thought was broadcast across his face. Which it might be. Which was as unacceptable as this miscalculation.

  “It grows and grows until there is nothing left. No one challenges them. Everyone fears them. Even the bigger agencies haven’t bothered trying to infiltrate in years. The Sons have everything they ever wanted, but they will always want more. So, they will destroy and destroy and destroy. Because nothing can stop them.”

  She’d started out unmoved. Resigned, almost, but as she spoke the emotion crept into her voice and vibrated there. And deep inside him.

  “They were bad enough then,” he said, still not able to wrap his mind around her words. How could they be stronger, more feared? How was it possible? Right was supposed to win—he’d won all those years ago.

  Except right hadn’t won. It had just escaped.

  “They’re worse now,” Liza said with a conviction he no longer questioned.

  Facts were facts, and the fact was that the Sons he’d known wouldn’t have bothered. They wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention with a burned-out truck in the middle of nowhere.

  If what Liza said was true, and they’d grown and the powers that be had stopped their periodic attempts to infiltrate and disband...

  He blew out a breath, letting concern out with it. Because he needed a new plan, and emotion wouldn’t get him anywhere. Not guilt or failure or weakness.

  He glanced at Liza, who was watching the smoke as if it were just an average sight. Care wouldn’t get him anywhere, either, but it sat there in his gut like an old illness he hadn’t fully cured.

  But remembering that time, and the boy he’d been, Jamison realized he needed to access that person again. Find his youthful certainty. His adolescent arrogance. He had to be ready to risk anything again.

  The goal wouldn’t be escape this time. There would be an end.

  He’d been resigned to the fact that getting involved might bring him into contact with his father again, might be the tipping point for his father’s eventual revenge.

  But now he understood there was no might about it. It was time to end what he’d let fester and grow and rot the landscape he loved so much.

  He stared at the truck and gave up everything he’d chosen to bury in the past fifteen years. He let it go on the wind. Maybe he’d subconsciously known this was coming, because there was only a little pain, quickly smothered by the cold certainty that had made up his teenage years.

  “Unchecked power gets checked eventually, Liza. No one gets to rule forever.”

  “And when would that eventually come to pass?” she asked, as if she didn’t see the change in him. As if she couldn’t feel the change in the air.

  He looked back at her then, met her furious and frightened, dark gaze, orange and red blazing behind her like the apocalypse was already coming for them.

  It was. It was time.

  They’d find Gigi.

  Then he’d go after the Sons.

  “It gets checked now.”

  * * *

  THE LOOK ON Jamison’s face made her shiver for more than one reason. It reminded her of the boy she’d known.

  And loved.

  Which was a terrible thing to be thrust into—those old feelings, made more potent by the fact they weren’t teenagers anymore. This wasn’t about freedom anymore.

  It was about her sister’s life, and maybe theirs.

  The tremor was fear, but it was also something deeper, something more elemental. A sensation she would not under any circumstances let herself acknowledge.

  She sincerely hoped.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  He frowned, considered the landscape, then pinned her with another too-potent stare. “What do you think we should do?”

  “What?”

  “You were right about the truck. You...” He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I thought I’d been keeping tabs, but clearly not well enough. You know them, have a better understanding of their moves than I do.”

  “I’m not one of them, Jamison. When will you—”

  “I didn’t say you were. I said you know them. We need to use that understanding, because I can’t anticipate their moves anymore.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You’ll stop that now.”

  She was too shocked by the snap in his tone to give him a piece of her mind.

  “You know. You’ve been living inside the Sons for fifteen years. You don’t have to pretend I know more than you. I’m not going to punish you for it.”

  “That isn’t what I—”

  He merely raised an eyebrow and she trailed off. He was right, partially. She was too used to the habit of pretending she didn’t know anything—to save her skin. She was used to using all her skills and knowledge on the sly.

  She wasn’t used to...a partner. She didn’t want one. “I’m tired, Jamison,” she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “I’ve been fighting this battle for too long. You know what that feels like.”

  “Yeah. And I know you can’t quit until Gigi is safe. But you have me, Liza. I’m not asking you to do this on your own. I’m asking you to use your brain.”

  “You always did it on your own.”

  “No, I didn’t. My brothers and you were all old enough to hold your own when I helped you escape. Gigi is four. Besides, you said it yourself. They’re more dangerous now. So, we need to work together. If you were alone—what would you do next?”

  Liza scrubbed her hands over her face. Her leg ached, and so did her head. Her eyes were gritty from the dust in the wind and she desperately wanted to go to sleep.

  But if she was alone, she’d press on. To somewhere she thought Gigi might be. “I’d just keep looking. They won’t have given up on trying to find us. Burning the truck
was a message. But you were right earlier—it isn’t our fathers out searching for us, so they’re not going to kill us. But they want to find us—bringing us to our fathers? Jackpot.”

  “Why didn’t your father do anything to you when you went back?”

  Liza didn’t react to that question. It was one of the ones she’d been ready for. Still, the glib lie or clever redirect didn’t flow off her tongue like she’d practiced.

  “Just another thing I’m underestimating, isn’t it?”

  His voice was far too soft, far too much like the boy she remembered. “Women don’t mean as much there. You know that.” She kept her back to him and closed her eyes against how pathetic that lie sounded.

  “Loyalty matters. Above all else.”

  “Yeah, well. I survived, didn’t I? The task at hand is getting to Gigi. They’ll know that she’s what I’m after. If they’re smart, they’ll just lie in wait.”

  “If?”

  “It’s not that they’re not smart, but they’re cocky. Some can be impatient with Ace’s orders, trying to move up the chain. I’ve noticed...” She trailed off but Jamison only waited. It was hard to break the habit of keeping her thoughts, her theories to herself. But he was right. They had to do this together—not him or her, but them. “Ace’s best men? I haven’t seen them around much. It’s just a hunch, but I thought maybe they were put in charge of the trafficking. Which would leave his next tier with the job of finding us. They’re not the top tier for a reason, though.”

  “More brawn than brains?”

  She nodded. Some things he still understood.

  “Hence the torched truck. All right. So, we’ll keep heading toward Flynn. Do you think they’ll come back?”

  Liza looked around. Daylight was fading. In the east, darkness was beginning to twinkle with the first hint of stars. She could feel the temperature dropping already and the wind gave no sign of letting up.

  “Not tonight. They’ll spend the night closer to the other men. They’ll check in with either our fathers or whoever their direct orders are coming from. They’ll revise their plan and move out at daybreak.”

  “And whoever is in charge of the trafficking will likely be getting ready to mobilize. They won’t wait.”

  “I don’t know if it’s true,” Liza said, and this time not because she was afraid of voicing her opinion. But because she desperately didn’t want it to be true. She had to believe it was possible she was overreacting.

  But when she met Jamison’s gaze it was too...kind. And laced with pity. She turned away. “We need to move through the night, get a head start on them if we can.”

  “Agreed.” He moved over to her, but she didn’t dare look up. She felt him unzip her pack and then slide it off her shoulders. When she finally worked up the nerve to look at him, he was holding out a sweatshirt. “Put this on, then the coat. Lose the leather.”

  She wanted to argue, but she had some common sense. The sweatshirt and the coat he held in his hand would keep her far warmer than her thin coat ever would. Still, the old leather coat was something of a talisman. It had survived and so had she.

  He sighed, and as if reading her mind, shook out the sweatshirt, then did the honors himself. He pulled the sweatshirt over her head—and over the jacket. Then he held out the coat.

  Swallowing against the lump in her throat, she slid one arm in, and then the other. Before she could move to zip it up herself, he did it.

  Too close. Too Jamison. She wanted to lean forward because she knew, no matter how many reservations he still had about her, no matter how much bitterness he still held on to over the way she’d left, he’d hold her and tell her it would be okay.

  Which would break her completely. So, she stood statue-still as he zipped up the coat.

  “I’ve done this before,” he said, that quiet sureness she remembered about him threading through those words. Making her waver against the determination not to lean into him. “I can do it again.”

  She let that break the spell. She’d once thought him infallible magic, but she didn’t believe anyone was that anymore. “Don’t make promises you don’t know you can keep, Jamison. You’ll only beat yourself up about it later.”

  “I’ll beat myself up about it either way,” he muttered, releasing the zipper. “If you need a break, a rest, a snack, speak up. Best we keep our strength up.”

  He hefted the pack onto her back again, then pulled two headlamps out of his. He handed her one. “Put it on your head, but leave the light off and stay close to me for as much of the hike as you can.” He pulled the small light onto his head, illuminating the space between them.

  Then he handed her a gun.

  Chapter Eight

  Once Jamison made a decision, he didn’t waver. Usually. But handing a woman he didn’t fully trust a loaded gun while ordering her to hike behind him left him vulnerable.

  Hell, if he was going to go now, it might as well be at Liza’s hand behind his back. Symbolic, and surely the rightful end to his own stupidity.

  But as they set off, his own loaded gun strapped to his side, Liza didn’t make any moves to turn the weapon on him. She kept her headlamp on her head, but the light off. Which meant she walked close enough to him that his light guided them both.

  He couldn’t watch her for signs of her limp worsening or her expression for signs of fatigue, but after at least a good hour of harrowing hiking in the dark, he decided to take it upon himself to say they needed a break.

  He handed her a bottle of water and a protein bar and considered himself something of a saint for not lecturing her when she grimaced at it and stuck it in her coat pocket rather than eat it.

  “We should change your bandage.”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. We need to be closer. Besides, it feels fine.”

  He doubted it very much, but studying her in the eerie glow of his lamplight didn’t show any undue signs of pain or worry. It would take up too much valuable time to argue with her, so he nodded, took another swig of water and then packed it all away.

  They started out again. He kept on the lookout for signs of human and animal life. Bobcats were a concern, as was stumbling upon a sleeping anything. Then there were the rattlers—dangerous this time of year if only because disturbing rock as they hiked might accidentally unearth a den.

  The last thing either of them needed was a run-in with the kind of wildlife that could injure them. Especially in the dark, without cell service and with a biker gang looking for them.

  So, Jamison kept a slow, careful pace—refusing to let the irritation or impatience gain purchase. Maybe they were racing against the clock, but he doubted the Sons were racing against the same one. And if they were, he’d have to deal with that, but not at the expense of making a mistake here and now.

  For now, slow and steady was the best they could do, and he could not let the driving need to get closer, faster, push him into doing something dumb.

  He kept watch of the time, making sure they stopped and had a snack or drink each hour. Each time, he checked her over.

  On the third stop, knowing they were getting closer to Flynn and they’d have to be even more careful so as not to stumble across members of the Sons, he looked her over with a critical eye.

  She appeared tired, but he was sure he did, too. She’d stopped walking, so he couldn’t assess her limp, but as he looked down at where the wound was, he swore. There was blood seeping into the pants Grandma had given her this morning—which meant she had probably broken a stitch and was bleeding through her bandage. “We need to change the dressing on your leg.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “I’ll be quick.”

  “Trying to get me naked again. It’s tiresome.”

  “As tiresome as that joke.” He dropped his pack, pulled out the first aid kit. “You must have busted a stitch. You need a tighte
r bandage. If that doesn’t stop bleeding...”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered. She pushed the pants down past the bandage that was completely soaked with blood.

  “This isn’t good.”

  “It could be a heck of a lot worse.”

  True enough, and they didn’t have time to argue over it. He removed the bloody gauze and packed it up in one of the zipper bags he’d brought. He did his best to disinfect in the cold, dusty wind and the dim light of his headlamp.

  She shivered in the cold, and he worked as fast and efficiently as he could. It looked like only one stitch had broken, so he did his best to tighten the bandage over it. She needed to be in a hospital. If this got worse, she’d be more liability than help.

  He opened his mouth to say just that, but then thought better of it. Liza was the one dealing with the pain. She wanted to save her sister. She knew what she was doing. It wasn’t his job to police her.

  It never had been, and he frowned at the thought he might have done it anyway. Had he been the reason she left? He’d been too heavy-handed in trying to keep her safe and she’d escaped to the only place she’d known to go?

  Senseless questions. Useless thoughts. It did not matter, and he had to stop letting his mind go to the past.

  But as he stood after patching her up and putting away the first aid kit, he had to accept that whether or not he wanted to deal with the past, it was here. Always in the air between them, an electricity that seemed to charge off each other. It was the past, it was attraction and it was as potent as it had been back then.

  There was too much still here—maybe it was the unfinished ending they’d had or maybe it was something deeper—but it seemed to thicken and get harder to fight against.

  They stood too close, looked at each other too long, and no matter that he knew his brain was cautioning him to move, to focus, to stop, he hovered exactly where he was. Too close to her. Too tempted to...

  “You’d only hate yourself as much as you hate me,” Liza whispered, breaking that moment. Thank God.