True to You

by Jennifer Ryan

  “I’m saving you from it.”

  “I don’t need you to save me. I don’t need anyone to save me. I made my choices. The ones I regret and the ones that made me happy or sad or angry. Killing yourself, my father, Flash, me! What does that accomplish? Nothing. That’s the end. You take away any chance that I’ll have a happy life. If that’s what you want for me, if you really did all this for me, then put the gun and detonator down. Stop this now before it’s too late for any of us.”

  Uncle Otis shook his head. “You won’t shoot. You don’t have it in you. You’re good. The best of us. That’s why you’re standing in front of him, protecting him, a man who betrayed you.”

  “She knows I tried to spare her. I tried to be the man she deserves.” He’d pushed her away, told her their being together wasn’t a good idea, but she’d seen how much he wanted her and pushed back because she wanted him. “I never put her in danger.”

  “All of this mess is because of you and him.” Her uncle pointed at her father with the gun. “I won’t let you take her from me. I won’t let you fill her head with more lies. I won’t let you make her believe you two can be happy together after this.”

  “I knew from the beginning that I’d never get to keep her. But for the brief time she was mine, I gave her the best of me. She showed me what it means to love someone more than you love yourself. I won’t let you take someone like her out of this world. You love her, so make the sacrifice so she can live and find the kind of happiness she gave to me.” Flash’s heavy sigh held a wealth of sorrow and regret. “We both have to let her go.”

  Flash’s heartfelt words filled her heart, weighed it down, and made it fly all at the same time.

  “You seem to think I’ll let you go.”

  “Keep me. I’ll stay if you let her go. You’ll have accomplished what you came here to do. Iceman is dead, his top men were arrested outside, and you’ll blow us sky-high along with the drugs stockpiled in this place. She will be free.”

  “Flash, no,” she pleaded, glancing over her shoulder.

  Flash didn’t look at her; he kept his gaze locked on her uncle, though his shoulders sagged with his waning energy. She needed to get him out of here now.

  She took two steps toward her uncle and held the gun directly in his face. “We all walk out of here, right now, or I will shoot you.”

  Her uncle finally looked at her and all she saw was the inevitable.

  A split second before she shot him, his head whipped back, her ears rang with the gun blast, and her uncle dropped to the floor with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. His gun and the detonator fell from his hands and skidded across the concrete.

  “I’m sorry, Cara. I didn’t want you to have to live with his blood on your hands.”

  Cara should have guessed he only gave her his gun because he had another one.

  She turned to him and rushed forward, trying to catch him before he fell, but only managed to brace his shoulders before he cracked his head on the floor.

  She gently set him down and patted his cheek. “Flash.”

  His eyes fluttered but didn’t actually open. “Go out the front,” he mumbled. “They’re waiting for . . .” His head fell to the side as he passed out.

  “I’m getting you to a hospital.” She definitely wasn’t leaving him in a building rigged to blow. Even if her uncle hadn’t hit the button, there could be a backup system, some countdown clock that would set it off anyway. Her uncle came here to kill them all. She wouldn’t underestimate him again and believe she’d gotten away safe. Not yet. Not until she and Flash were out of the building. Not until he got the medical attention he needed.

  She didn’t like his gray pallor or the amount of blood soaking his jeans and the back of his DEA jacket.

  She crouched at Flash’s head, grabbed the shoulder straps on his bulletproof vest, braced her feet, hauled him up several inches, and dragged him with her as she slowly made her way to the front door. Her thighs burned with the exertion it took to drag his big body practically all the way across the building, but she didn’t give up. She stopped with her butt pressed against the door, leaned Flash against her knees, reached back, and turned the knob. The door swung open behind her.

  She caught a glimpse of lots of men lined up facing the building behind their vehicles, guns drawn and leveled on her. Their boots shifted and scuffed the pavement as they readied to take out any threat. Her heart jackhammered in her chest as she prayed they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.

  “DEA. Show us your hands.”

  She didn’t want to let go of Flash. If she did, they’d take him, and she’d never see him again. Just like the way he knew staying with her uncle and letting her go meant he’d never see her again.

  But he needed help and she’d make sure he got it.

  She didn’t know what would happen next, but she had nothing left to keep her here.

  It took a great deal of strength and courage to ignore the DEA order, the possibility that they’d simply shoot her for not complying, and drag Flash out the door and twenty feet away from the building.

  She fell back on her butt on the pavement with Flash’s head in her lap. She leaned over him and whispered in his ear, “I’m sorry, too.”

  A man ran forward and dropped to his knees next to Flash. “King!”

  Must be his real name. Or at least another nickname. “He needs an ambulance. My uncle shot him in the leg. His words were slow and deliberate. I think the head wound is really bad.”

  “Where are your father and uncle?”

  “Inside. Dead. You have to help Flash. He can’t die, too. Not because of me.”

  The man touched her arm. She flinched away. Her mind, her heart, everything numbed to the point she couldn’t think or feel anymore.

  “Okay, Cara. I’m Agent Bennett. We’ll take him from here. Go with this agent.”

  She didn’t move. Couldn’t, really. Mostly because of Flash’s weight on her hips and legs, but also because she didn’t have anything left inside of her.

  The agent behind her took her arm to help her up. A paramedic pressed a thick pad to Flash’s—no, King’s—leg.

  The pain brought him around. “Cara.” He glanced all around, looking for her.

  She brushed her fingers through his hair as the agent hauled her up behind him. King turned his head and stared up at her. She stared down at him. Time seemed to stop. She wanted to say so much but couldn’t find the words.

  A thousand words filled his eyes. Past the pain, she saw the regret, the apology, the sadness, the longing for her to understand. She believed all those things, but couldn’t bring herself to believe the same depth of emotion she’d seen in his eyes and felt in his arms the night they were together was real and truly there, or just her heart wishing for impossible things again.

  The agent pulled her away so the paramedics could tend to King. She couldn’t get used to the name. To her, he was Flash, the man who’d loved her for one night but lied to her every day.

  She didn’t stop looking at him, even when the agent coaxed her into the back of a car and closed the door. When the agent drove away and she lost sight of King, she still felt a piece of him inside of her not even the numbness that overtook her could mask.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cara sat on the floor with her back to the wall and her head on her knees in the conference room the agent who drove her here put her in hours ago. She didn’t know how long she’d been there, if she’d been arrested or just detained for questioning; she didn’t much care. She didn’t have anywhere to go, no family left to call on for help, no coffee shop to open.

  Yesterday’s happiness and satisfaction with her life disappeared quicker than it came into her life. Just like King disappeared from her life.

  Everything was gone.

  The door opened for the first time since she’d been placed in this room. She leaned her head back against the wall and stared up, way up, at the dark-haired man with the wi
cked rose-and-skull tattoo on his arm.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “The next person to fail miserably at telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but?”

  His mouth flattened into a thin line. “What do you want to know?”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No.”

  She planted her hands on the wall at her sides and pushed herself up. Tired to the bone, her legs aching from her folded-up position on the floor, she barely made it to her feet. “Great. Then I’m leaving.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  She shook her head and looked him in the eye. “Nothing ever is.”

  Several people rushed past the conference room windows to greet a beautiful woman standing just outside the door. Cara recognized her from several movies. Ashley Swan. Oscar-winning actress, survivor of a sadistic murderer and the head of the Guzman drug cartel, and wife to DEA Agent Beck Cooke. He’d rescued her a while back. The news coverage went on for weeks and outed one of the best undercover agents in the DEA.

  “I believe they call you Trigger.”

  He nodded.

  “Well deserved for the shot you took at Guzman. Let me guess, you’re friends with King, is it?”

  He nodded again.

  “So you take out Guzman and King comes for Iceman.” She remembered the story her father and King told tonight. “Payback because my father duped the DEA into taking out Manny Castillo for him.”

  “To avenge what that bastard did to you.”

  “It’s sweet, right? In a gangster sort of way.” The sarcasm didn’t even crack a smile on the stoic agent’s face.

  “King doesn’t normally work undercover, but your father set him up as his own personal hit man.”

  “Another crime to add to the list of the many horrors my father did in his life.”

  “That’s right.” Anger slipped out with Trigger’s words, though he tried to hold it back. “King is a trained sniper. He takes out the bad guys. Each and every one of those deaths is justified but that doesn’t make them any easier to bear. Especially when your father sets someone up and goads him into pulling a gun so King has no choice but to kill the guy.”

  She hated Manny for what he’d done to her. She thought about killing him all the time. She appreciated that her father actually did care enough to want justice for her. To get it for her.

  But she didn’t like that he’d used an innocent man to do his dirty work.

  “Your father is wanted on a long list of charges with several murders right at the top. He needed to be taken out.”

  “Was.”

  “What?”

  “You said he is wanted. Not anymore. He died tonight protecting King. He saved King for me. One last show of how much he loved me and would do anything for me. I never really saw the things he did as a sacrifice for him. I spent most of my life thinking he didn’t really love me and wanted nothing to do with me. But he did the best he could under the circumstances. When I came along, he was well entrenched in the Guzman cartel. If he tried to leave, they would have killed him. So he did what he had to do and always made sure I had what I needed. A home. A job. Money. It wasn’t an ideal life. I still hate the things he did and put me through, but I finally understand what it took for him to let me go. Well, as much as he could.” She refocused on Trigger. “King was right. The only way I’d ever truly be safe is if he died. I imagined many different ways that would happen. In his line of work, I figured a rival would take him out or the cartel would kill him over a mistake or to make sure he never ratted them out. I never thought my uncle would kill him and want to kill me, too, so that I would never hurt again.”

  Trigger held out one of the chairs at the conference table. “Sit down before you fall down.”

  She’d been up all night and been through one traumatic event after another. She didn’t think she’d ever sleep peacefully again.

  Trigger took the seat beside her and pulled the notepad and pen from the middle of the table to him. “Walk me through what happened.”

  “Didn’t King tell you guys?”

  “He’s been in surgery for the gunshot wound and has one hell of a concussion from the coffee shop blast.”

  She wanted to ask if he’d be all right. She wanted to know every single detail about his condition and recovery. But she didn’t ask. She wasn’t family or his wife or even his girlfriend. She was his mark, his entry into her father’s circle. She had to believe that so she could hold on to her anger about him lying to her. Otherwise she’d have to accept that he used her, lied to her, and quite possibly loved her despite her not knowing who he really was.

  Trigger let the silence lengthen until it was clear to him she had no intention of talking about King.

  “King found out about Tandy’s side business,” he prompted.

  “She met with her contact from my father’s crew at the coffee shop in the afternoon. He told me that he overheard Tandy say they didn’t have anything going last night.” She couldn’t believe all that had happened in the last eighteen hours. “My uncle called and asked me to come and see him. King was supposed to meet his parole officer. Which I guess is totally bogus since he never did anything illegal.” She shook her head. “Did he really spend five months in jail just to have an excuse to get close to me?”

  “You and your father have trust issues like no one else on the planet. King needed a rock-solid cover.”

  “You should probably warn the warden not to let me in to see Scott.”

  “Don’t kill him. He’s my son’s father.” Trigger glanced over his shoulder at Ashley and the little boy in her arms wearing the knitted dragon cap she’d made the night Flash—no, King—brought her hot chocolate. “Scott only did this to keep me and his son safe. Your father threatened to come after me for retribution against taking out Guzman. Like your father, Scott wants to be sure no one ever comes after his son to get to him.”

  “So he let you and your wife adopt his son to make sure he’d always be protected.” Like her father had walked away and left her with King because he saw something between them and hoped King—her personal law enforcement bodyguard—would always protect her.

  Trigger read the confusion she couldn’t hide. “It’s not easy to unravel the truths and lies and discover that the line between them is a strange gray area where things are both real and not all at the same time and in varying degrees.” Trigger glanced back at his beautiful wife, then back at her. “People can draw closer together under dire circumstances. What happens can confuse how you really feel when you’re faced with life and death. I don’t know what happened between you and King. It won’t be part of the official record. But from what he told Agent Bennett, he made it clear how much he cared about you and how much he hated lying to you. He didn’t want to use you to get to your father, so he found another way.”

  “Through Tandy.”

  “Yes. And recently your uncle.”

  “He was on to my uncle?”

  “He left King a couple of threatening notes. Those notes were linked to several threats made against the governor, other government officials, and several bombings of rival cartel drug labs.”

  Cara raked her fingers through her hair and over her head, drawing her hair away from her face. “It just gets worse.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “I found my uncle’s bomb-making lab. I nearly got my head blown off getting inside. There are several crates of C-4.”

  “Can you tell us where it is?”

  She shook her head.

  “We need to recover those explosives before someone else gets their hands on them.”

  “Trust me, no one could find this place.”

  “Cara . . .”

  “I can’t draw you a map or anything. It’s hidden on the property. I didn’t even know what I was looking at until I was right on it. Even still, it wasn’t easy to get to. I’d have to take you there.”

  “The DEA will serve a search warrant on your
place. The ATF will want in on the explosives.”

  “The more, the merrier.” She rolled her eyes.

  “What happened after you found the explosives?”

  “My uncle found me.” She spent the next hour reliving the worst night of her life. Trigger asked questions when she didn’t give enough detail but otherwise let her spill the words from her lips like a purge that left her emptier by the second.

  “So, in the end, your uncle killed your father, trying to kill King. And King killed your uncle when he tried to kill all of you by blowing up the auto shop?”

  Yes, with one perfect shot, right in the head. One more death to bear. One more life saved. Hers.

  “That about sums it up. Can I go now?”

  Trigger shut off the recorder and handed her his pen. “Read over the statement and sign it if it’s accurate.”

  She signed without reading one word. She didn’t want to go over it one more time. “You’ve got it all on tape.” She stood to go, not really knowing where or how she’d get there.

  “We’re headed over to see King. If you’d like to see him, join us.”

  Immobilized by having to make a decision, she didn’t answer because her heart screamed, Go and her head yelled, Run.

  “I have no idea what shape he’ll be in when we get there, but I know he’ll want to see for himself that you’re okay. Don’t you want to do the same?”

  She did. Very much. But what then?

  “I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go after that.”

  Ashley opened the door and peeked inside. “Sorry to interrupt but you looked like you’re about finished. We just got an update. He’s awake.”

  Trigger stared down at her. “He’s my best friend. I need to go. What’s it going to be?”

  She nodded her agreement and followed him out of the room. Ashley waited in the corridor with her son in her arms. She passed the heavy load off to Trigger.

  The little boy stared over his father’s shoulder and pointed down at her. “Yucky.”

  Cara followed the little one’s finger-pointing down to her bloodstained T-shirt hem and jeans and noticed for the first time the blood smears on her hands.