Love Inspired Suspense January 2014

by Shirlee McCoy

  Brendan, for telling him they could talk “later.” Lauren. If he’d had a better grip on the wheel, had checked his tire pressure, had worn his seat belt and not been thrown from the car…

  Then he’d be dead, too. Unable to help her then. Unable to help Andrea today. Andrea, who he’d also failed…

  How?

  Josh braced both hands against the window frame and gripped the wood until his knuckles ached and his elbow protested. How had he failed her?

  He hadn’t. He squeezed his eyes tight as the revelation crashed against layers of habitual self-recrimination. The images of his charred SUV faded away, overwritten by a new film. The attack at the counseling center. The perceived threat at his unit. The gunshots at the church. He swallowed hard. Each time, Andrea had needed him…and he’d come through. Had not failed.

  How long had he been worshipping the idol of himself, focusing solely on his own strength? What was it his preacher had quoted from Psalms? Through You we push back our enemies; through Your name we trample our foes. Not by his power. God’s. Not his weakness but God’s strength.

  It wasn’t his might that did anything, and if he kept holding on, God would never be able to take care of anything. He had to let go. Had to give up control. Had to take a risk.

  And he knew without a doubt where his first step would take him.

  *

  Twenty-four hours ago, holding the bottom of a metal locker in her hands, Andrea had felt like she and Josh could do anything. Now, huddled in the corner of her couch in the dark, she wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  While she’d been answering even more of the detective’s questions at the church, Josh had slipped from sight. When the flatbed showed up to haul his truck away, he was nowhere to be found. Whatever had died in his eyes this afternoon had been because of her. She’d kept him from further danger, but something told her he’d read the act as rejection. If she explained her actions, he’d be right back here, doing his level best to stand in front of any fist or bullet that had her name on it.

  This admission cut worse than the night Brendan figured out her crush and told her she’d never have a chance with a guy like Josh. The same night he told her Josh was taking Amy Phipps to the senior prom.

  To this day, Andrea couldn’t stand Amy Phipps. The girl had never said two words to her, but Andrea still couldn’t get over believing they were mortal enemies. Despite the ache in her gut, she grinned at the immaturity. Someday maybe she’d grow up. Most of the time, she rather doubted it.

  The light in the room shifted and grew darker. Without even looking at the clock, Andrea knew it wouldn’t be long until the sun cracked the horizon. She’d seen enough predawns to know the old adage was true. It really was darkest right before dawn. If that were the case, maybe light would come back into her life soon. It sure couldn’t get much blacker than this.

  For the fifteenth time since she woke up a little after two, she pulled out her cell phone and toyed with the idea of dialing Josh’s number. Not at this time of day. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. It was doubtful he ever wanted to hear from her again, anyway. The conspicuous absence of his vehicle from the parking lot below testified to that.

  Instead, she clicked to her photos and enlarged the one she’d kept of the wall locker. The detective had erased the pictures on Josh’s phone but hadn’t realized Andrea possessed a copy. She felt a little guilty about having evidence she shouldn’t, but the actual locker floor had been turned over to the police, so there couldn’t be any real harm in looking at a photo.

  Guilt pushed Andrea to set the phone aside. She kneaded the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger. Since when did she become an armchair detective who believed she knew more than the police? It would be better if they handled the sleuthing while she focused on keeping herself alive one more day.

  Something slipped against her apartment door. A slight rustle, then silence.

  Andrea sat straighter and dropped her feet lightly to the floor. Someone was out there. Gripping her phone, she eased across the carpet to the door, careful to avoid the creaky spot on the small hardwood entry, and cautiously leaned forward to peer through the peephole, hoping it was true that no one could see in from the other side.

  A soft knock nearly threw her backward, a light shriek ripping from her throat as her phone clattered across the floor and came to a swift halt under a table against the edge of the beige carpet.

  “Andrea.” Her name passed through the door.

  On hands and knees she scrambled for the phone, until the voice came again.

  “It’s me.”

  Her muscles froze as her fingertips grasped the phone, and she dropped back, staring at the steel door. Her pulse raced twice as fast as it had when she thought a random intruder lurked outside.

  “Josh?” His name squeaked out, and she cleared her throat. Her voice needed to be strong, authoritative, to make him leave before he could get hurt again. “What are you doing here?”

  “I needed to see you.”

  That did it. Emotion overtook reason and she rose to her feet, flicked the deadbolt and opened the locked door she’d hidden behind since he kissed her.

  Josh stood in the dim light of the passageway, seeming hesitant to cross the threshold.

  The sight of him in navy basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt with the old infantry “Follow Me” logo on it made her grip the doorknob harder. He looked like the young Josh, the one that never left her memory. How did he do that? Make the space between her old crush and her new feelings fold over themselves in emotional origami?

  “Did something happen?” There had to be a reason he’d shown up here unannounced, in such a rush he hadn’t even combed his hair. It rumpled across his head like he’d run his hand back through it more than once on the way to her apartment.

  “I needed to see you,” he repeated. The uncertainty rolled off him like steam on asphalt after a summer storm.

  The heat that still lingered in the outside stairwell drifted into the apartment around him in a way that left her unsure if it came from the outside world or from whatever crackled between them.

  She took a step back to give him room to pass. “Because I’m in more danger than we thought?”

  Her question seemed to release the brakes that held him in place. Stepping through the door he met her toe-to-toe, looking down at her, his nose scant inches from hers. “Because of you.”

  How was she supposed to respond to that?

  It didn’t matter if she had a response or not. Josh slipped his left hand behind her neck and pulled her close, his mouth hovering near hers as though he waited for permission.

  In response, she closed the gap, wrapping her arms around his neck and meeting him halfway in a moment that drove Saturday’s kiss from her mind. This was not a throwback to a high school dream. This was an entirely new thing, a fresh realization that the man in front of her was everything but a memory.

  It was simultaneously seconds and years when they pulled apart, Josh resting his forehead against hers.

  Andrea drew a shallow breath. “Do you regret doing that?”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head slightly, and he slipped his hand down her arm to squeeze her fingers before he pulled away. “Then we need to talk.” The low rumble of authority in his voice sent warm shivers across her stomach. She was not standing in front of a man who was about to renege on his actions again.

  “I’m sorry I barged in on you like that.” Josh wandered to the window and peeked out, keeping his back to her.

  “I’m not.” A nervous laugh escaped her. “I just…” She fluttered her hands when he turned back to look at her. “What brought that on?”

  Josh threw his head back and exhaled loudly, exposing his Adam’s apple.

  Don’t go there. Andrea forced herself into sanity before she planted a kiss where there was no permission to go. She had a feeling they were treading rocky ground in more ways than one, that this moment might
be more dangerous than any they’d faced in the past few days.

  When he lowered his eyes to hers, she saw a new resolve shining at her. “You said I was hiding something.”

  The weight of unspoken truth sank Andrea to the edge of the couch. This was it, the thing that stood between them. Instinctively, she knew it would either draw them together or rip them apart. She pulled a throw pillow against her stomach and gripped it like a shield.

  “My accident? It was the same night Brendan died.”

  Her brows furrowed. Why would he hide that?

  “But it’s not the whole reason I wasn’t at the funeral.” With a long breath, he came back and dropped to the ottoman in front of her, his knees hovering close to hers without touching. “Brendan showed up at my door that night, wanting to hang out, and I told him it would have to be later because I had a date.”

  It took a second for the words to weave into a coherent pattern. Brendan went to Josh. Josh turned him away. If Josh had set aside his plans…

  “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. If I’d stood up Lauren for him, they’d both still be alive.”

  Andrea’s hands went to her lips as she slid back and broke contact. “You turned him away when he was in trouble?”

  “No.” Josh pulled her hands from her face, wrapping her icy fingers in his warmth. She didn’t want him to touch her, but she was powerless to pull free. “He wasn’t in trouble. He was discharged from the army, thinking about coming to school, wanted to see if I thought he had a prayer of playing ball if he came in as an older freshman.”

  “He was talking about the future?”

  “He was. And when I told him there was a girl—” Josh swallowed hard “—he said he’d heard there was a party happening across campus and he’d see me there later.” He slipped closer, his voice low and urgent. “I think the overdose was an accident. It had to be. Nobody who talks like he did ends his life just a few hours later.”

  Answers. How long had he held the answers her family wanted so desperately? “Were you ever going to tell us? All this time we wondered, and you kept it from us.” She jerked her hands away, but his grip tightened.

  “Up until tonight, I was convinced I’d killed them both. That it was my fault. Until I saw you again, it never crossed my mind that you didn’t know he didn’t intend to die. Until tonight, it was all about me. I admit that. I couldn’t see outside of myself to realize other people were hurting. My head knew it, but my heart didn’t.”

  Training kicked in, masking her emotions. “Survivor guilt.” Just like her own guilt. In spite of everything, in spite of the hatred and anger she wanted to feel, Josh’s former words rose up. “You didn’t fail him. Or Lauren. You had no way of knowing what would happen to either of them.”

  “I know that now.”

  “And you didn’t fail me, either.”

  His fingers squeezed tighter. “I don’t—”

  The chime of an incoming text message stopped him.

  Josh pulled his phone from his pocket, regret seeping into his expression. Surprise overtook his other emotions and he rose, breaking the connection between them. “It’s Cameron.”

  Andrea’s heart fluttered between disappointment and shock. “Why is he texting you?”

  “All of my soldiers have my number.” He scrolled the message. “He wants to see you.”

  “Then why not call me?”

  “Does he have your personal number?”

  Good point. “When?”

  Josh took a step back and flashed the screen at her. “As soon as possible. At the counseling center. You should call Detective Simmons.”

  “And scare Wade off?” The kid was so skittish he’d run if he caught sight of anything out of place, and then they’d be right back where they’d started. “Josh, if we’ve got a prayer of stopping this, we’ve got to keep him in one place long enough to tell me the truth about what’s going on. I’m meeting him. Now. And I’m not taking the police.”

  “You’re not going alone. I’ll drive. That kid might be scrawny, but he’s strong, and if he doesn’t show up alone or this is some sort of trick…” He headed for the door with long strides. His hand was on the doorknob before he turned to face her. “I’m not losing you now.”

  TWELVE

  Of all the dumb chances he’d ever taken, this may well rank up there with the absolute dumbest. And it wasn’t his life he was messing with.

  It was Andrea’s.

  For the twenty-seventh time since they’d left her apartment, Josh checked the rearview mirror to see if anyone had followed them. He felt only slightly safer driving an anonymous rental car than he did driving his pickup, but there was no telling what their faceless enemy knew or where they lurked. His left hand gripped the wheel, his right elbow resting on the console, pain pulsing with each heartbeat.

  Beside him, Andrea puffed out a deep breath and leaned her head against the seat back. In spite of everything, she wasn’t scanning the road around them, wasn’t looking for danger. She’d climbed in the car without question, laid her life in his hands and assumed he was man enough to handle the situation.

  In the wake of what he’d confessed just moments before, her level of undeserved trust gripped Josh’s heart. His grasp on the steering wheel tightened. “I’m sorry.”

  There was a slight rustle as she shifted in her seat. “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  Oncoming headlights played on her face for what seemed like forever while she thought. “My brother battled things in his head that I’ll never understand, things he was powerless to control by himself. Even if you’d broken your promise to Lauren and been there with him that night, you probably wouldn’t have been able to stop him. He tried to fix what was broken by himself. He made his own choices.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe I’m starting to see that for the first time.”

  “A tough lesson coming out of the chaos you’re in.”

  “Maybe.” She planted her feet in the floorboard and pushed back into the seat. “I should be the one apologizing. You probably thought I was pushing you away when I was trying to protect you yesterday.”

  “What?” Where was this little bit of information earlier? Her revelation would have caused him to run right off the road if he hadn’t been holding the wheel so tightly. “Trying to protect me? From what?”

  “From them. You nearly got killed because of me. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”

  Oh, how he wanted to pursue that. If things were different, he’d pull over right now and they’d hash out every emotion building in this relationship.

  But now wasn’t the time. Rather than follow this line of conversation down its inevitable road, Josh ignored the pain in his elbow and reached over to brush the hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “How much sleep did you get before I showed up?”

  She stiffened, then received his gesture as an acceptance of her apology and allowed him to change the subject. “Counting the thirty seconds I just catnapped?” A smile flickered on her face in the pink light of predawn. “About thirty seconds. You?”

  “You beat me by a whopping twelve seconds.” Josh relaxed into the seat. Only a handful of headlights shone in the rearview mirror along 185 on this early morning. None seemed suspicious. “Any oh-dark-thirty theories on what Cameron’s little wall locker code might mean?”

  Andrea didn’t answer. Her breathing had fallen into the even, shallow rise and fall of sleep.

  Josh smiled and let her doze. Soon enough he’d have to wake her up and face whatever it was that Cameron had for them. They’d need to be on top of their game.

  Not for the first time, he rethought the decision to go meet him without notifying the police. Uniforms could have stayed far enough back not to arouse Cameron’s flight response, and it would have made Josh feel a whole lot better to know someone besides him had Andrea’s back. Someone with guns.

  His phone rested in the cup holder between the seats.
He really should call Detective Simmons. The woman was probably sound asleep, but chances were she’d had more rest than the occupants of this car combined and could have a team in place in the next ten minutes, before he and Andrea even hit the Victory Drive exit.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Andrea muttered.

  A quick glance showed her eyes still closed.

  “You already handed over our one link to whoever’s doing this to us.” She sat up in the seat and stretched her arms over her head, words drowning in a yawn. “If he takes off scared again, chances are he’s not coming back, and then we’ve got nothing.” She dropped her hand to the side of the seat and it rested there, taunting him, daring him to reach over and pick it up.

  Fourteen years in the military and he couldn’t keep himself more vigilant than this? It was foolish to approach her when she was still in danger, to let his emotions take control the way they had tonight. He should go back through basic training and learn a little more discipline. Then her words filtered into his consciousness. “Our link to whoever is doing this to us?” She thought of them as a team.

  “He’s your soldier. And it seems like that last shot wasn’t aimed solely at me.” She drew her eyebrows tight. “No pun intended.”

  Andrea was more nervous than it seemed if she was walking the fine line between humor and sarcasm again. Forget every alarm screaming in his head. He eased his hand over and wrapped his fingers around hers. “It’s going to be okay.” He hoped his words sounded more convincing to her than they did to him.

  “If I didn’t believe that, I’d walk up the middle of Veterans Parkway at high noon and let them wipe me out. It would be a whole lot better than looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

  Josh squeezed her hand one more time and let go, even though he wanted to hold on like a lifeline. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. There’s too much left for us to talk about yet.”

  Silence settled in again as they passed the airport, runway lights glistening like Christmas in July. “Josh?”

  He studied the lines on the road before he answered. The tone of her voice set his guard high. “Yeah?”