Locked-Down Heart (Combat Hearts Book 3)

by Tarina Deaton

  “That includes eating pizza between answering social studies questions.”

  He dropped his arms and sagged his shoulders. “Ugh.”

  Kimber had already pulled her books out of her book bag and set them on the small table.

  “Think of it as practice for college,” Denise said.

  “I’m not going to college. I’m going to join the Army like you and Grandpa.”

  A montage of her years in the Army flashed through her mind. She was in no way prepared to overlay her nine-year-old nephew into any of those scenes. “We’ll talk about that when you’re eighteen. And either way, you’re still going to have to learn to study while eating pizza. It’s a life skill. Right up there with learning how to drive a stick shift.”

  “What’s a stick shift?” he asked.

  “Oh, young Padawan, you have much to learn.”

  “What’s a Padawan?”

  She dropped her arms in shock. “What’s a—Well, I know what you’re going to be watching on TV for the next week.” Her phone vibrated in her back pocket before she could delve further into the severe lack of their cultural education.

  Bree’s grinning face stared at her from the screen and she slid her thumb across it. “Hey. Hang on a sec.” She lowered the phone. “Can you put the pizza in the oven when it beeps?” she asked Kaden.

  “Sure.”

  She had a feeling she was going to come back to a partially frozen pizza still sitting on top the stove, but she moved to the small landing outside the front door of her apartment for some privacy. “Hey.”

  Sprocket curled up behind her when she sat on the top step.

  “Hey,” Bree said. “What’s going on?”

  “I have a list,” Denise said.

  “You have a list? Is there any particular order to your list?” Something crunched over the line.

  “Are you eating carrot sticks?” Denise asked.

  “Yes. I have exactly twenty-four minutes for lunch today, so you’re going to have to deal with me crunching on carrot sticks in your ear while you talk. I’ll try to move the microphone away from my mouth while I chew.”

  “Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “No real order, so let me get the big thing out of the way first.” She gave Bree an abbreviated version of the previous day, including picking up Kimber and Kaden from school.

  “Shit,” Bree said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Any way we’d be able to move into your house this weekend?”

  Crunch. “I haven’t officially moved out yet. I mean, most of my personal stuff is at Jase’s, but I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to leave at my house so I haven’t moved any of the big stuff. Jase doesn’t have a trip this weekend so he may be able to get some of the guys to help shuffle everything around.”

  She went over the furniture and rooms she wanted to move and they made plans to meet Saturday morning.

  “How’s everything else? You sound tired.” Bree asked.

  Denise sighed. “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by things. They seem to be piling up at the moment.”

  “We’ll figure it out. What’s next? You’ve got five and a half minutes.”

  “I think we should get an office manager for the rescue. The paperwork is eating into a lot of my time and I’d rather be working with the dogs than sitting in the office. We can probably get away with someone part-time. Maybe a business major from the college.”

  “Okay.”

  “And at least one more full-time person.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s it? Okay?”

  “With…four minutes left? Yes, that’s it. I trust you, Denise. If you’re telling me you need more help, I know you need more help. If you need to talk it over more, bring the kids over to Jase’s place tonight for dinner. We’ll work out a plan of attack and figure out where to advertise for the help.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Especially if she wouldn’t have to figure out what to cook for dinner.

  “Anything else?” Bree asked.

  “I kind of had sex with Chris again.” Why did she throw that in there?

  “Oh—Wait. What?”

  “I kind of had sex with Chris again?” She cringed this time, waiting for the explosion.

  “How do you kind of have sex with someone? You know what? No. That is the first thing we’re talking about tonight. How are you going to drop that on me with less than a minute before I have to get my next patient? You should have started with that.”

  “We wouldn’t have gotten to the rest of what I needed to talk about.”

  “Beside the point. You getting nookie is the most important topic of discussion.”

  Denise smiled. “No one calls it nookie anymore, Bree.”

  “Not the point! Damn it. I have to go. Six o’clock! Heifer.”

  Bree hung up and Denise grinned at the phone, imagining Bree’s frustration at not being able to slam a handset receiver down. There were some advantages to modern technology.

  Chapter 21

  Chris braced his hands on the tailgate of his truck, staring at the last two boxes. He remembered those boxes. They were heavy and even though they were the last two, he dreaded picking them up.

  Jase returned from his trip into the house, wiping sweat from his brow. Even though it was only early spring, they’d been unloading their trucks and carrying boxes and furniture into his house for well over an hour. “Come on. Last two. They aren’t going to walk themselves inside.”

  “How did we end up doing the brunt of the physical labor?” Somehow the girls had managed to escape while the guys did the heavy lifting. “Isn’t this supposed to be the twenty-first century? What happened to women’s equality and all that shit?”

  Jase laughed. “Why do you think they’re in the woods shooting targets while we’re doing the manual labor?”

  “I’m so confused.” Chris slid one of the boxes off the tailgate and hefted it to get a better grip. He wasn’t sure what was in it, but if he had to guess, it was a home gym. Or Bree collected bricks. Or kept all her wealth in gold bullion.

  “Bree’s an Olympic power lifter, right?”

  Jase’s brow crinkled. “What?”

  “That’s the only reason I can come up with for how heavy these boxes are.”

  Jase pulled the last box off the truck with a grunt. “They’re probably all books.” He looked up at the overcast sky. “Which is why they’re in your truck, which has a cover, and not mine. The woman would lose her shit if her books got wet in the rain.”

  “Why does she have eight boxes of encyclopedias?”

  Jase grinned. “You know I’m thinking of that How I Met Your Mother episode, right?”

  “Encyclo-pae-dia,” they said in unison, then laughed.

  His laughter fading, Jase shook his head. “She has hardbacks, paperbacks, reference books. I suggested donating some of them and you’d have thought I’d said we should cut off Charlie’s other leg. The woman didn’t talk to me for hours. Hours.”

  “Huh. Good to know. Denise has a lot of books, too.” He followed Jase through the front door and into the living room. They stacked the boxes on the floor before the fireplace next to all the other boxes they’d dragged in.

  “It’s kind of cool though. She’s perfectly happy to sit on the couch and read while I’m watching TV. Doesn’t care what it is as long as we’re on the couch together.”

  He’d never been the type of guy to get jealous, but damned if he didn’t envy what Jase had. Knowing the woman he was with wanted nothing more than to be with him. Didn’t matter what they were doing or if they were even doing the same thing, just as long as they were together. He wanted that with Denise. Wanted to sit with her on the couch at the end of the day and not worry about why he was there and whether she questioned it, because the only reason he’d be there was because he wanted to be.

  “You want a beer?”

  “Does the Pope ride in a mobile?” He flopped dow
n on the couch and gratefully took the beer Jase returned with.

  “Where’s she putting the books?”

  Jase sat in the recliner. “I’m adding built-ins along this entire wall.” He waved his hand, indicating the brick wall with the large fireplace in the center.

  “Wow,” Chris said.

  “Pretty much.” Jase sipped his beer. “You okay, man?”

  Chris scrubbed a hand over his head. “Chief wants to send me undercover again.”

  “How soon?”

  “A month if this case isn’t wrapped up by then. Sooner if we manage to capture Eddie or get info on how the Anarchists are regrouping.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  Wasn’t that the question. He had no fucking clue. He didn’t want to leave Denise, or the kids, but this was his job. What he’d signed on to do. What he loved…once.

  Shit.

  He used to live for it. The adrenaline. The rush of doing whatever it took to get the bad guy. Now… Denise smiling at him for making the kids breakfast. Laughing at his look of horror when she suggested he try to do Kimber’s hair. He’d never understood how guys could just walk away from the job, but now… Now he knew.

  And he didn’t know what to do.

  “No fucking clue,” he said.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Jase asked.

  Chris frowned. Since when weren’t they completely honest with each other? “Yeah, man. Always.”

  “Why do you still do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Go after the target.”

  He drew a blank. He didn’t know how to answer the question.

  Jase sat forward in the recliner and rested his elbows on his knees. “I loved it—Special Operations. Being a badass. Following the intel, assessing the objective, and taking down the target. It was a rush. Until I realized it was one huge fucking self-licking ice-cream cone. We weren’t making a difference. We weren’t even fighting a bad guy. We were fighting a guy who was defending his country—his home. It wasn’t anything any of us wouldn’t have done if the situation was reversed. I joined the Army to make a difference, but I ended up not liking the difference I made.

  “I’m not saying that’s the case with you,” he continued. “But why do you still do it?”

  Chris rubbed his hand over his head, rolling Jase’s words over in his mind. “I guess it was the same. Didn’t really have a plan when I got out and started college. Figured I take a few classes and figure out what I was going to do with my life. Go into management or something. All those leadership skills I picked up as an NCO,” he scoffed.

  “This girl I was dating, her little sister went missing. Local cops chalked it up to a runaway, but this girl swore up and down her sister wouldn’t run away. They were close and if there was anything going on, she’d have known about it. Her parents took the girl’s phone to the local FBI field office and begged them to look it. They found a whole bunch of hidden apps. She’d been lured out, probably trafficked.”

  He took another drink. “Right in the middle of fucking America. How does that happen? Girl I was seeing dropped out and went back home. I looked into joining the FBI. Had no interest in being a cyber analyst, but special agent? Fuck, yeah. That was right in my wheelhouse. Declared pre-law as my major and the rest is history.”

  “And now?” Jase asked.

  Chris stared into the cold fireplace. “And now, I’m where I was when I got out of the Army. When the Southern Anarchists are gone, another gang will fill the void. The drugs won’t stop, the guns won’t stop, and families losing their kids won’t stop.” He looked at Jase. “So what difference am I making?”

  “When I started V.E.T. Adventures I just wanted to stop one guy from killing himself the way Tony did. Just one. If I could do that, I’d be a success. The difference we make doesn’t have to be huge. Doesn’t have to be epic. It can just be one guy.” He held up his index finger. “But that guy—he’s got a wife. Friends. Parents. Maybe kids. So that one difference can ripple out and affect dozens of people.”

  “I get it, but why are you telling me this?”

  Jase nodded, as if psyching himself up for what he said next. “I’m expanding V.E.T. Adventures. I’m partnering with Denise to pair guys who come through my programs with dogs she has and I got a subcontract with a Veterans Affairs outreach program.”

  “That’s great,” Chris said. “Congrats.”

  “Thanks, but it means more work and more time away from Bree. I’ve been considering taking on a partner—someone who understands the mission and how important it is. Someone who wants to really make a difference. Normally, I wouldn’t have considered asking you, but…things being what they are…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jase leaned back in his chair. “Something’s off with you. I don’t think it’s this case, because things were going off before you left. I think you’ve lost your purpose.”

  Had he? He was conflicted, that was for sure. He wanted to bring the Anarchists down. Wanted to give his agents’ families closure. Stop one more little girl from being taken from her family. But the void they created would be filled by another gang. Maybe one smarter and harder to take down.

  “What are you saying?”

  Jase pulled at his short beard. “Would you consider coming on as my partner? Not trying to make the decision to transfer harder, but maybe it’d be something you’d consider.”

  Shock didn’t even begin to describe his reaction. Being a badass door-kicker was pretty much all he’d ever done. It was what he knew. In the Army and the FBI. Could he be satisfied doing a job where all he did was camp and hunt? Hell, he did it a lot in his off-time anyway. He’d seen the change in a couple of guys who went on repeat trips, how the tension and anxiety would lessen over time. Jase made a difference. Maybe not the difference Chris thought he’d make by joining the FBI, but was it more important to stop bad guys from doing bad things or remind good people what they had?

  Accepting the offer meant staying. It meant not leaving Denise. It meant lazy weekends together with Kimber and Kaden. The longing for normalcy and Rockwellian bliss was almost debilitating in its intensity.

  It also meant giving up the only identity he’d held as an adult.

  “When do you need an answer?”

  “No rush. Think it over. I can handle things until you know which way you’re going to go.”

  Chapter 22

  The sharp crack of the rifle echoed off the surrounding trees, sending up a flight of birds that had settled into the branches only minutes before.

  “You’re still off dead-center by a couple of centimeters,” Bree said, sighting the target downrange through binoculars.

  Denise raised her head to stare at the target and ejected the spent cartridge from her rifle. “Scope might be off by a hair. I haven’t sighted it in almost a year.”

  Bree turned her head, then peered more over her shoulder. “Could also be that you’re kicking your feet up.”

  Blushing, Denise lowered her feet and splayed them out on the ground in the more traditional prone position. “Habit.”

  “It still boggles my mind that you made it through the Army while kicking your feet up when you shoot.”

  Denise made the adjustments to the scope and pressed her cheek against the rifle stock. She sighted through the crosshairs and focused on her breathing and the beat of her heart. The thin lines of the optics rose and fell with each breath. She paused at the end of the inhale, counted to three and exhaled. At the bottom of the breath, she again paused and counted, squeezing the trigger until she felt the slight resistance in her finger, and fired when she hit three.

  “Dead center,” Bree said. She glanced over her shoulder and grinned. “Guess it was the scope.”

  Denise dropped her head and kicked her feet, which had come up again at some point. She raised her head. “That’s how I got through the Army with kicking my feet up. I always
shot expert.”

  “How did your dad let you get away with it?”

  She smiled and laughed. “My mom told him it was cute and to leave me alone. That was the first time I remember seeing his eye twitch. He said, ‘Karen. There is nothing cute about being able to take out a target at two-hundred meters.’ She threatened to dress me in a tutu the next time he took me hunting just to prove there was. This was way before they made pink camo, otherwise I’d have been hunting in that.”

  “I can totally hear your parents having that argument.” Bree glanced at her watch, then up at the sky. “We’ve got about fifteen more minutes before we lose all the good light. Thank goodness the rain held off today.”

  While packing up the rest of her bedroom at the rescue, she’d pulled out her rifle from under the bed where it had been collecting dust and realized she hadn’t been shooting since before Sarah got sick. Her off-handed comment had led to Bree’s suggestion that they get some target practice in before the sun set.

  She’d jumped at the chance. For some reason, she’d always found shooting targets relaxing. The rhythm, the focus, the precision—it all calmed her. She had no choice but to let go of everything when she was shooting, otherwise she couldn’t focus on the hitting the target. Even in the heat of battle, she’d been able to keep her cool by focusing on the mechanics.

  She’d set up to take another shot when Bree asked, “So what’s going on with you and Chris?”

  She jerked the trigger and the shot went wide, hitting the edge of the target. She raised her head from the rifle and turned it slowly, glaring at Bree through slitted eyes.

  Bree’s face was the definition of feigned innocence. “Was it something I said?”

  “You’re lucky I like you.”

  “I know, right? Spill. I watched you with him today. You were this weird combination of standoffish and blushing school girl.”

  Laying the rifle down, she rubbed her eyes. “I’m not sure I know what I want.”

  “Yes, you do,” Bree said. “You’re just afraid to admit it.”

  Denise stacked her hands and rested her chin on them. “I want what you and Jase have,” she said quietly, turning her head toward Bree.