“Hey, boy.” Dylan let himself into the run and the drenched dog turned his gaze on him. “I won’t leave you just to see you taken to the pound.” Dylan shook his head. “Guess you’re coming home with me.”
Joe barked in response and Dylan wondered if the shepherd would leave his master’s home. Joe remained still as Dylan crouched beside him and clipped the leash to the dog’s collar.
Dylan stroked the top of Joe’s wet head. “I’m sorry about Nate.”
Joe barked as if in response to Dylan’s words.
“Wish you could talk.” Dylan frowned, rubbing rubbed Joe behind the ears. “You might be able to tell me just what the hell happened here.”
Joe whined as if asking the same question. He licked Dylan’s fingers.
Dylan got to his feet, opened the gate and led Joe out of the dog run.
Joe bared his teeth, growled and jerked against the leash. He stared at the shed where BPD officers were still working. Joe barked, the sound vicious and filled with fury.
Dylan frowned. Joe had never been a hostile dog but he had been protective of Nate. What made the shepherd bare his teeth, snarl and bark like this?
For a long moment, Dylan let Joe carry on as he pulled hard on the leash. Finally, Dylan tugged on the leash to get Joe’s attention. The well-trained dog calmed and walked beside Dylan to the truck. Once he’d settled Joe in the back of the king cab, Dylan climbed into the driver’s seat and drove away from the Saginaw section of Bisbee to head to the DHS office near Douglas.
* * * *
Smells of wet dog and rain filled Dylan’s office. Joe sat by the desk, looking like a sphinx as he stared ahead, ever on watch.
No matter what he’d seen in his line of work, the calls Dylan had just made were the hardest he’d ever had to make. He gripped the phone, wrapping up his conversation with Christie Reyes.
She’d broken down and tears were still in her voice. “I just got a postcard from him yesterday. It didn’t feel like a goodbye note.”
Dylan went still, remembering the card in his back pocket. “You received a postcard from Nate? By U.S. Mail?”
“Yes.” She said the word in a way that told him she was having a difficult time speaking. “It surprised me. We live in the same town, yet I haven’t heard from him in so long.”
Dylan wanted to press her, but she sobbed and he made the decision to give her time to get used to the idea of Nate’s death. He needed to read his own postcard again.
She cleared her throat and pulled it together. “I’ll make funeral arrangements.”
In a voice thick with pain and regret he replied, “Thank you, Christie.”
“The CoS was Nate’s only family.” She echoed Dylan’s words to Jensen before adding, “We take care of our own.”
“Call me for anything you need.” Dylan tried to swallow. “Anything.”
“I will.” She sounded beyond sad. “I’ll call Belle and let her know.”
A rush of relief hit Dylan. He’d been dreading that phone call the most.
He shook his head. He was such a chickenshit.
He clenched one hand on his desktop as he imagined Nate watching him, his disapproving stare burning into Dylan.
Dylan let out a long breath. “Thanks, Christie, but it’s my duty. I’ll call her.”
Christie hesitated. “Do you need her number?”
“I’ve got it.” He’d kept her number for a long time but had never called it. “Thanks again. I’ll talk with you soon.”
A sniffle. “Yes, soon.”
He touched the Disconnect icon on his phone and stared at the mobile device. He’d called Leon, Tom, Marta, and now Christie. No one had taken it well and Dylan knew they had to be experiencing the same shock and ache of loss he felt.
The pain Dylan felt over Nate’s death rivaled what he’d experienced with his father’s death. A drug cartel hitman had murdered Ben Curtis while Dylan attended high school and not a day passed that he didn’t miss his dad. The man had been his hero and larger than life. If Dylan hadn’t been bent on revenge over his father’s murder, he probably would have been a rancher just like his dad.
Dylan turned his gaze to his office window and stared out at the dark skies and pouring rain. It hadn’t let up since early that morning, as if grieving for his good friend too. He’d need to call his mother and brother, Aspen, after he called Belle.
His clenched his jaw as he looked at his phone. It was the right thing for him to be the one to call Belle to let her know about Nate.
But then again, maybe she wouldn’t want to hear from him. It would probably be for the best if Christie were the one to call Belle.
Shit. Dylan clenched the phone harder. No, it was his job.
God damn, but he’d never been so indecisive or been known to shy away from anything.
But this is Belle.
Joe let out a long sigh, drawing Dylan’s attention to the dog that had lowered his head to his front paws. Thank God Leon had said he’d take Joe. Leon’s three kids were older and would like having a dog around. Leon said he’d come by Dylan’s office in a couple of hours to get Joe.
Dylan would have kept the shepherd, but his job often kept him away from the ranch and Joe deserved better than that.
A knock came at the door and Dylan looked up to see Trace Davidson with his knuckles against the doorframe. Despite the fact that Trace, also a DHS agent, was a good friend, Dylan didn’t feel like talking to anyone at the moment.
“You okay?” Trace dragged his hand over the hint of a beard on his jaw.
“Yeah.” Dylan leaned back in his chair. “Fine.”
“If that isn’t a heaping load of bullshit, I don’t know what is.” Trace lowered his arm, his Texan drawl more pronounced than usual. He stepped into the room and shoved his hands into his front pockets. The motion pushed his overshirt aside, revealing his service weapon. “Nate was a good man. I’m sorry as hell to hear what happened.”
The ache in the pit of Dylan’s belly only seemed to grow worse. “That makes two of us.”
“I’ll let you get back to whatever you were taking care of.” Trace pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
Peachy. Fucking peachy.
“Thanks.” Dylan didn’t mean to sound as terse as he knew he had.
Trace gave Dylan a long, hard stare. “Call me if you need anything,” Trace said then walked out of the door.
Dylan blew out his breath as he turned again to his phone.
He pulled up his contacts and found her name. Belle Hartford. As far as he knew, she hadn’t married, but there’d been spells where he hadn’t checked in on her. For all he knew, she could have married and kept her maiden name. He could have pushed harder, looked deeper into her life, but somehow that hadn’t seemed right.
Even though he knew he was stalling the inevitable by not calling Belle immediately, he reached into his back pocket. He grasped the postcard he’d forgotten about in his grief until Christie had mentioned her own. He rarely forgot something so important, but today had been like no other.
He pulled the postcard out of its baggie and stared at the picture of Main Street in Old Bisbee, a colorful location filled with history. He flipped the card over and set it on his desk. He stared at his name and the address of his ranch scrawled on the right and the note on the left. Nate could have sent an email but he’d handwritten the note.
Once again Dylan read it. Two things stood out. The first, Hey, remember when I served in Iraq?
The second thing that bothered Dylan—Nate had signed it WYB.
Dylan narrowed his gaze as he stared at the acronym he and Nate had used in school, back when they’d been young. Long before nowadays, when kids used cell phones to text, Dylan and his friends had used the old-fashioned method of passing handwritten notes. Nate had written WYB, their code for Watch your back.
What the hell did it all mean? Again, why would Nate write something so off and why didn’t
he just leave a voicemail while Dylan worked undercover, or send an email?
Unless Nate had worried someone would overhear the call or read his email.
Why hadn’t Nate mailed the postcard? Maybe he hadn’t had time. Yet he’d had time to mail Christie one.
Had he sent postcards to everyone in the CoS? Tom, Marta, and Leon hadn’t mentioned if they’d received anything. Of course they might have been too upset. Still, it seemed like an odd thing to not mention.
Dylan leaned back in his chair and stared through the open blinds to the window that looked out at the cubicles where support staff and some of the junior agents worked. The busy office appeared almost like nothing had changed.
Over a year ago, the Jimenez Cartel had blown part of the DHS’ ICE building all to hell. Agents and support staff had been killed in the blast. More agents had been murdered while protecting a witness who had been set to testify against one of the key heads of the cartel.
The Feds had come down hard on the cartel, seizing assets, arresting key individuals and making their lives a living nightmare. Landon and Dylan had helped take Diego Montego Jimenez, El Demonio, out of the picture. The Demon was no more.
The problem of Diego’s son, Alejandro, had also been eliminated. Alejandro had been known as El Puño, the Fist, and the world was a better place without either one of them.
Both heads of the cartel had nearly killed Landon Walker’s fiancé, Tori Cox, just over a year ago, as well as murdering DHS agents ordered to protect Tori.
The remaining heads of the cartel had retreated, but this fooled no one. The Jimenez Cartel would be back in business, this time with Rodrigo Jimenez, El Verdugo, at the helm. Only a matter of time before the Executioner drove the cartel forward.
Dylan’s gaze returned to the postcard and again he tried to make sense of it. Finally, he put it in the center drawer of his desk and locked it.
He picked up his phone again and held his finger over Belle’s contact details. A strange feeling tugged at his belly. He pressed the number and brought the phone to his ear.
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About the Author
Cheyenne McCray is an award winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who loves to torture characters—whether they’re misbehaving or not—and kill off deserving individuals. She also totally gets off on blowing things up. All fictionally, of course. She’d rather chew glass than write sweet and sugary. Give her a hideous demon or particularly nasty villain to slay any day.
Cheyenne enjoys creating stories of love, suspense, and redemption. She loves building worlds her readers can get lost in. If you would like to find out what odd and unusual things Cheyenne is up to these days, cruise her website any time, take a look at the bizarrely normal yet strange FAQs, and even drop her a line or two.
Email: [email protected]
Cheyenne loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.totallybound.com.
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