“Every child has a double heritage. I made sure mine were well protected on both sides. Their father was Hal Stephenson. They owned that ranch. All they had to do was eliminate that fool Owen and then they could step forward as the other heirs. They owned the land. And they owned the drug trade. It was their birthright.” Her eyes narrowed. “And you killed them. I was going to take you outside during the evacuation, use you to trap the others who went to Mexico with you, but they were hired mercenaries. They don’t really matter.”
“If you kill us, you’ll never get out alive,” Tara said.
Behind her, she felt Jake press three fingertips into her back and tap three times. She took a slight step forward, and Joy shouted at her to get back.
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” She nodded three times, agreeing to Jake’s count.
• • •
THANK GOD, SHE’D understood. Jake inched his right hand down into his pocket, pushing his hip up as high as he could without Joy noticing, and got a grip on the Sig. When he had it secure, he tapped Tara’s back with one finger, waited a beat, then tapped her with two fingers, waited a beat . . .
And she threw herself down and forward, out of the line of fire, tackling Joy from the ground as he fired repeatedly. Joy went down on her back, her pistol firing. A bullet creased the outside of his arm and slammed into the wall. The next one crashed through a window. He dove on top of Joy while Tara struggled to grab the gun from her hand. Blood covered Joy from a wound at her shoulder and one in her side, but still she fought. Tara slammed her hand down into the floor, and she released her grip on the gun.
The door burst open and two uniformed officers shoved through, guns drawn. Lucy and Ethan crowded in behind them, and Jake had never been so glad to see anyone in his life. They’d neutralized Joy, but he needed to see to Tara, whose arm was bleeding from where the IV had been torn out, and who was sitting on top of Joy’s arm, the pistol held tight in her hands.
He gently closed his fingers over Tara’s and removed the gun from her grip, then helped her to her feet.
“It’s over.” He handed Joy off to Ethan and one of the cops with a quick explanation of who she was and passed both pistols over to the second officer, then wrapped his arms around Tara. Moments later, two more officers arrived along with medical personnel. Nurses went to care for Aurora where she lay curled around her belly on the floor. The cops cuffed Joy—screaming curses—in front and then lifted her from the floor as if to take her out on foot, but the nurses insisted on laying her on a gurney as they had with Aurora and starting an IV while the police officers held Joy down. Then they all left the room in a single, rushed cluster.
In the sudden silence, one of the officers who stayed behind cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but we have to ask you to come with us for a bit, Agent Nolan. The two of you need to be questioned separately if we want your story to hold up in court.”
“You can’t be serious. Can’t you—”
“No.” Tara lifted her right hand and touched his lips, drawing his attention. A bit of color had returned to her face and her eyes had cleared. “You go. They’ll have to move me anyway, and Lucy will stay with me.” She glanced at her friend. “Right?”
“Of course. Jake, you go. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be back. Tara won’t be alone for a second, I swear it.”
More medical personnel arrived, and a woman helped Tara into a wheelchair.
“Are you sure this is okay?” He knew procedure as well as anyone, but he’d fight it if Tara needed him.
“I’m sure. Get this over with.”
The police did him the courtesy of questioning him in an empty room, but even so they made him tell his story over and over. The uniformed officers were replaced by two detectives, who were later joined by an agent from the El Paso FBI field office. Jake held it together for nearly an hour before he put his foot down.
“I’m done. I’ve explained everything. You’ve recorded it. Now I am going to see Tara. If you have a problem with that, arrest me and I’ll call a lawyer.”
“You killed at least two American citizens in Mexico along with God alone knows how many others. And you shot a woman right here in this hospital.”
“And I’ll answer for it. But every one of those shootings was justified. Righteous. And you know it, or I’d already be cuffed and stuffed. Since I’m not, I’m done.” He strode to the door and pulled it open, shoulder blades twitching the whole time. But no one stopped him, so he jogged to the stairs and up to the post-op floor.
• • •
“I’M A MESS,” Tara said once they’d settled her in her new room and the police officers and nurses had left her alone with Lucy.
“Oh, totally,” her friend teased. “I mean, you look as if you just survived a near-death experience. Oh, wait: you did.”
“I don’t mean outside, though thanks for that. I mean . . . what if I don’t get the feeling back in my hand? And what about the drugs?” She reached her bandaged left hand over and touched the IV the nurse had hooked into the back of her right hand. Her left elbow veins were shot from the rough injections she’d been given in Mexico, and her right was bandaged where Joy had torn out her original IV. “Right now I am fine, but what about when I leave and they stop pumping me full of morphine?”
Lucy grimaced. “I’d like to say none of that matters, but the truth isn’t that easy.”
Tara’s throat went dry and her eyes burned. She lifted her water to her lips to hide her face.
“Tara, listen to me. As long as it’s important to you, it matters. But only for that reason. Do I care whether your fingers work properly? Hell, no. You could have had them amputated and I wouldn’t care. Neither would Jake. He loves you. All he wants in the world is for you to be well and safe.”
She swallowed and asked the question eating at her. “How could he ever want to tie himself to an addict?”
“Well, for one thing, there’s no guarantee that once they take you off the morphine you’ll be what any of the rest of us think of as an addict. If you think of yourself that way, then you’ll work at fixing the problem, but you’re the only one who can tell how you feel inside, how bad the urges are.”
“Does Ethan’s addiction scare you?” At first, Tara thought Lucy might not answer, but after a moment she nodded. “Yeah, it does. I don’t worry about him backsliding. He hates even remembering those days. And when the urges strike—and they do—we talk through them. But he isn’t over the insecurity, the idea that he’s a lesser man for having the dependence, and I don’t know that he’ll ever completely beat it. He worries about being a bad husband, about being a bad father, about not being strong enough to face up to the challenges. Those concerns are based on his addiction, not on reality.
“Jake understands what he’s getting, and he wants you. You can, of course, decide that you don’t want him, but it’s not up to you whether he loves you or not. He does.”
The tears she’d been holding back slipped down her cheeks. “Are you sure? What if he just feels responsible? What if I remind him of Lisa and he wants to rescue me since he couldn’t help her?”
“I knew Jake when his sister died. Believe me when I tell you, the way he feels about you is anything but brotherly.”
“But he’s a white knight. What if I’m no more than another project?”
“You’re not. I’ve known you all your life. You’re a fighter, Tara Jean Dobbs, a white knight in your own right. And that’s exactly what he needs: a woman who can take care of herself.”
“I’m not doing such a great job of that. I don’t even recognize myself.”
“Oh, sweetie. I know. Even the most independent of us need help sometimes. Believe me. And I am the last person in the world who’d ever tell you to listen to what anyone else says about you, but in this one instance, you need to let go and trust the rest of us. We still recognize you. Jake doesn
’t see you as a project any more than he sees you as a sister.”
Tara took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
Tara attempted a smile. “So how bad do I look?”
Lucy laughed. “Bad enough. Luckily, you have another six months before you have to be my maid of honor.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting married.”
Jake pushed the door open a few minutes later. “Hey,” he said, walking over to the bed. He wore a fresh bandage over his arm, and the stitches on his head looked rather worse for wear, but he was smiling, and Tara’s heart lifted at the sight.
“Look who’s back,” Lucy said. She stood, leaving her spot on the edge of the bed open for Jake, who immediately sat. “They kept you quite a while.”
“Yeah, well, I have an accounting to come still. They didn’t give you too hard a time?”
“No. I had to tell them everything that happened here. They said someone else would be by to ask me about Mexico, but that it could wait.”
“It can.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Lucy said. On her way out, she gave Tara a quick wink and pulled the door shut.
The moment the latch clicked, Jake leaned over and gathered her up. She wrapped her arms around his waist, careful not to pull out the IV, and felt his whole body sigh.
“Tell me again,” he said.
“Tell you what?”
He growled, surprising a giggle out of her. “Tell you that I love you?”
“Yeah, that.”
Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs, beating all the humor out. “It doesn’t solve anything, though.”
“It doesn’t have to. We’ll deal with whatever comes.” He leaned back slightly and looked down into her face. “Tell me something. If you could do anything at all, what would it be?”
“Get out of this hospital. Go home.”
“Where’s home? Surely not Dobbs Hollow.”
She hadn’t even considered that. Once her father had died, she’d put her childhood home on the market, and the lease on her apartment had expired after she left town. A storage locker in Dallas—her first stop when she left Dobbs Hollow—contained the few possessions she cared enough about to keep, and a safety deposit box held her weapons and papers.
“I guess I’m homeless. Lucy gave the police her address in Houston when they asked where I could be reached, but I don’t care for cities so I don’t know how long I’ll stay. Besides, she and Ethan will want to be alone.” She shrugged.
“Have you ever thought about leaving Texas?”
“And going where?”
“Virginia? Plenty of small towns there.”
She gaped at him, then snapped her jaw shut. Virginia? “You’re going back to the FBI?”
“The FBI isn’t the only employer in the state. But yeah, I have to go back and talk to them. I promised my superiors I would when I asked for their help and contacts when I realized I was going to join the Chosen. After our . . . adventures . . . they won’t allow me the kind of latitude I’ve had for the past couple of years. I’ll have to fish or cut bait.
“All I promised was a conversation, though. I could retire. There are beautiful small towns in upstate New York. Horses, farmland, the whole bit.”
“New York?” Tara’s mind spun. “Why New York?”
“A comment Nash Harper made. HSE is in New York City, and I could probably get a consulting gig with him. I wouldn’t have to be in an office all the time, but I’d want to be close enough to go in when necessary.”
He was planning his future. And he wanted to share it with her. “What would I do?”
“Whatever you wanted. I’m sure you could get a job with a police department—there must be a process for people who move across the country. Like I said: you’re a tiger; you’ll get any job you decide on.”
Did she want to go back to law enforcement? She believed in the creed, deeply and completely, and always would. But maybe there were other ways to protect and serve that would better suit her. She’d started over in two separate departments and couldn’t imagine doing it a third time.
“When I was a rookie in San Antonio, I enjoyed the whole community outreach thing. Going to schools, talking to kids and adults about personal security, stuff like that.”
“So then set up a business. Teach self-defense and personal security and firearm safety. Go to schools or work at a shelter. People need you. I need you.”
“I can’t just move with you.”
“Okay, then we’ll stay in Texas.”
“No, no, I’m not tied to the state. I’m just not ready to start a new life yet. I have so much to hash out with my old one. Can you deal with that?”
“I can. And I’ll help you as much or as little as you want. Just promise that when you are ready, you’ll give me a chance to be in your new life, whatever it looks like.”
“I can’t imagine going on at all without you, and that’s terrifying in and of itself. I’m used to relying on me. Right now, if it weren’t for the fact that you’re here, I’d probably lock myself in a small, dark, windowless room and never come out. When I left Dobbs Hollow, the lawyer told me it would likely be months before my father’s will could be properly executed, and my brother didn’t even have one. I’ll have to call him—the lawyer—and see how far he’s gotten. I try to imagine things like selling my parents’ house, facing the fallout from my brother’s crimes, living with the—God, the need—for that stupid drug for the rest of my life. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide.” Or cry. Which she was doing again. It seemed all she’d done since her return was weep. She forced the tears back.
“Talking to Ethan didn’t help?”
“It did. But it scared me, too. He said I wouldn’t ever be the same person I was.”
“What the—”
“No. He was being honest. He said I had to think of it like I would any other major life change. Change is part of being human. Addiction makes your life a little harder but so does, say, having chronic pain. He asked me whether I’d ever had to kill on the job, and when I said no, he asked whether I’d ever drawn my weapon on duty. I have. Seven times. And every one of those times has altered the way I viewed myself and my work just a little. The first time . . . it was a seismic shift in perception. I don’t have to tell you.”
“No, I understand. And the first kill is worse.”
“I’m not sure I want to find out what that’s like. I could do it. I realized that in Mexico in a way I hadn’t ever really considered, even through all the psych exams and questions and practices. Even after drawing down on a guy in a domestic assault who was going after his wife with a broken bottle while he pointed a revolver at me and my partner. At that point, I knew in my mind I could fire, could kill him if he didn’t surrender. But in Mexico, I knew in my heart.
“As much as the drugs, that’s something I have to work out before I can get on with my life.”
“You know, there’s a reason they make you go to the department shrink after every shooting.”
“I have a feeling this is going to take more than a few sessions.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. But we’ve got all the time in the world. If nothing else, neither one of us is going to be able to move on until the various law enforcement entities get their pieces of the Hijos-Chosen pie. So we’ll just take it one day at a time. Slow and steady. Sound about right?”
“It does. But Jake?”
“Yeah?”
“Not too slow, okay?” She leaned up and pressed her lips to his, tasting the smile that formed there.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK OWES a great deal to various groups as well as individuals. For starters, my gratitude goes to MWA and Sisters in Crime for teaching me about weapons and taking
me shooting, and to RWA for the conference at which I learned the ins and outs of a Joint Terrorism Task Force. The services these organizations provide is priceless.
But when the research is done, you still have to write the book. And for a hospitable spot and all their attention in the time it took to write this, I owe the staff at the Village Social my deepest gratitude. Always on hand with more caffeine and—when that’s not enough—something deliciously chocolate to keep me going, without them there would be no book.
I also need to thank my editor, Leis Pederson, and my copy editors, Andy Ball and Lynda Ryba. Carrie Devine made the cover suit the story and Keith Snyder made the whole thing into a book. I cannot imagine a better team.
Last but not least, as always, thanks go to my husband. He knows why.
About the Author
LAURA K. CURTIS gave up a life writing dry academic papers for writing decidedly less dry short crime stories and novel-length romantic suspense and contemporary romance. A member of RWA, MWA, ITW, and Sisters in Crime, she has trouble settling into one genre. She has published four romantic suspense novels (Twisted, 2013; Lost, 2014; Echoes, 2015; and Mind Games, 2015), two contemporary romance novels (Toying With His Affections, 2014; Gaming the System, 2015), and a host of short stories, many with a supernatural bent.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Laura KramarskyCover
Copyright © 2017 Carrie Devine/Seductive Musings
Cover Image Copyright © knape / istock.com
Interior: Typeflow
All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading, or electronic sharing of any part of this book (other than for review purposes) without the permission of the author constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
This book was originally published by InterMix in May, 2014
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