“What if . . . what if we’re drawn to each other just because of the threat? That after it’s over, we won’t have that special connection I always feel when you’re around me?”
“I’m game to find out if you are.” He gestured toward the door. “This threat isn’t going to last forever. Are you willing?”
“Yes . . .” and her mouth crooked. “I have another confession to make, and it’s one you should know about. I don’t believe in not coming clean with a partner who’s investing his time and care in me.”
Dawson heard the regret and apology in her husky tone. “We haven’t exactly gotten to do much talking on a personal level. It took two weeks to install all those monitors around the cabin.”
“I know, and you were working from sunrise to sundown.” She gave him a fond look. “We’re both walking on eggshells every day. But I wanted to let you know about my past. I fell in love at twenty-five with Steve Coris. He was a deputy here in Lincoln County. My dad ran the department and I was learning how to take over from him someday if the voters would have me. He’d already put in for retirement and I wanted to try to take his place.” She leaned forward, gently massaging her thigh for a moment. Lifting her hands, she sat back, staring at Dawson for a long moment. “I’d sworn never to fall in love with a military man because I saw so many of them killed or wounded. I made a real effort to stay clear of any serious relationships while in the Marine Corps.”
“But things changed when you got out and came home?”
“Yes . . . yes, they did. I guess I was a lot lonelier, without a partner in my life, than I realized. I wasn’t interested in a man who wanted me to stay home and cook and housekeep. I wasn’t that woman. And while I felt it was important to have a family, it just didn’t fit into the life and career I wanted in law enforcement.”
“How did you and Steve meet?” he asked gently, seeing the strain around her mouth, the sadness in her eyes.
“At a Fourth of July dance over at Maud and Steve Whitcomb’s ranch. They always throw a countywide celebration, and it was my first year home from the Corps.” She smiled hesitantly, her gaze shifting off into space. “I was up at the bar and he turned and had a mug of beer in his hand. I was standing too close and the beer went all over me.” She laughed softly. “Steve turned red as a beet. He was so stunned, and then apologetic. He offered to drive me home to get cleaned up, which I thought was sweet. He didn’t know who I was because I’d just come onto the force.”
“Helluva meeting,” Dawson noted drily. Sarah looked happy in that moment, girlish almost. There was no question she’d fallen in love with Steve. So what had happened? He stilled his impatience.
“It was. I drove home, and he followed me in his truck. I was touched by his sensitivity and caring. That’s important to me in a man, Dawson.” She studied him for a long moment and finally said, “Steve was killed a year from our first meeting on a domestic argument call.”
Brows dipping, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
“It totaled me in a new way. He was my first serious relationship. We’d just gotten engaged when it happened. After that, I threw myself into shadowing my father’s duties and lost myself in the politics of running for sheriff a couple of years later.”
“That had to be rough on you.”
“I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day, exhausted myself and dropped into bed to sleep. I guess I ran from the grief; tried to outrun it, maybe.” She grew silent. “I’m drawn to you, Dawson. It just happened. I wasn’t looking to get into another relationship at all. This scares the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
“Because of Hiram and his gang. He could come find us, shoot up this cabin with AK-47s, kill one or both of us.”
“That’s made you afraid to reach out for another potential relationship?”
Nodding, she opened her hands and met his gaze. “Yes, it has. I guess I’ve learned so often that life is tenuous at best. That you can lose people you love in the blink of an eye.”
“Life isn’t for the faint of heart,” he agreed. “Let me tell you a true story. I guess it’s confession time between us.”
“Okay,” she ventured, tilting her head, curious. “Tell me.”
“I fell in love with Lucia Steward when I was twenty-two. We had a whirlwind romance and married a month later. Then I got deployed to Afghanistan for three years in a row, with three months stateside with her and then got redeployed once more. I was acquiring PTSD at the time, but I didn’t realize it. I’d come home to Camp Pendleton in Southern California and I couldn’t talk to Lucia. We got into terrible fights all the time. She accused me of not loving her, because if I did, I’d talk with her, share what was bothering me, stuff like that.”
“So many marriages break up over the man or woman coming home with PTSD,” she said sadly.
“Mine was one of them. We divorced when I was twenty-five. It was an awful time for both of us. I realized later how my inability to talk to her, to let her into what I’d seen and done in Afghanistan, had been the reason. But I couldn’t open up. I knew she wouldn’t understand and God, I had no way of trying to tell her about it because you can’t.” With a one-shouldered shrug, he muttered, “At least I couldn’t. So it was my failure and my fault. It wasn’t Lucia’s because she was hurt and angry. But at that time, I was beyond helping her or myself.”
“That’s so sad.”
“The other part of it was that I was confused about lust and love.”
“None of us are mind readers and most of us aren’t self-aware enough to realize something like that in our early twenties.”
He smiled a little, meeting her gaze. “My parents were right: age would give me maturity. I look back on that time in my life and realize it wasn’t really love I was feeling for Lucia. I saw real love between some of my friends and their wives when we came off deployment and went back to Camp Pendleton. My parents had that same kind of love, too.” He opened his hands and stared down at them for a moment. “A lot of little things tell me the difference between lust and love. I know the difference now . . .” And he loved Sarah but withheld the words. She wasn’t ready for it, although he suspected she already knew how he felt toward her. Neither of them wanted to cross that bridge right now. But life was nebulous, in the moment. It seemed there was nothing they could count on from one hour to the next. All that stood between them and death was King and those monitors. It was a tenuous life they were living, and because of their military background, they remained silent.
July 29
Dawson’s gaze swept around the area as Sarah walked with renewed confidence on her wounded leg. She still wore the brace but from the third week onward threw away the crutches and forced her weakened leg to get stronger every day. Sunlight slanted here and there down on the forest floor as she walked to the garage and then followed another trail back toward the cabin. Neither of them wanted to leave the safety of the immediate area. Of late, according to Cade, the Elson gang had seemed to disappear from the county radar. No one knew where they’d gone. It had been a quiet week, and he wasn’t feeling good about it.
Trying to put the threat aside, he followed Sarah, who was going at a good, fast hiking walk. She walked once every hour outdoors, and he could see the positive change in her as a result. An epiphany of sorts. Sweeping the tree-studded area, he watched for anything out of place, any unusual movement, but saw nothing. King was walking alongside Sarah, happily panting, glad to be taking these hourly circuits. Both dog and woman were type As who breathed in movement, action and forward motion. Smiling a little, he hung back, wearing a pistol on his belt. Dawson never went outside without it.
He had a go-bag stashed just inside the door of the cabin, should they be attacked or if the monitors went off and they had to make a run for it. There wasn’t a night that went by, as he lay in his bed, hands behind his head, that he didn’t consider escape routes should Hiram and his men attack them. Fortunately, there were two doors to the cabin, and
the windows were large and opened. His mind went over these routes until he had them memorized. He didn’t tell Sarah about them because he wanted her to focus on getting well. She had enough to do, working with Cade, overseeing many different aspects that needed her attention. No, better he do it, because he was recon. There were days when he left the cabin and King with Sarah and jogged up and down the slope, searching for points where they could run to escape if necessary. If she knew how much work he’d done in that arena, she’d probably have stressed out over it. He had planned a number of different escape points and trails to take if they were attacked.
There wasn’t a night that went by when he didn’t hear Sarah get up, go to the bathroom down the hall, then walk out to the kitchen. King would follow her wherever she went. Once he’d realized who it was, he’d remained in his bedroom. Sarah needed time to herself. Time to think, to feel and to heal. King was with her, so he fought the urge to get up and go out there, too. If Sarah wanted to talk with him, she would have knocked on his door and asked to come in. But she hadn’t.
He looked down at the watch in his hand, timing her circuits. She was really pushing herself now. Although her femur had healed, it still wasn’t solid. But she insisted, every time she did her rounds, she’d do an extra one, push herself faster and farther. Dawson cautioned her about wanting to jog instead of walk. Her bone wasn’t strong enough yet to deal with the jarring impact of running; there was no sense in possibly fracturing it again. It was just too soon, he told her. Then he’d see the flash of anger and her impatience, walking around to blow off her emotions. Sarah wanted out of this self-imposed hiding, wanted to go back home, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Cade had told her it was too dangerous. They were trying to find Hiram breaking the law so they could incarcerate him.
Frustration curdled in his throat as he watched Sarah and the dog round the corner of the cabin. He felt as if everything was in suspended animation. Cade was cautioning her to remain at the cabin another two weeks. He wanted her at 100 percent when returning to her job. Further, he voiced his trepidation over Hiram’s disappearance. No one had seen him, and it wasn’t as if the deputies and others hadn’t scouted all of his known hidey-holes. Elson had vanished and so had his gang, and Dawson was damned uneasy. Constantly scanning the area, the cabin entirely enclosed by thick forest, he keyed his hearing. The use of the Forest Service truck had been a godsend, camouflaging their whereabouts. Where had the bastard gone? Where?
July 30
The beep, beep, beeping of the monitor picking up movement, cut through Dawson’s sleep. Instantly, he jerked upward, and yanked the bedroom door open and hurried down the hall to the office. Opening it, he wiped his eyes of sleep, staring hard at the computer screen. His heart banged once. It revealed Hiram Elson and at least eight men in militia-style guerilla clothing, skulking through the dark. They all wore night vision goggles.
He heard Sarah opening the door to her room across from the office. Turning, he saw her in the soft lighting, torn from sleep, wiping her eyes.
“Is it Elson?” she demanded huskily, peering at the screen, standing next to him.
“Yeah. I can see nine of them.”
“How far away?”
He looked at the monitor that was taping them. “That’s the farthest out. I’d say a mile from our cabin.”
She let out a rough sigh. “Then we have time to get out.”
Turning, he said, “Yes. Get dressed. Get your go-bag. I’m going to harness King. I’ll get our weapons from my bedroom locker.”
Nodding, she turned carefully, not wanting to put too many demands on her just-healed leg. “Okay. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Dawson heard the concealed terror in her voice, saw her wrestling with the fact that Elson was so near and with the intent of killing her. He quickly hit an alert switch on the keyboard that connected him directly with Dispatch at the sheriff’s office. In as few words as he could, he gave the GPS coordinates where Elson was, and the direction he was heading. The video feed was also going directly into Dispatch. There had been plans in place from the get-go, with not only the sheriff’s office in Lincoln being alerted, but also the Teton office as well. They had a SWAT team that would deploy immediately. They were going to need every bit of manpower they could gather, going up against AK-47s and eight or more men who would fight back, wanting to kill everyone they could. Grimly, he signed off, hurrying out into his bedroom.
Sarah and he had practiced this egress every day. They had special clothing and boots, along with holsters holding Glock 18s with the safety off and a bullet in the chamber. Their go-bags were camouflaged knapsacks they’d wear. Most important, they each had level 2 Kevlar vests they’d wear. He even had a vest to protect King. His hands moved with muscle memory as he hauled on a black T-shirt, his vest, and the camouflaged twill shirt with long sleeves. Next came the trousers, the dark green thick socks and his boots. Turning, he went to the weapons closet and opened it. Inside were AR-15s with two vests that held the extra ammo magazines. Shouldering them, he hurried down the hall, knocking briefly on Sarah’s partly opened door.
She was sitting on the bed, swiftly lacing up her boots. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing a floppy bucket hat, infrared goggles hanging around her neck. Dawson was glad Sarah had been trained in combat in the Corps; she wasn’t going to be some frightened, hysterical, out-of-her-mind civilian who wasn’t used to this kind of threat or stress. She would be steady and reliable.
He set the rifles near the door, butts resting on the floor. Affixing his earpiece, the mic close to his lips, he made sure it was snapped onto the epaulet on his left shoulder. Turning it on, he saw Sarah stand.
“Radio check,” he told her.
Nodding, her radio and mic already in place, she said, “Test . . . test.”
“Copy that. We’re good to go.” He saw the holster around her waist, the Glock in the black nylon holster, a strap around her upper thigh to keep it in the position she needed for a fast draw.
“Help me on with the knapsack?” and she hauled it off the bed where she’d thrown it earlier. Every minute was precious. Sarah knew Elson would move as fast as he could. They didn’t have time for anything but getting out of the cabin.
“Yeah,” Dawson said, coming over and lifting it from her hands. “Turn around . . .” and he quickly slid it up and settled it on her shoulders and back. She was just as fast at buckling the nylon across the top of her breasts and around her waist, stabilizing the go-bag so it wouldn’t flop around and make noise. He worried about her leg. They couldn’t walk; they’d have to run. Would her leg stand up to such a beating? Would it fracture again, leaving her helpless and unable to escape? The dark possibilities surged through him. As he settled his own go-bag into place on his back, rapidly tightening and locking the straps into place, he saw her shadowed face, the set of her lips, the narrowing of her eyes. She was all business. It gave him hope.
King was sitting nearby. He had placed the Kevlar body vest on the dog earlier, had a six-foot leash and he was ready, ears standing up, eyes glinting. At that moment, Dawson thought he looked more like a hound from hell than a Belgian Malinois. He felt good about having King with them.
“I’m ready,” Sarah said into the mic.
“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him. He wasn’t about to let her out the door first. And he didn’t care if she got pissed or not. As they moved swiftly across the living room, Dawson felt his heart contract with terror and something else he’d never thought he’d feel again: love. What a hell of a time to feel it. He pushed the brim of his baseball cap up and settled his night vision goggles into place over his eyes. The infrared set would hang around his neck, should he need them instead. Sarah halted and did the same. They had two sets on them. One was the grainy green NVG to see through the night so they wouldn’t trip and fall over anything. But it would allow them to see anything moving, too. They both flicked a small switch that turned them on. He’d use
d them as a recon with success. Everything would show green, and he allowed his eyes to adjust for a few moments before pulling the door quietly open. Sarah and the dog hugged the wall next to the exit. She had her pistol drawn, just in case. And so did he.
Slipping out into the cold night air, he halted and listened, scenting the night, peering into the darkness, looking for unusual movement. Look for what was out of place; it was a recon’s mantra.
“Clear.” Dawson had filled Sarah in on recon speak between them. It was short, terse, usually of one syllable. She also knew the silent hand signals they used. When she brought out King, he took the dog’s leash, wrapping the leather around his left wrist. Moving down the porch to the corner, he heard Sarah close the door as quietly as possible behind them.
His heart was doing a slow pound. He felt as if he was back in Afghanistan. The stakes were high: life or death. Feeling Sarah’s approach behind him, he gave her a hand signal: follow me. And then said, “Seven.” He heard her click her radio, meaning she copied. Talk would be held to a bare minimum from here on out.
Leaping off the porch, he headed opposite the way Elson and his men were coming toward them. He’d scouted ten different exit points around the cabin and had familiarized Sarah with them, although she’d never walked them. The direction he was heading was a slope, the ground littered with dry pine needles, which hid the rocks below, a tripping hazard. Hoping she had memorized the trails, he took off at a swift stride.
There really wasn’t a path or trail, although Dawson had given each exit point a number. Each headed in a different compass direction. The wind bit at his exposed ears as he forced himself to walk slower for a few minutes. Worried that Sarah’s wounded leg would require a warm-up period so she could use it better, he cautioned himself not to jog yet. King strained at his leash, his ears flicking around like radar online. Most of the time, the dog’s ears were oriented behind them, and he knew King was picking up on Elson’s advance.
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