On a good day, Colter could take a guy like Danny down with ease. But it had been a long time since he’d had a good day. He knew his limitations and, right now, his leg was screaming at him.
It was a small price compared to the one his brothers had paid, but it stung to be so useless in a situation he should have been able to handle himself. Some badass Staff Sergeant he was.
Of course, he wasn’t a military man at all anymore, except in his mind.
Turning around and heading back into town after he’d dropped Kensie off had been a fluke. A nagging sense that he’d regret it if he didn’t help her look for her sister, even if he had no idea where to start.
He glanced at her now, absently petting Rebel from the seat beside him. Her lips were clenched in a tight line and her head was bowed slightly, as though Desparre was beating her. She’d barely said a word since she’d followed him back to his truck, but she’d done a poor job of hiding her shaking.
Anger at Danny for making her feel that way overtook his embarrassment, but even that was quickly eclipsed by fear. Fear over what could have happened if she’d ridden off in Danny’s truck instead of his.
And nothing had been done about it. Police had shown up and taken his statement—and Kensie’s, about the missing door handle inside Danny’s truck. But the officers had shaken their heads, telling Colter he was lucky Danny wasn’t pressing charges for assault. When Colter argued about the door handle—obviously meant to keep someone trapped—they’d said it wasn’t a crime to have a broken truck.
As someone who’d run investigations himself, Colter understood their dilemma. But that same experience told him Danny was still a threat.
He shot another glance Kensie’s way, unable to stop himself from drinking in a quick look at her. Reassuring himself she was safe.
Catching his look, she said softly, “Danny said he was Air Force. I thought I could trust him.”
“I really am a Marine,” Colter blurted.
Thankfully, she looked more perplexed than startled by his outburst.
“An MP. Military Police,” he clarified. “I served for almost a decade, rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant. I doubt Danny Weston’s gotten any closer to the service than walking past a recruiting booth.”
“I shouldn’t have believed him.”
Her voice was so low he almost didn’t catch it. His hands tightened on the wheel of his truck as he continued his slow, steady drive along one of Desparre’s back roads out of town. “The guy’s a creep, but he’s smart. Good at getting people to trust him. Especially women.”
“I think he was in the grocery store. He heard me talking about you. It seemed like he knew you.”
“Yeah, he knows me. But we’re not friends.” Colter and Danny had crossed paths a few times since he’d moved to Desparre. Once had been in the bar where Danny was trying a little too hard to get a local woman to go home with him. Colter had walked her to her car, but he suspected if there hadn’t been people watching, Danny would have come at him that night. A few times since, Colter had seen him around, and the guy had set his radar off.
He had no idea what had brought Danny to Desparre, but he suspected it wasn’t good. And he didn’t trust the guy within a mile of Kensie.
“Just steer clear of him, Kensie.”
“Yeah, I got it.”
There was an edge to her voice that he suspected came as much from fear as it did from anger.
He drew in a deep breath through his nose, trying to calm his emotions. Yeah, it hadn’t been smart of her to get into a stranger’s truck, but how mad could he be when he’d essentially asked her to do the same thing with him?
She didn’t know him. She was acting on blind faith and desperation. They were feelings he knew well. As much as he didn’t want to get involved in anything remotely resembling a mission, he couldn’t let that desperation lead her into danger again.
Because if Alanna had been grabbed by a guy like Danny, it was probably already too late to save her.
The errant thought left a bitter taste in his mouth and he shoved back the inevitable memories that followed, of the last moments he’d seen the brothers he’d loved. Brothers he would have traded his own life for if he could have.
He prayed Kensie wouldn’t have to live with the same grief.
“So, the store,” he said, trying to clear the fog that always threatened whenever he thought about that day, his last day in the military. “Tell me what you know.”
She glanced his way, her beautiful eyes clearing, like this was the distraction she needed, too. “Not much. Apparently the owner found it in a stack of money. The chief of police told me Jasper didn’t know who’d left it there, but I’m thinking we can ask him about everyone who came in that day. Or maybe he’ll recognize me. My sister might still resemble me.”
Her last words were full of hope and wistfulness, and he tried to remember how cold she’d told him the case was. “You said she disappeared fourteen years ago?”
“Yeah. She’d be nineteen now.”
“How old were you when—”
“When she was kidnapped?” Kensie finished. “I was thirteen.”
She didn’t offer any more, so Colter let the silence remain, let Rebel take up the task of relaxing Kensie. His dog seemed more than up for it, leaning between the seats and practically hanging her head in Kensie’s lap.
“I think she likes me,” Kensie said, amusement in her tone.
“Yeah, she transitioned better into civilian life than I did. I think she’d be friends with everyone if she could.”
It wasn’t totally true. Like most dogs, she seemed to have an innate sense of who she could trust. But she definitely would like it if he’d let more people into his life, give her someone else to spoil her.
Kensie laughed as Rebel nuzzled even closer, her front feet practically in the seat with them now. “Well, thanks for making an exception and being my friend.”
Was that what he’d done? He let the idea rattle around in his brain as they pulled up to the store out in a little strip of shops off the beaten path. Yeah, he guessed it was. He’d saved her life, she’d seen his home, and he cared about what happened to her. Plus, he sympathized over what happened to her sister. A year after leaving the military, he’d made his first new friend. As much as he liked Kensie, it left him unsettled.
“Let’s go see what we can get out of Jasper.” As he spoke the words, a familiar determination filled him, one he’d prayed wouldn’t return. The feeling of a mission.
Instantly, his chest tightened and breathing seemed more difficult. The doctors at the VA hospital had told him the PTSD might always be with him. Sometimes it would be flashbacks, other times panic attacks or nightmares. They said he needed to learn to recognize the triggers and manage his response. But that was easier said than done.
Rebel’s head swung toward him, her ears twitching. The first few months after he’d gotten out, there were times when something as simple as a branch snapping would send him right back onto that battlefield and the first crack of the sniper rifle. And he wasn’t the only one; more than once, he’d found Rebel cowering in the bathtub during a thunderstorm. Or she’d leap on him, trying to protect him from a car backfiring, and re-aggravate both of their injuries.
Rebel knew exactly what was happening right now. But he didn’t want Kensie to see his weakness, so he flung open the truck door and practically fell out of it.
The cold air shocked his system, filling his lungs and stopping the spasms in his chest. He clenched and unclenched his fists, a trick he’d learned at the hospital accidentally. It helped ground him, give him control over one small thing.
By the time Rebel leaped to the ground beside him and Kensie hurried around the truck, he felt back in control.
She squinted at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Let’s do this.” It wa
s something he’d always say to Rebel when they were about to track a scent. It came out now without thought, but instead of provoking another attack, it straightened his shoulders and filled him with strength.
Beside him, Rebel seemed to strain forward, even though she was always off leash. She sensed a new mission as much as he did. Unlike him, she seemed truly ready.
Thank goodness her injury hadn’t fully healed.
The selfish thought hit unexpectedly. But if Rebel had healed while he hadn’t, she would have been back at war, assigned to a new soldier. The only reason he’d gotten to keep her was that the huge piece of metal that had gone straight through his leg had also pierced her. Neither of them would ever be a hundred percent whole again. Which meant the military didn’t want them anymore.
“Okay,” Kensie said, obviously not realizing the dark place where his thoughts had traveled. She strode up the snowy walkway toward the store.
He followed, trying not to be distracted by the subtle sway of her hips under her parka. Rebel trotted along beside him, ready for the kind of action she’d been trained to handle.
As soon as they walked through the door, a bell dinged and Jasper Starn glared their way. With his chrome-silver hair slicked back on his head and his dark skin over-weathered by the Alaskan wind, he could have been anywhere between sixty and a hundred. He’d lived somewhere on the outskirts of Desparre and run this store for as long as anyone in town seemed to remember. And he was possibly the crankiest store owner Colter had ever met.
When they approached him instead of walking around the store, Jasper looked them up and down like he was cataloguing places they might be hiding weapons, then grunted.
Seemingly not put off by the less than cordial welcome, Kensie gave him a wide smile. It didn’t seem to do much for Jasper’s mood, but dang if it didn’t make Colter feel a little lighter.
“I’m Kensie Morgan.”
His lips pursed, but he made no other sign he’d heard her.
Kensie’s smile faltered a little. “I’m Alanna Morgan’s sister. I know you found the note—”
“I got nothing to say about that.” Jasper cut her off, then angled his glare toward Colter. “No pets in the store. I’ve told you that before.”
Colter nodded at Rebel, who promptly sat. At sixty-five pounds of pure, lean muscle, and always at attention, she could be intimidating. “We just have a few questions. The quicker you answer them, the quicker we’re all out of here.”
“I already talked to the FBI and the police. You want to know about it, ask them.”
Kensie’s smile dropped off. Probably she was used to people being accommodating—or at least polite—when she asked them about her missing sister.
Colter took an aggressive step forward, slamming his hand down on the counter. Sensing his mood, Rebel came up next to him, baring her teeth a little.
Then Kensie’s hand landed on top of his. It was soft and slender and unexpected and it totally threw him off his game.
“I was there the day she went missing,” Kensie said, her voice a pained whisper that made even Jasper freeze. “I was thirteen. I was supposed to be watching her, but I was reading a book up by the house while she ran around the front yard.”
A sudden, wistful smile broke across her face. “Alanna was five. She was wearing this blue flowered dress, covered in dirt because she liked to play with everything. She was so grubby—her hands, her face—but the cutest little kid. She had these dimples you wouldn’t even know were there until she grinned, and then this sparkle in her eyes that told you she was about to be trouble.”
Kensie took a deep breath and Colter felt the shaking through her hand. He flipped his over and closed it around her palm, trying to give her support even as his mind warned him he was treading in dangerous territory. Connection.
Kensie’s fingers spasmed slightly in his, but that was the only sign she’d noticed. Her gaze was laser locked on Jasper. “I saw the car pull up. I saw the guy grab Alanna.” Her voice broke. “I dropped my stupid book and ran after them, but they sped away. It was the last time I ever saw her.”
Colter had been in Jasper’s store more than a dozen times since he’d moved to Desparre. For the first time, he saw the man twitch and his glare soften.
“Look, I’m not playing games here,” Jasper said, his tone conciliatory. “I found the note stuck in a stack of money in my cash drawer at the end of the day two weeks ago. I don’t know how it got there.”
“Okay,” Kensie said, leaning forward. “Do you remember any of the people who came in the store that day? Maybe a young woman—about nineteen—who looked like me?”
Jasper’s lips twisted as he stared at Kensie. “Maybe. Someone with dark hair like yours did come in that day, but she was with her family. I don’t know who she was. Hadn’t seen her before and haven’t seen her since.”
Jasper’s was a regular stop for people who really lived off the beaten path. So if Jasper had only seen the girl once—if it was even Alanna—she might have just been passing through.
Kensie’s shoulders dropped and her gaze sought his, as if she was looking for him to find a new path forward. But he wasn’t sure there was one.
If Alanna had been in the store on her way to some even more remote part of Alaska, how would they ever trace her?
Colter knew what it was like to live with a desperate, burning hope, as painful as it was powerful. But he also knew that sometimes there was relief in release, too. He’d never return to the person he’d been before he lost his brothers. But when he’d woken in the hospital and no one would tell him if his brothers were okay, he’d been frozen. Sometimes he wished he could return to that state of hopeful ignorance, but it meant being stuck, unable to move forward at all.
Finding Alanna might be impossible. If it was, what if Kensie was frozen forever?
* * *
“WE NEED TO talk to the police.”
Colter leveled his best Marine stare at Kensie across the table in the tiny restaurant off the main strip in Desparre. He’d pulled in on a whim because she’d looked so defeated after talking to Jasper that he hadn’t just wanted to drop her at her truck all alone. And if he was being honest, he didn’t want to say goodbye quite yet.
Because it was a place he came semiregularly and because Desparre was usually low-key, they let Rebel sit beside the booth as he and Kensie quietly sipped coffee. Her eyes were downcast, maybe to avoid his stare. But then, it hadn’t worked on her the first four times he’d suggested this course of action.
“What’s your hesitation? I know you talked to them once, but they’re not going to spill everything they know just because Alanna is your sister. If we go in and ask pointed questions about the note, we might get somewhere.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
He frowned, trying to figure out if talking to Jasper had discouraged her as much as it had him or if something else was going on. “It’s worth a shot, right?” he pressed, surprised with himself for playing cheerleader. He’d known this woman less than a day and already he’d spent more time with her than anyone else since his doctors at the VA hospital. Not only that, he was actually pushing her to press forward, when he’d been the one who’d wanted out in the first place.
Truth be told, he still wanted out. The last thing he needed was a mission. But Kensie had a pull about her he couldn’t deny.
She took a heavy breath before meeting his gaze. “You’re right.”
“Okay, then,” he said, forcing himself to sound more cheerful than he felt and praying he wasn’t just giving her false hope. “Let’s do this.”
At his words, Rebel’s head popped up and a grin tugged his lips. This time, instead of leading him down memory lane toward a panic attack, the idea of having a mission just made him feel wistful. If only it happened like that more often. But although he’d gotten better at avoiding triggers, it wasn’t
the same thing that set him off every time.
“We’re not working, girl,” he told Rebel, who yawned and settled down on her tummy.
Kensie gave him an incredulous stare. “She understands you, doesn’t she?”
His smile grew a little. “You’ve never had a pet, huh? Trust me, they understand way more than you’d think.”
She shook her head. “Nah, we lived in the city until I was ten, then my parents finally decided three kids in a walk-up was too much and moved out to the suburbs. By then I’d kind of given up asking for a pet. I thought Alanna was going to be the one to wear them down about getting a dog. After she was gone, none of us had time for things like that.”
Things like what? A childhood? He studied her, trying to imagine what her life had been like after her sister had gone missing. Trying to imagine the guilt she’d internalized at such a young age when it clearly hadn’t been her fault.
He knew all about that. He understood how irrational survivor’s guilt could be, just like he understood that knowing it didn’t make it go away. But he’d been an adult, faced with an inevitable consequence of war. She’d been just a child. And yet, until she’d spoken those words to Jasper, he never would have suspected she blamed herself.
He barely knew her, but she came across as competent and positive. He supposed it showed that the front you put on for others didn’t always match what was underneath.
He dropped some money on the table for their coffees and stood, trying not to cringe as his leg spasmed. They needed to do this before the police station closed.
Desparre wasn’t big enough to warrant twenty-four-hour coverage. Officers here were on call after a certain hour, but the station would be closed. He checked his watch—8:00 p.m. They had one hour and then they’d be out of luck.
Kensie stood more slowly, taking one last, long gulp of coffee as if she was either preparing herself for something or delaying moving forward. Rebel followed Kensie’s lead—probably her leg was hurting, too.
K-9 Defense (HQR Intrigue) Page 4