by Nicole Helm
He stepped back, letting her fix her pants over the bandage herself.
“It must be nice to have just left the Sons, cut out all that horror and be perfect and happy now,” she said, her voice harsh and full of emotion here in the dark. “It must be so nice to have left it all behind.”
“You could have,” he reminded her, though it didn’t come out harsh. He was starting to feel a tiredness creep in, which drained him of the energy to maintain a facade of strength. It left only the truth.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“If you say so.”
“Marci was still in there.”
He didn’t want to get into the whys of her leaving. Or perhaps more honestly, he desperately wanted to get into it and knew it wouldn’t satisfy either of them. “Your sister didn’t want to be saved. It’s why we left her in the first place. You said you were fine with it. I don’t know why the four years you were out would have changed that.”
“That’s it for you? You don’t try to save someone you love just because they don’t want to be saved?”
He noted she didn’t address all the holes he’d just punched in her argument, but he didn’t need to keep falling into potholes of the past. He needed to complete this mission and move on before that temptation took him someplace he didn’t want to be. “Not if you plan on saving yourself.”
“You couldn’t understand. You didn’t have to leave anyone behind.”
It was painful that she could think that. That anything he’d done then or now had been easy. That there was anything nice about knowing your father was a monster and if you weren’t careful that perversion might bloom inside you, too.
So, instead of responding, he walked on.
* * *
HER LEG HURT so much she wanted to cry. Her heart hurt just as much. At too many things. Not just the way he’d gently rebandaged her wound, or the way he’d looked at her afterward—like no time had passed at all. But at what he’d said, at the way he’d dismissed Marci, and at the shock of hurt on his face when she’d said he’d left nothing behind.
Then he’d blanked it all away and started walking again.
Remorse pulsed inside her like a heartbeat. Regret twined around her lungs, making it hard to breathe without crying.
But she forged ahead because Gigi was what was important, not her screwed-up past or any lingering feelings she had for Jamison Wyatt.
Being hurt and hate aren’t the same thing, Liza. Don’t conflate that.
Those words would haunt her until the day she died. Because all she’d ever known growing up was hate and hurt. She hadn’t seen a sparkle of goodness anywhere except in the Wyatt boys, and then out there in the world Jamison had given her.
Maybe there were more reasons she hadn’t been able to stay out there than just Marci. Maybe all that goodness of Grandma Pauline and the Knights had been too much to bear. Too good to accept when all she’d ever known was bad.
What a horribly depressing thought. But she had to cut herself some slack. She’d been twenty. Maybe things would have been different if she’d been younger, or older.
But things couldn’t be different, because she’d made her choices. Just like Marci had made hers. Carlee hers.
But Gigi didn’t have choices.
So, Liza kept moving, ignoring the pain in her leg. But she couldn’t quite ignore the pain in her heart, too. “Did you ever want to go back?”
If he was surprised by the question, he didn’t act it. “I don’t know.”
She’d expected an emphatic no, or a certainty at the very least, not I don’t know. That was enough to throw her already unbalanced world even more off-kilter. Jamison always knew.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” she demanded.
“It’s too complicated,” he replied, moving forward at a quicker pace that had her scurrying to catch up with him.
“That’s not an answer, Jamison.”
He sighed heavily. “The answer lies somewhere in the middle. It was home, much as I hated it. He’s my father, much as I hate him. I didn’t want to go back, but there were days I didn’t...not want to go back.”
She shook her head, as if she could negate what was clearly an honest answer. She knew that churn too well, wanting both things in the same breath. Never being quite right.
And she’d never been able to express that to anyone, but Jamison had distilled it into a few words. Ones that would probably only ever make sense to them.
Now was hardly the time to wade into it, but if not now—when? When would she ever be able to talk about this with someone? Jamison was the only one who understood both sides of the life. “If it was complicated to stay away, don’t you think it was complicated to go back?”
Jamison was quiet for a while, but eventually he responded, though he sidestepped the question. “Conflicted or not. I didn’t go back. That’s the difference.”
“I had to go back.”
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself, Liza, go ahead. You don’t need me to absolve you of your choices. If you needed that, you wouldn’t have left.”
She stopped walking at that, because it was true. She didn’t need his approval or his forgiveness. If she’d asked herself a day ago, she would have said she didn’t want it.
But here in the middle of the howling, frigid dark, her leg pulsing with pain and her heart aching, she realized that was what she’d been craving since she’d sneaked out of the Knights’ house all those years ago.
His approval. His forgiveness.
She was too old for both. Too old for this.
“As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter,” Jamison said, still moving, far enough away she had to flip on her own lamp to catch up without tripping. “We’re here for one thing and one thing only.”
“Gigi.”
Which meant she had to give all that acceptance and forgiveness to herself, rather than waiting for Jamison to give it to her.
She blew out a breath. It was a shaking realization, and yet it took no weight off her shoulders. Not until Gigi was safe. Once Gigi was safe, Liza could build her own life.
Her own life. Anywhere and anyhow she pleased. Regardless of Jamison or the Sons.
She breathed again, letting her heart beat in time with the pulse of her wounds. She’d use all that hurt to drive her through the fear. Straight into a future no one but her got to dictate.
She caught up to Jamison, flicking off her light once she was close enough to walk in the beam of his. They walked in silence, which Liza figured was for the best.
No more talking. No more trying to get him to believe or see something in her. It didn’t matter. She just had to remember that. Remember those words of not needing his absolution over the words of hurt and hate.
They didn’t hate each other. They didn’t have to forgive each other.
They just had to forgive themselves. She wondered if he ever had, and doubted it very, very much.
Jamison stopped abruptly, quickly turning off his headlamp. Liza sucked in a breath and held it. Far off in the distance, something flickered. Firelight, if she had to guess.
Chapter Nine
“That’ll be a camp of some kind. All of them?” Jamison glanced back at Liza because he was determined to rely on her information as much as his own instincts.
She had an odd expression on her face. The fear and uncertainty were gone. Even the snarky, careless mask she’d worn at first was missing.
She looked fierce. Determined. He glanced at her leg—as far as he could tell, the bandage was holding and no new blood was leaking out.
“Probably all of the ones looking for us. Most of them at the very least,” she said with complete certainty.
“You stay here and—”
“No. Never separate,” Liza said emphatically, which might have swayed him if those
words and the way she said them didn’t remind him of his father.
“That’s a Sons rule.”
“It’s a smart one,” she said, not wavering. “If we’re going to outwit them, we need to play by their rules.”
“Never.”
“Jamison, I won’t let your pride or honor or baggage or whatever you want to call it get in the way here. You said you were ready to check their power and face them and your father. You know you can’t do it as a cop. You have to do it as Jamison Wyatt.”
I’d rather die. He didn’t say it out loud because he knew how words like die could become a little too real when dealing with the Sons. “I won’t be Ace, Liza. I can’t be.”
“I’m not saying you have to be, Jamison. But we have to fight with some of the ruthlessness they do or we’ll never survive.”
Ruthlessness. He hated that word. As a cop he’d had to harden himself to things. Injustices he’d dreamed of solving. As he’d told Liza, some people didn’t want to be saved—and you couldn’t survive yourself if you were always trying to save them anyway. But ruthlessness was more than that. It was a loss of humanity—a blackness on your soul.
He’d watched that blackness swallow his father more and more with every year. Because unlike most of his brothers, he could still remember flashes of a man who wasn’t all bad. At one point, there’d been some compassion in Ace Wyatt.
Jamison had never known what exactly eradicated it bit by bit, but he knew it was a slippery slope. The more hurt you inflicted, the less goodness you had inside you—and it didn’t always matter if the people you were hurting deserved it.
Slippery slope or not, there was a little four-year-old girl in far more danger than he’d ever been. So, Liza had one thing right. He couldn’t play by the cop rules he was used to. He couldn’t toe the line of the law like he wanted to.
Ruthless, no, he couldn’t promise that. But he’d come here for a reason, and she was right enough that if he was going to check the power of his Sons, and face his father once and for all, he had to be willing to cross some lines he’d promised himself he wouldn’t.
But not all of them.
“I can’t promise to be ruthless, Liza. I’ve made too many promises to myself about not becoming Ace. But for a little girl caught up in something that isn’t right or fair, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
She let out a breath, but before she could talk anymore, he forged forward.
“We need to know how many men they have. I think it’d be better, safer and smarter if only one of us got close enough to count. I think since I’m the one without a gunshot wound, it would make the most sense if it was me.”
“And if they find you, take you to your father, where does that leave me?”
“The more we know—”
“No. That’s the cop talking. We don’t need to know what they’re doing. We need to know what we’re doing. We’re after Gigi, not them. So, we avoid. What if we hiked around them, keep heading toward Flynn? Surely wherever they’re holding Gigi is somewhere between them and Flynn.”
“Beyond Flynn. West. It makes it easier to either transport or have a meeting place without bringing outsiders into town,” Jamison muttered, vaguely irritated her plan was better.
“So, we hike beyond. Avoid as much detection as possible.”
She had a point. He doubted Dad’s scouts expected them to hike through the night. If they could get past this group before the sun rose, then they’d only have to worry about camp lookouts, presumably.
If they could get around Flynn before sunrise? Their chances were even better.
“Get out that map of yours. The one with the marks,” she ordered.
He shifted his pack and pulled the map out of his pocket. “No headlamps. Hold this while I get my penlight out.”
He handed her the map, shrugged off his pack and sifted around until his fingers brushed the slim plastic of his small, precise flashlight.
“Hold out the map,” he instructed.
She did, and he studied it with the light, but as they stood there in silence, he stiffened.
A rustle. It could be animal—most likely was, but the hairs on the back of Jamison’s neck stood on end. He met Liza’s shadowy gaze in the dim penlight. She opened her mouth, but he quickly reached forward and placed his palm over it.
He switched off the light in his other hand and shoved it into his pocket. He needed Liza to fold the map and put it away without him actually saying the words. With his free hand, he reached out until he found one of her hands still gripping the map.
She nodded imperceptibly against the hand on her mouth, so he let his arm drop. Then he took both her hands and pulled them together—trying to get it across that he wanted her to fold up the map. It took a few seconds, but then she finally seemed to get the message.
He turned toward the noise, shielding her body with his. The folding of the map made the hint of a swish against the quiet, pulsing dark, but just like the rustle he’d heard—someone could mistake it for animal or the wind.
His hand itched to reach for his gun, but a shot would echo through the canyons and quiet night and give them away. He could fight off one or two, but he doubted they’d survive a whole group of the Sons descending on them.
There was nothing around him but a thick blackness his eyes hadn’t adjusted to after looking at the map with the penlight. He listened through the off-and-on wind for a sound that might give him an idea of which direction the prowler was coming from. Luckily, Liza was behind him, pressed to a rock, so they couldn’t be surrounded on all sides.
Unless someone came over the top of the rock outcropping.
He heard a swish—a knife being unsheathed, if he had to guess. Jamison had his own knife, but he kept it in his boot. The blade was short as well, and wouldn’t be useful if he had to use it to defend himself in the dark.
Liza’s hand pressed into the small of his back, and the other one curled around his right arm and pulled it back. She unclenched his fist and pressed something to his palm.
The handle of a knife. He couldn’t see it, but based on the weight it had a longer blade than the one in his boot. He couldn’t lunge blindly—it was too risky. He needed to see his target and act with as little noise as possible.
The Sons usually did this kind of thing with radios or walkies. If there was a man out there, he’d turned his off. Which gave Jamison some hope they could neutralize this threat without detection—at least for a little while.
But he needed light. And a whole hell of a lot of luck.
So, Liza’s knife in hand and ready to move, he switched on his headlamp and saw just what he’d hoped he wouldn’t. A man not ten feet away from them—luckily blinded by the sudden light.
Jamison lunged, hoping the element of surprise did everything he’d need it to, to keep himself and Liza safe.
* * *
LIZA SWALLOWED THE scream that welled up inside her at the last minute. Noise would likely mean capture.
Jamison’s headlamp flew off his head as he jumped for the man who’d been lurking around them. The light bounced against the rock below, creating enough of a beam that Liza could make out two figures grappling in the dark.
But not who was who. Too many times, the light flashed against something bright and silver. If Liza wasn’t mistaken, both men had knives as they rolled and grunted.
She couldn’t try to shoot—and not just because she might hit Jamison. Noise was the enemy here. They could fight off one man—
Wait. Sons never sent just one man. Liza switched on her own lamp. She looked around, but there was no one besides Jamison and the other man grunting and fighting.
She was standing next to an outcropping of rock and some pebbles tumbled down. She looked up just in time to dart out of the way as a man jumped down. She whirled to face him, half wishing she hadn’t given Jam
ison her knife since a gun would draw too much attention.
Since she recognized the man as one of her father’s lackeys, she sneered at him. “Hello, Claybourne.”
“Hello, dead meat.” He held a gun, but she had one thing going for her. Her father wouldn’t allow his men to use it on her.
No, if she was going to be killed, it would be by her father’s hand. So, she smiled. “In your dreams, sweetheart.”
“You think who your daddy is protects you. There are lines even you can’t cross, little girl.”
She kept her smile firmly in place even as dread pooled in her gut. She didn’t believe every idle threat one of her father’s personal men threw her way, but there was enough going on for her to wonder.
They had to know she was after Gigi, and if Gigi was part of the alleged human trafficking ring, would that mean anyone had leave to kill her? Was the trafficking a big enough deal that her father wouldn’t care if someone besides him killed her?
It didn’t matter. Not yet. Because she’d yet to interfere with anything, and no one knew she’d heard the trafficking rumors except Jamison. Jamison, who she didn’t dare look at—because if he was winning against the other guy, it was best not to draw Claybourne’s attention to it.
Instead, she focused on the man her father considered his best tracker, but not one of his smartest men. “And just what line am I crossing right now?” she asked with a saccharine sweetness that would make anyone’s teeth hurt.
“I’d say involving the Wyatts was the first one.”
“You can’t kill me for that one, Claybourne. I know it and you know it.”
He smiled in the beam of her headlamp. “There’s a lot of room between where we are right now, and you being a dead body at my feet, isn’t there?”
The sounds of the fight had stopped, and Liza knew she had to keep talking, had to keep Claybourne’s attention on her. If Jamison had won, he could surprise-attack Claybourne. If the other guy had won, well, Liza was screwed either way. She couldn’t fight off two men and cart a hurt Jamison off somewhere safe.