South Dakota Showdown

by Nicole Helm

  She was the key to something. Something inside him. Something he’d been waiting for...all these years.

  He didn’t believe in fate or true love or any of the things either could mean, but here he was.

  “You okay, champ?”

  Nope. “Anything on the two-way?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, but I haven’t been awake much longer than you.”

  That was some comfort. Perhaps he’d woken because she’d gotten up and off him, and it had just taken a few minutes to jolt into clarity. Jamison looked at his watch. It was still before noon—so he’d slept about five hours. It could be they’d hiked far enough to be out of range. It could be that the search party—if they’d figured out their scouts had been taken out—had gone the wrong direction.

  “Probably a good sign,” he decided, trying to be hopeful though it wasn’t his natural inclination.

  “Unless they noted the missing walkie and changed the frequency,” Liza pointed out.

  “Lucky for us, we can test out that theory.” He held out a hand, waiting for her to toss the handheld at him, but she didn’t.

  “You talk in your sleep,” she said instead, dark eyes watching him with something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to name if he lived to be a very old man.

  Since he vaguely remembered his dreams, all about her, he stiffened, but he wouldn’t let himself shift and give in to how exposed he felt. “Do I?” he replied blandly. “Anything interesting?”

  “I guess it depends on who you were muttering about.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember my dreams.”

  She made a considering sound but didn’t comment further. He unwrapped the protein bar and took an unsatisfactory bite. “Change the channels. Give each one about ten minutes and see if we pick up on anything.”

  He reached for his pack, wincing at the way his body had stiffened over the course of their nap. Everything ached or was too stiff. Was he thirty-seven or ninety-seven? He stretched a bit, pulling his bottle of water out and taking a drink. Then he tried to roll the kinks out of his neck as he went to his pocket for the map.

  But it wasn’t there. There was a moment of blind panic before he remembered Liza had it. Trying to hide the galloping of his heartbeat, he took a slow, deliberate breath and kept his gaze on the protein bar until he calmed that unnecessary jolt.

  “Map?” he finally asked casually, if he did say so himself.

  She pulled the square of paper from her pocket. “This isn’t going to hold up through much more of this.” Instead of handing it to him like he would have preferred, she unfolded it on her own lap. “What is all this, by the way? Because these marks are something more than just what’s been going on the past few days.”

  He shrugged. “Just a map.”

  “No. It’s a map with a code. Spill it, Jamison.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up from the map, met his gaze. “Because we’re in this together.”

  She didn’t say always, but it seemed to hang in the air between them. Whatever they were, whoever they were, always seemed just about right.

  Maybe that was why the hurt from her disappearing all those years ago had never healed, just left a jagged edge he’d never been able to set aside for any other woman.

  Liza was his always, whether she was with him or not. Whether he wanted her to be or not.

  Too vulnerable a thought and he’d rather discuss what they needed to focus on. “I’ve kept track over the years. Even after we—I got out, if I heard of something related to the Sons, I marked it. Dead bodies are an X. The hashtags represent petty crime. Camps are squares. Unexplained disappearances I thought might relate back to the Sons are circles—in the margins if there were no known last whereabouts.”

  She blinked and looked back down at the map. “You kept track? All these years you kept track and never...”

  He knew what she meant to say before she trailed off. Knew because he was always wondering what more he could have done. But having her say it burned. “Never what?” he demanded.

  “Did anything.” She shook her head, raising her gaze from the map to him. “You knew all this was going on and you never did anything.” She looked at him as if he’d morphed before her very eyes into a villain.

  Her words weren’t true, but that look hurt. Injured enough that he wouldn’t defend himself. Why bother? She wanted to believe he was the ultimate bad guy—what did it matter?

  He really didn’t want it to matter. There was no point in trying to explain anything to her. But his mouth always had a mind of its own around her.

  “Brady, Gage and Tucker work for the Valiant County Sheriff’s Department, just like me. I have contacts in county departments across South Dakota. I put pressure where I could on those cases. So did they. We’ve done what we can.”

  But he was just one man—not a gang or a federal agency. There was only so much he could do within the confines of the law. It had never felt like a failure—even when the law handcuffed him—until Liza had looked at him with that hurt and horrified expression.

  “Hand me the map,” he said roughly.

  She shook her head and grabbed her pack, rifling through it until she pulled out a pen. She made a few of her own marks, then tossed the map at him.

  He scanned the map, noticed her big black X about fifteen miles north of Flynn.

  “You know that’s where Carlee was murdered?”

  “No, not for sure. My father has some kind of house in that area—I don’t have an exact location but it’s somewhere there. You know how he always liked to keep a separate place. A step above. Keep his family out of reach so he could be their only tormentor. I don’t know where else he would have killed Carlee that Gigi would have been able to witness it.”

  He nodded, a new idea occurring to him. He’d figured west made the most sense in terms of transportation, but if Liza’s father was the point man on the trafficking...

  “What’s around the cabin? Give me details.”

  Liza shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Irritated that even now she’d keep things from him, he didn’t bother to hide the sharpness in his tone. “Liza.”

  “Trust me. I wasn’t allowed within miles. Gigi told me a few things, but nothing that will help us find it. They may have let me back in the Sons, but I wasn’t trusted. Not in all those years. I’m the Mariah of this generation, just hoping my turn to die wasn’t until after I’d helped my sisters.”

  Mariah. He remembered a woman in her forties. Tough and always mouthing off and getting knocked around when she did it to the wrong person. It never stopped her, and for the longest time Jamison and Liza had wondered why she got to live. No one else showed disrespect like that and got to stay—and keep breathing.

  She’d even helped Jamison once, when he’d been getting Tucker out. He’d been about to get caught, and she’d created a diversion.

  A year later, she’d been used—very much against her will—as a suicide bomber that had allowed the Sons to interfere with a prisoner transport and get one of their men back from the feds.

  Because the true danger of the Sons, at least under his father’s leadership, was that they were patient. They were smart. They didn’t expend anyone until their usefulness had been completely wrung out.

  Jamison supposed that was part of the reason for his own freedom the past fifteen years. Dad was waiting for the time he’d be most useful, and he could wait a very, very long time.

  Maybe this was what they should have done, all along. Force Ace’s hand. Take the power back. Be the ones to move, just like they’d been when Jamison had gotten them all out.

  Regardless, here he was. “What if it’s here? At your father’s place or close—close enough Carlee caught wind. The Sons don’t kill without planning, but if Gigi witnessed Carlee’s death or just her being dead,
it wasn’t planned—or not very well. I never saw my mother. She was there one day. Gone the next.”

  Something like sympathy softened Liza’s expression, so he pushed on because he didn’t want any of her sympathy.

  “Your father did always like his place on the hill, like you said, but fifteen miles? That’s an awful lot for the second in command. Ace wouldn’t be good with that unless there was a reason.”

  “That’s... Yeah, that could be.”

  “It would also explain why we’re not getting any hits on the two-way. We’ve gone west. If they’re protecting your father or the trafficking, they might have gone north.”

  She nodded, let out a little huff, not in relief but maybe determination. She met his gaze. “So, I guess we’re headed north.”

  * * *

  THEY LET THE afternoon wear on while they waited in the cave. They took turns switching the dials on the two-way, listening for clues or hints, but every channel was low-level static.

  As sunset crept closer, they began to prepare to leave. Jamison thought that no walkie activity meant they’d be safe to start before dark fully descended, and Liza was glad to get some daylight hiking in before the stumbling, panic-inducing night trek.

  Now they had a clear target. She couldn’t entertain thoughts that Jamison might be off base. He had to be right, and they had to be heading for Gigi.

  She tried not to think about how it led straight to her father.

  They packed up the gear in silence. Jamison shoved some trail mix at her, and his bottle of water. Since she didn’t want to break the silence and argue, she ate and drank as much as her churning stomach could handle.

  She insisted on checking his face and bandages, reapplying a few. Of course, that only meant he insisted on changing her bandage, which meant mostly removing her pants.

  She was getting a little tired of feeling his hands on her skin while he changed her bandage with absolutely no hint that it might affect him in any way.

  She could be anyone. A stranger. One of his brothers. He’d bandage them all with the same gentle detachment. Actually, he’d be rougher with his brothers, because he cared about them. He’d be angry they’d been hurt.

  She was as good as a stranger.

  More than that she was an idiot for letting her mind go in these pointless circles when her sister was in grave danger. But Jamison had found a lead—a good one, if her instincts were on track like his.

  She hissed a little when he used a disinfectant wipe against her wound, but he was quick with it and was almost immediately spreading the soft, cool bandage over the stitches.

  His hands were rough—likely from work he did at the ranch to help out Dev and Grandma Pauline. He might live in Bonesteel, a good forty-five minutes away from the ranch, but Jamison would lend whatever help he could.

  Help. It was his core. He’d kept track of things the Sons had done, and as much as she’d felt a moment of betrayal, it hadn’t lasted. He’d used his law enforcement influence to try to right crimes committed by the Sons.

  He hadn’t explained what the check marks on the map had meant, but she knew. Those were cases where he’d actually been instrumental in getting an arrest made. She didn’t recognize all of them, but Lyle Pearce had been arrested and convicted of murder three years ago—much to her father and Ace Wyatt’s fury—which was most definitely Jamison’s X and check mark just west of Bonesteel.

  He hadn’t forgotten, hadn’t let it all go like he pretended. She had to wonder if Ace knew that—and was keeping the same kind of tabs for every time his son interfered.

  She swallowed at the fear. It was one thing when she’d known she was the Mariah—that she could at any point be used for the Sons’ ends and die—but it was another to think of just how much hatred Ace might have built up against his eldest son. More than she’d anticipated.

  Which made this all the more dangerous for Jamison. Her heart and gut twisted and she wanted to say something as he finished with the bandage, but she couldn’t.

  He was still crouched at her feet, spreading the new bandage over her leg, his calloused fingers grazing across the skin just outside the bandage’s reach.

  His gaze lifted, heated. As he stood, he kept her gaze—and lifted her pants, the very tips of his fingers brushing along her skin as he did so. She held her breath, his heated gaze melting everything inside her, including the fear.

  Because Jamison had always been her safe place—and she’d always wanted safe as much as her body had wanted his.

  Now was not the time to give in, but she was drowning in all that sparked between them and deep inside her. He reached his full height, inches above her own, and she leaned toward him even as her brain told her it was a mistake.

  She got up on her tiptoes and pressed her body against his. It matched, just the same as it always had. They matched, heart, soul, body. She gave herself time to watch him, to wait for some inkling he felt it, too.

  He showed no signs of reaction. He held himself still, and his eyes remained cool. Which made something inside her crack in half—perhaps her sanity—because in the next moment she pressed her mouth to his, his lack of response be damned.

  He didn’t balk like she’d expected. He didn’t push her away. He let her kiss him. And somehow, second by second, inch by inch, he sank into the kiss. Softening, reacting, taking. It was such a surprise she threw herself into it wholly.

  The kiss ignited—not like in the old days, with sparks of desperation and joy. This was different—deeper and more complex. Not just spark, but full-on explosion from the inside out. It was joy and need but also betrayal and confusion. It was hope and it was cynicism. It was everything they were and had been in their fifteen years apart.

  But at its core the kiss was them—whatever had brought them together as friends when they’d been kids, whatever had bloomed between them as they’d learned what the opposite sex had to offer. It was their hearts, entwined still, after all these years—because for whatever reason, they were made for each other and could never bend or twist to be someone else’s.

  He was the only man she’d ever wanted, the only man she’d ever willingly touched intimately, and there was some relief that fifteen years hadn’t changed that.

  But the reprieve swirled with the sadness of reality. This world of theirs dulled the edges of euphoria. Yet she was still breathless, boneless maybe, throwing herself and her heart into this whirlwind of a kiss.

  He wrapped his arms around her, strong and certain. He kissed her with intention, not just desperation. As if there was some way they could erase all those old hurts and start something new and purposeful.

  But too few moments later, he pushed her away. Slowly and carefully, but a clear push nonetheless.

  Silence and heat swirled around them in the low light of the cave. Her body pulsed with an electricity she’d nearly forgotten existed, because no one but Jamison had ever made her feel outside herself—just sensation and heart with no concern for the physical here and now.

  It hardly mattered. It was a pointless kiss and he’d pushed her away, no matter what she felt.

  It had been a waste of time at best, though it lingered inside her. She meant to give him a sassy smile and an offhand remark, but she was too steeped in feeling to manage it. “I just had to know if it was all still there,” she whispered. The truth—in all its pointless glory.

  His gaze was enigmatic and impossible to read—or maybe she didn’t want to read it. Maybe she didn’t want to know what he was feeling. His words certainly didn’t give much away.

  “I guess it is.”

  But it was an admission. Not exactly a timely one. “Not really the time to figure that out.”

  He kept watching her and giving her no clue as to how he felt. “Not especially.”

  “We should go.” She made a move for the outside world, but Jamison’s hand was s
till on her arm, and it held firm.

  She thought he might kiss her again—hoped, maybe. But he only watched, searched. There was something very nearly vulnerable in his eyes, so she stood still before it and let him find what he sought.

  “Was it me?” he asked, his voice a harsh rasp. “I was too...overbearing. A different version of them. You had to run away from—”

  She didn’t need an explanation to know he was talking about her leaving, to be horrified he’d blame himself. “Oh, Jamison. God. No. No, I wanted to be you. Save my sisters like you’d saved your brothers. I wanted to prove I was as good as you.” It hit her then what she’d never fully allowed herself to admit. “I never could.”

  He flinched, as though the words were a slap. Then he let her go. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  She’d thought that. That he’d never understand. That fifteen years was too long, but here in this moment she wondered.

  Unfortunately, now was most definitely not the time to figure it out. “We should go,” she repeated. If they didn’t, what other emotional pain would they bring up to compete with the physical pain of their injuries?

  “I’ll exit first, search a little, then you. We’ve got a long walk.”

  Yes, they had a long, long way to go.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was another beautiful sunset streaking across the sky as they marched silently toward their target. Jamison could remember nights when they’d still been with the Sons, when he and Liza would hike some hill or rock outcropping, depending on where their camp had been, and watch the sunset.

  She used to say sunsets held such promise—for a new day. He’d always responded that, technically, that happened with sunrises.

  Every time she’d grin at him and say, Yeah, but who wants to get up that early?

  He’d refused to touch her when they’d been in the Sons. It would have been a violation of what he was trying to do, the man he wanted to be. The first time she’d kissed him, he’d lectured her on proper behavior even as his heart had beaten so hard against his chest he thought it’d break through.