by Nicole Helm
Her temper didn’t just snap now, it ignited. She kicked out, landed a blow to his shin, which weakened his grip. She wrenched her arm away and swung.
He blocked the blow, feinted left well enough she fell for it. Then he had both her wrists in his grasp and held them against the truck behind her so she was trapped.
They both breathed heavily and Cecilia didn’t fight the hold. She could get out of it, but as much as she didn’t have any qualms about sparring with Brady, she didn’t feel right about actually hurting him—which she would have to do to escape his grip.
She took a deep breath, tried to turn the fire of fury inside of her into ice. She angled her chin toward his wounded shoulder. “I could get out of this in five seconds flat if I fought dirty.” Even if he was finally healing, one well-placed strike to his wound would have him on his knees.
He didn’t even blink or wince. “Not if I fought dirty right back.”
“You?” She snorted, even though his hands were curled around her wrists and his body was way, way, way too close to hers. She could feel his body heat, and he didn’t have to be touching her anywhere but her wrists to get the sense of just how big and strong he was.
And this was really not to the time to wonder what it would feel like if he was touching her anywhere else.
Except, then that’s exactly what he did. Inch by inch, he pinned his body to hers—her back against the metal door of her truck, her front against...him. And she wasn’t sure which was a harder, less giving surface.
It was meant to be threatening, maybe. A show of power, and that he was bigger and stronger than she was. But she didn’t think it had any of the desired effects, because what she really wanted to do was press right back. Even with his hands tight around her wrists.
Brady’s face was too close, and he had that fierceness from last night that, God help her, it really did something for her. She liked he had some secret edge. That he wasn’t perfect or so easily contained.
Which was not at all what she should be thinking about. She should be fighting dirty. Getting out of his hold, even if it meant hurting him. But she couldn’t bring herself to.
“He knows you took Mak,” Brady said, his voice a razor’s edge against the quiet morning. “I get it. He’s not going to stop until he figures out what you did with him. But his men also followed me and Liza. Maybe they gave up, but Elijah has some unknown beef with me too. We’re in the same boat. Stay, we lead him to Mak. It can’t happen. But if we leave? We lead Elijah away.”
Cecilia had to swallow to speak, to focus on his words instead of the heat spreading through her. The throbbing deep inside of her. “Just what are you suggesting?” she managed to demand. Or squeak. She wasn’t sure which sound actually came out of her mouth.
“That we do this together, Cecilia. Lead Elijah away, and take him on. While having each other’s back.”
Chapter Eight
There was a faint buzzing in Brady’s head, and he was having a hard time not letting it take over. If it won, this wouldn’t be about Elijah or danger or anything else. It would be about them.
But today wasn’t about the surprisingly soft woman he was currently pressing against a truck. Today was about keeping Mak safe. Keeping Cecilia safe.
Seriously, why had he pushed her against the truck? To prove some point that he was physically stronger? He was well aware Cecilia could hold her own if she was giving it a full 100 percent. She had gone easy on him in their little tussle because of his shoulder, just like he’d gone easy on her because neither of them wanted to actually hurt each other.
So, why was he crowding her against the truck as his body rioted with...reaction? A heat that should have warned him of danger. He shouldn’t want to lean into it, explore it.
Relish it.
He realized belatedly he was leaning in, getting closer. He could smell her, feel her. What would it matter if he—
That just could not happen. He was not this person.
He released her abruptly. Which wasn’t his best move. It showed her way more than he wanted to admit. He stopped himself from scraping his hands over his face. Stopped himself from gulping for air like he wanted to. He tried to picture himself encased in ice so any and all further reactions were frozen deep inside of him.
What was wrong with him? He felt like there was some rogue part of himself sprouting up and refusing to be caged away like it usually was.
He wasn’t attracted to Cecilia. She irritated him. She challenged him. That infuriated him—it didn’t make him want her. This was simply an aberration. A...hallucination.
Something real and enticing for the first time in a long time.
Which didn’t matter. Not now. What mattered was outwitting Elijah.
“Get in the truck, Cecilia,” he managed to say, without sounding like he felt. Raked over coals. Shaken until his brain was mush. “Or we’ll be found out before we leave the ranch.”
Cecilia stood there, still pressed to the truck like she was afraid to move. Which was ridiculous. Cecilia was never afraid. Certainly not of him. She’d fought right back when he’d tried to stop her from getting in her truck.
But he could see her pulse rioting in her neck. She breathed unevenly, lips slightly parted. And she didn’t move.
Everything inside of him ached with something he refused to acknowledge or name.
“No one else knows?” she finally asked, her voice more or less a whisper. Infused with suspicion, but a whisper nonetheless.
Brady forced his body to level out. When he spoke, it was controlled. Even. “Grandma Pauline. She’s the one who convinced me to go with you, not stop you.” And not go on his own. But Cecilia didn’t need to know he’d had the same plan as she did. “She said we should leave Mak.”
Cecilia visibly swallowed as if that hurt, but she nodded. “He’ll be safer here. Away from me.”
He could see the way that pained her, just like he could feel an echoing of that same pain inside of him. There was something about taking care of Mak that had crawled inside of him, lodged somewhere near his heart.
“He’ll be safer away from us,” Brady corrected, because he needed the verbal reminder himself. “It might not connect, but I’m Elijah’s target too.”
Cecilia nodded, as if agreeing. Then she pushed herself off the truck and went to the one with tinted windows that he’d been driving. They both climbed inside in silence, buckled in that same heavy absence of noise.
Brady spared Cecilia a glance as he turned the key. She had her hands clasped in her lap and she looked straight ahead. Long strands of black hair that had slipped out of her braid framed her face. He’d known her since he’d come to Grandma Pauline’s. She was as familiar to him as his brothers, more or less.
But he found himself staring, when he had no business staring. When he had no business being...affected by said staring.
“It’d earn him respect,” Cecilia said abruptly. “Elijah. For him to screw with one of those Wyatt brothers who left, who went into law enforcement and thumbed their nose at their father, at the Sons—”
Brady jumped on this thread he could follow without getting as lost as he felt when he was staring at her. “Who got Ace thrown in jail. There are plenty of men in that place who like Ace. Hell, worship Ace. He’s the best leader they’ve ever had. If Elijah takes a chunk out of us, my bet is he gets the respect of those who follow Ace even now.” Brady nudged the truck forward, watching the surroundings to make sure they weren’t spotted.
“But us leaving together... Doesn’t that prove Mak is here? That we left him here?”
“Depends. I think we can make it look like anything, if he doesn’t know where Mak is right now. We can make it look like we have him. We can make it look like we’ve taken him somewhere else. We can even make it look like we split up, so he won’t know which thread to follow. He’ll have to split resou
rces thinking we’re apart, but we’ll be together the whole time.”
“We,” Cecilia echoed. She squeezed her hands together. If it were someone else, he might have attributed that gesture to fear.
“We,” Brady said firmly, because at least in that he was sure. “Whatever his reasons, Elijah’s targeting us both right now. He followed us both. So it’s a we. I want to keep Mak safe as much as you do.”
“Is it that bad?” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I don’t know why I even asked that. Of course growing up in a gang is that bad.”
“I wouldn’t know it was that bad if I hadn’t gotten out. I knew it was... Wrong isn’t the right word, because when you have nothing else it’s not wrong. It didn’t fit, though. It didn’t seem right. And Jamison, well, he could remember living with Mom at Grandma Pauline’s. He’d had that glimpse of different. He made us all believe in it. Believe we deserved it. Mak wouldn’t have that.”
Cecilia inhaled sharply. “Would it have been different? If you didn’t have Jamison?”
She’d never know how often he’d asked himself that. How often he’d wondered if Jamison was the reason he’d followed the straight and narrow against the bad that must be inside him. How often he’d hoped it was something deeper, something good inside of him.
But he could never be sure. “I’ll never know,” he said, pulling out onto the gravel road on the back of the Knight property. It would lead them to the highway. And then...
“Where are we going?” She sounded more like herself again. In control and ready to fight whatever came their way.
“That’s an excellent question. Got any ideas?”
* * *
CECILIA GAPED AT BRADY. “I’m sorry...you don’t have a plan?”
He gestured her way, though he kept his gaze on the road. “This is the plan.”
“This isn’t a plan. It’s not even half a plan. It’s the teeny tiny beginning of a plan.” She forced herself to take a breath so she didn’t start sounding panicked, even though that was the exact feeling gripping her throat. “I had a plan. You come in and ruin my plan and then... I can’t believe you of all people would do something without thinking it through.”
“I’ve thought it through. We find someplace to hunker down. We contact Elijah and see if he’ll come after us. Then we work together to arrest him.”
“Someplace is not a plan. See if is not a plan!”
Brady rolled his eyes. “We’ll work it out. Do you think my apartment is far enough away?”
“No. Besides, too many innocent bystanders in an apartment building. Same with my place. Too close to neighbors he could use.”
“And where were you going to go?” Brady asked loftily.
“Motels. Crisscross around. Make it look like I’m running, trying to lose him.” She threw Brady a condescending glance that he didn’t see since his eyes were on the road. “You can’t contact him. That’s too obvious.”
Brady shrugged negligently. “I think Elijah runs toward the obvious.”
“Maybe. But he doesn’t think we will. He reacts to fear.” Cecilia looked out of the windshield at the highway flying by, the rolling hills, patches of brown from the fading summer heat against the green, slowly morphing into the landscape of the Badlands. Rock outcroppings in the distance that would take over the whole horizon. She thought of the dead prairie dog, the dead raccoon, the simple notes. “He wants me afraid. If we act like we’re running, he’ll take the bait. Though I wouldn’t mind leaving a few dead animals for him to find, I think acting like we’re on the losing side is what we should do.”
“He left you dead animals?” Brady asked, and for a second she was fooled by the deadly calm in his voice, so she simply shrugged.
“That’s serial killer behavior.”
She turned at the cold edge of fury in his voice. It was mesmerizing, seeing anger on Brady. She knew he’d been angry before. It wasn’t that she’d ever been truly fooled by the careful armor he placed over himself. It was just she couldn’t understand why it had broken down now. The Wyatts had been through some bad things the past few months.
Maybe it was the gunshot wound, and the infections. Just frustration bubbling over. Maybe it had nothing to do with this.
With you.
Uncomfortable with that thought, she pushed it away and focused on what he’d said rather than how he’d said it. “Like you pointed out last night, he’s a sociopath. Though I don’t fully understand how so many sociopaths can congregate in one group, follow one leader. How do people like Elijah and Ace get whole swaths of men following them? Willing to kill for them?”
“They normalize each other’s behavior and lack of feelings. That’s how groups like the Sons form. People with all sorts of mental problems normalized by each other, exacerbated by each other. They’re told the outside is the enemy. If they’re miserable, if they’re poor, if they’ve been hurt—the outside is the reason for it. The outside is the reason they’re miserable, and if they strike out enough they’ll finally be safe and happy.”
It made a sad kind of sense.
“But make no mistake, Cecilia, people like Ace and Elijah are worse. They know what they’re doing. They know how to manipulate people. Maybe they have their own warped view that the world has harmed them, so they have to harm the world, but there’s nothing to feel sorry for.”
“Did you mistake me for someone with sympathy?”
He flicked a glance her way. “You aren’t without sympathy.”
“You know how it is. You’re a cop long enough, it starts to eat away at you. Hard to watch people make bad decisions over and over for no good reason and not develop a certain kind of cynicism.” She wasn’t sure why she said that. She wasn’t in a habit of admitting her cynicism—though she knew Brady would understand, would have to. He’d been a cop a few years longer than she had, and he didn’t have the same connection to the people he served as she did.
“I think everything you did for your friend, and for Mak, proves that whatever you might feel on a bad day isn’t who you actually are. That’s not a criticism. If you lose all your humanity, badge or no, you’re no different than Ace or Elijah.”
The way he said it had her stomach twisting painfully. “Do you worry about that?”
He stared hard at the road, his grip on the steering wheel tightening before she watched him carefully relax it. “Sometimes.”
“You shouldn’t. I don’t know a better man than you, Brady.”
“Duke,” he replied automatically, trying to defer the attention to someone else, it was clear.
“Duke’s a great man,” Cecilia agreed. She didn’t like feeling soft, didn’t like this need to soothe. But Brady brought it out in her, because she knew a lot of men and Brady was the best. Whether he wanted to believe that or not. “He’s a wonderful father or father figure. But he’s a crusty cowboy with a chip on his shoulder who still hasn’t quite accepted his daughters are grown women. Jamison is like that too—he looks at all of you, and all of us like we’re still kids. It doesn’t make them bad people, it just... Well, you don’t do that.”
He shifted uncomfortably, like he didn’t know what to do with the praise. She doubted any of the Wyatt men were particularly used to having nice things being said to their faces. Grandma Pauline was amazing—but she wasn’t complimentary.
“I guess that’s just being the middle child. One foot in each door. Understanding the oldest side and the younger sides.” He slid her a look. “Or maybe not, since technically you’re in the middle and you still treat Rachel and Sarah like babies who need protecting.”
Cecilia frowned. “I do not.”
“Okay.”
She stared at him in shock. He was patronizing her. “Don’t okay me. I do not treat them like babies!” She was being nice, and he was turning on her. The jerk.
“You’re
right,” he added, with almost enough contrition to mollify her. “You treat them, and Felicity, come to think of it, more like toddlers than babies.”
Her mouth dropped in outrage. She couldn’t believe Brady was criticizing her. And over how she treated her sisters. Which was not any of his business, and certainly not an area he was an expert on. “I was being nice to you.”
“Yeah, and I’m telling you the truth,” he replied, still so casual as if they weren’t arguing at all. “Which you know is the truth or you wouldn’t be pissed off.” He nodded toward the road sign for the next three towns. “You have a motel in mind?”
Cecilia crossed her arms over her chest, tried not to feel petulant. She did not treat her sisters like toddlers. She was just protective of them, because she knew all the awful that was out in the world. Who cared if Brady understood that or not? They had far bigger problems at hand. “The Mockingbird in Dyner.”
Brady winced, but nodded. “All right. Hope you brought your hazmat suit.”
Chapter Nine
Brady drove toward the scummy motel Cecilia had named. It wouldn’t have been his choice, but he understood Cecilia’s thinking. They had to look like they were trying to evade notice. A cash-only, by-the-hour motel room would be just the place. He’d have to put his comfort aside.
The trick was going to be to get Elijah himself to come after them. He likely had a never-ending supply of men who’d take orders under the right incentives or threats. Brady figured they could fight off attacks, as long as Elijah didn’t know where Mak was, but that would be the constant, overwhelming worry.
Brady slowed the truck about a block away from the Mockingbird. He turned to Cecilia, who was still pouting by his estimation. He didn’t know why that amused him. It should be irritating or frustrating or nothing, but something about tough, extreme Cecilia pouting over being called overprotective made him want to laugh.