by Nicole Helm
“You know, I don’t know anything about my father. He could be the leader of some gang somewhere. He could be a murderer. He could be a million terrible things.”
“The difference is I do know. I appreciate you trying to comfort me, but I know exactly what my father is and what he’s done.” Probably not everything, but certainly enough to be haunted by it.
“And I know exactly who you are and what you’ll do.” Her hand found his in the dark of the truck.
He squeezed it. They needed to get going, put some distance in before the sun rose. He kept her hand in his. “I need you to promise me that you’ll be honest with me about the state of your injuries. If things hurt. If there’s bleeding—or bleeding through bandages. You have to let me know when we need to stop and take care of those issues. I need you to promise.”
She was quiet for a few humming seconds, and he waited for the lie or the argument.
“All right,” she said gravely, with enough weight and time between his words and hers for him to believe her. “I promise.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Then let’s get going.”
They both got out of the truck, loaded their packs on their backs, and set out into the rocky landscape before them.
Brady had his cell phone on silent, though the service out here would be patchy at best. He had a mental idea of the area that hadn’t changed all that much since he’d been tasked with survival out here as a child. He had the pack on his back and he had an injured Cecilia hiking beside him in the dark.
Not exactly where he’d planned to be a few weeks ago, or months ago, or certainly after New Year’s Eve.
He’d had some disdain for the way Gage and Felicity had gotten together. Brady could admit it now, in the privacy of his own thoughts. He’d understood Liza and Jamison, Nina and Cody—they’d had a history before going through their ordeals. But Felicity had been harboring a crush on Brady for he wasn’t sure how long. Brady hadn’t understood how dangerous situations gave way to honest, deep feelings.
No matter that he could see Gage and Felicity now and knew they were happy, he’d been skeptical.
But now he understood that danger and running stripped away the walls and the safety exits you built for yourself without fully realizing it. He’d been able to lecture Cecilia about kissing him on New Year’s Eve because his life had been intact and he’d been able to use that as an excuse to wedge between them.
But danger—life or death danger. Worry—keeping a baby safe worry. These were the things that stripped you to nothing but who and what you were.
It was a lot harder to fight feelings here.
Brady took a deep breath of the canyon air. He didn’t love the Badlands, and he didn’t love the act of hiking—both brought back ugly memories of an unpleasant childhood. He preferred the rolling hills of the ranch or the sturdy, square grids of town.
Because in the dark, in the unusual shapes of the Badlands built by rivers and wind, Brady knew the only thing they were really going to find was danger.
* * *
DAWN BROKE, PINK and pearly. A gentle easing of sun over dark. It felt like some kind of promise. Peace.
Cecilia knew Brady was keeping the hiking pace slow for her. Normally she would have chastised him for it, but everything hurt. Her feet, her body, her injuries—especially the stab wound. Her head pounded and even though he made her stop every so often and drink water, her mouth was miserably dry.
She was both hungry and nauseous and utterly, completely miserable. She walked on anyway, because Elijah or his men had set a fire at her childhood home with the people she loved most in the world inside.
She glanced at the man in front of her, bathed in the golden light of sunrise.
Love was a very strange, complicated word. She adjusted her pack, happy to focus on how heavy the light load felt rather than anything like love.
“Need a break?”
“No. No. Rather get this over with than break.”
“I think we’re close enough if we can get high enough, we can see the camp. I want to climb up here and try,” Brady said, pointing to a large, steep rock outcropping. “You can stay put, be the lookout.”
Cecilia shaded her eyes with her hand. The climb looked difficult even if she were in perfect health. Still, she didn’t want to be down here caught off guard if someone came upon her, or vice versa. “Let’s see what I can do.”
“Favor that side,” he instructed. Clearly he didn’t want her to make the climb, but didn’t want to leave her alone either. They started the climb, and Brady basically hovered over her trying to mitigate any effort to her side.
She wanted to be irritated, but she wouldn’t have made it without his help. Even with his help, she felt more than a little battered when they reached the top. But she could almost put that aside when she looked out below.
This wasn’t strictly national park land, but the Badlands still stretched out, all canyons and valleys with only the occasional patch of flat and grass. In the lowest valley, some distance off, there was clearly a camp of some kind
And while they were alone in this moment, it was clear people used the flat area of this rock outcropping. There was a lockbox dug into the ground, rocks pushed together to form a kind of bench. Signs of footprints.
“Lookouts,” Cecilia muttered, toeing the locked box.
“Might have caught them during the dawn changing of the guard,” Brady said, looking out over the valley below. “But they don’t keep lookouts all the time. With their diminishing numbers they probably only do it when there’s a threat.”
“What would be considered a threat?”
“Cops or federal agents mostly. A few months before Jamison got Cody out, there was a big ATF investigation. Nerves were high. Always a lookout then.”
She couldn’t help but watch him when he offered little pieces of his childhood like that. It was purposeful. He’d never once spoken about his time in the Sons to her before, and so doing it now had to be because...
Well, because he’d decided to trust her. Or care about her. Or something.
He pointed to the camp below. “If Elijah has an actual position of importance, and I’m thinking he does, that’s his compound right there to the north. He might not have the main tent, but he’d have a tent in that area.”
“So we climb back down and hike around to the north side?”
“Not to the north, no. The main compound is more guarded than the rest. They’ll have guards positioned all along the north perimeter to make sure no one tries anything. I think especially with all the factions and power issues, you’re going to have a lot of presence there.”
“We can’t exactly cut through the camp.”
“No. I’m too recognizable, and you may be too at this point. It’s going out on a limb, but I don’t think he’d be here right now. He’s either at the rez, or close to the ranches. He’s going to be somewhere he thinks we’re going. So, our goal is to cut him off before he gets to the camp when he realizes we’re not rushing home.”
Brady pointed again, this time to the southern portion of the camp. “That’s the main entrance. See how they’ve got it set up? You’ve got tire tracks coming in right there—and I don’t see any other vehicle points of access. So, that’s the road in.”
“He’s not going to be alone.”
“No. And we can’t just ambush him. All that does is land us in another fight, and it doesn’t give us any grounds to arrest him.”
“So, what are you proposing then?”
Brady finally took his gaze off the camp below. “Do you know how Jamison created a big enough distraction for me and Gage to escape?”
Cecilia wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Every time he told her some awful story about his childhood she wanted to wrap him in a hug. Which wasn’t exactly a comfortable reaction for her, even if she was comi
ng around to the idea of...well, whatever she felt for Brady.
“He’d gotten Cody out almost two years before us. A few months before us, he’d gotten Tuck out. Obviously, the suspicion was that Jamison had orchestrated it, but no matter how Ace tried, he couldn’t figure out how. He beat Jamison, he beat Gage, he beat Dev. He threatened, raged, demanded answers from the people around us, but he never could find actual evidence that Jamison was behind the escapes.”
“Why didn’t he beat you?” Cecilia asked.
Brady blinked. Then he turned away from the camp, made a move to climb down.
“Brady. I asked you a question.”
“He believed me when I said I didn’t know since he said I couldn’t lie to save my life. It wasn’t worth the energy to beat me.” He held out his hand to help her down the first steep descent. She knew she should just take his hand, not react to that...horror.
But it was so complex in its horror, and the more she got a glimpse into what he’d endured the more in awe of him she was. No wonder he could be a little stuffy and standoffish. No wonder the rules meant so much to him.
Why on earth had he slept with her?
Which wasn’t a question they had any time for.
“The point of the story is that Jamison created a distraction,” Brady continued, waiting for her to take his hand. “He ambushed someone he knew had been working with the cops, called a Sons meeting and told Ace this was the man he’d been looking for.”
Cecilia nearly stumbled as Brady helped her down. “Jamison threw someone under the bus?” She couldn’t begin to imagine. He’d be right to. He and his brothers stuck in hell, she wouldn’t blame Jamison a bit. Still, it surprised her.
“Not exactly. The guy had been working with the cops, but he’d gotten pissed off and killed one of them. So, while Jamison had set this meeting in motion, he’d also managed to send evidence to the local police department that this man was the culprit. So, the distraction was twofold—finally finding the perpetrator, and the cops coming to the compound.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“It was. I don’t know how many weeks he spent working it all out, getting the timing right. And he did it all on his own. Well, I think Liza helped him. We still almost got caught. All that and we still almost got caught.” Brady shook his head as if he could shake away old, bad memories with it. “Anyway, point is we need that kind of distraction. Something to keep Elijah focused and busy on one hand, while we’re working to arrest him on the other.”
Cecilia looked around the vast landscape. The camp was now hidden behind the rocks to their backs. “How on earth are we going to do that?”
Brady paused. “Well, he wants both of us for different reasons. If he had one of us...”
Brady trailed off.
“You don’t honestly think one of us could be a distraction?”
“It makes sense. One to distract, and one to observe the arrestable offense. And then move forward with the arresting.”
“And let me guess—you think you should be the distraction?”
“Actually, no. I think it should be you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Cecilia stared at him, mouth actually hanging open. She’d stopped her forward progress down the steep incline, but she still held on to his hand.
Brady couldn’t say he liked his idea, but unfortunately it was the most sensible. He thought she would have seen that herself, but apparently not.
“Unfortunately it makes sense. You’re hurt, which means it’s going to be harder for you to be stealthy. It’d make more sense for you to pretend to be caught. I can move around easier, observe with more ease and care, and arrest with more force. Plus, your jurisdiction is limited to the rez. While we’re outside Valiant County lines, I’ve got more of a legal standing than you. In a court of law.”
She blinked, mouth still hanging open. When she finally spoke, it was only to echo his own words. “Court of law.”
“It has to be legal, Cecilia.”
She blinked again, multiple times, as if that would somehow change anything. “You’re going to let me be a sacrificial human diversion. You said we’d never split up and you want to do just that.”
“Let’s not use the word sacrificial. All the elements have to come together right. Including making sure we’ve isolated Elijah before we allow you to be any kind of diversion. Then, it has to be absolutely certain I’ll be able to follow, observe and arrest. Not split up, give the illusion of splitting up.”
She finally started moving forward again, letting him take some of her weight on the way down. When they reached more even ground and a tuft of grass amidst the rocky terrain around them, he started leading her toward the best positioning for their purposes.
“We’ll want to keep ourselves by the road, a ways away from camp. The biggest challenge right now is to figure out a way to block Elijah from getting to camp—and keeping him separate from camp if we do let him catch you.”
“Let him catch me. You’re going to let Elijah catch me.”
“No, I’m not going to let him, Cecilia. You’re going to either make the decision to be the diversion or not. If you don’t want to do it, we’ll devise a new plan.” And part of him really wanted her to refuse, even though he knew she wouldn’t. Even though this was the only way.
“We can’t do this alone. It’s just not possible with only the two of us. Not this close to literally hundreds of people who’d help him.”
“What about three of us?”
At the sound of a third voice, Brady whirled, gun in hand. He hadn’t heard a sound, even a potential for someone sneaking up on them. He was ready to shoot first and ask questions later, but the voice was too familiar.
Brady stared at his brother for a full twenty seconds, gun still pointed at him. “Tucker. How... Wh... What on earth are you doing here?”
Tucker’s smile was easy, but it hid something that made Brady fully uneasy. “I’m a detective. I’m detectiving.”
That didn’t make any sense. Brady could only frown at Tucker. “This isn’t your jurisdiction.”
Tuck shrugged. “I needed to do some looking myself and get a grasp on what I’ll need local law enforcement to do when we’re ready to move. It’s a pretty complicated case. Lots of departments and moving parts.”
None of that made any sense, least of all Tucker having some case that tied to the Sons that none of them knew about.
“And you just happened to come across us here in the middle of nowhere?” Cecilia demanded, not even trying to hide her suspicion.
Brady didn’t know how to be suspicious of his own brother, even when none of this felt right.
“It’s not exactly the middle of nowhere,” Tucker replied, unoffended. “It’s the Sons lookout that gives the whole camp’s layout.” Tucker waved an arm as if to encompass the camp behind the large outcropping they’d just climbed down. “And now I can help you guys.”
“How did you find us?” Brady returned.
“I’m not here for you, Brady. I mean, I can help. I want to. But it isn’t why I was here. I was here for my job. I heard you guys and came closer. By the way, I listened to your plan and it kind of sucks without backup.”
“I wouldn’t call one more person backup,” Cecilia replied, her demeanor still suspicious.
Brady could only feel conflicted. His gut was telling him that something was off, but this was Tucker. Tucker was... Probably the most well-adjusted out of all of them. He was good like Jamison, without Jamison’s penchant for taking on too much responsibility. He worked hard like Brady without letting it make him too uptight. He had Gage’s good humor without using it as a shield.
But none of this made sense, and Brady didn’t like the fact Tucker was clearly lying to them. To him. When had Tucker ever lied?
“Elijah was camped out near the ranches. H
ad a small group with him. Only two other men that we could tell. The group or person who started the fire is gone, so he’s traveling light. So if we can somehow take out his communication, three against three isn’t such bad odds.”
Brady opened his mouth to tell Tucker Cecilia was hurt and didn’t count as a full person, but he found something so off-putting about all of this, he just closed it right back up. He couldn’t put Cecilia at risk until this felt less...wrong.
“You can’t be serious,” Cecilia said. “You can’t honestly think we buy any of this.”
Some of the forced cheerfulness melted off Tucker’s face. “But if you buy it, I can help.” He turned his attention from Cecilia to Brady. “Surely you trust me to help.”
Brady had never once questioned his brother’s honesty or loyalty. Even as kids. Tucker was honest to a fault. On more than one occasion the Wyatt brothers had ganged up on Tuck for telling Grandma Pauline something she would have been better off not knowing.
Nothing about this felt right or honest, but it was Tucker. “Of course we do.”
“Speak for yourself,” Cecilia interjected. “You’re acting fishy as hell. I don’t trust that for a minute.”
“Cecilia,” Brady muttered.
“No, it’s all right. She doesn’t have to trust me.” Tuck smiled. “But you trust me, Brady. Right?”
Never in his life had he hesitated to trust one of his brothers. It was alarming to hesitate now. But something wasn’t right—and he didn’t know how to figure out what.
* * *
CECILIA FELT A little bit like crying. Tucker Wyatt wasn’t some Sons spy. She knew that in her gut, in her heart.
But her mind was telling her he was sure acting like one.
It didn’t take anyone with some great understanding of Brady to see that the hesitation cost him. Hurt him. Hence the tears, because the idea of Brady being laid low by his brother’s potential betrayal just ate her up inside.