by Laura Scott
* * *
During the long trek to find cell coverage, Paige examined what had almost happened between herself and Liam. Granted, emotions were running high. They’d nearly been killed by their pursuers, and he could have died in the quagmire of quicksand.
The almost-kiss was the result of an adrenaline surge, relief that they were still alive. That was all. Nothing more, she assured herself and did her best to ignore the whisper of anticipation that still shivered through her. Then why was she having such a hard time convincing herself of it?
The recent rain had turned the ground slick. When her foot slid, Liam steadied her with a hand to her elbow.
“Careful.”
She also needed to be careful when it came to her feelings for her client. She could take a wrong step and slide down a slippery path from which there was no coming back.
Think about something else. “Tell me about your time in Afghanistan,” she said. “You said you’d seen too much to ever believe in the Lord’s goodness again.”
He was silent so long that she feared he wasn’t going to answer. When he spoke, his voice was so low that she had to strain to hear it.
“The Stand was one of those places where war had sucked the life out of the land and the people. For the most part, the people were good and hardworking, trying to make a living in a harsh land and impossible circumstances. Some of them even helped the US military, and we came to depend upon them.
“A young boy, about fifteen, ran errands for us. He knew the ins and outs of Jalalabad and fed us information whenever he could. I warned him not to take risks, but he wanted to help us rid the land of the terrorists. He told me once that that was the best way he knew to help his family and his people.
“He managed to infiltrate a terrorist group and gave us valuable intel. But he was discovered as a spy. What they did to him...” Liam shook his head. “He died a horrible death because he was trying to help us. I might as well have put a bullet in him myself.”
“I’m so sorry, but you must know that that wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know all of it.”
“Tell me the rest.”
“I ordered men into battles I knew we couldn’t win. And because of that, good men died. Men who had wives and children and sweethearts and parents at home. Men who just wanted to serve their country. Men who deserved better.
“Does your Lord love a man who did that and who walked away without a scratch when his men were left bleeding and broken and worse? Does He love a man who is so messed up that he flinches when he hears carts at the supermarket bang together? Or who can’t take his son to a Fourth of July party because the explosions make him think he’s still at war?” His voice gained strength and volume with every question. “Does your Lord love that man? If He does, why does He let war happen in the first place? If He is all powerful and good, why doesn’t He stop it?”
The words were so strangled that she could barely make out the last ones. Her heart ached for him, for a soul so damaged and ravaged by the ugliness of war. She longed to reach for him, to hold him against her and promise that the Lord could help heal the scars in his heart, but she kept her arms at her sides and her words locked inside, knowing that Liam wasn’t ready to hear them.
“I’m sorry.” The inadequacy of her words mocked what he had just shared, but they were all she had.
“I don’t want your pity.”
“And you’re not getting it,” she returned. “Sorrow isn’t the same as pity. A man as smart as you should know that.”
He flushed. “Now I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Paige understood grief. More than most, probably. Her brother and then her fiancé had both died far too early, but telling Liam that he wasn’t alone wasn’t the way to comfort him.
Grief couldn’t be willed away. Neither could it be ordered to cease. Grief lived on because people needed that connection to those who had been lost. Liam had cared for the young boy who had sacrificed his life for his people. He’d also cared for the men in his command.
He probably wouldn’t put his feelings in those words.
She regarded Liam with his dirty hair, mud-encrusted clothes and tortured eyes. When they found the killer—and they would—would he forgive himself for the death of the boy and those of his men? And as she helped him, would she be able to forgive herself for not being able to save Ethan?
In putting an end to the killings, would either of them find the peace they sought? Or were they both chasing the impossible?
She wanted to ask him everything, and so she asked him nothing.
NINE
When a beat-up truck stopped and the driver offered them a ride, Liam and Paige accepted eagerly.
“Thanks,” Liam told the driver, a farmer with a hat as beat-up as his truck and a craggy face that spoke of long hours in the Georgia sun.
“No problem. I figure if you don’t mind riding with springs poking you in the backside, I don’t mind a little dirt.” He eyed them curiously. “Something tells me there’s a story there behind all that dried mud. If you don’t mind my saying so, you both stink of the swamp.”
“You’re right, there’s a story,” Liam said, “but you don’t have time to hear it. Where is it convenient to drop us?”
The driver named an address close to S&J headquarters.
“Great,” Paige said. “And thank you.”
He let them out and they hoofed it the rest of the way to S&J. Inside, Paige directed Liam to a men’s room.
“There’re some men’s clothes here that we keep just for these occasions. I’ll bring them to you.”
“Thanks.”
He found a spacious bathroom, complete with shower.
A half hour later, he met her in her office. “I thought I’d never get the mud off me. Or the stink.”
“Same here. There’s something about the swamp smell that sticks to you.” She sniffed. “I’m going to be smelling like it for the next week.”
Liam arranged for another rental car to be delivered to the S&J office. “My insurance agent is going to hit the roof. This is the second claim I’ve made in a week.”
“It’s a good thing you got total coverage,” Paige said, sharing a smile with him. Then her smile faded. “I still say what’s happening goes back to the day of the accident. There’s something there, something that would make sense of everything if we could only identify it.”
“I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with something. Anything. Nothing stands out, except for what I told you about Sam, and I’m not even sure that that’s real.”
“Describe Sam on the way home. You said he got real still, but did he say anything?”
“I tried talking with him, and he said he was trying to figure something out. Then he leaned back against the seat, closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything else. I waited to see if he wanted to talk, hung around, just there. But he didn’t open his eyes. After a while, I backed off and left him alone. The rest of the guys were celebrating, telling stories about how great we’d played, making plans for how we’d party when we got back. The best I know, I was the last person he talked to before the accident.”
“That’s all?”
“All that I can remember.”
Why did the thing with Sam stick out? It was a throw-away incident, yet it stuck in Liam’s mind with surprising tenacity.
Was it because he didn’t want to remember how he’d left his friends behind? Was it because he could still hear Danny’s and Brett’s voices in his mind urging him to go ahead? Was it because he couldn’t bear knowing that he had left five friends to die?
* * *
Paige understood that Liam was caught up in the past. She didn’t want to disturb him, but spending too much time thinking of what might have been didn’t do anyone any good. Nor did beating yourself up for what couldn’t be changed
.
She ought to know.
After Ethan’s death, she’d blamed herself and had refused to listen to calmer voices, all saying that no one could have foreseen what had happened.
Blood rushed to her ears as she was suddenly plunged into the past. Memories, harsh snapshots in black and white, hit her with such force that if she’d been standing, her knees would have buckled.
As it was, she gripped the edge of her desk, trying to hold on to the here and now, but the past reached out and grabbed hold of her. In an effort to keep from crying out, she bit her lower lip, the physical pain helping to ebb her panic.
It had been a routine operation, one that should have gone off smoothly. She and Ethan were undercover, posing as a couple looking to buy arms to sell overseas. Expensive clothes, designer bag and flashy jewelry had sold the look while a briefcase full of cash had cemented their introduction to one of the top arms dealers on the East Coast.
They’d met their mark in an abandoned factory where shadows cast by a harsh overhead light vied with the dank darkness that permeated the corners of the huge room. Well aware that the boss’s men were no doubt hidden in the corners had her subtly checking them out, trying to identify the location of the tangos.
Everything was going by the book right up until the meeting with the big man. He rarely came out of hiding to conduct business, but they’d made the deal too sweet to pass up and had insisted upon doing business with the head of the organization.
But the boss’s second in command had taken one look at Ethan and drawn his gun. “He’s a fed.”
A sting operation that Ethan had spearheaded eight years ago had rounded up a dozen or more foot soldiers, one of whom was now the boss’s right-hand man. For keeping his mouth shut upon his arrest, he’d been rewarded with a high-level position in the organization.
Instantly weapons were drawn, and though Ethan and Paige had tried to brazen their way out, they knew they were in trouble. Fortunately, she’d had a mini-transistor hidden in the ostentatious jewel pinned to the lapel of her $3,000 suit.
Backup arrived and, for a few moments, she’d thought she and Ethan were home free, but the henchman who had identified him had wanted revenge and, at the last minute, had shot him.
As soon as Paige had seen the dark blood—death blood—gushing from the gut wound, she knew it was too late. Still, she did her best to stanch the flow, yelling for paramedics, praying with all her might.
Ethan had been given a hero’s funeral and she had packed up her bags and moved from the home she’d planned to share with him.
“Guilt is an equal-opportunity taskmaster,” she said now. “It exacts a price from anyone trapped in its snare.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
Paige told Liam about Ethan, recalling her earlier thoughts. She continued, “Everything should have been all right, even at the end when Ethan was pegged as a fed. Our backup arrived and I turned my back, just for a minute, to talk to the supervisory agent. I thought the man was out of commission—I shot him myself—but he had enough hate in him to make sure he took Ethan down with him.
“If I’d had my partner’s back, maybe he’d still be here.”
“If is a dangerous word,” Liam remarked. “I’ve used it myself. If I’d been faster. If I’d been stronger. The world’s ifs will destroy us if we let them.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve made this about me. I didn’t mean to do that.”
He reached for her hand, squeezed it once. Twice. “I’m glad you did.”
So was she. To her surprise, she didn’t pull away.
“Thank you for telling me that,” Liam said. “It couldn’t have been easy.”
“It’s me who should thank you for listening. You have enough on your mind without my adding to it.”
“I needed to get out of my own head for a while. You reminded me that grief and guilt don’t belong to one person alone.”
Paige remained in her office far into the evening. She shuffled notes back and forth. Though the notes weren’t necessary, it helped to see her thoughts on paper, but nothing jumped out at her. Instead, her thoughts were keeping pace with the rhythm of shifting papers into a different order and starting the process again.
The same question kept circling around in her mind: Why now?
Paige knew she was missing something. Something that would explain what was happening. And why.
Extensive training on analyzing evidence in the ATF didn’t help with this job. It was motive she and Liam needed to pin down. Paige brooded over the visit with Reva. Something felt off there, but she couldn’t identify what it was.
A knock at the door had her calling out, “Come in.”
Shelley stood there, one arm laden with a bag of toys and the other hand holding three-year-old Chloe’s.
“I know I’m a tough boss,” she said, “but I don’t expect you to work past midnight.”
“Caught. You’re here late, too,” Paige observed.
“Later than I intended,” Shelley said on a tired sigh. “Chloe’s with me because Caleb’s out of town and Tommy’s at a friend’s house. I’m on my way out,” she said, depositing the bag on a chair, “but I wanted to check in with you and see what kind of progress you’re making with the McKenzie case.”
“Not as much as I’d like.” Paige gestured to the notes she didn’t need. “We’ve stirred up somebody enough to make two more attempts on Liam’s life, and this time they weren’t even disguised as accidents.”
“Sounds like you’re getting close.”
“I wish we were.” Paige proceeded to fill her boss in on what had taken place.
“We interviewed Mr. Howard, the father of Liam’s best friend. He doesn’t ring as a suspect for me,” she said and explained about the man’s wife. “We also interviewed Pope’s wife—or Hawkins, as she goes by now. She’s a piece of work and made no bones about how she feels about the survivors. According to her son, she couldn’t do anything even if she wanted. Unless I miss my guess, she has a bad case of arthritis.
“We also talked with Reva Thomas. Her sister died in the accident, and she was on the bus as well, so she has a double connection. She was friendly enough, but not much help. And we saw Sam Newley’s brother, Jerry. He couldn’t add anything, either.”
“I’ve heard of Reva Thomas. Mayor of Willow Springs, isn’t she?” Shelley said. “Making a name for herself.”
“That’s right. With an eye to bigger things.”
“You have plenty of suspects.”
Paige continued her brooding. “Revenge doesn’t explain the timing of the killings. If it were as simple as that, the murders would have started shortly after the accident. Revenge might play a part, but there’s something larger at stake here. Something worth killing for.”
Chloe started to fuss, and Shelley lifted her into her arms, murmuring to her all the while. “We’re going in a minute, princess.” To Paige, she said, “Let me know if you need reinforcements. In the meantime, I’ve got to get the princess here home. She didn’t get a nap today, and it’s showing.”
Chloe uttered a protest that sounded dangerously close to dissolving into tears.
“It’s okay,” Shelley said. “We’re going home.”
Paige stood and brushed the hair from Chloe’s face. “Princess Chloe is getting prettier every day.”
“And she knows it. She has Caleb twisted around her little finger. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”
Apparently satisfied that all was well, Chloe now chattered happily, causing Paige to smile at the idea of the tiny girl riding herd over her rough-and-ready ex–Delta soldier father. Caleb was also an operative at S&J. He could put down a perp without breaking a sweat but was sweetly tender with Tommy, the nephew he and Shelley had adopted, and Chloe. His and Shelley’s family wasn’t a traditional one, but it overflowed with l
ove and laughter.
“You sound happy.”
“I am.”
Paige was aware that she sounded wistful and did her best to bank the feeling. She didn’t begrudge Shelley her happiness one bit; she only wished she could claim some of the same for herself.
The sympathetic look that Shelley sent her way told Paige that her boss understood. Not for the first time, Paige thought how grateful she was to have a boss who was also a friend.
“It will happen for you someday. You have to be patient.”
“Someday might never come.” Paige cleared her throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to whine.”
“You’re not whining. You’re lonely for family.”
Paige forced a laugh. “The last time I heard from either of my parents was a year ago at Christmas.” The calls from her mother and her father, who lived a continent’s distance apart, were as forced as her laugh. She’d been only too glad to get off the phone with them. Pretending that they had any kind of relationship was not only painful, it was also exhausting. She didn’t doubt they felt the same.
“There’s all kinds of family. S&J is your family, too. And we’re grateful you’re a part of it.”
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I’m letting S&J and Liam down.”
Shelley touched Paige’s hand. “You’re a first-rate operative. You’ve never let S&J down. And you haven’t let Liam down.”
Paige’s lips twisted. “No. Just the ATF and my fiancé.”
“Enough of that.” Shelley’s sharp tone had Paige looking up in surprise. “You’re feeling sorry for yourself, and that isn’t like you. You’re smart and capable. You’ve had some bad breaks. Who hasn’t? So get out there and do your job.”
Paige stared at her boss. Shelley had never spoken to her like that before. It shook her down to her core.
“You’re right. I was feeling sorry for myself.” Self-pity didn’t solve anything, and she detested that she found herself falling into that trap. That wasn’t like her.
“You’ve worked difficult cases before. Why are you so afraid now?”