Fatal Response. Jodie Bailey
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Jason had stopped at Seth’s and taken his buddy’s phone in order to track Angie’s whereabouts with an app her husband had installed. When the team had returned from Iraq a few months earlier, bruised and wounded, the paranoia had hit them all. Dogged by rumors of retaliation by some of the terror cells they’d infiltrated, each man had done what it took to make sure his family was safe.
Those safety measures included knowing where their loved ones were at all times.
The trail had stopped here, at the Mountain Springs Volunteer Fire Department. And now Jason stood by Angie’s car...with a woman he’d never imagined he’d see again. A woman who was accusing him of... Of what? “Where’s the person who was driving this car?”
Erin didn’t answer, simply turned her back to jog to the front of Angie’s vehicle, where she knelt so he could no longer see her.
“I asked you a question, Erin. I need an answer. How did this car get here?” He rounded the rear of the Mustang and stalked toward Erin, who bent over something on the ground. “Where’s the woman who...?” His gaze fell on a familiar pair of boots splayed on the pavement. On a growing dark pool at Erin’s feet.
No.
It couldn’t be.
This was a nightmare. The helplessness of his history leaking its way into his subconscious. There was no other way any of this made sense, the only way so many incongruous pieces of his life could be packed together on the cement drive of a back-road fire station. The only way Erin could be in front of him, her head bent over Angie’s body.
“Tell me she’s alive.” Because if she wasn’t, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t call Seth and tell him his wife, the woman whose existence had kept Seth alive in the dark days after the incident overseas had nearly killed them all, was gone.
Erin rose and turned to walk toward him, her boots leaving dark imprints on the shadowed ground.
Jason didn’t want to think about what those tracks were made of. He tried to step around Erin, but she blocked his view and pressed a hand to his chest, backing him around the rear of the car. “Don’t look. If you know her at all... Don’t look.” She’d slipped into the cold professional mask he’d seen on her one too many times, the one that said she’d seen horrors he couldn’t unsee for her.
The one that said she was protecting a victim’s family.
The one that told him Angie Daniels was dead.
Erin pressed her palms to the wall and stared out the narrow window in the fire exit in the station’s kitchen. Huge portable lights shone over the parking lot and onto the edges of the grassy meadow the department used for training behind the fire station. The Mustang still sat on the asphalt, a white sheet covering the remains of the woman Jason had referred to as Angie.
Having a name made everything so much harder. Angie. Who knew Jason. Who had been ripped from the world in a brutal, horrifying way. Whose death Erin would never be able to unsee.
Erin had responded to accident scenes and sick calls, had been trained to render aid in the most dire circumstances, but she had never been present when life was violently torn away. It was a whole different scenario.
Her stomach churning, Erin leaned her forehead against the shatterproof glass and looked for something else to focus on. At the far corner of the parking lot, Jason was talking to a police officer who had his back to her. From this distance, it was tough to tell who the officer was.
Erin turned her back on the high window in the dayroom and walked to the center of the kitchen. She was tired. Exhausted in a way she hadn’t been in years. All she wanted was to cross the hall to the bunk room and collapse, but she couldn’t. She’d given her statement, which had served to solidify the horror in her mind, and if she closed her eyes there was no doubt the sickening sights and sounds of Angie Daniels’s final moments would overtake her.
So would the memory of intense blue eyes that still somehow managed to see straight through her.
There was a time when her heart would have known Jason Barnes was living half an hour away.
Even better, there was a time when he’d have been sitting with her on the small couch on the other side of the room, cramming his mouth with popcorn while they binge-watched cheesy eighties television.
Everything could have been different if he’d understood her side of the story. But he never had and, in the end, he’d simply thrown up his hands and walked away.
Hands shaking, Erin grabbed the pot from the coffee maker and turned on the water in the sink to fill it, but she misjudged the distance and clanked the metal carafe against the faucet, dropping it with a clatter.
There wasn’t enough reserve left to care. Instead, she lowered her chin to her chest and stared at the gray tile floor.
Her eyes slipped shut against the mist threatening to build into full-on tears. She was not crying. Not now. Never where anyone might see.
“I see you’re handling tonight’s events well.”
Erin jumped at the deep masculine voice behind her, then relaxed when she found the source. “Tonight’s not the night to sneak up on me, Wyatt.”
Her cousin bent and grabbed the pot, then set it in the sink. The badge on his black Mountain Springs Police Department jacket gleamed in the fluorescent lights overhead. “Wasn’t trying to. You just looked like you could use some—”
“I don’t need help.” Snatching the carafe, she shoved it under the water and waited for it to fill. “I need coffee. You want coffee?” Truth was, with her hands shaking and mind racing, coffee was the last thing she needed, but it would give her something to do until he left. Wyatt Stephens had a way of figuring out all of her hidden secrets. It was one of the reasons her cousin was the only person who knew she’d once been married to Jason. If she’d tried to keep him in the dark, he’d have figured it out. He read her almost as well as Jason did.
The difference was, Wyatt’s ability to read her mind came from growing up together. Jason’s came from a whole other kind of relationship.
Erin balled her fists to keep from digging her fingers into her scalp. She didn’t need Jason Barnes in her headspace.
“I just got here, but I wanted to check on you before I headed to the crime scene.” Wyatt laid a hand on her shoulder to keep her from turning her back fully to him. “You want to talk about it? What you saw—”
“Was something I couldn’t stop.” Her stomach knotted as the horrible crunching thud seemed to echo in the room. She didn’t want to talk about the collision either. A woman was dead because Erin hadn’t been able to rescue her. It was her job. She’d failed.
“That’s twice you’ve cut me off in the past thirty seconds.” With a gentle tug, Wyatt turned her to face him. He took the carafe from her hand and set it behind her on the counter. “What else is happening? You don’t usually—”
“I don’t usually see helpless women get purposely mowed down.”
“That’s three times.”
With a sigh, Erin pulled away from her cousin’s grip and leaned back against the counter, shoving her hands into her pockets as she stared at the black leather couch across the room. “Jason’s here.”
It took a second for the name to register, but she could tell when it sank in. Wyatt’s chin lifted slightly. “Why?”
“I have no idea.” Erin ran over the brief encounter, leaving out the part where the sight of him had driven her back half a decade.
“Did he say how long he’s staying?”
She shook her head as her phone vibrated in the thigh pocket of her navy blue