the debilitation of PTSD on anyone.
She dropped her hand to her stomach and wrapped it around her midriff. “I don’t think I’ll ever fully accept those words. Jeff’s been dead for three weeks, and it still doesn’t compute.” She swiped a palm across her eyes. “Can you just tell me where I can find Wade Spencer?”
Wade felt his hands shaking. Promise noticed, too. As was her special way, she pushed her soft and firm head into his palm. He latched on like a drowning victim, digging his fingers deep. A few strokes across her fur and air slowly filtered into his lungs again. The vise in his chest released a bit of its pressure, but his clenched jaw stayed in its grip.
“I’m Wade,” he admitted between his teeth, still petting Promise.
“Oh, I’m so glad I made it.” She sniffed. “I was beginning to think you didn’t exist. That my brother made you up.”
“I exist.” Barely. His chest constricted again.
“My brother’s death wasn’t an accident. I just know it. The army passed me off from one official to another, and they all have the same lame story. A mechanical issue on an engine he was working on.” She sputtered as if the words made her laugh. “My brother, mechanic extraordinaire, had a mechanical malfunction that blew up in his face. What a joke.”
Wade’s whole body rocked from a tremble, starting from his feet straight up to his shoulders. “It’s no joke. It’s the truth.” Promise whined, and Wade knew it was because he was breathing heavy. “It’s best if you keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong and go home.”
Wade left her there with her mouth agape. He needed to get away before he lost all control over his body and writhed on the ground before her. Besides, he didn’t believe the lame story the military offered about her brother, either, and that meant what she didn’t know could save her life.
“Please...” She was back to playing his shadow. “Jeff was killed on purpose, wasn’t he? Just tell me, Mr. Spencer. Who killed him?”
Wade halted and spun around. “I did!” His chest heaved up and down. “And unless you want to die, too, you’ll do as I say and go home.” If that didn’t make her disappear, nothing would.
The swishing of her shoes in the snow didn’t follow him this time. He walked alone with his service dog. At the bend he gave one last look and found the driveway empty except for the footprints she’d left behind.
Mission accomplished.
He continued on his way, but before he could take two more steps, a blast shot into the night. Wade flew to the ground, hunting for cover like so many times before. He sought the dark forest in all directions for a sniper as the gunshot echoed back at him through the trees.
The terrors of combat banged into Wade’s head just as the reverberating sound of the explosion had thrown him further than to the ground. It had sent him back to battles he wished to forget but knew he never would. No longer did he feel the frozen snow beneath his face and hands, but instead it was the hot dusty sand of his tours overseas that took control of his mind.
Wade reached behind him for the gun in his waist holster as he peered up and around looking for the enemy. The snowcapped trees brought him back to reality.
No desert.
No sniper.
Instead, it was Jeff Phillips’s sister who’d come to hunt him down.
He could only think that it was the woman who’d taken the shot at him. She was the only one around, and he had just told her he killed her brother. It made sense she’d take him out now.
Another report wrenched through the air. Immediately, the sound of a car speeding away followed. Both sources came from below at the road and not around him—or at him.
Phillips’s kid sister wasn’t shooting at him after all, he surmised. But if he wasn’t wearing the bull’s-eye, then who was?
She was.
Wade jumped to his feet and shot off back down the driveway. Promise raced along beside him. He would have liked to tell Promise to get to the girl’s side, but his dog was trained to assist him, not anyone else.
Snow flew up in a cloud around them. Down the road around the bend, the woman’s car lights still beamed. Her driver’s door stood wide and the car was where she’d left it. But she was nowhere in sight.
A quick survey bounced his vision from tree to tree, ditch to ditch, rock to rock. And there he located her, crouched low behind a boulder.
Wade rushed to the rock and dropped to his knees. He reholstered his gun behind him as he studied the way she held the shoulder of her jean coat in severe silence. No screams. No agony of pain. Just startled shock before cognition filtered in.
She’d been shot.
He removed her stiff, sticky hand from where a dark blotch of blood blossomed. At the same time he scanned the area behind the rock. Had the gunman been in the car that drove away? Or was there a second one waiting in the trees to get another shot off when the woman emerged from her hiding place? With the darkness, Wade couldn’t be sure. But he also couldn’t leave her here to bleed to death. The thin jean coat’s fabric was shredded on the arm, but still he couldn’t tell if the shot had been taken in her arm or upper chest. He wouldn’t know until he got her to the house.
The trip called for a calculated plan of action. The driver’s-side window of her car was blown out, but the car should still move. Wade judged the distance to the Beat and made the decision that he could drive her up to the house a lot faster than run her up. Plus, he didn’t need to give the shooter more target practice if he was still in the area.
With his plan set, Wade untied Promise’s bandanna and stuffed it into the woman’s coat. “Hold this there while I lift you.”
“Get away from me,” she said, pushing at him with barely enough strength to shoo a fly.
“All in due time, Ms. Phillips.” He lifted her and made the run for the waiting vehicle.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you! You killed my brother!”
He ignored her protests and carried out his self-imposed orders. “Promise, to the house,” he commanded the dog. Wade ducked his upper body over the woman’s and charged for the car. He placed her quickly but gently through to the passenger seat from the driver’s side. No more bullets sprayed them, and Wade took that to mean the shooter had been a drive-by and not in the woods. But his plan of action never lost momentum. Mere seconds went by before he had the car in gear and speeding up the inclined drive through the woods that led to the main house.
“I said I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I hate you!” Her head dropped back and he could see her jaw clench. She’d yet to even whimper in pain.
“Hate me all you want. I’m fine with that. It tells me you still have some fight left in you.”
“You’re right, and I’m going to make you pay for what you did.”
They reached the house, and Wade took the circle around the empty fountain, shut down for the season. He pulled up to the front entrance and had barely put the car in Park before he jumped out and ran around to the passenger side. The fool girl already had the door open, trying to exit the car. He scooped her up again, ignoring her struggles up the steps.
“Put me down!” Now she cried, but not from pain. He knew the sound of guilty pain. She hated herself more for having to depend on the man who’d caused her brother’s death.
“You have no choice but to let me help you now, Ms. Phillips. You’re on my family’s property.” He turned the knob to the double front doors and kicked them wide. “That makes me responsible for you, and there’s no way I’m letting another person die because of me.”