Rafe felt his stomach flip as he walked out of the interrogation room.
He’d quit his job. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have a badge or a gun or a future.
Cam turned, and Rafe saw the only things he had left in this world. Laura and Cameron. His family. Well, he wasn’t about to let the only thing he had left slip through his fingers. “You will not be bait.”
“Rafe, not here.” Cam turned again. “Let’s get her home, and we can hash this out without an audience.”
God, where was he going wrong that Cam had to be the sensible one? His fist still ached from the battering he’d given Brad, but he would do it again. They had led her like a lamb to slaughter. He could see it now. They had beaten her down, gotten her emotional, and then pulled the final card out that sent her over the edge. They’d played her like a fiddle, and he was ready to kill them all.
What if one of them knew exactly what he was doing? What if one of them had been watching her with predatory eyes?
“Kincaid.”
He turned at the sheriff’s sharp bark. Wolf Meyer stood beside Wright. Rafe had a sudden bad feeling that the sheriff had let the SEAL watch things play out. Despite what Edward had said, he didn’t believe for an instant that Meyer had anything to do with this. “What is it? If you’re planning on telling me to get the hell out of your town, then you can think again.”
To his surprise, the sheriff smiled. “No, I was going to congratulate you on growing a pair. You should have done that a long time ago.”
“I knew he had a set when he took down that asshole. Conrad was snooping around Laura’s cabin, and this guy here gets the jump on him before I could. That’s saying something,” Wolf admitted.
The sheriff tilted his hat back and regarded him with an assessing stare. “There’s a town meeting concerning Laura. You need to be there. Town hall, seven o’clock.”
Wolf’s eyes rolled back. “Yeah, I have to go set up the computers. Just because mom and Mel are hiding out doesn’t mean they aren’t civic-minded. They intend to attend the meeting via the Internet, and since the Farley brothers messed up our cell tower, I have to do this all without using wireless. God, I long for a day when they can’t get hold of me from that bunker. Maybe I can somehow prove to Mel that aliens can get to him through his dial-up connection.”
Rafe promised the men he would be there. If he could get the whole town looking out for Laura, it might make things easier. They could look for someone who shouldn’t be there—only he was starting to believe that maybe the killer was already in Bliss.
He wanted to get Cam on the Edward angle right away. Rafe’s brain raced as he moved toward the parking lot. Laura and Edward had some sort of beef he hadn’t known anything about. Brad was acting like an ass. Brad had been around the Bureau for a long time before he joined the BAU. And Joe. God, was he actually wondering if his mentor was a serial killer?
He wouldn’t let it stop him. He would investigate every single one of them until he figured it out. This was what he should have done five years before.
Rafe slammed out of the double doors, practically running to keep up. He stopped in his tracks at what he saw. Standing right there in front of his SUV—crap, it was technically the Bureau’s SUV—stood Jana Evans, microphone at the ready. Cam had put Laura on her feet, and they both faced the tiny ball of spite.
“Would you like to tell our viewers about your experience with the Marquis de Sade?” Jana asked in a brisk, professional voice. She wore what had to be a thousand-dollar suit and killer stilettos, but there was a gauntness to her frame that utterly turned Rafe off. “We would all love to know how you managed to escape a killer who never makes a mistake.”
Cam stepped in front of Laura, his big body a barrier between her and the world. “You get the hell out of here. Move that van out of the way.”
“Not until I get my story, I won’t.” Jana shoved her microphone toward Laura’s face. “This is the one that puts me over the edge. I’ll get on at one of the cable giants after this.”
“No. The time difference wouldn’t work, but if you want to do a live shot, I can be back here for the eleven o’clock news at nine o’clock. We would have to broadcast then.” Jana practically vibrated with energy. “I would need to meet you a little earlier to get you ready.”
Rafe was about to forbid it when Laura nodded at Jana. “Come out to the town hall. We can do it there.”
She walked around the news van toward the SUV Rafe had driven out here. Rafe stopped in front of the reporter. “She’s not doing this.”
Jana gave him a tight-lipped smiled that came nowhere close to her eyes. Her icy blonde hair was in a tight, professional bun. It was so different from Laura’s natural honey color. “Laura always does what she wants to, Rafe. You should know that. She won’t listen to you now. See you tonight. Don’t think you’re getting on camera. I already have an FBI source.”
He bet she did.
Rafe hopped into the SUV right before Cam took off. Laura had taken the passenger seat, leaving him in the back. He leaned forward, trying to force his way into her space. “What was that about? You can’t go on television.”
Her stony face stared back at him. “Sure I can. It’s what they want. It puts a huge target on me.”
“You already have a target on your back,” Cam pointed out, his voice tight with tension.
“It will be a beacon when I’m done with that interview,” Laura replied.
He could guess what she was going to do. She was going to get on TV and taunt the Marquis de Sade. She would know exactly what to say to get his rage going. By the time she was done, there would be no question about him coming after her. It was everything those fuckers would want. “I forbid it.”
“You can’t forbid anything,” she replied with a sigh.
He chose to ignore her. “How fast can we be in Vegas, Cam?”
Laura turned, her face marred by a nasty frown. “We’re not going to Vegas.”
“If I break speed limits, I can get us there in ten hours.” Cam paused at the street as though trying to make the decision.
Laura stared at Cam. “If you want me to run again, this is the way to do it.”
Cam turned toward her cabin. Pussy. As if he could hear Rafe’s thoughts, his eyes pleaded through the rearview mirror. “What am I supposed to do? We can’t make her marry us.”
Rafe didn’t see why not. “I can think of several ways.”
“It’s not happening,” Laura said, a stubborn set to her chin. “You’re going to drop me off at my place, and then you can leave. Both of you.”
Cam turned to her. “I’m not going anywhere. I told you that. I told you that you couldn’t get rid of me. For god’s sake, Laura, we made love not an hour ago.”
“We had sex,” she shot back.
“You told me you loved me,” Cam replied, his voice thick with emotion.
Rafe sat, wishing he’d had the chance to pull her in back with him. He could see plainly what she was doing. He wished he’d done more than ruined Brad Conrad’s face. By showing her those photos and playing on her guilt, Brad had undone all the progress he and Cam had made with her. Brad had shoved her back into that place where she was alone and helpless.
He wasn’t about to let her stay there. “Can I finish this conversation for you, bella? I know precisely how it is going to go. Now you’re going to tell Cam that you didn’t mean it. You’re going to tell him that making love in the sheriff’s office meant nothing. You were telling him what he wanted to hear because he was being unreasonable. Cam is going to get hurt and sit there in sullen silence while you turn to me and tell me the same thing. You’re going to lay down the law. You’re going to push us both out by telling us you never loved us and you like your life here without us. You’re going to tell us to go home and forget about you. Am I close?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I was going to curse more.”
Yes, she probably would have. He shook his head. “You’re being a self-sacrificing idiot.”
“Is this about the case?” Cam asked, clearly confused.
“No,” he replied. “It’s far more than the case.” He couldn’t forget the haunted look on Laura’s face as she’d told him they didn’t need to use a condom. “She’s feeling guilty about a lot of things. She’s feeling the weight of those women’s deaths. She’s also feeling unworthy. She loves us, but she doesn’t know how to be with us.”
“That is such bullshit,” Laura shot back. “I think I know how to be with you, Rafe. I just have to let you pin me to the nearest flat surface. That’s all you require.”
She wasn’t going to get to him that easily. “I don’t require a surface at all, bella. When I want you, I’ll simply lift that skirt, pick you up, and impale you on my cock.”
Cam shook his head. “Yeah, baby, I can totally do it standing up.”
He couldn’t miss the way her fists clenched in her lap as Laura replied. “There’s more to a relationship than sex.”
He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to touch her, but he held off. “Yes, there’s far more. There’s also more to a marriage than giving birth to children.”
She flushed, her delicate skin turning pink in a heartbeat.
Cam stopped the car in the middle of the road. “She thinks we don’t want her because she can’t have kids?”
He’d known they would have to deal with this sometime. “I believe Laura is seeing herself as the noose that’s going to take us both down.”
Cam turned back to the road and started driving again. “You’re right—she’s being a martyr.”
“You’ve both quit your jobs for me,” she said, though a bit of the fire had left her voice.
“I never liked it much anyway,” Cam said flippantly. “I was only there for the nookie, and when you walked away, that dried up.”
She slapped a hand on the dashboard. “This is serious, damn it.”
Cam shrugged as he sped up. “I am serious. I would have quit that job a long time ago if it hadn’t been for you and Rafe. I’m not like some of these guys. I don’t want to be knee-deep in bodies. It drags on me. I like programming. I liked building the program that found you. I’m going to stay here in Bliss and work my job and come home, and after I fuck you into submission, I’ll work on my facial recognition program.”
“You are not staying with me.”
“So, throw me out,” Cam challenged. “When you can pick me up and toss me out, I’ll sit in your doorway until you let me back in.”
“I won’t,” Rafe vowed. “I’ll slip back in again and again.”
“Damn it, Rafe,” she hissed under her breath. “Be reasonable. Go back to Joe and get your job back. You know he’ll take you back in a heartbeat. Cam might not have loved the Bureau, but you’re a lifer, and you know it. You relish that job. It’s everything you worked for.”
He had loved the job, but he loved Laura more. The job he’d spent his whole life preparing for had threatened to chew up and spit out the only woman he’d ever loved. In the end, there wasn’t a choice to be made. He wouldn’t love the Bureau with his whole heart. He wouldn’t cuddle the fucking Bureau at night. The Bureau wouldn’t grow old with him. “I’m not going back. I don’t know what I’ll do from here, but I can’t go back.”
“That is insane,” Laura said.
“Why? Didn’t you walk away from a life that you thought didn’t work for you anymore? That’s what I’m doing. I’m walking away. The world is a big place. When one thing stops working, you walk out and find something else. As long as I have you, I’ll be fine.”
She shook her head. “No. You don’t have me. I won’t do this. I won’t be the reason you lose your job and your family. What would your mother say? Or are you asking me to choose between you and Cam again?”
He knew she was making a certain amount of sense, but his sense had been tossed out a long time ago. There were a hundred things wrong about this relationship, but only one thing mattered. He loved her. “My mother can choose to accept me as I am, or she can stop talking to me. I’ll still love her. I’ll still try to take care of her. I can’t force her to respond the way I want. I can only be responsible for my own actions. I can’t fix the outside world, bella. I can only promise to make our personal world as perfect as I can.”
“You won’t be happy.” She turned and stared out the window.
“Don’t tell me how I’ll feel,” he shot back. “I know how I have felt for the last five years. Broken and useless.”
He’d been missing a piece of his soul since the day she’d walked away. His badge, his job, his family meant nothing if he couldn’t get her back. He loved his mother, but Laura was his soul. If there was a choice to be made, he’d made it the minute he quit the Bureau. Frustration welled up inside him. A few hours ago, he’d been deep inside her. Now he could feel her pulling away.
She turned from him, her eyes shifting to the road ahead. “You get over it, you know. That broken, useless feeling won’t last forever. You find something else to love, and you move on. You make a better life.”
Every word from her mouth made his heart ache. “And you found a better life.”
“I found this place. I love my friends. Do you know how long it took me to let one of them in? It was years. Nell was such a little flake. She was one of the first people I met here. She made me zucchini bread. I took one look at her and decided that she was safe. She wasn’t smart enough to hurt me.” Rafe could hear the tears in Laura’s voice. “I love her. God, I love her. I wouldn’t have given her the time of day when I was in DC. She would have been an amusing airhead, but I have learned more about truly loving the people around me from Nell than I could have imagined. She believes in so much more than I can. And Holly. Holly will do anything for a friend, but I rebuffed her for years because I wasn’t going to let another Jana get her hooks in me. I broke my foot one winter. Holly ran out of her cabin, and she got me to the hospital in Del Norte, and she brought me home and fed me. She worked my shift for a week so I didn’t lose my job. I hadn’t done anything for her. I had been nothing but cold.”
“She saw the real you,” Cam said quietly.
She took a steadying breath. “I don’t know that I knew the real me until I came here. I don’t know that I would be this me if I went someplace else. Maybe part of figuring out who we are is finding a place to call home. What I’m trying to say is that it was hard, but I got over it. I’m happy here. You’ll be happy one day, Rafe. One day you’ll wake up, and your kids will jump all over you, and you’ll go to work as the special agent in charge, and your mom will be so proud. You’ll look back, and I’ll be nothing more than a memory. You’ll thank me.”
His hands were shaking. He had the sudden realization that this wasn’t going to go the way he had planned. She wasn’t going to give in because he kissed her senseless. “I won’t. If you won’t take me, I won’t thank you, bella. I could handle it if I thought I wasn’t the best man for you. Hell, I’m willing to share you because I know you need Cam, too. If you won’t accept me, my life won’t be filled with kids and this great career. It’ll be filled with regret because I know why you’re really rejecting me. You can’t forgive me. You can’t put what happened behind you.”
Her blonde hair shook, but she didn’t bother to turn around. “This isn’t about what happened to me. This is about you and Cam. Neither one of you can be happy here. It isn’t in you.”
“Really?” Cam asked, his bitterness dripping. “I’m such a city boy. I’ve never lived in the country.”
“You hated it,” Laura pointed out.
“No, I hated the small-minded attitudes that put my mother at the bottom of the social feeding order,” Cam argued. “I love the country. I love the peace and quiet, and if you think you can force me to leave, you’re wrong. You might not want me, but by god, you’ll see me. I’m not leaving. If I find this magical, mystical woman who can complete me by spitting out my kids and proving her womb works, then you’ll have to watch. You’ll have to watch me make a life for myself here and know that it could have been yours. Baby, I can’t tell you how much I wish I could change what happened. If I could give my fucking life to have spared you that, I would. I made a horrible mistake and you paid for it, but I’m here now. I’ve gotten on my knees and begged forgiveness. I can’t do any more than tell you that I love you, and I’ll try my damnedest to never fail you again. If you can’t forgive me, then you’ll watch me. You’ll watch me live my life here, without you.”
Cam pulled in front of Laura’s small cabin. It was tiny and far from Rafe’s traditional level of comfort, yet he’d been happy here briefly. He’d woken up this morning knowing where he belonged—beside her. Now she was pulling away, and he had the distinct impression that his caveman act wasn’t going to work this time. He could force her to Vegas, but he couldn’t make her marry him. He couldn’t make her accept him. Fuck, he couldn’t force her to forgive him.
Maybe he didn’t deserve forgiveness.
Laura slammed out of the car the instant it stopped. She walked to her door and disappeared behind it. Rafe felt like someone had shredded his insides. He threw open the car door and got out, utterly unsure of what to do next. He couldn’t leave. He thought briefly about walking in after her, throwing her down, and fucking her until she admitted that she loved them, but that wouldn’t work in the long run. She would just go back to her self-martyrdom as soon as the flush of orgasm faded.
She hadn’t forgiven him. Not even close.
He walked, unsure of where he was going. The early evening air was crisp though it was technically still summer. The grass at his feet was a lush green and sprinkled with wild flowers. Reds and whites and blues and purples dotted the carpet of grass as he walked closer to the river. He stared down at the Rio Grande. It looked deep and cold. It flowed on endlessly.
How the fuck was he supposed to deal with this? Her pain was his fault. He’d served her up on a silver platter because his career had meant more to him than her pride.
God, he wanted to take it all back.
“Don’t.” Cam was suddenly beside him. “Don’t give in to it.”
“What are you talking about?” Rafe asked, but he thought he knew.
“The guilt. It doesn’t solve anything, brother. I feel the weight of it. I feel it every time I look at that scar on her belly. We fucked up. We can’t let it affect the rest of our lives.”
“I don’t see why not. It affects the rest of hers.”
“Only because she’s letting it,” Cam replied. “I meant what I said. I love her. I won’t leave her again. If that means I’m a deputy in a small town, then that’s what I’ll be. If my penance for failing her is never touching her again, then I’ll stand back and protect her from afar, but I don’t think she’ll resist for long. When I was in the office with her, there wasn’t some horrible guilt between us.”
Rafe hadn’t felt it. All he’d felt was his connection to her. But then she’d rejected him.
Cam put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think you should leave, either.”
He was surprised at that. “Why? If I left, you could have her all to yourself.”
“And be alone? I don’t think so. She’s a hell of a woman. I think it takes two to handle her.”
Emotion choked him, and he finally fucking understood. This was why it could work. This pain he felt was halved because Cam took some of it. If Cam was here with him, then he was never alone. Cam would be beside him. A strange sense of love and gratitude flooded Rafe’s system. Love? Damn. He shouldn’t think that way about his best friend, but then again—why the fuck not? He didn’t want to jump Cam. He had zero desire to have anything physical with the man. But maybe love was a lot of different things. Maybe love was a word that defied simple explanation.
Family. That was another one of those words that he wasn’t sure of anymore. His family, it seemed, was outside the norm.
“Stay with me,” Cam said. “We can get her back. I know we can.”
Rafe nodded, far too emotional to speak. He wasn’t leaving. Not when he’d found his home.