Dangerous Lies (Badge of Honor #2)

Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

Headlights cut through the inky night, illuminating sheets of rain as they pelted the asphalt. Jax tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his gaze flicking to the rearview mirror. The country road stretched behind them, empty. For the hundredth time since Megan had shared her idea, he second-guessed this plan.

“Are you sure about this?” His eyes shifted from the mirror to Megan. She sat tucked into the passenger seat, dressed in a ski cap and dark gray rain jacket.

“Dawson and Noah have tracked down every lead they can, and nothing has helped. We still don’t even know if Zeke is the man after me, or if it’s someone else. I’m done being afraid. Running from my memories of the accident has only made things worse. I want to do everything I can to figure out what happened that night. Sometimes revisiting the scene of an accident can help with memory retrieval and trauma processing. It allows the brain to reconsolidate the memory in a way that might bring clarity.” She turned to face him. “That’s why we have to do it now. At night, in the rain. I want the conditions to be as close to the same as possible.”

Jax admired her bravery, but this move bordered on recklessness. He hadn’t spotted any sign of a tail, but the storm was coming down hard, making it impossible to know for sure. Noah had agreed to meet them at the accident site with the case file, but even that didn’t settle Jax’s nerves.

He checked the mirror again—still nothing—then tapped the brakes to slow for the turnoff onto the narrow country road. Towering trees flanked either side, their rain-heavy branches sweeping together overhead, forming a dark tunnel.

Beside him, Megan stiffened.

Jax eased the SUV to a stop. He reached for her hand without thinking, his need to protect her outweighing any desire to uncover the truth about Oliver. What he’d said earlier in the chief’s office was true—finding out what happened that night wouldn’t bring his brother back. Nothing could. But Megan was alive. And vulnerable. She had to come first.

“You don’t have to do this, sweetheart.” Jax knew the accident site would be difficult for him to revisit, and he hadn’t been in the car crash. Megan had been pushed to the emotional brink this week. She was strong, but her grandfather’s warning rang in Jax’s ears: everyone has a breaking point. “Noah and Dawson will figure it out. It may take them time, but they’ll get there.”

She met his gaze. Half of her face was cast in shadow, the other side illuminated by the light from the dashboard. Megan smiled and squeezed his fingers. “I know you want to protect me, but I’m strong enough to do this. I wasn’t always. But I am now.”

His heart tumbled over. Megan was the heady mix of sweetness, brains, and fortitude. Kissing her this evening had unlocked the truth Jax had tried desperately to bury. He was falling for her too. But saying so, admitting the words out loud, would only hurt them both. After everything his parents had been through, Jax refused to pour salt on their wounds.

There was no future for him and Megan. No matter how much Jax wished otherwise.

He leaned over and brushed a kiss on her lips. Soft and tender. Then he squeezed her hand. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Megan straightened in her seat. “I’m going to talk through it. Saying things out loud can help….” She stared out the window into the night. The headlights illuminated the wet road and the wild overgrowth on either side. “I was driving slowly, worried that I’d miss Oliver. He didn’t give me a specific meeting point. Just told me he’d be waiting somewhere near the fallen tree after the bend.”

“That’s coming up.” Jax slowed. The road curved and an oak tree, toppled in a previous storm, listed precariously close to the road.

“Stop here,” Megan ordered. She reached into the pocket of her raincoat and pulled out her cell phone. “I tried calling Oliver, but he didn’t answer. His phone went straight to voicemail, like it’d been turned off or he didn’t have good signal. I waited here for what seemed like forever, but was probably only five minutes. It was cold. My sedan didn’t have good heating, and the storm was gaining intensity. I was worried about hail or tornadoes. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave Oliver out here in the woods. He’d sounded so scared on the phone. So desperate.”

Her voice caught, barely a hitch, but Jax heard it.

His chest clenched. His instinct was to reach out—to comfort her—but doing so might break her concentration. “Oliver’s car was found half a mile away with a flat tire. Did he say anything to you about that?”

“No. I learned that later.” She let out a long exhale. “When Oliver didn’t show up, I kept driving a little farther down the road.”

Jax eased off the brake, letting the SUV roll forward. They passed the fallen tree, the windshield wipers sweeping away the rain as a dirt road turnoff appeared in the headlights.

“Stop!” She pointed to a cluster of trees on the left. “There. That’s where he came from. Oliver was soaking wet. No jacket. His hair was plastered to his head, like he’d been out in the storm the whole time. There was a scuff on his chin, like he’d been in a fight. It looked fresh, but I dismissed it at the time.”

“Makes sense. He was often involved in fights for Zeke.” Jax frowned, thinking back on the official reports. Megan was right. Oliver had been dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that night. No jacket. It was a small detail, but it mattered. “His jacket wasn’t in his car either. Investigators assumed that Oliver’s tire went flat, and that’s when he called you. But his car was half a mile from here. Assuming he came here to meet someone…” Jax shifted in his seat, looking at the thick forest surrounding them. “It’s raining. It’s cold. No one would stand around in a storm.”

“He smelled like hay when he got in my car.” Megan inhaled sharply. “There’s a barn at the end of that dirt road. Oliver was the one who showed it to me.” She hesitated and then admitted, “We used to get high there. Have parties sometimes.”

Jax had forgotten all about the barn. “Oliver used to go there as a kid.”

“What if he met Zeke there? Or if not Zeke, the person who attacked him?”

Jax’s mind raced as childhood memories surfaced. “There’s a trail that cuts through the woods to the barn. Based on where Oliver’s car was found, he must have taken that path.” Frustration burned through him. “When I surveyed the scene after joining the police department, the path was overgrown. I didn’t remember it was there until now.”

Megan wasn’t the only one with buried memories. Jax's heart pounded against his rib cage. They were on the cusp of figuring out what had happened to Oliver. He could feel it. Tomorrow morning, at first light, they would get a search warrant for the barn. Ten years had passed, but it might still contain clues that would lead them to the killer.

Jax drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Whoever Oliver was meeting with, the arrangement was made in person. There was nothing in his cell phone records.” He glanced at Megan. “Oliver drives here. Parks his car. Walks the path to the barn to meet someone.”

“But something goes wrong.” Megan picked up his train of thought. “There’s an altercation. Oliver gets a scrape on his chin and loses his jacket. Runs away and calls me, begs me to pick him up.”

“Why you?” Jax had asked that question many times during the investigation. “He had other friends. You and Oliver hadn’t spoken in months. Why reach out to you?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Oliver was an informant for the sheriff’s department. He’d turned on Zeke, which meant turning on everyone in that world. Maybe he was worried that no one else could be trusted.”

It made sense. “You weren’t a part of that circle anymore.”

“No. I dropped all of those friends when I got sober.” Megan ran her hands over her jeans and breathed out. “Oh Jax, what if he was going to get clean? We talked about it months before. I told him life would get better once he got off drugs, that I’d help him. Oliver didn’t accept my offer at the time, but I felt like he heard me. So much so, I thought he’d call in a week or two.”

His heart stuttered. Jax didn’t know if it made things worse or better to realize that his brother may have finally decided to straighten out his life. He swallowed hard. “It makes sense he was considering it. Especially if he was feeding information to the sheriff’s department about Zeke.” Jax stared at the empty road and the woods beyond. “But he was high at the time of the accident. So maybe that’s just wishful thinking.”

“I’m sorry.” Megan’s hand came to rest on his arm. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. It’s better you did. We don’t know which details are important and which ones aren’t.” He tossed her a reassuring look. “This is good. We’re making progress. Let’s keep going.” His gaze flicked back to the cluster of trees where Oliver had hidden that night. “What happened after he got in your car?”

“He was panicked. He yelled at me to drive. Told me someone was trying to kill him.” Megan pointed down the road. “I went that way. The rain was beating against the car and Oliver was shouting…” She bit her lip. “I couldn’t follow everything he was saying.”

Jax eased off the brake again, and the truck rolled forward. A part of him hated bringing Megan back to the crash site, but he recognized it might dredge up a memory that would crack the case wide open. “When did you see the headlights behind you?”

“Not until they were right on top of us.” She hugged her arms around herself as the woods along the left side of the road thinned, revealing a steep drop off into a drainage ditch. “The truck rammed us, and I screamed. It was hard to keep my sedan on the road. Oliver…” Her eyes widened as she inhaled sharply. “Oliver said, I never should’ve trusted him. He’s going to kill us.”

“He could’ve been talking about Zeke. You said the vehicle was a truck. Are you sure?”

She frowned. “I remember thinking it was a truck because of its size, but… it could’ve been an SUV. Maybe even a van.”

That fit. Zeke had an Explorer.

“Oliver was yelling at me to drive faster.” Megan’s voice was hollow, like she was lost in memories. “Then he grabbed the wheel. I fought him for control, and that’s when the truck rammed us again.” She swallowed hard. “And then… we went off the embankment.”

Jax brought his SUV to a stop. Even after ten years, some of the trees still bore the scars from the crash—deep gouges in the bark where Megan’s sedan had torn through them before plunging into the ditch. Rainwater rushed through the culvert below, not deep enough to swallow a car, but enough to have half-submerged the front of her Toyota that night.

Megan reached for the door handle. A second later, she was outside, standing on the side of the road, staring down at the ditch. Jax shoved the SUV into park. Rain smacked the top of his cowboy hat and slid down the collar of his jacket. When he reached Megan, his chest clenched at the look on her face.

Pain. Grief. Heartache.

A mirror of his own emotions. He reached for her, raising his voice to be heard over the storm. “Megan…”

“I couldn’t save him. I tried, Jax. I tried so hard.” She let out a choked sob. “For years, I thought it should’ve been me who died. Some part of me still does.”

“No!” He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the ditch, and lightly grabbed her forearms. Her raincoat was slick against his bare hands, her slender form curved inward, weighted down with a decade of guilt. Jax shook her slightly, and Megan raised her face to meet his desperate gaze. “I’m grateful you survived. Do you hear me? What happened wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t even Oliver’s fault. The only person responsible for what happened is the man who ran you off the road.”

Lightning streaked across the sky, sending a fresh shot of adrenaline through him. Thunder rumbled in the distance. They needed to get out of the storm. Jax guided her back to the truck, securing her inside before making a careful three-point turn. The wind shoved at the vehicle like invisible hands as they headed away from the crash site.

Megan hadn’t said a word. Her blonde hair clung to her face in damp tendrils, rain mixing with the tear that tracked down her cheek.

Jax reached across the console and took her hand. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here?—”

“No.” Her chin trembled. “I didn’t realize… I didn’t know how much I needed to hear that.”

“That I’m grateful you survived.”

Megan nodded, her lips pressed together as if she was holding back a wave of tears. She shifted closer, as much as her seat belt allowed, and rested her head against his arm. “Thank you, Jax.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then let his cheek linger there for a moment. That centered feeling washed over him again. The push-pull of their relationship, the way each of them bared their soul to the other… there was safety and love and respect.

He didn’t feel alone. Not in his grief, not in his anger, not in his heartache. But it was more than that. Megan saw him. He’d had girlfriends in the past that were easy to be around when things were light. But when tough times came, they bailed. Megan was the first person he could laugh with, and the first person he could cry with. He could be himself.

And that realization brought with it another powerful truth.

He was in love with her. Not falling in love. Not possibly in love.

In love.

Headlights flickered on the road ahead. The storm made it difficult to see, but the vehicle was big—an SUV or a truck.

Megan sat up. “There’s Noah.”

Jax’s muscles stiffened. His foot eased off the gas. Noah was supposed to meet them out there, and it was likely his vehicle heading their direction, but logic didn’t silence the whispered warning running through Jax.

“Megan, get down in your seat?—”

A burst of gunfire shattered the windshield.