Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
R age punched through Jesse’s gut as he watched the doctor stitch up the wound on Aspen’s head. Someone had knocked her out, Margot was dead , and it had all happened in his sheriff’s office while he’d been outside.
Fuck, he was angry!
He wanted to hit something. Punch his fist through a damn wall and let the pain drown out the other emotions. The fury. The frustration. The fear that had been alive inside him since seeing Aspen still on the floor beside a bleeding Margot.
Was it Dylan? Of course it fucking was. It had been confirmed that he was here in Amber Ridge. He’d probably turned off the power to lure Jesse outside so he could target Aspen…only Margot had gotten in his way and paid the price.
Jesse’s hands fisted. He wanted to kick his own ass for going outside. Aspen should have been safe in there. And Margot…shit, Margot was armed and well trained. No one should have gotten the jump on her.
“Okay, all done.” The doctor stepped back. “Those are dissolvable stitches, so no need to get them removed. You were unconscious for about ten minutes and suffered a mild concussion. So take it slow for the next couple of weeks.”
Aspen nodded. “I will.”
Jesse slipped an arm around her waist. She wouldn’t just be taking it slow. Jesse would be making sure she barely left the damn house. “Thank you, Doctor.”
The young man dipped his head. “You’re free to go when you’re ready.”
The second he stepped out, Jesse shifted in front of Aspen and gripped her hips. He was almost scared to touch her. “How are you feeling?”
There was a flash of something in her eyes…fear? Confusion? Then she blinked, and it was gone. “A bit groggy, but whatever he gave me for the headache is helping.”
Jesse ground his teeth together. She shouldn’t be in pain at all, dammit. She should have been safe in the station.
A knock on the door had them both turning.
Claudia stuck her head in. “Hey. You got a sec?”
The word “no” was on the tip of his tongue because he wanted to stay with Aspen. But Claudia had lost both a colleague and a friend tonight…they all had.
Aspen touched his arm. “Go. I’ll be okay. I want to call Callie anyway.”
He leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Call out if you need me.”
“I will.”
He crossed to the door but kept it open as he spoke to Claudia in the hall. “Did we get the asshole on camera?”
Please say yes . He needed solid evidence against Dylan so that every organization in the state was on the lookout for him.
She shook her head. “No.”
“ What? Why not? We have cameras at both the front and back exits of the building. We should have caught him entering and leaving.”
“When the lights went off, so did the power to the cameras. It’s like this person knew exactly which switches to flip.”
Or he was the luckiest bastard around. Jesse scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Does she remember anything about the guy?” Claudia asked.
“Red shoes. She said everything was a blur, but she remembered the red shoes.”
“It’s something.” She studied his face. “Want me to wait here?”
“No. You get back to the station. Unless you need to go home. Are you doing okay?”
A mixture of sadness and anger flashed over her face before she straightened. “I’m angry. And I need to keep busy right now. I’ll head back to the station and call the rest of the deputies to let them know about Margot. I’ll also see how the cleanup’s going.”
Cleanup…the cleanup from Margot’s murder.
The band tightened around his chest. “Look after yourself, Claudia. And let me know if you need me to make some of the calls.”
She nodded and had just turned to head down the hall when his phone rang, Luke’s name on the screen. Jesse had left a message for him, asking him to call. As Luke’s friend, he needed to take care of that himself. He wasn’t sure exactly where the man’s feelings sat with Margot, but regardless, the two had been close.
He shot a look at Aspen to see her still on the phone before answering the call. “Luke.”
“Jesse…hey. Got your message. Everything okay down at the station? Or are you missing my witty humor already? I wouldn’t blame you.”
Jesse swallowed. “Something happened tonight.”
“Cryptic. What kind of something?”
“The bad kind. Margot was shot.”
An audible gasp sounded over the line. “Shot? What the fuck? Is she okay?”
“She’s dead.”
There was a pause. “ Dead? ”
“I’m sorry. I know you and her had a thing and—”
“Who did it?” There was a new edge to Luke’s voice, one Jesse had never heard before. It was low and full of rage.
“I assume Dylan, as a way to get to Aspen, but we don’t have any evidence. The killer turned the power off, which disconnected the cameras.” At Luke’s silence, Jesse ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. If you need some time off—”
“No. I’m heading into the station now.”
“Luke—”
“I’m going , Jesse. I’m helping get to the bottom of this.”
Jesse looked up to see two familiar people walking down the hall—Becket and Holden. Jesse had texted both when he’d gotten to the hospital.
“Okay,” he finally responded. “Call if you need anything, Luke.”
He hung up.
Jesus. What a fucking mess.
He turned to his brother and best friend. “Hey.”
“How’s Aspen?” Becket asked, an anger in his eyes that matched Jesse’s.
His family was loyal, and the second Aspen had been introduced as his, she’d become part of that family. And today, their family had been threatened. “She’s doing as well as can be expected.”
“Are you thinking this was Dylan, and your deputy got in the way?” Holden asked.
Of course he was on the same page. They’d served on the same Ghost Ops team for so many years that they knew how each other’s minds worked. “It’s the most obvious conclusion.”
Becket’s gaze moved in either direction along the hall before landing back on Jesse. “We’ll watch the hall and trail you both home.”
Exactly why he’d called them. His deputies were good, but they weren’t former special operations like Becket and Holden.
“I appreciate it.” He nodded before heading back into the room just as Aspen was hanging up. “Get through to Callie okay?”
She nodded, but she looked pale.
Shit, he needed to get her home. He cupped her cheek. “Ready to go?”
“Past ready.”
“Me too.” He slipped an arm around her and led her out of the room, Holden and Becket sticking close.
It was late. She should be in bed. But Jesse was talking to deputies on the phone while he made hot drinks, and she knew if she got into bed alone, she wouldn’t sleep. Because every time she closed her eyes, she felt Margot’s warm but lifeless skin beneath her fingertips. Saw the crimson blood soaked into her uniform like it was still right in front of her.
She swallowed, watching Jesse as he balanced the phone between his shoulder and ear and poured hot milk into a mug while she sat on the couch.
He was certain this was Dylan. And yeah, there didn’t seem to be anyone else it could be. But then that made Margot’s death her fault, right? Or at least partially her fault. Dylan wouldn’t be here in Amber Ridge if it wasn’t for her. And he wouldn’t have been at the station tonight if she hadn’t been working there. That meant Margot would still be alive if it wasn’t for her.
The thought sat in her belly like an immovable rock, weighing her down. Pressing on her.
Jesse hung up the phone and turned, two mugs in hand. He looked so big and strong and angry. He was trying to hide that anger, but she could see it in the darkening of his eyes. In the tensing of his jaw.
He handed her a mug. “Here, I made you a hot cocoa. My sister also gave me something to put in it. Don’t ask me what, but she said something about a calming herb.”
“Thank you.” She took the mug from his fingers and the warmth slipped down her arms, moving beneath the surface of her skin.
Jesse sat beside her, but he felt too far away. She wanted to shift closer. Heck, every part of her craved the closeness of crawling onto his lap and pressing into him.
She didn’t. Because she blamed herself for him losing one of his deputies tonight?
She lowered her gaze to her mug. “Does Margot’s family live here in Amber Ridge?”
Jesse shook his head. “No. They live in Bozeman. Claudia called them.”
She nodded.
“Hey. Don’t do that.”
Her head shot up. “Do what?”
“Blame yourself for what that piece of shit did.”
She wanted to ask him how to stop blaming herself, but the words never made it out, because she had a feeling that no matter what he said, it wouldn’t change her mind.
“What got you into writing romance books?”
Her brows flickered. He was asking her about work? She nibbled her bottom lip before lifting a shoulder. “I love to read. It led me to study creative writing. One of our assignments was to write a chapter of a story. The only guideline we had was that it had to be emotional. I finished the assignment, but then I couldn’t stop. I kept writing until I had a complete book. I remember I couldn’t believe how easy it felt, like I’d finally found what I was supposed to do with my life.”
“And then you published it?”
“I did. I decided to self-publish because I thought, why not…and people read it. So I did it again. And people read that one too. That’s when I figured out that I could actually be a writer. There’s a bit more to it than that, with editing and cover design and marketing, but that’s the simple, condensed version.”
“Why romance?”
“So many reasons. The guaranteed happy ending. The ability to create flawed characters who fall in love. The escapism.”
“Have you ever written a character based on you?”
Despite everything, she laughed. “Maybe a funnier, more put-together version of me.”
“I can’t see how that’s possible.”
She almost snorted.
His gaze was intense as it beamed into her. “So you must believe in love.”
“I stopped believing for a while after Dylan.” Her gaze returned to her cocoa. She watched the steam swirl into the air. “I think that’s why I couldn’t write for so long. It felt pointless, like I was writing about a type of man who didn’t exist. A love that seemed so fictional, it felt forced when I read my work back.”
His brows slashed together but he didn’t say anything, just waited, like he knew she had more to say.
“It wasn’t just my writing that he affected. What he did to me affected so many facets of my life. For a while, I lost faith in my own judgment.” She looked up, that old familiar regret tightening her chest. “I liked him at the start. I didn’t see what I should have seen. I thought…” She laughed, but there was no humor. “I thought he was a good guy. How stupid was I?”
Jesse slipped her mug from her fingers and set it onto the coffee table. She gasped in surprise when he reached over and easily lifted her onto his lap so her legs straddled him.
“You’re not stupid. Men like Dylan make hiding their true colors an art form. They have to. Otherwise, they’d have no one to prey on.” He cupped her cheek. “You’d have never seen that part of him until he wanted you to.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. It felt big and painful. “But if I hadn’t fallen for his act, then none of this would be happening, and Margot—”
“It’s not your fault.”
The way he said it, with so much conviction, made her want to believe it. And it lifted a bit of that suffocating weight from her chest.
She pressed her palms to his chest. “I think it was you.”
“What was?”
“You restored my faith in love.”
His eyes darkened. Then his hand slipped behind her neck as he kissed her. There was nothing sexual about the kiss. It was comfort. Calm. And maybe something else. Something deeper…more healing.
The second their mouths parted, she pressed her head to his chest, right over his heart, while his arms wrapped tightly around her. Somewhere along the way, he’d become her safety. And right now, he felt like the only thing keeping her head above water.