Chapter Seven
Bailey eased herself out of bed, not wanting to move too quickly. She knew she had to give herself time to rest, no matter how tempting it might have been to just force herself to get back out there and pick up where she had left off.
After nearly a week here, she finally felt like she was getting her feet back under her again.
Though she had mostly kept out of the way of the people milling around, she had been getting to know the horses that lived out behind the main lodge in the paddock.
Hannah had told her that they were a relatively new arrival.
They helped some of the people who had a hard time dealing with other humans.
Bailey could see exactly what the appeal was—she didn’t have to hide herself or worry about what she said around them, she could just relax.
She had formed a particular bond with Wheatie, an old palomino mare who had been taken in by them when her old owners had gotten too frail to care for her.
She was incredibly gentle, and had started rushing up to the fence whenever she saw Bailey getting close, clearly not willing to let her get away without seeing if she had an apple tucked in her pocket for her first.
In fact, that was exactly where Bailey was headed right after breakfast. She tried to arrive at the cafeteria a little after everyone else, so she didn’t have to worry about too many questions, and it was nearly empty by the time she got there today.
Good. She hadn’t seen Aaron in a few days, and she wasn’t ready to talk to him again, not after their last conversation.
She just needed a little more time to shore up her defenses before facing him again. That’s why she’d been avoiding him.
She knew she had laid too much on the line, right there on her first night.
She should have been more careful, held a little more back, but she couldn’t stand the thought of him not knowing how much she had cared for him back then.
He hadn’t trusted her with the truth, but she would have listened to him—she wouldn’t have shut him down or told him he was crazy.
And she would have worked to bring those corrupt cops down right alongside him.
Confessing her once deeply held feelings for him felt like a risk she wasn’t sure she should have taken.
What was he going to think of her now? Had he felt the same way?
Even if he’d had feelings for her back then, he had still betrayed her.
Her heart still hurt when she thought of what he had done to her, and the fact he was capable of it.
She didn’t know if she could trust him again, but she knew she’d have to try.
Once she’d had breakfast, she headed out to the paddock, carrying her weight on her uninjured leg.
The pain was still there, but it had improved a whole lot.
River had tried to convince her to get checked out at a local hospital, but she had turned her down, not wanting to leave a paper trail so she could be tracked.
She was sure the cops who had done this to her would be searching for her already, and she didn’t need to make it any easier for them than she already had.
She had been convinced by Hannah to see Carter, one of the physical therapists. Carter’s brother, Cade, had made sure to give him a glowing recommendation and passed it along to Hannah and the guys saying how much Carter had helped him when he first came to the lodge.
She reached the field and saw Wheatie trotting over to greet her, her mane bouncing with every step. Bailey couldn’t help but grin, but the smile soon faded from her face when she spotted Aaron working on a fence at the edge of the paddock.
He glanced up and saw her coming before she could turn to leave, and he waved her over. Wheatie diverted her attention to him, nuzzling her head into his shoulder, and he reached over to stroke her nose.
“How are you doing?” he asked Bailey.
“I’m fine,” Bailey answered, even as a bolt of pain traveled up the length of her leg.
Ugh, she hated this. She wished she didn’t have to deal with him right now.
Being around him was so damn confusing, her head going in a million different directions at once.
And she was embarrassed that she had been so vulnerable with him on her first night there.
“You sure about that?” he asked, watching as she leaned on the fence to take the weight off her leg.
She nodded. “Sure. You know, I never asked what you do around here.”
He smirked slightly at her sudden change of subject. He paused for a moment, debating whether to let her off the hook before replying. “I got hired as Warrior Peak’s handyman. Kind of a jack-of-all-trades, help wherever’s needed.”
“Ah, so how long you been up here?” she asked, directing her attention back to the horse.
“Been here around six years. A friend in the department had used this place to recover after he suffered injuries in an undercover sting operation. Said it was a good place to contemplate and re-evaluate life choices. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.
” He paused for a moment before he continued.
Let her read into that what she will. He still didn’t think she was ready to hear everything yet.
“So…what do you know about Ziegler and the rest of the guys?”
She shrugged. “Not much. Definitely never would have thought they were dirty cops.”
“How did it all happen?” he pressed, leaning forward with interest. “Did they try to get you on board, or—”
“No, no, nothing like that,” she replied.
“Like I said before, they invited me out for a drink to celebrate, and everything seemed normal, at first. They all seemed happy to have me back. And then I asked about you. You were the elephant in the room, after all, so I thought I’d just rip off the Band-Aid and move on.
But one of them said something and the atmosphere of the place shifted.
Something about you being a rat, then their friendly tones changed to more menacing and made me uncomfortable.
So I threw out an excuse and left, and they followed me out. ”
His shoulders slumped as he took in what she was saying, as though he was blaming himself for it. Maybe he was. He was the one who had hidden it from her, after all. If she had known what she was walking into, she would have been better prepared to handle it.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he replied.
She frowned. “I think they could tell there was no chance I was ever going to go along with their corruption, so they had to get rid of me or scare me into silence. Now that I know what I’m dealing with, it’s going to be a lot easier,” she remarked.
She could already feel herself shifting back into cop mode.
“What’s going to be easier?”
“They were so impulsive…so reckless,” she continued on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “They’ve gotten away with their operation for so long that they’re cocky, Aaron. There’s no way they haven’t made mistakes. We just have to find one and expose them. I know there’s something—we just need to find it.”
“We?” he replied, cocking an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “I can tell you’re still a cop, under all of this,” she replied, gesturing to his clothes. “The sergeant who trained me is still in there.”
“I left the force for a reason,” he muttered.
She shot him a look. “Yeah, I know you did,” she replied. “Because you didn’t think you could take those guys on by yourself. But you’re not going to have to. We can do this together. I know we can.”
Wheatie snorted, as though agreeing with her. She reached out to pet the horse, running her fingers through her silken mane.
“You should just let me handle this,” he replied. “Like I should have done six years ago.”
She shook her head at once. “I’m not letting you deal with this all alone again.
That was the problem the first time around,” she pointed out.
“But we can’t just let them get away with this.
Think about how many people they must have hurt over the years, how many victims have gone without justice.
I can’t just walk away from this. Even if you could. ”
He winced. It was a low blow, and she knew it.
But she wouldn’t apologize. He should have stood up and fought all those years ago, even if it meant putting himself in danger.
She had always seen him as a principled, passionate cop, but to know he had left without trying to do more made her doubt all of that.
He seemed to be able to tell that he wasn’t going to change her mind, and he checked one of the nails in the fence before he replied.
“At least stay here while we work out a plan,” he suggested. “That way, I know you’re safe.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to send me away again?” she fired back. “Maybe Florida this time?”
He glared at her, a flash of anger in his eyes. “You know I did the best I could at the time.”
“Your best wasn’t good enough,” she spat back, even though she knew she was being unfair.
She couldn’t make herself care. Everything in her life seemed unfair right now, and she needed to take it out on someone.
Since he was partly to blame, he was her target.
If he’d only confided in her, let her help…
He took a step toward her, his eyes blazing. “You don’t get to decide that,” he told her. “If you had any idea of what I’d been up against—”
“I would have helped you!” she protested, shaking her head. “I would have done everything I could have to work with you and bring those guys down, you know that. You didn’t give me the choice. You got me shipped off to the middle of nowhere because you thought you knew what was best for me.”
“I wasn’t going to let them target you!” he exclaimed.
It was the most emotion she had seen from him since she’d shown up at the sanctuary.
Even though it was more anger than anything else, it was a relief to see him as emotional about this as she was.
Her whole life had been torn apart—the man she had admired, maybe even loved, had betrayed her.
He couldn’t expect her to just forget about it and move on, even all these years later.
“I cared about you too much to put you in the line of fire,” he said.
“And I cared about you too much to believe you could do something like that to me,” she snapped back. “You threw me aside like I was nothing. Like I was a bad cop. How was I supposed to feel?”
He opened his mouth like he was going to answer, but clamped it shut again with a sigh. He looked away like he would rather be doing anything else except having this conversation. But they would have to talk about it sooner or later. Better to get it over with now.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I wanted to keep you safe, and that was the only way I could think of to do it. I didn’t have a lot of time to think through options,” he told her. “It wasn’t what I wanted. I never wanted you to hate me.”
“What did you want?” she demanded.
For a split second, she could feel it between them again—that heat, the chemistry she had tried to deny for so long. It was like they were back in his cruiser, the two of them bantering over some case, just like they had back in the old days.
He took a deep breath and looked at the sky. “You.”