13. Harper
HARPER
Imove toward them on instinct, already shrugging out of my jacket. “What the hell, Luke? You could have been killed.”
He flashes a grin at me as he strides toward me, effortlessly carrying the woman in his arms. “Would you miss me?”
“Asshole.” I don’t say that I would. Instead, I move toward them. “Here, she’s freezing.”
Luke stops, the woman cradled gently in his arms.
Up close she looks even worse, because I can see the fear in her eyes.
Wanting to ask her what happened but knowing she’s in no condition to answer, I make what I hope are reassuring noises as I tuck my coat around her shoulders.
My hands brush Luke’s chest, which is practically naked for all the good his wet shirt is doing, and the shock of touching him makes me look up.
We’re close—close enough that I can feel the cold radiating off his wet skin. He looks at me like I just did something that mattered, and I can’t look away.
“I’ll explain everything,” Luke says, his gaze steady on mine, for once somber, with no humor. “But not here. We need to get her warm, get her in a vehicle, and secure this scene before anyone shows up. Come on.”
I look into the darkness past the railing. “Secure the scene how?”
But he’s already moving.
He’s right. The practical crisis is immediate: a woman in shock and a van in the ravine. Scrambling after him, I exhale hard through my nose, trying to think. I’m a cop—I know how to deal with situations, even if this one is unorthodox. “We need to call this in.”
“No.” Luke’s voice is sharp and final. He stops next to his truck. “Open the back.”
I open the side door, not because he ordered it but because the woman needs to get warm. “Why not?”
“Because we don’t know if calling it in will put her in danger.” He sets her gently on the back seat of his truck, making sure my coat is snug around her before taking out a knife from somewhere on his body and cutting the zip ties.
His statement startles me. I grew up a sheriff’s daughter.
To me, the law has always been representative of right and order—it’s supposed to protect.
Granted, I’ve had some questions and doubts lately about what’s been going on in Iron Ridge, but this—I look at the woman again—is beyond anything I imagined.
I feel a chill, like I got dunked in the water too. “Danger from who?”
He straightens and faces me. “Turner.”
“Jesus,” I whisper. The name hits like a physical blow.
Luke watches me. I know he’s thinking of two months ago when I showed up at their ranch and told them I thought the Turners arranged the accident that killed Emma’s dad but that I couldn’t do anything about it.
I know what they think I implied, but as long as there’s no victim, there’s no crime, so if they wanted to take care of Cole Turner like they did Eli, making him disappear, there wasn’t anything I could do.
I look at the woman in the truck. Luke’s right—if she’s somehow involved with Turner or witnessed something she shouldn’t have, me calling this in could be a death sentence for her. The most likely scenario would be that this woman disappears for good. Like I said, no victim, no crime.
Luke watches me work through it—watches me understand the scope of what we’re looking at. I wait for him to say something snarky or flippant, but he just waits for me to tell him what I want to do.
I glance at the woman, shaking in the back of his vehicle.
Fuck. I have no choice.
Exhaling, I look Luke in the eye and nod.
And just like that, I’ve crossed a line I didn’t even know I was standing on.