Chapter Thirteen
Liam and Price took off with promises that they, along with Darius, would figure everything out. Rose stood by the window, peeking around the curtain like a little kid watching her parents run off to have fun without her.
She turned around, clearly dejected.
It was another endearing moment for the woman.
James doubted she was in the mood for the compliment.
“You said you trust them, and they do good work,” he reminded her without preamble. “So we should let them go and do that good work.”
Rose heaved out a long sigh.
“I did say that, and I do trust them, but I want to help them too,” she wallowed. “This whole thing is about me, after all. Just sitting around here with you isn’t doing anything but wasting time.”
James made a pained sound and clutched at his chest.
“Wow, Wildcard. Way to hit me where it hurts.”
Rose openly scanned his expression. She must have judged his words as the joke he intended. She waved through the air between them with slight annoyance.
“You know I don’t mean being with you is a waste,” she corrected. “I mean us sitting here with nothing to do is a waste.”
Another moment of endearment.
He smiled into it.
Rose was too distracted to note it. Her brow was crinkled, and her gaze seemed to hollow. Those gears that never seemed to stop turning were going faster again.
“There’s got to be something we can do… Let’s talk it out one more time? It just all feels so ridiculous that I’m having a hard time processing alone in my head.”
James waved his hand.
“Then join me out here and I’ll help the best I can.”
Rose nodded and started to pace across the seen-better-days carpet.
Her hair was cinched up tight in a slick bun that contrasted with the casual cut of her clothes.
The boots she had put on gave her an inch of height but she still looked impossibly small making a groove in the carpet as she went back and forth.
If he had seen her without context, he couldn’t have imagined anyone would go to such lengths to hurt her.
Though, maybe he was projecting his own surprising yet steady feelings of protectiveness for the woman.
“The author of that article is, according to the website, based in Mississippi,” she started. “If Darius doesn’t find anything that links him to Damon, I’m going to assume Damon found the article and is just using it as his own plan.”
“It was one of the most viewed press pieces during that time,” James said. “Even the comments on it had a lot of interaction.”
She nodded. Then she paused.
“So let’s say that’s his outline as a middle finger up to everyone calling me an action hero. But why wait five months to do any of it? Was it a funding thing? Was it a planning thing? Why wait that long?”
James hadn’t thought about that yet.
The timing of it was a little odd.
“Maybe it was a grief thing?” he offered.
“Or, you know, he might not have instantly wanted his revenge against you. Something could have triggered him sometime after.” He didn’t know how true that was, though.
Darius had confirmed with the bomb maker that he had been hired by Damon less than a month after the bus incident.
“Or the gap could be because he was getting Derrick’s affairs in order.
Didn’t you say their parents were much older and lived up North? ”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure how hands-on Damon might or might not have been.” Rose’s voice went soft. “To be honest, I don’t really know much about Damon. I only spoke to him once. At the hospital. After he identified Derrick’s body. It wasn’t a very pleasant conversation on any front.”
James had wanted to ask about this before, because, aside from him doing an internet search, he also didn’t know much about the man behind the attacks.
Only what Rose had told him at the sheriff’s department, a conversation that felt like it had happened years ago and not a day.
Now, though, any and all details could be important, so he didn’t hold back with his questions anymore.
“How did that conversation go? Between you and Damon, I mean.”
Rose slowed her pacing.
“I shouldn’t have talked to him but I—I was upset.
Guilt and anger and being so dang tired from all that adrenaline finally leaving my system.
I shouldn’t have talked to him, but I did.
” She sighed. “I apologized for hesitating and that opened a can of really angry worms. He had me detail out everything that happened and I told him everything I told you.”
“The fight between that Lloyd guy and Derrick on the bus, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Poor Lloyd too, he just happened to walk by when I was done. Derrick went over to him and, even though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, they were definitely heated. Price eventually had to break their fight up and send—”
Rose came to a halt.
“Lloyd,” she said, interrupting herself.
“Lloyd?” James repeated.
Her dark eyes were like saucers when they swung to his.
“I understand targeting me after the viral video and press, but don’t you think some of that anger might have gone to the man who actually fought Derrick?”
James didn’t know why he hadn’t given another thought to Lloyd before. Now a rising sense of urgency pulled at his gut.
“When is the last time you saw Lloyd? At the hospital after the storm?”
Rose took her phone off the small table. Her thumbs were lightning-fast across the screen. Still, she answered.
“I actually ran into him at the hospital about a month ago when I was visiting Doc Ernest… The Camden Pharmaceuticals people eat lunch in the hospital’s cafeteria since the research annex doesn’t have a big kitchen…” Her focus narrowed in on her phone.
James left her to her silence.
He hadn’t known Rose all that long, but he thought he now had a handle on how she operated.
At all times, Rose Little was charging forward, eager to protect someone.
It made her brave and reckless and earned her the nickname Wildcard.
She disregarded herself for the sake of others. It was mostly a commendable trait.
It was also a terrifying one for the people who cared about her.
And James cared.
He had since she had pulled him into the service pit, when she had agreed to pretend to be hurt at the sheriff’s department to make him feel better, after he stood with her in the field behind his house, every second he had spent saving her from the tub the night before, and hours after he had shared a bed with her.
James cared about Rose to the point of distraction.
Something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
It was and wasn’t surprising.
Rose Little may have been small, but she had more than proven she was absolutely mighty.
And he simply wanted more.
It was a quick epiphany. One that had James nod to himself to confirm he felt the change. Now wasn’t the time to talk about it, though. Instead he kept to his chair and waited for the woman of the hour to plan her next move. Because no matter what it was, James knew he would follow.
She could protect everyone else, because James would protect Rose.
He just didn’t realize then how quickly he was going to have to do so.
* * *
“BETRAYED BY SOMEONE you trust, a close-corridors fight in a precarious place, something to do with heights, and a high-speed car chase through a bustling city.”
Rose was paraphrasing the last of Payton Abbot’s favorite action hero encounters with as little enthusiasm as possible. She looked up at the giant wall of a man standing pressed up against an actual wall and narrowed her eyes.
“Unless you and the department have other plans, I don’t think I’m going to get betrayed by someone I trust,” she continued.
“As for the close combat fight in a ‘precarious’ place—I’m not even sure what that means—and something to do with me being on the edge of a cliff or something, I feel like those could be difficult to mastermind even if Damon outsourced.
I’m not even sure we can count the car chase one since we’re not exactly a bustling city.
But maybe the city part doesn’t count. Damon seemed okay with changing the whole drowning thing to some random man ruining my bath. ”
James had had his eye on the doors to the hospital cafeteria for almost fifteen minutes. Even as he spoke now, he kept his gaze fixed.
“I’m not sure if you’re talking about all of this like it’s nothing as a way to cope or not, but let it be known, I’m not a fan of how casual you’re making this sound.”
Rose had already picked up on that fact.
The man might have a calm poker face but his body always gave him away.
He had been tense ever since they had come to the hospital, doubly so when Rose was recognized by one of her friends on the staff.
Now she could see the tension clearly in the line of his shoulders and the tightness of his jaw.
That tightness managed to stay there when he added another thought, just as grumbly as the previous one.
“And let it also be known, that no, I will not be the one who betrays you. So you can throw that idea right on out.”
Rose didn’t say it, but she hadn’t even entertained the idea of James betraying her in any sense of the word.
An odd thing, considering she hadn’t even known the sound of his voice until a week ago.
Now that sound was a comfort. A promise of being there.
A calm place in an extremely unorthodox storm.
Also a voice of reason.
Because James was right.
Joking about everything—being so casual talking about how determined someone was to take her life, money and prison time be damned—was the only thing keeping the panic in her down. She had already been stressed with the bomb and the gunmen at the garage but after the man in the bathroom?
Everything had changed.
Church clothes or not, that man had truly scared her by invading a space she’d never imagined would be dangerous. He had overpowered her quickly and had nearly taken her life. All while she had been naked.
That small detail might not have seemed like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but to Rose, it might have been the worst part.
She had been utterly vulnerable, not a stitch on or no weapon in sight.
If it hadn’t been for James…
Rose peeked up at the man again.
She didn’t want to even think about it.
As if she had voiced her thoughts out loud, the man in question swung his golden-rimmed gaze her way. He thumbed back over his shoulder.
“Isn’t that our guy?”
Adrenaline shot through her, breaking up thoughts of panic and of James and the comfort he brought. Rose swung her head around James’s shoulder so fast that if she had been wearing her hair in a ponytail it would have smacked him good.
“That’s definitely Lloyd,” she confirmed, staring at the group of people who had just left the cafeteria. “Doc Ernest said the Camden people always take lunch at the same time during the week. He’s the one in the back on his phone. The good-looking guy with the blond hair.”
James snorted but was already moving. She heard him mutter beneath his breath.
“I didn’t need that last part.”
Rose didn’t respond to his cheekiness. Instead, she let James take the lead and approach the group by himself.
She held back out of sight. Only a few of the people who had been there during the storm still worked at Camden now.
That didn’t mean she wanted to chance falling into a catch-up by running into them.
Her current plan was simple: see if Lloyd had had any contact with Damon since the storm or had any dangerous run-ins recently.
Rose didn’t need to chat past that.
Lloyd seemed just as uninterested in the usual pleasantries when he rounded the corner with James in tow. His eyes widened at the sight of her, but he didn’t smile.
“Deputy Little, what a coincidence, I was just about to try and find you.”
Rose shared a look with James.
Unlike the last time she had seen him, Lloyd Harrison looked somehow worse for the wear.
Which was saying a lot, given their last danger-filled interaction had been in the middle of a flood and a tornado.
There were dark circles beneath eyes that were tinged red.
He also seemed to have lost some weight.
Maybe Rose wasn’t the only one Damon had been targeting after all.
“You were looking for me?” she asked.
Lloyd nodded. His tired gaze shifted between her and James before he lowered his voice.
“I think it’s time we had a talk.” He nodded to James but kept his eyes on her. “A very private one.”