Chapter Eighteen
Tanner lay on the cold hard floor, consciousness coming back slowly. The first thing he became aware of was Bree pressed up against him, but that wasn’t unusual. She was almost always the first thing he became aware of when he woke.
The second thing was that he wasn’t cold. There’d been a time trudging up that riverbank where he was sure he would never be warm again.
He seemed to have all his fingers and his toes, so that was a good sign. Honestly, he was just surprised he was alive. He’d been sure he wouldn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew Bree wasn’t going to leave him, he’d be dead right now out in that water.
She sighed and moved against him, quickly proving the rest of his body was working just fine also, as her naked skin brushed against his.
She’d killed a man. In the midst of attempting to survive there had been no time to process that. He knew what it was like to take a life and wasn’t going to allow her to feel any guilt over it. If she hadn’t shot when she had, Tanner would be dead. She’d saved his life multiple times yesterday.
He pulled her closer until she was half lying on top of him, her favorite way to sleep.
She let out a shuddery little breath and his heart clenched.
He knew that sound. It was the sound she made when she had been crying.
It didn’t happen very often—for the longest time Bree had a difficult time accessing her feelings at all—and the sound gutted him now.
When he trailed his hand down her back, she shifted against him. “Tanner?”
“You went to an awful lot of trouble just to get me naked here with you, freckles.”
She bolted upright. “You’re awake!” She rubbed her face with the back of both hands. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m not a very good watchman.”
“You’ve got that gun right by your lap. I daresay if anyone came to that door you would’ve woken up. Your body needed rest.”
He wanted to ask her why she’d been half crying in her sleep, but she was already starting to inspect his body for injuries.
“Your shoulder is definitely dislocated. If I had my computer, I could look up how to put it back into joint, but now it’s so swollen you really need a medical professional.”
He definitely already knew that from the fire shooting down his arm and chest every time he moved.
“I’ll try to make some sort of sling out of your jacket. I don’t know if that will really help, but it should at least take some of the weight off your shoulder,” she continued. “I also think you have a concussion, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Nothing is life-threatening—that’s the most important thing, okay?” He trailed the fingers of his good hand up and down her arm. “Given the fact that I was shot at, fell over a ravine and was nearly clubbed to death, not to mention hypothermia... I feel pretty damn lucky.”
She nodded. “You have to be hungry. There are some cans of food. Nothing particularly appetizing, especially since we’ve got no way to heat it up. But at least filling. I have no idea who keeps this place stocked, but the food isn’t expired.”
“Old man Henrikson. He lives just outside town, but comes through once a year and makes sure the three or four shelters in this area have some basic provisions.”
“Henrikson? Who would’ve figured the most ornery man in town was a good Samaritan.”
“When his grandson was a teenager, he got caught out in a freak June snowstorm. Broke his leg, couldn’t get back home.
He would’ve died if it hadn’t been for a shelter that happened to be stocked by a hunter who’d been in a couple weeks before.
Henrikson has come out every year for the past twenty years to make sure these shelters in the area are stocked. ”
She kissed his forehead. “Hopefully that lovely story will make your cold franks and beans taste better.”
He ate the can she opened for him, careful to keep the Glock close to his side in case it was needed, while she laid their clothes out a little better to dry. Outside the rain continued to fall, although at least most of the thunder and lightning had stopped.
“How safe are we here?” she asked.
“This place is difficult enough to find in sunny weather. No one will stumble on it in this rain. It’s possible they would know about it if they researched hiking and hunting up here, but otherwise I wouldn’t count on anyone coming through that door.”
Tanner remembered the maps he and Noah had seen Jared and his friends looking at the night they’d surveilled the town house.
Could they have been looking at trails and shelters around here?
It would’ve explained a lot: how they’d known where the rafts would be located, and the best place to puncture them.
They could’ve studied the best places to try to ambush them.
He realized that Bree was sitting just out of reach, smoothing out the legs of his pants, then doing the same to hers. Her movements were jerky, almost frantic.
“Freckles, come here and sit by me.”
“Why? Are you hurt? Why didn’t old man Henrikson put some ibuprofen in the shelters, for goodness’ sake?”
He smiled and held out his good hand. “Actually, I’m sure if you mention it to him, he will.”
“Well, that’s not exactly going to help you, is it?” Her voice was tight. Shaky.
“Bree.” He patted the space beside him. “I’m okay. Come sit with me.”
She did, although a little reluctantly. “We need to get back into town.”
“We will. We’ve had rest, food. It will be much easier now. Let’s just give the storm a few hours and see what happens.”
If anything, that made her tenser.
He took her hand in his, twining their fingers together. “Why were you crying in your sleep, freckles? Not because of shooting that guy, right? His name is Paul Wyn. We have a file on him in the office and I recognized him when we were fighting. He’s one of Jared Ellis’s good friends.”
Her eyes widened. “He was in Risk Peak the night of the fire. He’d been dressed as a paramedic and tried to get me to leave Sam and Eva with him while I got looked over in the ambulance.”
Tanner let out a low curse. “Yeah, I think they knew about this trip and have been planning a kidnapping the whole time. But you shouldn’t feel guilty about shooting him. You know you had to do that, right? He would’ve killed me.”
Tanner would give anything if he could take that weight off her. Carry it himself. Taking a life, even in self-defense, or defense of a loved one, was still weighty.
But evidently, not too much to Bree. “Oh, no, I know I had to shoot him. He definitely would’ve killed you with that club. Honestly, if I had had a clear shot while you were fighting, I might have taken it.”
Tanner let out a short bark of laughter. God, he loved this woman. She was so damn practical.
“Well, as a law enforcement officer, I’m much happier that if you had to shoot Wyn, you did it when he was about to kill me, rather than when we were fighting. That’s much more defensible in my report.” He rubbed her hand. “If that wasn’t it, then why the tears? You were crying in your sleep.”
“It’s nothing.” She looked away.
“Freckles, you’re the least prone person to hysterics that I know. So if you’re crying in your sleep, it’s a big deal. Is it everything we’ve been through in the last couple of days? That’s understandable.”
“No, I—I... Forget it. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just worry about you getting back home in one piece. I’m fine.”
Now he was really worried. He hadn’t even thought to ask her if she’d been injured in some way. Was she hurt and trying to play it off?
He swallowed a groan of pain as he shifted his weight so he could get a better look at her.
“Tanner, what are you do—”
“What aren’t you telling me? Are you hurt?”
He didn’t see any marks on her naked body, but a lot of her was covered in blankets. “Bree?” He caught her chin in his hand, forcing those green eyes to look at him. “We’re a team, right? That means you tell me when you need help too. It goes both ways.”
His heart sat heavy in his chest as big tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Fine,” she finally murmured. “I was crying because I was relieved, okay?”
That definitely wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “Relieved that we made it to shelter? That we are warm and dry?” That made sense, but why not just admit that?
“No, relieved that I finally came up with my wedding vows!”
She closed her eyes and bowed her head as if she’d just admitted to committing the most atrocious of crimes.
“You were crying over our wedding vows?”
“You do know we’re getting married in four days, right?
And we have to say vows.” Her whole body seemed to deflate.
“I’ve just been in a state of panic, thinking of standing up there in front of everyone...
I’m already such a social spaz, and you’re so important in Risk Peak.
I wanted my vows to be perfect so I don’t embarrass you in any way. It’s just been stressful.”
He trailed his fingers down her cheek. “More stressful than running through the wilderness with people trying to kill you?” Because she hadn’t cried then.
She tilted her head, obviously seriously considering the stress levels of both. “Actually, about the same.”
He wanted to yank her to him but couldn’t force his left hand to work at all.
Instead, he threaded the fingers of his right hand into the hair at the nape of her neck.
He’d known the wedding planning had been stressful for her but had no idea she’d been feeling such pressure about the ceremony itself.
He leaned his forehead against hers. “If you got up there and couldn’t say a single thing except ‘I do,’ I wouldn’t care. All I care about is that you’re willing to give me forever.”
“I do. I do want forever. But everyone you’ve known your whole life is going to be there. All your people. I just don’t want to mess it up.”
He’d been selfish. He’d wanted a big wedding—talked her into it—and why?
Because he’d wanted to make his declaration of love for and commitment to her as public as possible.
But he should’ve taken into consideration more what she really wanted.
Bree could barely stand to be around a group of people at the best of times.
And standing up in front of five hundred of them, many of them she barely knew...
No wonder this had been so stressful for her.
He leaned forward and kissed her. “I never really thought about the wedding, the event itself, and how it would affect you emotionally. I’ve been joking all these months about taking you in front of the judge.
Let’s just do that. We don’t need a big event.
At the end of the day, our love, our marriage, is between you and me. Nobody else matters.”
She smiled at him, the sight so beautiful and pure it nearly took his breath away. “Last week I might’ve taken you up on that. Hell, the night of the fire I almost got killed because I was in the office working on those stupid vows.”
He smiled at her description. No one was ever going to accuse Bree of being overly sentimental. That was just fine with him.
“But they came to me while I was trying to sleep,” she continued. “All this... And they just came to me. Honestly, that’s why I was crying. I was just so relieved.”
“Tell me them.”
She reached up and kissed him softly. “I will. On Saturday. Four days.”
He could wait. “Are you sure that’s all that was upsetting you? You seemed flustered.”
“I just want to get back so I can write all this down, so I don’t forget them.”
Tanner shook his head. “I’ve seen you memorize entire pages of coding after reading it just a couple of times. Your brain is like a computer.”
“Exactly. I can remember coding, but words? Emotions? Not so easy.”
He tucked her against his chest with his good arm, ignoring the pain as best he could in the other. “If you’re worried you won’t be able to remember the words, just write a program in your mind that includes them.”
“What? I—” she paused. “Damn it, Dempsey, you’re a genius.”
She lay down next to him and he could almost hear her brain running like a machine. He had no idea what program she was writing, or what it would do, but knew whatever information she needed was now safely locked away in that brilliant mind of hers.
When she slept this time, there were no tears.