There was one last thing to do, one last burden from the past. It would take him a little over twenty-four hours. He hadn’t slept much last night and the smart thing to do would be to sleep here and take off tomorrow morning for Texas.
But Jacko wasn’t tired. He felt fine. He felt revved, even. He didn’t need to sleep. He wanted to get this over with, get the lingering shadows out from his life so he could go back to Lauren free of darkness.
He was more than willing to become the husband she needed. And he was beginning to suspect he could be the father his child deserved.
Just one last thing to do before going home.
He headed out.
Lauren walked back out into the living room. She’d gone into the bedroom to take the call when she saw it was from Jacko. No one else should be listening.
It was so sad that he still couldn’t talk to her. It was hard to think of the huge emotions raging in his chest. Jacko wasn’t frightened of anything. It was what all his teammates said when they talked of Jacko in battle. He was fearless.
Not when it came to their baby, though. That scared him.
Her heart pulsed in pain for the man she loved.
“Is dickwad coming back anytime soon?” a sour voice asked. Metal.
Felicity backhanded him on the chest. “Don’t talk like that. He’ll come back when he can.”
“When he can?” Joe said hotly. “When he can? If I ever dump Isabel like that, I hope you guys go after my sorry ass. With a gun.”
Metal and Joe were Jacko’s best friends. Jacko had saved Metal’s life twice and she’d heard the story a million times. From Metal, not Jacko. Jacko never spoke of his missions. He’d worked really hard with Joe in rehab after Joe had been blown up and nearly died. The doctors said Joe would never walk again but Metal and Jacko had dedicated countless hours to overseeing Joe’s rehab and he was now whole and healthy.
And pissed.
“Joe Harris!” Isabel’s voice was loud and crisp and Joe snapped to attention, like a private when a general walks into a room. Lauren could see the whites of his eyes. He looked spooked.
“Yeah, honey?” he said, his voice tentative.
Isabel walked right up into his face and poked him in the chest, hard, with a manicured fingertip. Isabel came from one of the finest families in America and had an instinctively classy way about her. Lauren had never seen her angry, and certainly never angry at Joe. Right now, though, her eyes were shooting sparks.
Joe looked scared.
He was a Navy SEAL. He’d been in countless firefights. He’d shown immense courage time after time and had a chest full of medals for bravery that were in a shadowbox, never to be publicly acknowledged, but they were there.
Right now he looked terrified of a slender woman who came up to his shoulder.
“Joe Harris, you take that back right this moment and you apologize to Lauren. I’ve heard the stories about how surly and difficult you were during rehab. And who the hell stuck by your side, day after day, soaking up your insults and anger? Who?”
Joe’s jaw muscles clenched. “Jacko.”
“Everyone said you were impossible and yet he stuck by you and worked with you to get you back on your feet. And right now Jacko needs your help and understanding, if that isn’t too tough a concept for you to wrap your mind around. Because if there is one thing I know—we all know—it is that Jacko loves Lauren. He has not walked out on her and you know it. He is doing something that must be incredibly important for him and just as he showed you loyalty, you should show it right back.”
Joe’s head was hanging. “Yes, ma’am,” he said to the floor.
“I think you owe Lauren an apology. I think you know perfectly well that Jacko has not abandoned her. Even saying it is awful.”
He took it like a man. Lauren had to give him that much. He lifted his head and looked Lauren straight in the eyes. “Isabel is right. I’m ashamed of myself. Whatever it is Jacko is doing, it’s because he feels he has to and that’s good enough for me. Should have been good enough for me right from the start.” He eyed Metal. “We both owe him—and you—an apology.”
“Yeah.” Metal was hanging his head. “I called him about a bazillion times to give him grief. I know better.”
“I told you Jacko knew what he was doing,” Felicity said, exasperated. “And I told you to leave him alone. Didn’t I?”
Metal nodded soberly. “Yeah. You did.” He too looked Lauren straight in the eye. “No excuses. We’re shitheads.”
Felicity jabbed her elbow into his chest. Metal was almost as muscle-bound as Jacko. He wouldn’t feel any pain from Felicity’s elbow, but he did shoot her a hangdog look.
“Idiots,” he amended.
“Morons,” Joe added.
Isabel looked at Lauren. “Does that satisfy you? Because they really did go over the top. Say the word and I won’t cook for Joe for a week.”
Joe’s eyes widened in terror. Once you got used to Isabel’s amazing cooking, being deprived for a week was no joke.
Lauren smiled sadly. “Apologies accepted, guys. I know you love Jacko, too. We have to trust him.”
“And I suspect Joe wants him back because he misses beating the pants off him at poker,” Metal added.
Lauren laughed and everyone relaxed. She knew that their anger was basically puzzlement. Jacko had never been anything but…himself. In his own way, he was as predictable as the sun rising every morning. He was lethal on the battlefield and utterly reliable at work and at home. If he said he was going to do something, he did it. No question. If he made an appointment, you could count on him being on time. If he wasn’t where he said he was going to be, he was dead somewhere—that would be the only explanation.
This kind of behavior—just disappearing without a word—was so unusual, it probably scared them. They thought they knew Jacko through and through, and he had turned into a puzzle they couldn’t solve.
Lauren understood him better. She alone knew that he was sometimes chased by demons who visited him in the night. She’d wake up and he’d be gone from the bed, pacing the living room floor. Finally she’d pried out of him that he suffered from nightmares. They scared him, she could tell. He never said it outright but the unscareable Jacko was scared. As a man, Jacko was invincible, so the things he was scared of must stem from his childhood.
Jacko wasn’t quite the monolith everyone assumed he was. He had cracks, just like every other human being.
She didn’t care. The cracks, the nightmares, the demons didn’t scare her. At the bedrock of his existence she knew he loved her, and she loved him.
Isabel clapped her hands. “Okay, now that I have officially forgiven Joe—and Metal—for being asses, I can announce that I made extra-strength dark chocolate brownies. Guaranteed to put hair on your chests, and that includes you, Felicity and Lauren. Let’s eat.”
As Lauren went into the kitchen to get plates and glasses, she paused for a moment, hand over her belly, right over where their child rested.
I hope you’re okay, my darling. Come back to us soon.
Jacko drove through the night again, not feeling the fatigue at all. If anything, he felt energized, like someone clearing out old brush to build a new house. Getting rid of the old to make way for the new.
It was noon by the time he pulled into Cross, Texas. He looked around curiously at the town he hadn’t been back to since leaving at seventeen. He’d never expected to come back, ever, but here he was.
Life was funny that way.
Cross was basically an intersection, and it was even more forlorn than it had been when he had left. It had three stoplights now instead of four. Welcome to Cross, Texas, Population 2,378 the sign said. A whopping 1,000 fewer people than when he’d left. There’d been the ruins of a shopping mall about five miles out of town. But the businesses were closed and the parking lot empty. Main was pretty empty too. Just another dusty Texas town with no oil and no high tech, an economy based on failing ranches and sto
res that sold only the basics . You wanted fancy food, fancy clothes, books, you drove a hundred miles to Werring.
Jacko knew exactly where to go. It had been a long time, sure, but the sheriff’s office wouldn’t have moved. Nowhere for it to move to. Jacko rounded a corner just off Main and there it was. Wyatt County Sheriff’s Office.
Jacko knew the inside of that office intimately. Not because he got in trouble with the law—he’d had two scrapes and then had gone off to the Navy. No, he’d been in and out because of his mom. She’d been incarcerated a lot of times, until Sheriff Pendleton had grown sick of locking her up. Jacko had always been there to take her back home once she’d dried out or sobered up.
Pendleton had been the closest thing he’d had to a friend then. Gruff, no-nonsense, he’d kept an eye out for Jacko. His wife Leanne often sent leftovers, the only cooked meals Jacko had until he’d taught himself the basics of cooking. Pendleton also left packages of used clothes on the trailer stoop. Clean, serviceable stuff that Jacko wore until they fell apart. They were his only source of clothes until he was old enough to do odd jobs.
Jacko remembered like yesterday his last talk with Pendleton, a former Marine. Pendleton had pressed a card into his hand the night he’d landed in the emergency ward after his mom’s dealer had cut him up for trying to stop her from buying more drugs.
“Things aren’t going to get any better, son,” Pendleton had said to him, dark eyes sad. “Here’s the card of a Marine buddy of mine. Join the Marines. You’re better than this, and you deserve better than this. There’s nothing for you here. Get out and never come back.”
And that’s exactly what Jacko had done, only he’d gone into the Navy not the Marines. It had been a toss-up between the Navy and the Corps. He knew he’d have made a good Force Recon sniper, but the Navy and the possibility of becoming a SEAL had won out. He’d taken Pendleton’s advice and never gone back. The instant he’d left Cross, his real life had begun.
Pendleton had never expected to see him again, he knew that. But…he owed the man. One last debt. He’d pay it and he’d be gone again forever, the past cleared. Pendleton would be retired by now, but the current sheriff would know where he was. If Pendleton had died, Jacko would visit his gravesite.
Jacko parked next to the beaten-up Cherokee with Wyatt County Sheriff’s Office painted on the sides. Looked like Wyatt County hadn’t come up in the world.
Inside, the smell was the same—industrial cleaner and burned coffee. The place had always been shabby but Pendleton had made sure that everything was clean and in good repair. It now reeked of neglect. Old-fashioned phones with rotary dials that looked like they weighed ten pounds each, grimy old-fashioned computers with deep monitors, encrusted keyboards and ancient processors.
You’d think there’d be some federal money coming in. Back in the day, Cross had been smack in the middle of drug smuggling routes and there’d been a three-way drug war between two Mexican gangs and an Anglo-Mexican gang. When Jacko was twelve, two headless bodies had shown up in the middle of Main, the underground cartel wars bubbling up to the surface.
As a SEAL, Jacko had been briefed for a mission into Colombia—the rescue of a fallen DEA agent. The planners of the mission had showed him maps of the drug wars flowing back and forth across the border. Several times, the flow of drugs and money and arms and murders swept over Cross, though on some maps it was too small to show up.
A secretary looked up when he walked in the door, ancient, looking like she’d been there since the Carter Administration. She’d been staring at her monitor. From where he stood, Jacko could read E! Entertainment at the top of the screen. She stared at him, cocking her head, unimpressed.
“Heyup yeew?” she said in pure Texan. He’d forgotten how many vowels people could put into short words.
He leaned an elbow on the counter. “Yeah. I’d like to see Sheriff—the sheriff, please.”
Damn. He’d forgotten to look up the guy’s name. He should have pulled over and checked—would have taken him all of two minutes.
She wrinkled her brow, like the words “see” and “sheriff” were new to her.
“Got an appointment?” she asked finally.
If this had been a business thing, Jacko would have had an appointment fixed at least a week ago, and the printout of the confirming email with him. Fuck. Either he was losing his touch or he was really out of it. Maybe both.
“No,” he said. Pointless trying on a charming smile. Jacko had no charm. And he couldn’t shoot his way inside, either. Shit. “I don’t.”
The girl pursed her lips. “Sorry,” she said, not looking sorry at all. “The sheriff is—”
“Candy.” She turned to the big tall guy who’d just come out of a side door. “I’m in.” The man held out his hand to Jacko. “Sheriff Constable. And yes, I know constable means police officer in England. What can I do for you, Mr.—”
“Jackman,” Jacko said. The handshake was dry and not a grip-strength contest. Jacko would have won. His grip had been measured by dynamometer at 60 kg—enough to crush bone if he wanted. He didn’t want to crush this guy’s hand. All he wanted was some intel before he got out and never came back. “If I can speak with you for a moment… I won’t take much of your time.”
“Sure. Step into my office,” Sheriff Constable said with an affable smile, which faltered as he looked at Jacko’s face. The sheriff was frowning, which made Jacko wonder what the fuck was on his face. Jacko should be smiling back. Right? He’d been told his default expression was ferocious with an overlay of dangerous. Lauren’s words. He was about to ask for a favor from this guy. He should be smiling, too. He lifted the corners of his mouth. That should do it.
But for a long moment, the sheriff just stared at him. Then he seemed to shake himself and opened the door to his office.
The sheriff’s office was big, but the walls needed painting and there was the same low level of technology. A glory wall to the right, framed photographs of Constable with men who were supposed to impress the onlooker. Jacko didn’t recognize too many. A governor here, a senator there. A Fortune 500 CEO. The rest were self-important faces Jacko didn’t give a shit about.
On another wall were a couple of antique guns mounted on boards behind glass and a small bookcase with legal texts. The third wall had wanted posters—not only of men wanted by the state of Texas but also the FBI’s Most Wanted.
Constable sat down behind his desk and motioned Jacko to sit in the visitor’s chair. Constable leaned back in his swivel chair, hands linked behind his neck. Body language as relaxed as it gets.
“So, Mr. Jackman, what brings you to Cross?”
Jacko kept an even voice. “I lived here from 1980, when I was born, until 1997, when I joined the Navy. I was friends with the sheriff then, Kurt Pendleton.”
Constable’s hands unlinked and he straightened in his chair.
Jacko frowned. “What? Is he—is he dead?”
As a kid, Pendleton had seemed ancient to Jacko, but he must have only been in his forties, which would make him about seventy now. Not that old, nowadays. But cops led dangerous lives. Not as dangerous as soldiers, but almost. In general, cops lived about twenty years less than civilians.
“No, sir. Pendleton isn’t dead, though some might question that. He’s in a home.” Constable sighed, tapped his temple. “Not quite…right. Up here. He was making big mistakes, forgetting things. The city council relieved him and gave the job to my predecessor, who retired five years ago. Pendleton is in a special care home near Las Vegas. His son made the arrangements, or so I heard. I never met the man myself. Sorry.”
Okay. Las Vegas. It was doable, on his way back to Portland. It would probably be sad to see Chief Pendleton now, a broken-down old man missing a few dots from his dice. But Pendleton had been good to Jacko back in the day. Maybe Jacko could leave some money with his caregivers, ease the old guy’s life. Jacko was on a quest to wrestle his past to the ground. Seeing the old sheriff was part of tha
t, he could feel it.
Jacko stood. “I appreciate your help, sir. Do you happen to know the name of that home where Sheriff Pendleton is now?”
The Sheriff frowned. “I don’t, actually. But I can try to find out. If you’ll wait here, I’ll do my best to get an address for you.” He walked out of his office before Jacko could say anything.
Jacko sat in the sheriff’s office and waited. There were no sounds from the outside world, Cross as dead now as it had been when he was a kid. About the only thing Cross had was sunshine. A shaft of sunlight so strong it looked like it could bear weight shone through a none-too-clean window pane and created a bright rectangle on the linoleum flooring.
He checked the weather in Portland on his cell. Rainy, high of 45 degrees. Cold weather never bothered him, but it did Lauren. She loved sunshine. He’d take her with him when he returned to Rancho San Diego to look at the house. She’d soak up the sunshine and they’d decide together what to do. Sell, keep. He didn’t care. Whatever made Lauren happy.
Maybe they’d toggle over to San Diego and he’d book them into the Del for a few days—the beautiful, old turn-of-the-last-century hotel on Coronado. Right on the beach. She’d love that.
It was an expensive hotel, old-fashioned luxury. When he was a SEAL, training in Coronado, the idea of staying at the Del was about as plausible as a vacation on the moon. One night cost a week’s wages and at the time, Jacko had no savings.
Now, he could probably live at the Del, if he really wanted to. If he didn’t order too much room service.
Man, his life had changed since those days. For the better. And he had Lauren.
Ferocious desire to be back with her exploded in his chest. It felt like scissors and knives—sharp, painful. If he could push a button to get back to her right now he would. He’d push that button and leave Cross, Texas, and beam himself straight back to her.
Whatever he thought he’d learn, he’d learned. He was done here. He’d never find out who his father was. That tiny hope that had been at the back of his mind forever was gone.