Convicted (Entangled Ignite) (10 page)

Suddenly, she realized she couldn’t hold too much of a grudge against Rick. She wasn’t much different, trying to protect everyone and risking exposure when she didn’t have to. Every price she’d already paid for this operation was too high to walk away from. Too high to throw away.

I’m sorry, Cade. This time, you
’
re on your own.

She let go.

Chapter Seven

“Why are we doing this again?” Rick asked, grunting in exertion as he pushed hard against the heavy fence post. Both of them were sweating through their long-sleeved shirts, the gloves on their hands adding to the heat beating on their shoulders. They’d been at this for hours, clearing out damaged posts and wire, digging holes, and dropping new posts into place. Rick packed loose dirt around each pole with a capped metal pipe and Cade strung the posts, holding them tight for Rick to staple the wires down.

“Because Milly asked us to.” The post finally dropped solidly into place.

Milly was a widow trying to hold her small ranch together up here in the mountains. She had only one ranch hand, the others having gone off when her husband died. Her husband had refused to let Wheels of Pain use his land for storage. After he’d been found in a ravine, no one else wanted to risk their lives to help the old woman stand against them.

“Milly Walters has never asked for a goddamned thing in her life.” Rick leaned on the fence post and wiped his brow. “And I know for a fact she’d never ask
us
to do this. She barely knows you and she nearly shot my balls off once for being on her land without permission.”

Cade wiped his own forehead, heading over to the skein of barbed wire next to the last post they’d strung. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re on the outside of the fence, then.”

Rick shook his head, watching as Cade carefully restrung the wire the way he’d been told by Jace Wilkes at the feed supply store in town. Milly was only one of about eight ranches on the outskirts of Marketta. Mostly small operations, they ran everything from dairy farms and chicken ranches to produce and orchards. Milly was one of the few who had horses and acres of private timberland. Open sections like this were just asking for trouble, especially when Cade found several motorcycle tracks.

“What exactly are you expecting to come from all this?”

“All what?” For the fifth damn time Cade’s glove caught on one of the sharp ticks of the wire. Well, he never said he was anyone’s cowboy.

“Picking up Old Jean’s mail every day. Coffee at the diner most mornings when we can just as easily fill up a thermos at the station and sit in the truck instead. I think I saw you carry groceries for Carrie Anne Milford the other day. For the past month, it’s like you’ve been practically spinning cartwheels to make the townsfolk like you.”

Cade looked up. Was that amusement in Rick’s voice? He couldn’t even remember the last time his friend had laughed at anything. “You think it’s working?”

Rick took a breath, openly considering the answer. “Well, they aren’t crossing the street to get away from you anymore.”

Cade accepted that with a grunt. “Progress, then.”

He’d taken to sitting at the park bench near the playground instead of his tree. The kids had started to shyly smile at him even. No one had come close, but every time one of those little grins was pointed his way, it started a warmth in his chest he was quickly getting accustomed to. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a chance for this place. There might be chance for him.

Hard as it had been to swallow, Trina’s advice had helped him see that. Helped him see a lot of things…

“You haven’t been sitting out with Katy for a while,” Rick rumbled, as he shoved the last seven-foot post out of the truck.

Just like that, the wire went through Cade’s glove, slicing his palm. He swore, ripping the thing off impatiently.

“I see she’s been her usual charming self.”

Rick’s attitude concerning Trina rankled. Always did. But Cade had to admit, Trina hadn’t spoken much better toward him. “She’s fine.”

And so was he, though the cut stung like a bitch.

“You just don’t want to be around her anymore.” Rick said it like a statement, but Cade heard the question underneath.

He shrugged, not wanting to talk about it. If he talked, he’d think and if he thought, he’d wonder if he made a mistake pushing her away. Like he’d tried not to think for the last two months. She’d been nothing but kind to him, though most would balk at his definition of kind. She was a blunt, no-bullshit woman, and he couldn’t help liking that about her. Under her rough demeanor was a generous, compassionate person. A sensitive one, who had her own scars and open wounds. The contradiction confused and captivated him, tempting him to track her down and beg her forgiveness.

Even if she gave it, the problems between them remained. Her loyalty to her club would always conflict with his mission, his growing dedication to these people.

“Katy never could play anything straight.”

“What’s your problem with her anyway?” A horrifying thought crossed his mind, one that should have occurred to him long ago. Both Katrina and Rick had grown up here in Marketta. “Were you two ever—”

Rick’s black glare relieved pressure Cade hadn’t realized had started to build.

“I had to ask,” he replied roughly, going back to pulling the bottom wire tight with the wire stretcher, then coiling it around the bottom of the post.

“You sure as shit didn’t,” Rick snapped. “There’s never been a damn thing between me and Katy Killian except for a lot of mutual dislike. Something you should keep in mind before you start thinking about tangling with her again. She’s dangerous. Her family’s dangerous. Nothing you do or say to her is going to change that.” A few whacks of the hammer had the line held in place, and they repeated the process in sullen silence.

Cade worked, watching his friend sweat and swear, feeling that disconnection trying to creep back between them. Something under his skin insisted he ask questions. Dig for the truth.

“Why do you two despise each other so much?”

He wasn’t sure if Rick would answer him. The silence stretched out so long they got the last pole almost completely tamped before Rick started talking.

“Katy got shipped up here to live with her uncle when we were kids. I never envied her that, since Cooper Killian was a bastard and a half even then. At first, she didn’t talk to anyone much but she seemed nice enough. Then, after a few months or so, she started getting into trouble. Getting into fights. She was always in one scrape or another from then on. And she had a mouth on her you wouldn’t believe.”

Cade almost smiled, picturing a tiny Trina, thumbing her nose at everyone, holding them off with bravado instead of sense.

“Then she started getting busted for stealing and it went downhill from there.”

“Downhill how?”

“When she was fourteen she got caught stealing a car. Crashed it into a tree. Got shuttled out to juvie for that stunt.”

No surprise. She’d told him she hit juvie repeatedly in her teens. “How does that turn into you hating her?”

“Aside from the fact it was my dad’s car?”

Ah.
“Aside from that.”

Rick blinked a few times. “Can’t really say, exactly. She and I ran in different circles, judged each other left and right. People thought of me as some kind of golden boy I guess, and that left her as the black sheep. Coming back from Afghanistan in one piece to be a sheriff while she comes back to be some kind of halfway old lady hasn’t really helped.”

Cade nodded, but both of them knew Rick was hardly in one piece. Neither was Trina.

“We just always seemed to be on opposite sides of everything.”

“Bet that happens a lot when your only parent is the local boogeyman.”

Rick looked at him for several long moments. Not his usual stare, which all but dared Cade to say something. No, this was that eerie stare, his eyes so arctic it almost lifted goose bumps on Cade’s sweaty, long-sleeved arms. “Are you trying to make me feel bad for her or something?”

“No.” Trina would hate to be the object of anyone’s pity.

“Because I won’t. Katy made her own choices. Red Dog isn’t even in Marketta anymore. She’s here because she
wants
to be, and the sooner you realize she’s poison to someone like you, the better off you’ll be.”

Cade stiffened. “What do you mean, someone like me?”

“Someone hanging onto his code by a thread. All it’d take is one little yank from her and you’ll forget yourself. Do things you never thought you could, all the while convincing yourself you had to for her sake. Until you become something you hate. Then where’ll you be, Cade?”

In hell.

Cade nodded, knowing his friend was right, but at the same time… The taut lines on Rick’s face. The misery and rage, hidden just under the surface of a face that should have been young but wasn’t. Cade knew then, Rick wasn’t talking about him.

“Shana?” he asked, but he didn’t have to. Cade knew the constant friction between the club and his friend had as much to do with Shana as it did the terrorizing of the rest of the town. Some might think more. “All this, everything you’re doing with the MC… It’s for her.”

Rick’s expression shuttered and he looked down, gloved hands loosely at his hips. Helplessness shadowed his frustrated sigh.

Arresting Carter every few weeks was essentially the source of the town-wide tension. Sooner or later—sooner, if Cade didn’t miss his guess—it would erupt into open gunfire. Shana had called Rick from her hospital bed and very calmly asked him to back down on his investigation. Cade had seen the torment on Rick’s face when she asked. He hadn’t stayed, stepping out of the personal conversation, but he knew shortly after she’d checked out of the hospital and had herself and her son driven home.

Whatever she’d said to Rick, it had been enough to stop the constant—and often fruitless—raids. The emergency calls from Shana’s house stopped, too, and since they saw her regularly heading to Cooper’s Tavern, unharmed, Rick stayed his hand. For two months things had been so quiet, it was damn near peaceful.

Cade often wondered what price Shana paid to keep Carter so silent, but she’d made it very clear that she wasn’t their concern. Not his, not Rick’s.

His friend’s nod, when it came, was accompanied by a low mumble and a glimpse into the hell Rick had been living. “My whole life has been for her.”

Cade took a minute to absorb that. Rick had enlisted at eighteen, and still been naive as hell when he’d been bumped up to ForceRecon’s grueling training schools. They’d all had bets if he would make it, since most of the men in Cade’s unit were recycling their training for the next tour. He’d pulled through, proving himself a talented sniper and an even better explosives man. ForceRecon needed someone who could do anything required, and Rick had been eager to pull his weight.

Now Cade found himself viewing his friend’s military career in a different light. He’d done it all because he’d wanted to build a career he could be proud of. Wanted to make a difference. Wanted to make a life. For Shana.

Instead, just like Cade, he’d nearly drowned in death.

Been buried in it…

Memories threatened to swarm him, the smell of the blood, dirt, and sweat like a ghost in his nostrils. But he pushed them away. Gently, willing them to fade. That was the trick, he’d realized somewhere in the lonely months without talking to Trina. She’d talked him through the haze, when she was there to see what was happening. She’d calmed him by pulling him slowly back to the here and now.

Cade wasn’t sure what nightmares plagued his friend. Was it the past that had made him so damned frozen? Or was it the present?

“I’ve never had that,” Cade replied quietly. No one had been waiting for him to come home, his parents having passed peacefully, one at a time, while he was still in the service. He’d been driven by duty, by a fierce need to protect his country and the brothers he served with. Not by the desire to protect just one person at home. That was a notion he’d simply never understood.

He blinked, thinking immediately of Trina’s militant face, chin raised high in defiance. He understood it now, though. She was gone, staying away like he’d demanded, but the hunger for her had only gotten worse. The hunger and the anger that she wouldn’t let him protect her. How much of that anger had been part of pushing her away?

“Never?” Rick asked, curiosity seeping into his voice unexpectedly.

Cade stared back at him, wanting to give an honest answer, but he didn’t have one that was wholly true. He had no right to feel that way—any way—about Trina. “Not before, no.”

“And now?”

He shook his head. Non-answer, yes, but he had nothing else. Rick’s questioning glance lasted a bit longer, but finally that too disappeared.

They finished their work quietly, mending the breach with little more than a nod at each other when it was complete. They packed up their tools, settled into the truck, and started the drive back to town.

For the first time in a long time, Cade looked back on his work in the side view mirror. He could tell where the new posts started. Could still smell the cedar on his hands and shirt. They looked and smelled like a fresh start.

He liked that. Liked it a lot.

He startled when he caught his own reflection, surprised to see a smile creasing his cheeks. It faltered when he realized it had come without his permission or thought. He almost tamped it down, but decided against it.

Trina might be out of his life, but he was still holding it together without her. He was making progress. He deserved this one. For as long as it lasted, he’d earned it.

…

Katrina climbed up the mountainside, her boots crunching in the sparse tall grass that had baked into straw in the hard dirt. Weeds tried to tangle over the tops of her feet, but she managed to sidestep most of them, grumbling as she did so. Fall was descending fast on the mountains, bringing relief to the practically scorched earth. Not so much for her. Between the early morning foggy cold and her well-developed irritation for the man she was meeting, she wasn’t happy about this little get-together in the slightest. Cresting the top of the hill, she found herself in a grove of trees, the canopy of leaves nearly black above her. It would probably be a nice place if the world’s largest pain in the ass wasn’t waiting for her in the one spot where the hazy light poked through.

“One of these days, I swear a sniper’s going to tag his stupid ass.” She stomped over, making enough noise to mimic a herd of horses running through. Not that the man even turned her way.