Risk: A Military Stepbrother Bad Boy Romance (17 page)

DAMIEN

“Beer?” Christina asked, coming out of her kitchenette. I sat on the couch in her small, student apartment, my bags surrounding me. I shrugged and held up my hand. She tossed it to me and I caught it, cracking it open, emptying it into my mouth. God, but that felt good.

“What a fucking mess, you two…” she muttered, getting one for herself. “Well, I guess it is what it is.”

“That’s right. It is what it is.”

“I’ve been needing to talk to Sarah,” Christina continued, taking a seat on the couch with me. She paused, looking pensive for a few moments before catching my eye and looking at me hard and deep.

“Has she ever told you about Kayla? About our mom?”

I furrowed my brow.

“No… Not really. I mean, she mentioned once that she had died in a car accident. And I knew that, of course. When my mom married Harry back in the day…”

I paused, thinking back, back to those early days—back before I really knew the Logans, knew what the hell was going on with these people… Before I knew what a toxic prison Laramie was.

“Yeah, no one really talked about it back then, did they?”

“That’s exactly right,” Christina growled. “And I think that’s because Harry had mom killed.”

My eyes widened. Whatever I had been expecting, it sure as hell wasn’t that.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I remember them arguing once, when I was younger. Mom had figured some things out—Harry was doing some consulting on the side for Oliver Richards, the chief of police. But she thought dad… Harry… was actually cooking the books for Richards. Helping him embezzle money from the town through the police department.”

“Shit.”

“Right. And I remember mom and Harry… They weren’t screaming at each other, like they usually did. No, they were… Talking quietly, but with so much more… God, Damien, I don’t know—it seemed like this life or death thing.”

“And you think it was… About that?”

“Yeah, I remember overhearing mom say some things… About how he was bleeding the town dry, about how she couldn’t keep quiet—about how she would go to the paper about it.”

“And what did Harry say?” I asked, almost afraid to find out as I sipped my cold beer, terrified in retrospect, even though the deed, the crime, it was all already committed…

“He said she might have an accident. That he couldn’t protect her. That he didn’t want to protect her.”

“God.”

“I could see the tears brimming in Christina’s eyes.

“I know. I know. It’s fucked up.”

“I mean…” I said carefully. “Is there anything you’re trying to do about it? Can you… Shit, I don’t know. Get the FBI involved?”

“Actually, yeah, that’s the plan. But I don’t have the evidence I need. Not yet, at least.”

She bit her lip.

“Really, what I need is to get into dad… Harry’s study. His locked files. I’d need Sarah to swipe the key.”

“Based on what she was saying, I don’t know if she’d be up for it,” I said darkly.

“I know. She’s always had trouble going against Harry. Even though she hates him just as much as I do.”

She looked at me carefully, cocking her head.

“As we do.”

I smiled.

“You’ve got that part right, at least. I hate the son of a bitch.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that you cracked him one upside the head,” Christina said, returning my grim smile.

“What about this, instead—if we can’t get at Harry’s files, what if we got at Richards’ files?”

“I mean, sure, that’d be great—but that seems like it’d be even harder than getting Sarah to rat on her own father.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Richards’ son owes me one. And he’s none too happy with his dad right now.”

“What do you mean? Teddy? That brain dead jock?” Christina asked, frowning.

“You’d be surprised. He just came out to his parents. His dad kicked him out of the house and he’s staying with his aunt now.”

Christina’s eyes widened.

“Shit. That’s… Wow.”

“Right. And if we could get him to go over to the police station—I bet he could get into his dad’s office. I mean, not if his dad were there, but maybe the other cops would let him in—I bet you they don’t know what’s happened. I bet you they think everything’s fine and dandy at the Chief’s home. Wouldn’t be nothing strange about the Chief’s boy coming in to grab something his daddy forgot at work.”

“That’s right…” Christina said. “Goddamn, that might just work. Can you talk to Teddy?”

“Sure thing. Kid owes me a few favors at this point.”

“It seems a lot of people in this town are starting to owe you favors.”

“Well, I’d rather just not be in this goddamned town to begin with,” I said with a scowl. “But I’ll take the favors if I can get them.”

“Dakota might also be up to get into Harry’s study too,” Christina murmured, sitting back in her chair. “The only thing is—Oliver and Harry, they’ve got a reputation for violence when things don’t go their way.”

“Well, so do I.”

Christina smiled.

“I guess it’s good to have a former Marine on your side.”

“Ain’t no such thing,” I said standing up as I felt my phone start to vibrate. I plucked it out of my pocket. “Once a Marine, always a Marine. I’ve met a couple other guys in town I think would help us out in a pinch too—if we need to, we’ll go to war.”

I looked down at the screen. It was Dakota. What the hell was she calling me for?

“Hello?” I asked, answering and mouthing the words “It’s Dakota” to Christina, who nodded knowingly.

“Damien,” Dakota’s voice came. Instead of calm and collected or, as it had been before, drunk and defiant, she was sobbing now, her voice shaking. “Damien, Damien, Damien… It’s Sarah.”

My blood froze in my veins and I felt a deep pit of anxiety build in my gut.

“Sarah? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“She tried to kill herself…” Dakota sobbed.

“What?!”

“Damien, she overdosed on pills and… and… I called an ambulance but she wasn’t breathing and she hit her head…” she sobbed.

“Okay, okay, calm down. Calm down. Where are you now?”

“I’m at the hospital. Will you come? Will you bring Christina?”

“Sure thing,” I grunted. I felt my blood boiling, where once it had been cold. Those were my instincts at work—ready to fight, to take action. “We’re on our way.”

I clicked the phone silent and turned to Christina’s deathly pale face.

“What… What happened?” she murmured, barely able to meet my eyes.

“It’s Sarah. She tried to off herself. Dakota found her and called an ambulance. They’re at the hospital now.”

I saw Christina’s face crack.

“God, no…” she whimpered. “First mom and now Sarah…”

“Come on. We’ve got to go. I’ll drive,” I said, grabbing her trembling hands and pulling her to her feet, as we descended the stairs of her building, down to my car, and off to the hospital.

As in combat, I didn’t think about anything. Nothing at all, nothing besides the mission.

On some level, it was good, good to have a mission once more. It made me feel in control. It helped me to know what I was doing, where I was going.

And it helped me to put off feeling anything for another time.

SARAH

I awoke with a shuddering, gasping breath as air was forced into my lungs.

Somewhere, deep with in the back of my brain, I had been aware of this air, the way the machine forced it deep into my lungs, over and over. The stale, plastic-tasting air invaded my lips and flowed down, into my body—it had been a staple in the dark, twisted dreams I had, dreams that remained just out of reach of my waking mind as my brain re-adjusted to the light around me—the optic white of the hospital room, the sunlight shining through the windows…

And the worried, concerned faces looking down at me.

“There she is,” someone’s unfamiliar voice said. “Eyes open. Sarah. Sarah Logan. Hey, honey—good morning.”

I turned my head. It ached. My skull throbbed. I remembered vaguely the experience of hitting my head on something. Yeah, that had really sucked.

“Where am I?” I tried to ask, but there were tubes in my mouth and it just came out like a series of guttural gasps.

“You’re in a hospital, sweetheart,” the doctor—a middle-aged woman with crows-feet by her eyes that seemed to smile whenever she did—said, leaning over me. “Everything is okay. You gave everyone a real scare.”

I tried to sit up but she gently, though firmly, pressed me back down.

“No, honey—now is the time to rest. You’re in no condition to be sitting up.”

But I wanted to sit up and so I tried again.

“Sarah, listen to the doctor,” a cold, tired voice said. My eyes darted over and I saw Damien, hunched over, a day’s stubble on his cheeks. Bags hung under his eyes. God, how long had he been sitting there?

“Damien…” my lips mouthed. It was only then that I realized how chapped they were, how dry my mouth was.

“It’s okay. Just relax,” he whispered. I felt tears start to fall from my eyes. I squeezed them shut, trying to stop the crying, trying to stop everything, but there was nothing I could do. I was crying, and crying hard, gagging on the tubes in my mouth, in my nose, in my lungs.

“It’s okay, Sarah, it’s okay…” someone else was saying. It was Christina. Next to her, rubbing her eyes, just awoken, was Dakota. And Maria. Everyone was here.

Not my dad, of course. But everyone else.

“I’m sorry…” I tried to mouth to everyone but Damien gently pressed his finger to my lips.

“It’s okay. We’re just glad you’re alive.”

Those words cut me deep. I hated the sound of it. Hated the knowledge of what I had done, what I had put them through.

The others stepped out of the room to talk to the doctor. I could hear, only vaguely, what they discussed—something about my vitals, something about my heart-rate and my breathing and my liver… It all sounded fine, though maybe it wasn’t—I had trouble concentrating.

“You really had us going there for a second,” he said with a grim smile. I reached out, took his hand, squeezed it. “You can definitely be a crazy bitch when you want to be. I’ll give you that.”

I forced a weak smile, squeezing his hand once more.

“Sarah, listen,” he said softly. “I’ve been talking to Christina. You know what about.”

What? What could they have been talking about?

Oh, of course. What has obsessed Christina for the past few years?

Mom. Dad. And what happened that night when her car skidded off the road and into a tree. And the ambulance didn’t make it out there for hours, even though it was just a mile or two outside of town.

“We’re going to go and get evidence and figure this out once and for all. If we do, then there’s a chance that your father—Harry—is going to go to jail.”

He took a deep breath.

“You can be free of him, Sarah. But I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. It’s up to you. Say the word, though, and I swear to god—I’ll destroy him.”

I tried to say something, but the tubes prevented. Damien found himself grinning over me.

“I guess you can’t say much of anything, can you? How about thumbs up for yes and thumbs down for no?”

I gave him a thumbs up. I reached my fingers to my lips, and then pressed them to his. He smiled. I loved that smile. I could drown in that smile—what a sweeter death that would have been than the one I had planned for myself…

“All right. That’s my girl,” he said with a smile.