The Perfect Outsider (21 page)

“I don’t think she knows
how
to stop.”

Rafe nodded. “She needs help, Jesse. She needs someone to take over for her for a while, and insist she put her feet up.”

Jesse snorted. “Like June is going to allow anyone to take over and give orders.”

“Someone has to.” Rafe shook his head and picked up his bag. “I’ve told June to take it easy, but she’s dogged in her drive to help others. Sometimes I think she’s just as trapped by it all as the Devotees are by Samuel.”

“It’s because of her husband and child.”

“I know,” Rafe said. “And I get it. I’m just as driven to find my own son as she is to set right the perceived wrongs of her past.”

* * *

Emotion burned in Jesse’s chest as he watched the doctor go down the passage toward the utility room. Rafe had summed it up. He was a good man and an astute doctor. There were a lot of good people mixed up in this net of Samuel Grayson’s.

Jesse opened the door to June’s room.

“Hey,” he said gently.

She turned her head on the pillow away from him, and something dropped like a stone in his stomach.

He came up to the bed, sat down on the edge and tried to take her hand. She moved it away, still not looking at him. Eager, however, nuzzled against Jesse’s leg, clearly worried about his mistress. Jesse stroked his soft fur instead.

“Hawk Bledsoe has things under control,” he told her. “He’s hopeful he can get Lumpy to give him something on Samuel.”

She said nothing.

Exasperation, worry, whispered through him.

“June, we’re going to win this.”

She turned her head, looked at him. His heart sank at the pallor in her face, the vacancy in her eyes.

“We?” she said quietly.

“Yes, June. You and me.”

“You’re wet,” she said, looking a little confused again.

He snorted. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there, worse than the night you found me. June, listen—”

“Lacy and the twins, the baby?”

“They’re all fine. We saved
everyone
.”

Her eyes moistened and she bit her lip.

“June, I have something to tell—”

Hawk gave a knock and entered the room. Jesse cursed silently.

“You doing okay, June?” said the agent.

She nodded. “Thanks for coming, Hawk. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

He smiled as he came forward, his brown eyes guarded but friendly. The man exuded a cop’s air of authority and confidence.

“You can thank Jesse,” said Hawk. “Landlines and the cell tower went down in the storm. Jesse hiked down the south trail and came banging on our door at the ranch in the thick of it all. Carly drove him down to get Doc Black while we headed straight here using his GPS mapping.”

June frowned, glanced at Jesse. “
You
fetched Hawk?”

“Looks as though we might get Lumpy Smithers to turn on Mayor Rufus Kittridge and Monica Pearl in a plea bargain,” Hawk interjected. “Lumpy was close to Jason Barnes and he feels betrayed by Samuel wanting him to let Barnes die. If we can charge Kittridge and Pearl, Samuel’s two militia leaders, we might finally get something from them to pin on Samuel. It would help if we could locate Samuel’s twin, Micah. He was the one who started this ball rolling, saying he could help us take his brother down.”

“What happened to him?” asked Jesse.

Hawk gave a half shrug. “He vanished into thin air. No leads on him at all. Perhaps Samuel got to him first.”

“What about Molly Rigg?” June said, trying to edge herself higher up to sit back against the pillows.

“As tough-talking as that kid is, once we start interrogating her, I have a feeling she’s going to give.”

“Promise me you’ll allow Molly access to counseling, deprogramming, legal advice, before you interrogate her,” June said, and Jesse’s heart hurt for her—even in her weakened state she was still worried for others.

“Of course,” said Hawk. “I’ve seen firsthand with Mia what a cult can do to a loved one, and how deprogramming can work like a switch—I believe in what you do, June, can’t thank you enough, none of us can.”

“Did Sonya show you around the safe house?” said June.

“She did—I’m impressed. And from what Lumpy and Molly are saying, no one beyond the two of them now knows the location of the cave house—it’s still secure to the best of my knowledge.” He turned to Jesse, paused, a grave and businesslike look entering his already-serious features.

“When you’re ready, Jesse, we’ve got some procedural stuff to go through with you.”

Jesse nodded.

He’d shot and killed two men in self-defense since his arrival in Cold Plains. One of them was lying dead outside right now. There would be consequences that would need to be legally addressed, statements made and taken.

He waited for Hawk to exit, then he got up and closed the door, desperate for a moment of privacy with June.

“Jesse,” June said quietly, turning her head away from him as if she couldn’t bear even to look at his face. “I need to be alone.”

He came and sat back down on the bed beside her.

“Please,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere, June. Not anymore. I remembered. Everything.”

She turned her head, met his gaze.

“Everything?” she whispered.

“I know who I am, June.”

A nervousness crept into her eyes.

Emotion suddenly crackled hard and fierce into his chest, and he took her hand in his. “And I
know
there is a place in my life for you.”

Chapter 11

J
une met his gaze. His energy was palpable, his eyes fierce with a kind of fervor she’d not seen in him before, and she was suddenly afraid of what he was going to say. She’d wanted so desperately to allow herself to love him, but in taking the risk she’d seen just how raw she still was about loss, and how much she could still be hurt. June wasn’t sure she could ever give herself wholly over to someone again, or if she even wanted to try. The cost of losing again was too high for her.

“What do you mean, ‘a place in your life’?” Her voice came out hoarse. She felt shaky. Her shoulder throbbed. Part of her suddenly wanted to flee.

“June—” His hand tightened around hers—large, calloused, capable, protective. And threatening. Her pulse quickened and her skin felt hot.

“My name
is
Jesse—Jesse Grainger. I know weapons, wildlife, bears, because I work as a game warden in northwestern Wyoming. I came to Cold Plains because of a promise I made to my wife—”

“So you
are
married,” she said flatly, not wanting to hear more.

A muscle pulsed at his temple. Time seemed thick, slow. And June could see pain in his eyes. As exhilarated as he was in rediscovering who he really was, June could see the memories were not easy for him.

“I’m a widower, June.”

She stared at him, heart beginning to hammer.

“My wife, Annie, died from injuries sustained in a fire.”

“How?” she whispered.

He glanced away for a moment, and swallowed. June’s heart squeezed and she slid her hand along the bed, tentatively touching her fingertips to his thigh, just making the barest of physical connections, yet afraid, still, of what he was about to say, afraid to dare to believe. And hating herself for the whisperings of exhilaration she was beginning to feel in the face of his loss.

“I’d been doing some renos to our ranch house. I’d put in the wiring myself and there was a problem with the electrics. The wiring caught fire and the blaze spread very quickly through the house. Our son was sleeping in a room at the back of the house.” Jesse hesitated. “He…died in the fire.”

Her heart began to pound, loudly, in her ears, images of her own son drumming through her mind.

“Annie tried to save him, but couldn’t reach the room in time. Firefighters managed to pull her out of the house alive, but she succumbed to her injuries and died in the hospital two days later.”

“What was your son’s name?”

“Cameron. I was in the mountains when it happened. I was contacted via radio, and managed to make it back in time to be at Annie’s bedside when she passed.”

Silence trembled thickly in the air.

“I’m so sorry, Jesse.” June placed her hand on his thigh.

He sat still for a while, his pulse throbbing at his neck.

“When did this happen?”

“Four months ago.” He inhaled deeply. “The worst thing, June, is the guilt I feel for not having been there. That’s the guilt that has been dogging me even though I couldn’t recall why. I feel bad because of it. If I hadn’t been out in those mountains, I might’ve been able to save them. And I’m weighed down by the fact it was my wiring that started the fire. I killed them, June.”

“Jesse, you can’t blame yourself. You were doing your job—”

“I
can
blame myself. June, listen to me—” He put his head back and stared at the ceiling, as if gravity might hold back some of the emotion suddenly gleaming in his eyes.

“I had unresolved issues with Annie,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t found a way to love Cameron yet. I wasn’t even supposed to be in those mountains for so many days, weeks, months at a time. But I’d taken the warden job expressly to be away from Annie and the baby, from the ranch, to figure it all out. To find a way to deal with Annie’s infidelity and the fact that Cameron was probably not my child.”

“Oh, Jesse.” June pushed herself higher onto her pillows.

He leveled his gaze at her.

“I needed the time to decide whether I wanted to go the DNA–paternity test route, or just to accept and love Cameron as my own. It wasn’t his fault, and he was a beautiful child. But this idea of never knowing haunted me. And I couldn’t help thinking of what Annie had done to our marriage every time I looked at ‘our’ baby boy—he was fair with green eyes. Annie had blue eyes, like I do, and almost blue-black hair.” He swallowed. “In fact, I realize now that Darcy reminded me of Annie. I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me looking at her, why her affection for Rafe seemed to cut at me so badly. Why I envied their obvious love.”

“Tell me about Annie,” June said softly. “How did you meet her?”

He rubbed the dark stubble on his jaw. “Some years back, before I ever considered the game-warden position, I used to guide hunting trips on horseback. I’d take time out from my cattle ranch in the Wind River foothills—leave the place in the hands of a manager—and guide a few high-end trips each season. Annie came with her father from New York one year, and she fell in love with the mountains, with me. I think it was more the whole Wyoming-cowboy image that got her, the romance of the open sky, the big ranch, which has been in my family for four generations… Whatever it was, her attention was intoxicating… We married a year later and settled on the ranch. She kept up her freelance editing business, flying back to New York for business once or twice each year, in addition to other travel.” He paused.

“It worked well for a time, June—things were looking good. But then Annie met up with an old flame on a social-media site, someone she’d known from school who’d always had a thing for her. This guy flew down to see her, and they met at a town over, in a hotel bar. I learned from another rancher that she’d been seen there with a guy, and that they’d stayed overnight at the hotel together. I confronted her about it—it led to a terrible argument. Apparently they had hot monkey sex… She said it was a mistake, said she was sorry, wanted me to forgive her. She claimed it was a last-fling kind of thing, something she’d needed to get out of her system.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “I took it hard, June. It wasn’t so much a blow to my ego as the fact I’m a one-woman kinda guy. Commitment is huge to me. We battled along for some months, sidestepping each other. She grew unhappy. I was unhappy.” He stared at June’s hand on his jeans and the brackets around his mouth seemed to deepen, as did the lines around his eyes. June’s heart broke for him.

“I fell out of love,” he said quietly. “It was that simple, and that complicated. All the affection, the passion, just fizzled to nothing. It was a heavy time, and then came the news of her pregnancy. I figured the timing was such that it could’ve been from her night with her old flame. Annie said it wasn’t, but only a paternity test would prove either way. That’s when the job of game warden came up. It’s what I had trained for when I left school, back in the days when I was young and wild, and when I used to do things like steer-wrestling.” He smiled sadly, and June suddenly loved him, so wholly that it scared the crap out of her. She cleared her throat.

“So you took the warden’s job?”

He nodded. “Mostly because it took me away, out into the wilderness, alone, sometimes for weeks at a time. I wanted to think—just me, the horses, the mountains, the big skies. I wanted to find a way to forgive her, June. I
wanted
to love the baby as our own. But you know what really cut? I’d wanted kids, and every time I’d broached the issue, Annie had stalled, saying she wasn’t ready. And there she was, giving birth, caring for what was possibly another man’s son.” He swore softly. “It messed with my head.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t yours, Jesse?”

“Deep down, yeah, I was convinced Cameron wasn’t mine. I think I was just afraid to do a test because it would just prove it with finality, drive it home, and I’d have to deal with it. We’d both have to make decisions. If I didn’t do the test, I could still believe. There was still a chance. And that’s what I was trying to work through when news of the fire reached me.”

There was pain in his face, in the way he held his shoulders, in the corded muscles in his neck. And June understood—it was lack of closure. Because he hadn’t done the test, there would forever remain the chance his own son had perished in the fire. Closure was a tough nut to crack, and the need for it sometimes difficult to understand.

“You didn’t want to do a test…after?” she said.

He snorted softly. “Why? To make my grief worse? To mourn less for little Cameron because he wasn’t my blood? Knowing doesn’t diminish the fact a baby died.”

She placed her hand on his forearm where he’d rolled up his shirt. His skin was warm, his dark hair coarse, masculine.