Looks like for once, I was right. I should have stayed the hell away from Jeremiah Long.
And told my brother to go to hell!
CHAPTER 4
Jeremiah
Slipping out the door, I stalk through the fading light. The mists on the mountain today are hiding a helluva lot.
Like how my heart pounds looking at her sitting there in pain and bloodied, dirty and yet so damn pretty that it makes my teeth ache from gritting them to keep from reaching out to pull her to me.
I have no business thinking thoughts like that. Not since I up and left ten years ago.
I knew she’d never leave me though. She needed to go. Needed to find something good for her, something to make her proud of herself.
Something that wasn’t a broken-down, has-been soldier with scars inside and out.
A man that woke up in the middle of the night screaming for his buddies. Screaming at remembered pain.
Screaming at the sad damn injustice of it all. That they were gone and I was still here. Still fighting my way out of the fog of war and shakily making my own way out here.
I bought my cabin and fixed it up, adding to the space and then getting solar panels on the roof, giving me a source of electricity that it didn’t have.
Then I made sure that the set-up would completely supply what I needed. And I put together a water system that was simple yet complex.
One that allowed me to have fresh water for my shower all the time. One that made sure I was as comfortable as possible.
All these little things I really thought that I did for me and now I’m not so sure.
Because she fucking looks right here. Like she belongs. To me, to the space.
To the future.
And that can’t fucking be right. Because she belongs with a man who’s not fighting demons all night. A man that can’t hear a fucking car horn go off without cringing and freezing like a little whipped puppy.
Yeah, she deserves a lot more than that. But from the looks of it, it isn’t what she found. I can see it in her sad, angry eyes. The ice in them locked in a frozen stare.
She’s hiding from something…running. And if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a man.
Which means that some fucker out there that she loved and trusted, and don’t that make me feel like hurting somebody, hurt her bad.
I want to punch a tree. Hunt him down and teach him in the worst way possible that he’s a complete fuck-up and he let the best thing he could ever have get away from him.
But one day he’ll know. He’ll realize that he did the unthinkable and let the love of his life get away and it will hurt so much more than anything I could do to him.
I know. I’ve already lived with the same thought.
“Slow down, Linc,” I grumble when the fucker goes chasing after some sound that only he hears. “We’re not hunting right now. Just slow the fuck down.”
But he doesn’t and I curse under my breath, swinging my long legs faster, trying to make sure I don’t lose the son of a bitch.
“You need better training, dammit! I knew that guy that said you were already trained was full of shit. That and the shots and everything else was just too much to ask for what he wanted. Lying sack of shit.”
Not that it really matters. I can train him. It’s just frustrating when someone lies to you.
Like she is. Saying she doesn’t hurt. Saying she’s alright.
I finally reach the drop-off and eye the car down the hill. Picking up my SAT phone, I call the Sheriff’s office.
