Page 26 of Tracking Safety

“You’re hurt.” He reached toward her without thinking. But he stopped himself before he made contact. “Are you okay?”

She touched her forehead and looked at the blood on her fingers. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

She didn’t look fine.

He helped Jenna to her feet. Her whole body trembled, so he leaned her against his truck. He did one more scan but didn’t see any other danger lurking.

Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

His spine tightened.

Why had someone taken a shot today? Was it aimed at Jenna? At him? At both of them?

He wasn’t sure.

The Hardings had been making noise for months, mostly through legal channels. He could easily imagine Dale Harding deciding that pressure wasn’t working fast enough.

Then again, the Hendersons had never needed an excuse either. They were angrier and less strategic than the Hardings, and a stray shot on a Wednesday morning wasn’t out of the realm of possibility of something Travis Henderson might consider a reasonable escalation.

Luke looked at Jenna again. Her hands were knotted together in her lap, knuckles white.

Something in his chest went hard and still. He had to figure out what was going on here.

Jenna leaned against the truck and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

Her heart still hammered inside her. She felt the pulse in her throat, in her fingertips, in the cut above her eyebrow.

She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead and focused on the simple mechanics of breathing in and breathing out.

Luke reached for her arm.

His gaze paused on the exposed scar on her arm, and he frowned. “What happened?”

“It’s . . . it’s a long story.” This didn’t seem like the time or place to recap how she’d cut herself while working at a seedy diner.

Luke’s gaze held hers another moment, more questions lingering there.

At once she became all too aware of his hand on her arm. Just like old times, he already felt steady and warm as his fingers curved below her elbow.

He didn’t grip her hard. He simply anchored her.

As soon as the shot had rung out, he’d acted without hesitation. One second they’d been standing on the sidewalk drowning in unsaid conversation. The next his hand was on her arm, and he’d put himself between her and danger.

Jenna hadn’t expected that. She didn’t know why she hadn’t expected it.

This was exactly who Luke was. But something about his protectiveness had cut straight through the fear and adrenaline and landed somewhere deeper.

He was the only person who’d ever made her feel truly safe. She’d known that when she married him, and she’d carried the memory with her like an open wound since she left him in the middle of the night.

Jenna had told herself she’d gotten used to the absence of the security she’d once felt.

She hadn’t. She’d just gotten better at not thinking about it.

Whatever happened from here—whatever Luke heard when she finally told him the truth, whatever he decided—she’d given up the right to this a long time ago.

She wasn’t going to think about that right now.

“Hey.” Luke shifted to look at her, though his eyes kept moving back to the street. “You with me?”