Page 146 of Weight of Guilt

They went through that door and didn’t come back out.

Chapter

Sixty-Nine

An hour later, the place had transformed, Wren mused.

Deputies moved in and out of the house. An ambulance sat crooked in the drive with its back doors open.

Cody had arrived somewhere in the middle of it all.

He sat on the grass with Mason pulled against his chest, one hand cradling the back of their son’s head.

Wren stopped for a second and watched them. Mason was safe. He would be okay. That was what mattered. The rest of this mess could be sorted out later.

Her son was pale and shaken, but he was talking. When Cody loosened his grip long enough for a paramedic to check him over, Mason complained that the blood pressure cuff squeezed too hard.

Such a normal complaint.

Wren nearly cried from relief. She desperately wanted normal right now.

Her gaze wandered across the yard to Nash.

He stood several feet from the ambulance, one hand braced against his hip. Someone had cleaned the blood from his face, but a cut remained near his mouth, and his shirt was torn at the shoulder.

More than that, something in his expression bothered her. Was that grief? Guilt? Anger? A mixture of all of them?

She stepped toward him. “Nash? What’s wrong?”

His gaze went toward the house, and he frowned. “They’re working on Jacob.”

“How bad is it?”

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It could go either way right now.”

Wren’s stomach tightened.

Nash stared toward the ambulance. “I don’t even know whose hand was on the trigger when it went off.”

“You were protecting us.”

His jaw flexed.

“Nash.” Wren stepped closer. “It was self-defense.”

“I know. At least, logically, I know that. Emotionally . . . that’s a different story.”

Wren followed his gaze toward the house and understood how the whole incident that had just played out was too similar to the incident that had put a bullet in his knee.

“If Jacob dies, we may never know everything.” Nash looked at her, a war going on in his gaze. “The answers will die with him.”

“I know.” She swallowed. “There are still a hundred questions.”

“At least.”

Wren glanced back toward Mason. He was sitting beside Cody now, letting the paramedic shine a light into his eyes. Cody kept one hand firmly on his shoulder.

“But we have Mason,” she whispered. “We got him back. Whatever happens with Jacob, whatever we don’t know, whatever we might never know . . . Mason is here.”