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“Thanks for being here, Nathan. But you don’t need to hold my hand. Don’t you need to get out there and help find Leif before he kills someone else?” She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh.
The tears welled again but didn’t overflow. She was a special agent. A professional. But first responders and special agents could get emotional too.
Nathan touched her arm. “I’m right where I need to be. Take a deep breath. Jack wouldn’t want you to go into shock over this. As I mentioned earlier, the sheriff called in for assists from the state. Two additional counties. I think they can spare me. He’s my friend too, Terra. We go rock climbing now and then.”
A chuckle escaped. “I’m glad he has a friend like you then.”
His eyes met hers. “He’s going to make it. He was shot before, you know, back with the FBI.”
“I heard about that. But not much. What happened to him?” Her question was barely a whisper.
“I don’t know the whole story. Maybe he’ll tell you. I think he nearly died, but he saved a woman and took down a big human-trafficking ring.”
Her heart pounded. “Jack did?” She thought she knew the woman—if it was Rae Burke.
He leaned closer. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that. I asked him about it, and he didn’t say much. But since he came from the FBI, some of what happened got out. Word got around. He’s private about it.”
Nathan frowned as he stared at his cup.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
“Jack will tell you what he wants you to know.”
Did that mean Nathan knew something he wasn’t free to share?
“Back there, he called me Sarah,” she said. “He didn’t recognize me. He was seeing Sarah. That nearly broke my heart that he would see his dead cousin.”
Nathan cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “I just ... I thought you’d want to know that he’s a hero. And more than that, he’s a survivor.”
Terra stared across the room at an elderly couple getting coffee. A survivor. Yes. She’d known that, given his background. And now she thought she better understood why he’d left her. That day she had thought he would propose but instead disappeared and walked out on their possible future together.
That day, Jack had been doing what he needed to do.
Jack had been surviving.
