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Hopefully, one day, Maria would see it the same way.
Lucas suspected she would. Already she had strangled her sudden scream once she realized that the fateful shot came from the direction of her fiancé, her friends, and her brother, Maria didn’t even spare another look back as she half walked-half ran toward them.
Bursting from the trees, Lucas went running toward his sister.
Her blue eyes filled with tears when she saw that Lucas was there, too, but as much as he was devoted to Maria, he didn’t mind one bit when she crumbled into Sly’s arms.
Lucas was her brother. Sylvester Collins was the man she loved more than anyone, and her refuge from whatever she had gone through the last few days.
He wanted to know. Just because Boone was dead, that didn’t mean that Lucas didn’t need to know what the bastard had done to his sister. He knew better than to push her, though, and accepted the fact that it might take a while before she was in the right space both mentally and physically to relive her time in captivity.
By the time Lucas reached them, Maria was weeping softly, squeezing the sheriff so tightly, he’d be bruised come morning.
But instead of accepting the comfort her fiancé was offering her, Maria—her olive-skin tone wan, dark circles beneath her blue eyes, her hair greasy and plastered to her neck, her cheeks sunken in—was trying to tell Sly something between her tears.
At first, Sly tried to calm her. There would be time to talk later, he said—but when Maria insisted there was something he needed to know, Sly went up in Lucas’s estimation as he pulled back his own overprotective side and said, “Of course. Tell me. Tell me anything you want.”
She nodded her head a few times, bobbing it as though trying to get the words out. “It wasn’t just Boone,” she finally said. “It… there were two of them.”
Lucas figured as much.
There was only way he could think to catch his sister’s attention. Though he worked hard to erase his accent, and banished his parents’ language a long time ago, he found it easy to grasp it and, in Italian, asked her, “Who was it?”
Her head lifted from Sly’s shoulder, meeting Lucas’s steely gaze. He saw strength reflected back in hers and knew that, while it would take time, Maria would get over this, too.
Just like she did Mack Turner.
“Maria.Dimmi.”
She shuddered out a breath. “Si, Lucas. But I… I can’t say for sure,” she said, answering English, “but I really think that it could’ve been Mason.”
Lucas felt that name like a kick in the gut.
Sly, meanwhile, rubbed her back. “It couldn’t be. He’s still awaiting trial at Montgomery, sweetheart. We’ll find out who else did this to you, but I really don’t think it could be Mason—”
“Mason,” interrupted Kade. He had Sly’s sniper rifle strapped to his back, stalking forward with the sort of strut that told everyone gathered that he was damn proud for being the one to take out Boone like that. His face, though, was twisted into a look of confusion. “Did you just say ‘Mason’?”
Sly nodded. Tucking Maria against his side, as though he’d never feel comfortable letting her go again, he stuck out his hand. Kade took it absently, shaking the sheriff’s hand, but when Sly started to thank him for taking the shot, he brushed him off.
Lucas’s impression of the former outsider P.I. turned deputy wasn’t that he was the type of man to turn away any sort of praise. If he did a good job, he expected recognition for it.
Strange, he thought, that he wouldn’t for planting a bullet in Boone’s skull like that… until he said something that had Lucas’s heart just about stopping inside of his chest.
“No, Sly, listen. You, too, Dr. De Angelis. I just got a page from your wife. Tessa, I think. She was looking for you and, I swear to God, I heard her say the name ‘Mason’ before the line went dead. I tried to buzz her back on the same line that called out, but it wouldn’t go through.”
“When?” asked Lucas. “When was this?”
“Like three minutes ago? Four? I shouldered the rifle, put my radio back on my belt, and climbed down the tree before coming right over her. So as long as that took, I guess.”
The world seemed to slow down around Lucas as he thought about what Kade had just told him.
In the distance, Natalie was jogging toward them. He saw her blonde ponytail standing out in the yellow moonlight; the hood that covered it before had fallen, leaving her pale face and paler hair out in the open. From another direction, there came the red-haired, freckle-faced Oliver boy. In his early twenties now, a deputy and no longer a boy, Lucas remembered treating him for broken bones not that long ago.
They must have came out of their hiding spots, too. Grace was wrapped up in Rick’s arm, the two of them oblivious of the bombshell that Kade had unknowingly dropped on Lucas.
Sly was saying something. Lucas couldn’t be sure if he was talking to him, to Kade, or even to Maria… but it didn’t matter.
He thought this was over when he got his sister back. Maybe it was. She was safe, even if she wasn’t sound, and knowing that Boone could never hurt her again did a little to soothe the fury Lucas hid behind a calm and icy exterior.
