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It was absolutely the most inappropriate thing to do in the middle of a crime scene, but his heart rate was coming back down. He had sensation back in his hands, and he latched on to Jocelyn as though he’d lose this grasp in the present if he didn’t. The helplessness consuming him from the inside crawled back into the dark void he’d walled away. Until there was nothing left but her.
She settled back onto her heels, a direct mirror of his position on the floor. Her exhale brushed the underside of his jaw, and that simple rush to his senses was all it took. Jocelyn’s eyes bounced between both of his, concern and fear and something like affection spiraling in the depths. “You with me?”
“Yeah.” Baker tightened his hold on her vest. Because she was the only real thing he had. “I’m with you.”
Chapter Five
Well, wasn’t that just the milk to her cookies?
Jocelyn pried her grip from Baker’s uniform collar and put a bit of distance between them. She’d kissed him, and in the moment, it’d been all she could think of to snap him out of whatever he’d been reliving. But now... Now there was a pressure in her chest reminding her that everything she touched died. House plants. Friendships. Her husband.
Shame burned through her as she tried to smooth the imprints of her hold from the fabric of his uniform. “I’m sorry. I...didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t answering, and I thought—”
“It’s okay.” Baker seemed to come back to himself then, but she couldn’t help but wonder if his mind would pull him back into that terrifying void with the slightest reminder of what he’d been through.
She’d always known people who’d survived trauma—in war, in their own homes, as children or adults—could be caught in the suffocating spiral of PTSD, but the chief of police had never crossed her mind. And now his assumption that she suffered from post-traumatic stress made sense. It wasn’t one of his deputies he’d been talking about who experienced nerve-wracking flashbacks. It washim. And she’d dragged him straight into a similar scene to what he’d witnessed.
“I shouldn’t have brought you back here,” she said.
He was still holding on to the shoulders of her vest. Gauging his surroundings, Baker finally let go. Yet he struggled to stay on his feet. Stable but weak. As though the past had taken everything he had left for itself. “I’m fine. It hasn’t happened in a while. It just caught me off guard.”
She reached out, resting her hand on his arm. She’d seen physical contact work in the field before. “If you need to wait in the car, I can go through—”
“I’m not leaving.” There was a violence in his voice she hadn’t heard until then. Just as she’d responded to him after he’d touched her mouth. It was reflected in his eyes as he seemed to memorize the scene around them. “I can do this.”
Shame, guilt, helplessness—it all echoed through her just as it did him, and Jocelyn backed off. His response made sense. Fellow soldiers who’d lived through what could only be described as the worst days of their lives on tour kept going back, comforted by the very horrors that had scarred and disconnected them. Baker wouldn’t admit defeat to the ambushing sights, sounds and smells in his head. No matter how unhealthy or unexpected. Because without them, he had nothing.
They were similar in that respect, and her heart wanted to fix it. To make everything better. But she couldn’t even help herself. How was she supposed to help him?
“Okay.” Jocelyn swiped clammy hands down her pants. It’d been jarring and terrifying to see a man as confident and driven as Baker shut down right in front of her, but deep down she knew he wouldn’t let it affect this investigation. The marshal had given them ten minutes inside the scene. She wasn’t sure how much time they had left. They had to keep moving. “I’ll see what I can find around the evidence closet.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. The hollow floor threatened to collapse from her added weight, but she kept to the path that the bomb squad had charted.
“Jocelyn, hold on.” His hand encircled her arm, and she turned into him, though not out of some fight-or-flight instinct she didn’t have control over. Because she wanted to. The flashlight beam cut across the floor from where he’d dropped it a few minutes ago, casting his expression in a white-washed glow. “I...”
Words seemed to fail him then. This man who fought for everyone in this town but himself. He didn’t have to say the words. Despite the distance they’d kept lodged between themselves and the rest of the world, invisible connections were forged through survival. That was what they’d done today. Survived. And in that single act, she found herself more in line with Baker than she’d thought possible.
“I know. It’s okay.” She tried to put that smile back in place. The one that could save the world, according to her husband. No matter what had been going on in their lives or how bad the pain had gotten from treatment, all he’d needed was that smile. And in the end, it was all he’d asked for, according to his nurses. But she hadn’t been there.
The muscles around her mouth wavered. “We’re all just trying to navigate the same road to healing,” she said. “Every once in a while, we take a wrong turn or end up going in reverse. But that’s why I’m glad you’re here with me, in the passenger seat. Helping me navigate.”
She slipped free of his hold, almost desperate to prove she could be his navigator in turn. That she could find something—anything—in this mess to give him some sense of peace. Squaring her shoulders, Jocelyn kept to the perimeter of where the blast had originated.
The bomb squad most assuredly had been through all of this. They would’ve spent hours trying to piece the device back together to identify its creator through a signature or fingerprint. But everything else would’ve had to wait. She took in the outline of the hole blasted through the far wall and low corner of what used to be a closet. The moments leading up to the blast played out as clearly as if they’d happened mere minutes ago, rather than hours.
Maverick had sniffed out the bomb’s components in a box stacked at the back of a bottom shelf. It’d been a clever hiding place. But why there? “The evidence room.”
“What did you say?” Baker kept his footsteps light as he carved a path through the makeshift kitchenette.
“Ponderosa’s chief of police—Trevino—was killed with a bomb strapped to the underside of his pickup truck. There was no doubt that whoever set the device had targeted him. His wife had her own vehicle, and their kids were raised and grown. Moved out of state to start their own families.” Her mouth couldn’t keep up with her theory—as it did sometimes when her mind raced ahead in a recipe she’d memorized but her hands didn’t work that fast. “The device from this morning was planted here. In the station. Where anyone could walk in.”
He closed the distance between them, his arm making contact with the back of her vest. Just the slightest pressure, but enough to elicit a response. “You and Jones were convinced the bombing was meant for me. Now you’re saying it wasn’t?”
“Did you see the device this morning?” she asked.
Baker stilled, his gaze narrowing as she practically watched him replay the events of the day. There was still a hint of sweat at his temple. Evidence the tin man was all too human. “No. Maverick was in the way. He was sniffing around...an evidence box.”
“It was on the bottom shelf. You remember?” She tried coming up with the case numbers marked on the outside, but there were still gaps in her memory from when her head had been lodged at the far wall. “Albuquerque’s bomb squad is working off our assumption the device was meant for you. They’ll put everything into putting what they can find of the bomb back together, but what if it was actually planted to destroy whatever was in that box? To stop a case from moving forward?” Her voice hitched with excitement. “Think about it. There are countless other places they could’ve set that bomb to get to you. Why would they purposely choose a box stashed on the bottom shelf of the evidence room unless they wanted to make sure no one could put the pieces back together?”
