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She wanted to argue, but being inside the too-small tent packed with cops was getting to her. Cold air worked into her lungs once outside, but she couldn’t distract her body from focusing on the throbbing in her shoulder.
Baker set his hand against her lower back, guiding her roughly ten feet from the men waiting for her confirmation that they’d recovered every piece of the bomb that’d brought down the compound on top of Alpine Valley. He pulled out a bright orange, cylindrical container with a white top from his front pocket. “Here. I had Jones grab your pain meds from the car.”
Twisting off the cap with his palm, he dragged one of the pills inside free and offered it to her.
Every nerve in her body went on the defense. She took a physical step back. “I told you I didn’t want it.”
“You’d rather be in debilitating pain while we’re here?” He countered her escape, keeping his voice low enough so as not to be overheard by anyone else. “Not sure you noticed, but if you weren’t talking to me right now, I’d think you were dead you’re so pale. You’re having trouble focusing, and you just bit off the head of the guy running this investigation.”
She couldn’t take her attention off the pill in his hand.
“Joce, everyone in that tent knows you were shot,” he said. “None of them are going to think any less of you for taking the edge off.”
She shook her head. She could hardly breathe. “I can’t.”
“What is this? Some kind of punishment for what happened?” Confusion and a heavy dose of frustration had Baker dropping the pain med back into the container. He screwed the top on. “For not being there when your husband died? Is that it? You’ve convinced yourself you deserve to suffer? You were shot and stabbed by a piece of debris, for crying out loud. I’d say that’s enough penance to last a lifetime.”
The pain burned through her, and no amount of distraction was taking it away. Jocelyn headed across the cleanup site, the sound of Maverick’s dog tags in her ears. Her shepherd knew she was on the brink of going over the edge. “No. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” Baker followed. “Tell me.”
She turned on him. There was no hiding it. Not anymore. “I’m a recovering addict.”
ANADDICT.
Baker didn’t know what to say to that, what tothink.
He tightened his grip on the medication bottle, his hand slick with sweat. “I don’t...” Clearing his throat, he tried to get his head back into the game. “I don’t understand. You were on morphine in the medical unit after what happened up there. You didn’t say anything.”
Jocelyn released her hold on her shoulder, trying to make it look as though nothing got to her. She had a habit of doing that. Pretending. “Dr. Piel doesn’t know my medical history. The nurses at the clinic that first time we were caught in the bombing at the police station had my chart. They knew not to put me on anything stronger than ibuprofen.”
“You’re going to have to start from the beginning.” Baker found himself backing up, adding more than a couple of feet between them. “Because what you’re saying right now doesn’t make sense.”
“What more is there to explain?” Her expression fell into something that could only be categorized as hollowness. As though she’d told this story so many times, she’d disassociated from the emotional toll it took. Though from what she’d just said, not everybody knew. “I lost my husband, Baker. I blamed myself for not being there in his final moments. I was getting messages from his friends, his family, calls from his doctor—all asking me why I wasn’t there. Because all he’d wanted in his final moments was for me to be by his side, and I let him down.”
Baker tried to swallow past the swelling in his throat, but there was no point. “So when you said you got sick after his death, you meant...”
“The pain hurt so much. I tried everything I could think of to make it stop, but nothing worked. The grief was crushing me, and I didn’t know what else to do.” The heartache was still pressing in on her. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she practically crumpled in on herself. “One night it got so bad, I thought I might hurt myself, but I found Miles’s old pain meds in the bathroom cabinet. I took one.” Her voice evened out. “All it took was one.”
“You started taking the pills more often.” Baker studied the orange pill bottle in his hand right there in the middle of what was left of his town. He’d responded to overdoses of all kinds while working this job. Mothers who’d only wanted to be able to do it all with a touch of ecstasy. Teens who started sniffing coke in the back seat of the bus on the way to school to fit in with their peers. A middle schooler who’d binged two bottles of cough medicine to get drunk. Sangre por Sangre had made it all possible—easier—to drag an ordinary life through the mud. And it turned out, he’d been partnered with an addict all this time. Bringing his gaze back to hers, he pocketed the pills, just in case the sight of them was enough to trigger something compulsive in her. “How did you stop?”
“I didn’t. At least not before it got worse.” Sweat slipped from her hairline. One push. That was all it’d take, and she’d collapse from the pain. How the hell was she still standing there as though she could take on the world? “The pills ran out. I went to my doctor. He wouldn’t help me. Neither would any of the others. The military discharged me under honorable conditions, but I couldn’t face the truth—that I was alone. So I did what I thought I had to at the time.”
His heart threatened to beat straight out of his chest. Baker licked at dry lips, but it didn’t do a damn bit of good. Because he knew what was coming next. “You found something stronger to replace the pills.”
“I convinced myself I could handle it.” She dropped her chin to her chest, shutting him out. “It was supposed to be a temporary fix, but the longer I used, the more I realized I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to hurt every time I walked through the door or thought about my husband. I don’t really remember a whole lot during that time, but it got bad enough no one—not even my friends, my unit or my family—could help.”
Jocelyn seemed to let go of something heavy, as though the rain were washing away the weight she’d carried. She stepped toward him. “But I’m in recovery now. I got myself into NA. I have a sponsor I check in with. I’ve been clean for over a year. It’s...hard. Especially when I’m injured in the field, but I don’t want to go back to being numb, Baker. I don’t. And with you, I finally feel like I can leave that part of me behind. That there’s more to my life than my mistakes.”
A thousand questions rushed to the surface, but all he focused on was the hollowness in his chest. There were a limited number of organizations where she could’ve gotten drugs like the ones she’d talked about, and the entire town of Alpine Valley had slowly been dying because of one of them. “Where did you get the drugs?”
That shadow of enthusiasm and hope—nothing like when he’d first met her—drained from her expression. “Why does that matter?”
“I think you know why it matters, Jocelyn,” he said.
Understanding cemented her expression in place. “Seems like you already know the answer you’re looking for.”
“From a cartel.” He couldn’t believe this. All this time, he’d trusted her to be on his side of the fight, but she’d kept a major part of her life out of the equation. Lied to him. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into one of these houses and found a kid barely breathing because of the crap he put in his arm or describe how many babies will have serious complications throughout their lives because their mothers won’t look at the people they really are in the mirror. And now you’re telling me you’re one of them.”
