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Heavy footsteps registered, breaking her out of her thoughts. One of the most dangerous places to be. Cash Meyers—Socorro’s forward observer—angled into the kitchen, dusted with red dirt. He’d been in town again, helping rebuild the homes Sangre por Sangre had destroyed in their last raid. She could see it in the bits of sawdust on his shoulder.
He nodded at her in the way most of the men on the team did, his chin hiking slightly upward. “Heard you saw some fireworks this morning.”
“Quite the show, for sure.” Her phone vibrated from the inside of her cargo pants, but she wasn’t ready to leave the protective walls of the kitchen. To acknowledge there was an entire world out there. This was where she thrived. Where nothing existed past the buzz of her stand mixer, the radiant heat of the oven and timers beeping in her ears. Jocelyn stuck the end of her spoon through the softening combination of butter, flour, sugar and cranberries. “Got a souvenir, too. Unfortunately, they made me hand it over to the bomb squad. Otherwise I’d put it on my bookshelf.”
“You’re sick, Carville.” Cash wrenched the refrigerator open and grabbed a bottle of water. In less than thirty seconds, he downed the entire thing. Then he tossed the bottle into the recycling bin—her initiative—and leveled that remarkably open gaze on her. It was the little changes like that Jocelyn had noted over the past couple of months. Ever since Cash had taken up with his client. Elena. She’d done something to him. Made him as soft as this cookie dough to the point that he wasn’t entirely annoying to be around. “You good?”
“I’m good.” What other answer could she possibly give? That the pain in her side was the only thing keeping her from running back into the numbness she’d relied on before she’d come to Socorro? That the mere notion of painkillers threatened to drop her back into a vicious cycle that absolutely terrified her? Cash Meyers wasn’t the person nor the solution she needed right then. Nobody on her team fit the bill. After loading her spoon into the dishwasher, she topped off the Tupperware and set it back in the fridge. “Tell Elena I’ll drop off a batch tomorrow. I know she and Daniel really like my peanut butter cookies.”
She moved past Cash and into the hallway. Air pressurized in her chest. It was always like this. Like she was preparing for war. Only in her case, the metaphor fit better than anything else. The onslaught of pain and suffering and death outside these bulletproof walls had the ability to crush her. It was a constant fight not to retreat, to hide, to fail those she’d sworn she would help. Even a grumpy chief of police.
“Jocelyn.” Cash’s use of her first name stopped her cold. The men and women of Socorro worked together as a team. They relied on one another to get them through their assignments and to keep each other alive. They were acquaintances with the same goal: dismantling the cartel. While most military units bonded through down time, inside jokes and pranks, the people she worked beside always managed to keep a bit of physical and emotional distance. Especially when addressing one another. The fact that Cash had resorted to verbally using her name meant only one thing. Her cover was slipping. “You sure you’re all right?”
She pasted on that smile—the one honed over months of practice—and turned to face him. In an instant, the heaviness of the day drained from her overly tense muscles, and she was right back where she needed to be. “Never better. Stop worrying so much. You’ll get crow’s feet.”
Jocelyn navigated along the black-on-black halls and faced off with the conference room door. Baker was still there, immobile in front of the window stretching from floor to ceiling as the sun dipped behind the mountains to the west. One arm crossed over his chest, the other scrubbing along his jawline. She catalogued every movement as though the slightest shift in his demeanor actually mattered. It didn’t, but convincing her brain otherwise was a lost cause.
Stretching one hand out, she wrapped her fingers around the door handle. She could still feel the heat flaring up her hands as she’d tried to take the brunt of the explosion for him. It’d been reactive. Part of her job. Nothing more. At least, that was what she kept telling herself. The bandages across the backs of her hands started itching as she shoved through the door. “You’re still here. Figured you and Jones would already be meeting up with the bomb squad back in town.”
Turning toward her, Baker dropped his hands to his sides. Desert sunlight cut through the corner of the window at his back and cast him in blinding light. It highlighted the bruises along one side of his face. A small cut at his temple, too. “Guess he had something else to take care of. Said I could wait for you here.”
“Right. Makes sense you would need a ride back into town.” She tried not to take it personally. Of all the operators Socorro employed, her skill set didn’t do much good in a bombing investigation.
“Well, yes. And no.” Nervous energy replaced the mask Baker usually wore. “He told me you were the first one who responded to that car bombing in Ponderosa. Thought maybe you could walk me through it, see if anything lines up with what happened at the station.”
“You mean other than the fact that the bomb that went off this morning wasn’t attached to the undercarriage of your car?” she asked.
“Right.” His low-key laugh did something funny to her insides.
As though she’d subconsciously been holding her breath just to hear it. Which was ridiculous. He didn’t want to be here. Baker didn’t want her help. He wanted to solve the case. She was only a means to an end. Tendrils of hollowness spread through her chest. Exhaustion was winning out after surviving the impact of the explosion. Her hand went to her side for Maverick but met nothing but empty air. Right. Animal Control.
“You know you won’t be able to go back to your place,” she said. “At least not until we have a better idea behind the bomber’s motive. Too risky.”
“I’ve been crashing on the couch at the station for a while.” Baker rounded the head of the conference table, closing the distance between them. A lungful of smoke burned the back of her throat. Still dressed in his uniform, he was walking around smelling as though he’d just stepped out of one of those joints that smoked their meat instead of barbecuing it. Her stomach rumbled at the sensory overload. “Does that make me homeless?”
“Well, it certainly doesn’t make you stable.” Her instinct to take on the problems of the people around her—a distraction she’d come to rely on through the hard times—flared hot, but Baker wasn’t the kind to share. Let alone trust a mercenary with personal information. She could help, though. Maybe that would ease the tightness in her stomach.
Jocelyn headed for the conference room door. “Come on. I’m sure one of the guys has something you can wear. You can borrow my shower while I find us something to eat.”
“Why are you doing this?” His voice barely carried to her position at the door, but every cell in her body amplified it as though he’d spoken into a megaphone. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because despite what you might think of Socorro, Chief, helping people is what we do.” She didn’t want to think about the ones she hadn’t been able to save. The ones who took up so much space in her heart. “It’s why we all enlisted. Whether it be military or law enforcement. It’s what keeps us going. It might not seem like much, but even the slightest deviation from a recipe can alter the taste of a dessert. It makes a difference.”
“Damn it. I was hoping you were going to say something like money or authority or to take credit for dismantling the cartel.” His expression softened. “And now I’m hungry.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” The bruising along one shoulder barked as she hauled the heavy glass door inward, but she’d live. Thanks to him. “We’ve got some prepackaged meals in the kitchen. I’ll grab you one while you clean up.”
“Baker,” he said from behind.
She hadn’t made it more than two steps before the significance of his name settled at the base of her spine. “What?”
“We survived a bombing together, and you and your employer are going out of their way to help me find who did it.” He slipped busted knuckles into his uniform slack pockets, taking the intensity out of his body language. “You can call me Baker.”
The chief was asking her to call him by his first name. Giving her permission to step beyond the professional boundaries he’d kept between them since the moment they’d met. It shouldn’t have held so much weight, but in her line of work, the gravity hit as hard as that explosion.
“Baker.” She could practically taste his name on her tongue. Mostly sour with a hint of sweetness. Like a lemon tart packed with sweet cream.
Or maybe she just needed to brush her teeth.
