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Except for Ember. Her arms, her heart, ached for her sweet baby girl now. Her Kemberly Kaye, named for Heather’s own mother. Her baby girl had deserved so much better than to be conceived from pain, from fear, from hurt.
“Anything about your sister, yet?”
“They’ve prepped her and moved her into surgery now.” It hadn’t even been fifteen minutes, she didn’t think. Maybe…thirty? But Hope might just have to wait. Because Kimball and Steve were there first. Kimball and Steve and Haldyn. They had gotten there first.
He nodded. “Heather…I…don’t know how much I can keep quiet. There will be questions.”
She knew what he meant. Where this conversation was about to go. Of course. Steve, a TSP detective, had hurt her. A connection of the governor, and a member of the TSP, too. No one would want that staining the image of the TSP right now. Politics, after all.
She was so damned sick and tired of politics screwing with innocent peoples’ lives.
“IA. Those bastards out of Wichita Falls. Stillman and his asshole pals.” A rush of utter hatred for the men who had told her before to keep her mouth shut. Or she wouldn’t like the consequences. She had her kept her mouth shut. Had let them silence her voice. For years. “I didn’t have…a choice, you know. Big surprise, right?”
“Talk to me.”
Trust him. That was what he was really saying. She just looked at him.
Why didn’t the man get it?
He didn’t get it. She would never fully trust a man with the TSP ever again. The cost was far, far too great. Especially one as powerful as the man next to her.
“Tell me what happened.”
Open her soul? Why the hell not? So the rest of the TSP could understand. Could file it all away in their little case files until they could use her pain later, for their own ends. But she would. She’d bleed herself dry if it protected her family. “Not much to tell. I told it all before. Reported it each and every time. I have copies of everything if you need some bedtime reading material, McKellen. Lot of good that did—I was told to keep my mouth shut. Every time I tried to report what he was doing to me. Keep my mouth shut, or else. He stalked me for years. Until one night, he decided he’d toyed with me enough. Let me fight him long enough. And he attacked me—want to guess how? I’m just glad Frankie was with my sisters. Want to know what he did to me that night? Read the reports, look a the photos. I reported him. Then they put me on thirds, and put Hope on opposite hours. Reminded me that she was out there with no one to really protect her. Alone. Then…I was…pregnant. Do you know how much a pregnancy costs without health insurance, Commander McKellen? Especially when the people who should have had your back…just don’t? To feel…trapped like that. Steve had—has—very powerful friends in Wichita Falls. And I just don’t. Now…Hope is paying the price for my stupidity. Haldyn, too. If I had…fought. But I always fought him, and it didn’t do a damned bit of good. He stalked me. Would break in to my apartments—I moved each time. He would follow me everywhere. Told his friends on the force things about me, rumors they…spread. I couldn’t trust anyone at my back out there—and they made that known, too. So I took the desk job in IA on thirds like they ordered. And I played their game. That is a lesson I will never forget. And then I came here. And…he followed.”
She saw. He knew what she hadn’t put into words. He knew. No more keeping the hurt hidden. He knew, and Murdoch knew, and Jarrod, and every one of the Major Crimes who had been out there. Joy, Samia, Cashlyn.
Soon, it would be a part of official reports and investigations, and it would be out there forever. She could almost predict the upcoming headlines.
She jerked back when he tried to touch her, to comfort. She…didn’t want anyone from the TSP to ever touch her again. “I just can’t keep hiding it, fighting. When will it ever end?”
103
Jarrod heard Heather’s broken question and it damned near destroyed him. Jarrod had heard every word she’d said.
He would never forget the hell on her face, in those big dark eyes of hers as she just stared at Daniel. Looking for the answers to questions no one could answer. Ever.
Daniel’s hand was still up in the air between them.
But Heather didn’t want touched. Especially by them. Hell, Jarrod could understand that.
He had known his partner had secrets. And Haldyn had said she was afraid.
Now he understood. The darkness wasn’t just in Finley Creek. It was throughout the TSP. Hurting innocent people in more ways than Jarrod could even think about now.
Costing just too much.
Haldyn was somewhere on a cold table, strangers putting her back together again. No one had given him any answers about her either. Because he didn’t have the right to know first. He supposed that was her sisters. He’d never met them. He doubted it would be her parents.
Powell. Daniel.
Definitely those two. She loved them. They mattered to her.
Heather jumped up, started pacing. Her blond sister was in an exam room, getting the graze on her arm treated. Two of Heather’s sisters had been hurt tonight. Fear for the gremlin tangled with fear for the woman who was Jarrod’s world.
Someone came in. Searching for Daniel and Jarrod. For information. Jarrod looked up.
The rest of Major Crimes was there. Except Murdoch, Lila, and Gunnar. And Charlie—Charlie was in Masterson, Wyoming, now. But they were there.
