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“Any clue on what’s made them both targets?” Jake asked quietly.
“Haldyn doesn’t seem to have a clue.” Jarrod looked around the long drive of the Scott house. “But Powell closed on this place the same hour they were attacked. Coincidence? I don’t know. And Haldyn is here today. What if it’s not too far of a stretch to assume it has something to do with what happened before? Rumors have always said they were supposed to be main targets that night, too. It was coincidence and damned luck that they weren’t. Maybe Scott wasn’t working alone in any of it? Besides just his hired goons? Why were Haldyn and Powell and Zoey and Madison and Shelby and Charlotte targets back then? Of men other than Scott? We never conclusively found where he gave orders to have Shelby taken. Because those ladies of ours don’t lead high risk lifestyles at all—especially Powell. Haldyn, maybe—she’s made enemies through her work, I’m sure. But Powell? She doesn’t really fit.”
“Targeting the two of them just doesn’t make sense,” Gunnar added. “She’s getting out the keys, guys. I’m going to be right there beside her when she opens the door. Damned stubborn woman. Stubbornest woman I have ever met in my entire life.”
“Imagine how stubborn your babies will be. Someday. But better get on that fast. You’re almost forty, you know.” Jake had to point it out. Jake, who was a year or so older than Gunnar and everything.
“If she ever lets me near her long enough to make those babies, you mean, damn it.”
“No luck?” Jarrod was trying to be sympathetic. He really was. But the honked off look in the other man’s eyes, hell, Jarrod did commiserate. No denying that.
He understood the other man’s frustration. Being that close to the woman he wanted…
He wasn’t even going to let himself think about how he wanted the right to march over there to her and wrap his hands around her waist and pull her into his arms. Tell her she didn’t have to be so damned nervous. That he was there and would make sure she was okay.
No matter what kind of secrets they found inside. He was the one who was going to keep her safe. No matter what.
But he wasn’t the kind of guy who did that. He was the kind of guy who fixed things. Found answers. Not the kind of guy who swooped in and saved the beautiful girl. Then carried her off and lived happily ever. He just wasn’t.
But as he watched Jake wrap himself around his wife and Lake pull his Heather look-alike close enough to give her a fast, hot kiss like that, he wondered if maybe…if maybe Jarrod wasn’t the stupid one now.
Like maybe he was the one missing out. Hell. He wanted the right to go over there and pull Haldyn close, too. To hold her until that fragile look in her eyes disappeared forever.
51
She’d been at Victor Scott’s house before. They had had round-the-clock forensics teams, even borrowed teams from Wichita Falls and Dallas, to process Victor Scott’s ridiculously opulent mansion. They had found some things that had pertained to his business dealings, but nothing that had led to the identification of any of the men who had hurt her friends.
When it had been boiled down to the basics, Victor Scott hadn’t led them to the truth about who the choir hall shooters had been. Everything still felt unfinished. And would until they knew who the four shooters involved were. A fifth shooter had been killed when Zoey fired back that day.
Scott had been a ruthlessly intelligent businessman. He had hidden things so deeply they hadn’t been found. Yet.
They were moving on. Building their lives now. Trying to get past the trauma that had nearly taken Charlotte, Shelby, Madison, and Shelby. But the knowledge that the shooters were still out there—that they really didn’t even know the full why of it—haunted them. Hung over all of them.
Haldyn shot a look at Zoey, who stood next to her—as regal and gorgeous as ever. With a look in her eyes that said Zoey was hurting now, too.
“You okay?” Haldyn asked quietly.
Zoey’s husband was off with Jarrod and the rest of his little barbarian Major Crimes buddies now. She wasn’t certain what they were discussing, but none of them had happy expressions on their faces. She looked at them for a moment. Gunnar and Jarrod were watching her and her friends. Closely.
Zoey watched them, too. “I am. I’m just…ready for the secrets and the hurt to end. I thought after the shooting at the choir hall that life couldn’t get darker, Hal. I learned differently, thanks to what happened with Eastman later. Finding my way out of the darkness is hard. And now my kids—they are looking at me and Murdoch to show them how. I’m not always sure that I know how. So how can I get Pen through what happened?”
Pen had been shot by Gregory Eastman right in front of Zoey that day. “How is she doing?”
“I don’t know. I think she pretends. Like we all do sometimes.” Zoey’s mouth tightened as she looked at her aunt Hope. The relationship between Zoey and her mother’s family was still very tenuous, almost conflicted. On both sides of that equation.
Other than saying hello to one another when Hope first arrived, there was still reserve between them. And Hope wasn’t exactly a reserved kind of person. The hurt was real. For far too many people.
It was complicated, and painful, and just hurt people so much—Haldyn would never understand how someone like Eastman could have done what he had. How he could have thought it was okay to do that to innocent people.
Jarrod thought it was all tied together. All the evil in Finley Creek.
Haldyn just didn’t know. She could see the possibilities, probabilities—all of that. But she could also see support for the opposite. All she knew—the answers were still out there.
Tonight was the next step in finding them.
All she knew was that good people were getting hurt. The people in Major Crimes—she didn’t know if they’d be enough of an army to win the war with the darkness.
“I think we are all good at pretending. Maybe even to ourselves. Char—she definitely pretends. Big time actress now. But we both know she’s terrified.”
