Page 31 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)

CHAPTER TWELEVE

“It’s a little early, isn’t it? Don’t you need your beauty sleep?”

Conner sat on a picnic table overlooking the platinum of Evergreen Lake as the dawn began to dent the vault of night. He didn’t respond to Justin’s question. Nor to him dragging a lawn chair over.

Justin plopped down into it. “What are you drinking?”

Conner glanced at the bottle in his hands. “Root beer.”

“So not whiskey. Good choice.”

A loon called over the dark waters, mystical and lonely. The wind stirred the trees, whispers in the night.

“So, not going to shower. Or sleep?”

He took another drink, the root beer warm and sitting poorly in his churning gut.

“I’m pretty easy to leave, apparently.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize we were having this party.” Justin turned his chair, put his bare feet up on the bench.

Conner looked at him. “Go away.”

“Not a chance, little bro. I didn’t come back from the dead to let you wallow in some sort of pity party. So your girl walked away from you. You didn’t send her away, didn’t break her heart for seven years.”

Conner scrubbed a hand over his hair, already rucked up from hours of waiting as Micah went into surgery to repair his leg.

Micah wouldn’t lose it. Would walk again, would live. And Reuben too, who’d woken long enough to meet Justin. Hear a smidgen of the story.

Maybe, hopefully, they wouldn’t know the full of it.

Conner didn’t even want to acknowledge the dark satisfaction that pooled inside him when he’d pulled the trigger.

Both times. He took another swig wishing, maybe, it might be something stronger.

But he’d never been that guy, preferring something a little more adrenaline-laced to dull the pain.

Your life is too big for me, Conner. Too dangerous.

He roughed a hand down his face. Stared hard into the dark waters. “It’s over. I know Liza. She’s stubborn, and when she makes up her mind, she means it.”

He finished the root beer. Stared at the bottle. With a rush, stood up and threw it as far as he could, a spurt of pain in his heave that he didn’t bother to quiet.

The bottle smashed against a tree.

“You’ll have to clean that up in the morning, before kids run over it in their bare feet.”

“Leave me alone.” Conner shot him a look. “Why did you come back?”

Justin considered him, rubbed a hand across his chin. “Apparently, it’s to stop you from being me.”

Conner sank down again on the table. “I’m not you.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a good man. You show up, and stay.”

When he looked up at Justin, his brother wore a grim, pained expression, even in the dim wash of the cabin light. “But, you’re about to be me. You’re about to walk away from a woman who loves you.”

“She walked away from me! ”

“She’s scared. Frankly, I’d be terrified if I had to marry you. Look at you. Bloody, sooty, and you smell. You look like a freakin’ commando.”

“I was a commando.”

“Right. We’ll, it’s unnerving.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. You appear out of the dark like a ghost—”

“I prefer ghoul, thanks.”

Conner shook his head. “How did you find us?”

“You’re not the only one who knows how to use a computer. Where do you think you learned your hacking skills?”

“The military.”

“Whatever.” But a grin tweaked Justin’s mouth. “I’ve been checking in on you for years. You, and Blue.” His smile disappeared. “I should have come for her, no matter what they said.”

“ Who said? Tell me what happened.”

Justin pulled in a breath and got up. He turned his back to Conner, staring out at the water. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m not going to sleep. Maybe ever again, so take as long as you want.”

“Do you have anything stronger than soda in that six-pack?”

“Nope.” Conner handed him a long neck. “But it has a nice lukewarm kick.”

Justin screwed off the top. Put a foot on the bench.

“Okay, so you know I embedded with the Sons of Freedom right after the bombing of the Mexican embassy. We figured they were behind the terrorist attacks—and planning more. I was able to feed enough information out to protect several potential targets. A pipeline attack in Alaska, another embassy bombing. The Sons of Freedom are radical rightists—but that’s just a cover. ”

“They’re a black ops organization for certain government interests,” Conner said.

Justin looked at him. “Yeah. Except not our government. If you dug hard enough, you would have discovered that Blankenship’s interests go further than money.

He’s been working with certain off-the-grid overseas groups that would like nothing more than for America to get tied up in a domestic civil war over gun control, borders, and the running of oil, and anything else that can take our attention off the defense of our country, here and abroad. ”

“He was a spy?”

“Traitor. We think he was recruited years ago when he served in Iraq. Before your time, by the way. He was captured and liberated, but...”

“I know all about the recruiting they do,” Conner said.

“While I was working for the SOF, I overheard a phone call between Kayle and Blankenship—they were plotting the Times Square bombing. What I didn’t know what that it was also a trap.

They suspected me, set up the phone call, and when I called it in, Blankenship knew about it.

When the bomb went off—thankfully no one was hurt—I feared I’d been made.

So I set up a meet with my handler and gave a copy of the phone call on a thumb drive, along with my phone, to Blue. ”

“And told her you’d call her.”

“Yeah. Except when I went to meet my handler and told him what happened, he knew I’d been blown. He extracted me, faked my death, and gave me a new assignment. As a dead man, I was free to roam the country...”

Justin picked at the label on the bottle.

“Wet work?”

He took a drink. “I wanted to see Blue. But I feared that if contacted her, Kayle—or Blankenship—would find her. After all these years, I thought she’d moved on, made her peace.

I had no idea Blankenship was still hunting Blue.

I hoped he’d bought my story—probably would have if you hadn’t been so persistent. ”

“Hey—”

But Justin grinned, something fast. “Nice to know you care.”

“That’s the thing, Justin. I did care—knowing you died, your murderer on the loose—it destroyed me. I promised Grandpa that I’d find—”

“I went to see him.”

Conner closed his mouth.

“Near the end. He was in the hospital. You’d left—I think to get some shut-eye in your fifth wheel—and I came in. Told him the truth.”

Conner swallowed. “He told me to drop the investigation. That it didn’t matter anymore.”

“Sorry. I didn’t want him to go to his grave with me lying to him.”

“But it’s okay to lie to me.”

“You looked like you were doing okay. Marrying a pretty girl, got a new set of brothers.”

“Are you kidding me? It was eating me up inside that you weren’t here this weekend. I didn’t pick a best man because—shoot, Just—I wanted you to be my best man.”

“You do?”

“I did . I’m not getting married, remember?”

Justin took another drink. Silence.

“I thought you loved this girl.”

“I’m going to hit you again.”

“Please. Give me a reason to hit you back.” Justin raised an eyebrow, almost a dare.

And shoot, the coiled, dark heat still ranged inside him. Dangerous.

Unpredictable.

“Of course I love her.”

“Then, what’s the problem?”

Conner stared at him, nonplussed. “She doesn’t want me.”

“Yes, she does—”

“No, dude, you didn’t hear her. I offered to give up smoke jumping. She practically called me a liar—”

“That’s because you are one.”

Conner found his feet. Justin held up a hand. “Just let me put down my, um, root beer.”

“I’m not lying—”

“Yes you are. To yourself. It’s in your blood—maybe not smoke jumping, but this impulsive, all-out, do-something-about-it nature that drives you.

You don’t sit on your hands when trouble calls.

You go. You’re that guy who raises his hand first when the patriots call for volunteers.

The first one out of the plane. The guy who jumps out from behind a truck and says, and I quote, ‘Shoot me! ’”

Conner rocked back. “It was you . You shot the guy on the roof.”

“Of course I did. I wasn’t going to let him kill my little brother.

I’m just sorry...” He made a face. “Sorry I didn’t get Blankenship first. Could have saved your buddy Reuben.

And of course, Jim Micah. I was having a hard time deciding whether to go after you guys in the building, or take out the shooters.

Then it was way out of control and...” Justin wiped his hand across his mouth. “Close one.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“But see, not you. You would have run into the burning building. And that’s something you can’t separate from yourself.” He clamped Conner on the shoulder. “This girl knows you better than you know yourself—and that’s what has her freaked out. She knows you can’t stop yourself.”

Conner ran his thumb over his swollen knuckles.

“I met her up here, you know. In Deep Haven. The north woods were on fire, and the team came in to help fight it. I think I fell in love with her the first day I met her, when she showed up with donuts. She invited me to watch her make pottery, and we had our first date right downtown, at a festival, eating Pierre’s pizza.

A few days later, I barely survived a flashover, and.

..I came down to the beach. She was sitting there—told me later that God had woken her up to pray for me .

She was—is—calm to my crazy world. And, she listens.

I used to call her from strike camp, and just her voice. ..just her...voice...”

He cuffed his hand over his mouth, looked up at Justin, his eyes thickening. “This can’t be...she is...she is my only.”

“Okay, bro, breathe. Let’s fix this. It’s what we do, right?”

Conner bowed his head, wincing.

“Get up.” Justin had him by the collar and dragged him off the table. “Get cleaned up. We’re going to town.”

“What—why?”