Page 207 of Track of Courage

“My mom died of cancer when I was nineteen.“ She wrapped her arms around herself. “She was ... amazing. Creative—she used to paint watercolors, but she was this fantastic cook, and for a while, when I was in middle school, went back to work as a nurse.” She stared past him, into the swirling white. “Wow, I miss her.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. She herself didn’t have a great voice, but oh she loved to sing. She’d say, ‘You don’t have to have a perfect voice to make a beautiful song.’ She played the piano really well, though,and we’d sing all sorts of hymns—‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘It Is Well with My Soul,’ ‘Blessed Assurance.’ She loved Jesus, and even in the end, when the pain was great, she met it with a joy and said she’d be waiting for me in heaven.”

He considered her a moment, then, “My grandfather said the same thing about my sister, Aven.” He didn’t know why he told her that. She might be too easy to talk to.

She glanced at him. “You believe in God?”

“I believe he exists, but sometimes I wonder if he...” Aw, shoot. “Just ... wondering what he thinks about...”

“Our mistakes?”

He looked at her.

“Wrong place, wrong time.” She gave him a tight smile. “Also, River told me about the shooting.” She pointed at his knee, then met his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Oh. How had they gotten here, with him suddenly naked in a snowstorm? Still. “The worst part about it wasn’t my knee.”

“But you got him—the drug trafficker.”

He looked at her, frowned. “At the cost of a little girl’s life.”

He didn’t mean for the words to rush out, so hard, so blunt. Her mouth opened, closed. “Oh. River left out that part.”

He looked away, his chest tight, the terrible coil inside starting to take hold. “Yeah. The news media did a poor job of reporting that detail.”

Now his breathing hitched, and sweat beaded his back. He braced his hand on the doorframe.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” No. Dumping out his cocoa, he set the cup on a ledge inside the barn and took off for the house, not sure why.

He made it to the porch, climbing up when—“Dawson!”

Her voice cut through the storm, and he turned, shoving his hands in his pockets. She’d run out into the wind, the snowcatching on her blond hair, her eyelashes. She came up to stand next to him, her puffer jacket tight around her.

And he couldn’t escape the words pressing through him, out into the open. Or their sharp edge. “I knew he was going to kill her—Iknewit. I’d been following this guy for months. I should have moved, but I waited for SWAT to get in place, and so I sat there, negotiating with a killer and I ... Stupid. I...”

His breath was knotted, and in a moment, he was at the scene, the night sky frozen above, breath in the air, his gut tight, listening to a little girl cry.

His heart hammered inside his chest so tight it burned. He should sit down—But he gripped the porch railing, hanging on, unable to stop. “When SWAT went in, I went straight for her. And that’s when he shot her. Just—shother. The bullet took out my knee. But it hit her. The guys behind me took him down, but...” And now he almost bent over, the world spinning, his words choked. “She died.”

There, it was out, into the frozen air, and he just stood, his breath forming in the air.

It occurred to him then that he hadn’t let the full story out since...

Never, at least not since his statement that night. Because who wanted to revisitthatnightmare?

She folded her arms, shivering. They should go inside. But somehow, standing here in the shelter of the porch, his words taken by the wind, made the telling easier.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He didn’t mean his tone, but, “Wasn’t it? I should have said something, done something. I should have convinced the chief to move.”

“Maybe,” she said softly. “But you can’t blame yourself for other people’s evil.”

Oh. He drew in a breath. “Yeah, except I can’t seem to escape it either.”