“After everything you said to me downstairs. After all of that, you’re still going to walk out that door.”Her voice was low and even.
“It’s not the same as before. Just let me explain.”
“No.” She stood and gathered her clothes from the stairs. “Get out, Hud. I mean it. Don’t come back.”
“Please just listen—”
“Get out.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “Please.”
He looked at her for a long moment, something working behind his eyes, then turned and walked to the door. It closed behind him.
Blair stood on the stairs and listened to his truck start and pull away. Then she walked up to the bathroom and closed the door.
“I am so done with you,” she said to the empty room. “So completely done.”
She turned the shower on as hot as she could stand it and stepped in.
****
Hud hit the steering wheel with his fist and immediately regretted it. He shook out his hand and stared at the road.
She was too angry to listen. She hadn’t raised her voice and that worried him more than if she’d shouted. She wouldn’t give him two seconds to explain himself, just shut him down and threw him out, and he couldn’t even be fully angry about it because that stubborn streak was one of the things he lo—
He stopped that thought cold.
“Love?” He said it out loud like he was testing the word. “Who said anything about love?”
He drove another block in silence.
“Damn it, Anderson.” He shook his head slowly. “You finally fall in love and it’s with a woman who just told you to never come back.”
He thought about turning around, knocking on the door until she answered and making her listen. But she was too far gone tonight and he knew it. There was no reaching her right now.
After the stakeout he’d try again. He’d find a way to make her hear him out.
But right now, he had a job to do, and Harold White wasn’t going to arrest himself.
At ten o’clock Hud pulled into the courthouse lot to find Alex Reeves, Kian, Creed, Luke and Eli already there, standing beside their trucks. He parked and walked over.
“Glad you’re all here. Let’s go inside and go over the plan.”
They followed him up, gathered in the conference room, worked through the details and assigned positions. Then they sat around the table with coffee and waited until it was time to move.
Later, they moved through the trees in silence, weapons up. Moonlight filtered through the branches in pale threads, just enough to see by, not enough to give them away.
Hud kept Alex and Kian to his right, Creed, Luke and Eli to his left. He didn’t like the feel of it. The terrain, the hour, the stillness that sat too heavy over everything. Too close to the night they’d almost lost Rawley. Different woods, same cold weight settling in his gut.
The shot cracked through the silence before any of them could react.
Creed dropped.
Everyone scattered, pressing behind boulders and tree trunks as a second shot rang out and blew achunk of rock into the air.
“Creed.” Hud kept his voice low. Nothing. “Kian, can you see him?”
“He’s down. Not moving.”
“Damn it.” Hud’s jaw tightened.Just be breathing. Hold on, Creed. “Anyone able to get to him?”
