Page 3 of Saving Wyatt

Maybe I was cursed.

Or maybe I simply didn’t deserve it. Happiness.

Maybe it was for people who hadn’t fucked up. For people who hadn’t made so many mistakes. For people that didn’t ruin everything they touched. For people who hadn’t put their friends and family in danger for some ego trip.

Because wasn’t that what it had been? This stupid decision to cleanse this island of the scum that had seeped into it while I was busy with the Navy? What was it if not my ego that made me think I had some sort of authority or power to go up against literal crime lords?

All I’d achieved was to start something I didn’t have the power or resources to see to the end. I’d been doomed from the start, but the worst part was I’d doomed the men that had trusted me too.

So, no. Nice things didn’t happen to me. Because I didn’t deserve them. So, I was sure—one hundred percent sure—that however great those things were that something terrible was going to happen. Something to balance the equilibrium or tip the scales against me even further.

It was a thought—no, a certainty—for the rest of the day. I expected my actions to come back at me, to haunt me like the monster I was. Only nothing happened, and I went to bed convinced I was wearing my demons around my back and convinced they’d turn into nightmares as soon as I fell asleep.

Smash.

Something broke. I opened my eyes, my ears already sharpened by the noise that shattered the quiet of the night and shot out of bed.

With my gun in my hand, I walked down the hallway, listening in on Autumn’s and Elliot’s doors, but they seemed to be fast asleep. Which only meant it had come from downstairs.

I made my way downstairs to the bar, and as I navigated in the dark trying to find the source of the mysterious noise, my foot slammed into something hard.

Aiming the gun at the floor, I looked down and felt a gut punch in my stomach. Because I was right.

Good things didn’t happen to Wyatt Goodman. And the dead body in the middle of my bar was proof of that.

I didn’t even have a chance to turn the lights on when the sirens and blue lights flooded the space and came for me. Dakota Mitchell, the chief’s son, led the arrest, and it was then, as the cold metal of the handcuffs strapped around my wrist and the bar was illuminated by the dozen flashlights, that I saw the face of the murdered man at my feet.

Detective Bennet. One of Salieri’s dirty cops who’d been on the run since October.

I sighed and steeled myself.

Game on, Salieri. Game on.

TWO

ARI

"Are you staying long? It'd be nice to have you around," a little old woman, Mrs. Austen, asked.

Upon first impression she looked fragile. As if she might break from a simple pat, let alone a handshake. Yet despite her appearance, she was probably stronger than a lot of the young, virile men I'd met in my time.

"Not sure, Mrs. Austen. That's the hope," I answered her, then gave her a warning. "Sharp scratch."

She shut her eyes, and I took her blood sample, pondering over her question in my head.

Coming to Mayberry Holm was never in the cards for me, but then again, a lot of the things I'd done in the last few years hadn't been in the cards. Life had a way of screwing you up when you least expected it. When you had your guard down.

Which was how I'd found myself a wanderer at the ripe old age of thirty-eight when I should’ve been settled down, a couple kids on the way, and living the quiet suburban life.

Or as quiet as a doctor's life could be.

So here I was, on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts, adrift and trying to have a semblance of a life while at it.

The truth was I didn't know how long I'd be here. As long as my funding lasted, I supposed. Maybe a bit longer. I'd been here for a little over two months, and I was starting to get used to the chilly, misty mornings served with a heavy dose of joint ache and the friendly busybodies that seemed a little too keen on my personal life for my liking.

It reminded me of home, even though I was several thousand miles away from it.

I took the cannula off Mrs. Austen’s soft, cottony skin, and she squeezed her eyes even harder for a second before blinking them open and giving me a smile as if nothing had happened.