Twice Shy

One “Do you realize this is the first time we’ve gone anywhere together without Jessie?” Aaron Hammond asked, twining his fingers with his wife’s as they strolled across the street to their favorite restaurant. It was early yet for dinner—a little after four—and with the temperature hovering just a few degrees above zero, few people were out and about. “Thank you, Aaron, for reminding me. I’ve been trying very hard to not think about that.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, spun her deftly to him in the middle of the street, and planted an adoring kiss on her lips. He was rewarded with one of his favorite smiles, the one that ignited her entire face with love. The brisk January air coaxed a rosy glow from her cheeks, which in turn brought out the green flecks in her hazel eyes. “Happy second anniversary, my love,” he whispered. He kissed her again, lingering a little longer. “Right back at ya, babe, but we should probably get out of the middle of the street. There’s a car coming.” With a laugh, he pulled her toward the sidewalk. Tires screeched, and the car slid to a stop. Aaron instinctively stepped in front of Erica to shield her, all at once feeling entirely n***d without his sidearm. He wasn’t on duty, and there shouldn’t be a need for it, but he couldn’t ignore how the back of his neck tingled. When the driver—a vaguely familiar man in his mid-twenties—lurched out of the car with a nine-millimeter in hand, Aaron’s unease exploded into terror. “You!” the man spat. “You’re the son of a b***h who put Jerry away.” The d**g bust. Back in May, Aaron had pulled this man’s younger brother over for a faulty brake light and blown the lid off the largest d**g ring in the county’s history. “Look, Joseph, I’m sorry, but—” “Yeah, yeah. You were just doing your job. Jerry wasn’t hardly involved! He won’t make it on the inside.” “If he keeps his nose out of trouble, he’ll be paroled in two years.” Joseph shook his head. “You don’t get it. Zach’ll kill him for ratting him out.” “No one’s going to let that happen.” “You don’t know Zach. His old man taught him well—he’s got connections everywhere. You gotta get Jerry out of there.” “You know I can’t.” “You have to find a way. If Jerry dies… I’m coming after your family. Starting with her. We’ll see how you like losing someone you love.” “Put the g*n down, Joseph. You’re not going to solve anything with it.” “Jerry’s never really been in trouble before, and he helped you and that damned Sheriff Rogers and the county attorney take down Zach’s entire operation.” The man pointed the g*n in Aaron and Erica’s general direction, but his hand shook. “That plea bargain was a piece of s**t deal. He shoulda gotten a slap on the wrist.” Aaron’s heart pounded, threatening to break out of his chest. From the corner of his vision, he saw a man shove a woman back inside the restaurant and thought he heard someone shout for the police to be called. The street was otherwise deserted, but Aaron sensed people watching from the safety of the buildings, and he prayed they had the smarts to stay there. He wished desperately that he could send Erica running to join them. Behind him, she let out a small, terrified noise and dug her fingers into the meat of his shoulder. He was only a sheriff’s deputy from a rural county. What the hell did he know about defusing a situation like this? A momentary flash of anger shoved the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Yeah, Rogers is an asshole, and yeah, he and the county attorney had a hard on for this case. It was a shining example of the good ol’ boys system at work, but the fact of the matter is that Jerry’s in prison because he screwed up. He made the choice to get involved with your dickhead cousin. If he hadn’t, I’d’ve had absolutely no reason to arrest him.” Reigning in his temper, Aaron said carefully, “You might want to consider what you’re doing right now because threatening me is only going to make it worse for your brother. And for you.” The man hesitated, and Aaron wondered how much of his threat was nervous bravado. His hand trembled worse now, and he swallowed repeatedly. Would he really pull that trigger? Aaron took a step forward, drawing the man’s attention and aim. “You just stay right there, pig.” “You’re not going to shoot anyone.” “Jerry’s just a damned kid! You don’t get it. Zach’s going to kill him. You don’t do something, Jerry’ll be dead by this time next week. He’s just a stupid kid who made a dumb mistake.” Aaron glanced over his shoulder at Erica and inclined his head toward the restaurant, silently begging her to sneak toward it. She shook her head, unwilling to leave him. Please go, he mouthed, willing her to understand that he needed her safe. With one last, fleeting glance at Joseph, she inched away. Aaron returned his attention fully to the man who still had a g*n aimed shakily at his chest and prayed Joseph wouldn’t notice Erica slipping away. He held the other man’s gaze and listened as the elder Mackey brother blamed himself for not raising Jerry better in place of their parents and for failing to keep him out of their cousin’s greedy trap. Even with adrenaline surging and heightening every sense, it was hard to ignore the pang of pity for the brothers. Aaron had watched his boss—the same man who, while working for the Devyn Police department before running for sheriff, had arrested Aaron’s entirely upstanding older brother on a false assault charge—make an example out of a scared, skinny, and unlucky kid with the same hopeless sense of unfairness Joseph now railed against. He’d even felt guilty for arresting Jerry Mackey, but right now, it was only terror that seized him as Jerry’s older brother jerked the g*n around with each point he made. Even if he lacked the conviction to intentionally shoot someone— The boom reverberated off the buildings behind them, loud but not so deafening that Aaron missed the unmistakable thwump of a bullet boring into flesh or the soft gasp of surprise. He jerked around just in time to see Erica falter and lunged to catch her before she fell. Her eyes widened with shock and pain before a frown deeply furrowed her brows. She’d made it just a few steps toward the restaurant. Agony ripped through his soul when she coughed and a foam of vibrant blood splattered her chin. A strangled scream burned his throat. He sank to the ground with her cradled in his arms, certain even through the deluge of confusion and denial that he couldn’t save her. Even if the paramedics arrived right then, she was beyond help. The resignation in her eyes cut him with the precision of a scalpel; she knew she was dying and she had already let go. She met his gaze, and inexplicably, her lips lifted in a smile that softened the agony in her eyes. Without a word, she said everything he ever needed to know. She loved him. Then she was gone. “No. No, no, no. Don’t go. Please don’t go. I love you.” Vaguely aware that people were screaming and crying, he curled himself protectively around her, clutching her to him as if he could keep her spirit with him a little longer if he just held on tight enough. A second shot cracked in the bitter afternoon, and Aaron waited to feel the bite of the bullet, not caring if he died with his wife. No, wanting to die with her. That pain didn’t come, and when he realized it wasn’t going to, he dared to look up for a moment. Joseph lay sprawled in the street a few feet away with his pistol gripped tightly in his hand and a pool of blood spreading quickly beneath his head. In a remote, detached corner of his mind, Aaron wondered if he should feel relieved or gratified, but he didn’t. There was only more heartache for the waste of another life. After what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, someone rested a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Sheriff Rogers, the police chief, and a pair of paramedics standing over him. His boss’s mouth moved, but Aaron couldn’t make sense of what Rogers said. Finally, the sheriff pointed to the ambulance, and Aaron reluctantly released Erica’s body into the care of the paramedics. Blood stained the front and the back of her, and when he glanced down, he saw that his Carhartt coat was destroyed. “Ah, Jesus Christ, Aaron,” the sheriff said, squatting beside him. “Jesus. Are you hit?” He shook his head, unable to form even a simple no. “Are you sure?” He nodded. “It’s all….” Swallowing, he tried again. “It’s all Erica’s. She’s dead. Oh, God. My wife is dead.” He lay back on the pavement, covered his face with his hands to block out the sight of the ambulance crew and the police crawling over the street trying to piece together what had happened, and gave in to the grief. * * * Four and a half years after Erica’s death, the memory was still agonizingly sharp. So was the memory of later that night, when he’d faced her parents, Jim and Jessie Robinson. The chief of police had already informed them of what had happened, but Aaron had needed to give them the exact details. He had prepared himself to be turned out of their family, but they had embraced him with shared grief and had cried with him for hours. It had taken him a while to realize he wanted to see condemnation in their faces, but instead, he’d seen the same love that had outshone the pain in his wife’s eyes. How could they still love him when she had died because he’d failed her? Though his self-loathing had gradually turned into gratitude, he hadn’t yet answered that question and didn’t know if he ever would. He hadn’t found a way to get past the fact that Joseph had essentially died for nothing, either. Contrary to Joseph’s fear, his scumbag cousin and cohorts had not once tried to hurt Jerry in any way, and not only because they were kept apart in prison for the very reason Joseph feared. Zachariah Neely had, like Jerry, been a model prisoner thus far, no doubt with the same intent as his cousin—to get that early, good-behavior parole. “Did you hear me, Aaron, honey?” The dispatcher’s voice jarred him out of the memories. Pearl, who had been at her job as long as he’d been alive, regarded him with a worried frown, and he didn’t doubt that she knew exactly what had distracted him from their conversation. “Yeah,” he replied. “Jerry’s getting out. I hope he stays out of trouble this time.” It had been a little over two years since he’d last seen Jerry Mackey. Aaron had been following up on a fistfight he’d broken up the previous night at the Big Sky Truck Stop south of Devyn, and Jerry had waltzed into the restaurant and without a word of warning punched him in the back. It hadn’t taken Aaron long to subdue the kid, who couldn’t weigh more than about a hundred and forty pounds and had the musculature of a twig, and within twenty minutes, Jerry was on his way back to jail with a parole violation guaranteeing he finished out his five-year sentence. “More to the point,” Pearl remarked, “I hope he’s had time to realize you did everything you could to help him.” He shifted his weight. “When’s he getting out?” “A week from Friday.” “That soon? Damn.” She reached across the counter and patted his hand. “Go home, Aaron, enjoy your four days off, and don’t worry about Jerry Mackey. I won’t be there to enforce it, but I fully expect you to ask a pretty girl to dance at Vince and Evie’s wedding on Saturday.” “I’m not making any promises, Pearl, but I’ll do my best to enjoy my time off.” “I guess that will have to do. Go on, get out of here.” Aaron strolled out into the hot August afternoon before he decided to find an excuse to work a little longer. The cab of his truck was sweltering, but instead of cranking the AC, he rolled the windows down, craving fresh air. The sun blazed in a smoke-hazed blue sky, further bleaching the summer-baked grasses of the sprawling ranching valley and the sage-blanketed foothills of the surrounding mountains. As Aaron drove up the highway toward home, he glanced back at the tapestry of golden wheat fields and green hay and alfalfa fields. It was all as familiar as his own heartbeat, and normally, the sight comforted him, but today even the scorching sun couldn’t burn away the chill that was nearly as sharp as if he were again kneeling on that winter-grayed street.