Page 71 of Westin
The gun made Westin nervous.
Lee refused to leave it sitting on a table, or beside the bed. She carried it with her everywhere she went like it was her smartphone and she was expecting a phone call. She moved between the couch and the windows, between the bed and the front of the house, pacing like she expected an ambush any moment. He couldn’t distract her with reality television, with funny banter, even with a kiss or a romp in the bed. Nothing could keep her still.
“Are you expecting an ambush?” he finally asked her as the sun started to go down, the land darkening with dusk.
“Yeah.”
“Who? Who are you expecting to come for you?”
She was standing at the windows in the living room, studying the view out the front of the house that looked toward the back of the property. It took him a while, but he finally realized that this view pointed toward the field where she’d found the box. It was that direction from which she expected trouble.
“Lee, you can trust me. I can help you.”
“Can you?”
He moved up behind her and slipped his hands over her shoulders. “Tell me who you think is coming for you.”
“Besides my partner? The one person I should have been able to trust, but apparently can’t?”
“Yeah. Besides your partner, one man out there all by himself.”
“But he’s not alone.”
“I get that impression. What I want to know is who you think is working with him.”
She didn’t answer him right away, just stood there staring off into the unfamiliar darkness. He could see her reflection in the window, could see the worry lines that were etched across her forehead and beside her amber eyes. He wanted to smooth them away, make them disappear, not because they weren’t pretty—everything on her was beautiful—but because he knew what lay behind them, and he wanted to take that from her too.
“That California cartel was that bad?”
“It’s complicated.”
“But that’s who you think is behind this?”
She once again chose not to answer him. The tension in her body was infectious, moving through his own body until his shoulders were sore and his back ached. He rubbed her shoulders lightly, running his fingers up against her neck, caressing as much as massaging, wanting her to know he was there, to remember that he was part of this too. Finally, she sighed and turned into him, pressing her face against his chest.
“I should have seen it coming,” she said. “I knew the pressure he was under. His daughter has spina bifida, which requires physical therapy and a wheelchair and so many other things. It cost money that he was barely able to afford, and time. He was never home, never there to help his wife with the emotional and physical parts of having a child with special needs.” Lee shook her head. “I saw it, but he kept assuring me that they were working it out. I believed him.”
“It’s not your job to figure out when the people you trust are lying to you. It’s his job to be honest with you.”
She shook her head against his chest. “I should have known. How desperate did he have to be to make a deal with these people?”
“Lee,” he said softly, “what people? Who else is involved in this?”
But she didn’t have a chance to answer him. The house shook as an explosion rocked the land underneath them. Westin pulled her back from the windows as they imploded, twisting around to cover her body with his own. He could feel the glass bouncing off his shirt, felt the bite of it cutting him in a few places. They stumbled, falling against the back of the couch, covering their faces as they waited for the debris to stop flying.
“What was that?” she asked even as she turned into him, touched his face to check for damage. “What happened?”
“I think it might have been the old hay shed. It’s about half a mile from here.”
“Why would they do that?”
“To get our attention. To draw us out.”
“It worked.”
She pulled away from him and stood, charging to the door like she was going to just walk out there. Westin scrambled to his feet and grabbed her, pulling her back.
“They could be anywhere!” he hissed. “You can’t just walk out there! You could be walking right into their hands.”