Pulling the Trigger

“I should have been there.”

“I told you I needed some time alone that day. You were giving me the space I needed after Mom and Dad’s funeral. If I’d known he still had feelings for Mom…”

Her fingers clenched at her side and he got the feeling she was fighting back the urge to reach out to him, as well.

“What happened afterward—Watts’s never even being arrested—that wasn’t your fault, either.”

Didn’t make Watts any less of a bullying bastard who’d gotten away with crap his entire life because of who he was related to. Didn’t make Ethan feel any more like a man who’d done right by the girl he loved, either. “He can still hurt you. In ways you may not even have imagined yet.”

“I’ve imagined all of them,” was her stark answer. “But this is my job.”

“Go back to D.C. This is too personal.”

Joanna laced her fingers together and tapped her knuckles against her lips, thinking for a moment before she slowly began to pace. She seemed to choose each and every word with laser-beam precision. “I’ll concede that I won’t lose any sleep if Watts is arrested for a different crime. That’s not why I’m here. I didn’t volunteer for this assignment, but I didn’t argue when it was given to me, either. If I can’t face whatever criminal I run up against—even my own rapist—over an interview table, then I’m not tough enough to do this job.

“Make no mistake, there’s a reward involved if I prove to myself I can do this. If I break this case—if I can break Watts—I’m guaranteed a promotion in D.C. and I’ll never have to come back to this place again.” She stopped in front of him, her hands curled into fists as she faced him once more. “I know that sounds cold and calculating, but this is what I do. This is what I need to do. I’m the go-to woman who’s going to get Watts to talk. He’ll tell me who murdered Agent Grainger, and maybe where that fifty million dollars of Vincent Del Gardo’s is hidden. Besting him at my game will be justice enough for me.”

Pulling back his jacket, Ethan propped his hands at his waist, shaking his head at her misguided plan. “I don’t want you alone in the same room with him.”

“Isn’t it fortunate, then, that it’s not your decision to make?”

She retrieved her folder, tucked it under her arm and walked up to him as though she thought he would simply move aside. Screw this. Ethan reached out to lightly pinch the upturned point of her chin between his thumb and forefinger. She stiffened for a moment. But when she didn’t pull away and the warm coffee of her eyes stayed locked on to his gaze, he traced the line of her jaw, rediscovering the softness of her skin.

“Don’t do this, sweetheart.”

“Ethan…” She squeezed her eyes shut against the stroke of his hand, pressing her lips into a thin line to block the words and emotions locked up behind them.

“Shh.” He rubbed his thumb across the tight frown, urging her muscles to relax. He swept his fingertips lightly across her cheek.

When she turned her face into the caress, something cracked open inside him—his need for a woman to warm his bed, perhaps, or maybe the memories of how this particular woman had once enjoyed his touch. Her timid response took him back in time, when her long legs had caught his eye, and her innocence had captured his soul. Touching Joanna like this made him feel things, want things that weren’t his to ask for anymore. He tunneled his fingers beneath the heavy silk of her ponytail and let his broad palm cup the length of her neck. He leaned in, touched his forehead to hers and whispered, “You’re not as tough as you act. You weren’t fifteen years ago and you aren’t now.”

Her eyes popped open and looked straight up into his. “Fifteen years can change a person, Ethan.” She braced her hand against his chest and gently pushed him away. “I haven’t been that teenage girl who had a crush on my best friend’s big brother for a long time.”

He’d been more than a crush, and she wasn’t the only one who’d changed during their time apart. But neither comment seemed to mean much right now. She wasn’t here to recapture the relationship that had been, and he wouldn’t force her into the relationship that could be. Not when she was so intent on leaving. Again.

As he disentangled his fingers from her hair, he let her nudge him aside. Joanna patted the spot on his chest, then curled her fingers into her palm. It was a kind, but definite, send-off. “I have a new name, a new life. You don’t know me anymore.”

Ethan stayed in the small room for a moment as the door opened and closed. He listened to the spirit of Mother Earth inside him, listened to his training as a soldier, listened to his conscience—and made a decision. He opened the door and followed her out.

Joanna Kuchu—make that Rhodes now—didn’t know him, either, if she thought he was going to let her face off against that bastard Watts on her own a second time.

“GET IT TOGETHER, GIRL,” Joanna muttered. The skin at her nape was still tingling with tiny tremors from the warmth of Ethan’s hand.

Her heart pounded away at an equally unsettling rate as she left the interview room and forced one foot in front of the other along the KCCU’s tiled hallway. She could do this. She had to do this. She’d prepared herself to look Sherman Watts in the eye, to see familiar faces and places and deal with the memories they might trigger.

But she hadn’t prepared herself for Ethan Bia.

Not really.

She’d forgotten how impossible it was to reason with him—how he could watch her with those dark, nearly black, eyes and get under her skin and into her head and make her think that she was the one who was being unreasonable. His inner peace and age-old wisdom—even at twenty-one—had frustrated her as much as it fascinated. His certainty about the world and belief in what was right or wrong had confounded as much as it had comforted her. He’d been a rock in her chaotic young life, a constant she’d never known with her alcoholic parents. He’d also been a mysterious, compelling—completely sexy man.

Maybe that was the part she hadn’t prepared herself for.

Stopping to straighten her jacket and tuck her hair back into place, Joanna gave herself a moment to silence the confusion in her head. She’d devoted herself to her career, taught herself that her strongest allies were her own wits and determination. She’d gone through counseling and had prepared herself to accept a man’s touch again. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid of being with a man at some point in the future, but that she was afraid of needing him.

Ethan Bia, with that deep, rumbly voice and those gentle, work-roughened hands, had undone in fifteen minutes what had taken her fifteen years to firmly fix into place.

He’d gotten her blood boiling with his insistence that she had no business working an investigation that involved Sherman Watts. And then he’d hushed her, touched her—soothed her fears and anger and her constant fight to be strong and independent—and the years between them melted away. She’d wanted nothing more than to burrow against his big chest and feel his sturdy arms around her again. She’d wanted the shelter he offered as much as she’d wanted to welcome his kiss.

Felt a hell of a lot like need to her.

“No.” The wall beside her reacted to her firm insistence about as well as her turbulent emotions did. “It couldn’t work then. It won’t work now.”

There. Better. Think it through.

She was leaving tomorrow, Sunday at the latest, depending on how well Watts cooperated with her. She was too smart to risk her heart on a relationship that couldn’t last. Ethan was a man of the earth; she was a woman of the city. He was a Bia, son of a successful business owner and a tribal elder, a well-respected name on the reservation. She was a Kuchu, reservation trash, daughter of Ralph, a charmer with a big heart whose addictions had cost him his money as soon as he’d earned it, and Naomi, a flirtatious beauty whose drunk driving had gotten them both killed.

Joanna was too fractured inside to believe in anything more than what she could do for herself and control with her own two hands. What she needed was to keep moving forward with her life.

A mystic force of nature like Ethan Bia didn’t fit into her plans. She stood a better chance of surviving this trip home if he wasn’t a part of it.

“So get over it, already.” Smoothing her expression and her thoughts into business mode, she found Patrick Martinez pacing a rut into the carpeting of his office.

“Are you kidding me? Hell.” He cursed into his cell phone as he peered outside his window into the waning daylight.

Joanna’s training buzzed her senses on alert. What was he looking for? “Sheriff Martinez?”

“Yes. Lock it down before this rain gets worse and washes away any trail he might have left behind. No one goes in or out until I get there.” He snapped the phone shut and strode from the office. “Elizabeth!”

“I’m right here, Patrick.” The Indian woman set down the two mugs of coffee she carried and took a position at her desk, ready to handle whatever the sheriff needed.

“Sorry.” He offered the gruff apology in the same breath he started giving orders. “Get Miguel down from the lab and tell him to scrounge up any of his field techs he can call on short notice. I need them over at Watts’s place on the rez ASAP.”

“Got it.” Elizabeth spared Joanna a quick concerned look at the mention of the suspect’s name before picking up the phone and punching in the lab’s extension, quickly relaying the sheriff’s orders.

“Has something happened?” Joanna asked. Nobody—not Ethan, not Elizabeth Reddawn—had to protect her from Sherman Watts anymore.

Martinez grabbed his Stetson, pointing it at Elizabeth before putting it on. “And call my wife. Tell her I’m going to miss that movie.”

Elizabeth nodded, reading off an address she’d brought up on her computer screen.

“Trouble?”

Joanna jumped inside her skin at the sound of Ethan’s deep voice from right behind her. How could such a big man move without making a noise?

Martinez nodded to him over her shoulder. “Good. I’m gonna need you with me, big guy.”

“Sheriff.” Joanna ignored her erratic pulse and insisted on an explanation.