A SEAL's Vow (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 2) (29 page)

Nora turned to Walker in surprise, in time to see him freeze for half a second—the Walker equivalent of embarrassment. He recovered so quickly she would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking at him so closely.

“Walker told a joke?” Cab’s laugh boomed out. “Didn’t know you had it in you, buddy.” He slapped Walker on the back.

Avery touched Walker’s hand. “He’s a very surprising man.”

Avery’s admiration for the big man was so clear, Nora wanted to reach out and shield her. She was going to get hurt. Sue had said—

A woman’s roar of outrage cut across all their chatter and the soft pop music playing in the background of the grocery store. Nora froze. Avery ducked, and both men spun into motion. Walker swept Nora and Avery behind him, and drew a gun Nora hadn’t known he was carrying. Cab reached for his sidearm, already breaking into a run toward the sound. William pressed himself up against the shelves and held his camera in front of him like a shield.

Cab didn’t have to go far.

Sue Norton stormed forward, all five feet of her quivering with rage. Nora had never seen the Crow woman betray much emotion, so the spectacle in front of her was all the more shocking.

“Walker Norton, you’re shaming your family, your ancestors and the very land you dare walk on. How can you do it? How?”

Cab, the closest to her, lifted his hand from his holstered weapon. “Sue, this isn’t the time.”

“Put that idiotic gun away before I take it away.” Sue ignored Cab and confronted her grandson. “You want to end up dead like your father? Or do you think if you kill enough people you’ll somehow set things right? Let the dead avenge the dead.”

William straightened and pushed forward to capture the argument on film.

Nora exchanged a look with Avery. Her heart still pounding with shock, she straightened, and Avery did, too. She couldn’t see Walker’s face, but he stood stock-still and let his grandmother’s words pour over him.

“Put it away!” Sue swatted at the gun, and Walker yanked it back, then thrust it into a shoulder holster hidden under his light jacket. “Guns. Always guns with you. And now women. White women.” She said something in a language Nora couldn’t understand.

“Sue, you gotta calm down.” Cab moved closer but kept sweeping the store with his gaze, alert for any trouble.

Sue turned and swatted him. “Stay out of Crow business. This isn’t your jurisdiction, Sheriff.”

“You’re not on Crow land,” Cab retorted.

If Sue had been angry before, now she was furious. “Not on Crow land? Everywhere you look is Crow land. Everywhere you serve is Crow land—” She struck Cab again.

“Stop it,” Avery cried. “Cab’s not the one you’re mad at!”

Sue turned on Avery. “You got that right. Keep your hands off my grandson. You don’t belong here. None of you belong here.”

“Grandma.” Walker finally found his voice.

“Sue, let’s take this outside, shall we?” Cab said.

Taco seasoning
.

Nora had no idea why the missing item suddenly popped into her mind, but there it was. Taco seasoning. Without it, the tacos she was supposed to serve tonight to all the people who’d come to help them would be a bust.

Sue hit Walker this time—a hard swat. “Always with the white girls. Always. What’s wrong with you men? Why are you turning your back on—”

Nora glanced from the argument in front of her to the ethnic food aisle only steps away. She could see jars of salsa from here. The spice packets had to be just a few feet farther away. She could be there and back before anyone noticed, and with the gathered crowd she’d be perfectly safe.

She edged back, keeping one eye on her friends and the cameraman avidly filming them. Most of the shoppers in the store had been drawn to the front by the argument. They stood peeking out from other aisles, or stood at the tills and gaped at Sue.

“She’s something,” a white-haired woman told her friend. “Maybe I oughta yell at my grandson like that. Maybe then he’d remember to mow my lawn once in a while.”

“Good luck,” her companion said. “She’s right; they don’t make men like they used to.”

Nora edged around them and into the ethnic food aisle. There it was. Right there. Just another three feet….two…one—

“Gotcha,” said a familiar voice.

The world went dark.

‡

C
lay shifted again
on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room at the Chance Creek sheriff’s office, where they’d been sitting for several hours.

“Why are we sitting here if the sheriff is somewhere else?” Dell asked him again. “Waste of time.”

“This is where they want us, so this is where we’ll stay,” Clay said, but he knew what his father meant. He wanted to be back at the ranch—guarding Nora. He told himself there were plenty of men there to do that job, but it didn’t help calm his nerves. He couldn’t believe how much she’d held back from him. It was his fault, really. He’d assumed from everything she’d said that her stalker was ancient history. He’d never asked if she’d seen anything unusual since she’d come to Westfield.

He’d let her down.

“Just a few more minutes,” the receptionist said, but she’d been saying that for the last hour, and Clay didn’t believe it any more than Dell probably did.

“Waste of time,” Dell said again.

Clay fought against the urge to snap at him. That wouldn’t accomplish anything, but he wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. He didn’t understand how he’d become his father’s babysitter. If anything, his mom should be here.

His mom.

Clay pulled out his phone and typed a quick and enigmatic text to her. “At the sheriff’s office with Dad.” That ought to hook her. He waited, counting the seconds.

“Be right over,” she texted back.

Clay bit back a grin. Time to hand over the problem of his father once and for all.

Ten minutes later, Lizette arrived. Five foot five, with short curly hair and a pleasant face, she normally lit up any room she entered, but today she looked like thunder.

“Dell Pickett, what did you do?” She stormed into the waiting room and turned from one to the other of them. Dell stood up. So did Clay.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Then it’s you?” She turned on Clay.

“Not me. I’m innocent,” Clay began, but Lizette snorted.

“Innocent, my ass. When have either of you ever been anything but trouble?”

“Now, Lizette—”

“Don’t Lizette me. I’ve waited for years for you to become the man I wanted to live with. All you’ve done is put it off and make excuses. I thought kicking you out would bring you to your senses but I was wrong again. I suppose you expect me to bail you out?”

“Mom—”

“Forget it! I’ve had it—with both of you. How can two intelligent men be so goddamn stupid?”

“I’ve applied to every damn job in a fifty-mile radius,” Dell roared suddenly. “Not just construction, but gas stations, grocery stores, fast-food joints. None of them want me. I’m doing my best!”

Clay held his breath. He’d heard his parents fight before, but not like this. He understood his mother’s frustration—and his father’s—but he didn’t want a bad economy or a lost job to tear his family apart. His father had been far too baffled by the arson for Clay to keep believing he was the perpetrator. Dell wasn’t good at subterfuge. Still, he didn’t know what to say to diffuse the situation.

“For the last time!” Lizette yelled back. “I don’t want you to take another construction job, or a handyman job, and I sure as shootin’ don’t want to see you bagging groceries when I go to shop!”

“Then what do you want? Because I don’t know what to do here!” Dell’s voice snagged at the top of his range, and Clay swallowed hard. He couldn’t stand to watch his father come undone. He wanted to back away—to get the hell out of there—but there was nowhere to go.

“I don’t want to tell you!” Lizette’s eyes shone with tears. “I want you to have the guts to look in your heart, see what you’re passionate about and make it happen! Jesus, Dell. When are you going to get it?” Without another word she stormed out, leaving Dell and Clay to stare at each other.

“She keeps saying that. I have no idea what she means.” Dell turned, too, and walked toward the front door.

“Mr. Pickett.” The receptionist, who’d watched everything openmouthed, stood. “Mr. Pickett, you’re not supposed to leave.”

Dell ignored her and walked out the door. Clay quickly followed him. “Dad? Where are you going?”

“Back to Base Camp. I’m getting my things. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“You can’t do that.” Clay caught up to him as Dell opened the truck door and climbed into the passenger seat.

“I’m not staying.”

Clay decided Cab could find them as easily at Base Camp as he could at the sheriff’s office. He got in and backed out, turned the truck around and headed toward the ranch.

“You can’t leave Base Camp,” he said when they finally pulled in the dusty lane.

“Fine.” Dell got out when they parked and slammed the door behind him. He stalked toward the tents past the bunkhouse, where a group of men had gathered. Clay recognized faces from town he hadn’t seen in years. Others were more familiar from the weeks he’d been back in Chance Creek. They must have heard about the fire and come to lend a hand with the clean-up. “Get out of my way,” Dell said.

“Aren’t you the one who started the fire?” one of the ranchers demanded.

“Hell, no,” Dell said, starting toward him.

Not another fight. Clay ran to break it up before things got out of hand, but yanked out his cell phone when it buzzed in his pocket.

“Hey, make it quick,” he said as Dell and the rancher began to size each other up.

“Walker here. Clay… I lost her.”

Something hard beneath
her. Aching head. Dark. A musty smell of aging wood.

As Nora came around, she had no idea how to piece together these clues to form an image of her whereabouts. When she tried to move, she found her hands were bound behind her back. She lay on her side on a wooden floor that hadn’t been cleaned in… years, maybe.

She blinked the dust out of her eyes and lifted her head, recognizing the old one-room schoolhouse where she and Clay had made love for the first time. A dull ache blossomed at the back of her head. She didn’t think she’d been struck, though. She had a dim memory of a voice. Something sharp.

As if triggered by the memory, a tiny prick of pain in her neck made everything swing into focus. He’d stuck her with something. A needle.

He…

Nora sucked in a breath.

Andrew Pennsley.

Andrew
. Why…?

She struggled to a sitting position, an exercise in frustration without the use of her hands. Finally upright, her mouth tasting like chalk and ash, she tried to figure it out. Andrew, a fellow teacher back in Baltimore. What was he doing in Chance Creek?

Why had he…?

In a flash, her stupidity became all too clear. All this time she’d blamed a student for stalking her. She’d spent day after day in her classroom scanning the eyes that looked back at her, looking for guilt. Or hate. Or something to indicate who was tormenting her.

But it had never been a student. It had been a teacher.

Andrew.

She’d never even considered him.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid.

Of course it was Andrew. Two years ago, right after her mother passed away, she’d been asked to team-teach a group of eleventh graders. Dazed with pain and loss, she’d welcomed the chance to share the work with another teacher, and she’d been happy to be paired with a man who took his job as seriously as she did. Andrew, a Social Studies teacher, was known as a man who could control his classroom—as well as hold his students’ attention. It had all been a big relief until he asked her out. Nora didn’t dislike him. He simply wasn’t her type, and she’d been too hurt by her mother’s passing to want to be with anyone at the time.

She’d explained all that to him when she turned him down, and thought Andrew had understood. He waved away her apologies, and they’d gone on to teach together for the remainder of the year. The small awkwardness of the situation paled beside losing her mother, and Nora hadn’t given it another thought. The following year when they’d been asked to team-teach again, Andrew had agreed, but Nora had declined, and instead had taken over a twelfth grade English position. Andrew paired up with her replacement. He nodded at her when they met in the hall, and she smiled back.

Problem solved.

Except as Nora’s eyes adjusted and she took in her surroundings—the dirty floor, the huddle of old-fashioned desks, the boarded up windows—she realized the problem had never been solved after all.

Andrew was still angry.

Furious
was a better word. From his point of view she’d turned him down twice. Once as a possible lover. A second time as a teacher.

You think you have so much to teach me. You’re wrong.

She’d thought those messages were from a student unhappy with his grades, but it was Andrew who thought he didn’t measure up in her eyes.

And he’d taken her prisoner—in the same schoolhouse where she’d made love to Clay for the first time.