“It makes me unfit for duty.” Those pain-filled eyes closed and tears slid from the corners, effectively shredding his guts.
Nash pulled her into his arms, wrapping her tight. After a moment’s hesitation, she burrowed in, pressing her face to his chest. He could feel her shaking and didn’t know if it was from the effort of trying not to cry or from trying to do it without making a sound. He knew what this meant to her. Being a cop was everything. If she couldn’t go back to doing that, what would she do? Christ, how could he fix this for her?
A rumble of sound came from the bed. “Not a nightmare. Not crazy. Outside my room.”
They broke apart and hurried to the bed, flanking Robert on either side.
Rowan took his hand. “What?”
He swallowed. “Heard gunshots outside my room.”
She shot a startled glance up at Nash, before looking back at her great uncle. “You heard them, too?” There was no hiding the urgency in her tone.
“Scared the shit out of me. Fell out of bed right onto the damned floor.” He scowled.
“You heard them,” Rowan repeated. Then again, in a softer voice. “You heard them.” When she met Nash’s gaze again, her expression held a fragile hope.
He reached out to take her free hand, squeezing tight. “You’re not crazy.”
“Somebody get me some water and then tell me what the hell is going on,” Robert demanded.
Chapter 10
“You haven’t been honest with me.”
Rowan flinched, though her great uncle’s words were more statement of fact than accusation. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d have worried and you already had enough stress. See also, two heart attacks in the past four months.” She gestured toward his chest.
“Tell me now.”
She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the tab on the can of Coke Nash had brought back from the vending machine. “There was more to that bad call where Reyes died than I let on.” She stopped, wondering where to start. Wondering how to start. She’d spent so much of the past few months keeping everything locked down tight, telling no one because she didn’t know whom she could trust.
Nash’s warm hand settled on her shoulder and squeezed. She wanted to lean into him, lean on him. But she saw Robert take in the touch, his expression inscrutable. Her involvement with Nash was something else she didn’t want to talk about, but she laid her hand over his and squeezed once in thanks for the support.
“Before the raid where I was rescued, I heard something. A guy high up in our Narcotics Division arguing with the gang leader, wanting to know why the hell I wasn’t dead yet. That my being there endangered the entire operation. I went under again before I got any more, and then the next thing I knew, the whole place was swarming with law enforcement.”
“How did you know it was him?” Robert asked. “Do you know him?”
“Not super well. He conducted one of my trainings in my early days on the force. But he has a very distinctive voice. I didn’t imagine it. So I reported what I’d heard and Internal Affairs opened an investigation. But nothing came of it. He’d been undercover with the gang for months and nothing I overheard indicated they knew he was a cop. The whole thing was explained away as him protecting his cover. Which was also why he wasn’t part of the raid himself.”
“You didn’t mention that part when you told us about this before,” Nash broke in.
Rowan glanced at him. “I didn’t mention a lot of things.”
“Us?” Robert prompted.
“Nash and Chief Greer. I’ll circle back to that.”
“Okay. You don’t buy that explanation about the guy.” Robert didn’t sound judgmental about it.
“No. I don’t have any solid evidence to back up my version of things. It’s just my word, my gut feeling that he’s dirty. David didn’t trust him, but he never said why. And now he’s dead. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe not. But I believe, down to my bones, that Trent Voss is a dirty cop.” That belief hadn’t wavered at any point.
“When I woke up earlier, you said something about feeling crazy. What was that about?”
“I didn’t make any friends with my accusations. I’ve been ostracized in the department and subject to a string of harassment, the evidence of which conveniently disappeared every time I tried to report it. Between that and my trying to turn Voss in, my credibility is shot. I haven’t been allowed back in the field since it happened, and at this rate, I don’t know if I ever will be. The department shrink refuses to sign off on the psych eval and recommended an extended leave of absence. That so happened to coincide with your latest heart attack, so I didn’t fight about it. I figured I’d take care of you and decompress. And when nothing happened here, she’d be forced to admit it wasn’t all in my head. Except the harassment didn’t stop when I got here.”
Rowan explained about the graffiti on his truck, the spray paint on her hoodie, and the cameras she and Nash had set up. She even told him about her sleepwalking. “It’s been quiet since then. Until tonight. I know what I heard, but there is literally no evidence to support it.”
“Except that I heard it, too.”
“Except that,” she agreed. And thank God for it. She’d been losing what felt like an ever more tenuous grip on her sanity.
Nash spoke up. “It’s a smart tactic. Back in Houston, it was easier to get to her, easier for her to maintain someone else was behind everything. But with a change in location, that becomes harder to justify. What better way to convince her she’s crazy than to follow her here and continue to gaslight her?”
“But what I don’t understand is, if Voss or someone connected to him did this, how did he know to follow me here? I didn’t take a traceable commercial flight. You came to get me.”
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going? No friends? Whoever you turned in your leave to?”
Rowan shook her head. “No. I just took the leave. I didn’t tell anybody where I was going...except—well I didn’t tell her, but I was in Dr. Powers’ office when Mom called about the heart attack.”
“That’s the department shrink?” Robert asked.
“Yeah.”
“How much about all this does she know?”
Rowan stared at her great uncle, realization dawning. “Almost all of it. I didn’t talk about the emotional shit because that’s what I figured was keeping me on the desk. But the harassment, the ostracism…she knows about all of that. But surely…”
“Who better to undermine your credibility?” Robert suggested.
That thought made her even more uncomfortable about the therapist than she already had been. “I don’t know if I buy that. What motive would she have?”
Robert shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe she’s involved with Voss. Might be romantic, might be friends, might just be in on whatever the hell Voss is up to. Fact is, if one cop in the department is dirty, others might be, too. And Houston is a big department. Either way, somebody clearly followed you to Wishful, and we need to decide what to do about it.”