“Everything okay?” she asked. “You look pale. You really should sit down and rest your leg.”
“Why’d you really come here?” he asked, ignoring her concern. “If you’d just wanted to drop off dinner to help me out, you would’ve only brought enough for one.”
She maneuvered around him to set the plates on the table, giving her time to consider his question. For a moment, she thought about giving him some flippant, bullshit answer, but instead, she sighed and wrapped her arms around her torso, hugging herself to try to banish the cold fear that had penetrated to her bones.
“I didn’t want to be alone tonight,” she admitted, keeping her back to him, too humiliated to face him as she said it. “All I can see when I close my eyes is Mark Monroe’s face, so twisted and so full of hatred. I just…” She heaved a frustrated sigh. “You’re the only one who can understand, Gabe. I didn’t know who else to talk to.”
She started when she felt his hand on her shoulder but didn’t resist when he gently turned her around to face him. “I’m here,” he assured her, smoothing his hand along her arm. “Anytime you need me.”
She studied his face for a long moment, his harshly chiseled features even more fierce when he was so close. “What do I do now?” she asked. “I send victims to get counseling, to help them work through the trauma. Hell, I even volunteer as a counselor myself! Yet I can’t bring myself to go. I need to know what I can do to get that bastard out of my head, Gabe, what I can do to stop feeling so afraid.”
He gently grasped her chin. “You help me bring down that son of a bitch Jeb Monroe and put him away for good.”
She pressed her lips together in a determined line. “When do we start?”
Chapter 8
Jeb Monroe sat in his pickup truck, watching the deputy’s house through narrowed eyes, his blood boiling with hatred. Every ounce of him wanted to rush the porch, kick open the front door, and deliver a powerful message to Mac Dawson about grief and retribution. The son of a bitch had stolen Jeb’s father’s farm on behalf of the government, had taken from Jeb what was rightfully his. And then he’d sent his favorite deputy, his own son, to arrest Derrick in the very home where Mac had darkened the doorstep years before, adding insult to injury.
The Dawson boy carried himself with the same arrogant swagger, the same self-righteous, blind devotion to the government as his father. They were instruments of evil. And Jeb had been selected by God himself to rid the world of such evil. He’d heard the Voice telling him what he must do. And he would obey.
Jeb took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly, reining in his ire, forcing it down to a low simmer. He needed to bide his time, wait until the perfect moment to exact his vengeance. Then he’d strike. He’d rip out Mac Dawson’s heart.
The sheriff needed to understand what it felt like to lose a favorite son, needed to feel the pain that tore at Jeb’s chest with savage claws, shredding every ounce of him until he felt like nothing more than a hollow shell of a man.
Jeb’s cell phone rang on the seat next to him. Without turning his gaze away from Gabe Dawson’s house, he snatched the device from his seat and barked, “Go ahead.”
“I have the information you requested, sir.”
Jeb’s jaw tightened at the sound of his son Jeremy’s voice. “Well, I’m waiting.”
Jeremy cleared his throat nervously. “Tom Dawson’s wife, Carly, was DEA, but she was killed three years ago in an undercover operation. But your cousin at the courthouse told me she’d been filing for divorce when she was killed. Maybe he has someone else.”
Jeb grunted. “Scratch her off the list. What about the others?”
“Joe Dawson’s fiancée, Sadie Keaton, is an English teacher at the high school,” Jeremy informed him.
“Asterisk her,” Jeb ordered. “She’d be easy enough to get to.”
There was a slight hesitation before Jeremy added, “But she’s pregnant—about five months along.”
“I said asterisk her,” Jeb hissed.
Jeremy cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with Jeb’s order, but the boy was young, inexperienced. He didn’t understand that every war required sacrifices. “Yes, sir.”
“And the others?”
“It looks like Kyle Dawson is living with his girlfriend, Deputy Abby Morrow.”
Jeb considered this one for a moment. “Leave them off the list,” he decided. “I don’t want to draw the FBI’s attention any more than necessary. If Kyle Dawson’s anything like his father, he’s already stepped up their surveillance. I don’t want to give them any reason to move in sooner.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Gabe Dawson?” Jeb prompted.
“Unattached at the moment,” Jeremy told him. “He has no shortage of women on the hook, but he’s not with any of them.”
Jeb grunted in disgust. “Doesn’t appear that way. That whore attorney is at his house as we speak.”