and cursed. The guy was slumped over in a wooden chair, a pool of blood dried beneath him. His clothes—a camo shirt and pants—were also saturated and hard with dried blood. Bloody bandages were strewn across the table in front of him.
But those weren’t the only things on the table. A pile of envelopes, bound with a big rubber band, sat atop the scarred wooden surface, too.
Maggie’s letters...written to her fiancé. Blaine hadn’t looked at them; he probably wouldn’t be able to look at them. But he knew they were hers.
“What the hell happened to him?” Dalton asked.
“I think I killed him.”
Dalton snorted. “This guy has been dead for days. You didn’t do this.”
“I think I did. During the bank robbery,” he said. “That first van that was recovered had blood inside, and I did get off some shots during the robbery.”
Ash stepped into the cabin behind Dalton. “Is he the one?”
Blaine nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the guy who shot Sarge.”
Ash patted his shoulder. “You got him!”
“I wasn’t sure I hit him. They were wearing vests...”
This guy’s vest was lying on the floor near his chair along with the zombie mask and the trench coat. He had definitely been one of the robbers. Was he the one who’d killed Sarge?
When Blaine had fired back, he’d thought that he shot the one who’d hit Sarge.
“He must not have had his vest tight on the sides,” Dalton said as he leaned over to inspect it. “Looks like it was too small for him—probably left a gap.”
So Blaine had gotten a lucky shot into the guy’s side. “There was a smaller robber—maybe their vests got mixed up...”
“I don’t care what happened,” Ash said. “I just care that you got him—for Sarge.”
But who was he? Blaine stepped closer to the body, intent on tipping back the guy’s head to get a better look. But then a glint of metal caught his eye, and he saw the dog tags dangling from the chain around the corpse’s neck.
He picked up the tags and read, “‘Sergeant Andrew Doremire...’”
“Who the hell is that?” Ash asked.
“A dead man,” Blaine replied. He tipped up the face—he looked like the man on the security footage from the bank. Maggie had said that Andy and Mark looked eerily similar.
Dalton snorted. “Obviously...”
“No, he’s Maggie’s dead fiancé.”
Dalton Reyes cursed. “Do you think she knows he didn’t really die in Afghanistan?” Of course he would ask that; he’d already said he didn’t trust anyone.
“No way,” Blaine said with absolute certainty. Maggie carried too much guilt over his death, probably because she hadn’t been able to talk him out of joining the Marines. But she hadn’t been to blame for Andy’s death.
Blaine was.
Apparently Dustin Doremire hadn’t just been a delusional drunk. He’d been right. Andy wasn’t dead—or, at least, he hadn’t been until Blaine had shot him.
“He was one of Sarge’s drills,” Ash said. “He must have been worried that Sarge had recognized him. That’s why he killed him.”
Or because Sarge had been trying to kill him...
Blaine pushed a hand through his hair. “That must have been why they were trying to take Maggie along with them—they probably thought she recognized him, too.”
But she hadn’t. She had refused to accept that even the brother of her childhood sweetheart could have had anything to do with criminal activities. She would never believe that Andy had.
So who were the other robbers? Definitely Andy’s brother—unless the informant had mistaken Mark’s picture for his younger brother. But if his brother hadn’t been involved, where the hell was he?
Maybe even Andy’s father was involved. That could have been why he’d been drinking so heavily when they’d gone to see him—because he’d known that Andy wasn’t going to survive this time.
Blaine had killed him. Would Maggie be able to forgive him? Would she be able to forgive herself?
He was alive!
Blaine was alive.
Her heart leaped for joy the moment she saw him walk through the door of his sister’s sprawling ranch house. When he’d asked Buster to protect her, he hadn’t wanted her to take Maggie to her home—he hadn’t wanted her to put her family at risk. Neither had Maggie.
But when they had been waiting to hear about Blaine, Buster had insisted on bringing Maggie home with her. In case the news was bad, Buster had probably wanted to be close to her family.
Her kids had gathered around them. She had three boys and one little girl—the opposite of Buster and her siblings. The boys had lost interest in Maggie quickly and gone back to playing with trucks in the living room while Maggie and Buster waited in the big country kitchen. Although shy, the little blonde girl had crept close to Maggie and pressed pudgy little fingers against her belly.
“Baby?” she had asked, though she was little more than a baby herself.
“Yes,” Maggie had replied. And she had even managed a laugh when the baby kicked and the little girl had jumped away in surprise.
But fear for Blaine’s safety had pressed heavily on Maggie until he walked through the door. His bruises and scrapes were from the night before—from the fire. Otherwise he was unscathed from the shooting. Maggie had never been happier to see anyone in her life.
But she didn’t dare launch herself into his arms the way she wanted to. He had that wall around him—that wall he’d put up back at the hospital. Something was wrong. Maybe it was just that he’d realized he had lost perspective with her, and he was trying to be more professional.
Buster pulled Blaine into a tight hug. “Thank God, you’re all right. We were going crazy worrying about you.”
“Why?”
“We heard the call on the radio,” Buster said, “about the shooting and a possible casualty.”
The little girl tugged on her mama’s leg. “What’s a castle tea?”
Buster pulled back from her brother and picked up her daughter. “It’s nothing...”
But it wasn’t. Maggie saw the look of regret on Blaine’s face. Then he leaned forward and kissed his niece’s cheek. “Hey, beautiful girl...”
“Hey,
