probably hated him for talking his brother into a military career. He’d hated himself well enough that Jonah hadn’t figured he could handle her anger on top of his guilt.
What was she doing back in town after all these years? He didn’t want to believe it had something to do with her brother, Fix, but if it did, then Jonah would have to face the consequences.
“Elise.” Jonah didn’t want to admit how much it hurt just saying her name. He refused to admit he’d missed her, even to himself.
She sucked in a breath and coughed it out. Her eyes flew open and she gasped, but she wasn’t looking at him.
“Elise.”
She pointed behind him. Jonah turned, but couldn’t see what she was trying to show him. Did she even know who he was? A guttural noise emerged from her throat.
“EMTs will be here in a minute.” He could hear the ambulance’s siren, close enough it was probably turning from Hancock onto the road that led to the zoo.
Her mouth moved, her lips forming a word he didn’t understand.
“Elise, I don’t know what you’re saying.” His stomach churned. What had happened to her? This woman was dressed for a safari, but the zoo was a wreck. No one should even be here.
“Elise.”
Her face reddened. Her mouth moved again, and she managed to say, “Bomb.”
Jonah understood that word. He grabbed up his flashlight and spun to shine it in the direction she’d pointed. Taped to the underside of the grimy desk, it was no bigger than the lockbox for a handgun.
He swiped Elise from the floor, lifting her body easily the way he’d done plenty of times in his mom’s pool. He burst from the office door into the night, vaulting the steps.
The building behind them exploded in a boom and a rush of flames.
The man dived and rolled, taking Elise with him. Aside from the bomb—which to be fair, was a pretty major distraction—she just couldn’t think of this man as being her Jonah. He didn’t look like Jonah, he didn’t sound like Jonah and he certainly didn’t smell like Jonah. Elise had spent years with animals and a boy, and Jonah didn’t smell like anything she recognized. He smelled...like a man.
Tucked against him, she could only hold on as they turned over and over against the ground. Pain stabbed across her back and she yelled, even as she felt the heat of the flames on her face. Smoke choked the clean air from her lungs. The night sky flashed orange and they came to a stop.
Emergency sirens filled the air and people yelled. Boots pounded the ground to where they lay. Elise lifted her chin until she could see Jonah’s face. He didn’t say anything. He just stared down at her, a mix of disbelief and some of the warmth she remembered.
“Hi, Jonah.”
The warmth dissipated. “Now you’re going to acknowledge me?”
It was like being doused with ice water. “There was a bomb.” Hadn’t that been more important than their reunion? It’d been more important than the pain on her back.
Elise pushed away from him. She’d thought they were having a moment, but apparently not. The movement took her breath away.
He got up. “Are you okay?”
She shut her eyes and lay back, sucking air through her nose. How hard had that guy hit her? The world rotated and she put her hand to her forehead. She didn’t want Jonah feeling sorry for her out of guilt, but he already knew she was hurt. What was the point in pretending?
“What happened, Elise? Why were you on the floor? What are you even doing here?”
Elise opened her eyes. “Someone in the office. Hit in the back. Job.”
He frowned. “You’re the new zookeeper?”
Two EMTs ran up, setting bulky bags beside her. Elise tried to answer their questions. It was hard to find a single thought, let alone string two together. All the while Jonah stood there.
People walked up and spoke to him, uniformed cops and stern-faced men—and one woman—with silver star-shaped badges on their hips.
Jonah nodded to them. “Yes. Get on that.”
The badge people all strode off.
From the look of things, Jonah was someone important. His blond hair was still military short, highlighting his high-set cheekbones and steel-gray eyes. That much remained of the guy she’d known, his features so much like his brother’s. The same features bequeathed to her son, so that she’d had to see them every single day of Nathan’s life, forced to remember everything she’d lost.
Jonah’s T-shirt was overlaid with a black bulletproof vest. The gun on his hip and the badge on his belt only solidified the air of authority he’d always carried. Even in high school, years before he joined the marines, he’d been that way.
She lifted her eyes to his face, to where the man who had once been her best friend, her husband’s brother, now stared angrily down at her.
Nathan’s uncle.
Why had she thought she could escape the reckoning that was only inevitable when Jonah found out he had a nephew? Maybe it was the real reason she was here—more than just Nathan’s college tuition. Her son did need to know his relatives.
Or Jonah, at least. His mom—Nathan’s grandma—was a different story. As was Elise’s mom, and her brother.
Jonah shook his head. “What on earth is going on, Elise? I was chasing Fix—”
“My brother?”
Jonah sighed. “He ran into the zoo and disappeared, and then I found you on the floor.” He swiped his hands down his face.
Fix had always been wild. Quick to break any rule imposed upon him. But he’d still been her brother, and being estranged from both him and her mother all these years didn’t stop Elise from feeling the pang of grief knowing he was a criminal.
Fix had to be in big trouble if cops were after him.
If it wasn’t for the influence of the Rivers brothers—Jonah and his brother, her husband, Martin—Elise might very well have ended up walking the same path as Fix.
But for the grace of God.
Every single part of her past had intruded today. She half expected Jonah’s mother to walk in the zoo any moment now, just so she could look disapprovingly at Elise one more time.
Elise shook off the bizarre thought and said, “There was a man in the office, but it wasn’t Fix. He stole my keys and some files.” It made no sense. “The gate doesn’t even lock, and he took my keys.”
Jonah crouched beside her. “Did the man you saw plant this bomb?”
