Page 59 of Destined for the Cowboy

Or maybe it had also been the last. Maybe it really hadn’t been good enough for him to stick around.

“He was…there?” she finally managed to ask.

He gave her a puzzled look. “Yes. He was at the back of the crowd, but he was. I spoke to him briefly.”

“Was he…did he seem all right?”

She could hear the tension in her own voice, so she wasn’t surprised when the chief picked up on it. “Actually, no. He seemed a little wound up. And he left in a bit of a rush.”

Her mind was racing, trying to find a way to ask without sounding…possessive. Controlling, maybe, as if she had the right to know where he was every moment. But once again, the man who was, after all, a trained observer, read her perfectly.

“I’d look south,” he said. “He mentioned heading to the Alamo.”

Her eyes widened. The Alamo? Why had he felt the need to visit that sacred ground for most Texans, the place where so many heroes had died? It was always on her list, and she always stopped if she was in San Antonio, but she hadn’t made a special pilgrimage in a while.

After the chief had headed back to the station, she sat pondering this bit of news. Why would he feel that particular need on this particular day? Why would he make a visit to the place that had seemed like it would end the fight for independence, yet had become the rallying cry that spirited all the remaining Texians on to a victory that would forever be in the record books, those eighteen minutes at San Jacinto?

What had driven him to seek out that truly hallowed ground?

She needed to know. She had to know. Somehow she sensed this would be the key to at last figuring out the puzzle that was Logan Fox. She started the engine. And at the same time set her mind to working out what she would do when she found him. Because this was new territory for her.

And she didn’t like it much.

She finally broke free of the grief, and the man who had made her do it just walks away? Leaves her like last night was just…one of those one-time things? When for her it had been nothing short of a revelation?

No way, Fox.

By the time she was headed due south, she’d worked herself up into what David had called fighting mode. Not to fight with Logan, but with whatever had made him run.

*

There weren’t manyplaces where he felt as if he could sense the spirit of the past lingering, as if those who had died here lingered. Yet here, looking at the old mission, staring at the rough, battle-scarred walls, pitted and jagged in spots, it seemed…different. As if they really were still here.

It was a fanciful thought for him, but here, it didn’t seem so far-fetched. Why they would stay, he had no idea. Not after the heartbreaking outcome. Or maybe that was why. Maybe it had been so awful they couldn’t process it, and couldn’t really leave until they did.

Nearly two centuries later?

He almost laughed at himself. If nothing else could, thinking the spirits of the people who had died here lingered still should be enough to make him realize how far out of whack his mind was at the moment.

So far out that he’d done something he hadn’t done since he was a scared kid avoiding a foster parent a little too handy with a belt. He’d run. Unlike the heroes of this sacred ground, he’d run. Maybe that really was why he’d come here. Maybe he figured he might pick up some of that courage, like the song said.

By what, osmosis?

Disgusted with himself, he turned on his heel and strode away from the famous building, foregoing even his usual trip to the museum. He didn’t deserve to even be here, in the company of those spirits.

Even if they were imagined.

In the morass his inward-digging mind had become he was apparently not paying any attention to anything around him, because he nearly collided with someone walking the other way.

It was the impossibility of it that made it take a moment for him to realize.

Tris. Here. Right in front of him.

He was probably gaping at her, but he couldn’t help it.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

“Hello to you, too,” she said, sounding stung.

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