Page 3 of One Final Target

And there was one who wasn’t a ghost: Ian Hunter, Jodie’s second-in-command on RAT. Because Jodie had chosen to go a day early and he had to be with his wife, who was having surgery, Ian wasn’t there during the raid. Every chance he got, he reminded Jodie that she had rushed things.“You should have waited.”

In the days before returning to work, Jodie had smiled through the pain.“I’m ready, back on my feet. I want to go back to work.”Those words now rang hollow in her memory as empty lies. Jodie did not know how to go back to life as a police officer—not without her friends and colleagues.

Doc Bass begged her to be patient.“Allow yourself time to grieve. Emotional wounds don’t heal as fast as physical ones. Stop looking atthis as your responsibility. Focus on the cause of the explosion: Hayes. Not you. Forgive yourself. The deaths of your friends were not your fault.”

“Four good cops died on my watch. They. Were. My. Responsibility.”

Jodie couldn’t forgive, and she couldn’t blame anyone but herself. She’d missed something in the weeks leading up to the warrant service, something she should have seen.

I should have known.

Norman Hayes was still missing. Once the fire was out and forensics responded, they discovered a partially collapsed tunnel leading from the target address to the lot behind, where an unoccupied vacation home had been burglarized. Someonehadbeen in the cabin, ostensibly Hayes, and fled, probably after the first knock. This prompted a huge manhunt—which came up empty.

Investigators theorized Hayes fled the residence through the passageway to the vacant home, escaping before the blast, eventually finding a way off the mountain and possibly out of the country.

Jodie didn’t buy it. Her CI, the man who’d given her the tip about the cabin, was also missing. A local lifeguard, Jukebox had no criminal record. It was inconceivable to her to think he was part of this heinous ambush. She’d stayed quiet and let the investigation run its course, and here she was, three months later, with no satisfactory resolution.

There had to be a way to discover what really happened and who was responsible. Jodie vowed to find it.

She kicked a piece of burnt wood and watched it disintegrate into black flakes. “I’m finished crying. I will find out the truth somehow.”

No echo bounced back. Her words faded in the chilly wind.

She jerked a therapy ball out of her pocket and squeezed it in her right hand. Her injuries had healed slowly. The therapy ball became a nervous habit. Frustration fueled each squeeze.

She’d lived while the people she supervised went up in smoke in the blink of an eye. Guilt kept telling her she shouldn’t be alive while her whole team had perished. Her knuckles turned white around the ball. She wondered if she’d pulverize it.

Another shiver ran through her, as much from the memory as from the wind, which seemed to get colder with every gust.

The sound of an approaching vehicle caught her attention. Turning, she saw a late-model black Jeep cruising slowly up the drive toward where she had parked, the crunch and snap of large off-road tires rolling over gravel loud. The vehicle was unfamiliar. She could see a man in the driver’s seat, but he, too, was someone she didn’t know. Tensing, Jodie wondered who else would have business here, at this lot, which was essentially a graveyard now.

Suddenly the Jeep leaped forward, straight toward her, and the man laid on the horn. Startled, Jodie lurched from his path and sprinted for her car just as the sound of gunfire destroyed the mountain morning quiet.

CHAPTER3

SAM HIT THE SEARCH BUTTONon the radio, listening as the tuner roved up the dial, looking for a strong signal. It pinged through talk, country, rap, and finally settled on a worship station. He listened for a moment, then turned the radio off. He’d not been able to worship for a while and was not ready to try now. His mind was like the search mode, bouncing around for a solid signal but not finding what it needed to stay tuned to. The radio could be silenced, but his thoughts were not as easy to turn off.

So many things were on his mind. He’d just finished moving into his new home, a two-bedroom, one-bath cabin on Canyon Drive in the small mountain community of Green Valley Lake. Fittingly, it was perched on the side of the canyon, and he’d drunk his first cup of coffee sitting on the deck this morning, despite thecool temperatures. The mountain communities were experiencing a late spring cold snap promising more snow. He’d stayed in his deck chair for an hour, taking in the scenery and watching his breath and steam from the coffee rise in the frigid air.

While he sat, he’d contemplated the injuries that almost ended his law enforcement career, the fight he’d had to get his job back, and the ongoing battle he was having with the department psychologist. Weeks after passing all the requirements to return to patrol, Sam was itching to get out from behind a desk.

In all his life, Sam had never failed. He succeeded at everything he’d ever attempted—except pulling his partner out of the burning car and being able to tell Doc Roe he’d processed everything about the incident.

He couldn’t tell him that because Sam couldn’t lie.

But yesterday had been different.

“Have I completely forgiven myself? No, I haven’t. But I’m moving forward. I’m accepting things I can’t change. To quote you, ‘Healing from trauma doesn’t happen in an instant.’ I’m healing slowly but surely. Right now, all I’m doing is pushing paper. I need to be more active, more involved in doing what I became a police officer to do.”

He didn’t get patrol, but he got moved to a more active detail—homicide. The move surprised him, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Rather than argue and try to figure out what motive was behind the offer, he said yes and then decided to charge in, full speed ahead.

Sam stopped at the intersection where Green Valley Lake Road met Highway18. As downhill traffic passed, he absentmindedly flexed his right hand. Scaly, marred, and blemished from the burns and the skin grafts, it was still tight, painful at times. So was his elbow and, to a lesser extent, his shoulder. But the hand worked,and Sam would never stop rehabbing it, trying to get as close as he could to 100percent.

His destination this morning was a friend’s house, but he had a stop to make first.

He made the turn to the small hamlet of Arrowbear, wound around on quiet streets, passed his friend’s street, and then turned left where a sign proclaimed No Outlet. Sam continued to the end of the street, arching his eyebrows in surprise when he saw a small SUV on the parking pad in front of the burned-out house. Slowing, he scanned the area and spotted a woman standing near the blackest portion of the foundation, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, erect, alert posture.

Something like a lightning bolt hit him square in the chest as he recognized her. Sergeant Jodie King. The case file he’d been given in homicide was filled with photos of her and her team. She was the reason he’d been given the plum position in homicide. Doc Roe used Sam’s Army experience as a bomb technician to argue that Sam was perfect for the gig. His expertise could help solve King’s case.

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