Page 7 of Sutton's Shadow

Sutton racked her brain, trying to think of a way she could help. No one deserved to experience what the Tinsleys were going through. She remembered meeting Bethany years ago when she and her fiancé, Liam, had visited Tin Man while he was recovering from his injury. She was a precocious girl who Sutton felt an immediate kinship with, and she had enjoyed spending time with her. There had to be a way to help her. For once, she realized, she wasn’t lost in her own worries. Perhaps focusing on someone else’s pain was the solution to forgetting her own.

But then, Liam’s face just before he’d collapsed on her lap filtered through her mind, and the vise that was twisted around her heart tightened. Who was she kidding? Her grief and guilt were constant companions. She would never escape them.

And seeing Liam’s best friend again after all these years was not helping. Did he blame her for his death as well? Liam’s teammates didn’t hold back their feeling on that matter. They’d written in their report all about her reckless abandonment of safety. Not to mention her proclivity to disobey direct orders. They were convinced if she had moved when Liam first ordered her to go, he’d still be alive. Those were the thoughts that had taken up a permanent residence in her brain.

After a few more moments and a few deep breaths to block the phantom scent of Liam’s blood from her nostrils, she pushed her plate away. “Well, thanks, Jolene. I gotta get back out there.” She reached for her purse and pulled out a twenty, laying it beside her plate.

“You’re going back outside?” Jolene asked incredulously. “The sun’s going to set soon. And the temperature will tumble with it.”

One corner of Sutton’s mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I know. But I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a spectacular sunset. Wouldn’t want my camera to miss that.” She grabbed her purse and camera bag, donned her coat, and waved to Jolene as she walked out the door.

As she strolled down the sidewalk toward the bluff, her thoughts turned to Wyatt again. The gorgeous man sitting at the end of the bar had been a Ranger, just like Liam. She remembered him from her time in Afghanistan. Wyatt and Liam had been inseparable. The best of friends.

A smidge of jealousy struck her thinking about their relationship.

She’d never had a friendship like that, not as an adult. Focused on her career, she hadn’t maintained any of the bonds she’d once had. At the time, she didn’t regret it. She enjoyed her work. It was important.

But since losing Liam, her heart was not in it anymore. Sutton Masters, the award-winning photojournalist, was now the owner of a modest photography studio in small-town America. Spending her days capturing images of a family’s life events was somewhat beneath her skills, but she couldn’t bring herself to head back out there, facing the evils of the world to procure their victims on film.

The squealing scream of a child made her heart jump into her throat, and suddenly, she was back in the Colombian jungle. The cries in her memory drowning out the gentle rush of the waves in her reality. The quaint Lake Haven street dissolved into a lush green jungle with gunfire erupting all around.

As she struggled to draw in a breath, it wasn’t the fresh Michigan air that filled her lungs; it was the stifling humidity, acrid gunpowder, smoke, and blood suffocating her. She didn’t see the toddler squealing happily as she played nearby. Instead, the unseeing stare of Mina lying in a puddle of her own blood flooded her mind. Sutton saw herself tripping, landing hard on her knees just inches away from the girl whose life had been snuffed out as such a young age.

With trembling knees and her heart thudding in fitful palpitations, Sutton made it to the bench near Jolene’s before she could hyperventilate and pass out on the street. She sat down heavily and folded in half, lowering her head between her knees, her breathing far too erratic. Two years, and the memories, the fear, still debilitated her.

As she tried to control her breathing, the movie in her mind jumped to replaying the moment of their escape from Colombia. The final gunshot played on a loop. Liam’s grunt when the bullet hit echoed torturously. The shattering windshield and the pain in her head haunted her mind. She still felt and heard it. Even now, when she was sitting on a bench in Michigan, the coppery, metallic taste and smell of blood filled her senses.

Hers and Liam’s.

He had died right there. Right next to her.

He had died because of her.

When she first realized what was happening, she should have run. She should have followed his orders. He might still be alive if she hadn’t been so obsessive about documenting the massacre. Safe. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why did her work take precedence? Liam’s teammates were right. She could see the accusations in their eyes. They blamed her for their buddy’s death just as surely as she did.

And all it took was encountering Liam’s friend to set her distressing tailspin in motion. Even though Liam had left the Army, he remained a Ranger inside. The security organization he’d worked for had sent him with her to Colombia. How many times had he joked about being her glorified babysitter? And she’d been the idiot who took him for granted. He and his two teammates. She’d always felt safe with them around. Now, with Liam gone and his two teammates resenting her, she never felt secure.

The Colombian government had yet to find the group responsible. There had been nothing left of the village. Sutton could only assume that the kidnapped boys who’d survived were forced to be soldiers for their cause. Whatever that might be. And the girls who were taken... Someone had probably pressed them into a different kind of service. Everyone else was dead. Sutton was sitting on the only evidence.

Fear had possessed her for the first time in her life. Witnessing Liam’s death had messed with her mind. She’d been in such an awful place that she’d allowed the fear to control her actions, making her hide the pictures she’d taken. Something told her that if she let people know she had captured everything with her camera, she’d never feel safe. The evil she’d glimpsed in the leader’s eyes that night told her he would hunt her down. He wouldn’t want his image out in the world. Especially not connected with such a heinous act.

Sutton had once tried to reach out to a journalist she knew in Colombia, passing a few of her pictures over to him. A few days later, she had discovered he’d been killed. He’d been working the story about recent massacres in a few villages, including the village she had escaped from. Sutton couldn’t help but infer that they had killed him because of what he’d uncovered about that group.

So, like a coward, she’d taken the SD card with all her photographs from that night and hidden it away. She was running scared; she knew. Something she’d never done before. She’d always run toward the danger, using her camera as her weapon. But losing Liam and being hurt herself had been a wake-up call. And she’d been hiding ever since. Even knowing how disappointed he’d be in her. She’d buried her head in the sand and didn’t know how to dig herself out.

Lost in her thoughts, with her head down between her knees, Sutton slowly returned her attention to the present. People were strolling the cute cobblestone street, window shopping from the businesses with endearing names such as Brew-tiful Haven, a café, and Torch of Haven, which happened to be a candle shop. The toddler’s happy squeals that had set off her panic were joined by the noise of other joyful children as they played.

She pretended to be tying her shoes when she sensed a family nearby, wondering lamely in the meantime if she was even wearing shoes that required laces. Quickly glancing down, she was relieved to see her hiking boots on her feet.

“Are you okay?” a small voice asked from beside her. Sutton looked up to see a young girl, perhaps around eight or nine, staring down at her with big blue eyes.

“Wha... oh yes, I’m fine,” she answered, straightening upright.

“What’s that?” the girl asked, pointing to the bag on the bench beside her.

“That’s my camera.”

“You’re a photographer?”

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