Page 40 of A Dangerous Heart
Isaac was caught off guard by that thought. He’d been focused on Clare’s betrayal, her lies and who might be following her. His own hurt feelings. He hadn’t given a passing thought to what she had survived. Or the courage it had taken to leave the life she’d known.
She and her sister-in-law had planned her escape. But it was Clare who’d had the courage to act. To risk being caught or even killed by Victor.
Nick moved to the window, his back to Isaac, and let the silence of the moonlit night seep into the room. “Guess I canunderstand why she did it,” he said finally, turning from the window, his expression pointed.
Isaac only grunted.
Nick bristled. “Maybe she’s not the only one running scared.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isaac jerked his eyes to meet Nick’s level stare, tension bunching the shoulders that had barely started to relax.
“You’ve been keeping some secrets too. Distancing yourself from me, Drew, and Ed, keeping us in the dark. Haven’t breathed a word in—what’s it been now?—two years? About why you quit the Marshals.”
Isaac tensed. This again? “You can’t fix me,” he bit out. “I’m never gonna end up like Drew and Ed, with a wife and stars in my eyes.”
Nick watched him, his gaze filled with a compassion that Isaac couldn’t bear. His brothers still saw him as a hero. He’d never had the courage to tell them otherwise.
He did now. All of it flowed out of him like a rushing current. Everything. How he’d become friends with the boy and his mother and opened himself up to the thought of a family, had planned to court her once he’d finished that last assignment. And the shoot-out that’d ended in tragedy.
“I got Cody killed.”
The words came out differently than when he’d told Clare. Somehow, telling her had shifted something inside of him and the way he saw the past. Didn’t absolve him though. It was still his fault Cody had been close enough to grab.
He fell silent. In the stillness, his heartbeat pounded out the seconds in his ears. A heartbeat that reminded him that he was still alive…but Cody was dead.
He moved back to the bunk and sat down. Nick lowered to the bunk across from him, his hands clasped between his knees and his gaze pinned on Isaac’s face.
Nick didn’t look shocked or judgmental or even surprised.
“You knew.”
Nick nodded. “Read about it in the paper. Ed and Drew don’t know the details. I didn’t talk to them about it. They know the Marshals determined it was an accident though.”
Accident.A word that couldn’t encompass the enormity of what he had done.
“They didn’t fire you, did they?”
Nick already knew the answer, but Isaac told him anyway. “I couldn’t do the job anymore. I can’t fire on another person. Couldn’t even pull the trigger on the bear when David was in danger.”
Now Nick’s face showed surprise. His quick assessment showed on his face. “Clare,” he concluded.
Isaac nodded. Shame made him duck his head. He was broken. Now Nick knew the extent of it.
Nick sighed, the sound more like a shout in the silence. “I can’t help feeling that you and Clare, you both deserve a second chance. But I’m not the one who needs to give it.”
Long after Nick blew out the lantern and his steady breaths signaled he’d fallen asleep, Isaac lay in the dark, words spinning round in his head.
Accident.
Grief.
Forgive yourself.
Second chance.
Everything Nick and Clare had told him warred with what he knew to be true, or what he thought he’d known to be true all this time.
When the sun’s rays shone through the small window in the bunkhouse the next morning, he still didn’t have any answers.
