Julie Anne Lindsey - Marked By The Marshal

Right now, Kara needed a partner.

She lifted her brows at him. Ryder wouldn’t want to answer her next demand, but he had to. The moment his job had put her daughter in danger, Kara earned the right to know exactly what she was dealing with.

She tipped her chin upward and squared her shoulders. “I need to know everything there is to know about Timothy Sand.”

* * *

RYDER TRIED HIS best not to argue. He needed to at least attempt to pull prints from the matchbook, but she was right. He also needed to help Kara understand the things he’d never told her before. When they’d been in love, he’d worked hard to shield her from his work. It didn’t involve her, and Ryder had wanted to protect her. Kara was sweet-natured and kind. The sort of woman everyone loved at first sight. It didn’t make sense to ruin that with stories of fugitive apprehensions or prisoner transports. She didn’t need to know all the awful reasons people lived in witness protection, or why serving federal arrest warrants wasn’t as simple as what was portrayed on TV.

He’d intentionally kept the details of Timothy Sand’s crimes out of their pillow talk and dinnertime conversations because Kara was too good to hear that mess. She was good and true. Timothy Sand was something evil.

Ryder poured two fresh cups of coffee and sent another round of messages to his team in Cincinnati on his way to the table where Kara waited. He’d protected her before. The gruesome details had had nothing to do with her. But things had changed.

He settled into the chair across from her at the small dinette, hating everything he had to say next almost as much as the man it was about. Timothy Sand had given him no choice but to reveal the sequence of events that had nearly driven Ryder insane.

“Just say it,” Kara blurted. “I can take it. I just need to know. No more secrets or you’re not staying.”

Ryder patted the table with one heavy palm. He was staying whether she liked it or not. It might be in a sleeping bag on the porch, but he wasn’t leaving. Not until he could take her with him, which would hopefully be in the morning.

“Timothy Sand is an arsonist,” he said. Kara knew that much, of course. She tipped her head sarcastically, as if to say, “No kidding.” “He set fire to the home of his in-laws after his wife ran there for refuge.”

She sat back then, obviously feeling the weight of his words. Her lips pressed into a thin white line. Domestic violence was a personal villain of Kara’s. An ex-boyfriend in high school had hit her after she didn’t “act right” in his opinion. She didn’t talk about the details often, but she’d made it her mission that day to shed light on people like him and expose abusive men for what they were: criminals.

Ryder had been very careful to make sure she knew he wasn’t like that guy. He’d have gladly stepped in front of a train to protect her. Still would. And anyone who wouldn’t didn’t deserve her time.

“And?” she prompted, coming back to life after the initial jolt.

“He’d been charged with multiple counts of domestic violence over the years. Eventually, his wife had enough and left him. You know the statistics on that.” Leaving an abuser often escalated the abuse. Timothy was no better than the average aggressive asshole. No. He was much worse.

Ryder wrapped his hands around the nearly forgotten mug of coffee. “He followed her to her family’s home where she went to hide. Then he killed her, her parents and her younger siblings with a hunting knife.”

Kara covered her mouth with one small palm.

Ryder’s face heated with residual anger, and he felt the disgust rise inside him. He hadn’t captured Sand when he had the chance and now that monster was after Kara.

The look on Kara’s face was so heartbreaking Ryder considered ending the story there. He hated being the cause of that expression. The one that said, How can you deal with this every day? It’s unthinkable. Vile. Horrific. Disgusting. What kind of person chooses this work? Chooses to expose themselves to these things without end?

All legitimate questions, but what most people didn’t understand was that there were days when everything was golden and the bad guy paid for his crimes because of people like Ryder. Days when a family was released from their personal hell because a fugitive was captured. A killer put in jail. Those days made all the bad ones worthwhile.

“Timothy Sand burned the house down around their bodies, making it harder to identify them and the causes of their deaths, but there will always be a few things that can’t stay hidden.”

“The sun, the moon and the truth,” she said.

Ryder nearly smiled. It was nice to know she remembered his family’s favorite saying. Four brothers and a father, all lawmen. All who believed in justice and vowed to serve as best they could to make it happen.

“Sand was caught, eventually. He had no remorse. Probably blamed his wife for running and the family for giving her shelter. He’s still wanted for the original charges plus multiple counts of murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution when his path crossed mine.”

Kara listened intently. “‘Multiple counts of murder to avoid prosecution,’” she repeated. “Does that mean he killed again, while you were chasing him?”

Ryder nodded.

“And that was when you got hooked. Trying to stop him.”

“Yes.” Hooked . She’d always used that word as if Ryder had been on drugs. Though, in hindsight, it wasn’t the worst analogy. He’d been just as addicted, just as sick.

“That was the beginning,” he admitted. “After a while, I made some progress tracking him, and things got worse. I followed him to a small town in Ohio.”

Kara crossed her legs and leaned closer. “You were gone two weeks. I remember.”

“I had him.” Almost . Ryder swallowed hard, forcing his shameful gaze back to Kara’s sincere one. He’d driven through the night to get there, then followed the leads right to Timothy Sand. Within forty-eight hours, he knew everything he needed to bring him in. “I walked the town. Talked to the locals and uncovered his one mistake. He’d used his real name with a convenience store clerk, Jennifer Sayers.” Ryder’s lids fell shut. When he reopened them, he focused on the details of his old kitchen instead of the beauty before him. “Jennifer was young, happy and pretty enough that he’d forgotten himself, forgotten the alias. That slip was all I’d needed to get my hands on him.”

But he hadn’t.

Instead, Ryder had lurked in the shadows, building his case and waiting for the right time to make his arrest. “Three days after I’d started following him there, about a week after I’d received the notice that someone fitting his description was in that town, I went to the docks where he worked under an alias and waited for him to return from lunch. There were plenty of witnesses on hand, and he had nowhere to run without going for a swim. He took a bus to work, so there was no getaway car. Just a marshal and a fugitive. It should have been a textbook capture, but Timothy never showed. Instead, he went into town during his lunch and burned down the home of Jennifer Sayers.”

Kara gasped.

Ryder pressed on. “Somehow, he’d known I was there. Knew she’d told me about him. And he went to punish her.” Ryder pressed angry fingers to his temples. “She had an infant and three other children with her in the home.”

Shock twisted Kara’s sad expression into something caught between pity and horror.

Ryder couldn’t blame her. He’d felt those things and more when he’d gotten the news, until eventually he’d felt nothing. In fact, the aftermath of that fateful day had nearly killed him. Thankfully, punching his colleague six months later had resulted in him getting some help. All those weeks of Marshals-mandated counseling should have been a joke, but it became his lifeline.