Sharon Dunn - Broken Trust

All he could think about was Christine.

The blast had tossed her sideways and now she lay motionless, forty feet from the burning car.

She wasn’t moving. He ran. He dove to the ground beside her and felt for a pulse at her neck.

She was alive.

With his hand still cupping her cheek, he leaned closer. She looked so pale and lifeless. “Christine, can you hear me?”

No response.

He lifted her. She was like a rag doll in his arms. Holding Christine close to his chest, he ran across the lot toward the sidewalk. Without slowing his pace, he crossed the street, grateful that the hospital was clearly marked.

Christine moaned. She opened her eyes. Her gaze was unfocused.

Still running and out of breath, Wyatt looked down at her. He could lose her. So much had gone unsaid between them. “Just for the record—” he gasped for air “—I did love you. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

Broken Trust

Sharon Dunn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Commit your way to the Lord;

trust in him and he will do this: He will make your

righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of

your cause like the noonday sun.

— Psalms 37:5–6

For my children who inspire and challenge me

to be a better person

Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun .

Psalm 37: 5–6

Special Agent Wyatt Green knew he was in trouble even before he felt the bone in his arm crack. Unexpected high winds had caused the helicopter he was supposed to drop out of to pitch to one side.

When he was almost down the rope, he’d lost his grip, twisted in the air and held his hands out to brace his fall. The impact with the ground sent shivers of pain up both his arms, but there was no mistaking that splintering of bone. He suspected a fractured forearm. As he rose to his feet, he told himself it wasn’t that bad. He’d broken bones clean through, and the pain from that was even more mind-numbing. He’d completed assignments with injuries before, and he could do it again.

As the helicopter disappeared into the night sky and the thrum of the motor became more distant, Wyatt gritted his teeth against the pain and got his bearings. The badlands of eastern Montana looked just as remote and foreboding at night as they did in the daytime. Ten years ago, he and a team of agents had descended on this same area for a standoff with a landowner who appeared to be amassing an army to help him carry out his domestic terrorist philosophy.

A pain more intense than the fracture jabbed at his heart. Ten years ago, Agent Christine Norris, barely out of the academy, had walked away from a career to marry a rancher in this area. She’d also walked away from him. A flash of memory, Christine’s easy laugh and soft brown eyes, caused him to lose focus. He shook off the emotional ache, adjusted his backpack, checked his coordinates and headed toward where Christine and Dustin’s farmhouse was supposed to be.

Ignoring the pain in his arm, he jogged at a steady pace along the dirt road. When his supervisor picked him for this mission, he hadn’t argued. Ten-year-old wounds that still felt raw were hardly grounds for refusing an assignment. He was a professional. He had experience in this part of the country. He could manage his feelings about Christine just fine. It had taken him years to accept it, but their relationship had fallen apart because of him. She was a married woman now. He had to let it go and focus on work.

He stopped for a moment to look at the photograph of five-year-old Tyler Lansky. When he clicked on his flashlight, Tyler’s gap-toothed grin and blond hair came into view. Tyler was the reason he had been sent back here. Emmett Lansky had taken Tyler during a custody battle. Emmett had ties to a militia group believed to be setting up a training camp in this area.

The Bureau had been watching Emmett for quite some time. Now that Emmett had broken his custody agreement and taken his son across state lines, they had the excuse they needed to move in and make an arrest. Any intel out of him would be a step in the right direction. Though getting Tyler home safe to his mom was their primary mission, the infiltration would allow the FBI to see if there was any truth to the chatter they had been hearing, that this particular group was planning activities that fell outside the law.

Headlights flashed across Wyatt’s field of vision. He dived off the road into some brush. Lying low in the tall grass, he waited while the old pickup chugged past. Unusual to see someone out on a country road this late at night. His supervisor had warned Wyatt to keep the mission as quiet as possible. They didn’t want a repeat of what had happened ten years ago when they had shown up in full force, for what probably could have been a one- or two-agent operation. The rancher had turned out to be way more talk than action. The real tragedy was that after a forty-two-day siege, an agent had shot a fourteen-year-old boy who was climbing the fence of the property. The group had run out of water, and the boy was taking a bucket down to the river. The FBI sniper, exhausted from lack of sleep and restless from days of inactivity, had mistaken the bucket for a weapon.

The encounter had left the locals with a bitter taste in their mouths and a distrust of the FBI. This time they were only sending Wyatt and his partner. If a team or experts were needed, they could pull them from field and satellite offices fast enough.

Wyatt waited until the taillights of the old truck disappeared over a hill before resuming his jog down the road. He ran with an easy stride, barely out of breath. Early spring in Montana meant there was still a chill in the night air.

Dropping in by night would allow his partner in the helicopter to do a search for lights in remote places that might indicate a camp. The pilot would swing back around and get him. If the helicopter located anything or Christine gave them a direction to go, they would have an easy in and an easy out. No contact with townspeople required, no reopening of old wounds.

Christine had been a part of this community for ten years, and she’d recently been elected sheriff. She had to know something.

Wyatt slowed the pace of his jogging as memories rushed at him. She had been truly happy when she met Dustin. She probably had half a dozen kids by now. After a while, he’d been happy for her. She deserved it. His only regret was that he hadn’t been the man to make her happy. Working for the Bureau was what had kept them together, and he hadn’t seen what a gem Christine was until he’d lost her.

He ran to the top of the hill. In the distance, the lights from a farmhouse and outbuildings came into view. After tossing his backpack over a barbed-wire fence, he climbed it and made his way through a field filled with cattle. Most of the heifers had bedded down for the night with their calves. Those who were standing weren’t fazed as he passed by them.