Jacob took another drink and shrugged.

"She flinched. I can't control everything."

"Be that as it may, she'd still own our house."

Jill restacked the targets, tapping them neatly on the countertop.

"A little sloppy," she said. "But if it were me, I'd still want you to take the shot, I guess."

"Thanks a lot."

Jill moved to the refrigerator and took out a Tupperware container of salad and set it on the counter.

"No matter how it ended up, I'd still love you."

"That's a relief."

"Even if it meant I'd be deaf in one ear and have to eat through a straw for the rest of my life."

She should have been smiling at her own joke, but a frown creased her lips and touched her eyes.

"I didn't see Sesak's targets. She kept hers?"

Jill moved back to the stove and Jake pirouetted to the countertop where she'd just been. Kitchen ballet.

"She left early, before I could grab them," he said.

The frown deepened.

"She left you? Her whole job is to watch your back while you're on target and she left?"

Jake could hear the irritation, indignation, and a touch of fear in her voice. It was only now that he considered what would have happened if Kathryn had stayed. He knew that the bullet was meant for him, not her. And only as a message for him. This person had waited for Kathryn to leave. Thinking about it made him reevaluate the wisdom of not telling Jill what had happened. Her voice brought him out of his own head again.

"Jake? She left you there?"

"Not in the way you think. And it really was a s.h.i.tty day."

She c.o.c.ked her head like a dog waiting to hear a word it recognized. "Of course it was," she said, "but it was s.h.i.tty for everybody. That doesn't mean she gets to just quit! She'll never complete Phase One that way. She'll wash right out." Her arms were now crossed in front of her.

Jake could hear the weakness of his words in his own voice. "Well, I cut her a little slack because she's new."

"I've never seen you cut the guys any slack. Ever."

Jesus Christ. Would this day never end? Now he was defensive. On edge.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you're treating her differently because she's a female."

Jake could feel his mouth trying to move while his brain raced. Was he treating her differently? Maybe. Jill was worried. He'd never worked with a female partner before. And she knew the reality of that scenario. They both knew from their careers that things happen. Kathryn was his new partner. And a partnership in this line of work was a marriage of sorts. You spent at least as much time with your partner as your spouse. You did an intense job together, and in the aftermath, exhaustion set in and professional barriers were relaxed. They had both seen it happen.

Yes, he was treating Kathryn differently. Any other spotter he would have ridden into the dirt. Pushed him to his limits. But his feelings for Kathryn weren't romantic or l.u.s.tful. Far from it. What he felt for her was closer to what a father would feel for his daughter. He knew he could tell Jill this and her jealousy would end, because she would see the truth in it. But he couldn't say that to her. It would cause an even deeper pain. Because it would remind Jill that she had failed to give him a child of his own to raise and love and teach.

There was no winning this one. No way out.

He finally said, "It's not that. It's not because she's a female. It's what she could process as an individual and today was too much. Emotionally, I guess. At least for her."

Jill considered this and saw the logic in his point. And just like that it was over.

"Well then," she said, "she'd better learn to pull on her big girl panties or she won't last."

Jake chuckled and said, "I think she will."

Jill moved back to the refrigerator and Jake decided now was the time to escape. Tonight, after this day from h.e.l.l, all he wanted was a shower, some food, and to hold Jill in his arms.

"Time for a quick shower before dinner?" he asked as he pa.s.sed the refrigerator.

"Sure," she said, and he ran his hand across her b.u.t.t on the way out. "Hey now, I'm working here!" she said in her normal, cheerful voice.

CHAPTER 16.

In the kitchen, Jill sat on one of the barstools overlooking the stove area. She studied her hands on the counter in front of her. Her eyes went to her wedding ring and her right hand twisted it around her finger.

He'd become defensive and testy when she brought up Sesak. Kathryn. An attractive, younger, female cop. Jill knew what it was like to be a female in a male-dominated profession, so she felt a kinship with Kathryn. Women like them just kept their mouths shut and did their job and eventually the respect came. Jill knew how hard it was and she empathized. You had to work twice as hard to be thought half as good, and you really needed to have the physical strength for the job. Jill had caught a genetic break by growing tall and strong enough to do the work (even though she still seemed small next to Jake). She took special pride in having been hired before there were minority quotas. She kicked a.s.s on her two-day mental and physical strength tests and won her job. So Jill was already in Kathryn's corner whether Kathryn knew it or not. But not if it meant a threat to everything she and Jake had been through and built together.

As much as she loved and trusted Jake, and as much as she understood and identified with the obstacles Kathryn faced, Jill also knew the reality of men and women working together in these public safety professions. You do an intense job and in the aftermath-while you're loading dry hose back on the engine, restocking your ambulance, cleaning it out, whatever-there was a bizarre s.e.xual chemistry that came out as your exhaustion set in and you lowered your normal professional barriers by saying out loud what you'd been thinking for years, which might well be, "I'm hot for your body."

That's why you would see doctors and nurses become couples (especially emergency room ones), surgeons and surgical technicians, cops and firefighters. All of those adrenaline-junkie jobs ignited a post-call-out atmosphere of flirting and s.e.xual tension. You'd just saved someone's life together and maybe even did it when the person was clinically dead when you got there. Or you might be so physically exhausted you could hardly speak, but what came out of your mouth was what you really thought about your partner.

Barriers dropped. And sometimes pants did, too.

Frankly, Jake had been an arrogant a.s.shole about females in these professions. He railed about the ones who were hired "because they had to be" to fill quotas, and griped that they just weren't physically big enough to do the job. Or they were lesbians. Not that it mattered. Jill was often mistaken for one herself. Add the short haircut-for safety reasons-and people just a.s.sumed you were gay.

After Jill and Jake met-at a murder scene no less-he said he remembered seeing her through an ambulance window years before. She remembered it, too. She had thought about him. But meeting him face to face, talking to him, she recognized his prejudice and silently went about her life showing him what a female could do. She was proud that she'd forced Jake to rethink his knee-jerk reaction about all females in male jobs. He saw she could not only do it, she excelled at it. She knew she had won his respect and his heart the day he put a license plate frame (that she had bought for him as a joke) on his personal vehicle. It said MY HEART BELONGS TO A FIREFIGHTER. It sealed their fate and they were soon married and both working exciting, adrenaline-junkie jobs.

They had even worked some calls together where he had to remind himself that she was not his wife in that moment, and it was her job to go back inside the burning building. To get down in the blood, gla.s.s, and alcohol in order to shimmy into an overturned, collapsed car. Or to calm a drunk belligerent biker and gain his compliance. Just as she had to wait outside on a possible suicide scene until Jacob and the other cops went in and made sure there were no weapons involved. EMTs could not enter a scene before they were cleared by law enforcement.

She remembered one day when she and her partner anxiously watched a house that deputies were in the process of clearing, and strained to hear what was going on. To her utter dismay, two deputies came running out as if fleeing for their very lives. Jake was not with them. Then, she saw him appear and motion Jill and her partner onto the scene while the two other cops laughed at her and how big her eyes had been.

She said, "Very funny, a.s.sholes, I'll remind you of that next time you roll a patrol car!"

"Aw, Jill! C'mon!"

They helped each other by being the soft place to fall when needed. Jill knew one thing she could absolutely never do in her career was to cry on the job. Crying was the kiss of death in such occupations. So she learned to suck it up. And then here came Jake. A man who understood the rules of engagement. She could tell him anything. Cry in front of him and know she was safe. After a particularly brutal call, she remembered how she'd snuck into the station's office cubicle, away from the bunks where the rest of her shift members slept. It was about three in the morning when she called, and Jake had answered the phone by simply saying, "Tell me." And she did. She needed it all out of her then and there.

And slowly he came to trust that she could harbor his deepest secrets and fears as well. Through it all she had never doubted Jake's devotion to her as she was sure he never doubted her devotion to him. Oh sure, there were always the cop groupies to deal with. Women in love with the uniform, hitting on cops to get out of a ticket or for their own s.e.xual kicks. The groupies just came with the outfit. Accessories. She could handle them with ease. There were other kinds of females she could not abide, though. Like the ones who falsely cried rape after being arrested. It had seemed like something the guys just rolled their eyes at, so Jill never paid much attention to it. Until the day Jake came home and told her a woman he had transported to the county jail was accusing him of raping her in the patrol car. Suddenly it was real and horrific. How dare this woman lie like that? About her husband? An accusation like that could result in "unpaid time off pending an Internal Affairs Investigation."

These women rarely won their cases because they didn't realize that everything was recorded. Cameron County was just now catching up to technology's pace by placing cameras in each unit. But radio traffic had always been recorded. Without the benefit of cameras, officers gave a code over the air while transporting a female and read off their starting mileage on the odometer. When they arrived at the jail they would give their ending odometer readings. These transmissions were time-stamped as well, so no false claim ever really went very far. In some cases, the accusation didn't even clear the Watch Commander's desk that day because it was so outrageous.

Jake had once been accused of raping a woman forty-two times on a thirty-minute ride to jail-absurd on many levels, but such was the life of a cop. The guys on SWAT were giddy in antic.i.p.ation of Jill's reaction. She and Jake were newly married then, and she had been more jealous in those days. That weekend, she saw the team on a training day where she was playing the part of a hostage. When she got out of her car the hoots and hollers began immediately.

"Hey, Jill? How'd you like that? He's a persistent little fella it sounds like!"

And then she heard, "Lucy! He's got some 'splainin' to do!"

And finally, "Not satisfying his needs on the home front?"

She shut them all up when she said, "Hey, as long as he didn't break his old record I'm fine with it." And walked away. Jake's laughter was full, loud, and long. She cherished it.

She had felt powerful then. Proud she'd gone toe-to-toe with them. And she realized it was the feeling of powerlessness that was eating her from the inside out now. This was her life and she wasn't used to being an idle observer. She was feeling the way she felt in the aftermath of her injury. When they told her she'd never work another day on her torn-up leg. At least not in her dream job. Jill had no backup plan in place. It never occurred to her she could lose her job to an injury. h.e.l.l, they all got nicked up and bruised, sprained and dehydrated. It all just came with the territory. They worked through the pain and always came back, sometimes working right through an injury. Until that day. That G.o.d-awful, irreversible day. And yet, it had happened. In memory, Jill reached down and rubbed her right lower leg, where the pain was most persistent and constant. A bone-deep ache that would never go away.

Jake had a mandated appointment with a psychiatrist coming up, which she knew concerned him. h.e.l.l, it concerned her, but they had talked about that and how it was always the unknown that scared people.

People almost always imagine scarier monsters, worse scenarios, and bloodier bodies than the truth bore out. It was usually much less intense or dramatic. There was even a reality show on television predicated around this phenomenon, where people were put in pitch-black darkness and then simple things were done to them or near them. Performers with night vision goggles would touch the contestants, then quickly move around and touch them again. A feather might be rubbed across their face. There were epic freakouts because of the total darkness. The not knowing what was there. Suddenly, a household broom was some horrific instrument of torture and all because someone had turned out the lights. The human brain's reaction to the unknown could be spectacular. Some contestants looked like they might spontaneously combust if the lights weren't turned on immediately.

The human brain and the unknown were a powerful combination.

And here she sat with a big-a.s.s load of "unknown." She just couldn't shake the feeling that Jake was hiding something from her. She didn't want to believe that it had anything to do with his new female partner. But he was hiding something.

Of course, she was hiding something, too. But she didn't want to tell Jake about it. Not yet. It would be wrong to place a burden of worry and concern on his shoulders. Not until she knew for sure.

CHAPTER 17.

The next morning, Jill was folding clothes in the bedroom. She and Jacob had made love in the night. It was good. Not coming-down-off-an-adrenaline-high good, but not bad for a couple of middle-aged married people.

She had a busy day lined up, and thinking about it made her stomach hurt. She had a cla.s.s to teach at eleven, then one of her students who was struggling with writing believable dialogue was coming over for one-on-one tutoring, and after that she would be seeing both her sister and her mother. Seeing either one of them alone was bad enough, but together there was a tag-team effect that was enough to give a person gastrointestinal distress.

Out in the living room, the television was turned up too loud. Jake was out there flipping through the channels like a five-year-old with ADHD. And dry firing his weapon. His .45. Shooting at images on the screen. There was a certain rhythm to what he was doing. The SHHH STTKK of the sliding of the gun's action. Followed by flickering silence as the channel changed. Then the metal click of the pistol hammer. SHHH STTKK, channel change, click. An endless cycle. Jill laid a t-shirt on the bed. SHHH STTKK: left sleeve fold over. Channel change: right sleeve fold over. click: shirt folded in half. She folded another shirt to the same cadence, SHHH STTKK, channel change, click. She finally realized what she was doing and went to the living room where Jake held his .45 in one hand and the TV remote in the other. He put the remote down to work the action on his weapon, SHHH STTKK ... Picked the remote back up to change the channel ... then took aim at the TV and pulled the trigger, click. SHHH STTKK, channel change, click.

She watched as he continued, oblivious to her presence. She stared at the screen. He was murdering indiscriminately. Jerry Springer was the first to go, followed by Dr. Oz. Then Jane Fonda. Twice. Traitorous b.i.t.c.h. Jill's father had served in the Air Force in Vietnam. And now she was being honored as one of the hundred greatest females or something? It was disgusting. Jill shook it off and refocused on Jake. Apparently Jake wasn't feeling the same morning-after glow as Jill. It looked like maybe he was back in his bad place. He didn't even look up when she stood right next to him.

"Hey, where are you?"

"I'm right here."

"No. No you're not."

"Where am I, then?"

"I don't know. You're not here, though. You've gone away from me again. Are you back on your daddy's ranch? Is that where you are?"

"No."

"I think you are. I think you're back in Montana. With the snow and the sheep and the wolves."

"No."

"You're not here. And you're not there. Where are you?"

"Jill, I don't know. I guess I'm in the middleground."

"The middleground?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, you need to decide which way you're going to go. Back to the sheep and wolves, or forward to California. This is the Golden State, you know."

"I've heard."

In her soothing tourist-commercial tone of voice, Jill said, "Come to California..." which didn't get a smile from Jake. That line usually did. Instead he'd kept up the monotonous dry firing at the TV people.

Suddenly the Energizer Bunny appeared on-screen, and Jill threw herself in front of the TV.

"No! Not him! Not the bunny."

Jill grabbed the remote out of Jake's hand and quickly found Martha Stewart.

"You want to save the world? Shoot her."

Jacob smiled, worked the action again, though he kept the weapon pointed at the ceiling.

"Honey, you're downrange."

"What?"

"You're downrange."

She stared at him. Hands on hips.

"I am not downrange, Jake. I'm in our living room. And aren't you working later today? Isn't that why you can't make Brodie's birthday party?"

"Yep. Afternoon and evening."

"Look at you! You're off duty and doing this! You've got me folding laundry in cadence. Stop it! Enjoy your morning off!"

He sighed and lowered his weapon.