Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(38)

Since Cohen and I had been together, I’d wanted to make our relationship normal. Create a bond that wasn’t hobbled by my past. A “how was your day at the office, dear?” kind of relationship.

But he was right. I was way too skittish to walk all the way into the room.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not what you did in Iraq. As a cop, I know we’re all just trying to do our best. And I know that sometimes it’s impossible in the moment to perfectly draw that line between right and wrong. I get that.”

My pulse throbbed in my temple. “What, then?”

“It’s how you handled it with me. You’ve buried yourself so far behind your walls that even when both our lives were in danger, you wouldn’t let me in. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on. And now . . . now I don’t know if I can trust you to have my back.”

A needle slid into my heart. “I thought I could handle it on my own.”

“That’s exactly the problem. You think you have to handle everything by yourself. You should have included me, Sydney. Dammit.” He turned to face me. Anger and pain and hurt swam in his eyes, eddies in a dark current. His entire body slumped, as if gravity had finally gotten a grip on him. “Can you try not to die while I’m gone?”

My eyes filled. “Marines are hard to kill.”

“Apparently, not always.”

Because I had no words, I tried to put everything in my eyes. Love, apology, strength. Maybe Cohen saw it. Maybe not.

“I love you,” he said. “But I don’t know what that means anymore. Because I don’t really know who you are.”

He turned and walked into our bedroom, taking my heart with him.





CHAPTER 10

Hard shouldn’t scare you. Lay yourself open to the bone if you have to and take out what’s weak.

—Effie “Grams” Parnell. Private conversation.

Cohen didn’t stir when I came into the bedroom.

I undressed and slid in beside him. He lay with his back to me, and I lifted my hand, intending to touch him. To try and break down the barrier of flesh and bone he’d erected as firmly as a stonemason’s wall. But in the end, I was too much of a coward. I rolled away and stared into the dark until sleep finally granted me the company Cohen would not.

I woke the next morning to the sound of him showering. When he came back into the bedroom, I feigned sleep while he grabbed a few things from the closet. A minute later, the garage door went up and then down, and as quietly as that, Cohen was gone.

For a few days, or forever.

I shot him a text, asking him to let me know when he’d landed. Then I tossed back the covers and hauled myself to a sitting position. Clyde came back from following Cohen and locked his eyes on mine, his brow furrowed but his tail wagging.

You’re late, he was saying. He butted my knees. Time to get our game on.

“Ooh rah,” I agreed without much heart. I set aside my pain to deal with later, preferably in the dark and with a bottle of scotch. “Let’s go get the bastards.”



As Clyde and I left the gated community of Cherry Hills in my ancient Land Cruiser, I watched for a tail. It had to be there. But if so, the guy was too slick for me to spot. I spent fifteen minutes winding through backstreets without noticing anything, and finally accelerated onto I-25 and got sucked into the clot of morning traffic creeping north. On a good day, my beloved old truck topped out at fifty; this morning, that was ten miles an hour faster than the traffic.

I took the exit for I-70 and headed east toward Limon, away from my destination. I exited at Washington Street and took a few turns before I pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store. Still nothing. Finally, convinced we were alone, I returned west on Forty-Eighth. Once I was on the far side of the freeway, I made better time on the side roads.

Grams lived with my honorary aunt, Ellen Ann Lasko, in Denver’s Royer district, a low-rent scab on the face of the gentrification occurring all around. Royer had been settled in the early 1900s as a housing district for employees of a smelting and refining company. These days, most of the people in Royer worked for the railroad. Or had until gasoline got cheap in the eighties, and the railroads downsized. Now the neighborhood boasted more long-haul truckers than railroaders, along with plenty of the unemployed. Rumor had it that railroads were about to get popular again. Maybe there would be a shift in who was using food stamps at the local supermarket.

I used to come to Royer often, hoping to score dinner from Ellen Ann and guidance from Nik. But all that had changed after Nik and I worked a case together the previous winter and things ended badly. I’d hardly been back here since Nik died and Grams moved in with Ellen Ann. Visiting my onetime home away from home had become too painful. Plus, I’d been fearful of drawing the Alpha’s attention here.

There was no reason for him to look at the Lasko residence unless I pointed it out.

Now, as I pulled to the curb and studied the house, it was Nik Lasko who occupied my thoughts. The sight of his truck in the driveway with its God and Country Will Prevail bumper sticker shafted a hurt into me that went bone deep.

Nik had been like an uncle. A father, even. Offering advice and encouragement and sometimes disapproval. But he had not been the man I thought he was.

I knew how he would have handled the Alpha, though. He would have gone in, guns blazing.