Isolated Threat
Автор
Nicole Helm
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Chapter One
In the dark of his apartment, Brady Wyatt considered getting drunk.
It wasn’t something he typically considered doing. He stayed away from extremes. If he drank alcohol, it was usually two beers tops. He’d never smoked a cigarette or taken a drug that wasn’t expressly legal.
He was a good man. He believed in right and wrong. He believed wholeheartedly that he was smarter, better and stronger than his father, who was currently being transferred to a maximum-security federal prison, thanks to a number of charges, including attempted murder.
When Brady thought of his twin brother nearly dying at Ace’s hands, it made him want to get all the more drunk.
Brady wished he could believe Ace Wyatt would no longer be a threat. His father wasn’t superhuman or supernatural, but sometimes...no matter what Brady told himself was possible, it felt like Ace Wyatt would always have a choke hold around his neck.
Once he could go back to work, things would be fine. Dark thoughts and this sense of impending doom would go away once he could get out there and do his job again.
The fact he’d been shot was a setback, but he’d taken his role as sheriff’s deputy for Valiant County, South Dakota, seriously enough to know being hurt, or even killed, in the line of duty was more than possible.
He’d been shot helping save his soon-to-be sister-in-law. There was no shame or regret in that.
But the fact the wound had gotten infected, didn’t seem to want to heal in any of the normal ways no matter what doctors he saw, left him frustrated and often spiraling into dark corners of his mind he had no business going.
When someone knocked on his apartment door, relief swept through him. A relief that made him realize how much the darkness had isolated him.
Maybe he should go stay out at his grandmother’s ranch. Let Grandma Pauline shove food at him and let his brother Dev grouse at him. Being alone wasn’t doing him any favors, and he was not a man who indulged in weakness.
He looked through the peephole, and was more than a little shocked to see Cecilia Mills standing there.
Any relief he’d felt at having company evaporated. Cecilia was not a welcome presence in his life right now, and hadn’t been since New Year’s Eve when she’d decided to kiss him, full on the mouth.
Cecilia had grown up with the Knights, on the neighboring ranch to his grandmother’s. Duke and Eva Knight’s niece had been part of the fabric of Brady’s life since he’d come to live with Grandma Pauline at the age of eleven—after his oldest brother had helped him escape their father’s gang, the Sons of the Badlands.
While Brady had been friends with all the Knight girls, Cecilia was the one who’d always done her level best to irritate him. Not always on purpose either. They were just...diametrically opposed. Despite her job as a tribal police officer on the nearby reservation, Cecilia bent rules all the time. She saw gray when he saw black, and even darker gray when he saw white. She was complicated and they didn’t agree on much of anything.
Except that their fundamental function in life was to help people. Which, he supposed, was what had made them good friends despite all their arguments.
Until she’d kissed him and ruined it all. She hadn’t even tried to pass it off as a joke when he’d expressed his horror.
Still, he opened the door to her, even if he couldn’t muster a polite smile.
She was soaked to the bone, carrying a bundle of blankets. The blankets let out a little mewling cry and Cecilia shoved her way inside.
Not just blankets. A baby.
“Close the door,” she ordered roughly.
He raised an eyebrow but did as he was told, if only because there was panic underneath that stern order.
Her long black hair was pulled back in the braid she usually wore for work, but she wasn’t wearing her tribal police officer uniform. Her jeans and T-shirt hung loose and wet and her tennis shoes were muddy and battered. Even with the panic on her face, and the casual clothes, there was an air about her that screamed cop.
He should know.
“What’s all this?”
Goose bumps pricked visibly along her arms and she quickly began unbundling the baby. It was warm outside, even with the all-day rain, so he had the air conditioner running. He moved to turn it off.
“You got anything dry for him?” she asked.
Brady wanted explanations, but he could see just how wet they both were. So, he walked into his room and rummaged around for dry clothes for Cecilia, and a few things to wrap around a small infant. He grabbed some towels from the bathroom and headed back to his living room.
He handed the towel to her first. She knelt on the floor, placing the baby gently on the rug. She spoke softly to the child, unwrapping the wet layers, and even the diaper. Brady winced a little as she wrapped the baby’s bare butt in the towel he’d given her, rather than a new, dry diaper, though she didn’t appear to have any baby supplies.
“You need to get out of your wet clothes too,” he insisted once the baby was taken care of.
She looked up at him, an arch look as if he was coming on to her.
Heat infused him, an embarrassment he didn’t know what to do with. He did not blush, being a grown man. He was probably just feverish from this damn infection he couldn’t kick. Again.
“I’m not going to jump you,” Cecilia said in that flippant way of hers that always set his teeth on edge. “That ship has sailed. So unclench.”
He had never appreciated Cecilia’s irreverence for the rules of life. Or at least, his rules of life. One of which was nothing romantic between him and any of the Knight girls. Maybe some of his brothers had crossed that line, somehow made it work, but Brady had his rules. If there’d been a brief, confusing second on New Year’s Eve when Cecilia’s surprise kiss had made him wonder why, it was a moment of weakness he wouldn’t indulge.
Cecilia didn’t follow the letter of the law. She often advocated for wrong as much as right. She had kissed him. On the mouth. Very much against his will.
Then had had the nerve to laugh when he’d lectured her.
“Just go to my room and change,” he grumbled. “I’ll watch...” He gestured at the baby.
She looked back at the wriggling infant she was crouching over. Pain clouded her eyes, and fear was etched into her face.
“This is Mak.” She stroked his cheek with the gentleness of a mother, but Brady knew Cecilia had not secretly been pregnant or given birth to a child. He saw her too often for that to be possible.
He sighed, sympathy warring with irritation. “What’s going on, Cecilia?”
CECILIA COULD FEEL the shivering start to spread. It had been hot outside in the rainstorm, but Brady’s apartment was cold. Pretty soon her teeth would chatter, no matter how hard she fought against it.
And she would fight against it. Showing weakness in front of Brady Wyatt wasn’t something she could afford right now. She had to be in charge if this was ever going to work. If she was ever going to convince by-the-book Brady to go along with it.
“I’ll go change. You can leave him there or pick him up. He can roll over though, so keep an eye on him.”
She grabbed the stuff he’d brought out, helped herself to his room, and then once the door was closed, slumped against it.
She’d been a tribal police officer for seven years. She’d been afraid, truly afraid for her life. She had struggled to understand the right thing to do in the face of laws that weren’t always fair. It was hard, stressful, at times painful work, and she intimately knew fear.
But this was new. Bigger and different.
She didn’t want to die, so she feared for her own life when she had to at work. But she’d also accepted that she would die to save someone. That was why she’d gone into law enforcement, or at least something she’d accepted as she’d taken on a badge.
Now she had a specific someone. A tiny, defenseless baby. Poor little Mak. He didn’t deserve the stress and panic of being on the run, and yet she didn’t know what else to do. If Elijah got a hold of him...
Cecilia shook her head.
She needed help. She needed...
God, she did not need Brady Wyatt, but she didn’t have any other viable options in the moment. And the moment was all there was.
It was that lack of options that forced her to move. She stripped off her wet clothes, then put on the dry, too-big ones that were Brady’s. She paused at that. Brady had worn these clothes on his body.
And washed them, you moron.
She couldn’t help the fact she had the hots for Brady. Couldn’t help that the New Year’s Eve kiss hadn’t helped dissipate them any. Luckily the memory of his stern lecture afterward always made her laugh.
He was just so uptight. He drove her crazy. Yet, there was this physical thing that also drove her a different kind of crazy. She believed deep down it was just her dualistic nature. Of course she’d be attracted to someone whose personality made her want to pull her hair out.
That was her lot in life.
But that lot was way in the background now. Her only concern was finding a way to protect Mak. Cecilia had been trying to help her friend Layla through postpartum depression for the better part of six months, but a suicide attempt had landed Layla in the hospital with the state preparing to take Mak away.
Layla had begged Cecilia to hide him. The state would only take him to his father, who was rising in the ranks with the Sons of the Badlands.
The fact Ace Wyatt’s gang had begun to infiltrate the reservation Cecilia worked and lived on, the place she’d been born, filled her with a fury that scared her.
So, she’d focus on this. Keeping Mak safe until Layla was given a clean bill of mental health.
Elijah had already threatened to take Mak, maybe more than once. Layla wasn’t always forthcoming with what went down with Elijah, since there was still a part of Layla who believed she could save the man she loved from the wrong he was doing.
Cecilia didn’t believe. She knew the world was gray—that black and white were illusions made by people who had the privilege to see the world that way—but anyone who moved up the ranks in the Sons was too far gone to change for the better.
She would save the innocent baby who’d had the misfortune of a terrible father and an emotionally abused mother.
She’d been that baby, more or less, and her aunt and uncle had saved her. Showed her love and kindness and taken her in when her mother had died. She’d been six years old. Aunt Eva was gone too now, but she still had Uncle Duke, and the four other women he’d raised who were her sisters regardless of biological ties.
Cecilia tied the sweatpants tight around her waist. They were too long by far, but she cuffed the ends, then did the same with the sleeves of the sweatshirt. She took the bundle of wet clothes with her as she stepped back into the living room.
She stopped short. Brady held Mak, cradled easily in his good arm. Brady wore a T-shirt, so she could see a hint of the bandage that was on his opposite shoulder.
Recovery from the gunshot wound he’d received when saving Felicity had been complicated.
There were six Wyatt brothers, any of whom she could get help from. Easier help. All of them understood, to a point, you had to bend some rules to save people from the Sons.
Brady was the one who didn’t, or wouldn’t, accept that. He was also the one who currently couldn’t work. Who lived alone. Who could hide a baby.
Elijah might think to look at the Wyatt Ranch for Mak, but he wouldn’t think to look into Brady individually. Not at first anyway. Not while she came up with a plan.
“Can I throw these in your dryer?”
Brady inclined his head, gently swaying Mak’s body back and forth as if Brady had any practice with calming babies.
She’d spent some time in Brady’s apartment. Not much. They’d all helped him out here over the past two months, trying to give a hand with chores that might hurt his shoulder. She’d come over with Felicity and Gage one night and made him dinner. She’d delivered some food courtesy of Grandma Pauline a few weeks ago when he’d been doing laundry, and despite how little she wanted to be alone with him when everything about him made her body react, she’d insisted on helping him move the clothes from the washer to the dryer.
She did so now, tossing her own clothes in the dryer. She wouldn’t have time for them to get completely dry, but it would help. Hopefully the rain would stop so it wouldn’t be a completely futile gesture.
She hesitated going back into the living room. Much as she wanted Mak in her own arms where his warm weight gave her a settled purpose, she knew she couldn’t go back to Brady without a clear sense of what she was going to say.
She’d practiced on the way here. She’d just go with that. Brady. I need your help. I know you won’t approve, but you’re the only one who can keep this innocent child safe and away from the Sons. I know you’ll do the right thing.
Simple. To the point.
But as Cecilia stood on the threshold of his small, stark living room, watching a big man holding a tiny baby, she could only say one thing.
“His father is a member of the Sons.”
Brady’s expression did that thing that had always fascinated her. It didn’t chill. It didn’t heat. It was like something inside of him clicked off and he went perfectly blank.
She envied that ability.
“His mother is in the hospital,” she continued. “The state is going to award him to his father. I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s not up to you, Cecilia.”
He said it so coolly, so calm. She wanted to scream, maybe give him a good punch like he’d once taught her to do when she’d been thirteen and a boy at school was bothering her.
But rage and punching never got through to Brady Wyatt. So, she had to be harsh. As uncompromising as he always was. “Would you send this baby to survive your childhood?” Because Brady had spent eleven years stuck with the Sons, surviving his father—the leader of that terrible gang.
There was a flicker of something in his eyes, but his words and the delivery didn’t change. “He isn’t Ace’s son.”
“He could be,” Cecilia returned, trying to match his lack of emotion and failing. “Ace is gone. Elijah is trying to move up, take over. He’s recruiting people at the rez at a rapid rate.”
“Elijah Jones,” Brady said flatly.
The fact Brady knew him didn’t soothe Cecilia’s nerves any. “Yes. You know him?”
“Of him,” Brady replied, still so blank and unreachable. “He has a record.” Brady’s gaze lifted from the baby to her. “The state wouldn’t put a child with someone who—”
“You know what? Forget it.” God, he infuriated her. After everything he’d seen as a police officer, everything he’d survived as a boy, he could believe the state would do the right thing. She marched toward him. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need you and your rigid, ignorant belief in a system that does not work. Hand him over.” She held out her arms.
But Brady simply angled his body, keeping Mak just out of her reach. “No,” he said firmly.
