Courage Under Fire (Silver Creek #2) - Lindsay McKenna Page 0,38

Dirk. He was selling drugs in school at age twelve, and I knew it. If I told my mother? She’d have turned him in to law enforcement. I kept it a secret. Blake, his father, doted on him, spoiled him rotten, gave him all the money he wanted, and Dirk didn’t have to lift a finger to earn it. I don’t know why Blake didn’t see what his son was doing.”

“I don’t either. This has been a rough childhood for you in many ways for a long, long time.”

“It got much better when I was in college.” She opened her hands. “This isn’t very good table talk, but I’ve told you half the story about Dirk entering our lives, I might as well tell you the worst part.” She saw him frown, a darkness in his eyes that looked like worry for her. Taking a deep breath, she lowered her voice so that only Chase could hear her speak. “When I was seventeen, I saw Dirk get into a fight with his girlfriend. He took a gun out and shot her in the head, instantly killing her. I screamed and ran. I was afraid he’d shoot me next. I ran to the bus that I knew would take me to the police station. I was so shaken up I couldn’t phone 911 or anything. I just wanted to run as far away from Dirk as fast as I could. When I got to the police station, my knees were so weak that I was afraid I’d fall. Somehow, I made it to the sergeant at the desk. I think I half sobbed and half told him what had happened. They instantly sent out a cruiser.”

“My God,” he whispered. “What happened then?”

“I-I stayed at the station. It was the only place I felt safe. I called my mother at work and she called Blake. They came to the station. By that time? They’d found Dirk and took him down, cuffed him and read him his rights. He was taken to a jail cell long after my mother and Blake arrived at the station. We just waited there together. I told them what happened. The police confirmed through my eye-witness account, that Dirk had shot her.” She took a deep breath and held his turbulent gray gaze, feeling such warmth and a sense of protection pouring off him and surrounding her. It gave her the courage to go on. “Dirk was charged with second-degree murder and he got twenty-five years.”

“Did you have to testify?”

Giving a jerky nod, she whispered, “Yes. I was terrified of having to do it, Chase. After I got out of the seat, done with my testimony against him, Dirk screamed out that he’d kill me sooner or later. Of course, the judge ordered him out of the courtroom and they dragged him out of there, cursing me and my mother, Nalani. To this day, I can see his insane face, those crazed, black eyes of his, and his voice . . . screeching at us like a madman.”

Sitting back, Chase digested her quiet admission. “No wonder you wanted to be honest with me at the airport when we met.”

“You and everyone here in Silver Creek deserve to know and be protected from him, Chase. He’s a monster. He has no heart. No soul. His defense attorney tried to get him off on grounds of mental illness; that he was a sociopath, to which the psychiatrist agreed in testimony to the jury. But the jury saw something different. Worse. If they let him out of prison? He was insane, and would kill again. They were right.”

She pressed her hand against her heart. “And I’m his next target.”

“Not if we can help it,” Chase growled, giving her a look that said so much, that he would protect her at any cost. Even at the expense of his own life, if it came to that. In that moment, he became excruciatingly aware that he was falling in love with her. Real love. Forever love. He was old enough now to know the difference. And yet, she was hunted. Well, Dirk Bannock had just met his match and then some, whether he knew it or not. He’d been a behind-the-lines sniper for months on end in enemy territory. He knew how to track and he knew how to live off his survival instincts and his knowledge of the land. He knew who his enemy was. Dirk Bannock was someone he was going