“Tyler...the woman...”
“Yes?”
Noah exhaled. “I looked at her license for ID. It’s Emma Bass.”
Tyler thought he might have stopped breathing. Never mind his own certification, he needed an EMT to look at him right now. Spasms in his chest, palms sweaty. What was she doing in Alaska, near his lodge? She’d broken up with him with little explanation when everything had been going well...too well for their own good at one point...
Kid. Noah had said there was a kid in the car. Now Tyler knew he’d stopped breathing.
He was a smart guy. It didn’t take long for shock to turn to full-blown panic as other pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.
He was just about to ask how old the boy was when Noah said, “He says he’s seven.”
Tyler would guess he’d be eight in—he did some quick figuring from the worst mistake he’d ever made, the one time he hadn’t acted honorably, the way he’d been taught was right—December.
“Wait.” Noah gave him a sharp look. “When did you graduate college and break up with Emma?”
“She broke up with me.”
“When, Tyler?”
“Eight years ago last spring.” He met his brother’s eyes, squaring his shoulders, ready for whatever his sibling was going to dish out. He deserved it.
Noah still didn’t say anything, so Tyler lowered his voice and muttered, “Yes, okay? Yes, he could be mine.” Could be? More like probably was, hard as it was to wrap his mind around. He knew Emma wasn’t the kind of woman who’d have been unfaithful. This was Tyler’s kid, he knew it as certainly as he knew just about anything else in life.
Tyler moved closer to the boy.
“When’s your birthday?” He tried to keep his voice light so it would sound like he was just making casual conversation.
“December 17.”
Tyler blinked as the kid watched him with eyes he knew looked remarkably like his own. Green. Mossy green.
This was his kid.
And Emma hadn’t told him.
He swallowed hard. “I’m just going to check you out and make sure you’re okay and then we’ll take you to the hospital to wait on your mom.”
The boy nodded, eyes wide. “Okay.”
Tyler went through the motions of a typical post-car-crash checkup, doing his best as he heard the words echoing in his mind over and over. His son. His son. His son.
“Is my mom going to be okay?”
“They’re taking great care of her.” Tyler hadn’t been able to focus his mind enough to consider whether or not Emma was seriously injured. Surely, Noah would have said...
Still he didn’t want to lie to the boy.
But hope won out. “I think she’ll be okay.” She had to be. Tyler needed to talk to her. The questions he needed to ask her were only growing by the minute.
Only then did he realize he’d never asked the kid his name. He’d been so focused on learning his birthday to confirm what he already knew in his mind.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“I’m Luke Dawson.”
Tyler needed to talk to Emma.
Right now.
He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm for the kid, who he’d decided wasn’t going to sit in some cold hospital waiting room. So Emma hadn’t told him about Luke. A huge deal, one he’d have to sort through in his mind, but he had other things to worry about right now. Like why the damage to the car looked like another vehicle had been involved. The back end of the Toyota was smashed in and some kind of dark paint, black or blue, had left streaks on the side.
“I’ll be right back, okay, Luke?”
He stepped away from the car and walked toward his brother. “Where’s the other car?”
“Hit and run.”
“Is something going to be done about that?”
Noah raised his eyebrows and Tyler checked himself. It wasn’t the best idea for him to be telling his brother how to do his job. He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I just want this dealt with.” Uneasiness churned in his stomach along with no fewer than ten other emotions he couldn’t name at the moment. Emma. A son. Car wreck.
Something about it didn’t sit right.
A cell phone rang in the front of the car and both brothers turned to look at it.
Noah gave him a look of warning. “There’s no protocol that says you should answer that.” He’d read the look on Tyler’s face well. Back in his life, not even in it technically, for ten minutes, and Emma was already making him do things that weren’t like him. She’d loosened him up in college, taught him that having friends was sometimes more important than studying for an exam, and in turn he’d taught her the value of lists, planning, stability.
He moved to the car and answered the call on the unlocked phone before Noah could try to stop him. Because technically there was no protocol that said he shouldn’t.
It was an unknown number. His curiosity piqued. “Hello?”
Whoever was on the other end hung up.
“Who was it?” Noah asked.
“No idea.”
His questions for Emma, about Emma, were only growing and Tyler’s mind was consumed with her presence, even though she wasn’t physically there but a few miles away at the Moose Haven Hospital. This was what this woman did to him, made it impossible for him to think, made him feel too much.
What’s going on, God? Why is she here? And do You really think I can handle this?
It was that last question Tyler would really like an answer to. Because he wasn’t sure he was up to whatever this challenge was. When it came to Emma, with how thoroughly she’d broken his heart, he’d wound up the loser.
Emma had the worst headache she’d ever had in her life, she was in a strange town and someone appeared to want her dead.
And to top it all off, she was within miles of Tyler Dawson, which meant she was going to have to face him soon...and she still had no idea what she was going to say.
Everything about her current situation terrified her.
Emma sat up in the hospital bed. Luke. Where was Luke? She looked around, frantic. Surely the police who’d come to the scene would recognize that hers hadn’t been an ordinary accident, right? And they’d keep her son...their son...safe?
She ran back over the details in her mind. The car following too close. The crunch of metal on metal as her car had rolled in the sunlight and then only darkness. She didn’t remember anything else.
Emma pressed the call button for the nurse. First order of business, she had to get out of here and go take care of her son. And figure out if the wreck was some kind of weird coincidence or...
A vision of a person with a gun stalking toward her, wanting her dead, solidified in her mind. No, this hadn’t been coincidence and there was no point in pretending it could have been. Emma had witnessed a murder, had had the audacity to correct the assumption that it had been suicide, something the bad guys had probably set up on purpose. And now, in their eyes, she had