The Target

“Hannah, you don’t understand—”

“You’re right,” she agreed calmly. “I don’t understand. And I probably never will. But I can’t let that stop me from doing what I want to do. This life is the only one I’ve got. I want to live it.” She swept her hand down his cheek, as her eyes filled with tears. A moment later, she was gone.

STUNNED BY HANNAH’S WORDS, Quinn felt the strength drain from his legs.

This was crazy.

Quinn loved Hannah. She loved him. How could she do this to them? How could she just walk away?

Even as he asked himself those questions, Quinn acknowledged he’d known all along this possibility existed. They’d argued too much for him to think otherwise. But dammit it to hell, children weren’t a possibility for them. He’d lost too many comrades to think it couldn’t happen to him, too. He wouldn’t bring a child into the world just to abandon it. That kind of irresponsibility went against everything he believed in.

The door swung open again, and for one heart-stopping moment, Quinn looked up, thinking she might have returned. But it wasn’t Hannah. One of the aides stood in the doorway, a dinner tray in her hand. She started to argue as he waved her off, then she looked at his face. Without saying a word, she backed quickly out of the room.

His heart felt as if it’d been winched from his chest and hoisted high. He’d never loved another woman as he loved Hannah. And with absolute certainty, he knew he’d never love anyone that way again.

But what choice did he have?

A clean break could set her free. Hannah didn’t deal with shades of gray, so a black-and-white resolution—right or wrong—would give her the ability to move on. She could find a nice accountant, keep her career, have her children and never worry. She’d write Quinn off and everything would fall into place for her. She’d forget all about him.

He lied to himself and said it was for the best.

Her happiness was what mattered most. She could have her career and her family, too. Quinn closed his eyes, more pain—despite his resolution—flooding his heart. She’d share her life with someone who saw things as she did. Someone who could be there for her and her children. Forever.

Someone who wasn’t Quinn.

CHAPTER THREE

Nine months later—October

“I DON’T HAVE TIME TO talk about this.” Hannah stared across her bed at her mother. “I have to pack. I have to catch a plane to Florida, and once I’m there I have a bomb to examine. I don’t have time for this.”

Barbara Crosby’s expression immediately closed, but not before a hint of hurt passed over it. “I’m only thinking of you, Hannah. And I’m only doing that because you never do. Ever since Quinn went back to St. Martin—”

“That’s enough.” Hannah threw a pair of black pants into her suitcase and slammed it shut. “Stop right there.”

If Barbara had snapped off an equally angry reply, Hannah would have been pleased. Instead, her mother’s eyes filled with something Hannah didn’t want to see and she left the room. Hannah loved her mother deeply, but she had the feeling their experimental living arrangement might be more temporary than either of them had planned. It’d seemed like a good idea for Barbara to move in after Quinn had left town, but it also seemed as if they stepped on each other’s toes a lot.

A strong urge to stick her head out the bedroom window and scream came over Hannah. Nothing in her life was going right. She let the reaction roll over her and then she pulled herself together, shutting out the self-pity. With Quinn gone, she’d come to the conclusion that emotions didn’t pay. She had more important things to do with her time.

Like getting to Florida. Bobby had come into her office that afternoon and told her she was booked on a late flight to Destin. The name had barely registered in the aftermath of his explanation of why she was leaving.

Another day-care center had been bombed.

Hannah had kept her face a mask at Bobby’s news. When Quinn had left her life, Mr. Rogers had moved in. And unlike Quinn, he was here to stay. Hannah had become obsessed with the serial bomber. She could put him out of her mind when she was working on other cases, but he was always waiting for her when she finished, teasing her, taunting her, just outside her reach. When the lights were out and she should have been sleeping, she dreamed of finding the sick bastard and dragging his ass to jail. Arresting the killer of those two children had become her goal in life. In a strange way, those babies had become her own. She suffered for them and she wanted revenge.

She’d find him or die trying.

Grabbing her suitcase, Hannah banged her way into the kitchen, the bag hitting every corner possible. At Hannah’s noisy entrance, Barbara looked up from the stove where she was stirring a pot of bean soup that would have fed fifty. “Do you want something to eat before you go?”

“I don’t have time.”

Without comment, Barbara nodded and turned back to the range. Hannah waited awkwardly, unable to apologize but unable to leave. After a second, she sighed heavily, abandoned her suitcase and walked to where her mother stood. She put her arm around Barbara’s shoulders, then spoke with contrition, some genuine, some forced. “Look, Ma…I’m sorry. I—I didn’t mean to jump on you back there and I know you have my interests at heart, really I do. It’s just that…”

Barbara stared at Hannah with eyes as blue as her own. She didn’t remember her Norwegian grandmother, but Hannah was pretty sure the same bright gaze had come out of that face as well.

“That what?” Barbara asked. “That you want to never go out again? That you can’t get over Quinn? That you still love him and always will?”

Hannah dropped her arm and stepped back, her voice as blunt as her words. “Quinn is out of the picture, Ma. I would have thought you’d be happy about that. Don’t you want grandchildren?”

“Your disagreement about children isn’t the issue and it never has been. It’s just an excuse.”

“I happen to disagree, but if you insist on believing that, then how about this? I don’t love him anymore. That’s not an excuse.”

“You’re right.” Her mother paused significantly. “That’s a lie. Otherwise, you’d go out. Lots of men have asked but you never accept. Mark Baker has invited you to dinner a thousand times—”

“And he can ask a thousand more and I’ll still turn him down. He’s not my type.” She paused. “And I don’t still love Quinn.”

As if to reinforce the sentiment, Hannah made herself remember the night they’d broken up. Driving blindly, she’d made it to the end of parking lot of the hospital, then she’d fallen apart. Hot tears running down her cheeks, she’d pulled over and filled the car with deep, racking sobs, her misery too huge to contain. Everything she’d wanted, everything she’d dreamed of—all of it had evaporated in a flash. When she’d recovered enough to see, she’d made it home, but for months she’d felt empty and cold. Now that was her normal state of being. There would be no more tears. Not for Quinn.

Barbara returned her attention to the soup, staring into the simmering mixture. If she didn’t agree with her daughter’s pronouncement, she kept it to herself. Hannah leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek, then she picked up her suitcase and left.

QUINN ATTACKED THE FRESHLY turned dirt as if he was digging a hole to bury his thoughts. His physical therapist had recommended gardening as a Zen-like activity to aid Quinn’s recovery and calm his mind.

The man didn’t know Quinn very well.

Gripping the shovel with both hands, Quinn forced the edge deeper in to the sticky black dirt. Locals called it “gumbo,” and it was an apt description. Wet, heavy and hard as hell to work, the soil rewarded those who persevered. When he’d first arrived, Quinn had gone to the feed store and grabbed a handful of seed packets and several flats of plants without even looking at the labels, then thrown the seeds into the ground with little attention and done the same to the plants. To his surprise, turnips had sprung up alongside pansies and radishes. Snap beans and green onions had taken root by the fence. In a few more days, he’d have fresh lettuce, too.

Eyes followed his movement up and down the weedless, perfect rows. There were renters now living in the home where he’d grown up. An older couple with grandchildren, they’d assumed he would ask them to leave, but that had been the last thing on Quinn’s mind. He’d settled into the small over-seer’s cabin out back and asked only for solitude. Relieved but somewhat puzzled, they’d tried to visit with him in the beginning, but when he’d never cooperated, they’d finally understood he’d really meant what he’d said.

He wanted nothing but to be left alone.

Reaching the end of the last row, Quinn straightened his back and stretched painfully. From the bayou on his right, he heard the sounds of a quiet country evening. The lazy buzz of the cicadas, the distant caw of a crow, the soft slap of water against the dock. He was grateful he could hear them. Just as he was grateful he could almost run two miles, even though it left him gasping for air.

He had countered his isolation and pain with a storm of activity, spending the first months after the explosion either exercising to distraction or working the same way, pushing both his physical and mental limits. The EXIT team had conducted their own probe of the bombing, but they were busy and over-burdened. Quinn had decided to help them out, even though they didn’t know it.

And why not? he’d thought. What in the hell else did he have to do? His relentless pursuit of regaining his strength hadn’t gone as smoothly or as quickly as he would have liked; in fact, it’d been a damn hard struggle with little to show for it. Investigating the bombing on his own had distracted him.

But over the months, he’d found absolutely nothing more than EXIT had, and in the past few weeks, he’d decided he wasn’t going to find anything, either.

Since then, his only objective had been to stay awake. The minute he closed his eyes and went to sleep, the nightmares began. He had never seen the children after the bomb had detonated, but his imagination didn’t care. Horrible images haunted him, anyway. The silent, open gaze of a toddler. The too-still arms of a little boy. A grandmother’s wails.

He straightened and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a callused hand. Another memory haunted him, too. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never forget the way Hannah had stared at him the day she’d left. She’d worn a blue blouse the color of her eyes, and the pain in her voice still echoed in his head. Along with the stupid little speech he’d told himself that night about their breakup being for the best. Who had he been kidding?

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