Guardian Ranger (Shadow Agents 2)

Time to start fresh.

If Veronica would have him.

* * *

THE TICKING OF the clock on the small desk was way too loud. Every tick had Veronica tensing. She knew this meeting was necessary, but the last time she’d been in this building, well, she’d been scared to death.

Almost as scared as I am now.

Jasper was out of the hospital. Finally. The doctors hadn’t let her see him once he’d been wheeled back to the O.R. She hadn’t been family, and there’d been cops and agents all around him. She’d been pushed back. Veronica remembered pacing the floor of that narrow waiting room again and again. Then she’d broken down and slipped back into the recovery room. Gotten some scrubs, acted as though she belonged and seen for herself that Jasper was going to be all right.

She’d even kissed him back there, until a stunned nurse had appeared, but that nurse had taken pity on Veronica and let her stay a little longer.

I just want to be with him a little longer.

Only her time was up now. The EOD agents had closed their case. They’d be leaving town, moving, as Jasper had once told her, as soundlessly as shadows as they slipped from Whiskey Ridge.

From her life.

“Cale Lane,” Logan said, drawing Veronica’s attention as the agent looked at her brother, “on behalf of the EOD, we want you to know that you’ve been cleared in this investigation.” The words were formal, real official sounding.

Cale just raised a brow. “I kind of figured that, you know, when you didn’t throw my butt in jail.”

Sydney’s lips twitched.

“Wyatt was pretending to be me,” Cale continued, voice harder now, “and Reed Montgomery was the one giving him the cases.”

Logan nodded. “From the intel that Sydney recovered—courtesy of your sister’s flash drive—Reed let his contact in South America believe that you were actually taking the EOD hits. Striker was assigned the jobs, but it was actually Wyatt who tracked and eliminated the targets.”

Targets. Veronica swallowed. That was such a cold, clinical way of referring to people.

“I told Wyatt that I was getting out of the business, that I was gonna stay at the ranch more with Veronica.” Cale glanced her way. “That must have been when he decided he could use my name.”

“He planned to make you disappear,” Jasper said. She jerked at his voice, way too sensitive toward him. “You were supposed to be taken out on that case in the Caribbean, but you went off the radar.”

“Because I know a trap when I walk into one,” Cale muttered with a sad shake of his head.

“But when you vanished—” Now Sydney was talking. Gunner stood, still and silent, behind her. “—Wyatt knew he’d have to find you and kill you in order to tie up all the loose ends. He left evidence at his kill scenes, evidence to tie you to the crimes.”

“The guy picked up a lot of crime-scene knowledge from his time in the Dallas P.D.,” Logan said, tapping his fingers against a nearby file. “Seems he was even dating an M.E. for a while. I’m guessing she shared some tools of the trade with him.”

And Wyatt had used that knowledge to plant evidence against her brother.

“If the EOD caught Cale, Wyatt was counting on the evidence he’d left behind to send you to jail,” Sydney said. Her gaze was on Cale. “And if that didn’t work...” Now Sydney’s green stare drifted to Veronica. “Well, Wyatt knew that there was one thing that would always bring you back to Whiskey Ridge.”

Veronica hated being bait.

“Wyatt just had to bide his time and watch Veronica.” Jasper’s jaw tightened as he gritted the words.

“I don’t understand. Why’d he send those men after me at Last Chance?” Veronica asked. “If he was just biding his time...”

“Because he knew you weren’t going to stop looking for your brother,” Sydney said, her voice soft. “He wanted to move the game along. If you vanished, Wyatt must have thought that would sure grab Cale’s attention.”

“It would’ve grabbed it, all right,” Cale muttered, eyes glinting.

Logan delivered the next bit of news, saying, “Then when Wyatt found out that federal agents were in town, he started to cover his tracks.”

But she’d already figured that part out. The explosion at the sheriff’s station...the men who’d been killed. Wyatt had done it all. He hadn’t gone into the back in order to rescue Jimmy. He’d been getting an extra weapon, planning his kills, triggering the explosion.