She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the antique mirror over the sink. The woman looking back at her was smiling. Oh. No.
That morning, she had been trying to come up with ways to avoid Jake. Now, when she would have had the
perfect opportunity, she had agreed to accompany him to the lake.
What was wrong with her?
She had been afraid that Jeremy was getting too attached to Jake. Now she had to wonder if she was guilty of the same thing.
Chapter Seventeen
“S
topwatch?” Jeremy looked over at her and Emma held it up for his inspection.
“Check.”
“Camera?”
“Check.” She dug around in her beach bag and produced that, too.
“Oatmeal cookies?” Jake took up the questioning, his teasing smile playing havoc with her pulse.
Emma made a face at him, knowing that he was remembering the picnic basket she had sent along on their first fishing trip.
“Chocolate chip,” she whispered. “And they’re for later.”
“I think we’re ready, Mom. Count to three and then say go,” Jeremy instructed.
Emma took a deep breath, heart still suffering the aftershock from Jake’s smile. “One, two, three…go.”
She watched in fascination as the two of them set to work with an efficiency that made every movement look as if it had been choreographed. In a little over six minutes they were transporting the raft down to the shoreline, ready to launch.
Emma followed, keeping an eye on the stopwatch. According to Jeremy, the winner of last year’s competition had completed the entire race—from start to finish—in five minutes and eleven seconds.
Jeremy clambered aboard but when Jake jumped on, the raft tipped to the side, threatening to capsize them.
“What’s the matter?” Emma stopped at the edge of the water where the waves licked at the tips of her bare toes.
“Too much weight,” Jeremy called over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Jake pretended to look affronted at the suggestion. “Keep paddling. She’ll stay afloat.”
But “she” didn’t.
One of the barrels came loose and started to drift away, upsetting the balance even more. By the time they admitted defeat, both were soaking wet. They slogged back to shore where Emma was waiting with dry towels.
And the camera.
When the flash went off, Jake and Jeremy swung accusing looks in her direction.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” Jake reached for the towel.
“Really? The raft wasn’t supposed to sink?” Emma saw their disgruntled looks. And giggled.
“Mom, you aren’t supposed to laugh at us,” Jeremy grumbled.
“I’m not laughing.” Emma clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound.
Jake arched a brow at Jeremy. “Sounds like she’s laughing to me.”
“Me, too.” Jeremy began to dry his hair but they
heard a low but unmistakable chuckle from beneath the towel.
“Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.” Jake peeled off his shirt and Emma’s breath hitched in her throat as she stared at his bare chest. Not at the ridged torso, as smooth and golden-brown as teakwood, but at the crisscross of raised, angry-looking scars just below his rib cage.
Jake realized what he’d done when he heard Emma stifle a gasp.
Now that the pain of his injury had, for the most part, subsided, he no longer thought about the scarring. Until now.
He grabbed the extra shirt he’d brought along and shrugged it on, fumbling with the buttons in his haste to cover up the wound again before Jeremy noticed it.
Unfortunately, it was too late for Emma.
She stepped between him and Jeremy, using her body to shield his injury from curious eyes, but not fast enough for Jake to miss the mixture of shock and disbelief in her own.
Emma knew he had been shot, but Jake supposed there was a difference between knowing it had happened and witnessing the results.
Would she let him explain?
Jake blew out a sigh as he acknowledged there was a bigger question.
Could
he explain?
Other than Andy and Pastor Matt, not many people outside Jake’s former precinct knew the details surrounding his injury. That was the way he preferred it.
In silence, they loaded the pieces of the raft into the trunk of the car.
“What’s up?” Jake caught a glimpse of Jeremy’s pensive face in the rearview mirror.
“I thought for sure it would float,” he said. “My calculations should have been right.”
“Well, I happen to know one thing you didn’t calculate.” Jake decided to take a page from Emma’s book and try to help Jeremy see the humor in the situation. “What?”
“You didn’t add in the calories from the four slices of pizza I ate for lunch.” Jake patted his flat stomach. “I’m sure that I weigh five pounds more than I did this morning.”
That drew a smile.
“I ate that many, too,” Jeremy confessed.
“So now we know. None of your mom’s homemade pizza before the race.”
Jeremy smiled, his earlier cheerfulness restored. Emma, on the other hand, didn’t. Not only that, she had barely spoken a word since they’d left the park.
Jake had a hunch he knew the reason why.
By the time they arrived back at the house, the sun had started to set, outlining the trees in liquid gold. Shadow was waiting for them, wet nose pressed against the window and looking unhappy at having been left behind.
“Should I take Shadow for a walk?” Jeremy asked.
Emma shook her head. “It’s getting dark. I can do it. You should take off those wet clothes and jump into the shower.”
Jeremy obeyed but paused halfway up the steps. “Are you coming over tomorrow after you get off work, Jake?”
Jake opened his mouth to answer but Emma beat him to it.
“Jeremy.” Her voice was firm. “I’m sure Chief Sutton has other things that need his attention.”
Jake winced inwardly. So they were back to his title again.
The boy’s expression fell. “I guess so.”
“Good night.” Jake reached out and gave Jeremy’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “You do what your mom says and I’ll put the raft back in the barn.”
He was stunned when Jeremy’s arms circled his waist and he hugged him before disappearing into the house. “G’night, Jake.”
Emma appeared more troubled than surprised by the boy’s unexpected display of affection.
“I’ll unload the car,” Jake said. “Shadow isn’t going to let you forget that you promised him a walk.”
She gave a brief nod and struck out across the yard, the dog streaking ahead of her.
Jake couldn’t prevent a sigh from escaping. When it came to getting to know Emma, he felt as if he were on a treasure hunt.
The journey wouldn’t always be easy, but he had no doubt it would be worth the effort if he didn’t give up.
He wanted to hear her laughter. He wanted to see hope dispel the grief in her eyes. There were times he caught a glimpse of those things and knew God was at work in Emma’s life.
If he—and his career—stopped getting in the way.
If only the scars on his chest could be explained away with a lighthearted story about a tumble into the neighbor’s rosebush.
By the time Jake unloaded the last pieces of the raft from the trunk of the car, it was dark enough that he was forced to turn the lights on in the barn. He started to straighten things up and then chided himself for
lingering, knowing that Emma wouldn’t seek out his company.
He turned to leave and that’s when he saw her. Perched on an old wooden chest just inside the door, knees drawn up against her chest. Jake hadn’t even heard her come in.
He closed the distance between them and dropped down beside her on the bench. Emma continued to stare straight ahead, the flickering overhead light illuminating the delicate lines of her profile.
Silence stretched between them.
Jake didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t sure what Emma wanted to hear.
“Who did that to you?”
The soft question broadsided him. If Emma had asked
how
it happened, he would have given her an abbreviated version of the events that unfolded the night of the drug bust.
But she hadn’t asked “how.” She had asked “who.” And that complicated the situation.
“I don’t like to talk about it.” An answer that wasn’t an answer.
“Then tell me about your family.”
“I don’t—” Talk about them either, Jake started to say. Until he remembered that he had asked Emma the same question the day before.
Let her get to know you, Andy had said.
Jake decided to take his younger brother’s advice, especially if it meant that he could avoid talking about his injury.
“I have a mother and a stepfather. A younger stepbrother.”
“Andy,” Emma murmured.
Jake couldn’t hide his surprise that she knew his
brother’s name. “That’s right. But up until six months ago, I could count on one hand the number of times I visited them over the past five years. And I lived in the same city.” Jake paused, waiting for the stab of regret to subside. “I didn’t see them on holidays. I didn’t stop by for coffee on the weekends.”
“I don’t understand.”
Neither had they, Jake thought.
“Usually when an officer is undercover, he does some surveillance, makes a few buys until an arrest is made. My assignment lasted almost five years. In order to prove that I was one of them, I had to fit in. Had to earn their trust. It wasn’t easy but it was…necessary…to do my job.”
“So you had to sever ties with your family?”
“I thought it was in their best interest,” Jake explained. “We weren’t just trying to shut down a few neighborhood drug dealers. This was bigger. It went all the way to the top of the food chain.”
All the way to police department.
All the way to Sean.
Emma felt, rather than saw, a sudden memory that ripped through Jake. Made him shudder. Did he even realize that one of his hands had moved to his chest, covering the scars she had seen that afternoon?
“Is that how you got hurt?”
“Yes.”
When it didn’t appear that Jake was going to offer any more information, Emma was forced to ask another question.
“They figured out you were a police officer?”
“Only after someone told them that I was.” Jake closed his eyes briefly. “The night of the bust, two
people died. I was supposed to be one of them. I was viewed as a threat—the other guy, Manny, he was…dispensable. A nineteen-year-old addict who’d been on the streets since he was twelve. He liked to brag that he only looked out for himself. He refused a direct order to shoot me.”
“What happened? After…Manny?” Emma had to know. Not for her sake, but for Jake. Something in his eyes told her that this wasn’t a memory easily shared.
She understood. She had a few of her own.
“Something that I can’t explain other than to say that God intervened.”
“Intervened?”
“I got hit and went down. That was the first bullet. The second one jammed in the chamber.” Jake stared ahead with unseeing eyes, as if caught up in the memory again. “When I was at the end of my strength, I called out to God. He reached out His hand and He hasn’t let go of me since.”
Bile rose in the back of Emma’s throat. Not only because a young man had lost his life, but because Jake had come so close to dying.
“The person who shot you?” she whispered. “Did they arrest him?”
“The SWAT team heard the first shot and they took the second one.”
“And the person who set you up? Did you find out who it was?”
“Sean O’Keefe.” Jake’s eyes darkened with fresh pain. Pain that Emma sensed didn’t have anything to do with his injury.
“You knew him?”
A heartbeat of silence followed.
“He was my best friend.”
His best friend.
Emma swallowed hard. Without thinking, she reached out and covered the hand that rested on his knee. Jake’s fingers curled around hers.
“Sean used our friendship to keep tabs on me and he knew that I suspected some of the officers were taking bribes to look the other way. I never expected he was one of them, though.” Jake drew in a ragged breath. “The dealer didn’t think I’d live to see morning, so he decided to make me suffer a little before he killed me. He told me everything. How Sean betrayed me. And why.”
Their eyes met and Jake must have seen the question in hers. “It wasn’t just for the money. I think he got tired. Disillusioned. The things a cop sees can wear him down. Tempt him to give in rather than fight. I wonder sometimes…” His voice trailed off but Emma knew what he’d been about to say.
“You wouldn’t have.” She could say the words with absolute certainty.
Jake’s hand tightened around hers. “There were days when things got…blurry. When I was undercover, I walked a fine line between right and wrong in order to earn people’s trust. There were times I stepped over it. It wasn’t as hard to forgive Sean as it was to forgive myself for not realizing what was happening to him.”
“But you did.”
A smile lifted the corner of Jake’s lips. “With God’s help. I’d surrendered my life to Him, but when I was in the hospital Andy warned me that anger and bitterness could keep me stuck. Prevent me from moving forward. He was right. The weeks after Sean was arrested were a struggle, but I had made a promise to God the night I was shot.”
“A promise?”
“To do things His way. To follow where He leads.”
“To Mirror Lake.” Emma remembered what Jake had said the night that Jeremy had invited him over for dinner.
“Andy agreed that it would be a good place to heal.”
“Have you?” she asked without thinking. “Started to…heal?”
Jake rose to his feet with an enigmatic smile. “A little more every day.”
Chapter Eighteen
“T
he garden stones are beautiful, Emma!”
“What did I tell you, Esther?” Abby breezed into the booth with an armload of afghans. “She has a gift.”
“Abby.” Emma knelt down to adjust a canvas flap—and to hide her embarrassment.
“She’s right.” Esther smiled. “Some of the people who wandered through earlier this morning asked me if you took orders.”