Free True Lies by Ingrid Weaver

with his obscene cargo, then stood with her fists clenched in frustration for long, agonizing minutes while she wished she could have thrown every one of those crates into the lake. She would pay Simon’s debt, and get him out of this situation. But then she would make sure the police knew exactly where to find and destroy those drugs. Not for the sake of the law, but for the sake of the victims.
    Numbly, she turned to walk back to her plane. Kneeling on the edge of the dock, she stretched out to touch the scraped pontoon. It was scarred, now. Tainted. It would never be the same. This lake and this cabin would never be the same, either. And she had thought she had achieved a measure of peace.
    It was her fault. She was the one who had formed Simon into the man he was. Where had she gone wrong? What could she have done differently? Was she wrong to have let Simon go? Should she have made him face up to what he had done and take the consequences? Was her coddling responsible for the way he had turned out?
    Water lapped against the dock. A gull screeched overhead and a squirrel launched into a raucous, chattering scold. The familiar noises seemed cruelly magnified, scraping across her raw nerves. She pulled her hand back from the plane and drew her knees to her chest, feeling the urge to scream.
    “Emma?” The voice was soft and deep, moving over her like a gentle caress.
    “Bruce?” She twisted around.
    He was walking toward her, his familiar shuffling gait making scraping noises on the dock, his shoulders hunched inside his baggy coat. He tilted his head and the shadow from his cap brim slid over his sunglasses to shade his features. “Is something wrong?”
    Something wrong? Hysterical laughter threatened to burst from the lump in her throat. She shook her head quickly. Why was he here? She felt brittle enough to shatter. On top of everything Simon had dumped on her, she couldn’t handle the puzzle this man presented.
    He stopped when he stood beside her. “I'm sorry for dropping in like this, but there was no answer when I called and...” He paused. “You're crying.”
    She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes and turned away from him.
    “Emma? What’s the matter?”
    Shaking her head again, she wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed her face to her knees. No one had ever seen her cry, no matter what. “This isn’t a good time, Bruce,” she managed. “I'll...” She swallowed hard. “I'll call you later.”
    Instead of leaving, he squatted down beside her. “Aw, heck. I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do to help? Not that I'm much good at fixing things. I always seem to barge in on people when they’d rather be alone and— Heck, what happened to your plane?”
    A fresh spurt of tears gushed against the denim that covered her knees. “It’s scraped.”
    The boards of the dock vibrated as he sat down heavily. “No wonder you're upset. You love that plane, don’t you? I could tell by the way you look when you fly it. It can be repaired, can’t it?”
    She could fix it, but it would never be the same.
    “Emma? Can I get you a glass of water or something?”
    A sob hiccuped past her lips. She tried to stop it, but it was out before she had a chance. His kindness was threatening to be the final blow to her self-control.
    A stud from the open front of his coat scraped along the dock as he moved closer. His warmth flowed out to her even before he lifted his hand to her back. It was no more than a whisper of contact. “Do you want to tell me about what happened?”
    It was tempting, that offer to share. She couldn’t, though. For too long she’d had no one but herself to rely on. She had been the one to find solutions.
    He shifted his legs, twisting so that he could slip his arm around her. His touch was tentative, his long fingers resting gently on her shoulder.
    She didn’t uncurl from the defensive ball she’d wrapped herself in. Instead, she tightened her grasp on her legs, keeping her