At the Quietest Word

by M. L. Buchman

  Isobel rolled her eyes, but Ricardo missed that as he was facing the other way. Then she leaned over and kissed her brother on the shoulder. Ricardo might flinch at Michelle’s touch, but not at his twin sister’s. No matter what he said, or rather didn’t say, Michelle was something “other” so she triggered all of his body’s alarms. Maybe it would be better to be overlooked.

  “Six then,” Gibson adapted quickly.

  Michelle wished that she was a telepath with Isobel so that she could ask if he really had recovered so quickly, or if he was just good at masking it. Life would be so much easier if it was Isobel she was connected to. She understood Isobel, whereas Ricardo had enigma down to a fine art.

  “This team…”

  “Shadow Force: Psi,” if she was a part of this, Michelle was goddamn going to fight for its identity. “Hannah and Jesse named us. That’s who we are.”

  “Hannah did.” “Jesse did.” The two of them spoke simultaneously, continuing their uncontested quest for cutest Special Operations couple of the year award.

  “The six members of Shadow Force: Psi,” Gibson acknowledged with a slight tip of his head to Isobel, “include two of the best recon trackers I’ve ever met.”

  Ricardo looked up in surprise and Hannah twitched. Apparently praise was another thing that this Colonel Gibson didn’t do lightly.

  “I think that there are some real possibilities for the application of your talents.”

  “Which is why you pulled us together?” It seemed to be up to Michelle to keep carrying the conversation.

  “Well, you had already self-identified. All I did was send Jesse and Hannah your way. I was no more sure of what they were than they themselves were. But I was hoping that the other four of you might offer them some guidance. As your successful mission to free the ambassador demonstrates, there is definite potential here.”

  “Civilians, Michael. This team includes two civilians,” Emily warned him.

  “If I had realized that you would take Ms. Bowman into the field, I never would have sent you into the Congo. I had been informed that Isobel Manella was expected here at the ranch, so I knew she was in the clear. By the time I realized Ms. Bowman hadn’t accompanied her here, you were already airborne on your final leg into Kinshasa.”

  “And if you had tried to leave me behind, they and your precious ambassador would probably all be dead. We pulled that off by being a team.” The words felt arrogant and she wished her temper would let her take them back but—

  Anton muttered, “Damn straight, Missy.” He was the only one with Missy privileges. Even though he said it too softly for Gibson to hear, she appreciated the encouragement.

  :That’s twice I’d be dead without you.:

  Michelle wasn’t exactly comfortable with that. But she and Ricardo had never found a way to lie in telepathy—other than just keeping their thoughts to themselves. It was like the words shorted out and hurt inside her head if they weren’t honest. Even sarcasm was tricky—especially without any tonal markers.

  Ricardo really needed to keep away from Michelle. The more time he spent with her, the greater the distance between them grew.

  He’d managed to lose himself in the crowd still clustered around the campfire.

  Gourmet s’mores and Montana craft beer reigned—the director had mandated no more than two of the latter, so these were carefully nursed. Ricardo snagged an Ivan the Terrible Imperial Stout. He preferred the nuttiness of a brown ale, but drinking from a bottle labeled Moose Drool was more than he could face. Who knew, maybe in Montana it really was brewed with moose drool.

  He found a spot off to the side near a massive guy and his Malinois dog. Something about him said military, other than his broad shoulders. Male and military was good. Ricardo could deal with that even if he no longer belonged.

  It was only one specific paramedic woman who was confusing the hell out of him and he’d be best off avoiding her.

  “Ricardo,” he greeted the guy.

  “Stan,” the other responded and reached out to shake with his left hand—his beer was in his right.

  Ricardo twitched in surprise; the hand was cold. Not just beer-bottle cold, but definitely wrong—bloodless cold. He tried to apologize for the reaction.

  “Forgot, sorry. Part of the deal. Gave up my hooks for a prostho arm. Don’t worry, creeps me out still too.” Stan’s smile was grim and crooked on his scarred face. Then he waved it around in what appeared to be normal motion, even tried snapping his fingers—which didn’t work well enough to awaken the big dog curled at his feet.

  “Haven’t got that down yet. It’s an experimental rig I got snookered into. First time in years I can feel pressure and temperature. Nice to feel that a beer’s cold,” he switched the bottle into his left hand.

  “That’s…amazing. Too bad they can’t fix the scars inside.” Before he could be sorry about saying that, Stan was nodding.

  “Yeah, those are a bitch.”

  They sat for a while beneath the stars. They shone clearly in the perfect sky despite the bright fire.

  In a companionable silence they nursed their beers and watched the antics of the crowd. The cast, extras, and film crew all appeared to be doing some strange modern version of primitive mating rituals. A couple of people pulled out guitars and someone set up a couple of logs and some branches to drum on them. Soon the trio was doing a surprisingly lively version of Toby Keith’s arrogant How Do You Like Me Now? A pair of sopranos and an alto picked up the chorus, then plunged into the second verse. Dancers began to boogie in the firelight.

  Stan wasn’t reacting much one way or the other. After watching for a while, he leaned down to scratch the head of the dog at his feet. “Dog did the first part of the healing for me.”

  “Saying I need a dog?”

  Stan’s shrug was unbalanced, as if…he was wearing a harness to keep his prosthetic in place. “Heard worse ideas.”

  Ricardo expected that his life was about to get busier based on the dinner’s conversation. He didn’t exactly see himself going all dog handler. Isobel and Mama had made sure that he grew up with cats in the house. He liked their independence.

  Stan tipped his bottle to indicate a woman standing a quarter-way around the outer circle of people; there was just the slightest mechanical whir from his wrist as he did so. Another Malinois dog sat by her side as she spoke with a tall, gangly ranch hand wearing a cowboy hat—he looked too authentic to be an actor.

  “What?”

  “That’s my best idea.”

  Ricardo kept an eye on her as he and Stan sat mostly saying nothing. At one point she turned briefly to aim a dazzling smile their way. “Assuming that wasn’t meant for me.”

  “Not even a little,” Stan was grinning back—a really surprising expression on his hard face.

  All Ricardo could feel was shame.

  “You’ll get over it,” Stan was now watching him. When Ricardo didn’t respond, Stan continued, “It’ll come back in bits and pieces when you aren’t watching. Sometimes little pieces. Sometimes bigger,” he scratched the dog’s belly with a foot. “Sometimes a whopper,” he didn’t need to indicate the woman.

  “In the meantime?”

  Stan stared at the fire so long that Ricardo wondered if he was avoiding the question. When the woman turned toward them, her dog at an effortless heel despite no leash, Stan pushed to his feet. In a single heartbeat, his dog was up beside him and scanned in all directions for threats before relaxing.

  “In the meantime,” Stan paused to toss another log on the fire. “Try not to push too many folks away. Man needs his friends most when he thinks he doesn’t.”

  When he walked away, all Ricardo was left with was the fire’s heat and the cold stars.

  Chapter 4

  There were two more days before they were due to finish the Montana location shoot.

  Gibson had apparently been content for the moment with their meeting over dinner and had disappeared again to who knew where.
r />   No one came rushing to find Ricardo for some meeting. Javier was also a better horseman than he was, so, being done with dives into freezing mud puddles and a fierce brawl played out among a small herd of the neighbor’s longhorn cattle, there was no further need for him as a stunt double.

  Ricardo did his best to avoid…well…everyone.

  So he worked out.

  He ran with Hannah before breakfast. She was as quiet as he was—two Unit operators doing their thing who just happened to be near each other.

  After the meal, while everyone else was drifting back to the set, he went hunting for some weights. He couldn’t find a weight room, but he did find some old combine tires out behind the garage. Flipping a four-hundred-pound tire was a common enough workout for a Delta. He did that until his arms and legs burned.

  Then some cowboy—with an accent that was half fake-Texas and half authentic-Long Island, New York—told him how to find the swimming hole up behind the guest cabins.

  The man-made lake was empty. There were no regular ranch guests because of the film crew being on location. And they were all off filming a sex scene along some remote trout stream—something he really, really didn’t want to see his big sister doing.

  He even sent a few prayers for an out-of-season snowstorm or an unprecedented flood, but neither put in an appearance. Figures.

  The entire ranch seemed to echo with the silence as big as the achingly blue sky. The “swimming hole” was a good fifty meters across. He was able to plow back and forth for ninety minutes until he’d worked up to 5K.

  He lay on the floating dock in the center of the lake, shaking in the warm sunlight. It was a good shake: muscles pushed to their limits, shedding their lactic acid buildups in cathartic shudders. His body was finally back despite all of the pins and plates that had replaced so much of its structure.

  “Me and Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man.”

  “I never found him particularly attractive. Too fake-Hollywood handsome.”

  Ricardo couldn’t stop the shout of surprise. He also should have moved farther onto the float. His twist of surprise overbalanced him into the lake. He surfaced, choking out a lungful of water as he clung to the edge of the float. When he could refocus, he saw Michelle’s laughing smile teasing him from the far side.

  She had her bare arms crossed on the smooth wood and her chin resting on her wrists. The spaghetti straps at her shoulders hinted at just how little her bathing suit would be covering and he wasn’t ready for that. He remained in the water on his side of the float, fervently hoping that she’d do the same.

  No such luck.

  With an effortless motion, she lifted herself up onto the float, stretching out on her side with her head propped up on one elbow to look over at him. At first blink, he was relieved that she was wearing a one-piece rather than a bikini. When he looked again, not so much. Michelle’s long form was only emphasized by the red- and blue-striped material that stretched in very enticing ways over her curves.

  “Am I really that scary?”

  “Yes!” Not exactly his smoothest answer.

  “Why?”

  Not a chance he would try to answer that, despite the truth. Because, if the Madonna was a redhead, she would look just like you. A dead-inside man like him could never deserve someone like her.

  “I’m not some saint. You know that, right?”

  He wished that she didn’t seem to read his mind so often. The telepathy was hard enough without that. Even stretched out there on the dock, he had no idea what was on her mind. Messing with your brain, dude. That’s what she’s doing. And it was seriously working.

  Her sigh as she flopped onto her back didn’t help matters at all. Stretched out on the dock, there was no way to avoid looking at her amazing form, revealed in profile by form-hugging Lycra.

  :You doing this on purpose, Bowman (query)?:

  :Partly.:

  Well at least she wasn’t playing coy. :Fun to torture a guy?: He regretted the words the instant they slipped out.

  She tipped her head to look at him and he couldn’t look away from those eyes as blue as the Montana sky. With her dark red hair turned almost black by the water, her eyes seemed even brighter and more piercing than normal. :No. That’s not what I’m doing.:

  :Right. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.:

  :I’m still hoping you’ll be able to let go of all that some day.:

  :Oh sure, just as soon as I stop having waking nightmares and then trying to kill my sister’s best friend.: He could still see the bright red “bracelet” of where he’d grabbed and twisted her arm yesterday.

  :Maybe if you stopped keeping it all locked up inside, then—:

  :It already scares the shit out of me. Last thing I want to do is scare the shit out of you and everyone else.:

  :What about—:

  :Already had my dose of Army shrinks. So done.:

  She closed her eyes and turned her face back up to the sky…but the sun caught in the glistening tracks of her tears. Oh crap. He’d made her cry; could he make it any worse?

  He let go of the float, slipped silently underwater, and swam for shore in the dead silence of the pond’s depths.

  Why? Because he was a dogshit coward.

  :Chicken!: Michelle thought when she opened her eyes and found herself alone.

  If he heard it, and he must have, he didn’t offer a response.

  Damn you, Manella. But she kept that part to herself. The pain of seeing how wounded he was injured her nearly past bearing.

  Michelle wasn’t ready for who awaited her in the small gazebo that seemed to hover over the water by the shore. But there was no question in her mind that Emily Beale was waiting for her, even though she sat with her back to the water.

  Swimming ashore, Michelle wrapped a generous Henderson’s Ranch terrycloth towel around her hips, followed the water’s edge over to the log gazebo, and sat down across from her.

  Still Emily didn’t say a word and Michelle felt strangely unwilling to speak first. Jesse and her semi-brother had been even more in awe of Beale than Ricardo and Hannah were of Gibson.

  While she waited, she slowly became aware of sounds. The distant helicopter that must be part of the today’s filming. Swallows that skimmed low over the lake catching bugs added the occasional flutter of wings, but mostly flew silently across the blue sky, adding sight rather than sound to the setting.

  The sun moved the shadows of the gazebo posts before either of them added to either the motion or the sound.

  “I like sitting here in the mornings when I can. I married Mark on this very spot a lifetime ago. I find it very reassuring.”

  Michelle wondered what Emily Beale needed reassurance about, but couldn’t begin to guess. She kept the thought to herself and the silence stretched again.

  “I often find civilians a little perplexing.”

  “Oh, like you military types make so much sense to us.”

  Emily smiled at that. “Both American, educated, motivated, yet such a divide lies between us.”

  “You mean between Ricardo and me.”

  “Between you and the rest of the team.”

  “You’re forgetting Isobel.”

  “Isobel has other challenges to face,” Emily said as if she was a clairvoyant who could read the future.

  “I can hold my own.”

  “Take lessons.”

  “What kind of lessons? Could I learn anything that would have stopped Ricardo taking me down yesterday?” Michelle massaged her wrist unintentionally. The thoughtless power of him had been the most startling part of the whole experience. From Anton, she expected strength because he was so big. But Ricardo was her own height, and while not whip-lean, he wasn’t broad-shouldered either. Yet his takedown had been as effortless as it was autonomic.

  Emily’s shrug was as enigmatic as her smile.

  “From whom? You?”

  “I wouldn’t presume. Yourself perhaps? Life? Though you might learn not to s
hake a former Special Operations warrior while he’s suffering through a PTSD attack.”

  Michelle felt the acronym slam into her gut. Of course it had been included in her paramedic training. Somehow she’d taken in the knowledge without the concept. Ricardo had been shattered in so many ways. Yet he’d rebuilt the external so thoroughly that she’d overlooked all the signs of the internal fractures.

  Emily rose and stepped to the entrance to the gazebo. There she paused, but didn’t turn back as she spoke. “Not many could stand back up after what happened to him. He’s rediscovered the warrior—an incredible feat. But I wonder if he dares the next step, turning himself back into a man.”

  By the time Michelle caught her breath, Emily was long gone.

  Who the hell did the woman think Michelle was that there was any way she could help Ricardo do that?

  What was this place?

  Michelle suddenly wished for a Russian invasion or something to get them out of here.

  Ricardo intrigued and saddened her. That was all. Seriously! That. Was. All.

  Yet somehow Emily Beale had implied that the next step in his future was somehow up to her.

  No way, bitch. I’m not a therapist, I’m a paramedic. He gets another hole in him, I can patch it, but that’s where I stop!

  Chapter 5

  “Hey buddy, you keep doing shit like this, you’re gonna break yourself.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Anton.” It was disheartening to see how effortlessly the big guy could grab and flip a combine tire. Helicopter pilots didn’t need the kind of muscle a Unit operator did—or even a former Delta operator. Anton’s innate strength was not to be denied.

  Anton flashed a big grin that seemed as bright as the dawn’s sun. Ricardo had decided that his best defense against his thoughts of Michelle was to keep himself damn busy on the last day of filming at the ranch. So he’d recruited the other two guys from the team.

  After their run, they scared up a stack of old combine and tractor tires behind one of the barns. They’d been working up a good sweat working them along the line of the rail fence. None of them had noticed the two trainers working with a pair of horses in a nearby corral until he and Anton had peeled their shirts off and stuffed them in their back pockets.