by Susan Sey
“Yes,” she said feelingly.
He stacked his hands behind his head and contemplated the ceiling. “You have curly hair.”
One fat ringlet dangled in front of her eye—mocking her—and she stuffed it under the hat. “Shrewdly observed, Ranger Guthrie.”
“Really curly,” he said, and shot her an unexpected grin. “I like it.”
“I’m so glad.” Her tone indicated quite the opposite.
“Me, too,” he said serenely. “It’s wild. Just like you. Next time I’m inside you, I’m going to tangle myself up in it and take us both to fucking paradise.”
“Next time you’re—” The breath left her lungs in one hot, mindless rush. Oh God, inside her.
“Yep.” He grinned, at ease now, all supple, dangerous jungle cat. He patted the mattress beside him. “Why don’t you come to bed now, Maria?”
“Goose.”
“I won’t touch you, promise. Not unless you touch me first.” He lifted a hand, scout’s honor. “Come on. You’re safe. From me, at least. Come to bed. It’s late.”
She stared at him in narrow-eyed suspicion.
“Unless you’re afraid?”
She didn’t deign to reply, only stomped over to her mattress. She jerked her sleeping bag away from his, flipped it so her head was at his toes and crawled inside. She zipped it to her chin, turned her back on him and yanked the drawstring, retreating into a polypropylene cocoon. The low rumble of his laughter drifted through the lightweight material, and she heard him get up to kill the lanterns. Then his mattress rustled and squeaked as he arranged himself behind her, his feet at her head, his body curved in a loose C a few aching inches behind hers.
“Good night, Maria.”
She ignored him and his breathing went deep and even in a matter of moments. Then she was alone in the darkness, her body still shamefully alive and hungry.
God, she was in trouble.
Chapter 22
SHE HADN’T thought sleep was possible. How could she sleep, after all, while there was still this crushing gut load of guilt and fear to digest? It was true what they said—no rest for the wicked, and she’d been very, very wicked tonight. Plus, a girl had to have standards, and Maria’s included not dropping unconscious while there was penance to be done.
But as her priorities were clearly and rather profoundly fucked up this evening, she slept anyway. She must have. Because when she jolted out of the nightmare she was on her hands and knees on the rough wooden floor, a half-strangled scream still stuck in her throat.
After several panicked heartbeats, she slowly lowered her head to the cold wooden planks. She locked both clammy hands over her mouth and fought to break free from terror’s sweaty choke hold. She swallowed hard against that last scream in her throat, but it leaked out anyway, a small pitiful noise of pure fear.
“Maria?”
And oh God, now she’d woken Rush. Of course she had. He was an ex-SEAL. What he considered sleep hardly passed for woolgathering in normal circles. She shivered convulsively and pressed her hands harder to her mouth.
“Maria?” Curiosity became concern, and she could hear him patting around in the blackness trying to locate her. She rocked, tried to let go of the terror, willed it to drop away from her like the sleep. Or at least go sit in the corner while she found an even tone of voice in which to reassure him that she was fine. Just fine.
A big, warm hand landed on her ankle, then moved up the curve of her behind, which was situated conveniently on top of the ankle he’d found. He didn’t linger, though. Just smoothed that hand up the trembling line of her back to the hideous mess of her hair. “Jesus, Maria, what’s wrong?”
He lifted her by the shoulders, turned her to face him and set her back down, all with a disconcerting ease, as if she weighed nothing. Which she did not. And, Jesus, was she really going to entertain lustful thoughts about Rush’s upper-body strength right now?
She dropped her head, and it landed—startlingly—on Rush’s bare shoulder. She jerked back, only to find the hard cup of his hand on the base of her skull, holding her firmly against the living warmth of his skin.
“The lantern?” she managed. “Please?”
He left her shivering in the cold damp of his stolen T-shirt. The lighter scraped to life seconds later and there he was, filling the little kitchen with light and staring at her with startled concern.
“Jesus, Maria. What the hell?”
She tried a tentative smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was nothing. I’m overreacting.”
“Overreact—” He broke off, closed his eyes. “Shit. This is about the mice, isn’t it?”
“Mice?” She blinked at him, then shot an involuntary look at the floor. “We have mice?”
“What? No. Of course not.” He rubbed a palm down the outer seam of his boxers and cleared his throat. “Bad dream?”
She stared at him, less concerned about a possible rodent infestation than grateful for something—anything—to talk about other than the raw fear still clinging to her. “We have mice?”
He sighed. “This is a log cabin in the woods. Of course we have mice. But unless they’re chewing off your hair in the night, don’t worry about them.”
“That happened in one of the Little House books,” she said, perfectly willing to engage in a conversational side trip. “The mice ate a bald spot into Pa’s hair. Ma had to give him a bad haircut to cover it up.” She frowned at Rush’s shorn scalp, then stared. “Oh my God. That’s why you keep your hair so short?”
He scrubbed a hand over his head. “No.”
She tipped her head and squinted. “Receding hairline?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re changing the subject.”
She frowned, suddenly struck. “It’s quiet,” she said slowly.
“What?”
“Listen.” She cocked an ear. “The storm. It’s over.”
He gazed at her, uncomprehending. “And that freaks you out? That the storm is over? Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
She lifted her shoulders. How could she explain to him how that sudden silence had crept into her sleep and terrified her? How her subconscious had translated it into the deadly, tense stillness that precedes death falling unannounced from the heavens? Or worse, from somewhere infinitely more familiar?
Unease clung to her even now, chased away only by the weak light of the lantern and his solid, steady presence.
“What can I say?” She gave him a shaky shrug. “I’m a head case.”
It was probably the truest thing she’d ever said to him.
“You’re not a head case. You’re afraid.”
“No, I’m okay.” She smiled at him to demonstrate how very okay she was. He made an extremely rude noise and marched over to their makeshift bedrolls. He kicked his mattress up against the couch and dropped to it cross-legged. Then he pulled her into his lap, sleeping bag and all.
“You’re still shivering,” he said against her hair. Her curls. She’d lost her hat somewhere in her epic battle with the sleeping bag—super—and he nestled his chin into the tangled mess of her hair.
And, shit, he was right. She was a mess, and she didn’t have the strength to pry herself away from the rock-solid comfort of his arms right this very second. She would, though. In a minute or two, she’d be fine. Until then, where was the harm in just sitting here?
She leaned into his chest, where his heart beat steady and reassuring under her cheek and his solid warmth chased the chill from her bones.
“Talk to me, will you?” She kept her eyes closed. It was easier, somehow, to endure this wretched vulnerability from the safety of darkness. “I don’t want to go back to sleep. Not yet.”
“Okay.” He juggled her into a more comfortable position and settled his back against the couch. “I don’t know any fairy tales, though.”
“I don’t care. Just talk.”
“Talk’s not exactly my thing. You may have noticed.”
“I noticed.” She gave in to temptation and rubbed her cheek against the sleek heat of his chest. “Why don’t you tell me why you came back to Mishkwa after you got out of the service?”
“I told you already. I needed to figure my shit out.”
“And did you?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“So was this shit of a classified nature?” She snuggled deeper into the warm circle of his arms. “Or was it shit you can tell me about?”
RUSH HESITATED. It was a simple question, a simple answer. He’d been dangerous when he’d left the military. He’d needed space. He’d needed distance. He’d needed time. Mishkwa had given him all three in spades.
But he’d been alone for a long time now. Long enough for time to have done its magic. He hadn’t been lonely, though. Never lonely. Just . . . alone. At least he would’ve said so before Maria showed up and started loading up his carefully empty world with all her stuff. Her laughter, her thoughts, her ideas, her words.
Most people talked and it was just noise. When Maria talked, though, it was like she’d cracked open a window into the screwy inner workings of her head. She might not speak the God’s honest truth, but it was her truth and she handed it out over breakfast like it wasn’t anything. Like it was free.
And now she wanted words from him. Words that would cost him. He rested his chin on that riot of spice-scented curls, and thought, What the hell. He’d tossed her own truth square in her face a few hours ago. What kind of man would he be if he refused to look his own truth in the eye now? If he refused to offer it up to her?
“You know the difference between a solider and a killer?” he asked, but it was a rhetorical question. He didn’t expect her to answer, and she didn’t. “Soldiers kill other soldiers while killers just kill.” He hesitated, then took his courage in both hands and gave her the truth she’d asked for. The truth she deserved. “I came back to Mishkwa because I’d crossed that line and I needed to know if I could cross back.”
She stiffened in his arms. He didn’t blame her. It had taken him nearly two years to find a measure of peace with what he’d done. What he’d become.
“What does that mean, ‘crossed that line’?”
“It means I killed a lot of people while I was playing in that bloody little sandbox on the other side of the world. Most of them deserved it. But one day I murdered a woman and her baby.”
“You did not.”
“I did.”
She pulled back to gaze up into his face, a serene disbelief in her eyes that warmed him. “No. You didn’t. You were a sniper, Rush. I read your file. If you shot a woman or a child, it was on orders.”
“Orders.” He made a dismissive noise. “Orders don’t make people any less dead, Maria. They don’t make me any less of a killer.”
She nestled her cheek back into his chest, and the trust, the comfort implied in that small concession, brought the unfamiliar sting of tears to his eyes. “Okay, you’ve killed a lot of people. I get that. I’m not saying your soul is pure as the driven snow. But whatever you did, you did on orders from a superior officer. Which means it wasn’t murder, Rush. It was war.”
She made it sound so final, he thought. She believed it, therefore it was true. End of story. If anybody could make something real simply through the power of belief, he had a feeling it was Maria.
A long beat of oddly peaceful silence passed, then she said, “So? Tell me the rest.”
“What makes you think there’s more?”
She pushed a warning finger against his chest. “There is. Tell me.”
Rush remembered with a hard, hot flash how sharp those nails of hers were and how willing she was to use them if properly motivated. He wondered if he could motivate her again a little later. He pushed that aside to focus on the task at hand.
“As it turned out,” he told her, “it wasn’t actually a woman and a baby I shot.”
Maria gave a disdainful sniff. “Ha. I knew it. Didn’t I say so?”
“You’re very wise.” She dug at him with that fingernail again and he caught her hand in his, twined their fingers together and let it rest on her knee. “It was actually a fourteen-year-old boy with a really girlie face. And the baby in his arms? That was a bomb.”
“So you left the military because you shot a suicide bomber?” She shook her head. “No wonder you needed to straighten your shit out. That makes no sense whatsoever.”
“Do you want to hear this story or don’t you?”
She shut up.
“See the thing is, I wasn’t there to shoot a cross-dressing teenager and his fake baby. I was there to take out a fat, male, middle-aged double agent. Dutch guy, worked for the CIA then decided to switch teams. Dangerous business, switching teams. I don’t advise it.”
“I’ll take it under consideration,” she murmured.
“The guy figured out we were onto him, and instead of meeting his handler as usual, so we could blow him away, he decided to send us a little message instead.”
“A boy with a bomb. Dressed up as a woman with her baby.”
“Yep. So there I was,” Rush went on. He couldn’t stop now to save his life. He’d uncorked this beast and by God it was coming out. The whole thing. “Rifle snug into my shoulder, eye to the scope, kill zone established. This thing was precision-engineered down to the second. Watches synchronized, the whole deal. I get the word that the target’s in the building, about to cross the crowded square I’m covering. About to sit down for a coffee with the handler at this outdoor café. So my finger’s on the trigger, taking up the slack, counting heartbeats now, and you know who walks into my kill zone instead?”
“The boy with the bomb.” Her voice was gentle, filled with the beautiful, boundless compassion she extended to everybody but herself.
“But I didn’t know that. As far as I could see, it was a woman. With her baby.”
“But it wasn’t, Rush.” She wrapped both hands around his biceps, warm and confiding. “It was a boy with a bomb. Not that that’s any comfort to you, I know. A child is a child, and I can’t imagine what it cost you to shoot. But your pulling the trigger had to have saved countless lives.”
“You’re missing the point,” Rush said. “Because it doesn’t matter what really happened. What I really did. What matters is what I thought I did. Because I didn’t know it wasn’t a woman in my sights. I didn’t even suspect. You want the truth? You really want to know what was going on in my head when I pulled the trigger? Nothing. It didn’t occur to me to even wonder if this person was or wasn’t the right target. I didn’t fucking care. I had clearance to shoot, she crossed my kill zone and I took her—and what I believed to be her baby, Christ forgive me—out.”
He didn’t dare look down at her. If he’d finally reached the limits of her compassion, her forgiveness, he didn’t want to know. Not right now. Not yet.
“That’s what’s inside me,” he said softly. “That’s what I’m capable of, and I needed to figure out if I could live with it. That’s why I came home.”
“And can you?” Her voice floated soft and small from the cradle of his arms. “Live with it?”
He sucked in a steadying breath, planted himself firmly in the here and now and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I can. Turns out my moral compass wasn’t dead, it was just frozen. Took me the better part of two years to thaw it out again, and it’s rusty as hell, but I’m starting to think it still works.” He cleared his throat of a suspiciously wet lump. “Touch and go for a while there, though.”
She slipped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his heart and said, “I know what that’s like.”
Wonder blew sharp and wild through him, and he tightened his arms around her. “You do?”
“Yes.” She nestled closer, as if trying to get inside his chest and take his pain, his guilt, onto herself. “I know what it is to find something dangerous inside yourself. Something dark and unstable and unworthy. I know exactly what it is to do something unforgivable. And I know what it co
sts to tear down what you were and build someone better on the wreckage.”
So that was it. She’d scared herself somewhere along the line, just like he had. He’d suspected as much.
She laid a hand against his heart, gentle and merciful. “I don’t know who you were then, but I know who you are now. And the man I know earned forgiveness a long time ago.”
“Forgiveness,” he said slowly. A strange lightness filled his chest, new and yet somehow familiar. Gratitude? Peace? Love?
“Forgiveness,” she said firmly. “For all your sins, real and imagined. You’ve earned it. Now you just have to believe it.”
His throat simply closed and he gathered her to him, his lips in her hair, his heart a raw ache within him.
“Thank you,” he said finally. “That helps.”
And it was true, he realized. She had helped. He could still pull the trigger easier than most people flicked a light switch. No escaping that, not that he’d tried. His was an awful but necessary talent, and nobody who’d seen evil at work in the world could argue otherwise.
But he’d forced himself to face the living, breathing cost of exercising that talent. To realize that putting his particular skill set in the hands of anybody but himself—even the good guys—was abdicating responsibility. Because separating the act from the reason for the act—killing on orders—only separated Rush from his soul. Finding his way to wholeness again had been a long, bloody battle. One, God willing, he’d never have to fight again.
So he’d accepted himself, but he’d never thought to forgive himself. But she had. This sad, valiant woman in his arms had not only seen him but forgiven him.
Now if only she could forgive herself as easily as she’d forgiven him.
Chapter 23
RUSH WOKE the next morning to the muffled buzz of a blow-dryer. Damn, he’d slept hard. He flexed his empty arms and blinked gritty eyes at the ceiling. Power must be back. Which meant Goose was probably back, too. Sleek, polished, slippery Goose.
