Jake (In the Company of Snipers Book 16)

by Irish Winters

  “So...” Kelsey drew in a deep breath. “How do I describe Raymond…?” Another sigh. “I guess you could say he was a lost little boy who got tangled up with a bitter older woman.”

  “Ethel Durrant. Kelsey’s ex mother-in-law,” Alex bit out. “The bitch. Another close call.” The man couldn’t seem to speak without swearing.

  “Yes, but Alex,” Kelsey said. “You saved me that time.”

  “Like hell I did.” He snorted. “You ended Ethel before I got there with Harley and Judy. You showed the whole damned world how much better than her you were.”

  Kelsey’s shoulders lifted, her eyes shimmering under Alex’s praise. “But I still lost him.”

  “You never stood a chance, honey,” Alex replied, his voice gone soft and kind. “Acromegaly ended Raymond long before you met him. He was already living on borrowed time.”

  “But I didn’t know that then. All I knew was he was my second chance to make up for losing my sons, and I failed him.”

  “You made him happy,” Alex said, a definite hint of tenderness in his gruff voice. “Probably for the first time in his life, he had someone who really cared for him, and that person was you.”

  She nodded, her eyes brimming. “Yes. I did. I still do.”

  Jake watched the way these two talked, not tearing each other apart as much as building each other up. They loved each other and it showed.

  “What’s acromegaly?” Lacy asked.

  “A dysfunction of the pituitary gland,” Kelsey explained. “Raymond was a very big man with the mind of a very little boy. The first time I saw him, he scared the daylights out of me. I thought he was a giant, but he was so sweet, it was impossible not to fall in love with him.”

  “Seven feet, three inches tall and built like a damned brick shithouse,” Alex said. “Four hundred pounds. Over-sized head. Protruding forehead with one thick, black unibrow that made him look like Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “Poor Raymond had a bad heart and other health problems due to his disproportionate size,” Kelsey added.

  “Kelsey collects strays,” Alex grumbled like that explained everything.

  Her lashes fell to the slender fingers she was wringing on her lap. “Yes, I’m afraid I do, but I’d do it all again. Raymond needed someone to love him. Ethel used food to entice him to kidnap me. He was so hungry from living on the streets, and she knew just how to trap him. She had him dig a hole, a grave really, for me out west in the Shenandoah Forest. I was supposed to die there, and she meant for no one to find me. She did it to torture Alex, because she blamed him for her son’s death, which wasn’t true. Harley ended Nick, but that’s another story. Poor Raymond never understood how twisted she was. He wasn’t made that way. He only cared about the hamburgers she’d bought his soul with.”

  Kelsey wiped one slender finger under her eye. “One day she left him alone, and he let me go. We ran away together, but we got lost. The last day in the Shenandoah, she caught up with us, and she nearly killed me. But I knew that if I died, if I let her win, she’d kill Raymond, so I... so I…” She swallowed hard. “I defended myself, but it was too much for Raymond. He died there under the trees and I miss him.”

  “We can stop by our family plot on our way home if you’d like,” Alex said.

  So tough guy Alex had buried a stranger in his family plot? Jake didn’t miss the desperate plea hidden within his boss’s words. Like any man who loved his wife, Alex would do anything to make her smile.

  Kelsey nodded. “I’d like that, Alex, but Jake? Lacy? Don’t you find it strange that you bought Alex’s old house and—?”

  “Your old house,” Alex cut in.

  Now it was her turn to wink. “Yes, my home,” she corrected before she turned back to Jake. “You also named your baby, Raymond. That isn’t a trendy, popular name, and to be honest, it surprised me to hear it again, especially here.” Her fingertips fluttered over her heart.

  “Tell me about him,” Lacy said.

  Jake recognized the command in her voice and the light in her eyes. The ghosts she painted home always brought it shimmering to the surface like a sympathetic echo lifted up from her soul. A glow really, it radiated in all of her paintings as if she gave part of herself away to each ghost she enabled to go home.

  “I have a picture if you’d like to see him.” Kelsey reached for the cell phone in her pocket. Thumbing it to life, she handed it over. “There. That’s my Raymond.”

  Jake ducked closer to Lacy, needing to see the lost boy Kelsey had befriended and loved. It was a photo of an artist’s rendering, a pencil sketch. But whoa! Alex was right. This was no boy, but an adult male with the bulky body of a monster. A gentle smile graced his crooked face but those brows…

  “He has blue eyes,” Lacy said brightly, as if that were a good thing. Of course, she’d noticed that, not the monster-at-first-glance. And she’d spoken wisely. In the present tense. Has. Not had.

  “It’s no wonder he scared you,” Jake said. Imagine running into that guy in the dark.

  Alex finally joined Kelsey, his arm stretched behind her back on the couch, his other hand cupping her knee. “He scared everyone, poor kid.”

  Jake bonded with Alex in that instant. They had something in common. They both needed to touch the women who’d saved—yes, saved—them. Alex might be the supreme alpha at war and at work, but he was right when he’d said Kelsey collected strays. Apparently, Lacy did, too.

  Lacy traced her fingertips over the sketched shaggy head of the man-child that Kelsey still loved. This was the presence she’d felt in her new home, the one watching and waiting. She was sure of it. That evil Fallon guy Gabe that killed wasn’t the one who needed to go home. It was this lost soul who, apparently, still loved Kelsey like a little boy loved his mother. Raymond hadn’t been watching Lacy as much as waiting for his mom to come save him again. And here she was.

  “Would you like me to paint him home for you?” Lacy asked Kelsey.

  “No, I’m good,” she said, shaking her head, not that Lacy believed her. “I’ve made my peace with what happened with Raymond and my boys. It’s okay. Save your talent for people who really need it.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have asked that differently. I meant to say: May I paint Raymond home for him?” Lacy offered quietly. “I think this is more about Raymond and what he needs, not what you need. What if he hasn’t made his peace with what happened in the Shenandoah, with leaving you? What if he’s been waiting for you to come rescue him again? To show him the way?”

  “He never had the chance to tell you goodbye,” Alex told his wife. “That had to be as hard on him as it was for you.”

  “I know but…” Kelsey’s lips pinched as her eyes flooded. “Oh, God, I don’t know if I can go through it again.”

  “Sure you can, honey. You’d do anything for your boys, wouldn’t you?” Alex knew the way to his wife’s heart.

  Her lashes fell even as her head bobbed. “Yes, please,” she whispered, swiping her cheeks again. “Since the day Zack told me about your incredible paintings, I’ve thought about Raymond. He must’ve had a mother and father, maybe brothers and sisters. I might never know their names, but he does. Besides me, someone had to have loved him once upon a time. I’m sure he’d like to be with them again.”

  Lacy swallowed one of her noisy gulps. This was an opportunity of healing like no other. “I can paint him now if you have the time.”

  She didn’t need to hear an answer. ‘Yes’ glimmered in Kelsey’s soft brown eyes. This woman still loved Raymond as if he’d been her biological child. What a rare find she was in this crazy, selfish world.

  Without being asked, Jake scrambled to his feet, ran down the hall to their bedroom, and returned with Lacy’s easel under his arm, her case of oil paints, and a fresh canvas. “You want me to set up here or in the kitchen?”

  She could’ve kissed him. “I think the light in the kitchen’s better this time of day. Do you mind?”

  “Not if it make
s you happy.”

  With Baby Ray sound asleep and still snuggled with his new Aunt Shelby and Uncle Gabe, Lacy began another journey home for a lost soul. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scents of linseed and oils, the lingering turpentine she cleaned her brushes with, the smells of a thousand possibilities on the untouched, waiting-to-be-mapped canvas. “This one’s for you, Raymond,” she whispered, sure he was listening.

  Kelsey sat at one end of the table, while Lacy took the middle. Jake and Alex had stepped out on the back step, a concrete block that led to a cracked sidewalk into what would be a new garage by the end of the week. Lacy lost track of their deep voices as an image crystallized front and center in her mind. Drawing in a deep breath through her nostrils, she caught the scent of pine needles, sunshine, and wind.

  “It happened in the spring?” she asked Kelsey to be sure.

  Kelsey’s head bobbed. “Yes. Springtime in the Shenandoah.”

  That was all Lacy needed to know. The painting flowed through her like water out of a faucet. She began with a wash of blues and yellow for sunshine and sky. Next came the almond outline of two deeply set, indigo blue eyes, shadowed by a thick fringe of black lashes. Not cat eyes. Not Asian eyes. More the childish eyes of innocent wonder.

  She painted an overlay of green pine tips and boughs, the fresh new growth of spring, the kind where every pine tip glistened with beads of dew as if those eyes were peering through them. Adding a sprinkle of baby green pinecones in one corner, she placed a yellow star in the other. Kelsey watched as silently as that other person in the room, the one Lacy could almost feel peering over her shoulder.

  “He’s here, you know. Raymond. I didn’t feel his presence until I came home today with Baby Ray, and I can’t help but wonder if he knew you were coming to visit.”

  “He’s here?” Kelsey asked.

  Lacy nodded as she added—of all things—a squared off chunk of chocolate cake dripping with fudge frosting in another corner. Odd, but that was the impression that came to her.

  “Oh,” Kelsey whimpered when Lacy ended the frosting of that very out of place image with a flourish, almost as if she’d just frosted a real piece of cake. “He is here. He’s really here.”

  Lacy nodded, never more sure that Raymond’s spirit lingered as close to this side of the veil as he could get. The air was thick with his presence. Lacy could almost picture him with his arms wrapped around his earthly Mom.

  “Hug yourself,” Lacy told Kelsey. “Do it now. Wrap your arms around yourself and close your eyes. Picture him hugging you. He’s here, and he wants you to know it.”

  Tears dripped over Kelsey’s cheek and ran down her chin to her neck as she complied. “Those are his eyes,” she murmured. “I’d know them anywhere. One day we were tired, hungry, and covered with bug bites. We were both on our backs looking up at the trees and he said… he said… ‘The sky is blue and the trees are big and you…’” She could barely go on, but she squeaked, “‘…and you is my bestest friend in the whole world.’”

  This was the hardest ghost Lacy had ever painted home, more so because his Mom was right here helping him like she’d done before. Suddenly, Alex knelt beside Kelsey, tugging her into his arms. “You were his only friend, honey. Believe me. He knows you love him.”

  Lacy’s eyes watered at the tenderness in this tough guy’s voice.

  Kelsey sobbed. “But I told him I’d make him a great big hamburger and chocolate cake when we got home. He loved hamburgers. My poor boy. I never got the chance...”

  “Don’t cry.” Alex pressed his mouth to her temple. “Let him go, Kelsey. Please. You’ve got to let him go.”

  Lacy’s lips pinched. She tried not to look at the intimate scene unfolding at her kitchen table, but she couldn’t make her eyes not see the beauty this painting home had created. Her heart grew tenderer by the second. It seemed as if all Kelsey’s lost boys were suddenly here, reaching for their Mom to comfort her. The kitchen felt full, almost crowded.

  It took no time at all to add a border of little boy handprints, one small, one a little larger, and every third print man-sized. With every stroke of her brush, Lacy filled Raymond’s homecoming with love from him to Kelsey and from her to him. But the hardest was yet to come. There was a downside to painting people home. They left.

  Lacy didn’t understand how her crazy gift worked, but now she worried. Did Kelsey feel the presence of her sons surrounding her now? And if she did, could she handle Raymond and her sons leaving her again? Lacy wasn’t sure that she could. This gentle smiling giant’s presence was a nice addition to her little home. He certainly filled it up.

  “I may have to keep this picture for myself,” she murmured. “Raymond’s been watching over me and Baby Ray all morning. I kind of like having him around.”

  Jake shifted his hands from his pockets to her shoulders. “Say what?”

  She looked up at him standing behind her. “That’s right. This guy’s been hanging around our house this morning. Didn’t you feel someone watching us?” She set to outlining the blue eyes of an angel and the shadow of each individual pinecone scale. She highlighted each and every needle, adding depth here and definition there, hopping between charcoal grays and bright yellows to bring Kelsey’s beloved man-child to life.

  Jake ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Now that you mention it, yeah. I thought it was just, you know. Crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy,” Alex growled.

  “Yeah, I am,” Jake asserted unabashedly. “It’s the only way to survive in this world, Boss. Be a little crazy.”

  “Then I’m certifiable,” Kelsey said, finally letting go of her biceps and taking a deep breath. “So are you, Alex. You still dream of Abby and Sara. I know you do.”

  There was another story Lacy wanted to know. “May I paint someone home for you, Alex Stewart?” she had the nerve to ask.

  “No,” whipped out of his mouth as quick as lightning. “I’m good.”

  No, you’re not, but that’s what guys like you always say, and believe me, it’s okay. Whoever Sara and Abby are, the day will come you ask me to paint them home. I can wait. She finished Raymond’s painting, willing to work until her baby needed her or until Gabe and Shelby got tired of babysitting him.

  At last the piece was done. Her shoulders ached as Lacy settled back in her chair, calmer now. Still kneeling with Kelsey, Alex reached for his back pocket. “What’s your going rate?”

  “I don’t charge for works of love,” Lacy said. “It ruins the gift.”

  Alex stopped cold. His chin dropped, and it seemed he found the new linoleum floor interesting—until Lacy saw him blink. The muscles in his cheek clenched. This was as hard on him as it was on Kelsey. “With your talent, you should be living in a mansion, not here in this... this...”

  “Cracker box?” Lacy chided him as gently as she could. “I’m happy here, Alex. This is my home now and I’ll take good care of it.”

  “You’re as bad as my wife,” he bit out.

  “Thank you,” Lacy replied. She understood. Really, she did. Alex was a battle-hardened jarhead who’d done well transitioning out of the Corps. He’d started his own business and he made good money. He paid his men and women well, but her mission in life was different now. She wasn’t in the business of painting war heroes home for the wealth or the fame.

  These paintings, as bizarre as some of them were, were merely gifts of her heart. Besides, what could she possibly have charged all those poor moms and dads for the priceless gift of being reunited with their sons and daughters one last time? This was Lacy’s way paying it forward, the least she could do.

  “Look, honey,” Kelsey told him. “Lacy caught the boys’ handprints just like you did. Remember?”

  His head came up then. He ran a quick hand over his faced. Sniffed. Then nodded. “Thank you,” ground out of him. “Thank you for…” He cleared his throat. Coughed. Finally looked Lacy in the eye. “Everything.”

  “You’re welcome,
” she replied, pretending not to notice the raw emotions raging within the windows to his soul. Some things were just hard, damn it, and a warrior shouldn’t have to defend or explain his tears to anyone, not even to her.

  Setting the canvas back from the edge of the table where it wouldn’t get bumped, she leaned into Jake. “I hope this helps Raymond find peace,” she told Kelsey, “but you need to know that ghosts usually leave once I paint them home. One minute, they’re there; the next they’re… whoosh. Gone.”

  “As they should be,” Kelsey said with a drawn out sigh. “It’s time for him to move on. I’ve made my piece with what happened long ago, but it’s nice to know Raymond wanted to say goodbye to me, too.” She dabbed her eyes, took another deep breath, then said, “Let’s go home, Alex. The dogs need a run before bedtime. So do I.”

  He lifted to his feet and pulled her into his side. “You sure I can’t pay you?” he asked Lacy, his hand at his rear pocket again. “I’d feel better if I could.”

  Somehow, she doubted Alex would ever feel better. He had an entire squadron of ghosts around him, but none of them looked like a Sara or an Abby. Whoever those two women were, they were already home. Like Raymond with Kelsey, Alex just hadn’t let go of them yet. He hadn’t moved on, but they had.

  “No, sir, it’s been my pleasure,” Lacy told him firmly. “The painting will be ready after I apply a coat of varnish to protect it against ultraviolet rays and dirt. Pollution. Stuff like that. I’ll deliver it then.” I’ll have painted your Sara and Abby home by then, too. When I give you that picture, you’ll see. It really does work.

  “We’ll pick it up,” Alex corrected. Man, he was persistent. Wasn’t he in for a surprise?

  “Okay,” Lacy acquiesced. “I’d love that. Next Sunday. Just tell me when.”

  “Thank you,” Kelsey said, her eyes dry and her chin up. “I think you’re right. I don’t sense Raymond as much as I did for a moment there. He’s finally at peace. I can feel it. So am I.”

  “That’s how it works,” Jake declared as he tugged Lacy against his side. “She paints ’em home, and they’re happy to go.”