The Edge Of Courage

by Elaine Levine

  “His house was flooded with carbon monoxide. Almost killed him and his wife-they’re in the hospital.”

  “Wow. That’s bad news.”

  Rocco watched his reaction closely, but could read nothing in his expression. “Don’t you think it’s odd to have yet another inexplicable thing happen? He’d had his furnace serviced not too long ago.”

  “I’m not following. You saying there’s a connection between something at his house and the construction site? ‘Cause I don’t see it.”

  “I’d like you to look into the situation. It’s too coincidental.”

  “Look, Rocco, not to get you upset or anything, but you ain’t fighting insurgents here. Accidents happen. Sometimes a whole darn string of them-”

  “And sometimes they aren’t accidents at all.”

  “I’ve got nothing to go on with this and no call to go askin’ questions. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you or Mandy.”

  Rocco put his hands on his hips. “That a fact? How about I get you some evidence? Will you take it seriously then?”

  “If you find something, you bring it to me, you hear me? I don’t need you going off half-cocked, stirring up trouble, scaring people. Bring me some facts, evidence, proof, something, and I will look into it. I’m fond of Mandy. I’ve known her her whole life. Everyone in town likes that gal. We don’t like what’s going on out at her place, but none of it adds up to anything.” Rocco took his leave, frustrated with the sheriff.

  He was leaning against Mandy’s SUV, his arms crossed, when she brought the two dogs out of the vet’s a few minutes later. “What’s the verdict? Did the doc recognize them?” he asked as he helped her settled them in the SUV.

  “He didn’t. Neither had a chip. He gave me some diet suggestions to help them gain weight back. He said someone might have driven out to the country to drop them off. And then the poor things have been wandering about. That happens more often than you think. I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

  “You gonna keep them? Or do you want to take them down to the shelter in Cheyenne?”

  She flashed a look at him. “I’m not taking these boys down to a shelter, Rocco.”

  He looked at her, feeling something inside him twist. With hope. Was she this possessive of everything-everyone-she rescued? “Then keep them it is.”

  Chapter 12

  Rocco sat on the top step of Mandy’s porch after supper. The evening was slowly rolling toward night. The construction site had been secured for the day. Kitano was happily munching his evening meal. The strays, full and sated from yet another small meal, lounged in the last vestiges of sunlight.

  Mandy joined him on the stoop, handing him a cup of black coffee. All around them was peace and tranquility, but Rocco couldn’t shake the feeling of a storm brewing, as if what had happened to George was just the first stacked domino in a line of them.

  They’d learned from a phone conversation with George’s wife earlier in the day that their furnace had been serviced by the same company that currently was providing plumbing and HVAC services on Mandy’s equestrian center. It was, at last, a link, but Mandy refused to see that there was any connection at all. In fact, they’d argued about it earlier. He didn’t want to continue their discussion, so he stood and walked to the ledge that looked down to the construction site and sipped his coffee in silence.

  The accuracy of his instinct was an immutable truth he’d learned long ago never to doubt. Even when his mind was fucked all to hell, his gut held true. And right now, it was screaming a warning he could not ignore.

  Mandy could not see the danger-nor could he, for that matter. But it did exist. So how was he to keep her and her dream safe?

  He looked where she was sitting on the stairs and sighed. She smiled at him, a gesture he did not return. The world had gone mad, and he alone saw it happening.

  “Okay,” she said over the rim of her coffee mug. “Let’s go through it again.”

  “It makes no sense, I know.”

  “But it’s eating at you, so let’s step through it.”

  “Who benefits if you fail to open the center?”

  “No one. Not our therapy clients. Not the town that would have gained visitors for restaurants and gas stations and hotels. If I shut down construction until we figure this out, the crew and tradesmen would definitely not benefit.”

  Rocco sipped his coffee. A minute passed. A cold feeling settled in his stomach. “We’re looking at this wrong. Instead of who might benefit, tell me what happens if things continue on the path they’re on, with escalating issues and even violence.”

  “The cops will have more work to do. The emergency clinic in town and the hospital in Cheyenne will have more clients. My customers will not have a convenient place to come for hippotherapy.”

  “Keep going. What else will happen?”

  “I will lose this ranch because I’ll have construction loans I cannot repay.”

  Christ, it was all right before them, had been all along. “Before that. What will you do before that?”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “Call Kit and cry. I’ll feel like such a failure.” She set her coffee on the step and folded her arms about herself.

  “Right. And what will Kit do?”

  “He’ll come out, thinking he can make everything right. He hates this town, Rocco. He once said he’ll never come back-when we met over the years, it was never here. But for me, because of this, he would. I know it.”

  Rocco looked at Mandy, waiting for her to catch the implication. When she frowned at him, he explained. “This isn’t about you. It isn’t about the town or the center. It’s about Kit.”

  “How can it be about Kit? True, this is his hometown, but this ranch has never been his home. My successes or failures do not spill over into his world, except in their emotional impact, perhaps.”

  “If you fail, he’ll come home. Your failure is the bait luring him back here.”

  Mandy gasped. Her eyes widened as the impact of what he was saying settled in. “I don’t know how much you know of what happened before he left, but he didn’t leave on glowing terms. He’d made a stupid teenage mistake. He can’t have enemies here from that-still-can he?”

  “No idea.” Rocco shrugged. “Someone is forcing him to come home. I don’t know why.” He thought of Ivy, Kit’s high school flame. She was a poster child for a woman scorned. She’d only recently come back to town. And now this mess was happening.

  “What are you thinking?” Mandy asked.

  “What about Ivy? She and Kit don’t exactly have a peaceful background.”

  Mandy looked at him. “No. Absolutely not. She did not come back to start trouble.”

  “Stranger things have happened, Em.”

  “Not Ivy.” She wondered how much he knew, if it would be violating Kit’s trust to tell him the whole sordid story. “He told you what happened, didn’t he?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Ivy was fifteen and Kit seventeen when they began dating. Kit was planning to go into the Army to get the tuition assistance the GI Bill offered for college. They-they were intimate. Ivy got pregnant. That news came out the day Kit turned eighteen. Her father accused Kit of statutory rape. He wanted him thrown in jail, wanted his life ruined. It was a big scandal in town.

  “Sheriff Tate managed to intervene. He had Ivy’s father agree not to press charges if the sheriff personally oversaw Kit’s enlistment. No sooner did Kit graduate and walk off the stage with his diploma, but Tate took him in his patrol car and drove away. Ivy and her family moved away that summer. None of us knew what had happened to her or the baby. She never wrote. She never visited.

  “I heard, several years later, that she’d kept the baby. And then, she reached out to me online. It was wonderful to hear from her. We reconnected as if there’d been no lost time.

  “I was thrilled that she came back to town, with her daughter. I can’t believe that she would wish Kit harm. You met her. She is lovely and cheerful
and well-adjusted. She adores her daughter. She’s excited about the diner and their future. She would not do something so evil.”

  He’d once thought Kadisha incapable of evil, too. A memory moved through his mind, there and gone before he could capture it. What had happened the day of the explosion? Why couldn’t he remember?

  “Evil has a heartbeat all its own, Em. It may be Ivy. Or it may be someone who was hurt by the whole scandal. Or it may yet be something or someone else. Whatever it is, Kit can’t come home.”

  He took out his phone and dialed Kit.

  “Hey. What’s up?” Kit answered.

  Rocco looked at Mandy, wondering how to break the news to his friend that someone wanted him dead. “There’s a problem.”

  “I know. I was about to call you.”

  “The accidents here are no accidents. Someone is trying to draw you out.”

  “That’s what I picked up on. Remember that chatter I mentioned? Well, it’s gotten clearer. I’m coming out there. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “No. Don’t come here.”

  “Too late, bro. Blade and I will be in Denver tomorrow. We’ll be up to Wolf Creek Bend before dinner.”

  Rocco cursed. “Don’t bring Blade into this. Tell him convalesce somewhere else.”

  “Negative. The chatter’s from a Taliban cell operating out of Denver. They’ve figured out where we live, and they’re gunning for Blade and me. And now that you’re there, you’re a target, too. Shit, they hate you more than they hate either of us combined. You’re probably why they’re targeting me and Blade.”

  Holy hell. “This ranch is nearly impossible to secure. It’s wide open and sits inside a bowl of higher ranges. Perfect ground for sniper attacks,” Rocco warned.

  “I’m bringing up a team and some equipment. Have Mandy clear us some space in the basement. See you tomorrow night. Keep my sister safe.”

  When Rocco lowered the phone, he couldn’t escape Mandy’s worried look. “He’s coming home, isn’t he?”

  Rocco drew a breath. His lips pressed together in a thin line, he nodded. “Yep. And Ivy is not the problem.”

  * * *

  The house was silent. Rocco had checked all the windows, upstairs and down. The doors were locked. He looked around at the shadowy interior, dreading the battles to come. Mandy had kept her grandparents’ 1960s reproduction Americana furniture, electing to reupholster the worn pieces rather than replace them. The pieces were large and comfortable, made for the big-framed bodies of Western ranchers. The woven, oval rug looked like the only new addition to the room.

  This ranch was her home. It was supposed to be a safe place. He had to do whatever was needed to keep the war from getting any closer. He suspected Kit’s assessment was correct-that just as the enemy had attacked Mandy’s ranch to get to Kit, they would have attacked Kit and Blade to get to him. He was the biggest threat.

  He’d moved invisibly through various Afghan villages and camps, blending in with the native population. He’d heard firsthand the whispered rumors about himself, the Gray Ghost-an American commando who’d infiltrated the Taliban. Tactical errors experienced by the insurgents-errors that benefited the Americans-were blamed on him. Women manipulated his legend, horrifying their children with fiendish tales of what would happen to them should the Gray Ghost come to their village, warning them to behave and to beware of strangers.

  His mission hadn’t been to kill any of the first tiers of Taliban officers. It had been much more focused than that. He’d been ordered to gain the trust of Ghalib Halim. Observe, learn, document, and report-learn what he could of the Taliban’s internal leadership structure.

  In addition to the years of Red Team training that he, Kit and Blade had undergone, he’d had a full year of specific training for his assignment. It had taken one year to establish his cover in Afghanistan, a year to move ever closer to Halim, and four years to wait and observe. The hardest fucking years of his life. His fellow soldiers were being targeted by snipers, IEDs, and ambushes every day while he moved among the enemy with the mind-bending speed of a threatened chameleon, helpless to protect them with anything other than the info he fed to Kit and Blade.

  There were others like him, still embedded with the enemy, other linguistic savants. The forward eyes and ears-and sometimes guns-of secret American Red Teams.

  And yet now, his team had become the targets here, on American soil. If the bastards were successful in Wolf Creek Bend, who would be next? Other retired warriors? Their families? Was this a testing ground? Or was this more personal? God, he wished he had answers.

  “Can’t sleep either?” Mandy’s quiet voice seeped into his thoughts. He didn’t answer her. He hadn’t even been aware she’d come into the room. Some guard he was right now. He’d moved an oversized armchair back against the wall, in the corner, giving him a line of sight to the stairs, the kitchen, the hallway, and both front and back doors.

  Mandy sat on the sofa. In the dim light of the room, he could see that her back was upright and rigid, her hands tucked between her knees.

  “What’s going to happen, Rocco?” she whispered.

  He’d like to tell her everything would be okay, that the good guys always won. But that was a pack of lies, and it was never a smart thing to lie to an angel.

  “We’re trained professionals, Em. We’ll take out bad guys.”

  “But who are the bad guys? There have been no strangers in town. This is not an operation that can be run from a distance, is it? So they have to be here already. How will you know who to target?”

  “We’ll know.”

  Mandy got up and started pacing, rubbing her arms from the chilly night air. The skimpy tank top did little to provide warmth. Or cover of any sort. Every now and then, she’d pace in front of the wide bay window, silhouetting herself against the porch light.

  Rocco uncrossed his legs, tried to ease the pressure on his groin. “Want me to tuck you back in bed?” Please, please, go back to bed and quit torturing me.

  She stopped and faced him. “Only if you’ll come with me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Then, no.” She made a few more passes around the room.

  “Mandy,” he sighed, “come sit beside me.”

  For the space of a breath, she did not move, and then she was a flash of motion. She grabbed the quilt from the back of the sofa and folded herself up next to him in the wide chair, almost lying on top of him. The armchair was large, but it wasn’t meant for two people. He set his gun down, then helped settle the quilt over her shoulders and wrapped his arm around her.

  “Why did you move the chair over here?” she asked. He looked down at her but didn’t give her an answer. He was able to see very little of her expression, but he felt the slight stiffening in her posture. “This is how you slept, even down at the bunkhouse, isn’t it?” Again, he didn’t answer. “Why?”

  He kissed her forehead. He doubted she could see much of his face in the dark, but he didn’t want to reveal more than was safe. “Because nightmares make bad bedmates.”

  She sighed and lowered her head to his shoulder. He could feel more questions brewing in her mind.

  “Tell me about your wife, Rocco. What was her name?”

  He sighed. This was bound to come up some time. Best answer her questions once and be done. “Her name was Kadisha Halim. She was the daughter of the village leader, a warlord we needed our eyes and ears on. His poppy business sent hundreds of recruits to Pakistan for training and founded terrorist cells across the world, even here. His village was a key stop on the many trails between Pakistan and Afghanistan, high in the Hindu Kush, so remote the coalition forces patrolled it only rarely and could never hold it. Marrying Kadisha was like getting the golden key. I had free and complete access to the village and its leaders, fighters, and their plans.

  “Your brother and Blade were my handlers. For a few years, I was able to stream valuable information to our guys.” Tell her about Zavi. Tell her now, a part o
f him urged. But he couldn’t. He would have to tell her his command was convinced his son was dead, and those were words he could not speak.

  “What happened?”

  “The explosion.” He shrugged. “Ended everything.”

  She moved slightly so that she could look up at him. “Have you remembered more of what happened that day?”

  “No. I wish I did.”

  She settled against him once more, fitting into his side like his other half, a perfect match. Unable to stop himself, he touched the tips of his fingers to the soft skin of her chest, stroking along the rim of her flimsy tank top, up to her collarbone, and then to her neck. Reversing direction, he stroked downward, letting the backs of his fingers have the pleasure of touching her.

  “When the others come, you will properly cover yourself.”

  Mandy smiled, unconsciously dropping the quilt away as she stretched like a cat. “When the others come, I will parade about in my bra and panties.”

  Rocco growled as his gaze took in her arching curves. “I don’t want them looking at your skin.” It’s mine alone to view and savor.

  “We aren’t in Afghanistan, Rocco. You don’t get to tell me what to wear, or do, or think. A woman likes men to admire her. I like it. It makes me feel pretty.”

  Anger slashed through him at the thought of men touching her with their eyes. He cupped the back of her head, tangling his fingers in her hair as he leaned over her, drawing her back against the arm of the chair. “I will not have men ogle you.”

  “Why does it matter to you?”

  Because you’re mine. He pressed his face into her neck, letting his mouth discover what his fingers already knew-her skin was god-awful soft. He palmed a breast, knew his erection was like a metal pipe pressing against her hip. She wore no bra. Gripping her hair in his fist so that she would not move, he lifted her shirt, exposing a soft mound and its pebbled nipple.

  Moonlight slashed across her face and chest. He held her gaze as he bent to taste her breast. His nostrils were flared, and he felt the tension in his face, in his whole body. He did not take her nipple. He nuzzled at the wide underside of her breast. She moaned. His cock hardened even more, throbbed painfully.