Lone Star Survivor

by Colleen Thompson

  “It was a falling rock that did it, one that I’d kicked loose. We’d better take her into Marston to get checked out. I think she might need a couple stitches.”

  “All right, but before we go, have you come up with any idea, any theories at all, why somebody would be out to kill you?”

  Ian thought of telling his brother what he’d remembered about the true nature of his work for the government, but this wasn’t the time or place. “Same as I’ve said before,” he answered. “I have this feeling not everybody’s happy to have me back from the dead.”

  Zach’s gaze zeroed in on him. “You know, when you first came back and started talking about somebody wanting to make you disappear, I chalked it up to dehydration mostly, or the hell that you’d just been through making you a little...you know.”

  “In light of the fact that you invited a shrink to stay with us, I guess I do.”

  Zach grimaced. “Now, though, I’m beginning to see your point, especially considering how long the odds are of some random nut job coming on you out here accidentally.” His gesture took in the broad sweep of a land that went on unbroken as far as the eye could see. “But why now? And why not wait to catch you alone instead of when you had a witness with you?”

  “Could be that just maybe, Andrea’s what set this all off,” Ian said in a low voice, his gaze swinging toward Zach’s truck. “Maybe whoever shot at us is worried she’ll unlock something they’d just as soon stay secret. A secret—”

  Zach interrupted, his face hardened as he finished his brother’s sentence. “A secret so big and so ugly, someone’s willing to shoot down both of you to keep it.”

  Chapter 5

  While Zach drove them back to the house, Andrea sat in the front-passenger seat holding the ice pack Virgil had improvised for her. The cool pressure felt soothing, and it offered her a chance to hide her face—and her silent struggle to regain her composure.

  It was ludicrous, she told herself, that she was far more upset about kissing Ian, now seated behind her, than she was about the fact that someone had tried to kill them. Still, she would rather dodge more bullets than try to explain her behavior to Julian.

  Oh, he would be stoic about it, if she knew him, understanding even. With his own training in psychology—though he had always worked on the administrative side—he might even offer her excuses, citing her emotional trauma and her head wound, both of which had left her vulnerable to a retreat to the past. But inside, he would be devastated, left to wonder what it was that drew him to unfaithful women. Or what it was that he was lacking, when the flaw was hers alone.

  As they rode, Ian and Zach discussed calling local law enforcement to report the incident.

  “Not that I imagine Canter’ll do much in the way of an investigation,” Zach said morosely. “He’s mad as hell I put a stop to him coming to Mama with his hand out every time the department needed something.”

  “So you have something against spreading around a little Rayford money in the public interest?”

  “It’s the sheriff’s self-interest I’m worried about,” Zach said. “I don’t trust the SOB as far as I can throw him.”

  “You aren’t the only one,” Virgil said. “I tried to tell her it wasn’t right, him coming by so often...”

  Zach glanced over his shoulder, looking at his brother. “You remember Canter at all from back before we left home?”

  Ian went quiet for some time before saying, “I remember a stiff-necked deputy with a hatful of attitude threatening to haul our gold-plated Rayford butts to jail when we raised hell around town. Tell me you don’t mean that jackass.”

  “The very one. He’s sheriff now, and I can tell you, he was all about kissin’ up to Rayfords back when Mama was alone and half-looped most of the time with all those damned pills she was popping.”

  Miserable as she was, Andrea perked up a little to hear that the primly proper Nancy Rayford had had a substance abuse issue. So that was what was behind her brittle and tiresome behavior, especially toward her daughter-in-law. Andrea felt certain that the family matriarch’s snootiness was nothing but a facade, hiding the flaws she feared would be exposed.

  “Maybe we should just look into this ourselves,” Ian suggested. “Keep him out of it entirely—and away from Mother.”

  “Much as I’d like to, I think we at least need to report what happened. After he blows us off, we can try digging into it on our own—”

  “Or maybe Andrea can help me figure out what this is really all about...” Ian reached forward from the backseat and laid his big hand on her shoulder. She felt the warmth of him radiating through the fabric of her shirt, heard the concern in his voice as he gave her a gentle squeeze. “Almost home. You hanging in there?”

  “Just trying to let everything sink in,” she said. “And trying not to scratch those stupid ant bites.” The itching had begun already, though she was doing her best to ignore it.

  “We’ll have ointment for that at the house,” Ian assured her. “But we’ll want to get you checked out at the nearest ER anyway.”

  “That’s not necessary. The ice is helping, and the bleeding’s almost stopped.”

  “Don’t try to minimize it,” Ian said, giving her shoulder a firmer squeeze. “I saw the way your head snapped back when that rock smacked into you. And you looked dazed or worse when I—”

  She jerked away her shoulder and angrily demanded, “When you what?” When he had kissed her until she’d forgotten the danger they were in? Until she’d lost all sense of who she was, much less the professional and personal obligations she was honor-bound to live by?

  “When I reached you, that’s all,” he said shortly. “No need to jump down my throat about it. And no damned chance of getting out of an emergency room visit, so quit arguing about it.”

  Zach sent a measuring look their way, his expression telling her he’d figured out there was something more than met the surface going on between them. After letting them settle for a few moments, he said, “I understand your not wanting to make a fuss, Doctor—”

  “Please, it’s Andrea.” She’d asked the family several times to call her by her first name, just as she did with those clients she saw at the center.

  “Okay. Andrea, then. But I’m going to have to side with Ian on this. There’s no sense taking chances, not with a possible concussion. And since it happened on ranch property, I insist we cover the cost.”

  She opened her mouth to argue that wasn’t the point but then realized it was useless. “I see that I’m outnumbered. But if I have to go all the way to Marston for the ER, I might as well pack my things. I’ll send one of our other counselors, but I won’t be coming back.”

  “What do you mean, you won’t be coming back?” Ian demanded. “We were just beginning to make real headway. This morning, I remembered—” He cut himself off, leaving Andrea to guess he didn’t want to go into his work with the CIA in front of Virgil and his brother. “I remembered so much more.”

  “Connor will be perfect for you,” she said, pretending she hadn’t heard the note of desperation in his voice. “He served in Operation Enduring Freedom, so he has a lot of personal knowledge of the effects of the war on—”

  “He doesn’t have personal knowledge of me, damn it. Not like you do, Andie.”

  She gritted her teeth to get past her knee-jerk desire to correct him—or tell him that his use of his old nickname for her only underscored the fact that he would never see her as anything but the woman he’d once loved...

  The woman he still loved, she reminded herself, since he’d made it clear that in his mind, their relationship had never ended. And that he meant to do everything in his power to make her forget it had...

  Even if doing so would destroy her completely. Which was why she had to get away from him the moment that she could.

 
* * *

  Once they were back home, Jessie emerged from The Deadline Cave, as she called her book-and-paper-strewn study, and insisted on going upstairs to help Andrea clean up and gather her things. Ian had seen Zach whisper something to his wife—probably a directive to find out the real reason that Andrea was in such as hurry to leave. Seeing the fear in Andrea’s eyes, Ian had already sworn that, despite what had happened, they could keep her safe here. She’d only shaken her head, her stubbornly clamped jaw telling him that she wasn’t about to change her mind.

  As soon as the two women disappeared into Andrea’s suite, his brother turned on him and cuffed his arm. “So what the hell did you do to her, bonehead?”

  Ian shoved him back, reminding the dumb lug that he might be skinnier than usual, but he was nobody’s punching bag. “What makes you think I did a damned thing? Maybe she just doesn’t like being used as target practice. Probably not what she signed up for after spending all those years in shrink school.”

  Zach mimicked an air-raid siren, a sound so annoying, Ian wanted to deck him. “You hear that?” Zach asked him. “That’s my bullshit detector hittin’ the red zone. Because it’s obvious as the nose on your ugly face—”

  “I don’t care what anybody says. I don’t look that much like you.”

  “—the reason she’s bailing has nothing to do with bullets and everything to do with you. Or something between the two of you, more specifically. Which brings me back to my question. What the hell did you do?”

  Ian grimaced and paced past the bottom of the staircase as he attempted to cool down. Much as it griped him to admit it, his brother was absolutely right about why Andrea was leaving.

  “If you’re going to tell me, hurry up about it,” Zach urged, “before Virgil finishes calling Canter or Mama gets back from her hair appointment.”

  Ian blew out a long breath. “Could be I was a little too direct in announcing my intentions to make her forget this other guy.”

  “The one she’s engaged to marry? While she’s trying to help you to get back your memory? Smooth move, brother.”

  “I can’t help it when I’m with her. Can’t help the way it all comes rushing back to me—how smart and brave and sexy she is, how meeting her again brought me alive.” As true as everything he’d said was, the real reason remained unspoken: how the memory of her had sustained him, keeping him safe throughout a journey that had spanned continents and oceans, how he would walk forever to get back to where they had been...even if it was a place that no longer existed.

  “So that’s the trouble.” Zach shook his head, something between a grimace and a wry smile pulling at one side of his mouth. “You remember the rush but not the rest. Thing is, though, Ian, there’s gotta be a downside. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have broken up two years ago.”

  Ian thought of telling him why it had happened, telling him about the clandestine services career he’d kept hidden for so many years. But before he told anyone else about his CIA past, he needed time to consider whether sharing the information might prove a legal problem or, worse yet, a danger to the people he loved.

  It was just as possible, though, that getting it all out in the open might prove his best defense. But at the thought of allowing the viral sensation that would follow any report of how the government had spun up the feel-good story about a “soldier’s” miraculous return, his throat clenched and icy chills crawled up the column of his spine. The white marble and carved mahogany stairway fell away, dropping him back to a time and place where...

  Hunger and thirst, suffocating heat and numbing cold, and the cruel positioning of his arms as they bore his weight were bad enough. But the worst part was the hood that blinded him so that he couldn’t see pain coming, couldn’t see the chain begin its downward arc.

  He soon learned to listen for the dark chuckle or the clink of metal, to scent the sour sweat of his captors as they approached, to brace himself for the beating that would follow. But his senses failed him sometimes, leaving him in the constant torment of anticipation, holding his breath and clenching his muscles, his pulse jumping at every scrape of distant footsteps or a whisper of rats’ feet in the straw.

  It was the anticipation, along with the memory of pain, more than the torture itself that broke down his mind, his body, his will to resist the questions that kept coming, each one hard and unyielding as another blood-caked metal link.

  “Ian? Ian, you still with me, man?” Zach’s voice was a mere echo, an imaginary strand of English woven through the rough fabric of the Pashto demands that he tell them where the listening post was.

  But Ian knew it was illusion, another trick to break him, just like the hallucinations that tortured him each time he’d blacked out, impossible dreams where he’d managed to escape his bindings and strangle his guard with that damned chain. Dreams where he had somehow talked a sympathizer into helping smuggle him out of the mountains, out of the country. Where he had made his way back home...

  Not to a place, so much as to a woman. A dark-haired beauty in a blue bikini, a woman who regarded him with green-gold eyes beneath the long fringe of her lashes...

  “Ian!” He heard the semblance of his brother’s voice again, this time coming with a hard grip that shook his shoulders.

  Ian flailed to break free, his unbound arms swinging strong. His fist crashed into something solid, someone who shouted in surprise as he crashed backward into the banister before sitting hard on the pristine marble floor.

  “What’s going on, you two?” A red-faced older version of the Virgil Ian remembered stepped between the brothers, a phone forgotten in his hand. “What the hell’s all this about? Show some respect in this house. Your mama could be back any minute.”

  Ian gasped for breath, his heart jackhammering its way through his sternum. His skin beaded with hot sweat as he looked around wildly, seeking somewhere to run before the other guards showed up to beat him, to kill him this time for daring to strike one of their own.

  Before he could decide which way to run, the fog lifted, leaving him blinking down at his own brother. At Zach, who was sitting on the landing floor and rubbing his jaw.

  “It’s okay, Virg,” Zach said, his voice surprisingly calm for a guy who’d just gotten decked. “I’ve got this. You back here with us, Ian? You’re safe. You’re home now, and I swear to you, you’re never going back.”

  Ian took a shaky step and bent, offering his older brother a hand up. “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are. I get it.” Zach accepted his help, his steady gaze indicating that he did so more out of a desire to offer reassurance than out of any real need for assistance. Once he was on his feet, he tightened his grip. “Just let’s not make a habit of it, all right? Because I can get past a sore jaw and some bumps and bruises, but what if it had been Mama? Or Jessie or even Eden?”

  “I wouldn’t have hit one of them.”

  “But you weren’t swinging at me either, were you? Not that I don’t probably have it comin’ every now and then, but it was pretty clear that you were after somebody else. For one thing, you were yelling in some foreign language. Arabic, maybe? I don’t know. I never had the gift for—”

  “Pashto. It was Pashto,” Ian told him, naming the language of his captors.

  “So they were Taliban?” Zach asked him. “The ones holding you over there in—”

  “I don’t remember the details. And I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it.” It was bad enough knowing that his brother had seen the ropy, red scars across his back and shoulders. Bad enough that anyone knew that he’d been beaten.

  Virgil shifted and cleared his throat, then let them know the sheriff had insisted on coming personally to take their report rather than sending a deputy to do it. “He wanted you both still here when he arrives. I told him Dr. Warrington needs a trip to the ER before she’s questione
d, said I’ll take her there myself.”

  Zach scowled, looking as if he’d rather take another shot to the jaw than deal with Canter. “What about her car, though?” he asked, referring to the old blue Honda she’d arrived in.

  “I’ll drive her in it and one of the hands can pick me up there later. They’re always itching for an excuse to head to town anyway.”

  “To head to the bars there, you mean. Try and keep ’em out of trouble, will you? Or at least don’t let ’em drive after they’ve had a few.”

  “As long as I don’t need to stick around to keep you two out of trouble.” Virgil glanced from Zach to Ian, who was still grappling with the realization that the ranch in Rusted Spur, not the torture chamber, was his reality.

  “We’re just fine, aren’t we, Ian?” Zach said.

  “Yeah.” Ian blinked, then rubbed at his knuckles, noticing that one was split and bleeding. “Leastwise, I’ve busted up my hand enough for one day on your big mouth.”

  Frowning at the uneasy look that passed between the brothers, Virgil said, “I’ll—ah—I’ll be out in the kitchen, then. Making up a couple of more ice packs.”

  “Don’t worry on my account,” said Ian.

  “Mine, either,” Zach tossed in. “We’re done now. Aren’t we, Ian?”

  “You have my word,” Ian told them both.

  “Then I’ll be out there pinching a couple of those molasses-spice cookies I smell baking.” Virgil shared a warm smile that had served as a counterbalance for their father’s scowls and curses for so many years.

  Seeing it calmed Ian, a reassurance that kindness sometimes outlived cruelty.

  Once he’d left the room, Zach asked Ian, “You ready to talk about it now, see if the two of us can figure how your past could be connected to what went down this morning?”

  “I—I don’t—” Ian felt the vault of words slam shut, the lock inside him turning. He tried to struggle past it, reminding himself that his brother was on his side, but his face grew so hot he imagined he must be glowing like an ember.