A Soldier's Redemption

by Rachel Lee

  He looked down at his mug, giving her a break from his stare, from his acute perception.

  She thought about getting up and walking into her bedroom and locking the door. Hiding, always hiding. The thought stiffened her somehow, and instead of fleeing she held her ground. “Is it that obvious?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not to anyone who hasn’t been where I’ve been. Except for when you got that call, you put on a pretty good act.”

  “My entire life is an act,” she heard herself snap.

  He nodded, and when he looked at her again something in his gaze tugged at her, something that reached toward her and tried to pull her in. She looked quickly away. None of that. She didn’t dare risk that.

  “Look,” he said finally, “I don’t mean to upset you. I just want you to know…” He trailed off.

  She waited, but when he didn’t continue, she finally prodded him. “Want me to know what?”

  “I’m not useless. Far from it. So if…if you need help, well, I’m here.” Then he poured a little more coffee in his mug and rose, carrying the mug away with him.

  She listened to him climb the creaky stairs and wondered what the hell had just happened.

  Wade made up his bed with the skill of long years of practice in the navy. Perfectly square corners, the blanket tight enough to bounce a quarter off. His drawers were just as neat, everything was folded to fit a locker though, so the items didn’t exactly match the drawers, but the stacks were square.

  Old habits die hard, and six months of retirement hadn’t killed any of them.

  He sat on the wood chair in the corner of the room, and focused his mind like a searchlight on the present, because looking back got him nowhere, and the future seemed impossible to conceive.

  That woman downstairs was as scared as any green combat troop he’d ever seen. As scared as the women and kids he’d seen in situations he didn’t want to remember.

  He hadn’t expected to find that here. Hadn’t bargained on the feelings it would resurrect. He’d come to this damn county in the middle of nowhere because Seth Hardin had promised he’d find peace and solitude, and that everything here was as far from his past as he could possibly get.

  Right.

  Apparently Seth hadn’t known about this woman. Corinne Farland. Cory. Regardless, who the hell would have thought that he’d find this mess through the simple act of renting a room?

  He leaned over and lifted the coffee mug from the top of the dresser, draining half of it in one gulp. Good coffee.

  The back of his neck prickled a little as he thought about the situation, and he never ignored it when the back of his neck prickled. That sensation had saved his skin more than once, or someone else’s skin.

  But he couldn’t figure out why the hell Gage Dalton had brought him to this particular woman. There must be other rooms for rent in this county. Surely.

  Well, maybe not. The place didn’t exactly look huge. So it could just have been coincidence. But he didn’t believe much in coincidence. At some level, conscious or otherwise, Gage had thought of this woman, her terror and her room.

  And there was a reason for that, a reason that made the skin on the back of his neck crawl. Cory’s level of fear suggested a long-term, ongoing threat.

  And here he was, smack in the middle of a place he thought he’d left behind. A place he wanted to leave behind.

  He needed to normalize, to stop being a SEAL and start being a reasonably ordinary member of society again. He needed to stop sleeping with one eye always open, constantly ready for death to lunge out of any shadow or hole. He needed to let his reflexes slow again, at least to the point where someone wouldn’t risk death simply by trying to wake him from sleep, or by moving too fast in the corner of his eye. That’s what he needed, and that had just skittered out the door of his immediate future.

  Because downstairs there was one hell of a scared woman, and she shouldn’t feel that way. And a phone call, a simple phone call, had caused her to collapse.

  From what he’d seen of Conard County and Conard City so far, he would have called the place bucolic.

  Well, that was a hell of a reaction for a bucolic place.

  It wasn’t normal. It didn’t fit.

  Apparently he would have to keep sleeping with one eye open.

  He could leave, of course, but that didn’t even truly appear on his menu of options. He couldn’t walk away from her terror.

  Someone that terrified needed protecting.

  For a change, he decided, he’d like to provide the protection, rather than the terror.

  A bitter smile twisted his mouth. That, at least, would be a change. A much-needed change.

  And wasn’t that what he’d come here for?

  The phone didn’t ring again, thank God. Cory ate a small salad for dinner, then tried to settle in with the TV. She didn’t think she could focus on one of the library books stacked on the small table beside the rocking chair, because her mind seemed to have turned into a flea, insisting on hopping from one thing to another, all totally unrelated. Even the sharpness of fear didn’t seem able to get her full attention.

  So it was easier to turn the TV on, for the noise, for the visual distraction, for the occasional moments in which she could actually tune into the program, whatever it was.

  She noted that her roomer upstairs had grown quiet, utterly quiet. Probably sleeping, but with her senses on high alert, the inability to guess what he was about made her uneasy. Solitude was her friend, her fortress, her constant companion.

  But she’d invited in an invader, and his silence was worse than the noise he’d made while settling in.

  She flipped quickly to the weather station, but too late, because the image of a crime-scene team entering a home where a man lay dead, just a reenactment, was enough to set off a string of memories she tried never to visit.

  Jim lying there, bleeding from multiple wounds. Trying to crawl to him despite the wound in her own side, gasping his name, knowing somehow as she crawled that he was lost to her forever.

  She squeezed her eyes shut as if that could erase the images that sprang to mind. Gentle, determined Jim, a man with a huge smile, a huge heart and a belief in making the world a better place. A man who could talk to her with such kindness and understanding, then in a courtroom or deposition turn into a circling shark, coming in for the kill.

  A gifted man. An admirable man.

  The man she had loved with every cell of her being.

  Their last dinner together. Jim had taken her to one of the best restaurants in Tampa to celebrate a positive pregnancy test that very morning. They’d laughed, coming up with silly names they would never in a million years give their child.

  And shortly after midnight, everything that mattered in her life vanished. At least she didn’t mourn the pregnancy as much as she might if she had had time to get accustomed to the idea. That little mark on the stick had scarcely been real to her yet when the gunshot ended it all.

  But Jim…Jim had been everything. Jim and her students. The life they had barely begun to build together after only two years.

  Now she drew a shaky breath, trying to steady herself, trying to prevent the gasping sobs she had managed to avoid for months now.

  But awake, or asleep, she still heard the banging on the door. Banging that had sounded like the police. Jim had laughed drowsily as he climbed from bed to answer it.

  “Somebody probably just tried to steal my car,” he had said. His car was also a joke between them, a beater he’d gotten in law school. It was certainly not worthy of stealing, but the very expensive stereo he’d put in it was.

  She had heard him open the door then…

  Her mind balked. Her eyes snapped open. No, she couldn’t do this to herself again. No way. It was done, the nightmares permanently engraved on her heart and mind, but that didn’t mean she had to let them surface.

  Sometimes she even scolded herself for it, because while grief was natural, and the fear s
he felt equally so, every time she indulged herself in grief or fear, she knew she was giving that man even more power over her than he had already stolen from her.

  And he had already stolen everything that mattered.

  The phone rang, jarring her. This time she didn’t jump for it, this time she didn’t think it was work calling. Part of her wanted to let it ring unanswered, but she didn’t even have an answering machine, and what if it was Gage?

  Slowly, reluctantly, she reached for it, coiling as tight as a spring. So tight some of her nerves actually objected.

  “Hello?”

  “Cory, it’s Gage. I just wanted you to know a few other women have reported similar calls, so it was probably just a prank, okay?”

  Her breath escaped her lungs in a gasp of relief. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “And I’m getting caller ID put on your service. The phone company says you should have it within a few days. And don’t worry about the cost. The department will pay for it.”

  “Oh, Gage…” Words deserted her yet again. Of all the places on this earth the Marshals could have put her, she was grateful they had put her in a town with Gage Dalton.

  “Hey,” he said kindly. “We take care of our own around here. It’s not a problem.”

  Before she could thank him again, he was gone.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Startled, she nearly cried out, and turned to see Wade Kendrick at the foot of the stairs. How had he come down so silently? Earlier his tread had been heavy. Or maybe she’d just been so distracted. She drew a few deep breaths, trying to steady her pulse.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard the phone ring, and after the way you reacted earlier…”

  “Of course. Of course.” She closed her eyes and consciously tried to relax, at least a bit. It didn’t happen easily anymore, that whole relaxing thing. “Everything’s okay. Gage…called.” But what could she tell him about the call? Even a few words might be too much.

  He waited, and it was clear to her that he wasn’t satisfied. But he didn’t ask, he just waited. And somehow his willingness to wait reassured her. She couldn’t even understand it herself.

  “I got a nasty phone call earlier,” she said slowly.

  He nodded. “I didn’t think it was a funny one.”

  “No.” Of course not. And now she was sounding like an idiot, she supposed. She gathered herself, trying to organize her words carefully. “Gage just wanted me to know that several other women received similar calls.”

  One of his eyebrows lifted. “Really.”

  “Probably just kids.”

  “Maybe.”

  His response didn’t seem to make sense. “Maybe?”

  “Well, that would depend, wouldn’t it?”

  “On what?”

  “On what has you so scared, and who else received the calls.”

  “What in the world do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Life has made me suspicious.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lower lip, realizing that nothing in her life had prepared her for dealing with a man like this. He seemed to come at things from a unique direction, unlike anything she was familiar with.

  He started to turn away. “Well, as long as you’re okay…”

  He didn’t ask a single question. She found that intriguing, given what little he had figured out about her in the short time since he moved in. Any other person would have been asking dozens of question, but this man just seemed to accept that she was afraid, she must have good reason for it and that it was none of his business.

  In that moment she thought it possible that she might come to like him.

  “Wade?”

  He stopped and turned back to her. He didn’t say a word, simply looked at her.

  “I, uh…” How could she say that she didn’t want to be alone? That she was tired of being locked in the prison of her own thoughts? That even though solitude had provided her only safety for a year now, she was sick of it, and sick of her own company. Tired enough of it all to feel an impulse toward risk. Just a small risk.

  “Should I make coffee?” he asked.

  He had understood, though how she couldn’t imagine. She might have been about to ask him anything, tell him anything.

  All she said was, “Thanks.” Because there was nothing else she could say.

  She switched the TV off so she could listen to his movements in the kitchen. Everything he needed was beside the drip coffeemaker, so he wouldn’t have trouble finding it. And finally she could afford to have more than one cup each day. Imagine that, being reduced to one cup of coffee and a can of soup each day.

  Sure, there were plenty of people in the world who had less, but her life had never before been restricted in such a way. She’d always been luckier than that. Always. Until recently.

  Wade returned finally with two mugs, hers with exactly the right milkiness. The man missed nothing. Nothing.

  He sat across from her on the easy chair, sipping his own coffee, watchful but silent. Maybe this wasn’t going to work at all. How did you converse with a block of stone? But she needed something, anything, to break the cycle of her own thoughts.

  Man, she didn’t even know how to start a conversation anymore! Once it had come as naturally as breathing to her, but now, after a year of guarding every word that issued from her mouth, she had lost the ability it seemed.

  Wade sipped his coffee again. He, at least, seemed comfortable with silence. After a couple of awkward minutes, however, he surprised her by speaking.

  “Do you know Seth Hardin?”

  She shook her head. “I know his father, but I’ve never met Seth.”

  “He’s a great guy. I worked with him a lot over the years. He’s the one who recommended I come here.”

  Positively voluble all of a sudden. “Why?”

  He gave a small shrug. “He thought it would be peaceful for me.”

  At that a laugh escaped her, almost hysterical, and she broke it off sharply. “Sorry. Then you walk into this, a crazy widow who collapses over a prank phone call. Some peace.”

  His obsidian eyes regarded her steadily, but not judgmentally. “Fear like yours doesn’t happen without a good reason.”

  It could have been a question, but clearly it was not. This man wouldn’t push her in any way. Not even one so obvious and natural. She sought for a way to continue. “Gage said you were in the navy.”

  He nodded. “For more than half my life.”

  “Wow.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Yeah.” Short, brief. After another moment he stirred. “You need to talk.”

  She tensed immediately. Was he trying to get her to explain? But then he spoke again, easing her concern.

  “I’m not a talker.” Another small shrug. “Never was. Making conversation is one of the many things I’m not good at.”

  “Me, either, anymore. I wasn’t always that way.”

  He nodded. “Some things in life make it harder. I’m not sure I ever had the gift.”

  “Maybe it’s not a gift,” she said impulsively. “Maybe most of what we say is pointless, just background noise.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it’s how we start making connections. I stopped making them a long time ago.”

  “Why?”

  He looked down into his mug, and she waited while he decided what he wanted to say, and probably what he didn’t.

  “Connections,” he said finally, “can have a high price.”

  Man, didn’t she know that. Maybe that was part of the reason she’d kept so much to herself over the past year, not simply because she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Maybe it was because she feared caring ever again.

  “I can understand that,” she agreed, her lips feeling oddly numb. As if she were falling away again, from now into memory. But her memory had become a Pandora’s box, and she struggled to cling to the moment. To now.

  The phone ran
g again. She jumped and stared at it. Gage had already called. Work? Maybe. Maybe not.

  Wade spoke. “Want me to answer it?”

  A kind offer, but one that wouldn’t help her deal with reality. She’d been protected almost into nonexistence, she realized. Protected and frightened. At some point she had to start living again, not just existing.

  So she reached for the phone, even as her heart hammered and her hand shook. “Hello?”

  “Cory!” A familiar woman’s voice filled her ear. “It’s Marsha.” Marsha from work, a woman she occasionally spent a little time with because they had some similarities, some points of connection they could talk about. But they’d never really gotten to the point of random, friendly phone calls.

  “Hi, Marsha. What’s up?” Her heart slowed, her hand steadied.

  “I got a phone call. I think Jack has found me!”

  Cory drew a sharp breath. While she hadn’t shared her story with Marsha, she’d learned a lot of Marsha’s story over the past year. “What makes you think that?”

  “The person said he knew where I was!”

  “Oh. Marsha, I got one of those calls, too. Did you report it to the sheriff?”

  “A phone call like that?” Marsha laughed, but there was an edge to it. “Why would he even listen to me?”

  “Because I got one of those calls. And a few other women did, too.”

  Marsha fell silent. Then hopefully, “Others got the same call?”

  “Gage thinks it was a prank. I reported it and so did some others.”

  In the silence on the line, Cory could hear Marsha start calming herself. She waited patiently until she could no longer hear Marsha’s rapid breathing. Then she asked, “Do you want to come over?” She’d never asked that before, even though she’d gone to Marsha’s a few times. Explaining expensive alarm systems could get…messy, and involve lying.

  “No. No. I guess not. If Gage thinks it’s a prank, and I’m not the only one to get a call, I must be okay.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “But I’m going to get a dog,” Marsha said with sudden determination. “Tomorrow, I’m getting a dog. A big one that barks.” Then she gave a tinny laugh.