by Rachel Lee
“Then what are you saying?” she asked, her voice stretched tight.
“I’m saying that it’s what we choose to do with it that puts us in control. It’s the choices we make, and the lessons we choose to take. And I made some god-awful choices, and maybe I took some of the wrong lessons. That’s what I’m saying, and I’m not going to blame any of it on the kid I used to be, because I was a man when I made a lot of these decisions.”
She gave a single, jerky nod.
“Cory…what? Am I hurting you? Crap, I don’t want to do that.”
“No…no. You’re making me think.”
Oh, hell. He suddenly realized how she could be taking this. “I’m not criticizing you. I’m not saying you weren’t a victim.”
“I know that. I get that. It’s just that…”
He waited, and when she didn’t speak, he finally prodded. “Just that what?”
“Just that you’re right. I’ve kind of been thinking along the same lines over the past couple of days. That bastard stole my husband, my baby, my old life. But I’m still breathing. So what did I do? I crawled into a hole in the ground and stopped living. I chose to let him take away even my hope.”
“Aw, hell.” He couldn’t take any more of this. He rose from the table, knocking over the chair and ignoring it. He rounded to her and scooped her right up out of her chair, carrying her to the living room where he sat with her in his lap.
“You don’t get it,” he whispered, hugging her close. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone needs time to heal before they can get going again. You needed the time. You needed it. I keep telling you that. What if you’d had your leg blown off? Do you think you could skip surgery and rehab? Of course not. All I’m trying to tell you is that I take responsibility for the fact that I chose not to learn basic life skills. Like how to talk to a lady. Like how to reach out. Like how to share myself.”
“Actually,” she said brokenly, “I think you’re doing a damn fine job of it right now.”
“Not good enough. I’ve hurt you twice in the past half hour. I’m ham-fisted at this.”
Her hand gripped his shirt, balling it. “Listen to yourself. Just listen. You’ll make all kinds of excuses for me, but none for yourself. Think about that, Wade. The people who used to beat you up are gone from your life. So what do you do? You beat yourself up for them.”
He grew so still and silent that she almost panicked. Had she done it again? Pushed him to places he was unwilling to go, to even look at? She tensed herself, in expectation that he’d toss her off his lap and walk out the door never to be seen again.
But then, finally, she felt him relax. His hand covered hers, where it knotted his shirt, and held it.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said gruffly.
“Maybe you think you can’t make connections, but have you ever tried? You’re doing just fine with me.”
“But I hurt you.”
“So? That’s part of any relationship. People hurt each other. When it’s unintentional, it’s okay. I don’t think you want to hurt me. Do you?”
“Hell no.”
“Then okay. It happens.” She sighed. “Do you think my marriage to Jim was pure perfection? We had our fights. We hurt each other sometimes. The important thing is forgiving and forgetting when the hurt wasn’t intentional. That’s how you make a relationship that works.”
He turned that around in his mind, giving her credit for being far more adult in some ways than he was. “With me a person would need the patience of a saint.”
“Same here.” She squirmed a little on his lap, reminding him that he still wanted her like hell on fire, then rested her head against his shoulder. “We’ve all got trip wires, Wade. Fact of life. And when those wires get laid by terrible emotional experiences, they’re hard to get rid of.”
“Well, I laid a lot more of them over the years.” He didn’t have to look very far back to see where they’d come from. “Combat vets get lots of them. A sound. A sight. A smell. Even a word. I told you I can’t hold still. That’s not purely my training at work. It’s my learning.”
“Learning?”
“How long do you think you can live on the edge before living on the edge becomes the only way to live? You think you can unwind just because you’re home, out of the zone? Too many of us drink too much because it’s the only way to wind down. Others of us just live with the constant skin-crawling feeling that something is about to happen, that we can’t relax for even a minute.”
She nodded against his shoulder, just a small movement. “I’ve lived that way for a little over a year. You’ve lived that way your whole life. Insecure, sure something bad is always just around the corner.”
“Yeah. It makes me explosive, like a bomb.” He sighed, not sure where he wanted to take this, not sure why he was spilling his guts like this. Maybe he was hoping that his warning would get through, that she’d back away. Or maybe he was hoping that the next time he did or said something wrong she’d understand he didn’t mean to hurt her.
But regardless of what she understood, he would hurt her. He’d slam an emotional door in her face, or retreat behind his personal drawbridge. In one way or another, he’d go into self-protection mode, and once he got into that mode, he might well stage a preemptive attack.
“You’ve got to understand,” he said roughly. “You have to.”
“Understand what?”
“That protecting myself is automatic. Regardless of the kind of threat.”
She tipped her head against his shoulder and he knew she was looking up at him. He refused to look back at her. Let her read what she could from his chin; he wouldn’t give her any more than that. Not right now. Maybe never.
“Okay,” she said finally. “You protect yourself. I understand that.”
A frustrated sound escaped him. “Do you understand what that might mean?”
“Maybe not in every detail. But I get the general picture.”
He envied the note of confidence in her voice, but he didn’t believe it. Whatever this woman had been through in her life, and the little she had told him had been bad enough, he didn’t think it could possibly prepare her for what he could dish out. She had absolutely no idea of all that he was capable of.
But he did. That was the curse of so many years in Special ops. You knew what your limits were, and worse, you discovered you didn’t have a whole lot of them. Whatever the mission required. And sometimes the mission was your own self-protection.
That didn’t mean he was ashamed of himself, because he wasn’t. But it did mean he knew himself in ways most people never faced. Most people never needed to look into the darkest parts of human nature. And people like him were the reason they never had to. But those who had looked…well, they lived in an uncomfortable world with all the rosy tint stripped away.
It was a sad fact of life that someone needed to visit those black places, that someone needed to come face-to-face with the ugliest things in the human heart and soul.
But those who went there remained apart and different because once you’d looked into the abyss, it became part of you.
She thought she understood, God bless her. She thought because she had seen the terrible thing the night the killer came to her house, that she had some idea. But she had no idea at all, because seeing was not the same as doing. Sometimes a person like Cory glimpsed the abyss. But folks like him not only glimpsed it. They walked into it. They melded with it.
And when they returned they were forever changed in ways only someone who had trod the path with them could imagine.
So how the hell did you get around that?
Chapter 9
Gage called during the early afternoon. Cory got the cordless-extension phone from her bedroom so they could both listen to him and talk as necessary.
“Okay,” Gage said. “I’ve got both pictures going out to all deputies. They’re not being told anything about you, Cory, just that I want these guys hauled in on sight for question
ing in a possible homicide case. They’re to be treated as armed and dangerous.”
Cory caught her breath inaudibly at the description, then wondered why. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know how dangerous these guys were. But somehow hearing it from Gage’s lips made the threat seem more imminent. He had removed it from the realm of speculation and put it out there as reality.
Only as she felt her heart slam in response did she realize just how much denial she had been living with. Yes, she’d been afraid, maybe even ridiculously afraid all this time, but at some level she had desperately believed this moment would never come. And even now a part of her brain insisted on saying, We don’t know for sure.
And that was true. They were acting on little more than suspicion and a confluence of coincidences. As Jim had so often said of such things, “It won’t stand up in court.”
Gage knew that, surely. Yet he was moving forward as if a real threat had been made.
And maybe it had, in that phone call. It had certainly been made a year ago when the Marshals decided they had to put her into permanent protection. After all, it wasn’t as if they were manufacturing a paranoid conspiracy out of whole cloth.
She barely listened to the discussion the two men were having. It was as if a switch had been thrown at the instant she had faced the naked threat yet again. Once again she felt numb, utterly numb, perhaps even hollow. Yet there seemed to be no place left inside her for the fear, or even anger. In fact, even the spark of hope that had ignited in her over the past couple of days had deserted her.
There was nothing, could be nothing for her ever, unless she got this threat off her back for good.
Sitting there, hardly hearing as the two men talked, she faced the dismal reality of what her life had become and what it would remain as long as that killer was after her.
There would be no recovery, no hope, no future. That was what that man and his vendetta had done to her. He might as well have finished her off with a bullet to the head.
She couldn’t go back to the woman she had been just a few days ago. Because over the past few days, she had tasted hope and life again, however briefly. She might have found just the illusion of it in Wade’s arms, but it was enough to make her realize she could not go back. Whatever the cost.
Into the emptiness crept a steely resolve unlike anything she had ever felt before. Death, she knew in her heart, was infinitely preferable to the way she had been existing. She could not, would not, go back to that.
Nor did she pin her hopes for a future on Wade. She understood that he was a troubled, complex, complicated man who had come here seeking some kind of release, but he would have to find that on his own. Just as she would have to find her own resolve to live again, for herself.
No crutches, for they were unreliable, and temporary at best. So, she thought, as ice seemed to settle over her, she would deal with this mess. Then she would look for the woman she wanted to become. The woman who had once loved being a teacher. The woman who had enjoyed cooking as if her own kitchen was part of the finest restaurant.
And perhaps she’d discover other parts of herself in the process, parts she’d never had a chance to find before because she’d been too preoccupied with her goals, and then with Jim.
She was, she resolved, going to find her own two feet.
And the first step was getting rid of this threat. Allowing it to steal not one more day of her life.
She hung up the phone before the two men even finished their conversation. The details of what they planned really didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that she was going to face down her husband’s killer or die trying.
It didn’t take Wade long to notice the change in her. She sensed him start watching her more closely a couple of hours later. She didn’t care. He could watch her all he wanted. If she’d had a psychological break of some kind, it was a beneficial one.
She had had enough.
If that meant turning into an ice queen until this was over, then that was fine by her. Remembering how she had collapsed only two days ago after that phone call, she looked at herself and decided ice was infinitely preferable to that. Death was infinitely preferable to that. She had paid the price for someone else’s criminal act long enough.
She started dinner at her usual time. Wade joined her, but didn’t say anything. Nor did she have much to say, except to give him directions, since he seemed determined to help. Nothing personal. Nothing emotive. Just dry, flat instructions.
She felt no particular desire to eat, recognizing her hunger only as a sign she needed fuel. She didn’t even allow herself to enjoy the tasks in the kitchen. Not now. No way.
Not even in the littlest way did she want to feel regret for what was gone. No room for that now.
Finally, over dinner, he asked, “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a thousand-yard stare.”
That at least caught her interest. “What’s that?”
“It’s the way men look coming out of battle. Distant. Shut down.”
She forked some salad and ate it, pondering the comment as an intellectual exercise, having no other reaction to it. “I guess that would about cover it,” she finally said.
“Did something happen?”
She barely glanced at him. “I’ve had enough. That’s all. This gets finished if I have to hunt that man myself.”
“I see.”
He probably did. She returned to eating.
He resumed eating, too. But after a few minutes he spoke. “I get worried when I see that look.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Because when I see it, it means someone really has had enough. That the only way they can keep from breaking is to totally withdraw. It’s usually a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Hmm. Well, I probably have that, too.”
“Probably.”
Again silence fell. Then, “Cory?”
“What?”
“It’s not good.”
She raised her gaze from her plate. “What’s not good? That I’ve decided enough is enough? That I’ve decided I’m going to get my life back or die trying?”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Shutting down. Not caring. That’s dangerous. I’ve seen men do stupid things and get themselves killed when they have that look in their eyes.”
She simply looked at him, then resumed eating. Go back to what she had felt before? No way. This was infinitely preferable to feeling.
Wade didn’t say any more as they finished the meal. She barely tasted it. Fuel, nothing more. He joined her in the washing up, so it didn’t take long.
Then there was nothing to do except wait. The thing was, she didn’t want to wait. Not anymore. The Sword of Damocles no longer frightened her, but it was still hanging over her head.
“I’m going to take a walk,” she announced.
“Not without me.”
“I didn’t say I was going alone.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
Oh, he didn’t like that look in her eyes at all. He pulled on his boots, lacing them tightly, readying himself. He even went so far as to put his sheathed knife on his belt, then let his shirttails hang out over it. He could throw that knife with as much accuracy over short distances as he could hit a target with a gun from seven hundred yards. These were some of the skills he’d learned, used and had to live with.
And since he couldn’t carry a rifle with him on the streets, the knife would have to do. As would the garrote he stuck into his pocket, and the three plastic ties that could double as handcuffs.
Even if he went to prison for the rest of his life for it, he would allow nothing to harm Cory. Nothing. The certainty settled into his heart with entirely too much familiarity. It was not a new feeling, and he knew to the nth degree what he could do when he felt like this.
He supposed he was
now wearing his own thousand-yard stare. The calm of imminent battle had settled over him.
The feeling was as familiar as a well-broken pair of boots, like those he had just donned. Comfortable, but that didn’t mean he liked it. He’d been in enough battles to know better. Even success seldom left a good taste in his mouth. Or a totally quiet conscience.
Even less did he like the way the skin on the back of his neck crawled. It was back, all of it, just like that: everything he’d tried to shed and untangle over the past six months resurrected as if it had never gone away.
The man he wanted to leave behind took over now, emerging front and center almost mockingly. It didn’t matter, though. This was the man he had chosen to become over many years, and now he needed to be that man again. For Cory’s sake.
Whatever it took. Mission-specific goals became paramount, pushing everything else into the background. The man he had hoped he might become would just have to wait for another day.
Even in battle mode, however, he wished Cory wouldn’t take this walk. It would create unnecessary, uncontrolled exposure. Things like this should be planned in advance, contingencies reviewed.
But much as he wished she wouldn’t do this, he could see that nothing was going to stop her short of breaking the law and keeping her a prisoner in her own home. As he had said, when he saw that look in someone’s eye, he knew they were capable of doing something stupid.
All he could do was call Gage and tell him what he and Cory were about to do.
“Are you out of your minds?” Gage asked.
“I can’t stop her short of imprisoning her. You want to come argue?”
“Hell. All right, I’ll see if I can get some people in the vicinity fast.”
After he hung up the phone, he went to meet Cory at the front door. Her eyes remained flat and empty, but her body was moving impatiently. God, he knew that feeling all too well.
