by Angela White
“But, I do,” she protested.
Marc shook his head, moving toward the door, but his sharp gaze was on her and he saw the truth, saw the relief on her face when he kept going.
“I called you, didn’t I?” she argued tiredly as his hand went to the knob.
“Yes, but you’re not sure if you can trust me. It’s a problem we’ll have to work on.”
“It’s not a problem. I’m fine,” Angela insisted, worrying he was about to leave.
“Then why do you go for your gun every time I move?” He watched her slide trembling hands into her pockets. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Marc waved at the wolf, voice hard, “Stay. Guard her.”
The huge animal immediately lay down in the doorway, and Marc closed the door, leaving Angela relieved, confused, and sorry she hadn’t controlled her reactions better.
Marc walked the perimeter, furious. Angie was scared, and not that childish shit women did over mice and spiders: it was real fear of being hurt and he hated the people who had taught her that. He was hoping her life hadn’t been as bad as watching her implied, but every minute they spent together said it had been worse. The fear she was carrying was not from being attacked by the twins; it wasn't new. She was terrified of men, and that only came from being hurt by one.
"What if she’s been abused?" his heart demanded. "What if it’s just like she says? What if he comes for her and finds she’s not alone?"
“Then I’ll fight for her.” The words were instinctive and the Sergeant thought he’d probably end up doing that anyway. It was ingrained.
"If she chooses not to be with her Marine anymore," his conscience threw in the condition, but his heart lashed out in bitter anger. "To Hell with her man! She was mine first!"
9
Swallowed by her black coat and hat, Angela came out as he came up the steps, sweet vanilla filling his nose as they passed. Marc shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching out for her. They’d been apart so long and he had missed her so much!
Angela heard him as if he’d spoken, and she forced herself to stop and look at him as the stiff wind blew her stray curls around wildly. He was doing her a great service, and she didn’t want him to be upset. “It just wasn’t meant to be, Brady, but we’ll be friends again, in time. That’s something, right?”
He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, they had been soul mates. “It’ll be enough. You’ll be safe with me,” came unexpectedly. He hadn’t planned to reassure her, but was glad he had when she flashed him the first honest smile he’d seen since they were reunited.
“I know it deep down, but...” Angela shrugged, not wanting to expect more than he was willing to give.
His eyes were full of understanding. “But, it helps you to hear it, and you’ll probably need me to do it again.”
She flushed, brows drawing together as she looked away. He had seen her needs so quickly. Why couldn’t Kenny have been half the man Brady was? She moved to the Blazer, very aware of his gaze burning holes into her back.
When she stepped out of the Blazer, she wasn’t surprised to see the wolf sitting on the porch, watching.
“Hi, Dog. I’m Angie.”
The big animal immediately held out a paw, and Marc grinned as her pleased laughter rang out, watching her bend down to shake without hesitation. Most people were too scared. He watched from the impenetrable darkness of the doorway, heart thumping when she pulled her shirt to the side to adjust a lacy, white bra strap. The desire instantly changed as his eye went to the jagged knife scar on her shoulder, instantly knowing that’s what it was.
It was rough, ugly and out of place on her pale, white skin. A hard knot of rage formed in his gut as his mind saw her being held down, struggling and screaming, while someone carved what looked to be a grotesque letter K into her flesh. Wasn’t her man named Kenny?
Stop it! he told himself sternly. There were many possibilities, like a car wreck, shrapnel, fell on something, bobbed when she should have weaved, and still, he knew what he knew. Marc moved silently back to their den, mind busy counting the ways he’d make her man pay if he was the one responsible.
Five minutes later, Angela still hadn’t come in and Marc went back out, even though Dog was with her, not liking it that there was no noise. She was in the farthest, darkest corner of the porch, out of most of the wind, and if not for the sounds of her pen scratching on the paper, he thought he would have missed her. How could she see so well to write in total darkness?
“Something about the way my eyes work. What’s the temperature?”
Using his lighter, Marc checked the small stick-on disc he had watched her put up earlier, “Either 30 or 28, can’t tell which.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” he lit a smoke, staring into the thick shadows around them. “I need to ask you something.”
Angela closed her notebook. “Shoot.”
“Was calling me a way to make him see you don’t need him, so that you can get what you want? Are you using me against him?”
Angela flipped on her penlight as she stepped toward the rail, letting him see the truth on her face. “Not in the way you’re thinking. He isn’t coming back for me, intends to keep my son. I have to show him that I can not only make it on my own, but do it well.”
“Why wouldn’t he come back for you?”
Fathomless grief flashed in her eyes, and Marc drew in a sharp breath at the pain there, understanding something awful had caused it, something she wasn’t going to tell him yet.
“I’m a burden.”
“You’re not a burden. Look how well you’ve survived on your own.”
She shook her head, and he could hear the anger, the disappointment. “I was never allowed to be this person. He sees only what he’s created.”
She looked up at him, the bags under her eyes almost like bruises, they were so dark. “He heard the calls too and knows I’m on my way. He doesn’t think I’ll make it and doesn’t expect me to bring help that he can’t handle, so yes, I am using you, but only in the ways you’ve agreed to, nothing more.”
Marc knew she wanted to be done with it for now and pointed at the small, black discs he had set out, “Those are alarms, motion and heat sensors.” He picked up a rock and a stick, tossed them in different directions and almost immediately, two different tones chimed loudly from his wristwatch.
He quickly hit a button to give them silence, holding his arm up for her to see, and Angela controlled her flinch, but not her widening eyes at the sudden movement.
“Different sound for each breach tells how many intruders. Red button turns it off, green arms it.”
She looked at him with curious, smoky eyes. “You learn that in the Corps?”
“That and a few other things.”
“Like what?” she asked, watching his eyes fall to her lips, before he turned away.
“Survival stuff mostly. I was always good at planning for trouble. It’ll come in handier now, I suspect.”
He sounded wide-awake and she frowned. “Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m a Marine, Honey. This is par for the course,” he stated matter-of-factly, but didn’t tell her he’d only gotten a short snooze before their escape from the fire. His mind had been too busy racing to really sleep, and he’d taken a pill after they stopped for lunch.
They were quiet for a minute, looking, listening. No lights or noises in the darkness around them. No insects or rodents in the brush, and she shivered. The whole world was dying. Would they too? Shaking off the morbid thoughts, Angela followed him back into the warmth of their den.
When he took off his coat, thick arms flexing, her gaze was drawn to his muscular body.
“I grew up, didn’t I?” he grinned at her, and she nodded, eyes unreadable.
“Yes,” Angela slid into her blankets and ducked her head to her bag, thinking it was all going to be so much harder than she’d first thought. She tossed the black case toward his feet and hid a wo
rried look, but still watched for anger from making him jump. “Light the big one, will ya?”
Marc grinned, leaning against an end table as he fired it up. His gun belts were under his pillow, boots nearby, and the sweet pot curled thickly around them as they smoked all of it without speaking. There was a tension between them that they both disliked, but for Angela, it was a step down from what she’d lived with every day.
“In the morning, before we leave, I’d like to start showing you how to use that gun.” Come daylight, they would have to start watching for the twins.
She was unbraiding long curls that he longed to touch. “Okay. Will you tell me about some of your missions another night?” she asked, smothering another yawn.
“You mean about the places I’ve come through since the War?”
“No, about your time in the Corps.”
“Pick a city, state, or country.”
“New Orleans.”
“Before or after Katrina?”
She heard the change in his voice and met his eye. “During.”
“Okay.” Marc saw her shiver at a strong draft and pushed the heater closer to her with his foot, very aware that the connection, the spark that had always been between them, was still there, waiting for her to overcome her fear.
“So what’s the first thing I should know about guns?”
“Don’t have one, if you don’t know how to use it.”
Angela understood the answer had been drilled into him, but still found his tone smug. She met his eye warily, “And the second?”
“When its life or death, like it is now, rule one means shit.”
Marc grinned again, and she had to give him a tiny smile in return, eyes burning, head starting to thump. “So, what will you do with me first?”
His eyes went to her mouth again, and Marc forced himself to look at the floor as the wind howled through the dead cornstalks around the farmhouse. “We’ll work on target practice each morning for a few minutes before we head out, so we won’t be as likely to be tracked by the noise.”
“That’s smart.”
He stifled a groan of relief, dog tag clinking as he lay down on his side, facing her. “Won’t matter if someone’s close,” he warned, eyes on ebony curls resting on the blankets. Would it still feel like silk against his skin?
Angela looked at him, nostrils flared as if she had smelled the thought, and the fear lurking in her eyes made him roll onto his back. He was enjoying the buzzing in his head, the heat on his feet, and most of all, the sights, sounds, and smells of her that were invading his senses, reminding him of pleasures long gone. She too had grown up.
Yes, I have, she thought, easing down as the mild cramps of her sore stomach continued hurting her. Enough not to encourage what I’ll never be free to give.
“Night, Brady.”
She closed her eyes and felt him reach that cold, dark place in her heart with a single, beautiful, fiery blast of heat.
“Night, Honey. See you in the morning.”
“Yes, you will.” The old, familiar, hurtful response came from her lips as if no years had gone by and it was hard not to let the tears escape. Brady was back, and every wall that had stood between them before was still there, only now they were twice as tall. It would be a long time before they were even friends again.
Marc lay with his hands under his head until her even breathing told him that she was asleep, and then he eased onto his side, letting his eyes go where they wanted. She was so achingly beautiful and still more courageous than any female he’d ever known. How was he going to do this? Fifteen years with no communication, but Marc had never put her out of his heart. There was no way he’d make it a thousand miles without telling her that he had come back for another chance at their love. There wasn’t any deal he wouldn’t agree to.
Chapter Fourteen
February 15th, 2013
Devils Head, Colorado
1
“Damned spider wasn’t even the size of my fingernail,” Samantha muttered bitterly, about to cause herself a lot of pain because of it. Her leg was bad, the wound hard and swollen, black in the center with angry red lines of infection aiming for her heart. She shivered in the cold hunting cabin, building up the nerve to do what had to be done.
Green Falls and Woodland Park, Colorado had been looted like every other place she’d come through, but both had pharmacies surprisingly intact, and she had tried all the antibiotics she found on the spider bite, giving each a couple days to work. Though they had clearly slowed down the infection that had eventually made walking impossible, it was now life or death. She would have to do surgery on herself.
Sam was holed up in the Devil’s Head Hunting Lodge, taking shelter in a large, rustic log cabin. There were older, uncomfortable furnishings around a beautiful stone fireplace, an outhouse in the back, and huge glass windows in the front that gave her a view of dwarf birch trees with black moss climbing most of the smooth trunks.
The other walls were decorated with a buck, a bear, an angry bobcat, and a calendar still on December. The floor under her was cold stone, the forest still in the thick of winter. Isolated and alone, she was about to try treating herself so she could recover while waiting out the powerful blizzard she could feel pushing closer.
Terrified of passing out and bleeding to death, Samantha let her mind go where it wanted, thinking about the trucks and sport utility vehicles in the long gravel driveway. The thick layer of dust on the floor said no one else had been here since all hell had broken out, not even the bloody smears that she was sadly becoming used to. There also weren’t any bodies - not even a meadowlark or a stray cat, and that too, made her worry. It told her there were probably a number of predators around here that were keeping the carrion cleaned up.
Her stomach dipped at that thought, and when she closed her eyes, she saw the doomed man on the sofa again, heard the single shot. The compound was fifty miles behind her, but Pat’s grotesque face was her daily companion.
“Won’t last as long as he did if you don’t do this, Sammi,” she told herself.
The dark infection lines crawling outward from the wound were already six inches long, and she could only hope this drastic action would drive them back. Bandages and other supplies spread out next to her, roaring flames in the marbled fireplace at her booted feet, the dirty blonde pulled her cap down tighter over her long braid. It was time to shoot, Luke, or give up the gun.
Samantha, who had once created very useful technology for the government, and saved the life of the President, picked up the hot knife. There was a second one smoldering in the fire, and she tried not to think of how much more it would hurt. There was a shoelace tied around her upper thigh, cutting off the circulation, and she clenched her teeth as she pinched up the flesh around the nasty-smelling wound and thick, yellow clots ran out, rolled down her thigh.
“Don’t need someone to ride the river with,” she told herself, the leg of her sweat pants cut away from the thigh to the knee so if she passed out, she wouldn’t freeze to death. “It’s do or die time, Sammi.”
The steel in her spine stiffened into an iron bar and with a quick prayer she had no real faith in, Sam drew in a deep breath and pushed the red hot knife into her swollen, discolored leg.
It sank into her flesh like it was butter and she screamed as pain like she’d never known, raced up her leg. White and yellow puss shot out, followed by scarlet streams, and she moved the blade again, her hoarse cry never completely stopping as a chunk of her leg slid to the sticky floor.
Stomach and teeth clenched, the sobbing woman forced her shaking hands to drop the knife and grab the full, open bottle of rubbing alcohol. She dumped it over the heavily-bleeding wound, snatching up the second knife with her other hand before the waves of agony could overwhelm her, moaning.
Tears blurring her vision, she shoved the red-hot end over the gaping hole, and her lungs burned before she stopped screaming.
Twice more to be sure she had gotten it all
, Sam could feel her heart thudding in her chest, nothing else except the flames that had become her leg. She dropped the bloody metal back into the fire, grasping the syringe of morphine with jerking fingers.
Crying waves tears of misery, she only gave herself half of the liquid, and was grateful when the waves of pain immediately sank down into a nasty monster. The morphine was powerful, consuming, and she was unprepared for the strength of the liquid gold as it made her head swim.
When she was sure she had herself under control, she shot a generous dose of antibiotics into her thigh and then sat still, trying to stay awake, afraid of the wound breaking open, terrified of her dreams. Melvin and Henry were with her most nights, often joined by the Press Secretary from the bunker, and while she knew it was just her mind working through it all, she couldn’t help being afraid, looking over her shoulder.
Brief flares of light in the darkness had come sporadically, made her go still until they were gone. With NORAD being destroyed, Samantha saw no reason to keep looking for the government. She didn't know for sure what she would do yet, but if the surgery worked, she might be in Cheyenne by April Fools’ Day.
Pain was on her in thick waves, stealing her breath and Sam thought of her Seattle office with longing. She had spent more time there than the small condo she’d been left in her parents will. She hadn’t been an active member of the weather service, only a computer message they’d been told to listen to no matter what the data said, but she had been well-treated, her office full of luxuries designed to keep her close.
"Prize rat in a cushy run,” she slurred, crying again, ashamed of her life. She’d been part of the problem.
Some of this was her fault. Miserable, exhausted, her eyes closed less than a minute later, the pain and drugs too much. Sam slumped back against the bed of cushions and pillows she’d made, as the darkness swallowed her. Outside, the snow began to fall.
