A gut-punch of God only knew what sent pain radiating through his center. His IBA vest should have stopped most of the damage, but he didn’t have time to assess what had happened. The strap on his Kevlar helmet unsnapped at impact and rolled away. He reached to retrieve it, but the whistling shriek of an incoming bomb had him covering his head with his hands. It didn’t matter. The Kevlar would serve as nothing but a handy bucket to hold his brains when the rest of him was blown away.
Boom. A particularly powerful blast lifted him two inches off the ground, bouncing him up as though he weighed nothing. The pressure from the explosion washed over the ditch, taking dirt, rocks, and debris with it.
He’d always heard your life flashed before your eyes when you died, and he figured it would happen to him. But it didn’t. Only the sounds of screams and the blasts, followed by ringing in his ears and distorted reality. The taste of blood and dust covered his tongue and his heart pounded so hard it hurt. Clamping his eyes shut, he tried to recall a happy memory to take with him when the end came.
What he had wasn’t something to carry into the afterlife. His mother had run off when he was six, and he had a father serving time for bank robbery. He had friends—most of them here, with him. And they’d had some laughs together. But he’d killed them.
Debris rained down, everything from rocks to vehicle parts. An unattached hand dropped next to him, followed by something solid connecting with the back of his skull.
Oblivion.
***
Fingers pressed against his throat, feeling for a pulse.
“This one’s alive.” Someone hoisted the weight of a large chunk of wreckage from his torso. Two sets of hands slid under him. “On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
They moved in unison, rolling him onto a stretcher.
“No,” he begged. He wasn’t alive. This couldn’t be real. Another protest gurgled from his throat and he began to convulse, unable to hold his limbs still.
“Hold him down so I can sedate him.” Hands grasped his wounded limbs. Bone cracked and shifted under their grip. He tried to arch up, but remained restrained by several soldiers. He yelled and thrashed. They grabbed both sides of his face, holding him still.
Justin screamed. The sound was so inhuman; if he hadn’t been the one who’d made it, he wouldn’t have believed it came from a man. A stick with a needle. Burning.
As the seizure eased, they released their hold. He turned his head toward the medic who’d drugged him. The man blurred in and out. Justin’s vision came back into focus as a burned picture of a woman and baby caught the breeze and tumbled across the baked earth next to where the medic kneeled. Justin swallowed and his eyes blurred with tears. Sanders hadn’t even gotten to hold his daughter.
“You’re going to be okay.”
Let me die. Please. Let me die. Pain rode his nerves like an electrical wire, sending jolts of agony to the tips of his fingers and toes. He opened his mouth, but nothing came from his throat. Boom, boom, boom. His heartbeat slowed as the sedative did its job.
“Get him on the chopper.”
Regardless the drug, every step the medics took hurt as they hauled him toward reprieve. Broken bones, burns, but nothing compared to what played through his head. He’d killed them all and survived to see his handiwork. Nothing could be worse than that.
Whump, whump, whump. The helicopter’s blades beat against the air. The pressure seemed to pound down on him as they loaded him aboard. He opened his eyes as the chopper lifted and banked. Justin stared out over the battlefield, now a large crater. Below, a graveyard covered the landscape. Soldiers picked through the debris, searching for survivors. It was amazing they’d found any. From the looks of it, the bombs had tried to punch a hole through the planet.
***
Two years later
Justin tightened the cinch on his saddle. His gelding nickered, and he reached up and patted his shoulder. Tonight wasn’t the first night in the last week he’d taken an early morning ride, checking fences and cows that were close to having their calves. It wasn’t because he needed to. He still had a couple of weeks before the stock started dropping their babies. He did it to escape. Outside in the air, he could clear his head and connect with the world. He wished it had been a nightmare instead of a memory that woke him. God knew he’d take it all back if he could.
The time spent at Walter Reed had been more like imprisonment. He’d gone through physical therapy and counseling to deal with what had happened. Over and over, G-2, Division Intelligence, had sent someone down to debrief him about what had happened that day.
It had been more like interrogation. They reviewed that day, asking him to go step by step from the time they were surrounded, until he’d blacked out in the ditch. Did he know what was in the cargo? Had he seen anyone getting into the trailer before it was destroyed? Had anyone been acting strangely before he called for air support? After several days of the same questions, reworded about every possible way known to mankind, they’d determined he had nothing to offer, and stopped asking. Even so, he was never alone. Always watched, and if it wasn’t with pity, it was with hostility. Some didn’t understand the deaths he’d caused.
Everything they did brought back the nightmares he’d tried to bury. At times he wished he’d died, but in the end, he hadn’t. So he’d fled here, the one place he believed he could hide from himself, and others.
As one of four survivors that day, the reporters converged on him like a pack of jackals when he’d left the hospital, determined to finish off what the Al Qaeda had started. He didn’t want to think about it. He wasn’t some hero, regardless of what had been in that convoy, or that the damned Commander-in-Chief had pinned a Congressional Medal of Honor on his chest.
All those men were dead because of him. So he ran. He ran until people didn’t stare at him, until they didn’t know who he was, until the reporters with their questions couldn’t find him, until the cries of the orphans, mothers, and widows quieted to a dull whisper.
The solitude of the Wyoming foothills had been his life for the last few months, and it suited him fine. Everything else seemed overwhelming. Here, he could breathe, think, and when he had nightmares, no one heard him screaming in his sleep.
He’d rented a small spread from a rancher too old to work cattle anymore, and in exchange for caring for his stock, the old guy let him live in an empty bunkhouse that used to serve as sleeping quarters when the ranch had hired hands.
The house had stood empty for a few years, but Will maintained it, so it hadn’t taken much to clean it up and make it habitable. The best part about the setup? Justin didn’t get many visitors.
Every now and then, Will would stop up to have a cup of coffee, talk about the stock, and see how Justin managed his herd. He’d become a widower a few years back, and Justin suspected he might be lonely. The small talk seemed to fill some kind of a hole in the old man’s life and satisfied whatever he seemed to need. He didn’t bother him much, and Justin didn’t mind. He never intruded. Their subjects of conversation hovered around breeding heifers, the price of grain, beef, and the weather. Safe subjects.
The old man never asked him about the scar on his jaw or where he’d come from or if he had family. Yeah, he’d noticed it. Justin had seen him eyeing the gnarled flesh on his cheek, but he’d kept his curiosity to himself. Even after two years, the pain remained too fresh to talk about, and Justin was thankful he never broached the topic.
After being in the area for a couple months, he realized Will and his dogs were a fixture to Evans Point, and a poster model for simple living. The old cowboy was someone everyone knew and loved, a community leader and friend. Someone he could trust.
Before Afghanistan, Justin had been a people guy. He’d hung out with his friends, was active in sports, went out on dates, and had a healthy sex life. Hell, it had been nearly three years since he’d gotten laid. Two years since he’d caught a whiff of perfume or looked at a pretty face. Out here, his palm had
been his buddy and his girlfriend whoever was the current pinup in the magazine he got in the mail.
When Will showed yesterday morning, he’d come bearing a gift. A chunky Caucasian Mountain Shepherd pup that looked to be around eight weeks old. The old man’s cow dog had a litter, and he’d saved one for Justin, saying she’d help him with managing the herd, since he worked them alone.
At first Justin hadn’t wanted her. That meant he’d have to take her to the vet in Jackson Hole, the closest place with an animal doctor, which was about an hour and a half away, and that also meant weekly travel to Evans Point to get her food to add to the pile of provisions he’d stocked in his pantry. But one look in her eyes, and he’d fallen in love. He couldn’t say no.
Should have. He’d seen the old man’s dogs, and feeding her would be no small feat. Close to two hundred pounds as adults, Justin had never seen a bigger dog. They looked more bruin than canine, and it left him wondering why the old guy needed the massive dogs for working cattle, when an Aussie would have done fine.
He hadn’t named his puppy right off, had been calling her “Dog” all day. By nightfall, the name had stuck, and he’d christened her Dog. Of course she’d whimpered when he’d gotten up to take his ride, and now the squirming bundle snuggled against him, having wriggled her way into a ride as well as his heart.
Justin led his mount from the barn and swung up in the saddle with Dog tucked inside his jacket, her fluffy head poked out, watching as they turned to head for the north pasture.
The horse’s hooves punched through the thin crust of snow, punctuating each step, the only sound in the silent night. No cars, or people talking. Even the wind remained quiet, keeping to itself.
As he rode, Justin noticed tire tracks through the snow. He looked up toward the hills and frowned. Who was on the property? Rarely did he take the truck out, preferring to ride. The tracks were fresh, made since the last storm, and most definitely not from his rig.
Cattle rustling did happen, but not often. Every now and then he’d hear about an incident and knew it wasn’t improbable, and it was the reason the local ranchers still branded their stock. But more than likely it was just Will out taking a look around, restless in his retirement. As Justin rode closer to the north pasture, he noticed the headlights. The truck appeared to be the old man’s, but the woman beside the Hereford certainly wasn’t.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing with my stock?”
“This is my granddad’s cow, and her calf is stuck. I’m trying to turn and pull it.” She nodded at the arrowhead shaped mark on the bovine’s left side. Will’s brand, Evans Point.
Granddad? He’d never mentioned a granddaughter. Justin’s breath caught. Even in the moonlight, he could tell she was a beauty. She had pale blonde hair and eyes that looked silver in the light, but he’d bet they were as blue as the prairie sky, like her grandfather’s. Her jacket was off, and she wore a plain T-shirt that showed off her slender but curvy figure. And she had her arm up to her shoulder inside the—
“You could get down and give me a hand before they both die.” Her breath puffed out in a cloud around her. She shifted her weight and reached inside the cow with her second hand.
“Yeah,” he mumbled and dismounted, tying the reins to her pickup’s passenger-side mirror. “What are you doing out here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Took a drive. When I came across her, she was in distress.”
“No, I mean out here?”
“I live here in the spring. Take care of my granddad, the place. I’m his only living relative. My name’s Mercy, Mercy Evans, and I’d shake your hand, but you can see I don’t exactly have it free to do so. I need a chain. I can’t get a grip on his hooves,”—she moved her arm deeper—“but I got his head down.” She nodded toward the truck. “Behind the seat. I’m not getting him out without it. I’ll cast cow.” She pulled her arms free and picked up a rope, which she wrapped around the red-and-white Hereford, prepping her to lie down.
Justin moved to the truck, pulled Dog out of his coat, and set her in the cab as he grabbed the chain and made his way back to Mercy, who’d already brought the animal down to her right side. “You’ve done this a time or two.” He handed her the chain.
“Or two.” She slipped the links around a couple hooves that now poked out, braced a boot against the hindquarters, and pulled. Justin got in behind her and grabbed hold of the end. “Steady, not too hard,” she said.
Justin eased up a touch. The calf’s nose emerged. “Pull.”
He leaned back and pulled again, taking up the slack in the chain and was rewarded with a flood of amniotic fluid and blood, which gushed out so fast they were both soaked before they could move.
Moments later, the Hereford scrambled to her feet and turned around. She nosed her newborn and began to clean him.
“Mission accomplished.” Mercy stood and pulled her shirt over her head, stripping to her bra. She grabbed her coat and slipped it on. “Never is a clean job.”
Justin shook his head, stunned. The woman was a perfect stranger but stripped in front of him as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Justin whipped his hat off and held it in front of an emerging problem.
“You okay? You don’t have a weak stomach, do you?”
He shook his head and swallowed.
“Let’s get this girl and her baby back to the barn and grab some coffee. Your place. Granddad’s asleep and I’d rather not wake him. Besides, I need to wash up.”
Justin nodded. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a puff of steam. Did he want visitors?
She blew out a breath. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. It’s what, four in the morning? Of course you don’t want company, or coffee.” She shook her head and tossed the chain in the pickup’s bed. “Sometimes I forget not everyone keeps the hours I do.”
Justin continued to stare as she opened her cab and pulled Dog out. He caught a quick peek of the red lace that cupped the swell of one of her breasts from within her jacket. Red was one of his favorite colors. He blinked.
“Is she yours?”
“Yeah.” There seemed to be this glow around her, reminding him of an angel. Soft. And a slight dimple made an appearance every time she smiled. That American girl next door. The kind he’d always dreamed of meeting. Damn, she was pretty.
She scratched the puppy behind the ears and lifted her up, nose-to-nose, to examine her. “She’s cute. One of Granddad’s?”
He nodded, and shifted his weight, trying to relieve the tightness in the front of his jeans. Climbing up in his saddle began to look less and less appealing, but somebody had to drive the cow and her calf back to the spread, and perhaps the cold air would do him some good.
“You okay?” She tipped her head, snapping him out of his trance.
“I’ll take the cow to the barn and meet you up at the house when I’m finished. If you’ll take Dog for me.” It was only half a mile to the barn anyway. He hadn’t expected the cow to have her calf so early. So he’d turned them out in the pasture nearby. A big mistake. Which meant tomorrow he’d need to bring them all in. No sense in taking any more chances that their babies would come early. As the old man’s cow had already proved, spring calving was unpredictable.
“You sure?” She smiled, the little dent in her cheek playing a flirty game of peekaboo.
Justin shifted on his feet again. She was way out of his league.
Before the thought to restrain himself took over, he invited her over, knowing there was a multitude of reasons why he shouldn’t. “Yeah. I’ve got bacon and eggs. I’ll make you breakfast while you clean up, and you can tell me how you learned to pull a calf.” Not that he really cared. His goal had gone from avoiding company to wanting her in his house, and naked. It had been a long time since he’d been in the company of a woman, and never a woman like this. His dick screamed at him not to screw it up.
He scooped up the calf, walked over to his horse, untied the reins, and shoved his left boot in the stirru
p. Swinging up and over, he positioned the newborn in front of him. “It will be easier if this little guy rides. As soon as I get them settled in, I’ll be up.”
Chapter Two
Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
~Marilyn Monroe
“Look at my baby,” Sanders yelled above the beating blades of the shit-hook, the infantry’s nickname for the giant chopper. He thrust a photo out to Justin, who eyed it with surprise.
“You didn’t tell me Sara had the baby.”
“Didn’t know until I got the letter this morning.” Since they’d had to bug out two weeks before, nobody had received mail or had heard from their families. The first batch of mail, four weeks late, had just arrived an hour before they loaded onto the Chinooks.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
“Yeah, looks like her old man.” Red, wrinkled, and probably the ugliest newborn he’d ever seen, Justin wasn’t about to tell Sanders what he really thought. Hell, his girl, his baby, it had been all Sanders could talk about since they’d deployed months before. He was a proud daddy and Justin let him soak in the moment; celebrate the only way he could.
“Fuckin-A, I’m a father. Named her Angela, after my mother.” His heavy Brooklyn accent rose above the sound of the chopper blades.
“You gonna finally make an honest woman out of Sara?”
“Damn straight. As soon as I get home. Got two months left in this shit-hole. Her mom and pop own this antique store, and they’re going to turn it over to us when they retire. Figure that’s what I’ll do when I get out. Gonna be a businessman.” Sanders grinned and turned to the others, holding up the photo. “Wanna see my baby?”
Finding Mercy Page 2
