by Jodie Bailey
THIRTEEN
Lucas shoved his phone into his hip pocket and walked into the living room, dreading the sight of the vandalism that still jarred him hours later. The call to his landlord had been tough, and thankfully it was over. Going through everything with the police had taken a huge amount of time, and daylight was fading fast.
Near the shredded couch, Travis tossed a rag into a black trash bag and sat back on his heels. “So, yeah, grease really doesn’t come out of carpet easily. Or at all.” He swiped his hand across his forehead and stretched toward the couch to grab another rag. “What did the landlord tell you?”
“He’s calling his insurance company and they’ll send out appraisers. Really, what could he say?” Lucas leaned against the door frame and surveyed the damage. Even with all the work they’d put in since the police left, not much looked different. They’d cleaned the mess as best they could, but nothing was going to get the grease out of the carpets or the holes out of the walls.
The furniture was in position, though most of it was unusable. His next call would be to his renter’s insurance company to see what he could get for replacements.
Nothing they’d done in the past couple of hours had helped dampen Lucas’s anger. Whoever was behind this thought he’d leave Kristin to them, that he’d scare easily because they’d damaged his stuff.
His shoulders tightened. No. Whoever trashed his house had poked the bear and faced a bigger problem than they’d ever had before. Right now, he was ready to drive to post and interrogate every one of the men in the battalion until somebody talked, because if CID was right and one of them was behind this—
“Hey, brother. Slow your roll.”
Lucas’s head snapped up, and he caught Travis looking right at him, his expression somewhere between amusement and concern. “Slow my roll? What are you talking about?”
“You’re furious. It’s pouring off you in waves. Your face is so tight, one of your blood vessels is liable to pop. You can’t go at this like a vigilante. You do that, and you’ll get yourself and Kristin both killed.”
Travis was right. Whatever Lucas felt, he still had to temper his actions with calmer emotions, whether he wanted to or not.
“Besides, while you were on the phone with your landlord, I called Major Draper with CID. He’s already on it. Let the system work.”
“The system’s not doing much for us so far, is it?” Really, things were getting worse, not better. He was beginning to understand Kristin’s reasoning.
“The system might work slowly, but it does work. They’ve got eyes on the guys acting suspicious. They’ll know if anybody shows up to formation with grease under their fingernails.” He wagged his fingers in front of his face. “Besides me, of course.”
The grin Lucas shot him was halfhearted at best, but it did ease the stress a little bit.
Travis seemed pretty proud of himself as he returned to scrubbing a spot the size of a dinner plate. “And listen...the guys in our company? They are still our guys, still our brothers. You cannot go around interrogating all of them and suspecting them of being criminals.” He stopped working. “It will tear the unit apart when the wound I cut isn’t even healed all the way yet.”
Travis seemed to have found peace with his past, and he was right. There was a special bond in the military, but once someone started pulling at threads, things could fall apart, especially if it was leadership ripping the seams. They’d seen that firsthand. Lucas had to pull himself together or risk tearing the company apart once again. “Do you have to be right all of the time?”
“Pretty much.”
“Fine.” Lucas dragged his hand down his face. “We really ought to throw in the towel here.”
“Literally?”
“Literally. We’ll grab dinner and I’ll buy an air mattress.” Whoever had hit his house had trashed everything, even slicing his mattress open. It was definitely a message, one that made him angrier the longer he stood and stared at it.
“What happened here?”
Lucas rooted into place at the sound of Kristin’s voice. Taking a second to prep himself for the sight of her, he shot Travis a silent question then turned toward the front door, unsure how this meeting was about to play out.
Silhouetted by the late-afternoon sun, Kristin stood in the doorway with Casey close behind.
And yes, Lucas was a goner. Having her walk into the midst of the chaos—even if she was still mad at him—ran a charge through him that reminded him of what was important.
It wasn’t any of his stuff. Losing her to the bad guys was not an option. Even if she walked away in the end and never spoke to him again, at least he’d know she was alive and safe.
These shadow people could throw their worst at him. He wasn’t going to back off until this was all over.
Even if she didn’t want his help.
She stepped over the threshold like she was coming straight for him, then stopped and eyed him from head to toe. “Are you okay? I wasn’t home and we came back and saw—”
He waved a hand, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel under her scrutiny. “I’m fine. It happened while I was at church.”
“This morning?” Her voice inched up a couple of notches.
He knew what she was thinking. This morning. In broad daylight. While she was directly across the street, totally unaware.
All Lucas wanted was to sweep the fear from her expression, but the last time he’d touched her, he’d kissed her. After her rant on his front lawn this morning, he wasn’t going anywhere near where he could feel her, smell her...
The rest of the room fell away. His entire focus lay on the woman standing ten feet from him. Too close...yet too far. “Nobody’s hurt, so it’s all good. Insurance will handle everything. It’ll be a pain, but it’ll all be fixed. Eventually.”
“Tell you what.” Travis planted his hands on his knees and stood, then dropped a cleaning rag onto the couch. He aimed a finger at Casey, who still stood in the doorway. “What’s your name?”
Lucas pulled out of his stupor in time to catch Kristin wearing an expression that had to match his own. She arched an eyebrow but said nothing.
The other woman glanced at Kristin and almost shrank a little before she answered. “Casey.” She suddenly stepped forward, her expression issuing a challenge Lucas couldn’t quite read.
“Casey, I’m Travis. Nice to meet you. What say you and I go find Lucas an air mattress and bring back a pizza.” He patted his stomach with both hands. “Lucas has had me working like a private in basic training and I’m starved.”
It seemed to take a second for the question to register and for the slight shock to clear from her expression. “Okay, Travis. I see what you’re about.” She threw a wave and turned for the door. “See you guys later.”
Lucas’s muscles stiffened. He knew his friend wasn’t the man he used to be, but this was the first time he’d given any indication he’d noticed a woman since that whole mess at the company went down. “Travis...”
Travis gave him a nod over his shoulder, a silent I’m okay.
Lucas had to trust he was, realize when God whacked him upside the head at church this morning, it wasn’t all about Kristin, but about being Travis’s friend, not his father.
Kristin sucked her tongue against her top teeth and turned from the door. “You know what happened, don’t you?”
“Travis thinks Casey’s cute?”
Her eyebrows wrinkled. Kristin was cuter than Casey could ever dream of being. “No.” She drew the word out and pointed her finger back and forth between them. “We were left alone to work out our differences.”
Through the front window, Lucas watched Travis’s blue pickup back out of the driveway. “I see. So we’re supposed to hug it out?”
“Don’t push it.”
He bit down on a grin. “Talk it out?”
“Looks like it.” Kristin made a slow circle and seemed to decide the one decent place to sit was the coffee table. She settled onto it, leaving enough room for Lucas to sit beside her.
He’d take what he could get. Easing to the makeshift seat, he kept a good space between them. Still, Kristin was close enough for him to feel her warmth. Yep. He was still close enough to get burned.
She took in the damage to his home, lingering on a large hole in the drywall by the front door. “Was this because of Kyle?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think that would be an educated guess.”
“You can almost read it in the air.” She splayed her hands in front of her like she was framing a billboard. “Stay away from Kristin James.”
He imitated her hand motion and intonation. “Not going to do it.”
She chuckled low, then bumped her elbow with his. “I’m sorry about this morning. I’m sure the neighbors think I’ve lost my mind.”
“I’m sure they’re thinking worse things because, you know, the cops pulled in right after you left.”
“Oh, no.” Groaning, Kristin dropped her head into her hands. “I didn’t think about that.” When she lifted her head, though, she was smiling. “Nothing like a reputation to make the neighbors steer clear of you, is there?”
“If that’s your goal, then life is good.”
She smiled wider, but it faded quickly. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“I’m not.” At all. The weight of the truth scared him senseless.
“Lucas, don’t.” Pacing to the window, Kristin stared across the street at her house. “I can’t do this with you. But... I’m willing to admit there might be something to my brother being involved.”
Lucas didn’t know whether to cheer or punch a new hole in the wall. She’d thrown cold water on the feelings building for her, but she was willing to admit the truth. He kept his mouth shut, waiting to see what she’d say next.
“I want to believe my brother was a hero.”
“He served his country.”
She sniffed and tilted her head toward the ceiling. “Serving might be the one good thing he ever did, and even those motives are questionable.”
True, and Lucas was glad he hadn’t had to be the one to point it out.
“He’s somehow tied to everything going on, even though he’s gone.” Kristin ran a finger along the edge of the window, then flattened her palm against the glass. “This guy keeps mentioning Kyle. I know my brother was far from perfect, but...” Her hand and her head dropped.
Lucas balled his fists and ground them into his thighs. Man, did he ever want to cross the room and hug her, to share the burden, even though she insisted she was fine. Nobody was strong enough to stand alone under an assault like this. She needed somebody.
And Lucas wanted it to be him.
When she didn’t say anything else, he gave up all of the fight left in him. He couldn’t sit half a room away and watch her battle pain alone. Pushing off the table, he slipped behind her and touched her shoulder.
Kristin flinched, then relaxed and turned, leaning her head against his chest.
At first, Lucas didn’t move, scared she’d run like a startled stray cat. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, her tension gradually melting away. Somehow, her leaning on him in spite of all that had already passed between them made Lucas strong again, like he could take on anything thrown their way.
* * *
Far from the raging, heart-hammering hurricane that had engulfed Kristin when Lucas kissed her, this embrace brought a whole new kind of peace. In her whole life, even after it became clear her father couldn’t reach her anymore, she had never felt this safe, this protected. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how often she’d looked over her shoulder, trying to handle everything in her own power. “What makes you so strong?”
“What?” His voice rumbled, the edges choked.
“Nothing.” Kristin pressed her hands against his chest, pushing him away, and he released her without a fight. Right now was not the time, when she was already emotional and at the edge of herself. Tangling her feelings for Lucas with the fear and uncertainty of the threat against her was dangerous, even more dangerous than what her mother had done by letting her emotions rule her heart. She leaned over and snagged a wad of stuffing from a couch cushion and smashed it into her palm. “I’ll help you finish cleaning this—”
“No.”
The command in Lucas’s voice was one she’d never heard before, and it stopped her still. “I’m sorry?” Her voice edged up. He wasn’t about to order her around.
“You asked what makes me so strong. I should be allowed to answer.” He turned toward her, his face a mask.
She didn’t want the answer. Hadn’t meant to ask the question in the first place. The last thing Kristin needed was to poke deeper into Lucas Murphy’s psyche. “Forget I—”
“No.” He leaned against the wall between the window and the front door and crossed his arms, his biceps straining against his shirtsleeves. “You think I’m strong? I’m not.”
He was lying. Through everything, Kristin had watched him. He’d never once been shaken, not by anything done to her and not by anything she’d fired to wound him herself. “Nothing rattles you.”
The laugh he barked was sharp, and he turned his face toward the ceiling, shaking his head. “Then I put up a good front.” He dropped his gaze and captured hers. “You’re probably physically and emotionally stronger than I am, but there’s one big difference between us.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t dignify the comment with a question. It felt like he was baiting her, complimenting her now so he could dig a knife into her back when she let her guard slip. It seemed impossible he could make her feel safe one minute and vulnerable the next, like he was digging into the deepest parts of her soul.
“You can’t do this on your own. Nobody can. You know most of my story, but what I didn’t tell you—what I should have told you—was there was this chaplain when I was in basic who took an interest in me. Showed me where I was going all out for love in every place but the right one. A lot of people were hurt because of me.” He shook his head. “I know it sounds like some cliché that needs to be retired, but the only way you’re ever going to be able to truly stand up to what this world throws at you is by giving up.”
The words bristled across her skin. Kristin didn’t surrender, not to any man and not to a God Who’d let her father destroy their family. She didn’t need that kind of brutality. But at the same time, something in Lucas’s words wrapped around the broken little girl in her heart and pulled the pieces closer together. The warmth was entirely unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. Almost painful, like a deep-tissue massage after a hard workout, surpassing pain to something wholly right.
She shook her hands out to the side, trying to fling the sensation away. No. No surrender. If there was ever a time when she needed control it was now, when everything indicated her brother had lied to her, when her home and Lucas’s had been invaded, when someone was bent on beating nonexistent information out of her. Surrendering was the last thing she’d do.
“Stop talking.” Grabbing a couch cushion, Kristin tossed it onto the sofa, straining to make the feelings go away. “This can wait. It’s Kyle who can’t. We have to focus on him, on who’s doing this, not on your...” She waved a hand in the air, then dropped onto the couch cushion she’d set into place. “Not on your happily-ever-after fairy tale.”
Lucas opened his mouth then closed it without saying a word. He stared at her for a long time, then turned to the window, letting the silence stretch so long it almost snapped in two. Finally, he stood straighter, but when he spoke, he addressed the window. “What do you want to do?”
&nbs
p; “I want to find out what’s going on, to prove I’m not involved and to hope Kyle wasn’t, either. But if he was...” It hurt to even think it. Yes, he’d had a less-than-stellar reputation even before he joined the army, but a reputation didn’t make him an international smuggler. Stuff like that happened in movies, not real life.
Still, like it or not, they had to investigate everything, every angle, if they wanted to stop the madness before it broke her. “If my brother really was involved, then some of his friends were, too, which means somebody at your unit, maybe even Specialist Lacey, is in on this. But how do we figure out who?” There. She’d said it out loud. Practically admitted the unthinkable.
And it hadn’t killed her.
Lucas turned away from the window. “The guy who attacked you—would you recognize his voice if you heard it? Did you hear him say enough to pick him out if you heard him speak again?”
Kristin’s nose wrinkled. Things had happened so fast and the man had said so few words, his voice low and threatening, likely not the way he’d speak in normal conversation. But she’d seen his stature, broad and muscular, and she’d never forget the eyes of a man who’d been intent on hurting her. She wrapped her arms around her middle, trying not to fly apart, trying not to imagine what might have happened if Lucas hadn’t intervened. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”
“Tomorrow, the battalion is having a mandatory fun day to raise money for the Family Readiness Group. Most of them are family members and volunteers who keep the families informed and plan fun stuff for us to do. It’s a crazy job when we’re deployed.”
“Wait. A mandatory fun day?” Kristin slid to the edge of the couch, a sheen of amusement layering over her confusion and fear. “The army can order you to have fun?”
Lucas grinned. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting?” Kristin sat back and tried to get comfortable on the half-stuffed cushion. This turn in the conversation was a whole lot easier than talk of God and smuggling. “Tell me all about this ‘have fun or do push-ups’ mentality.”
