by Jenna Kernan
“You are serving your country, Rylee. Working with Homeland Security would certainly fit that bill. He must know that,” said Axel.
“Not according to my dad. You’re either in the US Marines or you are not. There is no other option.”
“So, your career choice caused some tension?” asked Axel.
“Oh, yeah,” said Rylee. “I just didn’t want to live my whole life out of the gunnysack. I wanted...wanted to find a place, one place to call home. Mom said home isn’t a place. But you know, it could be.”
“Except for my time in the service, I’ve lived my entire life in this county.”
“Meanwhile, I didn’t even know that there were families who did that. I saw from your records that you were emancipated. Is your family still here?” asked Rylee.
Why had he mentioned his past? Of course, she would have questions, but that did not mean he was ready or able to answer them. How did you even begin to explain the complicated mess that was his family? Let’s just start with his mother. No, that was a terrible place to start. His father? Even worse.
“Just my dad. He’s still around. I don’t see him often.”
Rylee’s eager expression fell. She glanced away. “Oh, I see.”
She didn’t, though. How could she?
Axel forced a tight smile and she glanced away.
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
He realized then that his words had led her to believe wrongly that his mom was dead.
Of course, Rylee was sorry for what she saw as a loss but she might be sorrier if she knew that his mother lived not ten miles from him and was not permitted to speak to her son or acknowledge him in any way as she prepared to enter Heaven’s Door, as they called it. She had chosen his father’s religious dogma over a relationship with him. That kind of rejection caused a sorrow that just never went away.
This would be the time to correct her and explain the situation. Axel groaned inwardly. His stomach knotted, and he knew he would not be doing that. Not today, not ever. Many of the good citizens of the county had forgotten that he was the skinny boy brought out of the Congregation of Eternal Wisdom by social services. They had forgotten that Sheriff Kurt Rogers had removed him from the influence of his father and fostered him for five years before Axel had joined the army.
His father had told Axel to his face that if he did not want to follow the true path to Heaven’s Door, he could suffer the Desolation with the rest of the unbelievers. Axel’s ears still burned at the memory of his father’s scalding condemnation.
“Any brothers or sisters?” asked Rylee.
That was another complicated subject. One that he didn’t even know how to begin to answer. Surely, he had brothers and sisters. But which ones were his by blood, who could say? The only way to sort that would be DNA testing and that would never happen.
Axel opted to keep his answer vague and truthful and then change the subject. “Yes. But you... Seven, right?”
“Exactly. I have five older brothers and an older sister, all in the marines.”
Uh-oh, he thought. Each one would be glad to knock him in the teeth for what he wanted to do with their baby sister.
Rylee continued, “Oliver, the oldest, is a master sergeant in the Marine Air-Ground Force. Paul is a sergeant major in personnel. It burns Oliver up that Paul has a higher rank. Paul is stationed stateside in California. I have two twin brothers, Joshua and Grant. They’re both second lieutenants and both intelligence warrant officers in Hawaii. That’s a great posting. Those two have done everything together since as far back as I can remember. Marcus is only two years older than me and an assault vehicles commander. Can you believe my only sister, Stephanie, is a gunnery sergeant in communications? She’s working as a cyber-network operator in Germany.”
“Your mom?”
“Mom worked in the military schools. She taught music. And I play guitar and strings because of her. But she passed five years ago of a lung infection.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” She took Axel’s hand. “We have that in common—losing our mothers. Don’t we?”
They didn’t. He frowned.
“I know. It’s hard, right? I think Josh and Grant were glad to reenlist, with her gone. Home isn’t a home without a mom. Or at least that’s how it was for us. We lived all over. Oceanside, Honolulu, Okinawa and then back to Hawaii, but Kāneʻohe Bay this time. We were in Jacksonville, which I liked, and then Beaufort, South Carolina, which I hated. But I was thirteen. Thirteen-year-olds hate most new things, I think, and moving. I detested moving. Maybe I just hate South Carolina because that’s where she died. So, Dad got transferred from Guam to Germany. That way me and Stephanie and Marcus could be with him. My older brothers were all up and out, enlisted by then.” She straightened as if someone had put an ice cube down her back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to unload all that baggage.”
“It’s all right. You know, families can be complicated.” He set his teeth and looked at her open expression. Maybe Rylee could understand. She knew grief and separation and a dad who was emotionally unreachable. Only difference was she was still trying to reach hers. “Listen, about my father—”
Her phone chimed, and she darted to her feet, removing the mobile and staring at the screen.
“My boss,” she said and took the call.
Thirteen minutes later there was a helicopter parked on centerfield of the community baseball field. Rylee jogged out, keeping low. He didn’t know what he had expected but it was not to see Rylee, carrying both drone and samples, climb aboard and disappear behind the door. Before he could take a step in her direction, the chopper lifted off, sending the dirt on the infield swirling behind them.
“Didn’t even say goodbye,” he said, as he covered his face from the assault of rock and sand.
What was he thinking? That she was staying? This was a good reminder that she was on to bigger and better things. He told himself it was for the best. Best that she left before she discovered just where he had come from. Because if she stayed, sooner or later, she’d learn the truth and that was something that he just could not bear.
* * *
IT WAS THURSDAY AFTERNOON. After a long night and a few hours of sleep, Rylee was back in her office in Glens Falls. Somehow, everything seemed different, as if she didn’t belong here.
Rylee held her cell phone in her palm, staring down at the contacts list. She had scored major points, located the vanguard of the attack and was just aching to crow about her accomplishment.
Her brow wrinkled as she realized that it was Axel she wanted to call. Not her father, who would likely be unavailable. He’d been unavailable emotionally to her for most of her life. Expecting him to suddenly see her as a competent protector of their country was just irrational. So why had she done all this?
If not for praise and advancement and accolades, why? Confusion rattled inside her like a bag of bolts in a barrel.
She hardly knew Axel. So why was she missing him and wanting to tell him everything that had happened since leaving him last night?
He was a bad choice for many reasons, not the least of which was the way he played fast and loose when deciding which laws to enforce.
For just a moment, she allowed herself to imagine an alternate reality. One where she came home to Axel every night. One where she stayed in one place and made a home for them. A garden with tomatoes and a bird feeder. Neighbors whose names you bothered to learn.
Rylee had spent her life moving and, while she’d believed she wanted something different, every decision she’d made climbing up the ranks had involved a move, and there was no end in sight. A promotion, the one she wanted so badly to earn, would require packing again and a new office, new city, new coworkers. Why had she never realized that in choosing to do the opposite, and not joining the US military, she had nevertheless adopted a transient lifest
yle?
She sat hard as the realization hit her. She wasn’t ever going to stop moving. She wasn’t going to be a team player. Or be a welcome part of a group task force on anything. She was going to live a rootless existence, moving from one apartment to another with whatever she could carry in three suitcases. Just like her father.
She was never going to have that dog or those kids or that husband that she had believed she wanted. Was she?
Rylee scrolled through the contacts, past her family’s names and her friends and her professional contacts, stopping on Axel Trace. Was she really going to pick him?
Suddenly, Rylee’s accomplishment frightened her. It was what she wanted. To make a splash. To gain attention. To use her analysis skills and new field experience to move onward and upward.
So why was she thinking of a cool autumn night and a picnic table outside an ice-cream stand in the far reaches of New York State and the man who waited there?
Chapter Eleven
The knock upon Axel’s door brought him grudgingly to his feet. Friday nights were busy, and he’d just made it home before eleven o’clock. The hour meant this was not a visitor. Most bad news came lately by phone or text, but some folks, the older ones mostly, stopped by to drop trouble on his door. Usually not after nine in the evening.
He had discovered that the later the hour, the larger the problem. Domestic, he decided as he left the kitchen in the back of the house, thinking the visitor would be a woman carrying her children in her arms, seeking protection. He’d stopped counting the number of such visits he’d taken since being elected as county sheriff.
Axel hiked up his well-worn sweatpants and grabbed a white T-shirt from the peg behind the door on his way past. He had changed for bed after his supper, but he’d cover up before he greeted his visitor. He had the shirt overhead when the knock came again.
He glanced through the window set high on the door and his breath caught. Rylee Hockings stood on his step dressed in a gray woolen jacket, thigh-hugging jeans and scuffed hiking boots. She was looking down at the yellow mums on his steps that had already been nipped by frost. The blossoms drooped and wilted. The angle of her jaw and the overhead light made her skin glow pink. The black knit cap on her head trapped her blond hair beside the slim column of her throat.
His breath caught, and his blood coursed, heated by her nearness. When was the last time a woman took his breath away?
Never was the answer. He’d steered clear of most women, recognizing the trouble they inherently caused and not wanting the complication of explaining the soul-scarring mess that was his family. Why would any woman, especially one as dedicated, smart and pretty as this one, want a man who most resembled the tangled wreckage of a submerged log in the river. He was good for tearing the bottom out of boats and causing other people trouble. So far, his personal life had been nothing but bad.
She lifted her fist, knuckles up, to knock again and glanced up to see him peering down at her.
“Hey! You gonna let me in?” she said, her voice raised to carry through the locked door that separated them.
He shouldn’t. Because if he did, he had a fair idea where the evening might lead. She was smiling like a woman satisfied with the world, but he had the feeling he could change that smile, brighten it, perhaps remove the lines of tension bracketing those pink lips.
Axel turned the dead bolt, pulled open the door and stepped back.
“What a nice surprise.”
She’d left Wednesday night and there had been no calls, no texts and no emails from her or from Homeland Security. He’d decided that she’d dumped him like an empty beer bottle, and now he didn’t know what to think.
“We’ve assembled a team. They’ll be here tomorrow morning. I just wanted to brief you before their arrival on all that’s happened.”
“Sure.” He thought the surprise must have shown on his face. Thus far, she had briefed him on very little.
She breezed inside with the cool air, and he closed the door behind her. She stepped into the neat entry and sank to the bench with his shoes lined up beneath and the variety of coats hanging above on pegs. Above that, the cubbies held his hats, gloves and a softball mitt.
“Boots off?” she asked.
He was happy to have her remove any item of clothing she wanted.
“Sure. And let me take your coat.”
He waited as she worked loose the laces while also glancing into the living room. She slipped out of her boots, revealing new woolen gray socks. She was getting the hang of dressing for the weather up here, he thought. But Rylee was quick and used to adjusting to her environment. She must be, after so many moves.
She stood and he took her coat, using the opportunity to lean in to smell the fresh citrus scent at her neck before stepping back. Rylee headed to the living room. He had left it earlier, as he always did, pillows in line on the couch he used only for napping and his book waiting on the table beside his comfortable chair beside the remote.
“You’re neat,” she said, coming to a stop.
Having things, personal things, was something he never took for granted. Personal property was forbidden at the congregation. He could never have imagined owning a home of his own. Filling it with the overstuffed comforts that were lacking in the austere landscape where he had been raised.
Wooden chairs placed on pegs each night. Floors swept and then mopped. Children assigned tasks on a weekly basis that grew increasingly difficult as they aged.
He’d been approaching that age where he would have been expected to choose the most holy position for males at the compound or the lesser status of men who did not accept the full preparation to be received in Heaven.
“Axel?”
He snapped his attention to her and realized he was clenching her coat in his fist.
“I asked if that was coffee that I smelled?”
The smile was forced but she didn’t seem to notice. “Yes. Have you had supper yet?”
“Oh, hours ago, but I’d love a cup of coffee.”
He debated where to bring her—the living room with that big couch or the dining room with the large wooden table for a professional conversation?
He motioned to the living room. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you a cup. How do you take it?”
“Black.”
He nodded and waited as she slipped into his world in her stocking feet. He was quick in the kitchen, returning with two cups. He tried not to place too much meaning on the fact that she sat on the sofa.
“Do you use the fireplace often?” she asked, gazing at the wood fireplace, screened and flanked with fire tools and a metal crate of kindling. The logs fit in an opening built in the river stone masonry for that purpose. The stone swept up to the twelve-foot ceilings of the old farmhouse and was broken only by the wide mantel crafted with chisels by hands long gone from the living, out of American chestnut back in a time when the tree was a plentiful hardwood.
“Yes, and I keep it set. Would you like a fire?”
“Oh, that’s not necessary. It’s just I always wanted a house with a fireplace. They don’t usually have them in California or Hawaii—or Japan, for that matter.”
“Or in South Carolina?”
She laughed, but her eyes were now sad. “That’s right. How long have you been here?”
“Let’s see, I found this place after I left the service. I bought the home after I finished my probation period with the City of Kinsley.”
“Police Department,” she said, quoting the part of his history that she obviously knew, the part that was in the records. But Sheriff Rogers had held back enough. Keeping the circumstances of his claim for emancipation listed as abandonment. The truth was worse and more complicated.
“That’s right. So that was, wow, six years ago. And I still haven’t replaced that back deck.”
He set do
wn her coffee and took a seat beside her. She gathered up the mug and took a sip.
“Strong,” she said and set the ceramic back on the slate-topped coffee table.
He left her to set the fire. The entire process involved striking a match and lighting the wadded newspaper beneath the tepee of kindling.
He slipped two logs from the collection and waited for the flames to lick along the kindling, catching the splinters in bright bursts of light.
“That’s a pretty sight. Warms me up inside and out,” said Rylee, gazing first at the fire and then to him.
An internal spark flared inside him and his heart rate thudded heavy and strong.
He knelt beside the fire and glanced back at her, taking in the relaxed smile and the warm glow of the firelight reflected from her cheeks and forehead. The entire world seemed to have taken on a rosy glow and he wasn’t at all certain it was the fire’s doing.
“Is it too late for a conversation?” she asked.
Did she mean too late in the evening or too late in their relationship? He’d spent the first few days resenting her intrusion, followed by a pervasive annoyance at the extra work she caused him. But just before she left, when they took that wild ride on the motorcycle, and even before that kiss, he knew there was something different about this woman. Perhaps the threat she posed was not professional but strictly personal.
Was that better or worse?
“No, it’s not too late.”
“Trace, I think I made a mistake with you. I want to apologize for trying to run you. You don’t work for me and it was wrong for me to treat you as if you did. To come in here and tell you what to do in your own county. That’s not collaboration. It’s my first field assignment and I really want to do well. It’s important for my career for me to get this experience. But even more important was finding the package. Finding that case will save a lot of lives.”
He came to sit beside her on the sofa. “That’s a good thing. But you’re back, so I have to assume your work isn’t finished.” He didn’t let himself latch on to the possibility that she’d come back to finish their business. “Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”
