Volume Three: In Moonlight and Memories, #3

by Julie Ann Walker

  The smell of the coming spring is in the air. The sweet hint of flowers blooming. The subtle green scent of new-forming leaves. And around and below it all, the ever-present aroma of the bayou. Briny algae. Slow-moving water. The decay of deadfall.

  “I reckon we’re ready.” Luc steps back from Cash’s bayou bier, which will become Cash’s bayou pyre once Luc sets a match to it.

  “How many laws do you suppose we’re breaking?” I open the lid on the old shoebox I brought with me.

  “Who knows?” He runs a hand through his hair. “Hell, maybe all of ’em.”

  “It’s so like Cash to make us into criminals here at the end.”

  “Ain’t it just?” Luc’s lopsided smile is contagious.

  “You think the pirogue will stay afloat long enough for…” I wrinkle my nose. “For the fire to do its job?”

  He pats the end of the hollowed-out log. “Her wood is thick and dense. And her waterproofing is solid. Cash said he wanted the gators to eat what the fire doesn’t, but I reckon she’ll hold up until there’s nothing much left.” He turns to me and hitches a chin toward the shoebox. “You ready?”

  I nod, and he offers me a hand to keep me steady as I step on the spongy soil near the edge of the water. Placing a hand on top of Cash’s casket, I close my eyes and say a silent prayer. Then I reach into the shoebox and take out a flattened, dried rose. It’s from the bouquet he bought me for my fifteenth birthday.

  “Thank you for understanding the heart of a teenage girl,” I whisper as I tuck the rose between two twigs.

  Next comes the flip-book he titled, The Story of Us. I flip through the pages, smiling at the memories they hold. “I don’t know if our story has a happy ending or a sad one, Cash. But I’m sure glad I got to read it. It’s pretty epic, don’t you think? A story of friendship and sacrifice and redemption and love. I don’t suppose most folks could ask for more than that.”

  Tucking the flip-book beneath a limb, I make sure it’s secure. Then I reach into the shoebox again and pull out a glow stick. It’s from the private rave he threw for me.

  The memory of how gentle he was, how patient and loving he was as he taught me about the beauty of two bodies giving pleasure and receiving it, blooms in my mind’s eye.

  “You always claimed to be a tough guy.” A tear drips from my chin and falls onto his casket, seeping into the grain of the wood and darkening it. “But you were always tender with me.”

  I place the glow stick in the bottom of the pirogue and go back to the shoebox for the empty package of gummy bears he gave me the time I was sick. “Your whimsical side was one of your best sides. I’m so glad you allowed me to see it.”

  I go on for a few more minutes, a few more items, until the shoebox is empty, and the pirogue is full of memories. And all the while, Luc stands beside me, never interrupting, offering support and comfort by his mere presence.

  When I step back, he pulls me into a hug, allowing me my tears, my grief. Then, when I’m all cried out, he takes a deep breath and says, “I reckon it’s time.”

  Nodding, I set the shoebox on the ground and pull a piece of paper from my back pocket. When he lights a long match and sets the flame to the kindling at the bottom of the pirogue, it doesn’t want to catch at first. Then, when it does, the fire grows quickly.

  I have to step back, the heat is so intense.

  Luc pushes the pirogue out into the swamp, and we watch as it slowly drifts across the water, the reflection of the flames dancing on the surface. The smell of wood smoke drifts back to us. Except for the crackle and pop of the fire, a heavy silence has fallen over the bayou. As if it knows it’s bearing witness to a sacred ritual. As if it realizes the importance of saying goodbye to one such as Cash.

  “Go on then, sweetheart,” Luc encourages me, hitching his chin toward the paper in my hand.

  I hate that I was too choked up to speak at Cash’s memorial. But maybe this is better. Maybe my words were always meant for just the three of us.

  Clearing my throat, I begin to read. “There were a million different facets of Cash’s personality that contradict each other. He was this unique combination of sentimentality and bravado. He could be cynical and sarcastic or deeply sensitive and kind. He was opinionated, and yet he was also completely understanding. He was a pain in the butt, but he had this magical way of making the world more exciting for everyone who knew him. Taken piece by piece, Cassius Clay Armstrong was a cacophony of humanity. But put everything together, and you realize he was a symphony. A beautiful song. One I’ll sing until my dying day.”

  I fold the paper and find Luc’s head bowed. When he looks at me, there are tears in his eyes. “That was beautiful, Maggie May.”

  I left all my words on the soft breeze, so all I can manage is a nod.

  He understands. He always understands.

  After kissing my cheek, he walks over to the tree where he propped his guitar. Sliding the strap over his head, he rejoins me at the edge of the water and starts to strum. I recognize the melody immediately. It’s Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

  When he opens his mouth to sing the first verse, I find my voice and join him. My fingers rub over the tattoo on the inside of my wrist, the symbol of a love that will stretch to infinity and back again, and I know the words Cash wrote to me are true. Love is stronger than death.

  Watching the flames rise around the body of one beautiful man who was such a huge part of my past, I reach up and tug on the ear of another beautiful man who is all of my future. And when Luc presses his cheek into my palm, I think to myself, How lucky am I to have loved them both?

  Epilogue

  ______________________________________

  Cash

  Our lives are as fragile as a butterfly’s wings, as mysterious as the great beyond, and as brief as a human heartbeat. But despite it all, we go on. Because in the end, we know we’ll always exist in moonlight and memories.

  ~ turn the page for a sneak peek of Hell on Wheels following the Acknowledgments ~

  Acknowledgments

  Huge thanks to my clever, funny, ever-supportive gal-pal, Amanda Carlson. I couldn’t have done any of this without your reassurance, your wisdom, and your patient guidance. You’ve been there for me during the hardest moments of my life. Put simply, you’re the best.

  Thanks to Joyce Lamb for taking the lumps of coal that were the first drafts of these books and helping me turn them into things that (hopefully) now sparkle like diamonds. Your nit-picky editorial eye and your refusal to blow smoke up my ass makes for a dynamic duo. Here’s hoping we write many more books together.

  Wider thanks to all the folks who do the hard work of getting a book into readers’ hands, Marlene Engel, proofer extraordinaire, Amy Atwell, formatter for the stars, and Sofie Hartley at Hart and Bailey Design Co. for the beautiful covers.

  And last, but certainly not least, to my amazing family who never fails to support and encourage me. You’re a wild and crazy bunch, but I wouldn’t have you any other way.

  Sneak Peek of

  Hell on Wheels

  Black Knights, Inc. – Book 1

  by Julie Ann Walker

  Prologue

  ______________________________________

  Jacksonville, North Carolina

  Outside the Morgan Household

  Those screams…

  Man, he’d been witness to some bad shit in his life. A great deal of which he’d personally perpetrated but very little of which stuck with him the way those screams were going to stick with him. Those soul-tearing, gut-wrenching bursts of inconsolable grief.

  As Nate Weller, known to most in the spec-ops community simply as “Ghost,” gingerly lowered himself into the Jeep that General Fuller had arranged for him to pick up upon returning CONUS—continental U.S.—he figured it was somehow appropriate. Each vicious shriek was an exclamation point marking the end of a mission that’d gone from bad to the worst possible scenario imaginable, and a fitting cry of heartbreak to her
ald the end of his best friend’s remarkable life.

  Grigg…

  Sweet Jesus, had it really been just two weeks since they were drinking raki in Istanbul? Two weeks since they’d crossed the border into Syria to complete a deletion?

  And that was another thing. Deletion. Christ, what a word. A ridiculously euphemistic way of saying you put a hot ball of lead that exploded with a muzzle velocity of 2,550 feet per second into the brainpan of some unsuspecting SOB who had the appallingly bad luck of finding himself on ol’ Uncle Sam’s shit list.

  Yep, two lines you never want to cross, horizontal and vertical.

  “Get me out of here,” Alisa Morgan choked as she wrenched open the passenger door and jumped inside the Jeep, bringing the smell of sunshine and honeysuckle with her.

  Ridiculously pleasant scents considering Nate’s day had begun in the seventh circle of hell and was quickly getting worse. Shouldn’t that be the rotten-egg aroma of sulfur burning his nose?

  He glanced over at the petite woman sitting beside him, stick straight and trembling with the effort to contain her grief, and his stupid heart sprouted legs and jumped into his throat. It’d been that way since the first time he’d met Ali, Grigg’s baby sister.

  Baby, right.

  She hadn’t been a baby even then. At seventeen she’d been a budding young woman. And now? Over twelve years later? Man, now she was all woman. All sunny blond hair and fiercely alive, amber-colored eyes in a face guaran-damn-teed to totally destroy him. Oh buddy, that face was a real gut check, one of those sweet Disney princess-type deals. Not to mention her body. Jesus.

  He wanted her now just like he’d wanted her then. Maybe more. Okay, definitely more. And the inner battle he constantly waged with his unrepentant libido whenever she got within ten feet of him coupled with his newly acquired, mountainous pile of regret, guilt, and anguish to make him so tired. So unbearably tired of…everything.

  “What about your folks?” he murmured, afraid to talk too loudly lest he shatter the tenuous hold she seemed to have on herself. “Don’t you wanna be with them?”

  He glanced past the pristine, green expanse of the manicured, postage-stamp sized lawn to the little, white, clapboard house with its cranberry trim and matching shutters. Geez, the place was homey. So clean, simple, and welcoming. Who would ever guess those inside were slowly bleeding out in the emotional aftershock of the bomb he’d just delivered?

  She shook her head, staring straight ahead through the windshield, her nostrils flaring as she tried to keep the ocean of tears pooling in her eyes from falling. “They don’t…want or…n-need me right now. I’m a…a reminder that…that…” she trailed off, and Nate had to squash the urge to reach over and pull her into his arms.

  Better keep a wrinkle in it, boyo. You touch my baby sister and you die. Grigg had whispered that the day he’d introduced Nate to his family and seen the predatory heat in Nate’s eyes when they’d alighted on Ali.

  Yeah, well, keeping a wrinkle in it was impossible whenever Ali was in the same room with him, but he hadn’t touched…and he hadn’t died. Grigg was the one who’d done that…

  Christ.

  “They want you, Ali,” he assured her now. “They need you.”

  “No.” She shook her head, still refusing to look at him, as if making eye contact would be the final crushing blow to the crumbling dam behind which she held all her rage and misery. “They’ve always been a pair, totally attuned to one another, living within their own little two-person sphere. Not that they don’t love me and Grigg,” she hastened to add as she dashed at her tears with the backs of her hands, still refusing to let them fall. “They’re great parents; it’s just… I don’t know what I’m trying to say. But how they are together, always caught up in one another? That’s why Grigg and I are so close…” Her left eyelid twitched ever so slightly. “Were so close… God!” Her voice broke and sympathetic grief pricked behind Nate’s eyes and burned up the back of his throat until every breath felt as if it was scoured through a cheese grater.

  It was too much. He couldn’t stand to watch her fight any longer. The weight of her struggle compounded with the already crushing burden of his own rage and sorrow until all he could do was screw his peepers closed and press his clammy forehead to the backs of his tense hands. He gripped the steering wheel with fingers that were as numb and cold as the block of ice encasing his heart. The one that’d formed nearly a week before when he’d been forced to do the unthinkable.

  A barrage of bloody images flashed behind his lids before he could push them away. He couldn’t think of that now. He wouldn’t think of that now…

  “Nate?” He jumped like he’d been shot when the coolness of her fingers on his arm pulled him from his brutal thoughts. “Get me out of here, okay? Dad…he shooed me away. I don’t think he wanted me witnessing Mother’s breakdown and I think I can still hear her…” She choked.

  Uh-huh. And Nate knew right then and there those awful sounds torn from Carla Morgan’s throat weren’t going to stick with just him. Anyone who’d been within earshot would be haunted forever after.

  And, goddamnit, he liked Paul Morgan, considered him a good and honest man, but screw the bastard for not seeing that his only daughter needed comfort, too. Just because Ali put on a brave front, refusing to break down like her mother had, didn’t mean she wasn’t completely ripped apart on the inside. And damn the man for putting Nate in this untenable situation—to be the only one to offer Ali comfort when he was the dead-last person on Earth who should.

  He hesitated only a second before turning the key and pulling from the curb. The Jeep grumbled along, eating up the asphalt, sending jarring pain through his injured leg with each little bump in the road. Military transports weren’t built to be smooth rides. Hell no. They were built to keep chugging and plugging along no matter what was sliding under the wheels. Unfortunately, what they gained in automotive meanness, they lost in comfort, but that was the least of his current problems. His pain he could deal with—brush it aside like an annoying gnat. He was accustomed to that, after all. Had trained for it and lived it over and over again for almost fifteen years.

  Ali’s pain was something else entirely.

  Chancing a glance in her direction, he felt someone had shoved a hot, iron fist straight into his gut.

  She was crying. Finally.

  Now that she didn’t have to be strong in front of her parents, she let the tears fall. They coursed, unchecked, down her soft cheeks in silvery streams. Her chest shook with the enormity of her grief, but no sound escaped her peach-colored lips save for a few ragged moans that she quickly cut off, as if she could allow herself to show only so much outward emotion. As if she still had to be careful, be tough, be resilient.

  She didn’t. Not with him. But he couldn’t speak past the hot knot in his own throat to tell her.

  He wanted to scream at that uncaring bitch, Fate. Rail and cry and rant. But what possible good would that do them? None. So he gulped down the hard tangle of sorrow and rage and asked, “Anywhere in particular y’wanna go?” She turned toward him, her big, tawny eyes haunted, lost. “Yeah, okay.” He nodded. “I know a place.”

  After twenty minutes of pure hell, forced to watch her struggle to keep herself together, struggle to keep from bursting into a thousand bloody pieces that would surely cut him as deeply as they cut her, he nosed the Jeep along a narrow coast road, through the waving, brown heads of sea oats, until he stopped at a wooden fence. It was gray and brittle from years spent battling the sun and weathering the salt spray.

  He figured he and that fence were kindred spirits. They’d both been worn down by the lives they’d led until they were so battered and scarred they no longer resembled anything like what they’d started out being—and yet they were still standing.

  Right. He’d give anything to be the one reduced to an urn full of fine, gray ash. Between the two of them, Grigg had been the better man. But on top of being uncaring, Fate was a stupid bitch.
That’s the only explanation he could figure for why he’d made it out of that stinking, sandy hut when Grigg hadn’t.

  A flash of Grigg’s eyes in that last moment nearly had him doubling over. Those familiar brown eyes…they’d been hurting, begging, resigned…

  No. He shook away the savage image and focused his gaze out the windshield.

  Beyond the fence’s ragged, ghostly length, gentle dunes rolled and eventually merged with the flat stretch of a shell-covered beach. The gray Atlantic’s vast expanse flirted in the distance with the clear blue of the sky, and the boisterous wind whipped up whitecaps that giggled and hissed as they skipped toward shore.

  It just didn’t seem right. A day like that. So sunny, so bright. Didn’t the world know it’d lost one of its greatest men? Didn’t its molten heart bleed?

  He switched off the Jeep and sucked in the familiar scents of sea air and sun-baked sand. He couldn’t find his usual comfort in the smells. Not today. And, maybe, never again. Hesitantly he searched for the right words.

  Yeah, right. Like there were any right words in this God-awful situation.

  “I won’t offer y’platitudes, Ali,” he finally managed to spit out. “He was the best man I’ve ever known. I loved ’im like a brother.”

  Talk about understatement of the century. Losing Grigg was akin to losing an arm. Nate felt all off-balance. Disoriented. More than once during the past week, he’d turned to tell Grigg something only to remember too late his best friend wasn’t there.

  He figured he wasn’t suffering from phantom-limb syndrome, but phantom-friend syndrome.