Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

Her hesitation gave Julia time to enter the breach. “Don’t you feel well, dear?”

Sophie shook her head. “My stomach hurts.”

Another boom of thunder caused the table to shake and their mugs to slide a bit. Wisdom, Connie thought. Grant me wisdom. How do I deal with this?

Julia knew no such qualms. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

Ethan spoke. “It’s all right to be afraid, Sophie.”

“Do you get afraid?”

“All the time. I used to be a soldier. I was afraid every day.”

“What did you do?”

“I did my job anyway.”

Sophie nodded, her young face serious. Maybe too serious. “That’s what you’re supposed to do,” she agreed. “Mom says fear is like a warning signal, and all it means is to be careful and think first.”

“That’s very wise,” Ethan agreed.

“But my stomach still hurts. I wanna puke.”

“Then don’t drink that chocolate, child,” Julia said. “Heavens, that’s the worst thing when you feel that way. Let me get you a little ginger ale.”

Sophie screwed up her face. “No. I don’t want anything.”

Watching her daughter, listening to her, Connie felt capable of murder. If she ever got her hands on the man who had frightened Sophie, he might never see the light of another day. Her hands gripped her mug so tightly her knuckles turned white.

She looked from Sophie to Ethan and saw a wealth of understanding in his dark gaze.

“Tell you what,” Julia said. “You can sleep in my bed with me. It’s close to the bathroom, in case you get sick.”

“I am sick,” Sophie said. She shivered. Then she leaped up from her chair and ran to the bathroom. Connie followed to find her daughter being sick in the toilet.

She grabbed a washcloth, wet it with cold water and pressed it to the back of her daughter’s neck, speaking soothing words about nothing, rubbing Sophie’s back until the dry heaves stopped.

When Sophie at last caught her breath and straightened, she looked white as a ghost.

“Well, that settles it,” Connie said as she gently wiped her daughter’s face, then helped her rinse her mouth. “You’re staying home tomorrow.”

“I said I was sick.”

“So you did. And you certainly proved it.”

Sophie looked grumpy. “You just thought I was scared, like a little kid.”

“Sometimes it happens.”

“But I don’t wanna sleep upstairs until the storm is gone.”

“No, of course not. This is the worst storm I can remember in a long time. I don’t want to sleep upstairs, either.”

“I’ll sleep with Grandma.”

So it was settled. A little while later, Julia and Sophie were tucked into Julia’s bed, with a light on. Connie went back to the kitchen and found that Ethan had once again disappeared. The man had a way of doing that.

She made more coffee and poured herself a cup, listening to the storm, wondering if they might get a tornado. It sounded violent enough.

Then, as if drawn by an invisible wire, she returned to the living room.

Ethan was still there, standing at his chosen post. Connie sank into the armchair. “I don’t think this is fair to you.”

He turned to look at her. “Why not?”

“Well, you came here to see your father, and instead, you’re living in my house, protecting my daughter, and your father’s at the other end of the county.”

He sat facing her, stretching his legs out before him. “It’s good to be useful. As for Micah and me...we have no history to speak of. There’s a silence between us. It may take years to cross it.”

“But you can hardly do that while you’re stuck here.”

“Do you want me to go?”

Part of her did, but most of her didn’t. “No. No. That’s not what I meant. What kind of silence are you talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“So many things are.”

“They seem to be,” he agreed. In another flash of light from outside, she saw him rub his bearded chin. “There’s a time,” he said, “when silence speaks best. A time when just being with someone gradually creates a knowing. This is one of those times. He only just learned about me, and I never knew anything about him at all, really. It’s not as if we can simply sit down and share the last thirty-some years in a burst of words.”

“I can understand that.” But she thought how odd it must be. It would be like that for Sophie, she realized, if that son of a gun ever returned. She prayed every night he never would, because with hindsight she could see that he’d never had a thing to recommend him, and she certainly had no reason to think he’d changed. “Has it been hard?” The devil made her ask as she thought of her daughter.

“Not knowing him? Not really. I understood why my mother chose as she did, and I respect that. There were a few times when I felt a little resentful that I didn’t have a father the way other kids did. But not often.”

Connie sighed. “Sometimes I worry about that with Sophie.”

“You couldn’t have raised her with that man.”

“Absolutely not! But how old will she have to be to understand that?”

“Maybe not very old at all. Like I said, I understood, and my mother’s reasons were very different from yours. Micah never abused her. She just didn’t want to live the lifestyle. Her choice was purely selfish, and yet I understood it.”

Connie tipped her head to one side. “Are you so sure it was purely selfish? Maybe she was thinking about trying to raise a child in those circumstances.”

“It wouldn’t have been easy,” he agreed. “But I don’t think she really loved him, either. It was, as the song says, just one of those things.”

“Perhaps. You’re very philosophical about it.”

“I’ve had time to think.”

She nodded and transferred her gaze to the window as the wind took a sudden turn at battering the house. “This is going to go on all night.”

“Seems like.”

“So everything went well when you met Micah?” she asked, quickly changing tack.

“Better than I expected. Faith wanted me to move in.”

At that, Connie chuckled. “She’d mother the whole world if she could. They make a truly interesting pair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you wouldn’t ordinarily think of the two of them together, they’re so different in so many ways. Yet she seems to touch a place in him, and he in her, that welds them. When they’re together, you feel the sense of magic.”

“I noticed that.” He crossed his legs at the ankle. “Some families seem to make a circle around themselves, like a spell. They have that.”

Connie nodded. “Exactly.”

“So do you, with Sophie and your mother.”

Connie smiled. “Thanks. I like to think so.”

“I can feel it. It’s good.” He rose without warning and went to the window. He didn’t speak, and Connie found herself holding her breath, waiting. The rain had stopped, but the wind still rushed.

“I’m going outside,” he said.

“Why?”

“I just want to walk around the house.”

“God, you’re creeping me out! Did you see something?”

“No. No. It’s just my training.”

“What training?”

“A storm is good cover for an approach. It doesn’t mean anything except that I won’t be able to relax until I check.”

She watched him stride out, thinking that his life had marked him deeply. Very deeply.

Most people carried scars from the past, but his wounds remained deep and fresh.

Would he ever let down his guard?

Chapter 8

Over the next several days, life began to return to normal. Children again played in the park after school, the school itself resumed regular recesses, and while kids still walked in groups, as advised, parents no longer hovered over them every instant.

Even the police presence seemed to have lightened, although Connie knew that was far from true. Most everyone else assumed the creep had moved on. Not Connie. That creep had known her daughter’s name.

Even so, she had to allow Sophie to return to some semblance of normalcy, walking home with her friends again, laughing and playing. She couldn’t keep her daughter under constant lock and key.

But she remained watchful, and she was sure Ethan did, as well, even though he sometimes appeared to be invisible.

For her part, Gage assigned her to an in-town beat during the days, which meant she was available for Sophie at any time. Ordinarily she disliked working in town, preferring to cover the county’s wide-open spaces and deal with the ranchers’ families. Working in town usually bored her.

Not right now.

Her third day on the shift, Micah Parish shared the car with her. She wondered what Gage had been thinking, if there was some particular reason.

Apparently so. Micah, usually a quiet man, opened a conversation several hours into the shift. “How’s it going with Ethan?”

“Fine,” she admitted. “He’s not a problem, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh.” She waited, knowing from experience that pressing Micah often led directly to a stone wall.

“I was just wondering what you think of him.”

“He seems like a pretty nice guy. For some odd reason he reminds me of you.”

Micah laughed. “Faith said exactly the same thing.”

“You’re not getting much of a chance to know him.”

“That’ll come.”

Connie hesitated. “It must have been a shock when he showed up.”

“Not exactly. Somehow, at some level, I almost expected it.”

“As if you knew?”

“As if I knew.”

“Maybe you should come over to my place after school gets out. You could spend some time with him.”

“He’s not ready yet.”

She glanced at Micah, then took the risk. “How can you know that?”

She expected the stone wall of silence, but he surprised her. “I just do. He knows where to find me.”

Connie managed to stifle a sigh of exasperation. Ethan had come all this way, to the virtual middle of nowhere, to find his father, and now he wasn’t ready to talk to the man? Why did she find that so hard to believe?

Yet Ethan had said much the same thing. Something about needing the silence first.

She was still thinking about that near shift’s end, and she positioned herself strategically to keep an eye out for Sophie as she pulled up near the school and Micah got out. He walked up the street, as if checking the cars parked along the curb.

Even with the cover of routine patrol and Micah checking cars for parking violations, he was still too visible, Connie thought. Still too visible to someone trying to avoid them. This wasn’t exactly the porous surveillance Nathan had recommended. Yet how far could she let the risk run?

Life was all about risk. She knew that. Complete safety existed only in a padded cell, and perhaps not even there. But while she could risk herself, she found it impossible to risk her daughter.

She scanned the street again and noted that Micah had vanished from sight. Like father, like son. Ghost men.

She let out the brake and resumed cruising, circling the general area where the kids would walk as they left school, but trying not to get too close. Micah was surely out there somewhere, watching, as was Ethan. She could afford to create the appearance of space.

She stopped at one point to put a warning on a car with a broken taillight. She waved to the crossing guards who began to appear on corners. She knew every one of them as a neighbor. That was the wonderful thing about Conard County. Even with the recent growth, she could still get to know nearly everyone.

It was also the reason she had always felt safe here. But all of that now lay shattered like a broken mirror, reflecting scattered, distorted images.

Had it ever been safe here? Or was that an illusion?

She watched the schoolchildren as they scattered toward their homes. As usual, she enjoyed watching them and their sheer exuberance. It reminded her of the days when getting out of school for the afternoon had been enough to fill her with elation.

Unfortunately, it seemed to take a lot more to excite her these days. It occurred to her that the human race would probably be a lot healthier if they could hang on to some of that joy, wonder and exuberance later in life.

Or maybe that was just a lousy perspective to take. Maybe adults crushed themselves.

Then, once again, her thoughts wandered to Ethan. They kept doing that. Her mind, she thought wryly, had a mind of its own. Here she was, prowling the streets looking for a potential criminal, and she was thinking of Ethan.

And her thoughts, heaven help her, reeked of sexual attraction and desire. Funny thing, that. It always sprang up when you least wanted it. And, as she’d learned, often for the wrong person. After her ex, she just plain didn’t trust her judgment of men that way. Now Ethan, a man she hardly knew, was turning the key in the locked box of her desires.

She’d tested the secure power of his arms, the hard muscles of his chest, in that single comforting embrace. But she hadn’t felt his skin, and she found herself wanting to know in the worst way what his skin felt like. Warm and smooth? Rough?

Damn!

At that moment, she spied Sophie coming around a corner from an unexpected direction. Worse, she was alone.

Connie’s heart accelerated along with her patrol car as she zoomed over to her daughter. Sophie looked over and smiled.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Where are Jody and your other friends?”

Sophie shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Climb in and I’ll take you home.”

Sophie did as she was told, climbing into the passenger seat, sitting with her book bag on her lap.

“Sweetie, you know you’re not supposed to walk home alone.”

“I guess I missed the others.”

“How come?”

“I dunno.”

When she paused at a stop sign, Connie looked over at Sophie. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Sophie’s lower lip stuck out. “Nothing.”

For the first time in a long time, Connie didn’t believe her daughter. “Honey, you know there’s nothing that makes me madder than a lie.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Okay.” Connie thought about that, admitting that I dunno was the kids’ equivalent of I don’t recall under oath. “You’re going to be a great lawyer someday.”

Sophie looked at her. “Huh?”

“Never mind. Look, there’s Micah. I need to stop for him, because we’re supposed to be working together today.”

“Okay.”

Micah stood on the sidewalk, watching her approach, and when she pulled up and rolled down her window, he bent to look in. “I see you found Little Miss Lost.”

“Lost?” Connie turned her head to look at Sophie. “Sophie, where did you go?”

“Nowhere,” Sophie said. “I told you. I dunno where the other kids went.”

Connie looked at Micah. “Later,” he said. “Take her on home. Ethan and I are going to stop for a coffee and a chat. Gage said for you to take the rest of the day.”

Connie nodded, her teeth clenched, sure Micah wasn’t telling her everything. One certainty leaped out at her, however: Gage hadn’t told them to take the rest of the day over nothing.

“Later,” Micah said again. “Ethan and I will be over shortly, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll put the coffee on.”

“Thanks.”

She met Micah’s obsidian gaze and saw reassurance there. Forcing herself to relax, she lifted her foot from the brake and drove toward her house.

* * *

Ethan and Micah met at Maude’s diner. Midafternoon, the place was quiet, with only Maude about to handle things. She poured their coffee, then disappeared into the back. The banging that carried through the kitchen door indicated that she might be involved in dinner preparation.

The two men, so alike yet so different, looked at one another across the table. The words, it seemed, still weren’t there.

Finally Ethan broke the silence. “This thing with Sophie Halloran... I don’t like it.”

“Me, neither.” Micah sipped his coffee. “Connie tell you about her marriage?”

“A bit. As if it were the distant past.”

Micah nodded. “Faith went through something similar. When I met her, she was running from her husband, and a couple of weeks after she got here, he found her and tried to kill her.”

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

Micah shrugged. “I was a deputy. I got there in time. He’s gone.”

Ethan nodded, as if approving. “Are you suggesting that Connie might be facing the same threat?”

“Not directly.” Micah looked down at his mug and suddenly smiled. “You’ll never know how many of the problems of life Faith and I solved over a cup of coffee.”

Ethan answered with a similar smile. “Good time to talk.”

“Especially when winter is howling outside. But back to Connie. She talks like it’s all in the past and she’s long over it. But I can tell you from my experience with Faith, she’s not over it. She’s buried it. That woman hasn’t dated in all the time she’s been here. Tells you something, because there are plenty of men around here who have asked.”

Ethan nodded. “I got the feeling her rendition was more cover than fact.”

“It is. When we did her background check before hiring her, I discovered the story was a lot uglier than the way she tells it. She sort of does the outline thing, like she’s reading from a list of all the abused-spouse indicators. It doesn’t get personal. But trust me, Ethan, it was personal. Very personal and very ugly.”

“Kid gloves, then.”

“That would be my advice.” Micah leaned back and sighed heavily.

“You think this has something to do with Sophie?”

“It might. You know what evil men are capable of. You don’t need me to draw you a picture. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I can tell you, men are worse. Far worse. And if this guy is still p.o.’d that Connie got away, there’s no telling what he might do to get even.”

“But why wait seven years?”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“He went to prison for what he did. And the judge really slammed him, because she was a police officer.”

Ethan lowered his head a moment. “When did he get out?”

“About seven months ago.”

“Does Connie know that?”

“I don’t know. Probably. We got a routine notice through the office, because she lives here now.”

“She never mentioned it. She doesn’t even seem worried about that.”

“Then maybe she doesn’t know. Or maybe she thinks she covered her tracks well enough. She changed her last name, for one thing, after she got here. The post office has long since stopped making forwarding addresses available to the general public because of the danger. It may not have entered her head that after all this time he might come after her.”

“And maybe he hasn’t.”

Micah nodded. “Maybe he hasn’t. But I’ll tell you, Ethan, I don’t like that this guy knew Sophie’s name. And I don’t like that she disappeared today.”

“Just briefly.”

“Briefly is too long, under the circumstances.”

Ethan sipped his coffee, thinking, reordering the pieces of the puzzle he’d been working with. “Okay. That helps.”

“Maybe.” Micah straightened and sipped his own coffee. “So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.”

The question couldn’t have been unexpected. Indeed, it wasn’t. But Ethan had learned to compartmentalize his life in units he could handle. After a minute or so, he replied, “I think you know.”

Micah waited, then nodded. “I guess I do. The hard part is figuring out how to forgive yourself.”

Those words struck a chord in Ethan, seeming to crystallize a whole bunch of emotional and mental baggage. “Yeah. Have you?”

“There comes a point,” Micah said slowly, “where you realize that the past is past. I’m not saying all of it was right, or even that any of it was right—or, for that matter, wrong—but it’s the past, and you can’t change it. So what you do, what you have to do, is understand that all that matters now is how you live today. If you’re looking for atonement, that’s the only kind you’ll find. And the only way to get rid of nightmares is to build new dreams.” Then he said, “I’m glad you came looking for me, son.”

At that, Ethan smiled. “So am I.”

Chapter 9

It was Friday evening, so one of Julia’s friends picked her up for their usual “girls’ night.” Julia and her friends would dine at one or another’s house, then go to a movie or play cards. Connie found it hard now to believe that once she had worried that her mother’s confinement to a wheelchair would turn her into a shut-in.

Ethan and Micah made their appearance rather later than she expected. Sophie and she had already dined, and Sophie had vanished into her room with her cell phone. The ticker in Connie’s head was already making her wonder if she’d bought enough minutes on her cell plan.

But all that faded to insignificance when the two men arrived.

“Sorry we’re late,” Micah said. “We went to do a little nosing around.”

“Did you find anything?

“Unfortunately, no.”

They gravitated to the kitchen table with their coffee, as far out of Sophie’s hearing as they could get.

Connie, her nerves already shredded by Sophie’s behavior after school, asked, “What did you mean by ‘Little Miss Lost’?”

The men exchanged glances.

“I lost sight of her,” Ethan said. “I was watching the kids come out of school, waiting for her. She came out with her friends. I moved farther down the street, trying not to be too obvious, and the next thing I knew, she wasn’t there.”

Connie bit out a word she rarely used.

“Exactly,” said Ethan. “So I started looking. I found Micah, and we fanned out. She couldn’t have been out of sight more than a minute or two, Connie. Honestly. Then I saw her walking alone along a different street toward home. I followed at a distance until she ran into you.”

Connie nodded, aware that she was about to begin shaking. “She lied to me. She said she didn’t know where her friends went.”

“A kid’s lie,” Micah said. “Whatever happened in those couple of minutes, she probably did lose sight of her friends. You know, it might be nothing at all. She might have chased a squirrel, seen a dog.” He shook his head. “It’s obvious nothing happened to her.”

“Except she’s not telling me something.”

“Maybe she’s embarrassed because she didn’t follow instructions, even scared because she lost sight of her friends.”

Connie put her face in her hands, weary, worried and unsure. “I wish I could believe that.”

A hand settled on her shoulder. Ethan’s. The touch zapped her like electricity, almost painful in its intensity. Then the hand lifted, and she was once again alone in her own miserable little universe.

She raised her head, looking at them. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t do this again. Thank God it’s the weekend.”

Micah spoke. “Raising kids is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Somehow you have to protect them without being overprotective. You need to warn them about dangers without making them scared of their own shadows. Connie, Sophie was just being a kid. They feel safer than they probably should, but you shouldn’t want to take that away from them.”

“I don’t want to. It’s just that...a few days ago she came through that door terrified because some stranger had tried to talk to her and called her by name. And then today...”

“Today the threat is in the past,” Ethan said.

“Yeah,” Micah agreed. “Eons ago in her mind. A week is a long time when you’re seven. The whole world changes. So maybe what she did today was just some healthy hijinks. Kicking up the traces a bit. The point is, she’s okay, and we’ll watch more closely.”

Connie nodded and managed a smile. “Sorry, guys. I’m not usually such a mess.”

“You’re not usually worried about your daughter.” Micah stood, stretching a bit. “I need to get back to my family. You’ll be okay with Ethan, Connie.”

“I know.”

Micah smiled. “Even bad things can sometimes bring about good.”