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

She did.

She had devised all the rules for her current life, maybe in reaction to her complete lack of control in her relationship with Leo. Maybe now she felt she had to control everything.

Talk about an impossibility! Apparently she couldn’t even protect her own daughter.

The phone beside her bed rang, and she reached for it, expecting to hear Sophie’s voice bubbling over with giggles about how much fun they were having.

Instead, she heard a chilling voice.

“She’s a beautiful child, Connie.”

Her veins turned to ice as she slammed the phone down on the cradle. No! No!

Then she screamed.

“Ethan!”

* * *

Ethan bounded up the stairs three at a time and burst into Connie’s room. In the flickering light from her television, she was pulling frantically at the phone cord, trying to yank it out of the wall.

“Connie?”

“It was him,” she sobbed. “It was him!”

“Who?”

“The man who wants Sophie. He said she’s a beautiful child. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God...”

Ethan crossed the room and took her into his arms, at once confining her gently and supporting her. “Shh... Shh...”

“He called. Oh, God, he called! Sophie...” She began shoving against Ethan, trying to escape. “I have to call and see if she’s all right. Sophie... Oh, my God...”

“Shh,” he said more sharply. “I’m here, and I’ll help. Is the phone still plugged in?”

“I don’t know. Oh, God...”

He lifted the receiver and heard the dial tone. “What’s the number?”

She managed to gasp it out, then grabbed the receiver as he dialed for her.

“Hi,” said the cheerful voice of Jody’s mom, Enid.

“Enid, this is Connie. A man just called. Is Sophie okay?”

“She’s okay, Connie. My God, she’s okay. She’s right here with the other girls, eating popcorn and watching The Little Mermaid. Are you sure it was the guy?”

At that, Connie collapsed onto the edge of her bed and began sobbing. “He talked about Sophie. He said she was beautiful.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Enid said, her voice taut with concern and an echo of Connie’s fear. “I won’t let her out of my sight. John’s here, too, and he’s keeping an eye on them. And between you and me, he’s loaded for bear. But...would you feel better if you took her home?”

“No!” Somehow the idea of bringing Sophie here right after that man had called was even more terrifying. “No. She’s probably safer there. I’ll call Gage and let him know what happened. Don’t be surprised if you see a deputy out front.”

“Good. That was my next suggestion. Now, you’re sure you’re okay if she stays here?”

Connie forced herself to breathe. “I’m okay with it. He called here. Maybe he doesn’t know she’s there.”

“No reason he should, unless he has a better intelligence network than the CIA. Which probably isn’t saying much. We’re not letting the girls out of the house, and John has already said he’s staying up all night to keep an eye on them. Not that I expect either of us will sleep, anyway. The girls are having too much fun.”

“Okay,” Connie said shakily. “Okay. I just had to be sure.”

“Of course you did,” Enid said comfortingly. “My God, I’ve been scared to death ever since the guy talked to the girls. I just sound like I’m calm. Look, I’ll call you again in an hour or so if you want. I can keep you posted all night.”

“Oh, Enid, that’s too much!”

“No, it isn’t,” Enid said firmly. “I know how I’d be feeling in your shoes. I’ll give you updates. But don’t get worried if I’m a little late, because these girls are keeping me busy. Now they want brownies. Good thing I like to bake.”

Connie managed a choked little laugh. “You’re a good woman, Enid. An angel.”

“Nah. I’m just a mom. You hang in there. John and I are on guard.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“You’d do the same for me. Now relax and try not to climb the walls.”

Connie’s hand shook as she replaced the receiver. Ethan stood not a foot away, waiting. “Everything’s okay,” she said.

“Good.” He squatted to her eye level, an exotic, mysterious-looking man with eyes nearly as dark as midnight, yet strangely comforting. “Tell me everything he said.”

“That was all. He said Sophie was a beautiful child.”

“Okay, then let’s think about why he would call.”

She realized he was trying to get her to think like a police officer, instead of a mother. And he was right. She needed all her wits about her. “To scare me. To let me know the threat is still there.”

“That would be my guess. So what does that mean? It sure won’t make it any easier for him to get to Sophie, will it?”

Her eyes felt full of glue, hot and burning, as she met his gaze. “No,” she whispered. “It’ll make it harder.”

“So maybe we need to think about what that means.”

She nodded slowly. “I’ve got to call Gage.”

He waited while she did, and Gage promised to dispatch some officers to Enid and John’s house to keep an eye out. He also wanted to place one at Connie’s, but she told him no. “Just watch the kids, Gage. I’m a deputy, too, remember. I’ll take care of myself.”

When she hung up, Ethan still stood there. Then he asked, “Want to come downstairs for coffee or something? Or are you better here?”

“I need to move.”

“Let’s go, then.”

He led the way downstairs. She carried a robe with her, but it was too warm to put on. Nor did she care in the least that she was in a nightshirt. Trivialities no longer existed for her.

Surprisingly, the homey scent of coffee brewing helped pull her back from the precipice of a breakdown. Rationality began to reassert itself. Gradually her breathing slowed and her heart calmed. Ethan sat beside her, close enough to reach for her if she needed comforting, but far enough not to crowd her. No reason that should surprise her. He’d probably dealt with more terror and horror in a few years than most people did in a lifetime.

“He’s after me,” she said presently.

“In what way?” The question, however, seemed to suggest that he had an idea.

“He wants me scared. He’s trying to get to me.”

“I agree. Right now it seems that way. Can you handle it?”

“Him scaring me? Only if Sophie isn’t at risk.”

Ethan nodded “You’re a strong woman. If we could be certain he intends Sophie no harm, that would be the end of it.”

“But there’s no way to know!”

“That’s the devil of it. I won’t kid you, Connie. This is the worst-possible kind of threat.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, in Afghanistan, we might meet a group of village chieftains who claimed to be all gung-ho for getting rid of al Qaeda and the Taliban, then the next day we’d drive into their village to provide medical care or help rebuild a school, and get attacked. When you don’t know where the threat is coming from, or exactly what it’s going to be, your options are a mess.”

“Yeah.” She stared down at the oilcloth-covered table, her hands knotting together until they hurt. “I don’t know how to handle this.”

“That’s what I meant. Is Sophie the target? Are you the target? Are you both the target? What do we most need to guard against?”

“I wish I knew.”

“What did this guy sound like?”

“Distant, almost. But there was something else in his tone. I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Anything familiar? Any recognition?”

“Maybe. Maybe so.” But every ounce of her being recoiled at the thought that she might know this creep. She didn’t want to believe it possible that someone like that could have crawled into the most distant periphery of her life.

“Okay.” He rose and went to get them both coffee.

Connie cradled her mug, but made no attempt to drink. She felt cold, so very cold. The kind of cold no amount of heat could dissipate.

As if he sensed it, Ethan reached for the robe she’d thrown over the back of a chair and draped it over her shoulders. It actually helped a little.

“Connie, who might want to get at you both?”

Everything inside her turned glacial: cold, hard and ready to crack. She whispered, “Leo.”

He remained silent, waiting.

Slowly she turned her head to look at him. “Ethan, he got out of jail several months back. But I’ve changed my name. There’s no reason he should have found me.”

“Did he know about your uncle living here?”

“God...” She tipped her head back, closing her eyes, loosing a long, despairing sigh. “I didn’t think so. I mean, Uncle Nate and I were never that close until I moved here. Leo knew I had family in Wyoming, but I’m pretty sure I never mentioned Nate or Conard County. Leo wasn’t the kind of guy to be interested in that stuff, and my maiden name was different. It never occurred to me that he could make a link.” She shook her head almost violently. “Damn, I’m stupid. I guess I need to pack up and leave again.”

“Not so hasty, there. First of all, you’re surrounded by people who want to protect you here. Second, you’ve got to face the bastard and deal with him.”

“I dealt with him once before! Do you know how hard it was to go into a courtroom and describe what he did to me? What I let him do to me?”

“You know better than that. You weren’t responsible for what he did for you. I don’t need to be a shrink to understand how domestic violence works, to understand how helpless and vulnerable it leaves a woman. He tried to blame you for it, but you know better than that, Connie. Or you should. It wasn’t your fault.”

“That’s what everyone says. But I still have to live with the fact that I didn’t leave sooner. That I let it go on so long.”

“If it were easy to get out of those situations, they wouldn’t exist. You get undermined before you know it. And those bastards are really good at making you feel responsible for what they do.”

She looked at him. “How do you know so much?”

“Because I’ve seen it happen. Because I’ve talked about it with other guys. The military has a lot of domestic-abuse counselors. One of them was a friend of mine. He explained it all to me.”

“Okay, so you know the mechanics. But then there are the feelings.”

“Trust me, I know about those, too. Maybe you aren’t ready to make peace with the fact that you were skillfully manipulated and brainwashed. I can understand that. I’m having problems of my own. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was responsible, not you.” He leaned toward her, his eyes burning. “And you are not responsible for what is happening now.”

“I feel responsible!”

“So? That doesn’t make it true. You didn’t ask for this. You did everything you could to avoid it. Now it’s here, and we’re going to deal with it so you can have the life you deserve.”

Something in his expression made her shiver. “You wouldn’t...”

“Yeah, I’m a trained killer,” he said bitterly. “But generally I don’t kill unless I have to. I don’t just get up on Saturday morning and decide it would be a good day for a murder.”

“I didn’t mean that!”

“Maybe not.”

“You know damn well I didn’t. And frankly, if it’s Leo terrorizing me and my daughter, I might kill him before you get a chance!”

They glared at each other across twelve inches of space, nerves and wounds so raw in both of them that it didn’t matter if they were reacting rationally.

Right then and there everything hurt too much to make sense of it.

Then, without warning, something inside Connie shifted. All of a sudden she felt the hysterical urge to giggle. The laugh started bubbling out of her, totally random, totally without reason, and then, only God knew why, she said, “Make love not war.”

His jaw dropped a half inch and his eyes widened; then, just as helplessly, he started laughing, too.

“Where did that come from?” he asked, breathless.

“I don’t know!” She couldn’t stop laughing. “Where did any of this come from?”

Laughter existed only a millimeter from tears, just as hate was the flip side of love. The strongest emotions occupied the same realms, basic and primal, entangled beyond extrication.

Tears began to stream down Connie’s cheeks, and she felt the crash coming. A pit yawned before her, and she didn’t know how to step back from it.

But Ethan knew his way around these emotional pitfalls, maybe because he’d survived so many, presenting a stony facade to the world when everything inside him began to crack.

He reached for her, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping her in his strength, pressing her face to his shoulder. She fit as if the space had been created for her.

Staring over her head at the ordinary sights of a kitchen, he saw, instead, distant landscapes, horrible anguish and suffering.

Life could be such a bitch.

But he knew one thing for certain: if he never did another thing with his life, he was going to make this woman and her child safe from this creep.

It was as solemn a vow as any he’d ever taken, filling his heart, touching his soul, giving back purpose and meaning where they had been stripped away.

No matter what it took.

Chapter 12

Connie’s laughter had given way to tears, but copious though they were, they fell silently, as if her body were too exhausted to do more than weep. The shoulder of his shirt grew damp, then sopping, as Ethan continued to hold her.

Calm returned slowly, finding its way back one quiet step at a time. Finally Connie lifted a hand and wiped her cheeks. “Sorry.”

“No need.” He didn’t want to let go of her. He wanted to keep her right where she was, as if it were the only way he could protect her. And maybe himself.

Nor did she seem eager to escape his embrace. She rested against him, within the circle of his arms, as if she had found a measure of peace at last.

That wouldn’t remain. It never did. But for now, neither of them risked disturbing it.

Reality had its own rules, however, and at last, with a sigh, Connie slid from his lap and back into her own chair. She reached for her coffee, found it cold and went to get a fresh cup.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“If you can’t hunker down with your friends in a firefight, when can you?”

“That’s an interesting analogy.” She returned to her seat and sipped the coffee.

“This situation qualifies.”

“I guess it does.” She shook her head, as if trying to wipe away a thought, then looked at him with a pallid smile. “I usually cope better.”

“With something like this? I suppose you have a whole lot of experience with this kind of thing?”

At that, her smile broadened a shade. “No, I guess I don’t. If Sophie weren’t involved... But why even think about it? She is involved. That’s what’s killing me.”

“Of course it is. Most of us worry less about ourselves than we do about those we care for.”

“You’re right.” A shiver passed through her—a release of tension, he guessed. “Time to stop being hysterical and start thinking.”

He nodded when she looked at him, waiting to hear what she had to say.

“I’m going to start by calling Enid and telling her she doesn’t have to call me on and off all night as long as everything is okay. Because I’m damned if I’m going to answer the phone again.”

“I could answer for you.”

“No. I don’t want to give the creep the satisfaction.” Rising, she went to the wall phone and dialed Enid’s number. In the background, mayhem still reigned.

“Okay,” Enid said. “If you’re sure. These girls are so wound up, I can guarantee you they won’t crash before dawn. And the cops keep prowling around. I think they’re making me more nervous.”

“I appreciate everything, Enid. I really do. But I need to start focusing on why this guy called me and what I should do about it, and honestly, I’d rather not be answering the phone tonight.”

“I can see why, honey. Don’t give the crud the satisfaction. And if you get concerned, just call. Like I said, we’re going to be up all night.”

When Connie hung up, she returned to her seat and her coffee. “It’s got to be Leo,” she announced.

“That’s my guess.”

“No one else would want to scare both Sophie and me.”

“You think he just wants to scare you?”

“Him? I don’t know. In the end, guys like him often turn out to be bullies who can’t stand up against any show of strength.”

Ethan nodded. “Did he say anything threatening at all?”

“No. Just that Sophie was a beautiful child.”

“Could he have any other motive?”

“Why would he? He kicked me in the stomach when I was pregnant. Does that sound like a man who wants his child?”

“That sounds like a man who feels threatened.”

“Exactly. And maybe now he’s angry because I sent him to prison. But I’m not the woman he used to kick around.”

“I’m sure you’re not.”

She looked at Ethan, determination in every line of her. “If it’s Leo, we could put his photo out there. At least among the deputies.”

“How sure are you?”

She paused thoughtfully. Finally she said, “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but close to it. He only said one thing, which didn’t give me much to go on, considering how shocked I was. It was like I lost all sense for a few minutes there.”

“Hardly surprising.”

“Yeah.” Then she astonished him by taking his hand and holding it. “You’re a godsend, Ethan.”

“No. Just a guy who happened to be in the right place when needed.”

Her smile was pinched. “I think you have a worse self-image than I do. And it’s not right. I can tell what a good man you are. Yeah, you did some awful things, but you didn’t do them alone. You did them because I and every other person in this country asked them of you.”

“I don’t—”

“Shh,” she said gently. “It’s true. You were in the service. You got your orders from this country, and you went. If there’s any guilt in what you did, we all share it. All of us. We can’t claim lily-white hands because we didn’t put on a uniform. Not in this country.”

He didn’t respond, seeming to lack the words.

“You know it’s true, Ethan. You do the dirty work we ask you to do. Whatever gloss we put on it, however high we hold the flag and however loud we cry the justifications, you and your fellow soldiers are just carrying out our will. Sometimes you’ll be sure it was absolutely right. But I suspect that in all wars the people on the front lines often wind up wondering what they’ve done and what it makes them.”

“Connie—”

“Listen to me. Just remember, when you walk down a street, that you didn’t do a damn thing all the rest of us walking those same streets didn’t ask of you. Didn’t send you there to do.”

Her grip on his hand had grown vise tight, and he squeezed back. Finally he gave a short, mirthless laugh and said, “I guess this is a night for therapy.”

“Or a night for putting things into perspective. You tried to help me see I wasn’t responsible for what Leo did. Well, you need to understand that just because you were the tip of the spear doesn’t make you any more responsible than the rest of us, the spear throwers.”

For a few moments he seemed about to argue with her, but then tension seeped from him. Before she knew what to expect, she was swept up into his arms and being carried up the stairs as if she weighed nothing at all.

She didn’t make a sound, didn’t offer a protest. How could she? Nothing had ever felt so right as being in his arms.

He carried her into her darkened bedroom, where the TV still flickered, and laid her on her bed. Then he stretched out beside her, fully clothed, and pulled her close, as if he wanted their bodies to melt together. She managed to wrap one arm around him, feeling the breadth and strength of his back. Feeling the wonder of him in every cell of her being.

“This’ll sound crazy,” he said huskily.

“Tell me.”

“You just said something to me that made more sense than anything anyone’s said in a long time—except for something Micah said the other day.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me the past was past, that if I wanted atonement, I had to find it in today. And that if I had nightmares, I had to build new dreams.”

She drew a sharp breath. “That’s so true! So beautiful. Oh, Ethan, I need to remember that, too.”

“I know. We’re not so very different, in some ways.”

“No, we’re not.” She tightened her hold on him. “When was the last time someone told you how beautiful you are?”

“Me?” He gave an embarrassed laugh.

“You,” she repeated. “Not just the way you look, although you probably have no idea what a handsome man you are, but in other ways. The first night you spent here, I felt something about you, something in the air around you. You were saying something about having studied shamanism and being a bit of a mystic. I don’t remember exactly. I just know I could feel it all around you, as if you’re a special spirit.”

“Not me. I’m an ordinary man.”

“No, you’re more than that.” She sighed and shifted so that her head was cradled comfortably on his shoulder. “I used to think we were beings of light unwillingly tethered to the ground.”

“And now?”

“I still think we’re beings of light, but we aren’t tethered unwillingly.”

“No?”

She tilted her head so she could see his face. “No,” she repeated. “We came here for this. For something beautiful we can experience no other way. Holding and being held. Comforting and being comforted. Skin touching skin across the abyss of seeming separateness.”

He closed his eyes as if absorbing her words. “You should try poetry.”

“Not me. It’s just what I feel sometimes. Transcendence through our very limitations. Tell me you haven’t felt it.”

He nodded slowly. “Rarely,” he said presently. “Too rarely. But yes, I’ve felt it.”

“These are the moments we exist for, Ethan.”

He cradled her even closer, if that was possible, and rocked her gently. The motion was soothing, seeming to lift her to another level.

This wasn’t possible, she warned herself, but the warning seemed distant and faint. She knew she would never trust fully again, and she knew that Ethan would undoubtedly move on until he found a life that suited him. They were too wounded to build anything between them.

So if she gave in to the longings building in her, it would be for a night. A single night. There would be no future in it.

Oddly, that seemed to free her. It banished all the fears from her marriage that had been holding her back. There was nothing to fear here, because this wouldn’t be a commitment. Nothing to upset her carefully established balance.

In Ethan’s arms, she felt herself grow weightless, as if she were rising to the heavens, above it all, safe from it all. Magic surrounded her, sheltered her, filled her.

She hardly felt herself move as she turned her face up, seeking his kiss.

When it came, gentleness came with it, a tender touching of lips that spoke not of hunger but a different kind of need, a more important one.

She responded in kind, shedding her shell, reveling in the freedom to just experience and share. Savoring the deep sense of safety that must have been coming from him, because it surely didn’t come from her.

He began to stoke her back, firmly but gently, shoulder to small of back, over and over until she understood why cats purr. A soft moan escaped her, saying all that words couldn’t.

Slowly his hand slipped lower, pressing her rounded bottom and bringing her into the cradle of his hips. Now she could feel his need, too, as well as her own, and the feeling was so good, so good...

She had never known a man could be so hard all over, nor that his hardness against her softness could be so enticing. Every inch of Ethan had been honed for action, and awareness of that carried her to some elemental place inside her where nothing existed except man and woman, woman and man. Identity slipped away, succumbing to urges as old as time.

They fit together as if they had been created for this. His kiss grew deeper, and her hips rocked in response, trying to get closer to him, trying to find the answer to her growing ache.