Guarding The Soldier's Secret

She slid forward again.

“You live here?” She dipped her head, indicating the aged trees shading the quiet street ahead, the high walls of houses with intricately carved wood window screens just visible through leafy branches. She waited for acknowledgment that didn’t come, then went on in a conversational tone. “I did a feature here a few years back. These houses are a couple hundred years old, at least, and most of them are owned by Kabul’s oldest families, families that trace back to the days of the Silk Road. How—”

“A friend of a friend,” he said, in a way that stated clearly, And that’s all I’m going to tell you.

She must have made some sound of vexation, because he exhaled through his nose and spoke under his breath. “This isn’t the time. Or the place.” The slight movement of his head recalled her attention to the other pair of ears present.

His eyes met hers and she realized with a small sense of shock that there was anger in them, mirroring her own.

She pushed back into her seat again, silently seething.

He’s angry? He’s angry? He pops in and out of my life—my bed!—without warning, as he pleases, dumps a child on my doorstep, tells me she’s his, then vanishes from the face of the earth for three years, and he’s angry? Really?

In a quick-as-lightning change of mood, fear returned.

Why? What is he angry with me about? It can only be something to do with Laila. Is it the adoption? The fact that I brought her here?

What business is it of his? He has no right—

A panicky shiver rippled through her. Did he have the right? If he was, in fact, Laila’s biological father—and she had only his word on that, after all. That, and those eyes.

Might he have a legal claim to her?

Could he take her away from me?

It was a new question, and it joined the others whirling in her mind.

Out of the maelstrom, once again one coherent thought emerged: I have to hold it together...put on a calm face...for Laila.

* * *

“Here we are,” Akaa Hunt said.

Laila ducked her head to look out the car window. She didn’t know why she felt funny about getting out of the car and going into the house with the carved patterns over the windows, but she did. Not scared, exactly, although she did have butterflies in her stomach and her heart was beating very, very fast. It was more like the way she remembered feeling on her first day in the new school after Yancy became her new mother, because she knew something big and exciting was going to happen and she wasn’t sure whether it would be good or bad.

“It’s okay, honey,” her mother whispered, and Laila nodded and reached for her hand. She felt like she might throw up or wet her pants, but that was so babyish she didn’t want to say so.

Just inside the door, she stopped suddenly and couldn’t keep from making a sound. It wasn’t very loud, but her mother and Akaa Hunt both heard. They stopped and looked at her.

“What is it, sweetie?” her mother asked.

Laila frowned and wrinkled her nose. “I smell something.”

“That would be supper,” Akaa Hunt said. “I hope.”

“It smells delicious,” Laila’s mother said and squeezed her hand in a way that meant remember your manners! “Doesn’t it?”

“It smells like...something I remember,” Laila said and added with a shrug, “but I don’t know exactly what.” She took a deep breath, let go of her mother’s hand and walked into the room. “I remember this, too. We used to sit on pillows when I lived with Ammi, when I was little.”

Behind her she heard her mother let out a breath and laugh a little bit. “Yes, I guess you did,” she said.

But her voice sounded quivery, and Laila wondered if maybe her mother’s stomach had butterflies, too.

* * *

“I think,” Yancy said, taking a deep breath, “Laila and I both could use a bathroom, if you—”

“Of course.” Hunt’s voice and manner were crisply formal. “Just go through there, into the courtyard. Second door down on the left is the women’s quarters. You should find everything you need. If not, let me know and I’ll have Mehri get it for you.”

“Mehri?”

“My housekeeper.”

“Oh—of course. Laila? Shall we wash up before supper?”

Laila looked up at her, then reached for her hand in a way that felt oddly as though she were offering reassurance and guidance to Yancy, rather than the other way around.

In the magnificently tiled bathroom, Yancy watched her daughter slowly and methodically wash her hands, arms and face, carefully rubbing the soap into foam, squishing the foam between her fingers, rubbing it over her forearms...

How silent she is. She should be chattering away, nonstop, asking one question after another, chirping like a little bird...

She cleared her throat. “Honey, how are you doing? Are you okay?”

Laila watched her hands, washing, washing. “Yes,” she said, but it lacked conviction.

“We had a pretty exciting day, didn’t we?” Yancy said carefully, wanting to go to her, wanting to touch her, though something held her back. “When those men...um. When they tried to...” When they tried to...do what? What did they want with us? I still don’t know. She caught another breath. “I was a little scared. Were you scared?”

“Well, I was...” Laila clasped her hands together and appeared to be fascinated by the foam squishing between her interlaced fingers. “But then I saw Akaa Hunt and I wasn’t scared anymore.”

Yancy felt a chill shiver through her. Breathless, she said, “Really? Why not?”

Laila’s shoulders lifted...fell. “Because I knew he would keep us safe. Like always.”

* * *

It was evening, which in recent times had become one of Hunt’s favorite times of the day. In his experience, most bad things seemed to happen at dawn. By nightfall, whatever was going to happen had happened, for better or worse. The world was shutting down, taking a breather. Even the wind stopped for dusk.

There was that, and the fact that lately it had begun to remind him of evenings when he was growing up, when the chores had all been done and the animals were quiet, well fed and bedding themselves down for the night. Dad would be out on the front porch having a smoke and surveying his kingdom while he waited to be called in to supper, and Mom banging things around in the kitchen, and good smells drifting through the windows. He remembered watching his dad and wishing he could be more like him, knowing he wasn’t and never would be as good a man as Charles Grainger, and all he really wanted was to be someplace far, far away from the farm and the whole state of Nebraska.

As an adult he’d worked hard to make sure the wish came true, and he had no regrets. Except maybe that—having no regrets—was something he regretted.

Here in the courtyard in Old Kabul, the air smelled of cooking—the meal they’d just eaten—and of flowers rather than hay or freshly turned earth or manure, and some kind of bird was singing a twilight song in one of the trees. Unlike his father, Hunt didn’t smoke—never had—and they’d already had supper. And the tiny kingdom he surveyed wasn’t his. But he was waiting. Waiting, not to be called in, but maybe—almost certainly—to be called to account.

He’d counted down the minutes before life-and-death missions with less trepidation.

He owed Yancy big-time, he knew, an explanation being the least of it. Explaining the facts wouldn’t be that hard, but he had a feeling “just the facts” wasn’t going to be enough for her, not this time. She was going to want to know what was going on with him, the why of it all, and how was he going to explain that when he wasn’t sure he knew himself. And even if he did know, he wasn’t clear on how much he was willing to tell her. Reticence was a hard habit to break. Knowledge was power, and giving that up to anyone, even the woman raising his child... He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. Or if he ever would be.

That realization made him inexpressibly sad.

The carved door behind him opened and his skin shivered with awareness. He turned and watched without comment as Yancy came into the courtyard from the part of the house that had traditionally been the women’s quarters. She was clutching a shawl around her shoulders. Because of the coolness of the evening, he wondered, or merely a case of nerves?

It surprised him a little that he felt the same purely physical, gut-tightening attraction to her he’d had almost from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her—not during the rescue, naturally, but later, back at the base. Sitting across from her at that table, looking into her eyes, the whole world around him fading away until it was just him and her... He’d known then he’d have her, eventually. He’d never doubted it. Just as he’d never doubted she’d be there whenever he came in off a mission, needing her.

He hadn’t looked too far ahead, back then. Never given much thought to a time when she wouldn’t be there. Then he’d put his daughter in her care, and everything had changed.

He’d thought he knew her pretty well, well enough at least to know she had nerves of steel. Ordinarily. But she’d been silent and withdrawn during the meal—with him, anyway—and he had an idea there was a lot churning around in that red head of hers. Because silence wasn’t a normal state for Yancy Malone.

“She’s asleep,” she said, and he nodded.

She glanced at him as she walked past him, deeper into the shadowed courtyard, where she lifted a hand to touch a blossom hanging from a vine. “It’s nice out here.”

“Yes,” he said, watching her. Waiting.

She turned to fully face him—as if squaring for battle. He couldn’t help but think how beautiful she was with that fierceness about her.

“Dinner was wonderful. Please tell... Mehri, wasn’t it?” He nodded. “Please tell her how much we—Laila and I—enjoyed it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or tasted so many different rice dishes. And the qorma was fabulous. I’m going to have to ask her for the recipe.”

Seriously? It sounded as if she’d rehearsed it.

He answered with a stilted nod. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to share it with you. Afghan people are justifiably proud of their cuisine, as well as their hospitality.”

Her smile flickered and finally went out. Her gaze wandered away from his face and was jerked back, like a restive horse fighting the reins, to meet his, this time with defiance.

“Well?” he said. Gently rather than with impatience.

He heard the slight catch in her breathing. “Well, what?”

“I know you’ve been wanting to ask questions. So—ask.”

Chapter 4

She stared at him a long moment more, and this time when her gaze slid away she didn’t force it back. He saw the muscles in her face flinch and her mouth quirk with an attempt at a smile. As he watched the emotional struggle play across her familiar features, it came to him that this was a Yancy Malone he’d never seen before. Jolted, he realized in all the times he’d shared her bed, as intimately as he’d known the secrets of her body, he’d never once seen her angry. Or wounded. Afraid or sad.

Or if she had been, he’d been too selfishly involved with his own needs to notice.

She shrugged finally and shook her head. But still no words came.

Out of sheer self-preservation, Hunt did what he’d always done when unwanted emotions threatened to pierce his armor. He turned on the charm. He put on a smile, one that was just a bit crooked. “Don’t tell me Yancy Malone doesn’t have questions to ask, because I won’t believe it.”

She made a sound that might have passed for a laugh if the light had been poorer. If he hadn’t been able to see that unfamiliar pain in her face. “I’d think you’d be happy about that.”

“Come on. I always loved your questions.” He paused and added with another wry smile, “It was so much fun to shut you up.”

For Yancy, the unmistakable growl of intimacy in his voice brought a fresh flood of memories... A face, a voice, a body...the sound of a laugh, a remembered look, the shape of a mouth.

Almost in a panic, she thought, But I can’t remember the feel of that body...can’t remember what that mouth tasted like.

Her memories were like recalling a movie or a television show she’d seen. She couldn’t seem to bring them into focus with her own reality or with the man standing before her now.

Strange to think I once shared a bed with this man—more than once. So many times...and yet I don’t think I know him at all.

What was it that was so different about him?

Oh, certainly he looked different, with the full beard, the turban, the Afghan tunic, vest and loose-fitting trousers—though here in the privacy of his home he’d shed the turban and vest. But it was more than that. It was, she realized in a late flash of insight, not what he looked like, but the way she saw him.

When she’d first met him he’d seemed to her like an invincible man-machine, a superhero, a life-size action figure. Later he was her shadow lover who came and went in the night like a ghost. But something had happened since the last time she’d seen him, the night he’d brought Laila to her and then disappeared without a trace.

Something’s changed.

Maybe I’ve changed.

Older now, perhaps wiser, and from the perspective of motherhood, she saw him as a mere human being, a man, one with flaws, one who’d loved a woman, fathered and then abandoned a child.

Though, oddly, he seemed no less imposing because of that.

If anything, even more so.

Yes, definitely more so.

I don’t know how to talk to him now. We never talked much before. Never had to. Meaningless love-words, whispered in the darkness...laughter and sighs...forbidden thoughts and questions never voiced. It was enough then.

Not now, though. Now the reality was, they shared a child. Like it or not, difficult as it might be, she would have to learn new ways to communicate with the man who was her adopted daughter’s biological father.

Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Communicating is what I do.

But it was he who spoke first.

While she was still thinking how to begin, he said hoarsely, “You have to know I never intended to drop her in your lap and—”

“Disappear?” Caught unprepared, she spoke with more bitterness than she’d intended or wanted to. Of course, it’s about Laila. It’s only about Laila. Remember that.

He drew in a sharp breath. “That’s not—”

“But you did,” she said, giving no quarter now that she’d regained her footing, skewering him with her gaze—her interviewer’s stare, the one that demanded answers, that refused to back down. “Didn’t you?”

He nodded, glaring back at her like the warrior he was. “I thought I’d be able to come back for her.”

“But you didn’t. You didn’t send word, leave me instructions, a message, anything.” Not accusing, simply stating facts they both already knew.

“I couldn’t.” He didn’t raise his voice, and it was like stones dropping into a well. “You know what my job is—was—like. The mission was—”

“Secret.” She nodded, smiled painfully. “This is where you tell me you can’t tell me anything, right?”

“I sure as hell couldn’t then,” he snapped.

“Does that mean you can...now?”

“Some things...” he said stiffly. “Maybe...when you’re ready to listen.”

She sucked in a breath and managed to keep a rein on her anger, though what she’d have loved to do more than anything just then was kick him. She managed not to, partly because it occurred to her, with her experience as an Emmy-winning reporter and hard-nosed interviewer of the famous and infamous, that his macho attitude—face set in stone, arms folded on his chest—was more defensive than imposing.

Switching gears, she said quietly, “What did you think I was going to do, Hunt? I had no experience with kids, let alone a traumatized child. I was in no way prepared for...for that. Why did you do it—bring her to me, of all people?”

He coughed, the universal indicator of masculine discomfort. “Well, hell, that’s a no-brainer. I came to you because I knew about that outfit you belong to...that—”

“INCBRO.” And was that all, Hunt? The only reason?

“Right. I knew you could get her to safety through them. I figured I’d come back and find her when I—” He stopped abruptly and ran a hand over his face and beard, a gesture of distraction she wouldn’t have thought him capable of—the Hunt she’d known, the superhero warrior. “That’s not— Look, you were the only person I could think of. That I could trust.” And then, in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, he whispered, “I sure as hell never thought you were going to adopt her.”

She didn’t answer for a moment—her mind was too busy throwing up barricades and battening down hatches. Keep your distance, Malone... Don’t let your own emotions get in the way. Your job is to get him to reveal his. And his intentions. Is he going to try to take her away from me?

But in that small silence Hunt must have seen an opening, and he took it.

“Okay, Yankee. What made you do it?”

It was her turn to suck in a breath—she hadn’t expected him to turn it around on her. At least, not so soon.

Hoping to buy herself some time, she said sharply, “Do it? You mean, adopt her? What kind of question is that? Why does anyone adopt a child? Because—”

“Usually because they want one very badly,” Hunt said, and though his eyes were hidden now by the deepening dusk, she could hear the steel in his voice. And the disbelief. “You said it yourself—you hadn’t had any experience with kids until I dropped one in your lap. It never occurred to me you’d suddenly develop motherhood instincts. I thought you’d get her to safety through that child-bride rescue outfit you work with. I figured you’d—”

“Pass her off like a hot potato? A traumatized little girl?” Again her voice came sharper and louder than she’d planned, partly because the words he’d spoken hit so close to the mark.

Motherhood instincts? I was terrified, Hunt. Bullets flying past my ears never scared me so much as those shimmering golden eyes gazing up into mine. And when a tear detached itself from the shimmer and slid away down her cheek... I didn’t have a clue what to do. I remember kneeling down...putting my arms around her...feeling her body trembling. She was trying so hard not to cry. I think I picked her up then. I must have, because I woke up on my cot with her wrapped in my arms, sound asleep.

She paused, then went on in a half whisper. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I don’t really know that,” he said, matching his voice to hers. “Do I?”

“You know a whole lot more about me than I do about you.” She threw that at him, tight and quivering with emotions, three years’ worth of fear and uncertainty and unanswered questions. “I live my life in the public eye. You live yours in the shadows. You’re a...a—”

“Ghost?” A single word, spoken softly in the darkness.

Her chest constricted with the pain of remembering. She gave a helpless whimper of a laugh and turned away from him.

His voice followed her. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

She shook her head and looked up at the night sky, where the stars were veiled by the lights of the city, as they were in New York and Los Angeles and all the other cities where she lived most of the time. Starry nights were one of the things she missed now that she was no longer reporting from remote battlefields.

“Why did I keep her with me and not hand her off to some stranger?” She paused, then took a careful breath and answered truthfully. “At first, I guess it was because she seemed so...lost. So scared. So wounded.” She has your eyes. Did you know that? I know it’s not unusual for Afghans to have light-colored eyes...blue or green or hazel eyes. But Laila’s eyes are your eyes. “The way she looked at me...as if she trusted me.”

“I told her she could.”

How different his voice sounded. Did she only imagine it was emotion she heard? Or was she projecting her own inner turmoil onto him? Surely the Hunt Grainger she knew would never allow himself to be caught in such an unguarded moment.

But then, I really don’t know him at all.

If only I could see his face, she thought, then remembered, The same darkness protects us both.

“And was that it?” His voice was relentless. Implacable. “Just...she looked scared? So you decided to take on the responsibility of raising a child? Come on, Yancy.”

He’d had enough interrogation experience to know when someone was lying to him. Or being evasive, at least.

He knew he’d cornered her, so he wasn’t surprised when she jerked around to face him, squaring off again, obviously angry, struggling to find the right words. Which was pretty amazing, considering words were ordinarily her best weapons of choice.

The qualities of the night hadn’t outwardly changed—the same soft darkness, the sound of trickling water from a fountain in a neighboring garden set against the far-off percussion of city traffic—but the courtyard was no longer peaceful. Now it seemed more like a battlefield, crackling and humming with tension.

“Obviously, Laila isn’t—wasn’t—just any child.” Yancy’s voice was infused with the same tension that filled the air around them. “And even if she was, we don’t simply pass them along, like...like shipping off a package on a train. Every case is different, and we always try to do what’s best for the child. Sometimes that means educating the family, even paying a bride-price or school tuition so the child can stay with her parents. We only take a child away if she’s an orphan or in immediate danger.”

“She was—I told you that.”

“In danger, yes. But not an orphan, not entirely. She had a father, someone she knew.” She paused, and there was accusation in the silence. Then, in a breaking voice, she said, “I thought she had you.”

“So, you kept her because she was mine?” It took some doing, but he managed to keep any trace of emotion out of his voice.

“Of course I did,” she lashed back, then caught a breath that suggested she might not have wanted to admit that. After a moment, she said on the exhalation, “She was yours—you’d told me that—so naturally I assumed you’d be coming back for her.” Again she paused, and this time when she went on it was in her reporter’s voice, vibrant with controlled passion. “Which I thought would be a few days. Then a few weeks. But you didn’t come back, and after a whole year had gone by, I thought you must be dead. Surely you were dead, because, I thought, how could any man abandon his own child without one word?”

Or me! The thought intruded, slipped past her defenses. How could you abandon me?

She rushed on before he could respond. “Anyway, by that time I’d grown so attached—” She shook her head as if throwing that word away. “Okay, I’d fallen in love with her. It’s not hard to do, you know. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. So I started the process of adopting her. It wasn’t easy, but I’m in a unique position to get some strings pulled and cut through a lot of red tape. The adoption was final six months ago. She’s my child, Hunt. My daughter.”

“Did you even try to get in touch with me?”

She gave a huff of laughter. “Seriously? I’m a reporter, remember? I called in every favor, accessed every contact I had. Brick walls. Everywhere I turned, the story was the same. You’d been killed in action. The rest was classified. They wouldn’t even give me your family’s location so I could tell your parents they had a granddaughter. I thought— Never mind what I thought! Why am I answering your questions? You’re the one who owes me an explanation. A hundred explanations.”

The words seemed to ring in the quiet courtyard, like the after-humming of a struck gong. He listened, and it seemed as though he could feel the vibrations in his own chest. A hundred explanations. Yes. And it still wouldn’t be enough.

“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

She uttered a high sound, too sharp to be laughter. “Is that all? Seriously? Even now? Just...I’m sorry?”