Calculated Vendetta

“Travis called Lucas.” Casey sighed. She should have known without asking. Kristin’s fiancé, Lucas Murphy, was platoon sergeant in the same company as Travis. They’d been close friends for years. It shouldn’t surprise her Travis had contacted his best friend, who’d turned right around and contacted hers. After all, they’d met through the other couple, and although Casey had managed to avoid Travis for months, her days of avoiding him had likely run out.

“I never understood why the two of you didn’t work out.”

“You’d have to ask him.” While Casey appreciated Kristin trying to change the subject, she’d a thousand times rather talk about the mugging than her nonexistent relationship with Travis Heath. He’d been fun, had made her laugh, had been a perfect gentleman. Then one day, he was simply gone. The thought of his departure still burned bitter. “So how’s the wedding planning coming along?”

Kristin’s lips tightened into a thin line. Clearly, she didn’t want to change the subject.

Getting engaged had softened her hard edges so much that she now thought the rest of the world should pair up, too. Even though it had been months since Travis quit their relationship, Kristin still held out hope her best friend and Lucas’s best friend would somehow form their own happy little family. She sighed. “Wedding planning is good. We’re going for simple. Small. You don’t come around enough anymore.”

So they were back to that. Well, she didn’t like being the third wheel. “Busy. And you ought not to be here. You should be out with Lucas, cuddling in a coffee shop or running a marathon or something.”

“I don’t cuddle in public, and we ran this morning.” Kristin laughed, the sound a bright light in the apartment that suddenly seemed dim. “Besides, it’s past midnight. Lucas better be at his house sound asleep.”

“And you should be at your house sound asleep, too.”

“I’ve got better things to do.” Reaching across the small gap between them, Kristin aimed a finger at Casey. “Like it or not, it’s a good thing Travis was with you. If the guy had a gun, he was serious.”

A shudder quivered Casey’s insides as she pictured the tense posture of the man who’d aimed that pistol. How much different would her night be right now if Travis hadn’t insisted on being a gentleman? She could have lost more than her laptop.

“I knew it would hit you.” Sliding closer, Kristin leaned her shoulder against Casey’s. Kristin had never been a touchy-feely person, but she knew how to help carry a load, especially since she’d found Lucas and Jesus. The change had taken some getting used to, but her friend was definitely happier now than she had been in previous years.

“I can’t stop the video.” Casey’s voice quavered, but she didn’t care. Let Kristin hear it. She was safe here. “I fought Travis on walking me to my car. If he’d listened to me and backed off...”

“But he didn’t. You’re right here, safe in your own apartment.”

Leave it to Kristin to hit her with a truth she couldn’t deny. Casey shoved aside the what-ifs. It was better to focus on the actuallys, which were a little bit easier to handle. “He took my laptop.”

“You mean your right arm?” Thankfully, Kristin followed her down the rabbit trail away from nightmares. “You had a backup, I hope.”

“I have my old machine to use until I can buy another, and everything is backed up on an external disk and in the cloud, but it’s still a pain. It’ll take a whole day to sort everything out and put it all together again.”

“Well, before you do that, you ought to spend some time out on your great-grandfather’s farm with your bow.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” It would feel good to pull back the string and let fly at a few targets. Really good. Load the fear and the stress into the tension of the string then release it forever.

It was a nice dream, but there was too much work to do. “Can’t. I’m wrapping up an interview with John Winslow tomorrow, and I have one with another guy the day after tomorrow.” No need to discuss John’s behavior tonight. She hadn’t even told Kristin there was a dinner. Confessing would bring too many questions Casey didn’t know how to answer.

She’d met John a year earlier, when she was writing an article about substance abuse among army veterans. He’d introduced her to a few other sources, and one of them had suggested the article she was working on now. When she’d contacted him again about discussing a mission he’d been on a few years ago, he’d been interested in everything she had to say, asking questions and talking for hours when they met for their first interview two days ago. He’d been the one to ask her to meet him for dinner instead of at her office, so the water was a little muddy when it came to what to call tonight. Especially since he kept disappearing with his phone, more distracted every time he returned to the table until she’d cut him loose.

“At least you won’t have to restart your story.”

“Thankfully.” Casey had already conducted interviews with two soldiers and had several more in-person and telephone interviews lined up... All except the one she’d rather not schedule at all. If she’d lost all her work, had lost her contacts or her calendar... She let her eyes drift shut, focusing on the averted technology disaster over the averted physical one. “The laptop’s locked, so everything’s safe, but still, the idea somebody has my stuff...”

“It’s violating. I know. I felt the same way when someone broke into my car and stole my keys last year. Even after I changed the locks, it still felt like somebody was creeping around in the dark corners of my house.”

“Well, they were.”

“Yeah, but—”

On the coffee table, Casey’s phone vibrated on the glass. Kristin reached for it and glanced at the screen, then turned it toward Casey. “Travis is calling you.”

“Let it ring.” Right now, she was too vulnerable, too willing to let her fear and overwrought emotions fool her into thinking he was the one who got away, that everything would be so much better if she had him beside her right now, holding her close while she leaned on his strong shoulder the way he’d let her at the crime scene.

Kristin dropped the phone onto the coffee table with a clatter. “If you don’t answer, he’s coming over here. You know how he is. He was worried enough when he called Lucas.”

“Text him and tell him you’re here and all is well.”

“Casey...”

“Just do it. I can’t talk to him right now.”

Kristin fired off a text, clearly irritated, then shoved the device onto the table beside Casey’s. “He’s a good guy. No matter what’s happened between you in the past, you owe him a thank-you for being there tonight.”

Casey begged to differ about him being a good guy, but yeah, she did owe him a thank-you for being a hero if nothing else. But when it came to forgiving him? It would take a whole lot more than him playing superhero.

* * *

Travis dropped his cell phone to the desk and stared out the window at the small strip of trees standing guard behind his apartment building. He missed the beach, the deep darkness over water where the only light came from the moon and stars. Living in a landlocked town might allow him to be close to post, but it didn’t give him a whole lot of opportunities to indulge his appreciation for nature.

He should have joined the navy, then he’d have had all the water he ever wanted. Whole oceans of it.

But he wouldn’t have been in place to help Lucas when he stared down danger in February. And he wouldn’t have been in place tonight to save Casey Jordan from a man who may have wanted money or something more. He still wasn’t sure which. All he could see when he closed his eyes was the gun, pointed unwaveringly at both of them.

He’d seen the aftermath of violence before. Had watched a good soldier and a better friend take the hit right in front of him, an image that overlaid tonight’s near-tragedy in rivers of blood. Sergeant Neil Aiken had been one of the best, and he’d died right in front of Travis, leaving a wife and two little ones behind to face the world without him.

And he’d still be here today if it hadn’t been for Travis’s foolish mistake.

Travis’s arms still bore scars from the shrapnel, but he’d survived. Had he been at the head of his team like he should have been, he’d have been the one to plant a boot in the wrong place.

Pulse pounding, Travis jerked the cord on the blinds and shut out the world. In a couple of weeks, he’d pack his bags and go to selection, then on to training for the Special Missions Unit that would take him far away from here.

And far away from Casey Jordan. For a few months with her, he’d let himself believe he could hold her close without getting attached. Then one day, the danger of such a belief hit him from the left. He’d been at her apartment, sitting on the couch with her snuggled beside him, watching some silly rom-com, his fingers toying with the ends of her hair... In the perfect peace of the moment, he’d known a depth of emotion he’d never felt before. It quaked something inside him, and when he’d kissed her goodbye he’d felt a kind of desperate, indefinable something that made him want to cling to her forever.

That night, his nightmares had amped their intensity, walking him again and again through the horrible day he’d been injured and Neil Aiken had died. He’d paced the floor in a desperate blend of guilt and fear that had made him want to claw at his own skin. He couldn’t love a woman like Casey. Couldn’t let her take over his life. He had too much to pay for sending one of his men ahead of him to die.

The next morning he’d texted Casey to tell her they were finished, full of lame excuses, aware such disrespect was the coward’s way out but knowing he could never go through with it if he heard her voice.

Now she’d reappeared in time to bring a deluge of memories with her.

In time to remind him of everything he’d lost when he walked away from her. If anything, she was more beautiful than he remembered. Casey’s gray eyes still had the ability to stop him where he stood, those same eyes that had made other men look twice when they saw her, something she never seemed to notice. Her blond hair had grown longer, though it still didn’t quite touch her shoulders. Shoulders that came to his chest, a fit he’d never known before or since.

But the fit had been all wrong.

Adrenaline and memories wouldn’t let him sleep anytime soon—if at all—so Travis poured a tall glass of soda and only wished for a second he had something stronger to mix in. He’d been down that road after Neil Aiken died, hard and heavy. Drinking hadn’t solved anything, hadn’t brought anybody back from the dead. It had made the memories worse and his thoughts exponentially more morbid.

So instead of wallowing in the past, he’d tried to call Casey. After seeing death charge her this evening, all he wanted was to hear her voice one more time, to reassure himself he’d succeeded in saving her. If he knew she was okay, he could put all of this to rest again and go on with his life without her.

But she wasn’t answering her phone, having Kristin text him instead of doing it herself. It shouldn’t cut, but it did.