Military Grade Mistletoe

Yep. The woman certainly had a talent for talking.

“There’s Uncle Harry.” Pike Taylor strolled into the living area, carrying their squirmy, wheaten-haired son, Gideon, who was decked out in a fuzzy blue outfit for bedtime. Even out of uniform, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, Pike carried himself with the wary alertness of the Kansas City cop he was. But the tall, lanky man who’d been there to protect his sister from both their abusive father and a serial rapist while Harry had been stationed over in the Heat Locker reminded Harry of an overgrown kid when he set his son down and chased him over to his play area in the living room. Even the dog got into the game, joining in with a loud bark and circling around the toddler, which only made the little boy chortle with glee. That muscle ticked in Harry’s cheek as the urge to smile warred with the images of something darker trying to surface. Gideon lost his balance and plopped onto the extra padding of his diaper before using the German shepherd’s fur to pull himself back onto his pudgy little feet and change directions. “Look out,” Pike warned from his wrestling position on the floor. “He’s been asking for his roommate all evening.”

Gideon toddled over to Harry’s knee, joyfully repeating a phrase that sounded a lot like “Yucky Hair,” which was apparently going to be his nickname for the duration of this visit. Gideon’s little fingers tugged at Harry’s jeans and reached for him, demanding to be picked up. Although Harry was half afraid to hold the stout little tyke, he could feel the expectation radiating off Hope not to deny her son the innocent request. Unwilling to refuse his sister anything that would put a smile on her face, Harry picked up his nephew and set him on his lap. He pushed aside the salt and pepper shakers that Gideon immediately reached for, and let him tug at the buttons of his Henley sweater, instead. Hans lay down close by Harry’s feet, keeping an eye on the little boy as if he didn’t trust Harry with the toddler, either. Harry shifted in his seat, uncomfortable being the center of all this attention. Gideon batted at Harry’s face and he lifted his chin, pulling away from the discomfiting contact. Hell, the dog was better with the child than he was. He needed to distract himself fast, or he was going to end up in a dark place that no one in this room wanted him to visit.

Turning his chair away from the watchful German shepherd, Harry latched onto the first thought that came to mind. “Daisy’s a little scattered, isn’t she?”

Pike tossed a couple of toys into Gideon’s playpen before rising to his feet and crossing to the table. “Scattered? You mean her house? She’s been working on it for three years. I can’t imagine what it’s costing her to redo it from top to bottom like that. Plus, she’s doing a lot of the cosmetic work herself.”

“I meant she rambled from one topic to the next. I had a hard time keeping up.”

“She does live alone,” Pike suggested. “Maybe she was lonesome and wanted to talk to somebody.”

Hope snickered at her husband’s idea. “She’s been at school all day, with hundreds of students. She’s had plenty of people to talk to.”

“Teenagers,” Pike countered. “It’s not the same as talking to an adult.”

Dismissing the explanation with a shake of her head, Hope opened a cabinet to pull out a bag of potato chips. “It’s not exactly like you’re Mr. Conversation, Harry. You’re quiet like I am with new people. Maybe you made her nervous and she was chatting to fill the silence. I do that when my shy genes kick in.”

Not in any universe would he describe Daisy Mega-Hugger as a shy woman. But maybe something about him had made her nervous. The scars that turned his ugly mug into an acquired taste? Not announcing his visit before showing up on her doorstep? Was there something more to those footprints in the snow than she’d let on? The idea of a Peeping Tom had upset her, yes, but now that he considered her reaction, she hadn’t seemed surprised to discover signs of an intruder.

Hope ripped open the bag of chips and crunched one in her mouth before dumping some onto the plate beside his sandwich. “She is one of those women who seems to have a lot of irons in the fire. She’s always volunteering for one thing or another. Daisy has the biggest heart in the world.”

Harry pulled a toddler fist away from the tip of his nose. Was that big heart why she’d even considered giving Mr. Rude a place to live as her tenant? “I actually waited there a little while after I left. She had a guy coming in to talk about renting her upstairs.”

Pike came up behind Hope and reached around her to snatch a chip and pop it into his mouth. “Mr. Friesen is the uncle of one of our receptionists at the precinct. I ran a background check on him for her.”

“He showed up before I got out of there. I waited outside for half an hour to make sure he left without incident.”

Hope’s eyes were wide as she set the plate in front of Harry. “Without incident? That sounds ominous.”

Harry ate a bite before breaking off a morsel of the soft bread for Gideon to chew on, in an effort to distract the toddler from grabbing the whole sandwich. “While I was there, she had me check out some suspicious tracks in her backyard. Looked to me like someone had been casing her house.”

Pike pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat. “Did you report it to KCPD?”

So, he thought the situation seemed troublesome, too. “I advised her to.”

Hope moved a subtly protective hand to her swollen belly. “You checked out the house for her, didn’t you? Her locks and everything are secure?

“She’s got new windows on the ground floor. Dead bolts on the doors.” But he hadn’t checked any of them to see if they were locked. Surely, the woman had sense enough to... The second bite of his sandwich went stale in his mouth. He should have done that for her, at least.

Pike pulled Hope onto his lap, soothing her concern for their friend. “We’ve had a rash of burglaries across the city. Pretty standard for this time of year. Thieves looking for money or credit cards, or even wrapped presents they can pawn.”

Either coveting his meal or sensing Harry’s increasingly testy mood, Gideon squealed and stabbed at the plate, scattering the pile of chips across the table top. Harry shoved the plate aside and pulled the boy back, scooting the chair across the tile floor. His boot knocked against Hans, sending the dog to his feet with a startled woof.

All at once, the dark place inside his mind erupted with a fiery explosion. He felt the pain tearing through his flesh. He heard the shouts for help, the whimpers of pain.

Harry staggered to his feet. “Platz, Tango,” he ordered, mixing the past and the present inside his head. “Hans, I mean. Platz.” Pike’s well-trained dog instantly obeyed the German command to lie down. Slamming the door on the flashback, Harry thrust Gideon into his frightened sister’s arms and grabbed his coat. “I’m sorry. I need to walk around the block a couple of times. Clear my head.”

“Harry?”

“Let him go, honey.”

An hour later, Harry had come in from the cold, apologized to his sister, finished off the meal she’d saved for him and shut himself inside the bedroom he shared with Gideon.

The flashback had receded to the wasteland of buried images inside his head, although he was still having a hard time settling his thoughts enough to sleep. With Gideon snoring softly from his crib across the darkened room, Harry lay back on the double bed, using the flashlight from his duffel bag to read through the stack of cards and letters that normally soothed him on nights like this.

He grinned through Daisy’s account of catching one of her students licking a potted plant in her classroom because the girl had been curious to find out what the sap oozing from the stalk tasted like. The girl had been perfectly fine, but the spate of dumb jokes that had followed would have given a stand-up comic plenty of material. The story had made his unit laugh to the extent that when any one of them made a boneheaded move, they’d teased the Marine by calling him or her a plant-licker.

Gideon gurgled in his sleep, reminding Harry that he was the interloper here. In another couple of months, Hope and Pike would need this space for Gideon’s new little brother or sister. Although he had every intention of returning to his duties with the Corps by that time, Harry acknowledged another stab of guilt. Maybe Hope wanted to redecorate this room. She had talked about expanding their loft into the shop’s second-floor storage area, but a renovation of that scale wouldn’t happen until after the baby’s birth. Maybe he was in the way here, and Hope was too kind-hearted to say anything. Maybe he could camp out in their condo for just a few days longer, then find himself a quiet place to rent until his penance was over and he could report back to Lt. Col. Biro.