Running Fire

“Could have fooled me,” Kell said. “You are one heck of a good-looking woman even if you’re forced into wearing that bulky flight suit.”

His compliment was sincere and Leah absorbed it. “Thanks...kind of hard to be very feminine out here in the badlands.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he said, smiling a little. “You give that flight suit a whole new, better, meaning.” He saw her blush and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Her shyness bothered him. Again, Kell was seeing her inability to deal with a sincere male-to-female compliment. He wasn’t flirting with her. He was being honest. She didn’t know the difference.

“I’m pretty much focused on my career” was all Leah could manage. There was no question Kell was interested in her. Leah felt the same toward him, but didn’t dare let him know it. There was just no room in her life, with her career as a warrant officer, to allow a potential relationship to work. She looked over. “Are you married, Kell? Have a bunch of children?” Because looking at him, he looked like the father type.

“Was,” Kell admitted. “I met Addison, who was a criminal-defense lawyer, in San Diego. Married at twenty-three and divorced at twenty-seven. She couldn’t take my long deployments, and I didn’t want children while I was in the SEALs. I’d never be home often enough to be a father to them. My training and deployments kept me away from home so much of the time. I did want children, but I wanted to be a father who was home and there for them, like my pa was for us.”

“You’ll make a wonderful father someday,” Leah said. Mentally she was comparing her father to Kell. There was a Grand Canyon of difference between the two men. Her father was cold, bottled up, frozen in time and bitter. Kell was warm, kind and caring. He was able to show his feelings.

Leah wondered if things would have been different between her father and herself if her mother hadn’t suddenly died. She had felt abandoned and alone after her mother was gone. She cried for months, every night, sobbing into her pillow, missing Evan and her. Her father was unable to care for her. He couldn’t even care for himself, as crippled as he’d been by the multiple deaths.

“I have a good role model,” Kell admitted. “My pa. I have two younger brothers, Tyler and Cody, and we used to have so much fun with him. He taught us how to hunt, fish and care for the land. The three of us grew up milking dairy cows.”

“You’ve got a good work ethic,” Leah said, trying to imagine Kell when he was younger. She’d bet he was the brother who played humorous jokes on others. Not mean ones, but funny ones, because he was so laid-back and easygoing.

“We all worked hard,” Kell agreed, smiling fondly, remembering those days, “but we also played hard.”

“What sports?”

“I went into track and field. Ty and Cody went into football.”

“You look like a quarterback to me.”

“Nah, my two younger brothers were good at it. I wasn’t. I’m six-two and they’re both six-four and outweigh me by thirty pounds. I didn’t see any sense in getting the shinola kicked out of me on the football field. Running was something I was very good at. It came naturally.”

“You’ve got long legs,” Leah agreed. She visualized him running and imagined he would have looked to her like a cheetah with swift, boneless grace.

“Did you ever go into sports?”

“No. I found my love, my passion, when I was sixteen. I loved flying. I still do.”

“What does it give you?” Kell wondered. He looked forward to talking with Leah. She was intelligent, well grounded in reality and funny.

“I guess...my freedom. When I’m flying, I’m above all the crap that I carry around with me. Up there—” she pointed toward the ceiling of the cave “—I’m in the arms of the sky.”

“Maybe an invisible, loving mother of sorts?”

She stared at Kell for a long moment. He was extremely intelligent, able to put seemingly disparate pieces together and make them fit like a completed puzzle. “I never thought of that way, but yes. I always feel protected up there, guarded, maybe.” She’d just walked away from a helo crash that should have killed her. Kell had been her guardian angel this time around.

“Without a mother to hold you,” Kell said, “you probably didn’t get a lot of that maternal nurturing we all need as kids growing up.”

“I’ve thought about that, too. Maybe that’s why I love going out into the Afghan villages, bringing clothing and shoes to the kids. I work with a local charity that is run by a husband-and-wife team, Emma and Khalid Shaheen. Both were Apache pilots and then Emma got kidnapped by the Taliban. She was injured and received nerve damage to her left hand. The Army doesn’t let you fly if you don’t have feeling in all ten fingers. But when Emma married Khalid, she got to fly his charity’s helicopter, a CH-47. A year ago, when my squadron was at Bagram, I took my off days and flew with Emma.”

“You like kids?”

“Just a little.” Leah smiled, tipping her head back against the wall. “Before we lost Evan, I loved taking care of him. I spoiled him rotten.” She laughed softly, a warm, good feeling flowing through her. “Kids should be spoiled with love.”

“Evan will always own a piece of your heart.”

“One of the good parts,” Leah agreed quietly. “The rest of my heart feels like it’s been cut up and buried.”

“Because of your marriage?” Kell knew he was getting into dangerous territory, but he wanted to understand her ex-husband. He saw her give him a grim look and her lips thinned as if she was weighing whether to say anything or not.

“Let’s just say I had lousy taste when it came to choosing a husband.”

Kell looked at his watch. “Time to go to bed.” It was a piece of information about Hayden Grant. Maybe, in time, Leah would trust him with the rest of the story, but he wouldn’t push her. As a sniper, he could look at a lawn and tell which blades of grass had been moved by an animal or a human. In the same way, Leah was giving him tiny signs and in his mind he was putting them together. Eventually, a pattern would emerge and he’d see the whole picture. He wanted to know because he had feelings for Leah. No one was more surprised than Kell. He wasn’t looking for a woman. Sex with the right woman? Yes. But as he pushed off his boots and got comfortable, he wouldn’t lie to himself. His heart was involved in this equation. What was he going to do?

As he made sure Leah was settled in for the night before turning off the light, Ballard sensed, or maybe intuited, she liked him just as much. They were two planets on a collision course with one another that could never have a happy ending.

* * *

THE NIGHTMARE STARTED insidiously for Leah. She and Hayden were camping out in the hills of Georgia; something he liked to do. It was August, the humidity high, the mosquitoes pestering her nonstop. Hayden was in a bad mood. Her father had been busy reviewing the fitness reports for every officer. Hayden was a captain and he wanted early major in rank. He was worried her father wouldn’t give him the marks he needed to make that early rank. He was busy building a fire, throwing heavier limbs on it, the smoke billowing up through the dense pine forest surrounding them.

“You need to talk to your father,” he growled. “I need a perfect score on this next fitness report.”

Leah’s hands shook as she began unpacking the food from the cardboard box sitting in the rear of their SUV. “If I say anything, Hayden, he’ll suspect you put me up to it. You know that.”

She hated these conversations. Assessments came every six months, and officers and enlisted persons alike were given a score. Those that had the highest grades would automatically be put up for early-promotion consideration. This was the first time Hayden could be put up for it by her father, the squadron commander.

“You have to say something,” he ground out, standing, wiping his hands off on his jeans. He glared at her. “Figure out a diplomatic way, Leah, but get it done, dammit!”

She winced as he cursed. Hayden was building into one of his rages and it scared her to death. She dropped the bread on the ground, then quickly picked it up. Breathing unevenly, her mind awash with fear of what he might do, she said, “I’ll talk to him.”

He walked over and stood beside her. He was six feet tall. She was five feet seven inches tall. Staring down at her, he jerked her hair back, hard. “Monday. When we get back. Take him to lunch.”

“Ow!” Leah cried, her scalp radiating pain. Her hand had gone up to the side of her head. “Stop hurting me, Hayden! You don’t have to worry, I’ll talk to my father.”

* * *

“LEAH! WAKE UP!” Kell dodged her fist and it landed hard against his chest, a lot of power behind her swing. She’d screamed and scared the hell out of him, jerking him out of his sleep. Worse, if there were Taliban nearby, they’d have heard it.

Gripping her arm, Ballard gave her a small shake. “Leah! Wake up. It’s just a dream!” He saw her face twisted and contorted, her mouth opened to scream again. What the hell kind of nightmares was she having to make her twist and buck against him? He had knelt down, dodging her flailing fist. It was lucky for him her other arm was in a sling or he’d have been in trouble.

“Sugar. Come on. It’s Kell. You’re safe. No one is attacking you...”

Kell’s voice broke through her nightmare and Leah snapped awake. Her eyes widened enormously as she sucked in ragged gasps of air. Kell’s darkly shadowed face was so close. His eyes narrowed, filled with urgent concern. She felt his one hand on her shoulders, the other carefully holding her right wrist. With a groan, she pushed him away. He instantly released her.

Sweaty, shaking, Leah pushed herself up into a sitting position. Kell sat back on his heels, guardedly watching her.

Rubbing her face, her hands trembling, Leah muttered, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to hit you...” She couldn’t tear Hayden’s glare out of her mind, the one from after she’d struck him in the face. That time, she wasn’t raped. How many times had he done it to her over the years? She’d lost count.

“Do you want some water?” Kell asked her quietly, watching her hide her face behind her trembling hand. He could feel she was embarrassed and he wanted to give her some room.

“P-please.”

“Be right back.” He got up and walked over to his ruck near his sleeping bag.