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

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.