A Soldier's Redemption

Only then did she realize she was almost holding her breath. Maybe she feared rejection of some kind. How could she possibly consider a no over a cup of coffee to be rejection? God, was she beginning to lose her mind?

It was, of course, entirely possible. In the past year she’d come perilously close to living in solitary confinement with only her memories.

“Okay.” She tried a smile and it seemed to work, because he nodded.

“I’ll just take my stuff up and be back down in a minute,” he said.

She watched him walk out of the room and noticed his broad shoulders and narrow hips. The ease with which he moved in his body, like an athlete. Yes, she was definitely slipping a cog somewhere. She hadn’t noticed a man that way in a long time, hadn’t felt the sexual siren song of masculinity, except with Jim, and since Jim not at all.

She didn’t need or want to feel it now.

Shaking her head, she rose and found that her strength seemed to have returned. Making the coffee was an easy, automatic task, one that kept her hands busy while her mind raced.

Surely Gage had been right. The killers wouldn’t warn her they were coming. So it must have been kids pulling a prank. When she thought about it, her own reaction to the call disappointed her. There’d been a time when she would have reached the same conclusion as Gage without needing to consult anyone at all. A time when she hadn’t been a frightened mouse who couldn’t think things through for herself.

She needed to get that woman back if she was to survive, because much more of what she’d gone through the past year would kill her as surely as a bullet.

Piece by piece, she felt her personality disassembling. Piece by piece she was turning into a shadow of the woman she had once been. She might as well have lopped off parts of her own brain and personality.

How long would she let this continue? Because if it went on much longer, she’d be nothing but a robot, an empty husk of a human being. Somehow, somewhere inside her, she had to find purpose again. And a way to connect with the world.

As one of the Marshals had said when she argued she didn’t want to do this, “How many people in this world would give just about anything to have a chance to start completely fresh?”

At the time the comment had seemed a little heartless, but as it echoed inside her head right now, she knew he’d had a point. She hadn’t liked it then, didn’t like it now, but there was a certain truth in it.

A fresh start. No real reason to fear. Not anymore. If they were going to find her, certainly they’d have done so long since.

Wade returned to the kitchen just as the drip coffeemaker finished its task. “How do you like it?” she asked.

“Black as night.”

She carried the carafe to the table, along with two mugs and filled them, then set the pot on a pad in the center of the table. She always liked a touch of milk in hers, one of the things she hadn’t had to give up in this transition. She could still eat the foods she preferred, drink her coffee with a little milk, and enjoy the same kinds of movies and books.

Maybe it was time to start thinking about what she hadn’t lost, rather than all she had.

Brave words.

She sat across the table from Wade, trying not to look at him because she didn’t want to make him feel like a bug under a microscope. But time and again her gaze tracked toward him, and each time she found him staring at her.

Finally she had to ask. “Is something wrong? You keep staring at me.”

“You’re a puzzle.”

She blinked, surprised. “You don’t even know me.”

“Probably part of what makes you a puzzle,” he said easily enough. His deep voice, which had earlier sounded like thunder, now struck her as black velvet, dark and rich.

“Only part?” she asked, even though she sensed she might be getting into dangerous territory here.

“Well, there is another part.”

“Which is?”

He set his mug down. “It seems odd to find a woman so terrified in a place like this.”

She gasped and drew back. His gaze never left her face, and he didn’t wait for a denial or even any response at all.

“I know terror,” he continued. “I’ve seen it, smelled it, tasted it. You reek of it.”

She felt her jaw drop, but she couldn’t think of one damn thing to say, because he was right. Right.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I suppose I have no business saying things like that.”

Damn straight, she thought, wishing she’d never asked him if he wanted coffee. Wishing she’d never agreed to share a house with him. Those dark eyes of his saw too much. Way too much.

He’d stripped her bare. Anger rose in her and she glared at him. How dare he? But then, hadn’t she all but asked for it?

He looked down at his mug, giving her a break from his stare, from his acute perception.

She thought about getting up and walking into her bedroom and locking the door. Hiding, always hiding. The thought stiffened her somehow, and instead of fleeing she held her ground. “Is it that obvious?”

He shook his head. “Probably not to anyone who hasn’t been where I’ve been. Except for when you got that call, you put on a pretty good act.”

“My entire life is an act,” she heard herself snap.

He nodded, and when he looked at her again something in his gaze tugged at her, something that reached toward her and tried to pull her in. She looked quickly away. None of that. She didn’t dare risk that.

“Look,” he said finally, “I don’t mean to upset you. I just want you to know …” He trailed off.

She waited, but when he didn’t continue, she finally prodded him. “Want me to know what?”

“I’m not useless. Far from it. So if … if you need help, well, I’m here.” Then he poured a little more coffee in his mug and rose, carrying the mug away with him.

She listened to him climb the creaky stairs and wondered what the hell had just happened.

Wade made up his bed with the skill of long years of practice in the navy. Perfectly square corners, the blanket tight enough to bounce a quarter off. His drawers were just as neat, everything was folded to fit a locker though, so the items didn’t exactly match the drawers, but the stacks were square.

Old habits die hard, and six months of retirement hadn’t killed any of them.

He sat on the wood chair in the corner of the room, and focused his mind like a searchlight on the present, because looking back got him nowhere, and the future seemed impossible to conceive.

That woman downstairs was as scared as any green combat troop he’d ever seen. As scared as the women and kids he’d seen in situations he didn’t want to remember.

He hadn’t expected to find that here. Hadn’t bargained on the feelings it would resurrect. He’d come to this damn county in the middle of nowhere because Seth Hardin had promised he’d find peace and solitude, and that everything here was as far from his past as he could possibly get.

Right.

Apparently Seth hadn’t known about this woman. Corinne Farland. Cory. Regardless, who the hell would have thought that he’d find this mess through the simple act of renting a room?