Conard County Marine (11 page)

“The anxiety. It comes at me out of the blue. I just wish it would go away.”

“It’ll lessen with time.” He dried his hands on a towel and joined her at the table. “I know what you’re going through. This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.”

“I suppose not,” she said. Impulsively she reached across the table and seized his hand. He immediately turned it over and grasped her fingers with his. His skin was warm, slightly roughened, and the pressure he returned comforted her.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ve been in and out of war since the invasion of Afghanistan. It changes me, when I’m over there. I have to think about things in a whole new way, live with a threat that isn’t always visible, but is very present. So when I come home, all that comes with me. The tension. The extreme awareness that anything could be a threat. There’s danger around every corner, and relaxing is damn near impossible. It’s gotten easier with time to make the transition, but I still have to make it. I’m still not completely settled from my last tour, so don’t be surprised if I overreact sometimes, especially to unexpected movements or sounds. But I
do
relax eventually, Kylie. Trust me, you will, too.”

“So sure,” she said, trying to smile even though she felt as if a sword would fall on her at any moment.

“Positive. Part of the problem you’re facing here, if you don’t mind my penny-ante psychology, is that you have no memory of what happened. You have nothing to process, which I admit would be miserable, but at least you’d have something to work through. Instead you’re dealing with a big blank that left a whole lot of fear but nothing else. The anxiety is understandable, but you can’t deal with what you can’t remember.”

He might have a point
, she thought, staring at their linked hands. Awful as the experience of the attack must have been, at least she’d have something to grasp, to think about, to face. All she had now was a big blank and a lot of lingering terror.

“I have nightmares,” he said. “Not all the time, but I have them. Once in a while I even have them when I’m awake. They pop into my head and all of a sudden I’m back in the middle of something that happened over there. But I know what I’m dealing with. I can work on it. I can look at it. You... What are you supposed to process? Intellectually you know what happened, but the rest of it is gone, leaving only the fear.”

“It would have been nice to have forgotten the fear part.”

“Yeah, it would. But that didn’t happen. So you don’t have a face, a place, a situation to pin it on. Nothing you can grieve, or rage at. You just know what the outcome was. Eventually you’ll work through the fear. I don’t know about the rest.”

She tightened her hold on his hand. “Sometimes I desperately want to remember. I want all of those three years back. Then, other times, it scares me as much as anything. I keep trying to tell myself it’s a blessing I can’t remember the attack.”

“But if you could remember his face, at least you’d know you didn’t have to be afraid of nearly everyone.”

She drew a sharp breath. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’m not afraid of people I know. I’m not afraid of you, but...”

“But anyone you don’t immediately recognize is a different story, am I right?”

She nodded slowly. “Very different. And I’m afraid to be in a crowd.”

“Because you have to pick through all those faces for familiar ones. That’s not easy to do.”

“I hated the grocery store. Everyone wanted to speak with me.”

“I get it. Everyone needs to be evaluated. If you had a mental picture of the guy, you’d feel safer.”

“Maybe so.” She closed her eyes, and once more searched her empty memory. Almost immediately, a headache tried to grip her, so she stopped. Not ready for that yet. But she wondered about the link between trying to recover her memory and getting a headache. Next time she saw the neurologist, she needed to ask. Was that some kind of mental warning?
Don’t look.
She could almost believe it.

But she realized he was right. The first time she saw each person, even those she knew from her life here, her first instinct was to tense in expectation of attack. It didn’t last long, but it happened on every first meeting.

She was constantly on guard, constantly alert for threat. No wonder she couldn’t relax much or often. Damn!

She raised her gaze to his face and realized he was dealing with much the same thing. His only advantage was that he didn’t have to perceive every new face in this town as a threat. Or did he?

“Coop?”

“Yeah?”

“When you meet people for the first time here, do you tense up?”

“Sometimes. It’s inevitable. You can’t walk out of the valley of death and not bring some ghosts along with you. It’s getting easier to make the transition the more often I do it, but...” He stopped.

“But what?”

“The nightmares aren’t getting any better,” he said quietly. “The more times I have to go back over there, the more ghosts I bring back with me. I deal with it better, but the crowd keeps growing.”

“God.” For the first time in weeks she honestly hurt for someone besides herself. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s part of what war does to you. Pretty soon you’re carrying around a graveyard of ghosts. Somehow you have to make peace with them.”

“But how?”

He shook his head a little. “You remember them. You do them the honor of remembering them. Every single one of them. Give them their due. Then they kind of recede, although they’re never gone.”

“But I can’t do that.”

“Not yet,” he agreed. “I don’t exactly know how to explain it. But those faces, as much as they haunt me, all they need is to be remembered. To not be forgotten. But my situation isn’t like yours. You didn’t do anything to draw this attack. If ever there was an innocent victim...” He sighed. “Kylie, you’re the face I’d never want to have to remember. The one I wouldn’t want in my personal cemetery.”

“Do you have faces like that?”

“It was war.”

He closed his jaw in a way that warned her he felt he’d revealed enough. Maybe more than enough.

But apparently he had another thought, because he spoke again. “One of the things that really bugs me about your attacker was that he wanted to add an innocent to his ghosts. He
wanted
it. He deserves no forgiveness, and his face deserves to be forgotten forever.”

“I seem to have done that.” And hadn’t he just said that was part of her problem in dealing with this? That she couldn’t remember? He was confusing her.

He sighed. “I’m not making sense. It would help you to remember him, but once you do, forget him. Whatever it takes. He doesn’t deserve another single second of your thoughts or caring once you’ve banished him. That’s what I mean.”

Now she understood and decided he might be right. But thinking about Coop’s “cemetery,” she wished there was something, anything, she could do to help this man leave his ghosts behind. She believed she understood what he meant but, good Lord, what a burden to have to carry.

She hated even imagining it. Closing her eyes, she could almost see the gray figures surrounding him, some of them with love, some with hate, some with fear, and all of them part of him now.

Two wars and all those years in the marine corps had given him that. While she appreciated the military, gave thanks for their sacrifices and the security they provided, she’d never really thought before about the lifelong burden the job imposed on them. Oh, sure, she knew about the disabilities, but she’d never thought about it in the way he had described it.

“Kylie? You okay?”

“I was thinking about your ghosts.” She opened her eyes and met his blue gaze.

“Don’t. They’re mine. Nobody else needs to carry them. Let’s talk about something else.”

She was agreeable, if it would make him more comfortable. “You said you grew a beard to blend?”

“Yep.”

“So how do those blue eyes blend?”

He laughed, visibly relaxing. “You’d be surprised how many blue-eyed people there are over there. Everyone thinks dark hair, dark eyes, but blue eyes are common enough.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“One of our medics commented on it once. She said they have some of the most beautiful blue eyes she’s ever seen. You have to remember Afghanistan was a part of the Silk Road. Caravans passed through there all the time. It’s a beautiful mix of genetics.”

“And what a storied place it must be.”

“Yeah. It’s a damn shame people couldn’t just leave it alone.”

Kylie smiled. “I think you could say that about most of the world.”

He laughed. “True that.”

Then the doorbell rang, and Kylie’s fear came crashing back.

*

Coop rose immediately to answer it. He waved Kylie to stay at the table, but she didn’t listen and he wasn’t surprised. After last night she had a real struggle going on, and while she was dealing well with it, it was still there and she wasn’t about to wait for the news secondhand.

If it was news.

He opened the door to see his cousin, Connie, standing there in uniform. “Hey, Cuz. Come on in.”

“Kylie here?”

From right behind him came her voice. “Where else would I be? Is it bad?”

“I don’t know.” Connie stepped inside. “Got any coffee?”

Kylie led the way back to the kitchen, and Coop poured her a cup. Connie adjusted herself on a chair, getting a belt full of equipment out of the way, and wrapped her hands around the mug. “How you doing?” she asked Kylie.

“Trying not to sit on the edge of my seat. Just cut to the chase, Connie.”

“Not much of a chase,” Connie said. “Mikey’s description of the man was useless. Can’t even identify the car except it was really old. As for the envelope, no prints inside or out. Anyone could have sent it.”

Kylie apparently had had enough of dragging this out. “But it was sent to me. What the hell was in it?”

Connie frowned and rested her elbows on the table. “A pressed, dead black rose.”

Coop caught Kylie before she fell out of the chair.

*

She came to lying on the couch with two concerned faces hovering over her. “I’m okay,” she managed, and even sounded a bit querulous.

“Right,” said Coop, and backed up.

Connie remained squatting beside her. “You’re the nurse. You don’t need me to tell you to sit up slowly.”

Kylie took the advice, the same advice she would have given, and pushed herself carefully upright. The world no longer spun or tried to turn black. “I’m fine. Really. Did you say a dead black rose?”

“Unfortunately,” Connie answered. Straightening, she sat beside Kylie on the couch. Coop paced to the front window, folding his arms and staring out. Kylie wondered which of his hells he was visiting. She knew the one she was teetering in.

“So what do you think is going on?” Kylie asked her friend.

“We’re still discussing it, but you’ve risen to the top of our list, right alongside the kids. Nobody thinks this was just a sick joke.”

No, nobody thought that, and if they had, Kylie wouldn’t have believed it. “Do you think this guy is just using the kids? Are they the distraction or am I?”

“Or do we have two creeps in town?” Connie offered. “No answers, kiddo. None. But, Coop?”

Slowly he turned from the window. His face was as set as stone, and he didn’t unfold his arms.

“We need you,” Connie said. “Forget everything else. We need you with Kylie all the time. You’ve just been deputized. Unless you object.”

“I don’t object.” His voice had turned steely. “I just want more information.”

“Don’t we all. We’re shorthanded. We’ve got too many schools and playgrounds and kids to watch, plus our regular duties, and now Kylie. It may all be one creep, but it could be two and we can’t take the risk. You need a weapon?”

Coop unfolded his arms then and looked at his hands, clenching them. Something in Kylie shivered. “These are all I really need, but given we have an unpredictable situation, I’ll take you up on a Taser and a Glock 43.”

“You’ll have it as soon as I go out to my car, along with a badge and radio.”

“What about a knife?”

“None standard issue, but I don’t think anyone will complain if you carry one.”

Kylie felt a tear seep out of the corner of one eye. “Coop, I’m sorry.”

He arched a brow. “For what?”

“I’ve sent you back to war.”

*

Connie left a few minutes later, after getting Coop equipment plus armor, telling him they were working on the black rose angle, since they might be able to find out where one could be bought, and possibly who had bought it. Other than that, they had nothing to work with.

When she was gone, Coop said, “You promised to wake Glenda.”

“Let her sleep. She needs it and she has a shift tonight. When she wakes is soon enough. Besides, it’s not like we learned anything useful. No point waking her so she can wonder about a black rose.”

Coop nodded and sat beside her on the couch. “Talk about clear messaging.”

“Seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? But we can still run in circles. I know I am. Are the kids really the ones at risk? Was the rose sent by someone who heard what happened to me but had nothing at all to do with it? Was it just a way to stir up more anxiety, especially about the children?”

“I’m more concerned about
you
,” he said. “How are you feeling? Even more anxious?”

Surprised, she paused a moment. “Oddly, no. It kind of went away. Maybe I just needed to faint.”

That brought an odd smile to his lips. “Right. Truth is, you’ve got something concrete to think about, even if it’s ugly. That often helps.”

She leaned back on the couch and drummed her fingers on her thighs. “You’re right. A black rose is weird. I don’t suppose they’re impossible to buy, but it’s still weird. Was it dead for a reason or by accident? It seems like a threat, but maybe it’s not. Yeah, that’s easier to think about than the big blank in my head.”

Then it really struck her and she turned to him. “You were right. Having something I can actually deal with makes it easier somehow.”

He nodded. “A face would be better but yeah. You’ve got something solid now.”