To the Edge (17 page)

She looked from him to her hands, then back to him again. "You don't even want to be here."

How was that for irony? This morning she'd been figuring the angles on ousting him from her penthouse and her life. Now she was terrified he'd run as fast and as far as he could. And the real kicker—she wasn't sure which frightened her more: losing the bodyguard or losing the man.

The man who didn't even like her.

"I've been a lot of places I didn't want to be." He held her gaze. Made sure he had her undivided attention. "It's never stopped me from doing the job. This is no exception. And the fact that you don't want me here changes nothing. I'm not going away until this threat goes away," he added, driving his message home. "So, like it, hate it, like me, hate me, it doesn't matter.

"Now I'll say this one more time so there's no question. No one is getting past me. No one is getting to you—got it?" Yeah. She got it. More important, she believed him. He'd protect her with his life.

As she watched him—her protector who made a mean omelet - she prayed to God it wouldn't come to that.

For the first time since she'd seen those cold blue eyes staring back at her Friday night, she worried about someone other than herself.

...
The Little Birds swarmed overhead like marauding mosquitoes laying down air cover for the Black Hawk orbiting over the drop zone. Nolan's Rangers dangled from the Hawk's belly on thick ropes. Their squad was to rendezvous with the ground convoy that was moving fast toward the target block, and it was taking too fucking long to off-load. Finally, thank you, Jesus, the helo burped out the last of his men.

Nelson roped down blind, his boots hitting the ground as rotor wash whipped up a cyclone of Iraqi sand. "Go! Go! Go!"

He grabbed the young Ranger by the shoulder and hunched over, herded him at a zigzagging run toward the bombed-out house where the rest of his team waited for him to call the next shot.

A fierce pocket of resistance had been playing havoc with the locals and the U.S. forces stationed in the little village north of Mosul. Two marines and an Iraqi interpreter had taken hits in the last twenty-four hours. His squad was to take them out in a surprise attack under cover of darkness.

Only the surprise had been on them. They'd dropped into the middle of the biggest game in town and it looked like every tango, fedayee, and Ba'ath Party straggler within a hundred miles had crawled out of his spider hole to play.

The fire flash from an RPG had him glancing up at the Black Hawk. The grenade's smoke trail zipped through the air toward the chopper. He waited for the ear-popping explosion but the ordnance missed its mark. The big bird roared off without a scratch while the volume of firepower on the ground went Hollywood and what seemed like a hundred shouted orders crashed through his headset from Combat Control twenty clicks away.

When they finally reached the abandoned house, he shoved Nelson through the door so hard the lance corporal went sprawling face-first onto the dirt floor.

"Ke-rist, Sarge, " the Ranger sputtered, spitting sand and hauling himself to his feet. The kid grinned, his white teeth shining in the dingy dark. "A gentle nudge would have
—"

Nelson never finished his sentence. He dropped his M4 and clutched both hands to his throat. Rivers of red gushed through his fingers.

His eyes widened. In confusion. In shock. Then in haunted awareness that he was as good as dead as his life pumped out through his fingers.

"Ramirez!"

The medic was at Nelson's side before his knees hit the ground, but every Ranger there knew the doc could do nothing for him. That much blood meant only one thing. A round from
a sniper rifle had severed the Ranger's jugular.

"Mom. " The single word gurgled out with the blood bubbling between Nelson's lips.

Minutes later, his heart quit beating.

Inside the building, his team stood or knelt in stunned silence. It could have been any one of them... and to a man, they knew it. Every Ranger felt the relief, felt the guilt, felt the
overwhelming sense of their own mortality. And every man
—
some, like Nelson, little more than kids
—
thought of Mom and home.

Outside, the first of the Humvees barreled by, their fifty-caliber turret guns striking fire.

It was Nolan's cue to haul ass.

'Move out," he ordered snapping his men out of their flat-eyed shock. "Now! Heads down! Let's go!"
...

Nolan lay in the dark, his hands crossed behind his head.

He was wide awake. Had been for hours, watching the ceiling fan circle round and round in the shadows as that night played over and over in his mind with the same torturous slow motion. Tonight it was the night north of Mosul. Other nights Tikrit. Still others the hellholes in Afghanistan.

He wondered if this was how it was for his dad. Hell, for Ethan and Dallas. They'd all seen their share of combat. They didn't talk about it. None of them did.

So, was it there for them, too? Every night? Rain or shine? Regular as clockwork?
Just like Old fucking Faithful,
he thought caustically. The sun went down. The nightmares started. And how convenient. He didn't even have to be asleep anymore to relive them.

He turned his head, glanced through the dark at the clock.

Four thirty-five a.m.

All these months later, was Nelson's mother awake? His father? Was the silence in their nights as loud as the silence in Nolan's?

Did they try to imagine the death scene that he saw as clearly as the digital read on the clock by the bed? Did they wonder exactly where their son had been when he'd breathed his last breath? If he'd felt pain? Who had been with him? Who among them had been friends? Did they understand that he'd been a well-trained stand-up soldier who'd had the bad luck to get bought by a golden BB? A lucky shot.

Would they care that the children living in that village now went to school? That their son had died so those children might grow up to be educated, to someday lead their country deeper into democracy? Or to grow into American-hating jihadists?

He sat up, weary to the bone. Weary of the wars he'd Fought. Weary of the death he'd seen. Weary of the need for it all. And for the need for boys like Nelson to die in the name of freedom.

Feet on the floor, elbows on his knees, he dragged his hands through his hair and fought a fierce impulse to call Sara. Sara... whose husband
had
returned from Iraq. And died anyway.

Nelson's death haunted him. As did the others'. Steubbing. Gonzalez. Brave men who had died doing what they believed in. Brave men under his command. Soldiers, who had been as well prepared as he could make them. While he mourned them, he couldn't have saved them. War, after all, was war.

Will was a different story.

Will had been a soldier, too. He'd made it home from Iraq.

Nolan should have seen it coming. He'd known Will had been wrapped tight. Even after they'd shipped home to Fort Benning, he'd had that look about him. That glazed-eyed intensity. It's what made him a good soldier, training hard over and over until he functioned on muscle memory and guts. What he hadn't done was recognize that Will hadn't pulled away from the edge once they were back stateside.

"You know what pisses me off?" Will had stated as much to himself as to Nolan the second day they were home. "Stupid people. Stupid people doing stupid things."

Yeah. Nolan had understood. All you thought of for months was coming home. Then you got there. It should have been so simple. But it wasn't. Like Will said. People were stupid. They asked stupid questions.

Did you kill anyone? What did it feel like?

Christ. What kind of a thing was that to ask?

"And crowds," Will had continued. "I hate crowds ... and people wanting me to get in touch with my feelings. What kind of bullshit is that?"

It had been the night after they'd all sat through what the soldiers jokingly referred to as the "don't beat your wife briefing session" all personnel were required to attend to help them deal with combat stress and readjustment when they returned home.

Will hadn't beaten his wife.

He'd shot her instead. And then he'd killed himself.

Now the boys had no daddy. Sara might never recover and Will—whom Nolan should have saved—was dead.

He walked slowly to the bathroom, flicked on the light. The tap water was cold. He cupped his hands and brought it to his face.

Finally, he straightened. Looked at his reflection in the mirror.

Down the hall, someone else counted on him to stay alive.

And the man who stared back at him—hollow eyed, combat weary—despite his earlier convictions didn't know if he had what it took to keep her that way.

12

"YOU
 
SEEM
 
DISTRACTED, JlLLlE."

Her father's voice jarred Jillian away from her little side trip to the debacle at Mar-A-Lago last night and back to the moment. They were at Golden Palms, the Kincaid Palm Beach estate. Having lunch.

From one nightmare to another.

With a bracing breath, she glanced up from her soup plate and felt immediate guilt when she saw the concern in her father's eyes. His biggest sin was caring too much. And sometimes she felt her biggest failure was in not forgiving him for it. It ranked right up there among her feelings for her mother.

She never knew which Clare Kincaid she would find— the woman who sometimes took to her bed with a sick headache, then fell into the depths of despair, or the belle of the society ball.

Today seemed to be one of her mother's good days. She was as polished as the silver, as sparkling as the crystal elaborately gracing the table in the formal dining room that had been the norm from the time Jillian had memories.

"The staff talks," Clare had tsked in annoyance when a twelve-year-old Jillian had asked if, just once, they couldn't eat off paper plates in the kitchen.

Social appearances were everything to her mother. In her late fifties, with jewel green eyes and perfectly coiffed red hair, Clare Kincaid was very beautiful in a fragile, porcelain doll sort of way.

"Jillie, sweetheart. Are you all right?" her father pressed, the crease between his eyes deepening to a furrow.

Realizing she'd drifted yet again, Jillian forced a smile for his benefit and made another stab at the soup, the second course of today's elaborate luncheon.

"I was just thinking how nice it was of Kenneth to make the asparagus soup for me. It's delicious, as always. Please tell him it's excellent. I guess I'm going to have to break down and get the recipe."

Which, of course, was ridiculous, but it was the best she could manage at the moment. Her idea of cooking was programming the microwave to reheat takeout.

"Consider it done, dear." Her mother smiled at her prodigal daughter. "Although if you came home more often, you could have it any time you want. It's such a nice surprise to have you here, Jillian. We don't see enough of you anymore."

They wouldn't be seeing her today if she and Garrett hadn't been summoned to Golden Palms via an early-morning phone call from her father. To put it in Garrett's vernacular, she had wanted to take a pass. He'd pointed out that since she didn't cut his paychecks and her father did, lunch with the folks was now on her Sunday agenda.

Home sweet home.
All ten acres and eight thousand plus square feet of cold, palatial elegance, tropical gardens, and lushly landscaped pools. The ocean estate was a monument to her father's publishing success, her mother's ticket to Palm Beach society Goddess status, and the source of some of Jillian's worst memories—the past two weeks notwithstanding.

God. Her life was being threatened and here she was, bemoaning her bad luck at being born a poor little rich girl. How pathetic was that?

Someday she swore she was going to get a handle on the mix of love and guilt and resentment that always accompanies her infrequent visits home. She set one foot inside and all the years of her father's dominance smothered her; she felt plagued anew by the fluid state of her mother's mental health.

Enough. She wondered how Garrett was holding up. He didn't strike her as a man who would be overly impressed or intimidated, but Golden Palms could be daunting. So could one of her mother's overblown lunch productions. And then there was the double threat of her parents together and the dynamics of one of their dysfunctional family gatherings.

She glanced at him across the table. Talk about dysfunctional.

She wasn't sure what she'd expected when she'd met him at the coffeemaker this morning, but it hadn't been such an abrupt about-face from last night. Notably absent was the nice guy who had appeared genuinely concerned about her frame of mind. She'd been a mess over the new threat. Such a mess, evidently, that he'd stretched his limits and actually acted human toward her. He must have used up his quota, though, because whatever notion had prompted him to make nice had vanished along with the omelet he devoured while the best she managed was to push her food around her plate before quietly excusing herself.