When Somebody Loves You (36 page)

It wasn’t until morning that he gave her the letter from her father.

He watched her read it, saw the tears gather. “It was him,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

“But how?”

“Does the name Robert Hodges mean anything to you?”

“Yes. He was one of our regulars for years before Daddy lost the resort.”

“Well, it seems he’s on the board of directors of Dreamscape. Your father knew that. When I told him it looked like you’d lose the lodge to them in a bidding war, he contacted Hodges.”

She stared at him in disbelief.

“It took a lot for him to make that call, Jo. But he did it. And whatever he said to Hodges must have been exactly the right thing, because Dreamscape backed out.”

“I owe him.”

“I think maybe he figures he owed you.”

She was quiet for a very long time. “I think,” she said finally, giving him a tentative, questioning look, “maybe it’s time he came home.”

She could see by the warmth and pride shining in his eyes that he agreed. “He’d like that.”

Looking out over the lake, then back at the man who had shown her that love, when it was strong and true, could overcome any obstacle, she smiled. “I think I’d like that too.”

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of the Black Ops, Inc. and One-Eyed Jacks series

The Way Home

Available October 2013 from Gallery Books

“Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.”

—
Siegfried Sassoon

Prologue

AFGHANISTAN—JULY

It wasn’t the memory he would have chosen—not when he couldn’t even remember his own name—but he knew that he used to have nightmares about vampires. Under his bed. Hiding in the dark closet. Swooping down on their Dracula wings and sinking their fangs into his neck.

How ironic, then, that he’d become a vampire of sorts: a creature who lived in the night, hid from the light, and sucked sustenance as though it were blood from a young Afghani woman who despised him but wouldn’t let him die. She brought him food, water, and medicine. And opiates that he suspected she liberally laced in all three.

He watched her now through an opiate-induced haze, so physically incapacitated that he was totally dependent on her. He knew that her name was Rabia and that she could ill afford the things she brought for him. He also knew that if she was caught harboring the escaped American soldier that a horde of Taliban warlords were searching for, not only would he be tortured, interrogated, and finally executed, but so would she.

So he didn’t know why she was doing this, but he had no option but to accept her help. Just as he had no choice but to believe what she’d told him in heavily accented English about who he was . . . because he didn’t remember. He didn’t remember being an American soldier, or what had happened to him, or how he’d escaped from the Taliban and ended up here.

The panic and anguish that stalked him whenever the opiates wore off were as huge and dark as the cave where she hid him. So he gladly relinquished both to the apathy induced by the poppy. Apathy was painless. Apathy made it tolerable to know that weeks, maybe months of his life were gone. His memories . . . gone.

Only the vampire dreams remained of who he was and who he’d been. And only the woman kept him alive.

He studied her now as she prepared his meal in the dim light of an oil lamp, in a silence that embodied their uneasy and unnatural bond as shifting shadows danced along the curved rock wall and dust swept into the cave on a wind that never quit blowing. He knew scattered words in Pashto but didn’t know why he knew them. She had a passing command of English but rarely chose to use it. More irony that she was the one constant in a life that had been reduced to pain, fear, and the vertigo that crippled him even more than the opiates. And he didn’t know whether to thank her for keeping him alive, or hate her.

Moving his head slowly to avoid triggering another attack, he pulled the ragged blanket around him against the chill of the cave floor.

When she came over to him with some soup, he watched her eyes as she fed him because he was too weak to do it himself. He couldn’t see her features beneath the dark scarf she wore over her head and wrapped around her neck to cover her face. He could see only her eyes, onyx black, winter cold, and void of any emotion but weary disdain.

It had been the same thing every day for twenty-three days. He’d used a small pebble to scratch a mark on the rock wall every day since he’d regained consciousness. She would appear wearing the ever-present scarf and a burqa that covered her from head to knees, completely hiding her body beneath yards of coarse, draping cotton. The scent of the summer heat and the scorch of the sun that she brought with her were reminders that a world existed outside this cave. A world that wasn’t dank and dark and cold. A world that was hostile and foreign and where, she assured him, he was not safe.

For twenty-three days she had been the only soul he’d seen. Yet he wouldn’t recognize her if he saw her on the street. Not that he would ever leave here. If the pain and the vertigo didn’t keep him flat on his back, the ankle shackle that chained him to the rock wall would. And then there was the poppy. Who knew how deeply he’d been dragged down that rabbit hole?

Some days—the lucid ones, when he couldn’t fight the fear—he would lie here shivering and wish for death. When pain ripped through his head, when the dizziness was so crippling it reduced him to lying rigidly still, hugging the rock floor in a desperate and futile attempt to stop the nausea, that’s when despair crushed him. And he would beg her to let him die.

Always, she refused. She continued to risk all to make certain he stayed alive and he had no idea why.

He knew only that every time she appeared on quiet feet and condemning silence, he felt shame and gratitude that she hadn’t forgotten him . . . the way he’d forgotten everything but the need to leave this place that even God had forsaken and find his way back home.

If only he knew where home was.

One

NORTHERN MINNESOTA—JULY

Today, of all days, Jess Albert needed routine. Most days she got it. Shopkeeping at the Crossroads General Store wasn’t exactly an exciting occupation. Every day was pretty much a repeat of the day before, and the day before that. Little groundhog days, stacked one on top of the other like cordwood.

“Until tomorrow, my little lotus blossom. Dream of me.”

Jess grinned as one of her regulars, Boots Nelson, delivered his standard good-bye, tucked his newspaper under his arm, and limped toward the door on his recently replaced knee.

“One of these days, Marcia’s going to show up with a shovel and bash one of us over the head if you keep flirting with me like that,” she teased.

“Ah, but what’s life without a little danger?” He wiggled his bushy white eyebrows, blew her a kiss, and let himself outside on a hot rush of July air to drive the four miles back to his cabin for his afternoon nap and his wife of almost fifty years.

The bell above the store’s front door dinged softly behind the irrepressible old flirt, sounding the same as it had since Jess’s father had first set up shop almost fifty years ago. Jess loved the sound of that bell. It was comforting, the bedrock of her childhood, as ingrained in her psyche as the scent of sunscreen, bug spray, and the cherry nut ice cream she’d scooped gallons of this summer.

She’d spent her youth playing on the scarred pine floors, eventually working behind the counter as a teenager. Three years ago, after burning out as an ER trauma nurse, she’d taken over the store when her parents had retired and moved to Arizona.

So she loved the sound of that old bell. Every time it rang, it meant business, which was good because her quarterly taxes were due soon and, as always, she was a little short on cash.

She also loved it because it meant she had another customer to help keep her mind off the fact that this particular day was a tough one to get through. She glanced at the framed eight-by-ten photo of her and J.R. that hung on the wall behind the cash register. Suntanned and smiling, their whole lives ahead of them. And then it wasn’t. At least not for J.R.

He would have been thirty-five today. If he’d been alive today, she would have baked him a cake, and some of his buddies on the base would have stopped by for some cake and a little beer.

But the last birthday J.R. celebrated had been thousands of miles from home. He’d been thirty-two. Eight months later, he’d been dead.

“Too late to add these to the bill?”

She looked up at the young father who was making some last-minute purchases before he and his son headed out onto the lake for a week of camping and fishing. He’d added a map and a couple of black ball caps with
LAKE KABETOGAMA
embroidered across the bill to their growing stack of supplies.

“Not a problem,” she said brightly, and harnessed her attention back to the business at hand. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, throw in half a pack of C batteries and we’ll call it good, right, son?”

The boy looked to be around ten. He had flashing brown eyes and buzz-cut blond hair, the image of his father and antsy to start their grand “just guys” adventure.

“Do you think we’ll see a bear?” the boy asked Jess with equal measures of hope and trepidation.

“It’s a good possibility,” she said, feeding his excitement. “By the last DNR count, over a hundred and fifty black bears called Lake Kabetogama and this part of Voyageurs National Park home. Where’re you camping?”

The dad dug into his breast pocket and checked his camping permit. “Blue Fin Bay.”

“Ah. Then there’s a pretty good chance you might spot one.”

The boy’s eyes grew as big as bobbers.

She couldn’t help but laugh as she continued ringing up their sale. “Just make sure to police your campsite every day, and store your food in the bear-proof lockers the park service provides. You’ll be fine.”

The bell rang again, and Jess glanced up from the cash register in time to see a pair of broad shoulders and the back of a baseball cap disappear down the center aisle toward the live bait tanks.

It was a sight she saw dozens of times a day during the summer season. Another fisherman burning with fishing fever, hoping to get lucky and needing some bait.

Since she was on her own until Casey got back from the bank, she left the newcomer alone to figure out what he wanted while she finished ringing up twenty gallons of gas, a mocha cappuccino, a root beer, and the rest of the groceries for the campers. Then she gave them directions to Woodenfrog Landing, where they could put their boat in, and wished them good luck. Once they’d left, she went to check on Mr. Ball Cap.

Heading out from behind the counter, she nearly tripped over Bear, her twelve-week-old black Labrador pup. The dog was a mass of sleek, glossy fur, big clumsy feet, and happily thumping tail. Still spent from their run this morning, Bear had “assumed the position” and was napping soundly by her feet.

“No, don’t get up.” She grinned at the oblivious dog and headed down a row of shelves stocked neatly with everything from canned goods to marshmallows to fishing lures, and walked toward the last place she’d seen the top of the ball cap disappear. “Sorry for the wait. What can I get you?”

“Not sure. What do I need to catch the big ones?”

The voice stopped her cold, and routine and comfortable shifted to excitement and chaos in one heartbeat. Though he was hidden on the other side of the aisle, she knew exactly who was back there.

Tyler Brown.

Holy, holy cow.

It was a year ago February when she’d met this man and exchanged a very few words with him. No way should she have remembered the timbre and pitch of his voice so clearly after nearly eighteen months. Yet she was 100 percent certain it was him as she made the final turn to face him.

“Surprise.” His smile was hopeful and expectant and even a little shy. Coupled with his very large, very striking, and very unexpected presence, it set off a handspring of emotions inside her chest.

“Yeah,” she finally managed, along with a smile that felt as forced as it felt necessary. “You could definitely say this is a surprise. Hello, Ty. You’re a long way from home.”

A very long way from his life. And a helluva long way from the cold winter night when he’d swooped in and out of her life like the storm he’d blown in on.

And now here he was, back again. One of the men who had been in the thick of a dangerous rescue. A man who had made enough of an initial impression on her that she’d opened up her gun safe to him and three other virtual strangers, based on his word alone.

Though Tyler Brown looked nothing like J.R., she suspected he was like him in every other way. Except one: Ty Brown was alive. J.R. wasn’t. Her husband had died thousands of miles from home, fighting a war she’d never quite understood, hadn’t truly sanctioned, and hadn’t been able to keep him from fighting. Looking at Ty—who had made her think of J.R. the first time she’d seen him—unsettled her as much as it confused her. And, unfortunately, excited her.

Her day had gone from mundane to totally bonkers to the tune of the bell above the door.

“So,” he said when she just stood there.

Guess he figured one of them needed to say something—and since he’d brought this game into play, she was just fine with leaving that to him.

“Thought I’d do some fishing,” he finished.

Really? And Florida was no longer surrounded by an ocean full of fish?

Since he had this little “if you buy that, I’ve got some farmland in the Sahara Desert I’d love to sell you” smile, she avoided the obvious questions, like: What was he
really
doing here? And the most damaging one: Why did it seem to matter so much?

“Early July’s not the best time of year.” Two could play this game. “But I’m told fishing started to pick up a bit this week.” She pasted on her shopkeeper smile and pretended her world hadn’t just been tipped on end. “You want live bait?”

His grin was both thoughtful and amused, like he knew that she knew he hadn’t come all this way to fish, but was willing to play it that way until she got used to the idea. “Live bait. Yeah, sure. Why not? Live bait would be good.”

She moved behind the tanks, hoping she didn’t appear as off balance as she felt. “Got a sale on flathead chubs.”

That spurred a soft chuckle. “My lucky day.”

She couldn’t look at him, because live bait had definitely not brought him back to Kabetogama. Neither had fishing, but she wasn’t ready to process that yet. Head down, she started scooping up minnows. “Couple dozen do you?”

“I don’t know. Will a couple dozen do me?”

He was laughing at her now—not unkindly, but like she was entertaining him, which meant he saw right through her.

Lord, she hoped he didn’t have her figured out. Or maybe she did. Then he could tell her exactly what was going on in her head, because she didn’t have one solid clue.

Well, maybe one. There hadn’t been a man in her life since J.R. And there’d never been a man who triggered the physical reactions Tyler had at first sight all those months ago. Reactions he was triggering again.

It had puzzled and unsettled her that she’d experienced such an instant and strong physical reaction to him. But she’d chalked it up to a cold, isolating storm, the threat of immediate danger, and a lot of long, lonely nights alone in her bed.

Then Ty Brown had disappeared from her life as quickly as he’d come into it. Which had been good. Which had been fine. She’d actually been relieved when he hadn’t called, even though he’d said he would. At least, that’s what she’d told herself. She didn’t want to get involved with anyone.

She especially didn’t want to get involved with a man like Tyler Brown. Special Ops soldiers, whether active duty or retired, were always warriors. They would always be the men leading the charge, putting themselves in danger, living for the adrenaline rush, and dying for God and country and the guy next to them in the trenches.

She’d lived with that kind of man. She’d loved and tried to understand that kind of man. But neither love nor understanding had been enough to keep him home—or keep him alive.