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Tonight was one of those nights. The paperwork was all up to date, the horses had been taken care of, the dogs fed, the dishes done. He didn’t even need to clean, since he’d already washed down the tub and bathroom after bathing the boys.
And maybe the real thing that troubled him was the fear that if he sat down with Courtney he might learn that she had discovered something today, something that supported her theory that Mary had been murdered.
Right now he wasn’t sure he could handle that.
Courtney sat in the living room on the sofa where he’d left her, cup of coffee on the table at her elbow. She appeared wan, he realized, as if she wasn’t any less tired or any more happy about this situation than he was.
That made him uncomfortable, and it took him a minute to realize what was going on: he liked having her here. He liked the distraction, the awareness that he was still a man.
Mentally he swore some words he would never speak in the presence of the boys, and wondered if he was going off his rocker or something.
The only thing that should be concerning him was whether Courtney had found out something.
The words escaped his mouth before he knew they were coming. “Did you find out anything?”
“No.”
“Much more to look at?”
She sighed, and he saw a glimmer of his own grief in her face. “Yes. Unfortunately. If it won’t kill you to have me around another day.”
“Won’t kill me.” Hardly that. Maybe having her around for a few days would make him face up to some stuff it suddenly occurred to him that he’d been avoiding. Stuff like maybe he needed to get on with a life apart from horses and the boys, just like Mary had told him.
Maybe his hermitage was comfortable for him, but judging by the way Kyle and Todd chattered at Courtney, it wasn’t enough for them. Heck, they’d even wanted her to read them a bedtime story, a request he’d nipped upstairs because he wasn’t sure he wanted them to have that intimacy with her. After all, she was moving on.
And maybe he was being terribly unfair to his sons. That caused a shaft of guilt to hit him in the gut. Here he thought he was protecting them and caring for them, when maybe he was cutting them off from things they just naturally needed.
He wouldn’t do that to his horses. Was he doing that to his sons?
Slowly he settled into the easy chair facing her and tried to think of how to deal with all of this. Find a way, any way, into a conversation that might help him, or his kids, or her. Anybody.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he asked her.
“Names. Maybe faces in videos. Somebody had to be close enough to figure out that she’d found something.”
“If she found something.”
“If,” Courtney agreed. “But I can’t think of any other reason she wanted to meet with me. Once she started working for us, we pretty much stayed apart unless we came together in the usual course of things.”
“So you’re not like a secret agent or something.”
“I’m not undercover, no. Not usually. And I knew Mary for a while before this issue ever came up. No reason to be unnecessarily covert. We’d already established a friendship that a number of people knew about.”
He nodded slowly, taking in the information, trying to imagine how things must have been for Mary. He’d probably always wonder. She never talked much about Iraq, not about the ugly stuff anyway. Like she was protecting him.
“Once,” he said slowly, “I tried to get her to talk about what it was like over there. She told me that when she came home on leave she wanted to recharge, not relive.”
Courtney nodded. “I can hear her saying that. She had a gift, didn’t she, for looking forward.”
“Yup. How did you two meet?”
“Oh, I was at her hospital. There’d been an accusation from someone in supply that medical stuff was disappearing and unaccounted for. And since the Marine Corps, and by extension the navy, supplied the hospital, I was one of the people tasked to look into it.”
“I thought she was at an army hospital.”
“Not exactly. Units from different branches of service share the same bases and use the same facilities a lot. Everybody’s got their own share of the job to do, but redundancy is expensive. Especially in hospitals. So, yes, her Guard unit was stationed there, but the hospital was being shared by everyone, and staffed by everyone. Anyway, when it came time to ask her about procedures and if she was aware of anyone stealing supplies, she gave me both barrels.”
Dom chuckled. “She would do that.”
“She asked me if I was an insurance company, wanting them to account for every roll of gauze, every bandage, every aspirin.”
Another chuckle escaped Dom. He could actually hear Mary speaking those words.
“Anyway,” Courtney continued, “she told us in no uncertain terms that everything was being used in treatment, that sometimes they gave supplies to Iraqi medical people who were desperate, and that if we wanted to know where all that stuff was going, we needed to be there when they brought in the next load of casualties.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. Sadly. And we didn’t have to come back to do it. We were still there investigating when it happened. After what we saw, we went back and reported that nothing was being stolen, everything was being used. And it was, Dom. I don’t know what annoyed that supply guy into making a complaint. All he had to do was leave his office and walk next door to the trauma center. The place was chaos, medical supplies were being used and discarded in huge quantities just to stabilize the patients. I don’t know.”
Her smoky blue gaze grew distant. “Maybe it griped him that they were treating civilians, too. If there were a lot of casualties, after they took care of their own patients, they’d grab supplies and head out to nearby Iraqi hospitals to help. It was humanitarian work, and we put in our report that in this instance they needed to call off the bean counters. Winning hearts and minds. That was part of the mission. And Mary was … well, Mary was a pure humanitarian.”
“Sometimes,” Dom said, hating to even admit it, “I’m glad she won’t have to live with those memories.”
“You should be glad,” Courtney said. “If there’s one blessing in any of this, it’s that she won’t have to live with that past. As good as she was, as kind as she was, she’d still have to live with the nightmare. I didn’t see nearly as much of it as she did, and I still have nightmares.”
He fixed his attention on her, realizing that she wasn’t just some cop who had known Mary, a cop trying to do a job he wasn’t yet sure he wanted her to do. In her own way, she was a vet, too. And she was a vet on a mission, whether he liked it or not. He had to respect that.
Damned if he didn’t feel she needed some time to wind down. Coming out here like this had been a desperate act, he realized. Not knowing how she would be received, risking her career if it became known what she was doing, all because she couldn’t let a desert ghost rest.
And that desert ghost had been his wife.
He sighed, struggling again against a torrent of emotions he’d tried to put in some isolated part of his heart simply because he had to get on with things, had to take care of two boys, couldn’t afford to give in or give up.
She was stirring all that up because she couldn’t lock it away as he had.
“You got any family?” he asked.
“Just my mother. We get together once or twice a year.”
Maybe that explained a lot, especially about her job, which was driving her into a dangerous place. Not necessarily physically. He couldn’t see any reason she should be in physical danger … unless those folks who’d been telling her to drop it might feel she was a threat.
For an instant his heart almost stopped. Had it occurred to her that whoever had killed Mary might come after her, too, if she seemed like a threat?
But then he dismissed the thought. She surely must have considered the possibility, and she’d said she was out here without telling anyone. No reason anyone should care where she took her vacation.
And whatever had happened had happened two years ago, just another atrocity among thousands and thousands of atrocities caused by war. However much dust and dirt she kicked up, she was up against powers she couldn’t fight solo. What did seem likely to him was that she would merely put her own neck in a career noose and make him a whole lot less comfortable with what had happened to Mary.
He’d been through hell since her death but the picture Courtney wanted to paint of what had happened presented a new version of hell. One he didn’t know if he could live with.
He wasn’t great with people, but he was good with horses, and right now he felt like he was looking at a mare who was frightened, and flailing about as she tried to figure out the best way to respond to a goad. Goads were bad. He wouldn’t even swat a horse, and this woman looked as if she’d been swatted good.
All he knew was the best way to handle a disturbed horse, and heading straight at the problem was often exactly the wrong way.
“We’re going camping this weekend,” he remarked. “The boys asked if you could come.” They had, but he’d put them off, not wanting to deepen this relationship any. But that had been his immediate response. His secondary response was the one he always got around to sooner or later: help the horse.
She’d probably hate him if she ever figured out he was thinking of her that way. But there it was.
“Camping?” she repeated uncertainly. “But, um …”
“You’re not going to finish going through Mary’s stuff tomorrow. We both know it. And I assume, since you’re here, that you’re on some kind of vacation. Because they sure wouldn’t have let you come otherwise from what you said.”
“You’re right.”
“So take some vacation. The weather is supposed to warm up, I need to go into the upper pasture to gather about twenty head that are still there. The boys have a great time. We ride up on Saturday morning, gather the herd and bring them back down on Sunday.”
“I … don’t know.”
“Think about it. I’m getting some coffee. You want fresh?”
“Please.”
Just a gentle movement of the bit, he reminded himself. Just a hint to let the horse know something was needed. No woman who had gotten into her car and driven out here in defiance of her orders could be weak. No, she had to be a strong woman. But right now she was looking weak, and that was because she was floundering as she tried to find a way to deal with a burr under her saddle.
That would change, he thought. If nothing else, her visit here would convince her it was a dead end. And maybe some mountain sunshine and fresh air would clear her emotions a bit.
Because, as he’d learned these past two years, sometimes you just had to live with the way things were, like them or not.
Chapter 4
Friday morning dawned misty as the warm front moved in, bringing the possibility of light rain.
Courtney rolled onto her side and stared out the window, struck by the lack of curtains. But why would anyone need curtains here? Beyond that window lay nothing but mountains and trees. The bunkhouse, barns and main pastures were on the other side of the house and behind it. In her world, though, no window was ever left uncovered because it was too easy for people to look in from nearby buildings, or even from the ground.
A different world indeed.
From below she could hear the sounds of Dom and the boys at breakfast, and she could even smell some of the aromas that had wafted under her closed door, but not even coffee could make her move.
Emotionally, she felt trampled. Last night she had determined that she would finish up today somehow and leave.
This morning she doubted she would be able to do much of anything. It was as if a load of grief she had been carrying around, carefully compartmentalized for two years, had finally hammered her. Reading through Mary’s letters to her sons had left her feeling positively battered.
Worse, it seemed to have awakened memories of things she had seen over there. Nightmares of war, of mutilated bodies, had plagued her all night. She’d awakened at least three times with the sounds of screams in her ears. But her exposure had been relatively small. Someone like Mary, someone who saw it almost every day, would surely have worse nightmares, worse memories. Worse everything.
I’m lucky, she told herself firmly. Lucky her job had taken her into hell so rarely. Other people had been there for years.
But the thought of opening those doors of memory any wider almost sickened her.
So what was she going to do? Give up her pursuit of justice? Let the desert ghosts lie in their hiding places? Because for her Mary wasn’t the only ghost. So were the women of that village who had never received justice. So was the person who had murdered Mary to protect himself and his buddies. Some of those ghosts she felt unable to leave alone.
Except that today it all seemed like too much. Way too much. Her plan of poring over letters, photos and tapes had been anticipated from a professional angle. It was the kind of thing she did all the time in her job.
But this was no job. This was personal. And it hurt.
Apparently not even two years had buried the anguish completely, and she could only imagine what it was like for Dom, surrounded by all his memories of his wife, taking care of two boys who looked quite a bit like her.
Of course, maybe that had helped him deal faster than her own burying of it had. Maybe he was further down the road than she.
Sighing, she at last rose, tended to her needs and went downstairs. Dom wasn’t there and she imagined he had taken the boys to the bus. Through one of the windows she could see Ted walking out into the pastures. He appeared to be carrying some tack with him.
Breakfast still waited on the table, and the coffee was still hot and fresh. Her place had been set, as if her arrival was anticipated. Somehow that made her feel a little more welcome.
She poured some coffee and then took some pancakes and link sausages from a platter and warmed them in the microwave. Blueberry syrup topped her menu. Not that she felt much like eating. Not after the nightmares, not after that damn email yesterday that was probably as toothless as an old hag, designed to frighten her, but unable to do anything else.
She forced herself to take a bite of pancake. No, that email was meaningless. It had probably arrived simply because she had gone out of reach of oversight. And someone was worried.
Wouldn’t they be horrified to realize that all they had done was confirm her suspicions that something was seriously wrong with the way the investigation had been quashed? For a moment, she almost smiled, and the taste of the pancakes became wonderful.
Yeah. They’d confirmed her suspicions. Now she would get to the bottom of this or die trying.
She tried to imagine Mary sitting at this table. All her memories of Mary involved the base, the hospital and a couple places where it was safe for an American to stop for coffee. Even in a pacified zone that wasn’t always a sure thing.
She ran her fingertips over the aging oilcloth, and figured from the pattern that it must have been Mary’s choice. She had loved cheerful things.
And she probably wouldn’t be very happy to see Courtney sitting here feeling as if lead weighted her down. That just wasn’t Mary. She probably wouldn’t be happy, either, that Courtney had gotten Dom all stirred up again.
Crap! She put her head in her hands as powerful, painful feelings grabbed her. Maybe she should have just let this lie and lived with her sense of outraged justice.
But as soon as she had the thought, she knew she couldn’t rest until she was absolutely certain that she had done everything possible. Everything.
She heard Dom come into the mud room, and didn’t even bother to look up. She didn’t want to know, in a moment of reaction he couldn’t conceal fast enough, how little he wanted her here.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she admitted frankly. “But it doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t, compared to his problems.
“Of course it matters.”
She listened to him pour coffee for himself, then heard a chair scrape as he sat at the table. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head, still resting in her hands. “It’s hard reading those emails and letters.”
“I know.”
Yeah, she was sure he did. And it seemed petty of her to even mention it. “How are you managing?”
He shrugged a shoulder, seeming to indicate he wasn’t going to talk about it. But then he said, “With time I feel it less often. I still feel it, it still hurts like hell, but it happens less often. I guess you can get used to anything, given time.”
“I guess so.” She gave herself an inward shake and looked up at last, finding his strong face looking calm, even resigned. And then she caught a flicker of something else in his gaze, something hot. It was gone almost instantly, but she knew that look, had seen it often enough to know what it meant: he found her sexually attractive.
