by Elle James
The bell dinged, the elevator door slid open and Jenna rushed in, turning slowly, hoping the doors would close before Dustin saw the tears in her eyes.
He stared straight into her eyes, his brow puckering slightly. “Thanks for stopping by to check on Dad.”
The doors slid closed and Jenna could swear she heard Dustin whisper something that sounded like I missed you.
She shook her head, sure she was projecting her own thoughts on him. So much for buying new panties. The man clearly wasn’t interested, or hadn’t forgiven her for being so brutal in brushing off their engagement. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him that she’d sacrificed her own happiness so that he could follow his dream. How pathetic would that look after all these years?
Jenna hurried to her SUV, brushing the tears from her cheeks. She called Toby and choked out the message she’d received from Rebecca. “God, I hope we’re not headed into another disaster. Waco doesn’t need more lunatics like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in ’93. But who knows what’s happening behind their walls? I’m going to check it out. Be ready with your camera in case there’s trouble at the commune.”
Chapter Four
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DUSTIN WALKED BACK into the waiting room where his brothers stood, arms crossed over their chests, eyebrows elevated.
“Well?” Adam asked.
Dustin frowned. “Well what?”
“Are you going to stay at her apartment, or not?” Houston prompted.
“It’s really none of your business.”
Adam held up the key, his lips twisting as if he was working hard at not smiling. “Then I guess you won’t be needing this.”
Dustin held out his hand. “Give it to me, and I’ll be sure it gets back to her.”
His older brother snatched the key out of his reach. “Uh-uh. She ditched you ten years ago. Houston and I discussed it. We’re not letting you get sucked into her web again. She’s bad news.”
Houston chuckled. “News, get it?”
With a scowl, Dustin wiggled his fingers. “Give me the damned key. I don’t care what she is. I’m not a teenager anymore. What happened in the past was for the best. If we’d gotten married, I wouldn’t be a SEAL.”
“How do you know that?” Houston asked. “You always wanted to be a SEAL. You could have done it—even married.”
Dustin shook his head. “If Jenna and I had married, I wouldn’t have enlisted. I would have done like Adam and gone on to college. Probably would have had a decent desk job where I wouldn’t be shot at.”
“Huh. I went to college, but now I’m getting shot at,” Adam pointed out. “You would have shriveled up and died behind a desk. The three of us never did like being indoors.”
Adam was right. From the time they learned to walk, they’d been outside every minute of daylight and sometimes well past dark, if their mother didn’t put her foot down. “Whatever. I’m old enough and more experienced. I can manage a night at Jenna’s apartment without falling apart. It’s just a place to stay.”
Adam crossed his arms. “So is the hotel across the street.”
“I’d rather not spend the money when I have Jenna’s apartment available.”
“And you’re not going there to get laid?” Houston shook his head even before Dustin could respond. “Don’t even try to lie. She’s hot. You had a thing for her. Old flames don’t always die. They come back and scorch us, if we let them.”
“Says a man who’s never had a serious girlfriend.” Dustin waved a hand at his younger brother. “When was the last time you got laid?”
Houston squirmed. “Last week.”
Dustin’s eyebrows shot up. “You were in training. Unless you got a thing for guys, it’s been longer than that. Try again.”
“Okay, it’s been more than a month.”
“Who was she? What was her name?”
“I don’t know. I met her at a bar.”
“Exactly. You haven’t had a real relationship. Ever. So how do you know if an old flame will scorch me or not?”
“Who has time for more than a quick hop in the sack? I give one hundred and ten percent to the force.” Houston tipped his head at Dustin. “Same as you. I haven’t heard about you having a steady girl.”
“Same issue as you. My job takes everything.” He held out his hand to Adam. “Give me the damned key.”
Adam laid the key in Dustin’s hand. “We just don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“You two are so kind.” Dustin’s tone dripped sarcasm. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it.” He pocketed the key, the metal burning against his thigh. “Besides, I’m curious what she wants out of this.”
“She’s probably kicking herself for dumping you and is going to beg you to take her back.”
“I doubt it.” But if she did beg him to take her back, he’d have the pleasure of blowing her off this time. Hell, he hadn’t been with a woman in over six months, having been too busy to even care. If Jenna wanted to invite him into her bed, who was he to disappoint the woman? He could have sex with her and easily walk away. Just like she’d done to him.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, tired beyond belief.
“You look like hell.” Adam clapped a hand on his back. “Why don’t you head to Jenna’s apartment now and get some sleep?”
“I want to see Dad first.”
“Yeah. Me, too,” Houston said. “Then it’s home to sleep for twenty-four hours.”
After spending some time sitting with his father while his mother and siblings went to eat dinner, Dustin was more than ready to reset his internal clock. His body didn’t know if it was day or night, and jet lag was dragging his eyelids closed even when he stood. He stretched out in the chair next to his father’s bed, his legs crossed at the ankles.
Seeing his father fresh from surgery had been a blow. The man was pale beneath his rancher’s tan. With tubes poking out of his arms and nose, and wires connected to electrodes on his chest, he looked like something from a science-fiction movie, not the robust man Dustin knew and loved.
His parents were getting older. They wouldn’t be around forever.
Was now the time to make the break from the service and come home?
Dustin fingered the key in his pocket. Was now the time to rekindle an old flame and see if there was still fuel to feed the fire? Or had Jenna’s offer been nothing more than an old friend extending a helping hand in a time of need?
There was only one way to find out.
His mother entered the room. “Dustin, you must be exhausted. Go home.”
He sighed and stretched. “Where are Adam and Houston?”
“Gone to the ranch to help take care of things. Your father probably won’t wake until morning. Get some sleep, or you’ll scare him with your haggard face.”
“Thanks, Mom. Nothing like laying it out there without sugar-coating.” Dustin stood, stretched and hugged his mother. “Everything seems to be working as it should. His heartbeat is steady and he seems to be sleeping comfortably. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay the night with him?”
She shook her head. “No. I want to be here in case he wakes. He’s likely to be cranky, and I want to spare the nurses his temper.”
Dustin chuckled. “He never was a good patient.”
“No, but he’ll listen to me when I tell him he’s being an ass.”
“You do have a knack for getting through to him. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be in town, not far away.”
She cupped his cheek. “I hope you know what you’re getting into, Dustin.”
“Adam and Houston told you where I’m staying?”
She nodded.
“I’ll be fine. I’m all grown up now.”
“Yes, but you loved her enough to ask her to marry you. Beware your heart doesn’t get broken again.”
“Thank, Mom, but I can handle it. It’s only a place to stay. Like a hotel room, only free.” Hugging his mother one last time, Dustin left the room.
JENNA SPED THROUGH the streets of Waco, her foot hard on the accelerator before she realized just how fast she was going.
Damn. With Dustin back in town, you’d think her mind had clouded. She couldn’t put together two coherent thoughts. He was just a man…a very sexy…incredibly muscled man… but still, only a man.
She refused to let herself get all wrapped up in him again. She wasn’t a naive teen anymore. The man had stayed away for the past ten years, apparently only coming to Waco to visit his parents and then heading right back to his duty assignment. If he’d had any lingering feelings for her, he’d have looked her up, maybe asked if she wanted to go out.
Then again, she’d been pretty blunt, telling him she wasn’t interested in settling down, that being married to him would cramp her style and force her to give up too many of her own goals and dreams.
In truth, she had given up her main dream of being a permanent part of Dustin’s life so that he could pursue his lifelong dream of being a Navy SEAL. She sucked in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly to regulate the erratic beat of her heart.
She had to focus on her cousin’s message and get to her before the farmer’s market closed.
Rebecca was a cousin on her mother’s side. Rebecca’s mother, Jenna’s Aunt Lissa, was a free spirit, who left her first husband to live with a bearded man in a run-down cabin near the river. She was sort of like a cross between a hippie and a puritan, sewing her own clothes, growing her vegetables and making handcrafted items she sold or bartered for other things she might need.
Rebecca’s father had taken Aunt Lissa to court for custody of his daughter Rebecca and won. He remarried and raised her like most normal children with access to electronics, television and movies. But her relationship with her father’s new wife wasn’t good, and she often retreated into her bedroom whenever she was at home, escaping into video games. Her behavior had become more and more belligerent toward her stepmother until her father punished her by taking away all of her electronics.
Angry, she’d thrown a screaming fit.
Jenna’s mother had stepped in, offering to take Rebecca for the rest of the school semester and to watch out for her during the summer. At his wit’s end, her father had agreed.
Rebecca’s rebellion seemed to calm until one day she disappeared, leaving behind a note that she’d gone to live with her mother in the Sweet Salvation commune outside of Waco, claiming she wanted a simpler life, free of advanced technology and peer pressure. This from a girl who’d been addicted to online gaming.
On the one hand, she’d kicked her gaming addiction—on the other, she’d fallen in with the zealot teachings of the commune’s elders. She’d convinced her father she was happier and living a good life. Her father, trying to hold together his marriage, reluctantly agreed to let her stay at the commune.
Rebecca had been there for over a year now, turned seventeen and seemed to be assimilating to the lifestyle. Thus Jenna’s surprise when she received a text message from a member of a community that shunned cell phone usage, computers, televisions and electricity that wasn’t produced by their myriad of windmills scattered around a six-hundred acre compound.
Jenna hurried to the farmer’s market, afraid it would close before she arrived, and she’d miss Rebecca. The members of the commune were brought to the market in trucks with their fresh vegetables and handmade crafts to sell. All proceeds were returned to the commune to be distributed equally. When the market closed, they were loaded into the trucks and returned to the Sweet Salvation compound where the women had their chores and the men had theirs.
Jenna frequented the market during the cooler days of late fall, avoiding the scorching hot days like the day was turning out to be. It wasn’t a fire or a gas line exploding, but at least her cousin’s call for help kept her from mooning over the tragedy that was her love life. From the message Rebecca had sent, the girl probably wasn’t happy with the way things were going and wanted out.
Parking near the market, Jenna jumped out and hurried toward the simple booth, craftily constructed for ease of erecting and tearing down in a hurry. Several women dressed in old-fashioned gingham dresses stood behind the counter, offering samples of homemade jellies. Rebecca was nowhere to be seen.
In an attempt not to appear too obvious, Jenna wandered past the booth to the next one where aprons and bonnets were sold. Again, no Rebecca. Afraid she was too late, Jenna kept walking to the end of the row of vendors, circled around behind the booths and stepped over extension cords and empty boxes.
“Jenna!” A voice called out from the direction of the portable toilets.
Rebecca’s head poked out of the door of the one on the far end, and she waved Jenna toward her.
When Jenna reached the portable bathroom, Rebecca’s hand snaked out and dragged her into the molded plastic room.
The smell of human waste struck Jenna, and she forced back her gag reflex, worried about her cousin who’d gone to great lengths to get her there.
“I don’t have much time.” Rebecca whispered.
“What’s wrong?” Jenna gripped the girl’s arms. “Are you being treated badly? Anyone abusing you?”
Rebecca had lost her baby-fat from the last time Jenna had seen her. With her strawberry-blond hair pulled back into a tight bun and her pale, freckled face glowing with a layer of perspiration, completely devoid of makeup, she appeared older. She wore a light green gingham dress and serviceable white shoes, the kind Jenna’s grandmother wore before she’d passed away. “They want me to marry one of the elders when I turn eighteen next month.” Her cousin’s chin lowered. “I try to be a good follower, but I can’t do it.” She looked up, her eyes filled with tears. “I just can’t.”
“You don’t have to marry anyone you don’t want to. You can move back in with your father.”
Before Jenna finished her sentence, Rebecca was shaking her head. “I can’t. My stepmother hates me.”
“You can move in with me.”
“The courts won’t let that happen. Nor would my father. I have to stick it out at least until I turn eighteen, but then I want out.”
“Are you sure you’re safe?”
“No one has harmed me yet. And the life there is pretty decent, for the most part.”
“What do you mean, ‘the most part’?”
She shrugged. “It all seems on the up and up. People like hard work and making things with their hands, using their brains and natural tools to cultivate crops. On the surface they all seem happy.”
Jenna tried not to breathe too deeply. The fumes were overwhelming her. “I feel there’s a ‘but’ in there.”
“I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s not right. Ever since the Department for Family and Protective Services visited the compound last month, the elders are spending more time in secret meetings and they seem somehow more intense. I don’t think they liked being told what to do. Elder John Powell is on a preaching tear, his sermons lasting upwards of four hours, seven days a week. We can hardly get our work done. More and more of the sermons speak to the rapture and the end of the world. It’s creeping me out.”
Jenna hugged the girl. “You should come with me. It sounds like it’s not safe there.”
“I can’t. My mother’s still there. I can’t leave the community without her.” Rebecca bit her bottom lip and stared down at her hands, bunched in the muted gingham fabric of her dress. “A couple other things. And I’m not sure whether they mean anything, but there are late-night deliveries to the main building. I snuck out of our dorm one night and found men unloading wooden crates, carrying them into the worship hall. I don’t know what was in them, but I don’t think it was food or staples. When I entered the hall the next day, there was no sign of the crates. I think they stored them in the basement—which they keep locked.”
“The boxes could contain food, clothing, or farming supplies. Why are you worried?”
“I wouldn’t have mentioned them, except the deliveries
started coming soon after an outsider joined the community who doesn’t seem to fit in. He reminds me of some of the guys on my old combat video games. You know…the kind that kick butt and don’t put up with much. Not at all like most of the men in the community.” Her brows pinched. “Well except Elder Snow.” She looked up at Jenna. “It could be nothing, but in case it’s something, I thought I’d mention it”
“Do you want me to come out and bring you and your mother out of there? Will she come?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened. “You can’t. They won’t let you past the gates. You have to go through their orientation and sign a contract before you’re allowed inside the compound. And then you’re not allowed to talk about what goes on inside.” Rebecca touched Jenna’s arm. “You can’t take this public. You can’t make it one of your news reports. They’ll know it was me.” Her eyes grew rounder. “Please tell me you won’t do a story on this. Please.”
Jenna wanted to blow the entire compound wide open, exposing the elders for the bastard zealots they were, frightening women and children into doing their bidding, marrying men they didn’t love. Who knew what else was going on behind the walls of the compound? “I promise not to shoot a story about this. But I can’t just stand back and do nothing.”
Rebecca held up a disposable cell phone. “I bought this with money I stole from the commune. I know it was wrong, but I wanted to be able to let someone who cared know what was happening in case things go wrong. I could be imagining it, but I have a bad feeling.”
“How are you able to hide the phone?”
“I stuff it into my undergarments and turned off the sound and vibration.”
“What happens if they find it?”