“Well, this should be fun.”
“Welcome home?” he offered.
I blatantly ignored him as we rounded the final switchback and came into the clearing. I’d been back only once in the last decade, but I’d seen this view nearly every night in my dreams.
The setting sun reflected off the windows of the two-story structure I’d grown up in, painting it with a picturesque light that matched the majesty of the bare peak that loomed just behind it.
Dad had always joked that it was safer to raise his family at the tree line, where the wildfires weren’t as big of a threat.
Personally, I thought he took a perverse pleasure in living at the edge, where there was barely enough oxygen for anything to grow.
I threw the Jeep into park, killed the engine, and then grabbed my coat from where it had fallen to the floor behind me.
By the time Xander pulled in next to me, I was out of the Jeep and had the black North Face on and zipped, wishing it was my Kevlar. I would rather have been dodging bullets than facing him—or Dad, for that matter.
“I’ll…uh…not be here,” Gideon said awkwardly before leaving me in the yard. I heard the house door open and shut right around the same time Xander’s car door did.
He came around the front of his polished, brand-new truck and stopped suddenly, his hands pausing mid-zip on his coat.
A lifetime of memories assaulted me—the good, the bad, and the worst. Pretty much in that order.
He raked a hand through his Ken doll–perfect blond hair and sucked in a breath. “Camden.”
“Alexander.” I shaped the brim of my ball cap.
Guess we both had our nervous tells.
He hadn’t changed much. Same blue eyes. Same lean frame. Still Dad’s obvious genetic gift to the world. Still my opposite in every way.
He shook his head as if struggling for words, and instead of reciting every way I’d failed our family, he crossed the decomposed granite of the drive and threw his arms around me.
“I’m so glad you’re home.”
His words sliced deeper than any insult could have. An insult I could handle—I’d been prepared for that.
But the way he pulled back, clasped my slack arms, and smiled at me—all tight lipped and furrowed brow, fighting back emotions I no longer felt capable of—wasn’t anything I could have built a defense against.
He laughed, the sound thick with six years of absence. “You’re huge. What do they feed you Delta boys? And what is this?” He motioned to my light beard as he stepped back.
“Green Beret, not Delta,” I corrected him with the decade-old joke and a forced smile as my stomach sickened.
“Yeah, yeah. Guys like me who never saw action can’t ever tell the difference.” His eyes skittered over my features, as if he were trying to memorize them before I disappeared…again. “God, Cam. I’m just…”
Nausea churned as the pit in my stomach deepened to a gaping chasm of regret and guilt.
He smiled, boasting even white teeth and a happiness I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced. “I’m just really glad you’re home.”
“You said that.” I was going to vomit. How could he be so nice to me?
“Well, it’s true.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “What do you say we go find Dad?”
“You don’t seem too worried.”
“I am, but for every time he’s forgotten my name, he’s never gotten lost on the land. We just need to spot him before the temps drop.”
I nodded, and he turned toward the house. It was in the high twenties right now, but we’d hit single digits within an hour of the sun retiring.
“Nice Jeep, by the way. It suits you,” he called back over his shoulder.
My eyes slammed shut as I sucked in breath after breath through my nose, willing the bile to slide back down my throat. It was like my body couldn’t physically handle the emotions.
Of course he forgave me. Of course he welcomed me with open arms. Of course there was no malice in his eyes, just open, raw love. He didn’t need to blast me with all my flaws. He’d always lived as an example, showing me every single way I’d never measure up by simply being him.
Just as I got myself under control, he turned back.
“You okay?” His voice dropped in concern.
“Yeah,” I lied. Because it was one of the things I excelled at.
“Altitude?”
“Something like that.”
“Just make sure you’re drinking enough water,” he reminded me, arching an eyebrow until I nodded my consent, and then headed up the steps to the front porch.
An eyebrow that was bisected by the first flaw I’d ever seen on Xander—a scar that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him. A thin, short scar that had me fighting back the urge to throw up my lunch all over the driveway.
The scar I’d put there when I’d thrown him through Mr. Williamson’s window.
Xander was halfway up the stairs when the front door flew open and Gideon ran from the house.
“He has a gun!” he shouted.
Xander froze, pivoting to watch Gideon race down the steps toward me.
“I’m sorry?” I pinned Gid with a stare, hoping he’d correct that asinine statement.
“He has the shotgun! Dorothy just told me. We have a couple search parties coming in from the Bradley side.” Gid strode past me, already talking into the radio on his shoulder.
“How the hell does Dad have access to the shotgun?” I growled at Xander.
“I…” He shook his head. “I thought I had them all locked in the safe. I hid the key and everything.”
“In the laundry room?” Dorothy asked as she walked onto the porch, holding a familiar, faded bottle of fabric softener. Time had apparently decided it was done with Mrs. Powers, because she hadn’t changed in the ten years that had passed since I’d enlisted. Her hair was the same shade of silver in the same chin-length cut. She even wore the same green winter coat.
“Yeah, right above—” Xander sighed, his eyes sliding shut. “Right above the fabric softener he refuses to use.”
“This fabric softener that I found in the entry hall?” she asked, giving him one hell of a “mom” look.
“That would be it.” A muscle flexed in his jaw.
“Tell me you stored the ammo separately.” Tell me you at least remembered that much from serving your three years.
Xander blanched. Awesome.
“Let’s find him before he kills someone.” I turned on my heel and headed back to the Jeep. Oddly enough, I was more comfortable with guns than I was with mushy reunions.
I dropped my coat, climbed up the Jeep, and popped the lock on the cargo carrier I’d anchored to the roof for the cross-country trip. Selling off just about everything I owned had seemed the logical choice at the time, but I’d held on to a few things for reasons I didn’t have time to examine.
“What are we going to do?” Xander asked, peering up at me.
“What do you mean?” I found what I was looking for and closed the carrier. Then I jumped to the ground, landing in front of Xander, whose eyes were bigger than my headlights.
Two more trucks and the APD pulled up the drive and parked.
“I mean…” Xander eyed the newcomers as they talked to Gideon and then lowered his voice as he turned back to me. “What are we going to do? He has the shotgun and doesn’t know who I am about seventy-five percent of the time.”
A comforting weight settled on my chest as I dressed for the occasion before zipping my jacket and tying my boots. “I figured we’d go find Dad.”
I rustled through my glove box, quickly grabbing my headlamp and a flashlight, then stuffed them in my pockets, pausing only long enough to tuck in the little white onyx bishop next to my driver’s manual so the chess piece didn’t get lost. We probably ha
d another hour of good light, but if I was wrong, it was going to take more than that to cover the hundred acres Dad owned, and that was if he’d stayed on the property.
“Don’t you think we should let Gideon and the PD handle this now?” Xander asked quietly.
I looked back to where Gideon stood with the other four officers who made up the Alba Police Department. They all had sidearms strapped on. I was on the receiving end of more than a couple of glares. Not that I could blame them. At least three of those guys had put cuffs on me at one time or another.
“You mean, am I going to let the men with the guns find our dad, who has his own gun?” I didn’t wait for Xander’s response, turning toward the northern section of the property.
“Wait!” Xander gripped my elbow, and I tensed, reminding myself at least a dozen times not to beat the crap out of him for touching me without warning.
“Let go of me.”
My tone must have gotten through to him, because he dropped his hand.
“There are rules, Cam. Regulations. They know how to handle this kind of thing. The last thing we need is you flying off the handle.”
Ah, there it was, the butter knife–soft condescension Xander used when he thought the twenty-five months he had on me age-wise gave him the right to issue orders. He’d never make a quick, clean cut to get his way. He’d simply saw with that lightly serrated edge until you were too raw from the friction to object.
I preferred the more direct butcher’s-knife approach.
“You and your rules. You’re telling me that if he points that shotgun at them, they won’t pull the trigger?”
Xander scoffed. “Come on, it’s the guys.”
“You willing to bet Dad’s life on that twenty-five-year-old bully who doesn’t bother to answer his radio and has flicked open the holster on his weapon at least four times since they started talking? I’m not. I know where he is, and I’m getting there before they do.”
Xander’s head snapped toward the little meeting Gideon was holding, and I started off after a faint set of tracks I knew would disappear as soon as we hit the mountain grass. They were more than enough to tell where he was headed. I muttered a curse at the altitude. It would take me only a few days to adjust, but I didn’t exactly have a few days.
“Where are you going?” Gideon called out.
“To find our dad!” Xander responded, radiating confidence.
I rolled my eyes at his public facade but kept going.
He caught up quickly, falling into step next to me as we stuck to the areas where the snow had already melted. Our strides were equal. They always had been. We were equal in height, but I had a good forty pounds of muscle on him.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said as the tracks disappeared.
“Yep.” My gaze raked the terrain, looking for any sign that Dad had come this way.
“Seriously, you think you know where he is?”
“How long has he had that bottle of fabric softener?” I asked as the granite crunched beneath my feet. At least it wasn’t snowing.
“Years.” Xander shrugged.
“Right. At least a decade. Paula Bradley brought it over when he was sick that year, remember? Tried to help out with laundry.”
“How the hell do you remember that?”
“I’m cursed with an excellent memory.” I turned toward the part of the property where Sullivan was buried. “Trust me, there’s shit I would love to forget. Do you remember why he wouldn’t use it?” We crested one slope and started back down toward the tree line, keeping the peak on our right as we trekked through a snow-covered section.
“I barely remember Mrs. Bradley bringing it over.”
“He wouldn’t let her use it, but he refused to throw it away,” I tried to remind him.
Xander threw me a clueless look.
“It’s lavender scented,” I said, answering my own question.
Xander sucked in a breath. “Mom.”
“Mom,” I confirmed as we reached the tree line and started to hike through the pines. In the shade, the temperature dropped to an uncomfortable level.
“But she’s buried at the other end of the property with—”
“That’s not where he goes when he misses her. Not that he’d ever admit that he misses her.” Admitting that would be tantamount to broadcasting a weakness, and Arthur Daniels was anything but weak.
“The ravine.”
“Yep.”
We pushed through the finger of forest that covered this strip of the property and came out into a clearing I knew all too well.
I cursed under my breath as it came into view.
“Oh no,” Xander whispered.
Oh no didn’t quite cover this. My heart paused mid-beat, then slammed, pumping adrenaline through my system.
Dad stood about thirty yards to our left, in the middle of the clearing, shotgun raised at the one person I’d hoped to never see again.
I’d know that frame, that thick braid of chestnut hair, that profile with a slight bump in her nose anywhere. Hell, I’d been there the day she’d broken it when we were kids. I’d been the one to carry her out of that mine.
She stood about fifteen yards in front of us with her hands out and open, but she wasn’t retreating from the double-barreled reaper pointed straight at her chest. Backing down had never been in her nature, and while I’d always been intrigued by her tenacity, right now I was cursing her stupid stubborn streak.
Willow Bradley was going to get herself shot.
Sullivan’s Willow.
You gotta help me here, Sully. I sent the thought rather than spoke it, knowing Xander wouldn’t understand.
“Walk through the trees until you can come up behind him. As soon as I give you the signal, get that gun away from him,” I whispered to Xander, leaving zero room for argument.
“What signal?”
“Trust me, you’ll know.”
“He won’t recognize you. He’ll shoot you,” he hissed.
“Better me than her.” Death had never scared me. We’d played a game of cat and mouse for as long as I could remember, and one day I would lose. It was that simple.
If I died today, then so be it.
I moved.
Chapter Two
Willow
Think, Willow. Think.
This was Mr. Daniels. I’d known him my entire life. Alzheimer’s or not, there was no way he was really going to shoot me, right?
Except there was this one troubling factor: he had no idea who I was. Oh, and he had a shotgun pointed at my chest. That was troubling, too.
“Mr. Daniels,” I tried again, keeping my voice soft. “It’s me. It’s Willow. I live next door, remember?” If you considered a mile away next door.
The breeze whipped a loose strand of my hair across my face, but I didn’t dare tuck it back beneath my hat. The sun had set precious minutes earlier, and it was already getting dark. What if he just couldn’t see me?
“Be quiet!” he shouted, jerking the shotgun. His eyes were wide and wild but not evil. He simply didn’t know me or the circumstances that had led him here.
I gasped in reaction, my heart jumping into my throat. What if he pulled the trigger? What if it went off the next time he jostled it like that? We were half a mile away from the Danielses’ place and three-quarters of one above my parents’. My cell phone was in my pocket, but I had a feeling he’d shoot me if I reached for it. At this range, I’d be dead before they could get me to a hospital…if they found me.
At least there were other search parties out right now. They’d come at the sound of gunfire.
“There are cougars out here, you know,” he snapped.
Like the one that had mauled his wife fifteen years ago on this very field.
“What are you doing here? You’re tre
spassing!”
I didn’t bother arguing the trespassing point, since technically, I was. But Dorothy had called in a panic, and I’d immediately headed out to look for Mr. Daniels just like I had a few times in the last month. The gun… Now that had been unexpected.
“I know there are cougars,” I told him with a slight quiver in my voice. “You taught me what to do if I ever ran into one.” I’d been seven years old when he’d pulled aside Sullivan and me for lessons. Naturally, Cam had played the cougar while Alexander watched in quiet judgment.
Cam. My chest tightened in that same physical ache it always did whenever he crossed my mind, even with the present danger. Heck, maybe because of the danger.
“I don’t know you! Stop lying! What do you want here? Why are you on my land? Get out!” He jabbed the gun toward me.
“Okay,” I said with a nod and backed up a step.
“Stop moving!” he screamed, his voice pitching high in alarm. “Don’t speak!”
I halted immediately. He was slipping further and further into the episode, and my mind stopped fighting the possibility that he might shoot me, my muscles locking in paralyzing acceptance.
Movement to my left caught my eye, and I turned my head a fraction of an inch to see the shape of a man only a few arm lengths away, approaching with hands up, palms out. Who was it? Where had he come from?
I couldn’t make out his face beneath the baseball hat, but he was massive, dwarfing my five-foot-four frame as he put himself between Mr. Daniels and me. The broad expanse of his back blocked my entire view.
I didn’t recognize him—which was odd, considering there were only about a dozen of us who usually came to search for Mr. Daniels—but there was something familiar in the way he held himself, the way his posture advertised submission but his energy felt 100 percent aggressive. I had the utterly illogical impression that this guy was more dangerous than the loaded gun pointed at him. At least, I assumed it was loaded. If it wasn’t, at least it would be a not-so-hilarious story to tell Charity later.
For all that Dad accused my sister of being impetuous, Charity had certainly never had a shotgun held on her.
“What is this? Who the hell are you? How many of you are there?” Mr. Daniels questioned, panic rising. The shoulders in front of me rose as if he were preparing to— “No, don’t speak! All lies! You claim jumpers are all full of lies!”
Great and Precious Things Page 2