Each curve revealed an obstacle. One time it was some cardboard cutouts of terrified civilians in the middle of the road, another time a “sniper” in the trees. Les patiently coached Devon through some advanced evasive techniques, but she didn’t need all that much help.
“Last easy curve, and then it’ll be our redheaded friend’s turn.”
Rhys gulped. Devon would be one hard act to follow.
As she sped around the bend in the road, Les suddenly leaned forward and held a piece of cardboard over her eyes.
Rhys shouted in alarm when the car drifted, the left front tire leaving the road in a spray of gravel. She corrected gently and got them more or less centered, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Without a word, Les jerked away the cardboard. Up ahead were some orange traffic cones, and Devon had a split second to gauge the distance and avoid them.
“Hit ’em and you fail!”
Finessing the pedals with both feet, Devon kept the car steady as a rock. She missed the first cone by mere inches, then rocketed to a stop at the finish line with a screech of tires.
Rhys peeled his fingers one by one off the doorframe, his heart threatening to pound its way out his chest. When he’d caught his breath, he unbuckled his harness and leapt out of the car to jump around like an idiot.
“Holy shit, that was awesome,” he shouted. “Yeah! Fuck, yeah!”
To his intense disappointment—and maybe a little secret relief—he wasn’t assigned that same course.
“Too difficult,” Les pronounced. “We’re gonna start you out slower.”
Most of the guys started out slower, and none of them passed the advanced course that first day. Only Devon.
It was a tired but happy group that made their way back to their transient quarters.
“In a couple of days we’ll get into some rally driving,” Les told Rhys and Devon. “That’s driving on unpredictable surfaces, like loose gravel and water. There’ll be some off-roading, some hill climbing and winching. You’re scheduled to jump tomorrow and Tuesday, so get some rest, young ’uns.”
A few of the guys were making plans for dinner, and probably the strip club again, but Rhys begged off. He was tired and sore, and he wanted to jerk off in the shower and then go to sleep—the world’s best stress relief.
All those plans went to hell when he checked his phone and saw a missed call from Lani. What? They’d agreed to no contact during the month he was gone, so why would she be calling him?
Then he saw the date.
Damn.
He immediately hit redial. When she answered, her voice was low and hoarse. “Hey.”
“Hey, sweetheart.” The endearment was automatic, and it sprang from a deep well of sorrow and guilt that Rhys had long given up trying to understand. He shouldn’t feel guilty, what’d happened with her brother Tyler wasn’t his fault, but there was a part of him that’d always wondered...
Could he have done more?
“You hanging in there?” He kept his voice achingly gentle.
“Yeah.” Lani took in a tremulous breath. “I wasn’t going to call you, I swear. But then my mom...”
Slumping on the bed, Rhys dropped his head into one hand, held his phone up to his ear with the other, and let Lani talk it out. He relived that awful day with her all over again, listened to her agonize over the choices she’d made, the things she’d said to Tyler.
All he could do was reiterate that it wasn’t her fault.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I know I shouldn’t have called you.”
Closing his eyes, Rhys swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s okay, Lani. I just—”
I hate that I can’t fix this. I’m never going to be able to fix this.
“If my mom hadn’t called, I think I would’ve been okay.” Now she sounded wrung out, exhausted, and it tore at Rhys’s heart.
“You want me to take emergency leave and come home—”
“God, no!” she burst out, her voice stronger. “I’ll be fine. I scheduled a bunch of extra shifts in advance so I’d be keeping busy.”
They talked a few minutes more, and after they’d hung up, Rhys stood and wandered restlessly to the window, his gut churning. He hadn’t thought much about her the last couple of days because he’d been so busy himself. It actually felt good to get a little physical and emotional distance.
But is she really okay?
Worry still roiling through him, and knowing he’d end up calling her back if he stayed in his room brooding, Rhys shucked his filthy, sweaty jeans and pulled on some shorts and a fresh shirt. He crammed his feet in a pair of flip-flops before making his way outside to wander aimlessly across the parking lot toward the acrid smell of a cigar.
It was Les, leaning against the hood of his pickup truck. “You want a smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
Les took a big drag of his, the ember flaring bright in the darkness. “Suit yourself.”
Rhys leaned next to him and stared up at the hulks of the derelict planes, silhouetted against the sky in the moonlight.
He shivered. “That has to be one of the saddest, creepiest things I’ve ever seen.”
Footsteps crunched across the asphalt and Rhys glanced up to see Devon approaching. She was wearing a pair of cut-off gray sweatpants and a bright white T-shirt. Her hair was damp, drying into a soft curl around her face.
“Hey, lady,” Les greeted her. “Can’t sleep?”
“No.” She gave him a faint smile. “Smelled your cigar and came to investigate.” She turned down his offer of one and leaned against the truck next to Rhys.
After a moment, Les said quietly, “Were you OEF?”
“Yeah.” Devon wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “Three years in the Twenty-Ninth Transportation Battalion. Did two combat deployments.”
“Thought so. The way you drive, I could tell you’d been in some shit.”
Rhys was burning with curiosity. A transportation battalion?
Les blew a cloud of smoke toward the sky. “What’re you doing here with all these yahoos?”
Devon told him about the CST program. “I spent about three months with a SEAL team in Kandahar before I...” She trailed off. “Anyway, in the Two-Nine I got to know one of the Afghan National Army interpreters we worked with. Just for fun he taught me some Pashto.”
“You speak Pashto?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m totally fluent, but I get by.” She turned to Rhys. “Remember that female terp who broke her ankle on the mission?”
Remember? Rhys would never forget. “Yeah,” he said softly.
“I visited her in the combat hospital in Kandahar before they shipped her home to L.A. We’ve kept in touch, and she’s helped me with Pashto, too.” Devon shrugged. “Somehow the powers-that-be in the CST program heard about it, decided I’m valuable, and here I am. Again.”
Les wet his fingers and pinched out the ember on his cigar before sticking the half stub in his shirt pocket. “Well, Miss Devon, I gotta say, you are one very interesting young lady.”
Devon’s lips twisted—a little bitterly, Rhys thought. Renewed curiosity surged, and suddenly he wasn’t ready for the evening to end.
“Hey, you wanna go for a walk?”
Devon stiffened, and for a moment it seemed like she’d refuse. Instinctively, Rhys kept his body language relaxed, hands in his pockets, as she assessed him, her gaze sharp, wary.
At last she seemed to make a decision, then said to Les, “Can we walk around the planes?”
“Sure, but you’ll be walking all night. The distance between them is greater than it looks.” He reached in his pocket and tossed her some keys. “Take my truck.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—”
Les cut off her protest. “I’m about to head over to play a little poker with the boys. Take the truck if you want.” He walked around to the bed and rummaged in a cooler, extracting a few bottles with a clink. “Left a couple beers in there, so help yoursel
f. I’ll get the keys from you in the morning.”
He wandered off, whistling.
Rhys looked at Devon. “I’m game if you are.” He caught the keys in midair when she lobbed them toward him.
“Okay, but you drive.”
They climbed into the truck, and Rhys navigated them along the road that led to the airplane boneyard. For the next several miles, they wandered among the rows of planes. Some of them looked like all they needed was a pilot and some fuel, and they’d be airborne. Still others were true derelicts, with missing engines and broken wings.
“Ooh, look at that one.”
Devon pointed at a huge 747. Its logo had long since faded under the harsh desert sun. All of the exit doors were off on both sides, so they could see right through it. There was plastic and insulation hanging down from the cabin ceiling, which waved idly in the breeze.
Rhys shuddered. The moon was bright—almost ninety percent illume—and the light tricked his eyes into thinking there were silhouettes in the windows. Ghostly passengers in a ghost plane.
“It’s just so sad and majestic,” Devon murmured. “Park here and let’s look at it, okay?”
Ugh.
Rhys shoved his childish revulsion away and turned the truck so the bed was facing the derelict. Devon climbed out and pulled the tailgate down before jumping up to perch on the end of it. She swung her legs and leaned back on her hands, staring up at the plane.
“I wish we could get inside.”
Of course the doors were way too high up for them to reach. Rhys grunted. “Not sad about it.”
Devon nudged him with her foot. “Scared?”
“It’s creepy as fuck, Devon.”
She laughed. “It is, a little. But there’s just something about it...”
When she didn’t say anything else, Rhys went to rummage in the truck bed. He found a few thick sleeping bags, and he folded one up and offered it to her to sit on. She took it with a grateful smile and wedged it underneath herself.
“Ah, much better.”
He investigated the cooler. “You want a beer?”
“No, thanks.”
He started to pull one out for himself, then paused. “Mind if I have one?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, her fingers drifting over one of her shorts pockets. A knife? Finally she nodded. “Go ahead.”
Rhys twisted the top off the beer, made a sitting pad and settled on the tailgate next to her. For long minutes, the only sound was of the wind whistling and the beer in the bottle gurgling as Rhys sipped it.
“Where are you from?” Rhys finally asked her, unable to suppress his curiosity any longer.
“Well, I was born in Florida, but my dad was Air Force so we lived all over.”
“Whoa. You’re an Air Force brat?”
“Yep. He’s a retired B-52 bomber pilot. Gulf War.”
“What made you go Army?”
“I had my sights set on aviation, too, but when I heard about the CST program, I couldn’t pass up the challenge.”
“Well, you’ve more than risen to meet that challenge.” Rhys toasted her with his beer.
Devon shook her head and drew her legs up to wrap her arms around them. She rested her chin on her knees. “Where are you from?”
Rhys took another swallow of beer, accepting the change of subject. “Evansville, Indiana.”
“How’d you end up in the Air Force?”
“Well, there aren’t a whole lot of prospects in Evansville.” Understatement of the year. “It was a way out, a way to provide for me and Lani. I enlisted right out of high school with the same goal as every other dumb kid—serve a tour or two, get some money for college, get out and have a life.”
“Yet here you are.”
“Yeah.” Rhys finished his beer and stowed the empty bottle back in the cooler. “I was working in Germany as a flight mechanic when a couple of PJs came through the shop on their way to Iraq. We got to talking, and I decided to apply.”
“And the rest is history.”
Such a simple statement to encapsulate two of the hardest years of Rhys’s life. The pararescue pipeline rivaled BUD/S in difficulty and washout rates, but he’d made it, and here he was.
“Lani? This is the same girlfriend you just broke up with?”
The memory of Lani’s phone call slammed into him, and Rhys’s hand curled into a fist. “Yeah,” he forced out. “Met her when I was five.”
“That’s right. Childhood sweethearts.” Devon’s voice held a note of sympathy. “I can’t imagine how hard it’s been for you.”
Before he knew it, Rhys found himself telling her all about the birthday party where they’d met, a pool party where most of the adults were either drunk or high, or both.
“Lani hit her head on something and went under. No one noticed, except for my dad.” He snorted. “Lucky for her it was during the five minutes a day he’s sober.”
“He saved her?”
“Yeah. Pulled her out, pounded on her back a few times until she coughed up all the water. To her parents, he was a hero. Our two families became friends, and like you said, the rest is history.”
“Together ever since?”
“As much as two kids can be. Then when we were fourteen...”
Everything changed. In the blink of an eye. We became the one constant in each other’s lives, and now that it’s over, we have no idea how to move on.
He blinked back sudden tears, feeling foolish as hell, but Devon didn’t react, didn’t say anything, just gazed up at the derelict plane.
Rhys wiped the back of his hand roughly across his eyes. “Why do you like that thing so much?”
A faint smile quirked her lips. “I don’t know. Maybe because she looks the way I feel. Mostly whole, still recognizable, but missing a lot of pieces.”
Kind of like he felt, too. Rhys rubbed his chest, surprised there wasn’t a gaping hole where his heart should be. Cutting ties was hard, and as much as he and Lani recognized it needed to happen, damn, it hurt.
The silence that fell after that was soothing, comfortable.
At last Devon murmured, “Wanna head back and try to get some sleep?”
As they drove slowly toward their quarters, Rhys said, “It’s been a long time since I talked this much about myself with anyone.”
Devon bit her lip, her fingers falling to trace the shape of the knife in her pocket. “Same.” She swung open the passenger door and hopped out of the truck. “Night, Rhys.”
“Night.”
He watched until she’d disappeared safely into her room, then turned toward his own with a sigh.
“If I were you, I’d watch yourself with her.”
The voice came at Rhys out of the darkness, and he jumped. “Jesus!”
Mullet stepped out of the shadows where he’d been leaning against the wall. He held up his phone. “Came out to call my wife, saw you drive up with Lowe.” He paused. “What were y’all doing?”
None of your business. “Just talking,” Rhys said tightly. “Unwinding. What’s it to you?”
“Man, it ain’t nothin’ to me. Just think you should be aware of what you’re dealing with.”
“We were just talking,” Rhys emphasized with a slash of his hand. “What exactly am I ‘dealing’ with?”
“Why don’t you ask one of the guys she accused of rape? Oh wait, he’s dead.”
Rhys rocked back on his heels. “What?”
“Yeah, that first team she was attached to in Kandahar?” Mullet’s voice was hard. “Lowe started fucking one of the dudes there, and when she found out he was engaged, she lost it and accused him and two other guys of rape.”
Rhys’s mouth flapped open and closed uselessly.
“She was hanging out with them,” Mullet went on. “Drinking with them, you know? A real party girl. Got into a relationship with this dude, and when he tried to break it off ’cause of his fiancée, she turned on him, tried to ruin his career.”
“Where did you
hear this?” Rhys croaked. “Did she tell you this?”
“Nah.” Mullet shook his head. “You think El-Tee isn’t gonna vet anyone we’re bringing on board?”
Rhys’s face went hot with anger. “And then what, our leadership just sat down and gossiped with you about it, knowing it could destroy unit cohesion before it even had a chance to form? No way. Try again, and leave El-Tee out of your bullshit story.”
“Fuck you with the gossip and the bullshit,” Mullet growled. “All you need to know is it’s a fact that accusations were made, there was an investigation and Lowe was transferred off the team.”
The team Rhys had been a part of for such a short time. One mission. The mission where Devon had made such an impression on him.
“It’s your life, Halloran, but that girl’s trouble, and if I were you, I’d keep it strictly business.”
He strode off, leaving Rhys numb with shock. He sucked in a few deep breaths, horror freezing his blood when he saw Devon standing there, an ice bucket in her hand, her face white as a sheet.
Oh, God. She must’ve heard everything.
“Devon.” Rhys took a step toward her, and she put up a shaking hand to ward him off.
“Just in case you’re wondering if his facts are true,” she said tonelessly, “they are.”
Devon’s knuckles clenched white on the bucket, her lips twisting in a bitter smile. She shoved open her door, and right before she disappeared inside, she turned to look back at Rhys.
“Not all war stories are heroic, you know.”
The door closed with a quiet click.
Chapter Five
I’m not a slut.
Devon gazed up at the ceiling in the predawn darkness and willed herself to believe it.
I’m not a walking mattress. I’m not a whore.
As if on autopilot she rose from the rumpled bed and stumbled to the bathroom. She leaned against the sink and stared at herself in the mirror. Red-rimmed eyes and a wild tangle of hair stared back at her.
Her body leaden with exhaustion, Devon climbed into the shower. Mullet’s words stabbed into her like so many needles, burrowing deep. What he thought of her. What so many thought of her.
Rhys’s shocked face swam behind her eyes, and Devon bit back a sob. Fuck, she’d enjoyed her time with him out looking at the planes. The way he’d made her a pad to sit on without being asked. The way he’d asked if she minded before he had a beer, but not pressuring her to have one, too. Their comfortable silences, the easy conversation.
Keeping a Warrior Page 6