The Edge Of Courage

by Elaine Levine

  “These are fresh. Have you had visitors up here?”

  “No.”

  Rocco crouched down and looked at what he could see of the ranch the below. Some of the construction. The long drive up to the equestrian center. A similar drive into the residential section of the ranch. The back of the house. The toolshed blocked sight of the bunkhouse and the pastures beyond it.

  “Do you ever see anyone up here?”

  “No.” Mandy crossed her arms and frowned as she looked around. “Maybe someone from the construction site comes up here.”

  Rocco doubted that. It would take a good ten minutes or more to get up here. It wasn’t a convenient place to spend a quick lunch or smoke break. And if someone was coming up after hours, well, he had no business loitering up here, watching the ranch. Judging from the tension in Mandy’s face, she’d come to the same conclusion.

  “Let’s move on,” Rocco told her. “I want to see the rest of the ranch.” They stepped down across a steep incline filled with boulders, sage, and scrub pines. Eventually the terrain leveled out and a path became visible.

  Mandy waited for him to catch up to her. “We’ll be widening some of these trails for our advanced students who are able to handle a trail ride. We’ve a thousand acres-plenty of space to provide an enjoyable experience for our riders.”

  He focused on the network of paths while she spoke. In Afghanistan, trails like these led to weapon and food caches, Taliban hideouts, and sniper nests. Standing here, unarmed and sheltered neither by body armor nor by the native garb of his undercover disguise, Rocco felt critically exposed.

  The path they’d moved onto was well used-more than the others. “How often do you walk these trails?”

  “Not very often. I made a couple of treks through here last month, picking the paths I wanted to have widened for our riders. Why?”

  He shrugged. They were too established to have been used only a couple of times this spring. “Your land backs to Ty Bladen’s property, doesn’t it?” Rocco knew a skeleton crew was managing Blade’s property. They wouldn’t be tracking through these woods-he’d sold off his herd when his father had died years earlier. His people would have no reason to come this way very often.

  “It does. The Bureau of Land Management borders the other part. I don’t know who leases it. We’ve never had problems with them. I don’t pay much attention to it.”

  He’d followed too many goat trails in Afghanistan that led to insurgent hidey-holes to feel a warm fuzzy that these paths were just making themselves.

  “Rocco, what are you seeing? You’re making me nervous. Do you think someone has been coming through here?”

  Hell. He lifted his hat and shoved a hand through his hair. Maybe he was seeing ghosts where there were none. The land here was arid. It needed irrigation to grow anything more than sage once the spring rains dried up and the summer heat came in. A little traffic now and then in this ravine would probably stress the vegetation enough to form semipermanent paths like these.

  “No.” He sighed. “I’m too used to looking for things that I’ll never see here. Forget it.” All the same, he decided to make a daily pass over the area, at different times, just to see what he might stir up.

  When they returned to the ranch, they came out on the far side of the old barn. There was an old circular corral with a single occupant-an edgy, black-and-white Paint. The beast lifted his head, scenting them. He moved to the far side of the ring, watching them with white-rimmed eyes.

  “That’s Kitano.”

  Rocco watched the Paint’s skittish behavior. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Mandy shook her head. “They say he’s gone loco.”

  Rocco didn’t miss the look she flashed at him. He wondered if they were still talking about the horse. Damn Kit, anyway. Had he told her about Rocco’s stay at Walter Reed? He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Has he?”

  “I think so.” She nodded. “I’m fostering him. I hope I can rehabilitate him. I don’t know that I will ever be able to use him in the center’s work, but I would be happy to settle him with a family who will love him.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was part of a herd of horses used by a tourist’s riding stable down in Colorado. His owners fell on hard times and couldn’t feed their horses. They were put in a pasture where they slowly starved. Kitano didn’t take a liking to that. He fought back, fought to free the herd. His owners beat him, then locked him up in a stall and forgot about him. I can’t get him to go inside a building at all now. That’s why I’ve got him in this corral.”

  Rocco cursed low under this breath. Kitano’s hell was like the pit he’d been a guest in. The wind curled around the buildings, making a plaintive whine.

  “How are you going to fix him?”

  “I don’t know. Time maybe. And patience. Plenty of food and water. Consistent handling. Basically starting over like he’s unbroke.”

  She stepped on the bottom rung of the corral and pushed herself up to brace her folded arms on the top board. “My grandfather had a persistent belief that there was nothing sunshine, rest, good nutrition, exercise, and laughter couldn’t cure.”

  “Horses don’t laugh.”

  She looked at him. Her sharp, green gaze pierced the haze of his mind, the clutter of memories and heartache that rode him with razor-edged spurs. “I wasn’t talking about Kitano.”

  He gave her a cold stare. She didn’t fucking want to get into his head. It wasn’t a safe place for any of them. “Thanks for the tour. I’m going to talk to George’s crew.” He touched the brim of his hat and headed back to the construction site.

  Hours later, after meeting the guys working the construction site below, his gut told him George’s assessment of his men was accurate. None seemed to be hiding anything. No one had seen any strangers around the site or up at the ridge.

  Rocco sighed as he stepped into the steel toolshed. The building was an oversized workshop that had long ago been taken over as a storage area. Various farm equipment and household artifacts littered the space-mowers, tillers, attachments for the tractor, extra tires, tools, shovels, rakes, brooms, boxes, trunks, discarded furniture-all of it covered with a thick layer of dust, none of it in any order. The clutter and confusion of the space amplified the noise in his head, hitting him like a wall he couldn’t pass through.

  He looked behind him, back to the wide-open space of the ranch as a wave of impatience slammed into him. He was grateful for the job, for the place to crash. But holy hell, he didn’t want to be here, fixing a goddamned tractor. He needed to be back in Afghanistan searching for his son.

  Chapter 4

  Alan Buchanan nervously crossed and uncrossed his legs. He’d been in this café for fifty-five minutes. Only five minutes to go. What a wasted day. He’d made the four-hour drive down to Denver only to now turn around and make the long drive home again. As usual. Over the past two years, he’d been summoned here at random intervals, several times a year. Until last month, he’d never once met with anyone.

  For their part, his associates had kept their word. They’d erased his past, given him a new identity-complete with a wife and a kid, set him up in a new town with the capital to start a business. He’d missed only one of these meetings. One, and yet the consequence had been severe: his wife had been murdered.

  He looked at his watch. One minute left. He got up to throw away his coffee cup, but immediately sat back down as Amir Hadad walked in and joined him.

  “Hello, Mr. Buchanan. How have you been?”

  Alan’s mouth went dry. Amir looked like any other affluent white-collar executive out for a coffee break that afternoon. A pinstripe suit. A neatly pressed white shirt. A perfectly knotted silk tie. His soft chin was well defined by an immaculately trimmed beard. His black hair was short. His dark eyes were alert. His friendly smile was contemptuous.

  “I’m here. As requested,” Alan answered, pleased that he didn’t stutter.

  Amir leaned ba
ck in his seat. “So you are. So you are.” He waved a hand toward a waitress and ordered a double espresso. “You are aware of all that we have done for you? Yes?”

  The memory of his wife’s car accident flashed through his mind. They said she’d been drinking. It was a lie. The woman had been a teetotaler. “Yes. Of course.”

  Amir’s coffee arrived. He did not touch it. “What is the progress on the construction site?”

  “As you requested, it has been problematic. The girl is having a hard time keeping workers. The construction is taking twice as long as it should because of all of the delays.”

  “Very good. Very good, indeed. It’s time that there should be a fatal accident, no? We need to speed things along.”

  “Kill someone? Who? How?”

  “It matters not to me. If you can manage to do it without being caught, I will relocate you again when this assignment is finished.”

  “You’re crazy,” Alan hissed. Sending a surreptitious look around the coffee shop, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “That’s insane. I’m not going to kill someone.”

  “Will you not? Has our time together been so onerous? One day of service here or there? You knew there was a price when you accepted the deal.”

  “I have already paid a terrible price. I lost my wife, thanks to you. I want out. Out for good. I will repay you what you have invested in me.”

  “There is no out, Mr. Buchanan.” Amir took out a ten-dollar bill and set it on the table. “By the way, how is your daughter?”

  “Don’t hold her over my head. She isn’t my kid. She was my wife’s.” He pretended indifference. “Do what you want to her, I don’t care.”

  “Of course I was not threatening her. Do you think me a monster? But I do have your signed confession. I would not hesitate to turn it over to the FBI should you find yourself unable to complete your obligations to us.”

  Alan shut his eyes as he weighed his options. He couldn’t cut and run, because he’d be right back where he was five years ago. He couldn’t go to the authorities: they wouldn’t believe him, and they’d throw him in jail for his past crimes. “I didn’t mean I wouldn’t do it, just that after I do it, then I’m out.”

  Amir smiled. “Good day, Mr. Buchanan. Always a pleasure to chat with you.”

  * * *

  Fresh out of a shower, Rocco studied his duffel bag, trying to decide whether he should unpack it and stay awhile or keep living out of the bag and remain mobile. He’d waged this debate with himself for a quarter of an hour without any progress.

  What the hell. He couldn’t even decide something so freaking simple. It wouldn’t take long to repack if he had to leave in a hurry. All he really needed was his shotgun.

  He pulled his clothes out of the duffel and stacked them in the dresser. When he finished, he wished he hadn’t. Everything he owned fit in two drawers. Almost thirty fucking years old, and what did he have to show for three decades of life? An old beat-up Ford, a shotgun he’d had as a kid, and two drawers of clothes.

  He quickly tamped down on that line of thinking-it was a dark road that led straight to hell. His life had been so much more than the sum of his things. He was a father and a husband. A trusted warrior. A linguistic freak of nature, coveted by spec ops groups for the ease with which he could learn languages and emulate dialects. He had a dark complexion that let him infiltrate any indigenous people in the Middle East and the skills to survive on the lam in foreign, hostile lands.

  At least he still had the languages, though there wasn’t much use for a linguist in the wilds of Wyoming. Maybe that was a blessing.

  He drew off his towel and stepped into briefs and a fresh pair of jeans. He laid out his toiletries in the bathroom, straightened the small bunkhouse, checked the locks on the doors and windows, and pulled the drapes. When everything was settled, he pushed an armchair into the far corner of the living room, facing the kitchen, moving it into the most defensible spot in the house. He set a box of shotgun shells next to it on the floor. With only the dim light from the bathroom, he settled into the chair for the night and reached for his shotgun. The hard, cold metal was all that passed for his backbone anymore.

  It was after midnight. He’d spent the evening getting the toolshed straightened up. He’d found lumber in the old barn and made shelves for the boxes of household discards mixed in with the equipment. He set the implements that didn’t fit the tractor off to one side for Mandy to decide what she wanted to do with them. Tomorrow, he’d tackle repairing the tractor-after another quick tour around the ranch.

  He blinked. His eyelids were heavy. The nightmares couldn’t take him if he didn’t sleep, so he fought to stay awake. He hated nights the most. The dark was the perfect backdrop for the images his mind kept playing, a continuous loop of a B-Rated horror flick, except what he saw was real, a memory, and far, far worse than any movie. He held the sides of his head, wishing the images that taunted him were less fragmented. The wisps that played in his mind, in his dreams, were only teasers. The flesh of the story remained hidden behind a shroud, too terrible to recall.

  The shrinks at Walter Reed had said he wouldn’t recover until he faced what had happened that day in Kasheem Baba. He didn’t disagree, but the truth was locked away so deeply within him as to be impervious to drugs or nightmares, a secret that hid like a cancer, slowly killing him in its ravenous destruction.

  * * *

  Pale morning light eased through the windows. Rocco opened his eyes. Without moving, he looked around the quiet bunkhouse. He sighed and leaned his head back. He’d slept longer than he’d expected-longer than usual.

  He changed into his running gear and jogged up the trails he’d seen yesterday, ending at the bluff overlooking the house. He counted the cigarettes. No new ones. He looked out over the vista. He’d catch the bastard who was watching Mandy. Sooner or later.

  Rocco took the trail down from the bluff, through the construction site, and then down the long drive to the main road. Running when he was exhausted was a challenge, but going through the motions of being normal was all he had. The meds the shrinks gave him kept him too stoned to function, but without them, rage simmered just beneath the surface of his mind like a festering wound. He forced himself to rise with the sun, eat something-whatever little thing he could keep down-and breathe. None of it felt real. He could only hope that his brain would reengage, and he could own himself again.

  And when he did, he was going back for Zaviyar.

  He ran three miles down the road in front of Mandy’s spread. The return trip was all uphill. By the time he came back to the dirt turnaround in front of the residential portion of the ranch, he was drenched with sweat. The sun was up and the day promised to be one of blistering heat. Spring weather here was as changeable as it was in the highlands of Afghanistan. Wintry one day. Blistering hot the next.

  He looked up. Mandy stood at the ridge overlooking the construction site. Wind plucked at the edges of her hair, fanning it over her shoulders. Involuntarily, he turned in her direction, silently crossing the distance in the packed dirt. He lifted his face to the breeze, seeking her scent. It was faint, but he found it. Sweet, heady. He squeezed his eyes shut as a memory slammed into him.

  Kadisha wore a long necklace of tiny jasmine flowers, warmed by her body and the heat of the summer evening. She laughed as she lifted it over her head and draped it over his, crushing the flowers against his chest to infuse the night air with the blossoms’ sickly sweet fragrance.

  Had she known, even then, what he was?

  Rocco opened his eyes. Mandy watched him, frozen like a hunted animal, her coffee mug halfway to her mouth. Yet unlike prey, nothing about her was camouflaged. Her hair blazed like flames in the morning sun. Her green eyes matched her green fleece jacket, making her standout like a flower in the barren expanse of a desert.

  He was breathing hard, and every draw of air brought him her scent. He wanted to touch her, wanted to feel the smoothness of her cheeks against the palms
of his hands, wanted it as he hadn’t any human contact in a very long time. He couldn’t risk it. He knew what would happen.

  His hands curled into fists. He nodded at her, then pivoted and made for the house, hoping a shower would settle him. He had one and only one mission today: fix the tractor so that he could mow the fields. He showered, ate a boiled egg, then headed for the toolshed.

  * * *

  The sun was high by the time he’d cleaned the tractor’s fuel filter and fuel supply hose, changed the battery, and flushed the radiator. He was rubbing the grease off his hands when Mandy came down to the shed with two glasses of something cold to drink. The tractor, which he’d moved to the dirt driveway, puttered next to them, releasing diesel fumes into the air.

  “You did it! You got it running!” Mandy smiled at him as she handed him one of the glasses. He took it, careful not to touch her. It was against all reason that he was drawn to the sound of her voice. He looked at the tractor instead of at her, wishing she’d leave. He wasn’t going to be here long. It was best not to form a friendship with her. They had no need to talk to each other.

  He dragged his gaze up to look at her face. It was a nice, open, American kind of face. She wore little makeup; nothing hid the freckles on her nose and cheeks. His gaze lowered to her chin and her long, thin neck, stopping at her collarbone. He forced himself to look lower, at the rest of her body. She wore a green tank top that clung to her body like a second skin. Rocco felt the heat of a blush warm his face as he looked at her body, a body she so carelessly exposed for his perusal.

  He lifted his gaze to hers again. She gave him a tentative smile, her eyes wary. He glared at her. He didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to talk to anyone. He wanted the silence to return. He needed to think. He stared at his glass, then took a sip. It was cold and sweet. Tea with big chunks of ice. Such an American drink, he thought, struck by another wave of homesickness.