“Flesh wound.” It burned like fire, but she held it out toward him, anyway.
The minute the pressure of his fingers hit her elbow, she looked away. Something about that touch overwhelmed the pain and shot a whole different kind of warmth through her body, one she’d been trying to avoid for months. It was not good when the FRSA couldn’t stop thinking about one of the rear detachment commanders. It was her job to be here for the families left behind during deployment, to be the liaison between them and Tyler as he led the soldiers and civilians supporting the push on the front lines. Tangling the two could get more complicated than twisted parachute lines.
Reluctantly, she pulled herself away. “It’s really just a flesh wound.”
It didn’t seem as though Tyler wanted to believe her, the way he studied her face, but, finally, he turned his attention to the guard shack. “You’re right. He nicked you, but having it looked at in the E.R. wouldn’t hurt.” Discussion closed, he pulled out his phone. “Yeah, this is Major Tyler Rainey. I’d like to report a shooting at the Family Resource Center.”
His voice was so calm, it was almost like he was asking for a weather call over the radio. But the words... A shooting. Kelly pulled her knees to her chest and held on with her uninjured arm. It could have been so much worse. Keep it together, like Dad taught you.
Tires screeched around the corner, cutting Tyler off in midexplanation as his head whipped around. “They’re coming back.” He was up faster than his knee should have allowed. Shoving his phone into his pocket, Tyler dragged Kelly to her feet by her good arm. “Can you run?”
She eyed his knee, focusing on anything other than immediate danger. “Can you?”
“Watch me.” He gripped her hand and pulled her forward, setting a faster pace than she could handle even on her best days.
They were halfway up the walk to the Family Resource Center when the first bullet spit dirt behind them. She swallowed a shriek. Three more irregular shots, then silence as they rounded the corner of the building.
Kelly pressed her back against the brick and strained hard, listening, while searching for a place to run. Streetlights left few shadows. Leafless tree branches shifted in the breeze. There was a wide expanse of fresh snow between them and the road, which would make their tracks easy to follow. Without a key to get back inside, they had nowhere to hide.
The engine drew closer, humming to a stop under the building’s overhang. She turned to Tyler to see if he’d found them an out.
He scanned the trees, the nearby road, the other side of the building... Likely, he saw what she saw. Nowhere safe to run. They were trapped.
He leaned closer, blue eyes intense, his whisper barely audible. “There are two of us and two of them.”
“And they have a gun.” Not to mention the disadvantage of her wounded arm and his recently reconstructed knee.
“Well, there’s that.” The humor fell flat in light of the footsteps crunching slowly closer. One set of footsteps. Kelly hoped the driver wasn’t circling around the back of the building to surprise them from the other side. Her heart beat faster, drowning out every other sound.
Until sirens lit up in the distance.
From a few feet away, a muffled curse, pounding feet, the squeal of tires...then nothing.
Tyler released a long breath and bent at the waist, hand braced on his good knee, exhaling loudly. “I think you’re safe for now.” He looked up at her, face grim. “But I also think we passed the point where you can call this random.”
* * *
The ancient faded-green desk chair squeaked as Tyler dropped into it, propped his feet on his desk and crossed his arms behind his head. His whole body ached from adrenaline and, not that he’d admit it out loud, the brush with fear.
Someone had taken a shot at Kelly Walters. And they’d come back to finish the job. He shut his eyes against what might have been, but his imagination burned with blood and tragedy, anyway. She could have been killed. Like...
Pressing a thumb and index finger against his eyelids, he squinted hard and shoved the images back into a dark corner, wishing his body would relax enough to let him sleep. But the adrenaline hadn’t quite let go yet. He wanted to go park his truck outside of the apartment Kelly rented off post and stand watch, but she hadn’t asked and that was a boundary he wasn’t ready to push. Not with a civilian coworker. So here he sat, in his office at work, waiting for dawn. In the morning, he’d call and offer to escort her back to the Family Resource Center for the big day.
How he’d gotten roped into volunteering to work behind the scenes at the community’s annual holiday toy giveaway, he’d never know. Well, actually, he did know. Because Kelly had been the one to ask. Had it been anyone other than the petite brunette with the ready smile, he’d have said no. Tyler opened his eyes and frowned at the ceiling. Too bad he was only here until his knee healed. After that, he was back to his battalion in the mountains of Afghanistan. That fact alone made any talk of being more than colleagues kind of tough.
His life was a soldier’s life, and the last thing he needed on the battlefield was to be torn between family and mission, or to leave a family behind if the unthinkable happened. He’d already seen that firsthand. He balled up a piece of paper and bounced it off the ceiling, catching it easily. As soon as he got the doc to sign off on his knee, he was headed right back where he should be. In the proverbial trenches, not standing behind a curtain and passing out wrapped gifts to the children of deployed soldiers.
And certainly not spending hours on a Friday evening wrapping hundreds of presents next to the woman who stole way too many of his thoughts.
The frown returned for an encore. Okay. So that part hadn’t been so bad. But it still wasn’t what he was trained to do. No matter how much they’d laughed and talked and learned even more about each other than they had over the past six months they’d spent working together. And no matter how glad he was he’d stayed hours after the other volunteers left, since it meant he was there for her when she was attacked.
His feet hit the floor with a thud, drawing a wince as his knee reminded him he’d pushed it too far tonight with the running. The pain was worth it, though. If he hadn’t been there, there was no telling where Kelly would be tonight.
He checked his watch. She should be wrapping up at the hospital by now, getting her arm bandaged up. If they’d been more than colleagues, he’d have insisted on staying with her and taking her home afterward, but she’d blocked his every maneuver to do that. After he’d finished telling his part of the story to the military police, she’d practically forced him to leave, insisting everything would be okay.
Speaking of stories... Tyler yanked open his top drawer and dug through the clutter until his fingers found the business card he’d tucked away a few months ago. Kelly’s dad had dropped by the battalion a week or so before he’d deployed with another unit in the 101st Airborne. Sergeant Major Jackson Walters was a no-nonsense kind of guy, a man Tyler had served under seven years earlier at the 82nd Airborne.
The minute the sergeant major recognized Tyler, he’d pulled him aside and slipped him the card with his personal international cell number on it. Keep an eye on her. She’s all I’ve got left. It wasn’t a request typically made, but Tyler had promised, tucking the card away and certain he’d never need it. What kind of guy called the father of a grown woman to report on her welfare?
That was long before tonight. And it was certainly before he’d started to think of Kelly as more than the coworker he consulted with on family issues, accompanied to way too many funerals and, more recently, had lunch with at the Post Exchange.
He shook that thought off once again and tapped the card against his desk. Did this merit a personal call to a war zone? She’d barely been nicked, and if those guys hadn’t come back, he’d have sworn it was a random act. But they had come back, which meant they
likely wanted something more.
The card crumpled in Tyler’s balled fist. He checked the time and did the math. It was midmorning in Afghanistan. Intel said the sergeant major’s unit was gearing up for a massive joint offensive. It probably wasn’t the time to interrupt his day with upsetting news.
Tyler slipped the card back into his drawer. He’d keep an eye on the situation and wait. Everything in him hoped this whole thing was two guys who’d hit the town a little too hard in their search for pre-Christmas cheer.
He whipped out his phone and called a buddy of his with the military police instead.
The phone only rang once. “Captain Shorter.” He sounded more brusque than usual.
“Shorty. It’s Rainey.”
There was a light chuckle on the other end of the phone. “Rainey, your name came across my radio not too long ago. What were you doing at the Family Resource Center with your FRSA at midnight?”
The heat that rushed into Tyler’s skin made him grateful this wasn’t a face-to-face discussion. “Believe it or not, wrapping Christmas presents for the deployed soldiers’ kids. Her other volunteers ducked out early, so I stayed behind to help. The big community toy giveaway is tomorrow.” The nearby town of Hopkinsville rallied around the soldiers’ families every year, heaping toys and food on the spouses and kids left behind.
“Check out the Good Samaritan. What’s up? You picked a crazy night to get tied up in other people’s shootings.”
“That’s why I called.” Dropping back in the chair, Tyler propped up his bum knee and ran a finger along the edge of the pain, wary of massaging the tender places too hard. “Wanted to see if you had any special intel on the two yahoos who took a shot at Kelly Walters.”
“Not a thing yet. It’s going to take a while to get footage from the gate. There are more pranks and mischief going on tonight than I’ve seen in ages.”
“Yeah?” Tyler chewed the disappointment out of the word. What he really wanted to hear was those two were safely in handcuffs so he could maybe get some sleep without worrying about where they were lurking. “Like what?”
“Petty messes. Couple of broken car windows. Some spray paint. A front door kicked but not breached. Kids with too much time on their hands now that it’s Christmas break.”
“I don’t envy you.” That kind of nonsense drove Tyler up the wall, but it happened sometimes when dads were gone for long periods of time and moms were stretched thinner than they’d ever dreamed.
“You’re jealous and you know it. You’d love to be in any kind of action at this point. Even rescuing pretty girls from handguns.”
“We’re done now.”
“You only say that because I’m hitting too close to home.”
“Out.” Tyler pressed End and tossed the phone to his desk. Sometimes Shorty was too intuitive for his own good. Made him a good cop but a terrible friend.
The phone vibrated, rattling a coffee cup on the desk.
Tyler snagged it, checking the caller ID. Surely the man hadn’t thought of another way to harass him.
The number on the screen made the adrenaline surge again. He swiped to answer. “Kelly. You okay? Need a ride from the hospital?”
“I’m home.” Her words were hollow, unbelieving.
Tyler sat straighter. “What’s going on?” If those men had found her, he wouldn’t be able to answer for what happened to them.
“My apartment.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “It’s been trashed.”
TWO
The Christmas lights hanging from balconies around the apartment complex glowed surreally against the fresh snow. Even at four-fifteen in the morning, squares of illumination from surrounding windows filtered dimly through the dark. Apparently, the ruckus at Kelly’s apartment was keeping the neighbors up, too. This was probably not earning her high doses of Christmas cheer from her neighbors, most of whom had young children.
Kelly let the blinds drop against the window of her first-floor apartment and steeled herself before turning to face the mess behind her. The gray couch lay on its back, stubby wooden legs exposed. Every picture and award had been ripped from the walls, glass ground into the carpet. Dishes, pots and pans lay scattered and strewn around the room, but nothing was missing, not even the laptop she’d left on the coffee table. Everything was simply a mess, calculated to be as disruptive as possible.
Coupled with the gunshot that still echoed in her ears, the fear was close to winning. It was one thing to be the victim of a random act, another very personal thing to know someone had been in her home and touched her things. If she turned around fast enough, it almost felt as though she could catch them still in the room, watching her. It was too much for one night, the coincidence almost unthinkable.
We passed the point where you can call this random. Tyler’s assertion rattled in her head, even though she wanted to silence it. It had to be a coincidence. There was no reason for anyone to target her. She’d spent the better part of the past hour racking her brain as she watched the police comb through her apartment. Nothing stood out except the one thing she hated to admit.... She’d feel a whole lot safer when Tyler showed up.
“Ma’am?” A tall policeman, slim in his uniform, stopped in front of her. “We’re finished.” He talked her through the next steps, handed her copies of paperwork she wasn’t ready to read yet and left.
All Kelly wanted was to put things together enough to go to bed, but after the evening she’d had, she knew sleep would not be an option. No sleep meant a long day of smiling through the weariness tomorrow. For weeks she’d looked forward to the toy giveaway. All she wanted was the best for those kids, but now the day ahead felt like torture.
A crunch of feet on glass, then a voice drifted from the doorway. “I passed the police on my way in.”
Tyler. Something around her heart cracked, and she let herself revel in the relief of his presence. She couldn’t have it for long, but right now she was too exhausted to fight the tremor that quivered in her stomach. Swallowing her sigh of relief, she looked up at him, trying to keep her voice level. “They just left.” She swept her hand to encompass the whole room. “Now there’s this.”
Tyler winced and stepped into the room, pulling the door shut behind him before he stepped over a pillow from her bedroom and an overturned kitchen bar stool to meet her. “They did a pretty thorough job.” His exhale was hard enough to move the bangs on her forehead. Either that or he was standing closer than he usually did. Not that she minded at the moment. Given the situation, it was all she could do not to give in to an impulse that had been building for months, to lean against him and let him wrap his arms around her. Even with him close, she felt as though she was facing this beast of a night alone, and she could use whatever comfort she could get.
Kelly straightened and took a step back, her thigh brushing her overturned couch. She knew better. People would fail her every time, wouldn’t be there when she needed them most. Tyler himself had made it no secret that he wasn’t here to stay. It was God she should be trusting, not a six-foot soldier with shoulders that looked broad enough to bear every one of her burdens.
“You zoning on me, Walters? Is this day finally getting to you?”
Let him believe it was that. It was way better than the truth. “Probably. This day started twenty-three hours ago when my dad called.”
Something in that sentence apparently piqued Tyler’s interest. His muscles tightened. “You talked to your dad today?”
“Yeah. Something strange about that?”
“No.” There was a forced nonchalance in the words as he tipped his chin toward her couch and leaned over. “Not at all. Just...surprised.”
Kelly joined him in moving the couch back into position. “He won’t be able to call on Christmas. Lets his guys have all of the phone time, so he thought he’d send his love a
couple days early.” Her voice strained as they lifted together, righting the sofa. “I’ll talk to him after New Year’s.”
“Hmm.”
“That’s it? One syllable?” Nudging the couch back into place with her hip, she hazarded a look at Tyler. “For that kind of moral support, I could have called the zoo and asked them to send a chimpanzee over.” What she needed right now was the Tyler Rainey who told jokes over Chinese food at the P/X food court and managed to tease a grin out of her when days got too long—not this closed-off, stoic Rambo, who seemed intent on keeping her at arm’s length. Where you should be.
“Hey, that begs a question.” Tyler turned away from her and started stacking broken picture frames, collecting them on the heavy wood coffee table. “What made you call me?”
Momentary weakness. She was scared and realized she felt safer when he was around. “You were the only friend I could think of who’d still be awake.” Kelly eased a half step toward the open kitchen when he turned back to her. If he was going to act as though it was perfectly natural for him to step in and start setting her apartment to rights, so be it, but she didn’t have to let him touch her heart. Glass rattled as she swept it from the counter into the trash can. “And you’re failing at the whole friendship thing.”
“Sorry.” There was a twitch in his eye, almost like a wince. “I doubt I can make things all better, but I can tell you you’re in good company tonight.” With an expression Kelly couldn’t decipher, Tyler went back to righting furniture, lifting her recliner off its side. It would be nice if he quit doing that. It made his biceps stand out under the long-sleeved shirt he wore, pushed his shoulders up in a way that showed the power there.
Holiday Defenders : Mission: Christmas Rescuespecial Ops Christmashomefront Holiday Hero (9781460341254) Page 16