Scorch

by Liliana Hart

  “That sounds appetizing,” he said, making a disgusted face. “I want bacon and pancakes.”

  “Then order it in the morning,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re the one who keeps ordering oatmeal.”

  “Because you’re a doctor and I’m afraid you’ll lecture me on bad carbs and high cholesterol.”

  “I will, but you’ll probably enjoy your pancakes and bacon anyway. You’ve never struck me as someone who really gave a shit what anyone else thought.”

  “True, which is why I’m more than comfortable telling you the beard burn on your neck isn’t going away. And neither is the bite mark.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him and took a bite of her own oatmeal. “Guess what, MacKenzie? I’ve never really given a shit what other people think either. You’ve got your own marks to worry about.”

  “I’m just saying there are a lot of people on this compound. People are going to talk.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  He was quiet for a minute and scooped up the rest of his oatmeal. And then he finally said, “I’m used to being talked about. And normally it doesn’t bother me. I also know how the guys talk about me.” He shrugged and grinned. “I might’ve had a reputation where the ladies were concerned.”

  She arched a brow at him. “I know. I saw you go home with the bridesmaids at Cade’s wedding.”

  He had the good sense to blush at that one and he cleared his throat. “All I’m saying is I don’t care what they say about me. I just don’t want the talk to be disrespectful to you. You’re…different.”

  “Thank you. And we’re both grownups. As long as nothing we do interferes with the job at hand, I don’t consider it to be anyone’s business but our own. And if anyone is disrespectful I’ll punch them in the face.” She paused a second and took in Shane’s bemused look. “Or if it makes you feel better, I’ll let you punch them. Last time I punched someone I fractured my knuckles. Hurt like a bitch.”

  “Damn, you’re a scary woman. Who’d you punch?”

  “A guy during basic training who didn’t like to be told no.” She didn’t pause between that statement and the next thing she needed to tell him. “I’ve been watching the incision areas and where the infection was in your leg the past week. You’re good to go for the prosthetic. I thought we might go today after physical therapy.”

  “Oh did you,” he said mildly, downing the rest of his orange juice in one gulp.

  “Everyone has a purpose,” she reminded him. “It’s your job to get back on track so you can figure out what it is.”

  Shane was getting stronger every day. His other leg was making good progress, and he’d built his upper body strength to close to where it had been before his accident. Lacey knew from experience that his upper body and arm strength would eventually surpass what it had been before as long as he kept working, and Shane was the kind of man who always took care of his physical shape. His life had depended on it, and that was a habit that wasn’t easy to break.

  Once PT was through, one of the trainers took him into the showers so he could get cleaned up. And while he was doing that, she worried about the potential upcoming explosion. It wouldn’t be normal if they didn’t butt heads on at least one thing a day, and she doubted that would change now that they were lovers. Hell, their arguments were more foreplay than for the sake of actual arguing.

  But she wondered if she’d gone too far. Now all she could hope was that he didn’t unleash his anger at an unsuspecting target. Because she’d gone against Declan’s recommendation, and she hoped her decision didn’t come back to bite her in the ass.

  Lacey watched as Mary MacKenzie walked into the gym Declan had built at the compound, and where the physical therapist was coming to work with Shane every other day. After Declan had shared that their mother was the glue that held the MacKenzie’s together, Lacey took a chance and decided to reach out to her. If she were a mother, she knew she’d want to be there on the day her son started walking again.

  Mary was a handsome woman somewhere in her sixties, but she could’ve passed for more than a decade younger. She was petite and fine-boned, and her skin was unlined. Her blonde hair was cut in a sleek bob, and her gray eyes were exactly like Declan’s. She’d seen Mary in action and knew she was a force to be reckoned with. Any woman who could raise five children, and help raise their four cousins after their parents had passed away, had to be a hell of a woman.

  Mary held out her hands to Lacey and said, “Thank you for calling. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. I know Declan wanted us to have minimal interaction with Shane while he’s adjusting, but Declan’s not a mother. I was there at his birth, for his first steps, broken bones, broken hearts, and everything else he put me through. I want to be here for this too.”

  “I’d want the same,” she told her.

  A few minutes later, Shane was wheeled out of the men’s locker room, and she could tell he was surprised to see his mother, though he didn’t voice it. He looked exhausted, and his gaze swept over Lacey, piercing her with a look she couldn’t quite interpret. It was a look that seemed much too personal, too invasive, but she didn’t break his gaze. She’d never been one to cower when things made her uncomfortable or unsure. She met his gaze head on and then realized those kinds of heated looks probably weren’t appropriate in front of his mother.

  “You look a little flushed, Shane,” Mary said, breaking the silence. “Are you running a fever?”

  “No, just got out of a hot shower. I didn’t get hardly any sleep last night and I’m exhausted.” He waggled his brows at Lacey and she smacked him on the back of the head in warning as he wheeled by.

  Dammit. She felt herself blushing again. She hadn’t gotten any sleep either, and she remembered why in Technicolor. She was sore in places she hadn’t been in a long time, she was pale, and she had beard burn and a hickey. Mary MacKenzie had raise four boys. She wasn’t an idiot.

  Mary hugged Shane and kissed him on the top of the head, but nothing else was said as they made their way to her Land Rover and toward the hospital where they’d be fitting Shane for his prosthetic. Nerves were running high. Shane’s hands were balled into fists on top of his thighs, and Mary had chewed off her lipstick.

  The hospital was almost a half-hour from the compound, away from civilization and higher in elevation. The area around it was thickly treed, though space had been cleared for a private airstrip and helicopter pad. A chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top surrounded the property and guards manned the gate. It looked like a military operation from the outside, but the only signs for outsiders who might happen to stumble across the area read “Keep Out” and “No Trespassing.”

  Lacey showed her ID and signed in Mary and Shane, since they were on the list of permanent visitors. Then she typed in her personal code at the keypad. The gates opened slowly and she knew the security guards inside the hospital were watching them, as well as the guards stationed outside. The tight security had never bothered her, but for some reason she was more aware of the eyes following them than she’d ever been before.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Lacey said.

  Shane rolled his eyes. “I said, you haven’t mentioned anything about your house lately. Seems too strange to be an isolated incident. Does Dec have any leads?”

  “What happened to your house?” Mary asked, unabashedly eavesdropping.

  “It burned down,” Lacey answered, and then she turned back to Shane. “It must be genetic. I don’t know how any of you seem to know the things you know. Even if you don’t know you know them.”

  Shane nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Intuition. And just knowing how patterns work. What happened?” he said, narrowing his eyes. “And why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “Honestly, because I forgot about. I’ve be a little…preoccupied.” She looked at Shane out of the corner of her eye and saw him grin. “Declan said he was taking care of looking into the fire. No one unusual was seen in the area around my
house, and Dec thinks the goal was to scare me instead of kill me, otherwise they would’ve waited until I was asleep at night to start the fire.”

  “Unless they knew you were just as likely to be home sleeping during the day,” Mary cut in.

  When Lacey looked back in the rearview mirror with raised eyebrows Mary said, “Declan always talks about the erratic hours you keep. He says you’ll forget and work the whole night through and then crash for awhile before you come back again. I saw that myself when Shane was admitted. You were there by his side for weeks.”

  Shane gave her a searching look and she cleared her throat uncomfortably. That wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have just yet.

  “There are easier ways to kill me if someone wanted to,” she said. “I live here, and I’m not always at the hospital. I have to go to the grocery store on occasion.”

  “So what was the second incident?” he asked.

  “Someone sent me a package of photos from my last mission. They left them in my locked car while I was in town doing some shopping. The photos were of the victims of a car bomb that took out my convoy. Twelve out of eighteen soldiers were killed, and there wasn’t anything I could do to save most of them. The photos were the ones taken for identification before the deceased were shipped back to the United States. Not easily obtainable. But someone got their hands on them.”

  “My God,” Mary said, putting her hand on Lacey’s shoulder in comfort. When was the last time someone had comforted her? Hugged her? “Those poor boys and girls,” she said. “It’s a mother’s worst nightmare when she has a child that puts themselves in the line of fire. I know how blessed I’ve been to have all of mine come home, but I can’t help but feel for the parents of those in your photos.”

  “The photos weren’t any easier to look at even with the time that’s passed. They had names. They were my friends.”

  Mary squeezed her shoulder again and Lacey wondered why she wanted to weep. She never cried. It had always been a point of pride that was able to stand through times of trouble and heartache stoically, without falling apart. But a simple gesture had her walls crumbling and she didn’t understand why.

  “I’m sorry about your house,” Mary said. “I know Declan will get to the bottom of things. He always does. That child drove me up the wall. He always wanted to know the how and why of every blasted thing. He asked questions from sun-up to sundown, and he’d pin you down if you tried to be evasive. Sometimes his father and I would hide in the barn with a bottle of wine just to get a little peace and quiet.”

  “That’s not all y’all were doing up there,” Shane said. “Last time you guys slipped away to the barn Darcy was born nine months later.”

  “Hush, Shane,” Mary scolded good-naturedly, and then she looked at Lacey. “I hope Declan has provided you with comfortable accommodations while you’re between homes. If not, you come stay with us in the big house.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lacey said. “He’s put me in the cabin next to Shane’s for the time being. It’s very nice.”

  “Oh yes. I like that one. I decorated most of them, since my boys all think a bunk and a thin sheet is all a body needs to be comfortable. But I reminded Declan that if he was running a global business, and government officials and who knows who else would be visiting, then they needed something a little more accommodating. I did most of the cabins with men in mind, but I’ll admit I got a little fanciful with yours. Declan nearly had a fit over the claw foot tub.”

  “It’s lovely,” Lacey told her. “I’ve been very comfortable.”

  “Why’d you leave the military?” Shane interrupted, clearly tired of decorating talk.

  “That’s kind of a personal question,” she said, looking over at him.

  “I figure we’re on a personal kind of basis now,” he said, winking, and she felt the heat rush to her cheeks.

  “Don’t be rude, Shane,” Mary said. “Good grief. She’s fifty shades of red. You’ve got to romance a girl a little and get to know her before delving into all the private stuff. Have your father and I taught you nothing?”

  “I was asking her a simple question. One I haven’t asked her before. Isn’t that how you get to know people better?” he asked. “Besides, I wasn’t trying to romance her. I’ll wait and do that when I’m not in front of my mother. Because that’s weird.”

  Mary pursed her lips and said, “Yes, and maybe don’t leave such obvious bite marks next time. It’s like I raised a bunch of damned animals. Every last one of you.”

  “I think a healthy sex life is hereditary. Lord knows, we all stumbled upon you and dad enough to send all of us to therapy”

  “Hush, Shane.”

  Lacey parked her Land Rover in her covered spot and said, “I’m going to need therapy after dealing with the MacKenzies. Y’all are the most unusual family I’ve ever known.”

  “Thank you, dear. I’m sure we can find a therapist that’ll give us a group rate.”

  She snorted out a laugh and then said to Shane, “I left the military because I wanted to go to medical school. Your brother helped speed up the process by offering me the job at MacKenzie Security.”

  “Wait, you’re telling me Declan offered you the job as chief of the hospital before you even became a doctor? You must’ve impressed him somehow.”

  “Good grief, Shane. Have you not paid any attention at all over the last eight years?” his mother asked. “Of course your brother was impressed.”

  Lacey said, “Declan felt it was deserved, and was willing to take a chance on me until I finished my schooling. He thought someone younger would be more adaptable to change and new ideas.”

  “Don’t get defensive,” he said. “I was just doing a little math in my head.”

  Mary MacKenzie snorted. “I wish you would’ve done a little of that in high school.”

  “I have to this day never used any algebra in my adult life,” he said, and then turned his attention back to her. “Anyway, you said you’re thirty-three now and you’ve been working for Declan for eight years. That would make you twenty-five when you started. And you spent six years before that as an Army Medic, earning the rank of Captain.”

  “Good memory,” she said through her teeth.

  “I’ve been known to pay attention from time to time,” he said. “I’m no math scholar, but I believe you have to have a college degree before you start medical school, correct?”

  She almost growled. “I started college at fifteen. Graduated at seventeen. As soon as I turned eighteen I joined the Army.”

  “Not the normal trajectory I would guess for a whiz kid.”

  “Not exactly. But it was a choice I made, not one my parents made for me. It turns out it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”

  “One of?” he asked.

  “The other was coming to work for your brother.”

  “Except for your house burning down, and someone sending you creepy photographs.”

  “I didn’t like the house all that much to begin with,” she said and took the keys from the ignition, earning a little chuckle from Mary.

  “If Declan drove me up the wall with his questions, Shane drove me to drink,” she said. “He could argue the brass horns off a billy goat.”

  “I still don’t know what that means thirty-six years later,” he said, arching a brow at Lacey. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

  Lacey got out of the car and unloaded his wheelchair from the back. When she opened his door he just stared at the chair and said, “There’s going to come a day soon where I burn that fucking chair to a pile of ash.”

  “Tell you what,” she said. “On that day, I’ll buy you the matches and lighter fluid.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” he said, and she helped him lift himself out of the car and into the wheelchair.

  “Did you notice how I didn’t even say anything about your language?” Mary asked. “I want to burn the fucking thing too.”

  For the first time Lac
ey had seen since his accident, Shane full out laughed.

  Chapter 16

  The hospital wasn’t much to look at on the outside. It was five stories of plain red brick, but inside, it was a work of art. The lobby was open and airy, and light spilled in from the skylights in the ceiling. Technology was the name of the game at MacKenzie Security, and Declan had always felt that if he wanted the best to work for him then he needed to give them the best in return. Every office, lab, and café was state of the art. It looked more like the Starship Enterprise than a twenty-first-century hospital.

  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Declan she spent more time in her office than in the house that had burned down. She had everything at her fingertips here. A comfortable place to sleep, food, a voice-activated computer that could talk back intelligently, and a 3D hologram workstation for her pet project.

  The exoskeleton suit was her baby. She’d spent too much time on the battlefield, watching the fragility of the human body come up against powerful weapons and bombs. If she could prevent such damage before they ever went into combat it would give soldiers the edge they needed to stay alive.

  The suit was pliable, so movement was natural and easy—not metal, like the early versions of the suit built by other companies. But even though it was pliable it could withstand gunfire and shrapnel. It would make a soldier stronger and faster, and in cases like Shane, where a limb was already lost, the suit had the ability to put a good soldier back in action by compensating for the limb that was missing and reading the brain’s commands as if the limb were still there. It also allowed for the capability to send in fewer solders and draw less attention in areas, and their vitals could be read from across the world, meaning if they were ever compromised or severely injured, command would know exactly where to find them.

  When she thought of the suit and what it could do, she thought of Shane. Of how his entire life had been dedicated to serving, and now he was unable to do the one thing that meant the most to him. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts it took her a minute to realize Shane had broken the silence and was looking at her expectantly.