by Leslie North
Taking off her gloves, she trudged around the house, whipping her long-sleeve T-shirt off to reveal a tank top beneath. Harris had opted to re-stain the front porch today so the newly replaced step would match, and she stopped well out of chemical-smelling range. He had freaked out when she’d offered to help him, citing one of his many Google-searched facts about the solvents in the stain causing birth defects. She had pulled her own phone out and read that those studies were skewed toward women who worked around stains for a living, but his jaw had jutted in a stubborn angle that let her know he wouldn’t budge.
Not wanting to cause a war, she dutifully attacked the poison ivy job (which still had contact with chemicals, though she hadn’t mentioned that to him).
“Do you think D-I-Y is an inherited gene?” Rachel raised her voice to be heard over the stain sprayer.
Harris whipped his face toward her and shut the pressurized hose off. “What?”
“D-I-Y,” she repeated, all but melting in the heat. “I want Ava to be as self-sufficient as possible.”
“Ava?” Harris asked, working the freshly sprayed stain into the wood with a long-handled brush. “Who’s Ava?”
“Our child.” Rachel rubbed her stomach.
He jerked straight up and faced her. “We’re having a girl?”
“Well,” Rachel cleared her throat. “I have no clue. I haven’t had the sonogram to tell me that yet.”
“And you decided on the name Ava,” he pressed, a crease forming between his eyes. “Without talking to me. Don’t I have a say in the choice?”
His hardening tone flipped a switch inside her, flaring her maternal instincts. Bristling at him horning in on her territory of naming her child, anger swirled in her chest. “You have something else in mind?”
“Yeah. I do.” His jaw jut out again. “If it’s a girl, I like Isabella, but if it’s a boy, I want Logan.”
“Are you kidding me?” Rachel tossed her shirt and gloves down, then charged forward. “Logan? As in X-Men’s Wolverine? No way.”
Harris vaulted over the porch’s railing and thumped to the ground. He marched until they met in the middle. “Emily.”
“Aiden.”
“Jacob.”
“Scarlett.”
“Scarlett?” he sputtered, his skin a vivid shade of red. “You made fun of Logan, but you want our child to be named after a character in the game Clue?”
“Yes, I do.” She leaned up on her toes and poked him in the chest. “Who do you think you are, telling me I can’t have any of those names?”
“The baby’s father,” he retorted. “Or does that not count all of a sudden?” He batted her finger away. “Have you relegated me to the role of sperm donor now? So much for being a team.”
The top of her head threatened to blow off and red crept into her vision. How dare he accuse her of not being a team player! Sperm donors didn’t live in her house—
“And I guess you’ve decided,” he hammered, “on your own, whose last name our child will carry.” He towered over her, his voice shaking with the fury stamped all over his face.
The red in her vision deepened, and she pushed his chest to get him to back off, but it was like trying to move a brick wall. “So what if I have?” she asked, rage boiling her blood. “You have a problem with the name Winchester?”
“Fuck, yeah,” he thundered. “This baby’s half mine. He or she should carry the McCallister name. The child should never have a question that I claim him or her as mine.”
Rachel clamped her mouth shut at the last second, halting the comeback: what good is your claim if you’ll be spending half our baby’s childhood thousands of miles away doing God knows what to get yourself killed?
Whirling, she stormed away.
“Where are you going?” he shouted.
She kept marching toward the parking lot. Everything inside her wanted to explode. One side of her wanted to be nasty and hurl her barbed statement at him, while another side feared what he’d say in return. Did she want him to tell her he was retiring from the Marines or was she terrified he’d tell her he was retiring from the Marines?
Vibrations thwumped on the grass from his boot steps. He was in hot pursuit.
“Rachel, stop.”
She broke into a jog, heading for her car parked beside his masculine muscle beast.
He cursed and reached the passenger side door of her six-year-old Hyundai Elantra just as she hit the alarm on her fob. Wrenching the driver’s side door open, she threw herself in and glared at him doing the same with the passenger side door.
“Get out,” she demanded, slamming her door closed. “I need to be alone.”
“Tough shit.” His door closing rocked the four-door sedan. “You’re not driving alone when you’re this upset. Frankly, you shouldn’t be behind the wheel at all, but far be it from me to have an opinion. You’ll just ignore it since I don’t matter in your world.”
“And you think sitting there and pissing me off is going to help the little lady drive better?” Tearing at the seatbelt to secure it, she cranked the engine over and roared out of the parking lot. She always backed in to cut down on the amount of time spent in reverse.
He latched onto the panic bar above his window and braced his other hand on the center console. “I think I’ll do whatever I need to, to keep you from wrapping this car around a tree or killing someone.”
Squeals emanated from her tires as she turned onto a two-lane road barely used anymore since the cannery closed ten years ago. She had no desire to hurt anyone, she just needed to cool off.
“Slow down.”
“Stop telling me what to do.” On a long straight stretch, she pressed the gas pedal further. The Elantra shot forward, its four-cylinder engine screaming to keep up with her demands.
“Slow the fuck down,” he growled, his knuckles whitening on the console.
She waited another five seconds to prove that she would slow because she wanted to, not because he demanded it. Pressing the brake pedal, she frowned when it felt mushy, then her foot went to the floor. Panic overrode the fury, and she kept jabbing at the useless pedal.
“SLOW DOWN!”
“I CAN’T!”
“What do you mean ‘you can’t’?” he barked.
“The brake pedal’s on the floor.”
“Christ.” He lunged across the car and seized the wheel. “Don’t touch the gas and grab your headrest with both hands.”
She accidentally smacked him in the face in her bid to hold on to her headrest. “I’m not touching the gas.”
A turn that wouldn’t normally be sharp at the posted speed limit loomed closer. At seventy-five miles per hour, they’d flip if they didn’t slow down. Her heart slammed against her rib cage and her stomach threatened to throw up the meager lunch she’d forced down.
Terror unlike anything she’d ever known gripped her, and she had to stop the scream trying to break free.
Harris clutched the emergency brake and steadily applied it at the same time he controlled the steering wheel. The Elantra protested, shimmying as it began to slow.
But not fast enough.
They were out of time. The turn appeared and Harris yanked the emergency brake up all the way and muscled the car into the curve. Her arm bashed into the window as inertia worked against them. Squealing tires wailed, and she slammed her eyes closed, bracing for the impact of flipping side over side.
The car continued forward, then the pressure keeping her against the window eased. They made it through the curve and Elantra slowed with every passing second.
Then it stopped.
Cracking her eyelids, she found them idling on the shoulder.
Safe.
He turned the car off, and she burst into tears as too many emotions flooded her body.
He unclicked her seatbelt and dragged her over the console with clammy palms. The position was awkward and uncomfortable, but she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorr
y. I’m sorry,” she offered over and over into his shoulder. “Thank you. Thank God for you.”
He squirmed and wiggled and she lifted her head to find a cellphone in his hand.
“Nine, one, one,” a female voice intoned in the speaker. “What’s your emergency and location?”
“Someone tampered with the brakes on Rachel Winchester’s car,” he reported, his voice carrying no emotional overtone, but by the way he violently trembled beneath her, she figured he was holding on to his feelings by a thin thread. Dilated pupils peering from an ashen face focused on Rachel. “Where are we?”
“Daniels Pond Road,” she answered, then peered out the window. “About two miles south of the old cannery.”
He repeated the information and asked for the operator to send the police. Then he hung up. “This was overt.”
This, meaning someone was stepping up his or her game to kill her.
10
“You seem agitated and distracted, Harris.”
Harris allowed his gaze to wander from the yellowing plant sitting on the radiator to peruse the rest of the small office. Mid-morning sun attempted to filter through the closed, brown, slatted blinds above the plant with no luck. Between the lack of sun and obvious overwatering, no wonder it was dying.
Dull, cracked, dented, and worn furniture, compliments of government funding, filled the rest of the depressing space, and Harris couldn’t wait until his mandatory hour was done.
The middle-aged therapist sitting attentively in a freshly pressed uniform had at one point been a door-kicking, first-one-in, tango-chaser, but had chosen to finish his master’s degree and put his education to use. First Lieutenant Greg Martinez, Ph.D., now had a crappy office stateside versus a crappy tent in some godforsaken country that probably hated the Marines’ presence.
Ahhhh, he led the good life.
“I’m fine,” Harris intoned, settling his focus on the man who held his future in his hands. Liar, liar. Frustration ate at Harris, and he wanted to scream at the lack of progress from the police on protecting Rachel from whoever it was who wanted her dead. The cops seemed to be taking the situation seriously when two marked cars with their sirens blazing had roared to where he had managed to stop the Elantra, but after the officers took his and Rachel’s statements, they didn’t offer much hope. Everyone agreed that Darryl was the most likely suspect with Tammy Winchester coming in at a close second, but without evidence, the police couldn’t do more than question them both.
Three motherf’ing sabotage attempts, each worse than the previous. What did the police need to stop the escalation? Rachel or their baby’s dead body? Ice shot down his spine at the mere thought, followed by white hot fury. He’d been tempted to question Darryl himself, but he feared he’d lose his temper and end up in jail, then dishonorably discharged—
“Master Sergeant McCallister,” 1st Lt. Martinez drew out, adjusting his tall frame in the ugly, pleather chair. “You see me three times a week. Have I ever allowed you to bullshit me?”
Goddamn it. He didn’t need this on top of everything else. “No, sir.” He gave the only correct response available. The therapist outranked him as a commissioned officer to Harris’s noncommissioned officer status, meaning Harris rose in ranks from enlisting, and Martinez started his military career already an officer and climbed from there.
The white pad of paper resting on the therapist’s thigh had a pen poised above it to capture all of Harris’s private thoughts and fears.
The silence drew out.
Shit. Pushing the brake failure and the lack of police response he’d hoped for to the back of his mind, one of the reasons he had to sit in this room bubbled up. Just confess already and get this over with. “I had another flashback last night.”
“Were you awake or dreaming?”
“Dreaming.” He crossed his arms and pushed into the back of the uncomfortable chair. “It woke me up, but I remembered enough to know I was reliving the Colombian mission.”
The faint scratching of the pen grated on Harris’s nerves as it slid over the page.
“Anything different in the dream from what you remember happening?” Martinez asked, focusing on Harris completely.
“No,” Harris snapped. “I still gave our unit the direction and Shawn still paid the price.” A pang ripped through his chest, and he sucked in air against the way it was tearing him in two. With all his heart he wished he had realized the direction that had called to him was a warning, not a green light.
“Shawn Ramirez was a combat veteran marine with just as many missions under his belt as you,” Martinez stated bluntly. “He broke protocol and charged in first when it was not his place to do so.”
Heat flushed Harris’s skin as fury whipped through him. “I don’t give a fuck,” Harris barked, clamping on to the armrests and leaning forward. “He trusted me to keep him safe, and I got him blown to hell and back.”
“You’re not a divine being, Harris,” the therapist responded calmly, not looking bothered in the least that Harris felt about two seconds from putting a hole in the drywall. “You may have a knack for reading terrain, but only God and the drug cartel knew that IED was planted there. Had you gone first like you were supposed to, there is just as much probability that you would be the one dead instead of Shawn.”
His mouth dropped open to shout, As it should be, but he stopped as Rachel’s words haunted him. If you had died, then our baby wouldn’t exist.
“You don’t get it,” Harris stated instead, his grip on the armrests tightening. “Shawn’s life should not have been sacrificed for mine. I failed my best friend.”
“Or your best friend made a mistake and paid a terrible price,” Martinez retorted softly. “None of your teammates nor your CO blame you for Shawn’s death.” He paused as if letting that settle in, but Harris refused to accept the absolution.
He didn’t deserve it. All his life, he’d striven to be the man others counted on to fix things. After his mom got sick and their family fell into chaos, he and his father connected through repairing broken dishwashers or faulty electrical. With every minute of sleep sacrificed, his father showed Harris how much he loved his family when he dove into the repairs after working two jobs without a complaint. And Harris tried to emulate that amazing part of his proud, but flawed father.
After Harris had discovered his talent for reading terrain, he developed it as best he could so he could keep his unit out of harm’s way. But he had let his friend down. Just like he was letting Rachel down. She needed him to keep her safe, but she was still in danger. And he feared Darryl or Tammy would strike again. How could he be a good father if he couldn’t keep his family secure? The baby wasn’t even born yet and he was already a failure. And no matter how many exhaust fans he installed, trim he repaired, or ceiling fans he rewired and replaced, Rachel still did not seem to understand he worked tirelessly for her. To show her how much he cared, and not just because she was pregnant with his child. He was falling for the most amazing, courageous, stubborn, intelligent, savvy businesswoman he’d ever met, and it scared him to death. But just like his father with Chance, the person he wanted most to see he was showing her the depths of his feelings, didn’t. Just another failure to add to the list.
“You can’t keep taking on the blame for Shawn’s death,” the therapist stated, pulling Harris out of his spiraling thoughts.
Martinez continued to hammer at Harris’s guilt, then switched it up in the last fifteen minutes to talk about his father. By the time Harris climbed into his car, he felt like he’d gone ten rounds as the punching bag instead of the boxer.
Cranking both windows down—literally since electronic controls hadn’t existed when the car was made—he gunned the Shelby Mustang’s throaty engine and hightailed it off the base. Warm, humid air coated his skin and plastered his sweaty T-shirt against his skin. Inhaling deep, he cleared his sinuses of the claustrophobic stench of the psychology building.
Water whizzed beneath him as he travel
ed the bridge, then he blessedly reached civilian land. Taking the long way home, he meandered through the streets, needing the random drive to empty his mind of the last hour. God, that had been rough. In all their other sessions, they had talked about Shawn, his dad, and touched on Rachel, but today the therapist had been relentless.
He stopped for the red light and fished his phone out. If he turned left at the next light, he’d head toward home, but if he kept straight, he’d hit wide open road.
Pressing Rachel’s name in his contacts list, he put the call on speaker.
“Hey,” Rachel answered. “How’d it go?”
“Same old, same old,” he blithely replied, lying through his teeth. “Just making sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
The light turned green and he slowly crept forward.
“I’m still cleaning the rooms from the weekend guests,” she continued.
“Mind if I drive for a bit?” His hand hovered near the turn signal in case she needed him.
“Not at all.” She paused, as if distracted. “You mind picking up more string cheese? I seem to have eaten the whole box.”
“Consider it done.” He pressed the gas pedal. “See you soon.” He hung up and flicked on the radio to help drown out the therapist’s words.
With every mile he logged, the yellow lines hypnotized him and the scenery soothed his soul. Rank smells of animal farms mingled with freshly mowed grass, making him smile for the first time since he left the house.
House. Shit. His eyes flew to the clock. Oh man. He hadn’t meant to drive for hours.