“No.” This wasn’t Preston. It couldn’t be. Preston was dead.
“Get on, Holly. Now.” The voice tugged at the strings she’d used to sew her heart back together when Preston’s charred remains came home in a coffin.
She had to be dreaming. She pinched her leg to wake herself up.
Ouch. Her thigh stung where she’d squeezed.
The man wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her toward the Jet Ski. “This is real.”
Real what? A real kidnapping?
“Who are you?” Her voice rose in panic.
She couldn’t just climb on behind a stranger. If he didn’t look so much like Preston, she would have pushed him off the watercraft by now.
“It’s me, Holly.”
Her mind whirled, almost pulling her head back with the weight of her thoughts. Preston was alive. He was on Lake Tahoe in front of her.
She covered her mouth with her free hand. This was impossible. Unless the corpse in the coffin had belonged to someone else and Preston had recently been released from some kind of POW camp.
She scanned his body, looking for injuries. If she climbed onto the Jet Ski too fast, would she hurt him? This was so unbelievable.
He tugged her arm. “Hurry, doll.”
Her heart reeled at the old nickname. This was Preston all right. In a daze, she slid behind him and clutched both arms around his middle. He was more solid than she remembered. At least he hadn’t been malnourished.
He gunned the engine. The Jet Ski tipped backward as it took off. Just like old times—
Except for the loud blast that erupted behind her. Hot air warmed her skin. Pushed against her. She craned her neck around to see fire shoot into the sky from her family cabin.
Her throat went dry. She clutched Preston tighter. If he hadn’t just picked her up, she would be dead. But why? And how had he known?
* * *
Preston exhaled. He’d picked her up just in time. Though the sooner he dropped her off, the better.
He hadn’t wanted to be right about the time bomb, but at least she was safe. He’d just have to make sure she was out of harm’s way before handing her over to police. Because she had a life to rebuild, and he couldn’t be part of it.
He slowed at his parents’ old, weathered dock. He wouldn’t have brought her here if they had been safe staying out in the open. But apparently someone wanted to kill her.
Her trembling fingers slid from around his waist to his sides as she twisted to look behind them. Her fingernails bit through his T-shirt. “What? What happened? What’s going on? I...I don’t understand.” She looked at his cabin then at him, her eyes still too glazed to be afraid. “Why are we here?”
Preston viewed the dilapidated A-frame from her perspective. How would she react when she found out he’d been living there the whole time she thought he’d been dead? How much should he tell her? Had he just saved her life, or had he put her in even more danger?
She blinked. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”
Since someone was after her, he’d get her out of the open. Later, he’d worry more about finding the criminal. “Let’s go in.”
She climbed onto the dock, causing it to sink halfway underwater.
He eyed her ten pink toenails. So feminine. So sweet. So off-limits. He forced himself to focus on hooking the towrope to the dock.
“I can’t believe it’s really you.”
She gripped his biceps when he stood, and maybe she just saw him as her old friend whose shoulders she used to sit on when playing chicken in the lake, but her proximity wasn’t as comfortable as it used to be. In fact, it was almost painful. It should be avoided because she wasn’t even supposed to see him, let alone touch him. He stepped around her.
She turned, her arms flailing now that she wasn’t hanging on to him like an anchor. “My cabin exploded. I could have been dead like you’re supposed to be.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “I can’t believe I said that.”
“It’s okay.” Though, was it? How was she going to explain surviving the explosion without revealing his existence? Was she even capable of keeping secrets?
She stepped forward. He stepped back.
“I didn’t want to believe you died, but we had a funeral for you. They played taps and gave your parents a flag.”
Preston looked away. He already knew about his funeral. He’d been there in the distance, watching, as his family mourned their loss.
Soon he would have to disappear again. No use giving Holly more to mourn. He’d put distance between them and a perimeter of defense around his heart. He wouldn’t think about the first time he’d kissed her, at the age of sixteen under this very dock during a game of hide-and-seek. Or about how she smelled of coconut, the same way she had as a teen. He held his breath and stepped away, toward the cabin.
He had to concentrate on the danger of their situation. He’d trained for that. He looked back at the fireball that had once been her family cabin to make sure nobody had followed them across the lake.
She grabbed his hand.
Even though they’d grown up holding hands, his pulse reacted violently as an adult. The whole fight-or-flight syndrome. He’d be better off if he chose flight rather than to fight for a relationship that could never last. Dead men didn’t date.
He led her along the uneven planks, up onto the deck and through the sliding glass door. His parents hadn’t used the place since his “passing” either. Apparently both families had too many memories at the lake for them to be able to enjoy vacations there without him.
“How did you escape? Can I be there when you tell your parents you’re alive?”
Uh...no. He took another step away and held up his hands so she couldn’t follow.
She scanned him up and down. “Are you hurt? Were you held hostage? Who is after you?”
He lifted his eyebrows. She thought he was the target of the bomb? This was going to be worse than he’d expected.
“Holly.” What a softer man he would be if he’d spent the last four years with her. Unfortunately, his current circumstances didn’t allow for softness. “The bomb was meant for you.”
Her spine shot straight. Her eyes snapped wide. She stumbled backward.
He stepped forward to stabilize her before she lost her balance.
She scampered away. “If the bomb was for me, how did you know about it?”
He held his ground. Tilted his head toward the deck. “I saw it being delivered.”
Her gaze ricocheted back and forth between his eyes. “How? Why are you here? Why does nobody know you’re alive?”
He pressed his lips together. The truth was going to hurt. Just not as bad as the explosion would have. “I’ve been in the US for the past four years. I wasn’t in the helicopter crash. I’d seen someone tampering with the engines and went to ask my sergeant to delay the op, but before he could halt takeoff, my team headed out. They didn’t make it far before crashing into a fuel tanker. Someone else’s body came home in my coffin.”
She rocked onto her heels, gripping the back of the couch for balance. “You’ve been pretending to be dead?”
Was that all she’d heard? “Yes, because—”
“I am so tired of hearing men’s excuses.” Her hand covered her heart. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I thought you were different, Preston. You used to be.”
He held out his hands and blinked. What just happened? “You’d rather I be dead?”
“No.” She took a couple deep breaths. Her eyes grew shiny, like she was about to cry—to mourn his death a second time. “I’d rather you tell the truth.”
This was what he got for saving her life? A guilt trip? Of course, Holly didn’t know he already had enough guilt to keep
him from being able to return home. Probably forever.
But as for telling the truth, Preston had tried, and his sergeant had been killed because of it. SOAR Commander Robert Long had found Sergeant Beatty’s body hanging in his bunk the morning after Beatty told Preston he’d look into possible sabotage. The death had been ruled a suicide.
Letting another person die because they knew the truth wasn’t a risk Preston was willing to take, which was why Holly could never tell anyone about him, either.
“Holly, the CID—Criminal Investigation Division for the military—hid the sabotage from the American people. They aren’t going to let me come back to life and point fingers unless I know exactly who I’m pointing at, and I don’t yet. So that means either the military will throw me in prison, or the person responsible for this will kill me. I have to stay dead for now.”
He wasn’t the bad guy here.
She shook her head. Shook it harder. “No. There has to be another way.”
He used to think the same thing until it ate him up inside. “There’s not.”
But what-ifs still teased sometimes. What if Holly let the crime scene investigators back at the cabin presume her dead, and she started a new life with him off the grid? Or what if she helped him assume a new identity? Or what if he stayed in the cabin and she visited occasionally? Then he wouldn’t be so alone anymore.
But none of those would be the best thing for her. He was there for her and not himself.
She planted her hands on her hips. “Am I just supposed to forget the way you popped back into my life today? Am I supposed to keep this a secret from your family, too? You know your little sister married my brother, right?”
“Holly.” He couldn’t help reaching for her.
She knocked his hand down. “That was supposed to be us. Don’t you care?”
He folded his arms. He wouldn’t tell her how he’d been glad at first when his old buddy Caleb looked out for her after his “death.” Or how he’d broken a couple knuckles punching a tree when she’d finally said yes to the man’s proposal. Or that he’d bought her an engagement ring before he left, and it sat in the loft above them collecting dust.
“I’m here because I care. I’m sure it would be easier for you if you didn’t know I was alive, but I saw someone plant a bomb in your cabin, and I had to save you.”
She glanced out the window. “Why would someone want to kill me?”
The question should rock him as well, but having played dead for the past few years, he’d found out more about murder than he’d ever wanted to know. “It could be a recently released prisoner whose case you lost. It could be a current criminal whose guilt you are about to expose in court. It could be a jealous coworker.” Preston sighed. “Have you received any threats? Do you have any enemies?”
Her eyes rolled up to look at the ceiling as she thought, and Preston had a pretty good idea of who she was thinking about. Finding her fiancé with the other woman had been an accident. Preston had simply planned to drop off a Bible and couple’s devotional at Caleb’s house as an anonymous wedding gift—a symbol to himself of wishing the best for Holly’s marriage. But instead he’d stumbled upon the fact Caleb was cheating. No way could he let Holly unknowingly form an alliance with a traitor, so he’d snapped a couple photos with his phone and stuck them in her mailbox. Of course, being a philanderer didn’t mean the man was capable of murder...
“No. I don’t think so.” She looked to him, fear etched like stone in the gray depths of her gaze. “What do I do?”
Well, she couldn’t die. He wouldn’t let her. His family had already lost too much. She’d already lost too much. “I’m going to have to go back into hiding, Holly. But I’m here for you until I figure out who planted that bomb. You’re going to be safe.”
She stepped toward him. Probably wanting a hug for support, now that she was momentarily in the acceptance phase of shock. Whether it lasted or not, he couldn’t be there for her like that. They would have to sever their connection soon, and it would be better if there was less to sever.
He grasped her hands to hold her at arm’s distance. “You can trust me, but we can’t be friends. I’ll be leaving again, so I can’t get close to you.”
Footsteps thudded outside the front door. The doorknob rattled.
Preston didn’t have any more time to worry about staying aloof. If he was going to consider himself a bodyguard, then he’d have to protect her. He wrapped one arm around her waist and dived behind the couch as the windowpane next to the door shattered.
Copyright © 2017 by Angela Ruth Strong
ISBN-13: 9781488018930
Perilous Homecoming
Copyright © 2017 by Sarah Varland
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