She shook her head.
He walked out the door.
“Milk,” she called out as he reached the entrance at the foot of the stairs. She had a bad feeling about this. She wanted to say be careful. But it came out as, “Milk and orange juice for Ben.” Afraid of what he might see in her eyes, she held his gaze only for a second.
He nodded and then disappeared into the locked garage where the Tahoe was hidden away from the casual observer. Mal watched as Nash backed out of the garage and then had to go through the whole production of getting out of the car and shutting the wide swinging door and locking it again.
Doc came to stand beside her. “He’ll be back.”
She turned to go back inside. “Maybe.”
There was that niggling suspicion that this was all coming to an end too soon.
* * *
THE TOWN OF Rock Springs, Colorado, was a mile-long stretch from a bygone era and one of the best-kept secrets in Colorado, having escaped the commercialism of the ski industry. It also had a history as colorful as neighboring Leadville. Rock Springs was located in Lake County, adjacent to two natural mountain lakes at the foot of Colorado’s highest fourteener, Mt. Elbert.
Nash made two passes through town before parking in front of the corner drugstore on the slushy snow-covered street and then made his way to the sheriff’s office on foot. He wanted to ask Rainey Law about the chatter he’d heard over the radio this morning.
Despite being saddled with the oldest deputy/doctor of veterinary medicine on record, the town of Rock Springs did have an actual police station, and two squad cars—or rather SUVs—were parked out front.
Nash was debating going inside or waiting for the sheriff to come out when the frosted glass front door to the office opened. A uniformed deputy stood in silhouette, putting on his sunglasses against the white glare and sunshine. “Do you want anything while I’m out?” he yelled back through the door.
There was a muffled response from inside and then Nash ducked into a narrow side alley as the deputy accepted the order and pushed through the door to the street.
While in the alley, Nash noticed several caged entrances to the building, and around back he noticed an entrance that looked as though it might be direct access to the jail. He glanced back down the side alley, sizing up the Dumpster and the fire escape above it. The building was two stories with evenly spaced windows and roof access.
Once the deputy’s vehicle pulled out, Nash sauntered back onto the sidewalk. It wasn’t that he was trying to hide, but the fewer people who saw him close up, the better.
The interior of the station was more homey than modern. There was a receptionist/dispatcher at the counter when he walked in. “May I speak to Sheriff Law?”
“Rainey, there’s a hot guy here to see you.”
So much for discretion.
“Thanks for that,” he said to the young woman.
“You’re welcome.”
Sheriff Law stepped out of her office and invited Nash in. She looked surprised to see him. “Didn’t expect to see you in town.”
“I was picking up some chatter on the police scanner between the deputies over in Leadville—” A nondescript sedan pulled up outside her office window just then. A man and a woman in suits and overcoats got out. He recognized the woman as Tess Galena. “You expecting company?”
“Shit,” the sheriff muttered as she glanced out the office window. “Stay here,” she said to him, and then she stepped out of her office.
“How can I help the FBI today?” he heard her say on the other side of the closed door.
“Have you seen this woman or this child?”
Nash watched through the closed slats as they flashed pictures of Mal and Ben.
“I told you last week, no.”
Damn, she was good. That wasn’t even a lie.
“How about this man?” the agent, or pseudoagent he didn’t recognize, asked. Nash still hadn’t seen the man flash a badge. He expected to see the agent showing Sheriff Law his mug shot, but it was actually a photo of Agent Tyler, the agent who’d fired on his own partner in the alley and then on them as they drove away in the Tahoe.
“No, I’ve never seen that man before.”
“What about this one?” The agent held up side-by-side pictures showing Nash as America’s Most Wanted and as a uniformed Navy SEAL. Both pictures were two ends of an extreme—he was somewhere in the middle now. The average person if shown those pictures might not even recognize them as him, or even the same person.
For one thing, his tan had faded to his natural skin tone, and he no longer had the wild unkempt hair along with the full beard and bushy eyebrows. Neither did he have a buzz cut or that hollowed, hard-jawed I work out sixteen hours a day look that he’d had right after BUD/S training.
He was lean-muscled and fit, but about twenty pounds lighter, and any hollowing of the cheeks came from skipping regular meals, not spending hours at the gym.
“Nope, haven’t seen him, either.” She crossed her arms. If either man was trained in body language, he’d be wondering why she was being so defensive. He might just attribute it to normal friction between the local law and Feds tromping all over their jurisdiction.
Nash was more worried about what Suzie Sunshine out at the receptionist’s desk might say. So far she’d said nothing and hopefully she followed her boss’s lead and kept her mouth shut. But Nash wasn’t going to wait around long enough to find out.
Like most well-constructed law enforcement offices, the sheriff’s private office had two ways in and out. He stepped out through the side door and into a hall. From there he tiptoed up the staircase and then out onto the roof.
The hollowed-out sound of boots running across a roof would have been heard from inside the building, so he crouched next to the exit tower and waited until the Feds made their next move. Fortunately that was to leave the building and drive off.
He decided against going back inside. He’d heard all he needed to hear. He just wanted to get back to Mal and Ben as soon as possible. He made his way up to the roof.
He’d judged the distance between the two buildings at about twelve feet. The average man could jump a distance of ten feet between buildings. The Olympic record was almost thirty feet. He got a running start and cleared the gap with room to spare.
He’d had a lot of practice running roofs in Third World countries.
The gaps between the rest of the buildings and the corner pharmacy were mere inches.
* * *
MAL KEPT WATCHING the clock. Nash had been gone all day. What was keeping him? She tried not to think the worst. That he’d either left them—in order to steer trouble away from them—or run into trouble before he could get back to them.
How long did it take to drop in on the sheriff, make a phone call and pick up some milk?
When she thought how normal that last bit sounded, she couldn’t help letting a laugh escape.
“Mom, it’s your turn,” Ben was saying.
She rolled the dice and moved her game piece. When they saw the flash of headlights and heard the crunch of tires on snow, Ben raced to the picture window.
“He’s back.” And with that, Ben forgot all about his game.
“Ben—” Mal called after him, but he was already out the door. A quick glance outside told her it was indeed the Tahoe pulling into the garage, but she couldn’t make out more than the taillights and license plate, so she hurried after Ben. Neither of them had taken the time to put on a coat, and it was freezing outside.
The car door slammed and Nash emerged from the garage with a bag in one hand and a carton of milk in the other. Mal stopped in her tracks. She put a hand to her mouth, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.
He handed off the groceries to his son, and then Mal turned to fol
low Ben inside.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Nash said as he reached the porch.
She pulled the door closed behind Ben and waited, hugging herself against the cold while Nash kicked the snow off his boots and took his sweet time about climbing the steps.
“Here.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a small pharmacy package that looked suspiciously like birth control pills.
“What’s this?”
“Plan B.”
“You have a backup plan for everything, don’t you?” She couldn’t help the sarcasm.
“We had unprotected sex.”
Which they hadn’t even talked about until now, and then to hear him say it like that—so matter-of-factly. Wow. “I’m aware we had sex.”
She used his vernacular.
Don’t think of it as making love. Try not to feel anything at all. No emotions. None.
She could choose to be a man about it. Or she could be a girl and demand they talk about their feelings when he so obviously had none for her whatsoever. She was so cold now her nose had started to drip and she sniffed.
Be a man.
“I don’t know what form of birth control you use. But if you’re on the pill, you’ve been off it for a week. And if you’re not, well...”
“There’s always plan B.” She tapped the package against her palm before tucking her arms around herself again.
“You’re still within the window.”
“Wouldn’t want that window to close, now, would we?” Her teeth started chattering.
“The last thing I want to do, Mal, is leave you pregnant.”
At least he didn’t apologize. There was nothing worse than an apology after sex. Sorry, I’ve got an early meeting. Or Oops, that’s never happened before. And how about, I know, I should have told you I was married?
But her favorite? I’m sorry I called out your sister’s name during sex.
Why couldn’t he have just said, “The last thing I want to do is leave you”? And then let that be the end of it.
“It’s cold. You should get inside, Mal.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got some things to do.” He turned and headed back down the porch.
She couldn’t help herself. She was a girl. She threw plan B at the back of his head and it bounced right off his thick skull. He probably barely felt it.
He ducked and turned with a hand to the back of his head at the same time. “What the—”
“Birth control is not an afterthought. I am not an afterthought.”
She turned and stomped back inside.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“YOU’RE NOT AN afterthought, Mal.”
He’d followed her into the bedroom and she turned around to face him. She couldn’t deny the sincerity in his words or those deep brown eyes she’d come to trust again. “What am I, then?”
“You and me...” He shook his head as if it were a bad idea. “It’s complicated.”
She knew that, duh. That was the understatement of a lifetime. It wasn’t as if she could totally disregard the fact that he’d been married to her sister. But maybe it felt more right than wrong.
More natural than not.
Not like slipping into her big sister’s grown-up heels and playing dress-up. But more like finding a favorite pair of old sneakers she thought she’d thrown out and trying them back on to find they were still the perfect fit.
How could she have ever believed him to be Cara’s killer when the whole time her gut was telling her that he wasn’t? Aside from the fact that she’d wanted, needed someone to blame, her heart had been so fragile that it had been constructing walls to guard against him even then. Walls that had started crumbling down less than twenty-four hours after seeing him again.
Or maybe she’d built those walls wanting him to tear them down. To prove that he loved her, too. Only he didn’t. Not in the way she loved him.
“I get it. You came back for Ben. I’m just along for the ride.”
He tilted her chin so she had to look at him. “I came back for you both.”
“You only need me to look after Ben. Because this isn’t over when it’s over, is it?” It was time she confronted her fear of losing everything. “Once you testify—Ben and I—we don’t get to go back to our regularly scheduled lives, do we?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”
And there it was, the anticlimactic after-sex apology.
I’m sorry I turned your world upside down.
“My cover’s been blown out of the water. And I think you know what that means.” Nash might have taken down an entire terrorist cell to get his man, but he’d taken himself down along with it. And besides, for every man captured, another dozen escaped.
There was no end in sight for any of them. Cut off the head of the Cobra and he just grew more heads.
Now the many heads of the Cobra sought retaliation, hunting Nash down, striking where he was weakest—her and Ben.
Mal knew that Nash only had two choices.
Stay ahead of the Cobra. Or stay out of the Cobra’s sight.
She and Ben would be tucked out of sight in the witness protection program—Nash would see to it in exchange for his testimony. Funny how his kidnapping them all made sense now. But while she knew what he would do in regards to her and Ben, she didn’t know which path he’d choose for himself.
Nash was a mongoose. His quick thinking and reflexes would allow him to stay out of reach of the Cobra and strike back more often than not. At least that’s what she chose to believe.
“You and Ben are going to be okay. I’ll see to it, I promise.”
A lover’s promises were almost as bad as apologies.
“I know.”
Cara had once called her the fifth wheel in her marriage. Mal hadn’t really given it much thought at the time. She’d been the tagalong.
In truth, she’d loved Nash since they were kids. She’d never stopped loving him.
Cara had realized it, tolerated it even. Perhaps Nash had, too. Because they always loved her.
He loved her.
Maybe not in the same way she loved him, but love could be complicated. She’d never stopped loving him, not even when she’d hated him.
Maybe she was trying to hold on to him as a way to hold on to Cara. Maybe she was just trying to hold on to something because of this insane situation they found themselves in. Or maybe she just wasn’t that complicated and was simply still in love with him.
He pulled her into a hug. “Are we cool?”
She supposed this was as close as he would come to talking about last night. Resting her head against his shoulder, she allowed herself that moment only to feel what it would be like to be loved by Nash. “We’re cool. I’m letting you hug me with maggots taped to your gut, aren’t I?”
She reveled in his deep chuckle.
The sound of it. The feel of it.
The heartbreak of it.
* * *
IT WAS UNUSUAL for them to sit down to dinner at a table like a family.
“I’ve arranged for our extraction,” Nash said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. At the old mine.”
She hadn’t thought to ask where it was going to happen. She’d just assumed it would be here at the cabin.
“Gather all your personal possessions. We pack only what we need and burn the rest. Doc will sanitize the cabin and get rid of the Tahoe.”
“We’re walking out on foot?”
“First light. So get a good night’s sleep.” He held her gaze for longer than was necessary to make his point. There’d be no repeat performance of the night before. The hunger in his eyes held a different story this evening.
/> After supper, a melancholy settled over the household as she made Ben help her with the dishes while Doc tended to Nash’s wound. He declared maggot therapy a success and went about stitching Nash up.
Meanwhile Nash had Ben lay out the contents of his backpack on the table—his Nintendo DS. School supplies and drawings. None of that was going with them. Essentially they were walking out of here with the clothes on their backs, a change of clothes and a day’s worth of food and water. Plus borrowed coats and boots.
“What about this one?” Ben asked, holding up that very first doodle he’d made at this breakfast table the morning after their late night arrival.
Nash shook his head. He at least had the decency to look as though he felt bad about it. Ben looked as if he wanted to cry but was a real trouper about it. He put the picture back on the pile.
“Say there, that is a nice picture,” Doc said. “Is this you and your dad? And your mom?”
“No, that’s me and my dad and my aunt Mallory,” Ben said while she tried not to cry. “That’s my mom.” He pointed to the angel.
“You know, I have the perfect place on my fridge. Do you mind if I keep this one to remind me of your visit?”
Ben beamed at the old man, while Mal shot him a grateful look, knowing full well that the picture would still be burned along with the rest. But at least Ben wouldn’t have to know about it.
Suddenly this was all too real.
“Time for bed, Ben,” she said with a hand to his back and ushered him toward the stairs. “Ow!” Mal flinched as something cold and wet hit her in the back of the head and then rained down her collar. More shocked than hurt, she turned to face Nash. “Did you just throw a snowball at me in the house? What are you, twelve?”
“Tit for tat.” He ducked out the front door as if he expected her to chase after him. Of course, she didn’t miss the reference about hitting him upside the head with birth control pills or the challenge in it.
Ben followed in a flash, grabbing a coat off the rack on his way out the front, which he didn’t bother to shut.
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