Crossing the Line

by Candace Irvin

  “Thanks.”

  It was as if they’d been transported six weeks into the past. They sat there, awkwardly staring at one another over another set of MREs with yet another humid jungle silence settling in. For every step he took with this woman, he took at least two back. He swore he could feel his morning progress slipping away with each chirp of the insects around them. He opened his mouth—and promptly closed it.

  That was no insect.

  He caught the soft rustle beneath the foliage several inches from her left hand again, but this time it was followed by a distinct slither. Eve must not have heard it, however, much less seen the flash of yellow, brown and orange, amid the foliage because she reached for her canteen.

  “You might not want to do that.”

  “Do wha—Jesus!”

  She shot to her feet and jumped to the edge of the clearing before he could tell her it was harmless. He bit down on his grin as he reached out with his K-Bar, slipping the flat of the blade beneath the boa constrictor to lift it up and get a better look. It was four feet tops. A baby.

  He flicked it into the trees.

  “I suppose you thought that was funny.”

  He shrugged.

  “Let me guess, unlike wimpy pilots—male or female— Green Berets aren’t afraid of snakes.”

  He should probably let that one go, too.

  She crossed her arms. “Tell me, Bishop. Have you ever seen a chopper do a barrel roll?”

  He nodded. “Once.”

  Her brow arched. “Have you ever been at the stick?”

  Not bad. In fact, damned impressive.

  He tipped his field cap. “Point taken.” She was right. Every soldier had his moment of valor…as well as his Achilles’ heel. He also had his opening.

  “Rats.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “The rodent. Hate ’em. I was five when I came face-to-face with my first one. I wasn’t supposed to go in the grain silo alone and I knew it. Never did it again.” Not that his dad and his brother had ever let him forget.

  “Rats?”

  He nodded. “Rats. Nasty, scurvy creatures. Carry all kinds of diseases. Ticks, fleas. Fat bellies with beady little eyes and skinny pink tails.” He could still see the damned thing, sitting there, trapping him for what seemed like an eternity, until his screams had finally sent it scurrying away. Hell, he still got queasy just thinking about it. But he was rewarded for his confession when Eve inched her way back to the center of the clearing.

  “Rats.”

  He shrugged.

  She just laughed. “I had a pet rat in grade school.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She shook her head. “Well, it wasn’t really mine. It was the science teacher’s. But I got to feed him and play with him. Herbert was white and he had this cute bald tai—”

  “I get the picture.”

  She grinned—and sat.

  He breathed.

  “Grain silos? Just where are you from, anyway?”

  “Nebraska.”

  Again, she blinked.

  This time he was actually affronted. “What? You never met a Nebraska boy before? Johnny Carson’s from Nebraska.”

  “I know. I just didn’t know there were jungles in Nebraska.”

  He dumped his MRE pouch beside his ruck and laughed at that. “There aren’t. Just miles of cornfields, gravel roads, cows, pigs, a million chickens and an occasional kid or two.” At least in the county he was from.

  “Your family must miss you.” She said it so softly, he almost missed it. The wonder, the envy.

  The honest desire to know.

  His own honest desire to share snaked through him.

  The hell with rats, he was truly queasy now.

  And this was dangerous.

  He did it anyway. “My brother couldn’t wait to get out. It was all he ever talked about. The day Ben graduated from high school, he left for the big city—that would be Omaha for you sophisticated Texans. He lasted a year.”

  “What happened?”

  “Our mom died.”

  Damn. He hadn’t meant for it to fall out quite so bluntly. Who was he kidding? He hadn’t meant it to come out at all. He watched her closely. Relieved when she didn’t pull away again. If anything, she leaned closer.

  “I’m sorry.”

  For once the words seemed more than a quick platitude. Maybe that’s why he actually wanted to continue.

  Or maybe it was just her.

  He shrugged. “Our dad, he took her for groceries one afternoon. They got caught in a snowstorm on the way back. Dad swore she never saw the semi that hit them. Ben came back for the funeral and never left.”

  How could he?

  Their father might have survived the accident physically, but he sure as hell hadn’t in spirit.

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Fine now. He died a year later.”

  He heard her soft gasp. “I don’t understand.”

  Neither did he. Not really.

  Or maybe he still didn’t want to understand.

  So why did he have this gut-wrenching premonition he was about to?

  “Rick?” Her fingers touched the back of his hand.

  He flinched.

  “Sorry, I didn—”

  His hand snapped up before he could stop it, claiming hers before she could retrieve it. He held on shamelessly and forced himself to continue. “It’s okay. It’s just— I’ve rarely…talked about it.” He had with a buddy once. But he knew damned well if Ernesto hadn’t prodded, he’d never have found the nerve. Rick studied the slender fingers in his. They didn’t move, didn’t flinch. They felt strangely right in his, as if they belonged. In a way, maybe they did.

  They’d come this far together.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to finish the story. “It was cold, snowing again. I was at school, Ben was visiting a buddy. There’s not much to do on a farm in the dead of winter except repair equipment, so that’s what dad was doing.” At least, that’s what the police report had said. “He was working on his truck, the one he’d bought new after the accident. A tune-up, it looked like. But the garage doors were closed and…” He swallowed the lump in his throat but it refused to go down.

  He shrugged. Seemed he couldn’t finish after all.

  Her fingers shifted in his, until her hand squeezed his. “And he died of asphyxiation.”

  That’s how the cops had pegged it, too. But from the way her eyes were glistening, she knew what had really happened, same as the sheriff had. His father had killed himself.

  No, there’d been no note. If there had been, the insurance wouldn’t have paid out.

  Dad was practical to the end.

  Her hand squeezed his. “He must have loved her very much.”

  “You could call it a family curse.” He’d meant it as a joke but she didn’t laugh. She squeezed harder.

  “How old were you?”

  “Almost eighteen. I graduated a couple months later and joined the Army.” Hell, he’d have joined the Marines if the recruiter had been in first that morning. He stared at her fingers, still streaked with cammo, tree sap and dirt from their morning trek. He should stop talking, let her eat.

  Except now that he had her interest, he couldn’t seem to shut up. He wasn’t even trying to reach whatever she was hiding anymore. He just needed her to know he understood there were some things that were so painful you just couldn’t talk about them. “Anyway, most of the guys I went to basic with were headed for the desert, but I had four years of Spanish and remembered most of it so I was sent to Ranger school and then on to Special Forces.”

  “How on earth did you find time for college?”

  He shrugged. “Not much to do after-hours at Fort Bragg.” Not if you weren’t interested in marriage or at least shacking up. “Got tapped for an officer slot soon after. Figured what the hell, I like the jungle. Might as well get paid to live here.” He stared at the tree trunk behind her, the thick vin
es and the darker green undergrowth as the silence returned.

  He wasn’t worried.

  It was different this time. Companionable, familiar. He should release her hand though. She really did need to eat. They both did. He tried to, but she refused to let go.

  “Eve?”

  He searched the shadows swirling through her eyes, the lingering doubts, the indecision. He didn’t know what to say anymore, what to do. All he knew was that he couldn’t push.

  He wouldn’t.

  She seemed to understand, because her gaze finally cleared, focused. “Remember the headset at the LZ? The one you asked for? The one I told you had malfunctioned?”

  He swallowed hard. “Yes?”

  “I lied.”

  Chapter 9

  H e knew.

  She just didn’t know how much. Eve had begun to suspect it sometime this morning. But she wasn’t certain until now. Why else had Rick exposed his inner self to her? And he had exposed his inner self. No man could pretend the pain in his eyes or in the hands that had been locked to hers while he’d been talking. No man would want to. Not even to gain her trust.

  Last night hadn’t been a dream.

  Not all of it, anyway. How much she’d mumbled out loud, she couldn’t be sure. She could only hope she’d kept her trap shut about Carrie and Anna. It was ironic. Carrie had discovered her secrets the same way. Once she’d gotten over the shock of waking to find her friend next to her bed, holding her hand during their freshman year of college, she’d realized the discovery was inevitable. When she was under stress, she dreamed. And when she dreamed, she talked.

  But that didn’t mean she had to explain.

  Not even to the man sitting twelve inches away, holding her hand as he patiently waited for her to finish. But she could give him something in return for his silence about last night and for his trust just now.

  She could give him that day.

  “I was angry with you. No, I was furious.”

  His brow shot up, but he remained silent.

  She appreciated it. She needed time to choose her words carefully. She stared at their hands while she gathered her thoughts. It should have unnerved her to see his callused fingers still entwined with hers. But it didn’t.

  If anything, she drew strength from them.

  From him.

  She drew a deep breath and faced that dark, steady gaze. “You snubbed Carrie. And you did it in front of your platoon sergeant and my crew chief. She was an officer and she was my copilot, but she was also my best friend. I know her behavior was out of line that morning, but so was yours. Frankly, I didn’t want you listening in. So I lied. For that, I’m sorry.”

  He waited several beats, as if he too needed time to corral his thoughts. He finally nodded. “You’re right. I was out of line. I was late for my briefing and seeing her didn’t help.”

  Now there was a leading statement.

  She’d give a heck of a lot to follow it, but she wouldn’t give up Carrie. Unfortunately, short of asking Rick how much he knew about his sergeant’s relationship with her friend, there was nothing she could do. She’d gone as far as she could go. It was up to him to trust her.

  Or not.

  To her surprise, he dropped his stare to their hands and studied them intently. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  He was right. It was easier this way, not having to look at him. “Yes. But it has nothing to do with the crash.”

  He nodded. “I know.” He stroked his fingers down the back of her hand then turned it over to smooth a caress across her palm. “You…need to get anything else off your chest?”

  For a blinding moment, she thought he meant the baby. But then his gaze came up and the compassion flowed out. He was asking about the dream. What he’d heard.

  What he wanted her to share.

  She couldn’t.

  But not for the reason he thought.

  It was simply too personal. Too much a part of her. The real her. She might have dealt with it, but aside from Carrie she’d never, ever, shared it. Much less with some man who’d be leaving just as soon as he got what he’d come for.

  She’d never even been tempted.

  To her utter shock, she was now. She even opened her mouth.

  Nothing came out.

  He simply nodded. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

  The ray of light he’d managed to locate in the middle of this shadowy jungle glinted off the truth burning in his eyes. She believed him. He truly wanted to be there for her.

  But for how long?

  Her bird was dead.

  There were times over the past six weeks when she’d wondered. Times when it felt as if she was simply trapped in a series of surreal dreams woven within the framework of a larger, more horrific nightmare. She kept hoping that if she hung on long enough, she’d finally break through. She’d wake up and discover that Carrie, Sergeant Lange and Sergeant Turner were still alive. That her career and her chopper were still in one piece. But as Eve stood twenty trees from the edge of the clearing she’d attempted to land in all those weeks ago and stared at the charred remains of her Black Hawk, reality struck home. And it struck harder than the knuckles of some stranger’s fist after she’d dared to crawl into bed with her mother all those years ago.

  She’d woken up, all right.

  Just not to the fantasy she craved.

  Six years of her Army career and three-plus lives had been reduced to a shell of blackened steel. Even from here, after all these weeks, she could smell the lingering stench of death, singed metal and vaporized fuel.

  What a waste.

  Her waste.

  Eve tore her gaze from the chopper and searched in vain for Rick, alternately cursing him for forcing her to wait idly by while he scoured the area for any potential booby traps left by the Córdoban army, and yet blessing him for allowing her this time alone with her memories and with her thoughts.

  With her doubts.

  Oh she had them, all right.

  She might not have admitted them to the investigation board or to Rick. But they were there. They’d been burrowing through her brain for weeks, gnawing at her confidence, eating away her resolve. Until this moment, she hadn’t known how truly insidious they were. What if the board was right?

  Not in their logic, but in the end result.

  What if she tore that hunk of cooked steel apart bolt-by-bolt and found absolutely nothing? How could she argue with the board’s finding then? Or worse, what if she discovered the crash had been caused by pilot error?

  Her error.

  Hell, even if she was vindicated, would it really matter?

  In the end, what would examining the remains of her chopper really solve? Would it silence the what-ifs? Strangle the could-have-beens? Or would she always wonder if she’d done this differently or that sooner, would three more people be alive today? Would Carrie still be expecting her first baby?

  “Eve?”

  She nearly jumped out of her boots.

  She recovered quickly and spun around. She took one look at Rick’s face and reached up to scrub the tears away from her own, then stopped. What was the point? They’d just start streaming all over again when they reached the graves.

  Then again, maybe she should have wiped them.

  Rick was staring at her as if he was afraid she was about to dive off the deep end. She wiped, if only to stop that gentle compassion before it sent her over.

  “Did you find anything?”

  He shook his head. “The monkeys have been over it. A puma made a couple of passes around the perimeter, but decided not to enter. Other than that, nothing. Just Mother Nature and entropy hard at work. We’re good to go.” He stepped up close and smoothed his thumbs across her cheeks, wiping tears she must have missed. “Are you?”

  No.

  She managed a nod.

  He didn’t move. He just continued to stare. She had the distinct feeling he wanted to say something, something he thought she wouldn�
�t want to hear. “What is it?” Even as she asked, his debrief sunk in. Monkeys, pumas, and God knew what else. Wild, curious animals.

  The graves.

  “Did the animals disturb—”

  “They’re fine. I’m just not sure how you’re going to take my suggestion now that we’re here.”

  Fear of the unknown was already bleeding her dry. “Spill it.”

  He nodded. “It’s been a long day. You’re tired. We both are. Just seeing the wreckage from here has upset you—not that it wasn’t bound to. Dusk hits in less than an hour and we have at least that long to travel before I’ll be comfortable setting up camp for the—”

  “You want me to wait.”

  “Yes. Just take a look at it now. It’ll be here in the morning and we’ll be rested. Thinking clearer.”

  “Okay.”

  He tipped her chin. “You’re sure?”

  “No. But you are. That’s good enough for me.” After everything he’d sacrificed to make this happen, it had to be. She drew in a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

  He nodded and turned to hoist his ruck on his shoulders. His hand shot out as she reached for hers. “I’ll get it.”

  The hell he would. Her ribs were fine now. She could carry her own gear, thank you.

  She reached out again.

  This time, his stare cut her off. It was a stare designed to put the fear of God into combat-hardened soldiers when necessary, a stare that demanded obedience.

  Expected it.

  “Fine.” She grabbed her rifle and took off on point toward the clearing, automatically threading her way through the thinning undergrowth as he’d taught by example during the day. She reached the tree line all too soon. By the time she reached her chopper she knew exactly why Rick had insisted on carrying her gear. She could barely carry her rifle, much less her own body. Her legs turned to lead as the world faded from view. All she could see was that blackened hunk of metal.

  Shattered windows, buckled steel.

  A vacant, lifeless shell.

  Tears scalded down her cheeks again before she could stop them, and this time the pounding in her chest could have put a live artillery exercise to shame. Her breath ripped through her lungs short and hard as every nerve in her body screamed at her to turn around, go back. Leave the way she’d come.