TEN
Scout sensed the change, both in Nicco and in their relationship. When he suggested they order in Chinese food, she agreed. Over fried rice, egg rolls and chicken and broccoli, she shared stories of her work on the paper.
Nicco’s interest had her opening up in unfamiliar but not unpleasant ways. He laughed at her description of an irate mother who had called the paper when her son’s name wasn’t mentioned in a story covering a local science fair. With a start, she realized she was flirting with Nicco.
Her heart did a funny little flip-flop at the warmth in his gaze as it rested on her. It felt good, this tingly sense of awareness, even the jitter of nerves she experienced whenever she was with him. More, it felt right. He felt right.
“Sometimes I miss my parents so much that it’s a physical ache. They wanted so much for me.” The wistfulness in her voice, along with her unintentional change of subject, sent a spasm of pain through her. She’d been talking about her work. Why had she brought up her parents?
The answer came swiftly. Because she knew they would have liked Nicco.
Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry. Sometimes my emotions get the better of me.”
“It’s okay,” he said and reached across the table for her hand. “You loved them. That love hasn’t died.”
“Thank you for saying that. Not everyone understands.”
She thought of what she’d just shared. Talking about the loss of her parents didn’t come easily. How could it? She’d bared her heart to Nicco, exposing the struggles of her soul to accept the unacceptable when her parents had been taken from her so cruelly, and letting him in on her fears. Giving voice to them had been incredibly difficult.
Not even with Olivia had she ever been so open and certainly not with Bradley, who she instinctively knew would have mocked her feelings. Nicco confused her. That was the trouble with opening herself up emotionally: she no longer had control over her feelings. Control was vital.
Despite her tenuous hold on her emotions, she risked sharing one of the most important tenets of her life. “I think trusting that God loves us is incredibly simple and incredibly hard at the same time. When we were children, most of us were taught that He loves us because he’s our Father, but when we grow up and look at all the evil and pain in the world, we start to wonder. We live in a fallen world where people betray those they claim to love, where lies and deceit are so common that we start to ignore them.”
“How do you reconcile the two?” Nicco sounded like he really wanted to know.
“I remember that God is there for me whenever I need Him. I have only to turn to Him. That’s why He’s given us the most precious gift of all—prayer.”
“You make it sound pretty convincing.”
“It’s what’s kept me going the last year.” She weighed the wisdom of continuing. They were treading into the quicksand of her past, and at the same time sharing her most intimate feelings for the Lord. The combination made her vulnerable. And though she was all too aware of her fragility in this area, she was reluctant to allow others to witness it.
So why was she considering going there with Nicco? He wasn’t a believer, and they had little in common, except for a need to find the truth. Was that enough? She didn’t know.
“There is no other relationship as perfect as that we can have with God because He is perfect. If the relationship’s not perfect, we know where the fault lies.” Her voice turned husky as love for the Lord welled up inside of her. She couldn’t talk about Him without her feelings spilling over.
Tears stung her eyes. She reached up to wipe them away when Nicco caught her hand. “Don’t. Don’t be ashamed of your tears.”
“I’m not ashamed of the tears, but...”
“But what?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m weak.”
“You? Weak? You’re the strongest woman I know, outside of my mother.”
She was unbearably touched, knowing how he felt about his mother.
It was time to lighten things up. “I never thought to be having dinner with an Army Ranger. The guys at the paper are going to want details.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“That Nicco Santonni is a real-life hero.” To her dismay, that didn’t elicit the smile she’d expected. Instead, shadows filled his eyes. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”
“It’s okay. But I’m no hero, Scout. Don’t make me out to be one.” The order only made her more curious than ever about him.
She put a stop to that train of thought before it could go anywhere. Bradley had stripped away her ability to trust. He’d left her without so much as a goodbye, just when she had needed him most.
It hurt too much to love someone and to lose them. Just as she’d lost her parents.
“I never expected to meet someone like you,” she said, then flushed when she realized she’d spoken her thoughts aloud.
“You mean a man who knocks you to the ground and then falls on top of you.”
“A man who saved my life.”
“It’s a life worth saving.”
In going after a story, she was tough, fearless, but flirting left her feeling like a sailor who’d wandered into unchartered waters. She wasn’t any good at it. Her last experience with flirting had been with her fiancé, and she’d failed miserably at being coquettish.
Relationships were foreign territory.
Since her parents’ deaths and her fiancé’s desertion, she’d guarded her independence. Her friendship with Olivia was the exception to keeping to herself. She was a loner and liked it that way. She wasn’t exactly lonely, but sometimes she craved the company of a man who understood her. She looked sideways at Nicco, and a bunch of messy emotions flittered just below the surface.
Nicco Santonni was nudging her self-imposed independence aside, forcing her to lean on him in ways that were not only unfamiliar but downright uncomfortable. She wanted to tell him to back off, to leave her to aloneness, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. At the same time, she wanted to see where this was heading.
Everything she’d protected so fiercely in the last year was in jeopardy. Losing her parents and then her fiancé had sent her into a spiral. It was only after acknowledging that she’d never loved Bradley and was better off without him, that she admitted what she’d known from the start. He had been something to cling to.
As though Nicco knew where her thoughts had landed, he said, “Tell me about the no-good fiancé.”
The description had her smiling, despite that painful time in her life. “When my parents were killed, I took a bullet to the shoulder and spent some time in the hospital. Bradley and I were casual acquaintances through work. He was a TV journalist. When I got out of the hospital, he looked me up. I was flattered. He was a well-known anchor, and I had just published my first story for the city beat.”
“What was his angle?”
Her smile broadened. “You have him pegged. He wanted an exclusive about my parents’ murders. Of course I didn’t know that. Not at first. He was always making plans, talking about going to New York and getting an anchor seat with one of the networks. All he needed, he said, was the right story, and wouldn’t it be great if he could tell my story on the news.
“I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. When he asked me to marry him, I was convinced it was love. In fairness, it wasn’t all his fault. I was looking for something, someone to take the place of what I’d lost.” She grimaced. “He told my story on the news, made me sound like some pathetic victim. It received attention from the networks in New York, just as he’d intended.”
“He used you.”
“Yeah. Looking back, I can see that. But I had stars in my eyes and couldn’t see beyond their sparkle. When he left for New York without me, I knew I’d been conned.”
“Good riddance.”
&
nbsp; “He had the nerve to text me—text, mind you, not call—and ask for his ring back.”
“What’d you do?”
“I sold it and gave the money to a no-kill animal shelter. Bradley hated animals. I sent him the receipt and told him he could write it off as a tax deduction.”
Nicco laughed long and hard. “Good for you.”
She pushed her plate back. “I’ve been doing all the talking. Tell me about you. What’s important to you? What makes Nicco Santonni who and what he is?” The questions were ones she’d asked people she interviewed, but, with Nicco, they took on new meaning.
* * *
Nicco understood that Scout genuinely wanted to learn more about him. That was only one of the things that he liked about her, her ability to listen. Along with her desire to help others, her generosity of spirit, her unfailing courage.
He understood the significance of what had just happened, not just the revelations themselves but the act of sharing. As though aware that she’d given away parts of herself, she went silent. Her eyes, though, spoke volumes of pain and grief and bewilderment.
For all that she’d endured, she was a remarkably composed woman. There was a quietness to her, a stillness. He appreciated the restful quality she carried with her. There was nothing restful about her articles, he reflected, and a small smile worked its way across his mouth. They were pointed, even fiery, in their indictment of corrupt officials and practices. The woman wrote with a passion that was a match to her spirit.
She believed in justice and truth and all the things that so many thought naive. What’s more, she wasn’t ashamed of those beliefs.
“Are you all right?” He brushed his hand over her arm, and she flinched at the contact.
“Of course.”
Her chin lifted, a signal that pity wouldn’t be welcome. A flash of brightness gleamed in her eyes, tears that, with only a blink, were banished by sheer force of will. As unmoved as she tried to appear, this woman was still scarred by unbearable loss and unspeakable pain.
He wanted to wipe the sadness from her eyes, to lift the burden from those slender shoulders. All he could offer was his own shoulder. With a flash of insight, he realized that they were both carrying a festering grief.
* * *
Scout sat back, prepared to listen. Just when she believed that Nicco was about to share something important, glass shattered and smoke filled the kitchen.
Nicco dove toward Scout, grabbed her hand, and pulled her across the room and out the back door. There, he pushed her to the ground behind some shrubbery. “Stay down.”
She struggled to process what was happening. Someone must have thrown a smoke bomb into her house to get her outside where she would be more vulnerable. The first shot rang out, perilously close to where she crouched.
With the bushes as cover, Nicco returned fire.
A volley of shots pierced the night, the bullets exploding around her. She thought she heard someone shout, but she couldn’t be certain because of the pulse of terror in her ears. The smell of damp earth filled her nostrils. Head down, she wrapped her arms around her knees. Like that would help if a bullet found her.
A sob swelled in her throat. She pushed it back before it erupted, then did the only thing she could. She prayed.
When a few minutes passed with no more gunfire, Nicco crawled out and stood.
Scout remained huddled behind the shrubs. Sirens sounded in the distance.
A hand gripped her shoulder. A scream formed in her throat before she heard Nicco’s voice. “Someone’s called the police. I’m going to contact Detective Wagner. I want him in on this.”
By the time Wagner and several patrol officers arrived, Scout had managed to pull herself together. Sort of.
“We’ll canvass the neighborhood,” Wagner said, “find out if anyone saw anything, but I don’t expect much. When people hear gunfire, they tend to take cover.” Turning his attention to Scout, the detective said, “Someone’s right mad at you.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak and only nodded.
“Tomorrow morning will be soon enough to give your statements at the station.” He included both Scout and Nicco in his glance.
“We’ll be there,” Nicco promised.
“In the meantime, I suggest you stay with a friend or at a motel for the night. The smoke will clear out eventually, but you don’t want to stay here.”
Scout packed a toothbrush, some sweats, and a change of clothes for tomorrow. They all bore the acrid odor of smoke, but no more than what she was already wearing.
“Let’s go,” Nicco urged. “You’re falling-down tired.”
She didn’t argue.
He drove to a motel not far from the freeway. “I’ve stayed here before when I have a witness who has to lie low. It’s not fancy, but it’s clean.”
She was too weary to answer and waited while he registered.
Nicco led the way to their rooms, checked out hers before she entered, then crossed the room to the adjoining door. “I’ll leave the door ajar. Anything spooks you, yell.”
“Th...th...” She couldn’t get the words out.
Nicco drew her to him and held her for a long moment. “It’s all right to be scared.”
She pulled back, swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not scared.” Well, she was. But mostly she was angry. Furious, actually.
“I’m getting tired of being target practice for some lowlife. If whoever’s behind this expects me to run, he’s in for a big disappointment.” Because she was more determined than ever to get at the truth.
ELEVEN
Nicco regarded Scout with a mix of admiration and concern. She didn’t back down—he ought to know—and she’d go after the truth no matter the danger. While he applauded her resolve, he worried that she didn’t seem to understand just how close they’d come to dying tonight.
If the shooter’s bullet had come even a hair closer, Scout would be lying on a slab in the morgue right about now.
Her steadfastness was one of the things he respected about her, but on the battlefield, arrogance could prove fatal.
He’d seen buddies who believed they were invincible mowed down by a spray of bullets that did not discriminate between courage and foolhardiness.
He sat in the room’s one chair and pulled her onto his lap. She was so tiny that it was no hardship to hold her. Beneath the smell of smoke, the scent of some flowery shampoo drifted from her hair.
“It’s all right. We’ll get through this.” He tightened his arms around her. “You need some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “Not after this.” She drew back a few inches so that her face was tilted to his. “Before...everything...you were going to tell me something.”
Nicco didn’t spend a lot of time in the past. Remembering took him down a rabbit hole that had no escape, but maybe sharing those memories with Scout would help both of them.
“An order came down to pick up a reporter at the local command post. I fought against it, saying it jeopardized the operation, but nobody paid any attention.
“Turns out the reporter was okay. Smart and savvy and pretty, a lot like you.” He thought of Ruth, her intelligence, her integrity. Against his better judgment, he’d been drawn to her, and the attraction was returned. Pretty soon, the two of them were sharing smiles and small jokes. “We started talking about a future.
“And then it happened.”
“What?” So immersed was he in the pain-filled memories, Scout’s voice reached him as though from a great distance.
“Things hadn’t gone the way they were planned...” And when had they ever? “...and the asset was still with us, rather than being exfiltrated. There were rumors that our camp would be raided by an insurgent group wanting to take him out. I knew I had to get Ruth out of there and sent her, along wi
th two of my unit for protection, back to headquarters. We didn’t know until it was too late that the road they’d taken was riddled with IEDs.”
He told the story without any inflection, repeating it by rote. That was the only way he could get through it.
The steady hum of the room’s AC unit provided background noise for the recitation of facts.
“An IED went off, killing Ruth and my men.” Grief had consumed him, scraping at his heart with razor-sharp teeth.
He’d witnessed death before. Few soldiers in a combat zone remained untouched by the useless waste of life that was war. But Ruth’s had reached down deep and squeezed the life from him.
“You loved her, but she’s not gone. Not really. She’s in your thoughts...” Scout gestured to his heart “...and in here.”
“Sometimes I can’t remember things about her. Her voice. Why don’t I have a recording of her voice? I’d give anything to hear it again.”
“You’ll remember when the time is right. When you need to hear it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s the way it is with my parents. Just when I think the memories of my mother’s voice or how my father smelled of peppermint are gone forever, I remember. I tuck it away. Later, I can take it out and hold it to my heart. Then I remember how much they loved each other. How much they loved me. It’s one of the Lord’s tender mercies.” Her voice cracked on the last.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you don’t get it. You weren’t responsible for your parents’ deaths. If not for me, Ruth would still be alive.”
“You can’t believe that.”
“She was in my care.” Bitterness clung to every syllable. “I was responsible for her and for the men assigned to me. Two good men died because of me, because of a decision I made.”
High-Risk Investigation Page 10