Mirror Me

by Stephanie Tyler

  The sheets were clean but worn, which was good. She could see shadows through them.

  Finally, she went upstairs and settled in on the double mattress shoved in the corner—it was on a box spring, which was directly on the floor. No worrying about anyone hiding under the bed. She climbed under the sheet and put what she needed within reach. Beyond the gun, she had a flashlight and a knife. She also had her Kindle, and the small TV was turned on, volume low, and placed on the dresser across the room.

  She’d set up the cameras the way Hoss had taught her. He’d been so good about helping her learn how to secure her surroundings.

  From her bed, she could peek out two windows. There was a single light on at Mrs. Mueller’s. None at the house next door. She hadn’t seen a car come or go from there all day.

  The hypervigilance she embraced like a religion came with a cost—exhaustion from staying up all night and trying to sleep during the day—but it was one she’d gladly pay.

  In the beginning, there had been prescriptions to make her sleep, to soothe her anxiety. But they’d made it worse. Being in control of her body calmed her more than anything, and vigilance wasn’t so bad. Soldiers, the FBI, police and marshals practiced it.

  But you’re just a civilian.

  No, not just. She’d seen far too much to be considered just anything.

  The creaks started again down the small hallway that connected the two rooms.

  “You don’t scare me,” she called out. “I have plenty of my own ghosts.”

  There was no answer, but the creaking stopped.

  *

  While Kayla sat at the ready, Teige was sitting on his back porch, couched in darkness. Learning to see well in the dark was, to some extent, an acquired skill that demanded equal parts patience and constant training. The only thing throwing it off was the blazing lights from the house next door.

  Willa Mueller left him the message about the nice, young single woman who’d rented it.

  He’d laughed in spite of himself, then called Mac a bastard from beyond the grave.

  He’d been back from some shithole for two days, holed up inside the house during the day. Decompressing used to be mandated for his Delta Force team whenever they’d come home from a mission. The operatives would house together on Post in seclusion, supposedly for the purposes of debriefing. Really it gave the psychologists a chance to assess them, and the docs a chance to make sure everything was medically okay. It gave the men a chance to come back down from the mission before they saw their families—and everything else—that invaded once real life hit.

  Soldiers just back from war were in no way ready for real life, and real life sure as hell wasn’t ready for them.

  Now he had to provide his own form of forced seclusion. Sometimes he stayed at a hotel so he didn’t feel guilty about ducking Willa, although she typically understood soldiers. He was pretty sure she was aware he’d been Delta, but Delta seemed a long time ago. At least until nights like this, with sticky wet air mimicking the jungles, soaking his skin.

  He was shirtless, running sneakers still on, his chest heaving less than it had been ten minutes earlier. Ten miles and it still wasn’t enough. He could’ve kept going, pushing his muscles to the limit. He’d been in the zone and then the images flashed through his mind and he’d stopped dead.

  Hanny was the only one who could handle his moods these days, but he hadn’t picked her up from the dog sitter yet, because that would mean seeing people. Interacting.

  Tomorrow was better.

  He flexed up on his toes to stretch out his calves before diving back into the woods. Ten more miles should do it. Ten more miles would bring the dawn, and maybe even sleep.

  He laughed out loud again, figuring that had to be some kind of record.

  Chapter Four

  Kayla was on the witness stand, boxed in, the microphone in front of her. She stared out into the sea of faces but couldn’t focus on any one of them.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  She raised her right hand. “I do.”

  The gavel came down hard enough to make her jump. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but when she looked out at the courtroom, the only person she saw was herself, staring back at her, telling her, “I’ll always be with you.”

  She woke with a short scream, halting it quickly, hoping no one in the neighborhood heard anything. The air conditioners should’ve blocked the noise, she hoped as she put a hand to her heart. It hammered a tattoo against her chest and her breathing was too fast.

  She’d known, between the drive and the move, that she wouldn’t be able to stay up all night. Normally she would, sleeping during the day instead. Nightmares when it was light out somehow weren’t as bad, but now it was pitch black and she was shaking.

  “Dammit,” she muttered. A creak down the hall answered her. “I’m okay.”

  The roll of thunder rumbled around the house. She did a swift check of the cameras and saw everything was fine inside the house. Outside too. No one was moving around, no cars—just swaying trees and lightning tearing up the sky.

  She pulled on a sweatshirt and went to look out the windows into the backyard.

  The storm was escalating. Taking pictures from inside the house wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying. Going outside on a night like this was crazy, but she’d learned to trust in the unpredictability of a storm. Because during the height of the madness had never required her to practice the ultimate caution. It was the calm days, the ones where it seemed as if nothing bad could possibly happen, that made her nervous, caught her off guard. Made her think that things were fine.

  Storms didn’t hide what they were. They couldn’t pretend they were anything but bent on total and utter destruction, no matter their path. She’d learned to appreciate things like that. The rain was a comfortable blanket of nature’s wrath that could shield her from everyone and everything.

  Storms were safe, and this one raged around her house.

  In response, she threw on a baseball hat and pushed the back door open against the wind to stand on the porch with her camera in hand. She’d switched to digital mostly, like the rest of the world, but she missed the feel of real film and the darkroom, that slow reveal of the pictures in the solution.

  She began capturing the way the lightning ripped the sky open, rain showering right in front of the lens.

  Beautiful. Ferocious. The world through the camera wasn’t removed, but she was protected. She could see everything, but she went largely unnoticed as she lost track of time.

  The sun would never break through the black clouds hovering. She edged the lens down, focused tightly on the line between the treetops and the horizon until something caught her eye. She edged downward, taking scads of pictures as she moved lower, but there was nothing. She zoomed in more tightly and that’s when she spotted him.

  It took everything she had not to put the camera down and walk away. But she comforted herself that the storm hid her as well as he’d been. And he wasn’t even looking in her direction.

  He blended in with the foliage and the storm without even trying. He remained unmoving, part of nature, part of the storm, like he’d been born from it.

  She snapped over and over, needing to capture him, wild, feral, part of nature. And then he moved over to the woodpile in the clearing.

  The soldier. Had to be.

  The lightning tore through the sky, and the soldier chopping the large round logs either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It had to be the latter, she thought as he raised the ax to the sky like he was purposely taunting the electrical currents to come out and play. She snapped several pictures in a long string, the whirr of the camera lost in the sounds of the storm, the lightning mimicking a flash.

  She blinked, and he was gone. She moved the camera away from her face and looked toward the soldier. Had she imagined him?

  No, she thought as she went through his pictures on the c
amera, until a touch on the back of her biceps made her whirl around with a small scream. She nearly dropped the camera but she was aided by a large hand that cradled both wrists—and saved the hardware.

  Him. Rain soaked. Angry.

  He’d noticed her, all right.

  “Why are you taking pictures of me?” he demanded, his voice a harsh growl. Up close, he was big. He wore no shirt, his chest muddied and scratched.

  It took her what seemed like hours to answer, because her throat was dry and her heart thudded loudly in her ears. A tremble went through her, and really the only thing holding her up was sheer will and his hand on her arm. “You were in my shot,” she managed finally.

  “Delete. Them.” His tone was a command.

  “No.” She held tight to the camera. Very nice man, my ass.

  “You can’t take pictures of me like that—not without my express permission and I’m not giving it. So delete them.”

  “I’m not…they’re for me.”

  “And who the hell are you that you need pictures of me?”

  Excellent question. “Who the hell are you?” she shot back and he froze.

  Christ, Teige, hold it together. You’re scaring the shit out of her.

  She was five foot four at most. Baseball cap pulled all the way down, the bill casting a shadow even when she raised her head to see him.

  Blue eyes the color of the warm ocean flashed at him. Bowed mouth. Baggy sweats, bare feet. Young. Innocent, maybe, but her eyes reminded him of the expression his mother used to use—She’s got an old soul.

  He didn’t even want to know her name.

  He didn’t answer her question either, telling her instead, “You can’t take pictures of soldiers like that. It’s a safety measure.” He might not still be a soldier but there was a price on his head in several countries he knew about and probably more he didn’t.

  Finally, she took a breath. “Okay, yes, sure—I get that.” She held the camera’s viewfinder so he could see it. “Do you want any copies before I delete them?”

  He stared at the picture like he was looking at a stranger. “No, just delete them.”

  She did, one by one, showed him that she only had pictures left of the trees and the sky. When she got to the end, she looked up at him.

  He was gone.

  But he wasn’t completely erased from her camera. Nothing was gone permanently in the digital age, not the way he would’ve liked. She went inside, locked the door and went to work retrieving the deletions from her memory card.

  She felt guilty, like she’d violated his privacy in a way—and she hated not respecting that. She deleted all of them except the one that she printed out to keep. She couldn’t bring herself to destroy it. It was so perfect. He looked beautiful. Ethereal. Like he belonged to the earth and the sky, like a God summoning the thunder.

  She put it in the desk drawer and closed it.

  The rain had stopped. The sun began to come through the trees. Another day.

  *

  Teige had been watching her through the trees for ten minutes before she’d slid her lens in his direction and started snapping. She hadn’t seen him immediately, but when she had, he felt it as sharp as a knife.

  Despite the rain and the rumble of thunder, he’d heard her footsteps, the whir of the camera as sharp as helo blades.

  And you’re back in the jungle again.

  For a brief second, he’d flashed back to that day, that specific damned mission that ruined him worse than any of the others, even the ones he’d taken heavy losses on. He didn’t know how he pulled himself back, since the greenery in the backyard looked as thick and heavy as any jungle in any godforsaken part of the world.

  But it wasn’t. Not the place where Mac got his head blown off. It was his backyard, and his stress level was through the roof.

  Fuck PTSD. He’d worked through that shit. Been working steadily through it for years. Today would be no different.

  Work would be the thing to heal him. Work and nothing more. He forced himself to forget about the girl and her camera and the fact that she was living next door. Those pictures she took were so painfully personal, even he could see it.

  He looked wild, his teeth bared as if trying to exorcize all the devils from all the jungles he’d waded into. She’d captured the way he felt inside.

  How the hell had she done that?

  There were landmines everywhere. It didn’t matter where in the hell he stepped. Staying away rather than figuring out why would be the challenge.

  You’ll have to apologize.

  He brushed that thought aside in favor of standing outside, letting his body soak up the rain. Some whiskey would help him come down. And then he’d finally be able to goddamned sleep.

  *

  “Daniels, did you get your witness set up?”

  US Marshal Abby Daniels leaned back in her chair to see her direct supervisor, Carl Lissner, coming down the hall toward her. She’d been at her desk for the majority of the evening, going over paperwork on her current cases. Now, her neck was stiff, her right arm was killing her from spending too much time with the mouse, and she desperately needed more coffee. “Yes, alarm system in place. New IDs, bank accounts, the works.”

  Carl stopped in front of her desk, handed her a hot coffee she gratefully accepted. His face had that craggy handsomeness that still had a lot of the female marshals and support staff swooning over him. She knew the attention embarrassed him more than he’d admit.

  He took a sip of his coffee. “It’s been over six months since any sightings.”

  And that means jack shit. “All that means is that the FBI still can’t find Mara. It doesn’t mean Mara can’t find her sister.”

  Finally, he sat down, their gazes level, like he was done treading lightly. “Kayla’s most recent handler was killed.”

  “You told me that last month. What’s your point?” She couldn’t help but sound annoyed. She was one of the younger marshals, yes. Female, yes. Family history that might make this case difficult for her, yes. But this checking up on her shit wasn’t something she’d expected from him.

  His tone gentled when he told her, “You know exactly what my point is.

  “I’m handling the new witness and myself.”

  “Any reason you put her in a house next to your brother?”

  She shrugged and tried to look innocent. “It was empty.”

  “Daniels,” he warned but she simply blinked. He gave her a pained look and she nodded, message received. He got up and walked away.

  She was nearly alone in the large office, save for security staff and the marshal on duty who was no doubt catching some sleep in the small room set aside for that purpose. There were several bunk beds, a shower and laundry facility in case an overnight—or several—were warranted.

  She turned back to her file, played with the frayed envelope paper-clipped to the inside flap. The letter was at least eight months old, addressed to Hoss at his field office in Kansas and placed in Kayla’s file.

  She’d memorized the content already, written in painfully perfect script with a leaking black pen. And she’d never be able to forget it, no matter how hard she tried.

  Daddy always used to say practice makes perfect.

  The first one was practice and it felt perfect. I picked someone who deserved it. If they didn’t, it wasn’t fair and Daddy always said to play fair.

  I was just doing what Daddy taught me. Claire did too…she’s not innocent, like she claims. My sister’s a murderer too. She just doesn’t want to admit it.

  Chapter Five

  He waited at the entrance of the park where the family picnic was being held. He only went because Roy begged him to, so he wouldn’t be alone in the sea of families.

  Teige knew that was bullshit. Roy loved the family shit and wanted Teige to find someone to love, same as Mac had wanted for him. If Roy thought a park filled with screaming kids and exhausted-looking parents would push Teige in that direction, the guy was cr
azier than Teige thought.

  “Welcome to paradise,” Roy said, a baby strapped to his chest and a toddler clinging to his hand. His wife, Lia, was behind them with the twin girls and Teige muttered something about birth control. “I hear you and I’m ignoring you.”

  He’d met Roy in the Rangers. They’d gone through Delta training together, but Roy had gotten out quickly once his wife got sick with breast cancer. She was recovering now, but Roy spent a lot of time with her and the kids. He had family money that allowed it, although he never acted like he was a rich kid.

  They’d stayed close, Roy always being his main contact when Teige went on jobs. Roy was probably the only person on the planet who actually knew where Teige was at all times, a responsibility he handled well.

  “Dude, seriously, glad you could make it,” Roy told him.

  “Thanks for the invite,” he muttered, opening the gate for his friend. Hanny ran through first, and she didn’t stop running. “Shit.”

  “She never does that,” Roy said.

  Teige whistled but was completely ignored by the German shepherd he’d inherited as a pup two years earlier. From Roy. The man would never admit he’d brought the dog home on purpose because he’d known Lia wouldn’t let him keep it. That same night, he’d looked as forlorn as Hanny when he’d knocked on Teige’s door. Teige had trained her, grown to love the big beast more than he’d admit.

  There was, of course, some screaming as the giant dog—which looked more like a wolf—ran through the crowded park, but most recognized her. He hightailed it through the clusters of people and caught up to Hanny as she was running toward a woman. Her hair was long and dark, pulled back in a loose ponytail, and she turned because people were pointing at the monster bearing down on her.

  She stared for a split second, then smiled, like Hanny was the best thing she’d ever seen. She bent down and clapped her hands but she hadn’t needed to. Hanny was on her like a heat-seeking missile.

  The woman wore a vintage AC/DC T-shirt and jeans.