by Janet Dailey
“Fine. But why do you need me to spy on them? That’s your job. I’m just the chauffeur.”
Her eyes narrowed. “These kids all have problems, and four of them are boys. It never hurts to have a man along in case things get out of hand—bullying, teasing the animals, sneaking a joint in the restroom, you name it. That’s one reason why I like bringing Dusty on these outings. All it takes is a word from him to keep the kids in line.”
Jake hung back, still reluctant to get involved. “Sorry, I don’t have much experience at babysitting. Besides, I don’t know if an ex-jailbird is the best role model for your kids.”
“Forget that. You’re US Army. Just tug up your sleeve and flash that tattoo. They’ll be shaking in their boots. Come on.” She seized his hand to pull him along with her. The contact tingled against his palm, sending a heat flash up his arm. As if she’d felt it, too, she pulled away. “Please,” she said. “I need your help this afternoon.”
Relenting, he moved with her down the path, matching her long, purposeful strides. She was tall, but Jake towered over her by half a head. Now he looked down at her, his gaze tracing her stubborn profile. “Don’t you ever back off, Kira?” he asked her.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. Don’t you ever stop charging ahead like a one-woman army? Wendy always said you were the most motivated person she knew. But where does it stop?”
The mention of Wendy’s name passed like a brief shadow between them before she spoke. “Everything I’ve done—my degree, my practice—has been due to hard work and discipline. I can’t afford to back off, as you say. I owe myself, and my students, too much for that.”
“Do you?” He studied her upturned face, the fine-drawn features, the thoughtful gray eyes, the ripe, sensual mouth, which seemed to contradict everything else he knew about her. How many times had that mouth been kissed? Jake found himself wondering. Had she ever been in love, or had her all-consuming discipline left no time for such trivial things?
“Do I what?” she asked.
“Do you owe your whole life to your work? What about fun? What about having a family?”
“You’re a fine one to talk.” She looked away, as if wishing she’d bitten back that last remark. “Anyway, I have a family of sorts. I have my grandfather and Paige. . . .” She glanced up at him in sudden alarm. “Oh, but Paige is yours. I mustn’t let myself forget that.”
“I didn’t come to take Paige away from you, Kira. She seems happy where she is. And I’m no fit father for a little girl.”
He sensed her relief. “Dusty told me you met her.”
“She came out to the shed and introduced herself. She was . . . Oh, Lord, she took my breath away.”
“Paige is a joy. I think she got the very best of both you and Wendy.”
“You could say that.” He didn’t want to talk about Wendy, how she’d died or how much he still missed her. Wendy had been his lifeline; and now that she was gone, there was no road back to where they’d been and what they’d had. He was lost, with no hope of ever being found.
Ending the conversation, he opened his copy of the visitor map, which Kira had handed out to each of the students and to him. The twenty-one–acre complex, which integrated cactus gardens, natural desert and animal exhibits, was a maze of trails, paved and unpaved. Their path had taken them past the hummingbird aviary and outdoor pollination garden, a mass of blooming scarlet, pink and gold flowers. So far, they hadn’t seen any of the students.
“Where now?” Jake asked.
Looking past his shoulder, she pointed to the map. “Most kids like to head up here, to Cat Canyon and the desert loop trail. Let’s go that way.”
Jake shook his head, surprised that he was almost enjoying this. “It feels like you’re plotting a spy mission. What do we do when we find them? Hide behind the rocks?”
“If we see them, and they’re okay, we keep our distance. If they see us, we wave and keep walking.” She strode out, Jake keeping pace with her. Other visitors strolled the paths, but on a weekday, with most children in school, the park wasn’t crowded.
A few minutes later, they spotted the three girls, who’d stopped to watch the otters in the stream-life exhibit.
“Well, they look okay,” Jake said.
“Yes. But take a closer look. Heather’s the dominant one. She’s got Lanie in hand, and they’re both ignoring Faith. See how she’s standing apart, not even involved with them and acting like she doesn’t care? That’s an issue right there.”
“I see what you mean.” The tall girl, pretty enough to be a model, was being shunned by the other two. Growing up, Jake had seen girls behave that way. Could be some jealousy involved, but that was Kira’s business, not his.
Kira moved on up the trail, Jake keeping pace with her. He’d grown up in Phoenix, but never spent much time in the higher desert country around Tucson. He’d forgotten how beautiful it could be in the spring, with cactuses and wildflowers bursting into bloom on the hillsides, drawing swarms of birds and nectar-seeking insects.
They’d reached the beginning of the loop trail when Kira’s cell phone rang. Jake couldn’t make out words, but the boyish voice on the other end of the call sounded frantic.
“Slow down, Calvin,” Kira said. “Tell me what happened.” She listened a moment. “We’ll be right there!” she said.
Jake caught her as she raced up the trail. “What is it?”
“It’s Patrick. He went off the trail, climbed up some rocks and took a fall. He’s conscious, but he’s got a bleeding cut on his head and who knows what else. Poor Calvin sounded frantic.”
She surged ahead, with Jake plunging after her. A memory flashed in his head: charging up a hill under AK-47 fire from the Taliban dug in on the ridge; seeing the young corporal on his right go down, seeing his face . . .
Jake wrenched himself free of the memory. This was no time to go off the deep end, when a child was injured and Kira needed his help. Pull yourself together, damn it!
Now, rounding a bend in the trail, they could see the two boys. One was sprawled faceup on the gravel. The other, a small boy with glasses, had stripped off his T-shirt and wadded it against his companion’s head.
“Good work, Calvin.” Kira dropped to her knees beside the injured boy, a skinny redhead. “How are you doing, Patrick?”
His face was pale, his freckles standing out as if they’d been painted on his skin. His eyes gazed up at her. “I’ll be okay,” he said. “Please don’t call my mom and dad.”
“I’ll need to call them,” Kira said. “That’s a rule I have to obey. But if you’d obeyed your rules, this wouldn’t have happened. Why did you go off the trail?”
“There was a lizard on the rocks. I wanted to catch it.”
“Well, there you go. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Now let’s have a look.”
Kneeling next to Calvin, Jake watched Kira ease the wadded, blood-soaked shirt away. The gash at the boy’s hairline, most likely caused by a sharp rock, didn’t look too bad, but it was bleeding like a fountain. Jake knew that scalp wounds, even the nonserious kind, tended to bleed a lot. Once the flow was stanched and the boy was checked out by a doctor, he’d probably be fine. But the blood reminded Jake of the men he’d seen who’d never go home whole, and the innocent women and children who should never have been in the way. So much blood . . .
Remembered horror clenched his gut. He battled the urge to clamber to his feet and get away from here. Kira needed him. He had to get himself under control.
“There’s a first-aid station in the visitor center,” she said. “I don’t think it would be wise for Patrick to walk that far. If you’ll carry him, Jake, I’ll stay next to you and keep the pressure on his wound. There’s an emergency clinic not far from here. Once he’s bandaged and cleaned up, you can drive him to get checked out. I’ll stay and keep an eye on the other students till you’re back.” She gave Calvin a smile. “You come with us, too, Calvin. Once we’ve t
aken care of Patrick, I’ll owe you a new shirt. You can choose any shirt you want from the gift shop.”
Patrick’s arms and legs dangled as Jake carried him the half mile over winding trails to the visitor center—just as he’d carried wounded men and maimed children, bleeding, dying in his arms as bullets and mortars rained around him. This wasn’t the same—a warm, safe spring day and a foolhardy boy who would soon recover. But as he walked the trail, with Kira beside him, he could almost smell the burning fuel and feel the grit of exploding earth blasting his face. Remembered cries and groans echoed in his head, drowning out even the recollected roar of gunfire.
Panic was setting in, squeezing him like a vise. If he could hold on till they got some help and he could put the boy down, maybe he’d be all right. Ahead, he could see the modern lines of the adobe-colored visitor complex. To his mind’s eye, it was like the high double wall of sand-filled HESCO bags that had given the outpost camps a measure of protection. If he could make it to that wall with his precious burden . . .
“My goodness, somebody’s had an accident.” The voice of a park docent broke into his thoughts. “Here, let’s get him where we can have a look.”
Barely holding himself together, Jake lowered the injured boy’s feet to the pavement and allowed Kira and the docent to help him inside the building, with the shirtless Calvin trailing behind.
Jake spotted a restroom sign and headed for it. Inside, the place was empty. For now, at least, he was alone. Apart from the faint trickle of water, the only sound he could hear was his heart pounding against his ribs.
Shaking, he made it into a stall and managed to bolt the door before the dam broke inside him. Choking on sobs, he slammed his fist against the metal wall, again and again, until his bruised knuckles numbed to the pain.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time Patrick was cleaned up, bandaged and ready to be driven to the emergency clinic, Jake had regained his self-control. A cold numbness had set in, a welcome condition in which he could think clearly but felt very little. It was this state of mind that enabled him to work and function in everyday life. It made that life bearable—most of the time.
The directions to the clinic were easy to follow. It was only a few miles from the museum. But Patrick’s constant barrage of questions made the distance seem endless.
“That’s a cool tattoo, Jake. Did you get it in the army?”
“Uh-huh.” Not really in the army, but Jake didn’t care enough to explain that.
“I want to get a tat when I turn eighteen. Did it hurt to get it?”
“Some.”
“Wow! That would be cool, being in the army. What rank were you?”
“Lieutenant. I went through a program called ROTC, where the army trained me in college and then I had to serve.”
“Did you fight?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where? Iraq?”
“Afghanistan.”
“Wow. Did you kill anybody?”
“Uh-huh.” Jake held on to the numbness, willing it to deepen, to freeze him to the core.
“Cool. What did it feel like?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Did you win any medals?”
“Uh-huh.” Jake recalled the day he’d taken the two Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart and the rest, and then tossed them off a bridge into some nameless river.
“Did you—”
“Patrick.”
“Huh?”
“Enough questions. Just be quiet.” Mercifully, by then, they were turning in to the clinic parking lot.
* * *
Kira had used her personal credit card to pay for Calvin’s new shirt—navy blue with a roadrunner emblazoned across the front. She’d given Jake the business credit card, along with the keys to Dusty’s Jeep, when he left to take Patrick to the emergency clinic.
It had occurred to her that if he got it into his head, he could leave the boy at the clinic and take the Jeep and the credit card, hitting the open road. But she’d had little choice except to trust him. Patrick needed to be checked by a doctor, and her other students couldn’t be left here unsupervised. Still, Jake’s appearance had worried her—his expression unreadable behind the dark sunglasses he wore, his knuckles freshly bruised as if he’d been fighting.
By any measure, Jake was a volatile man. But Dusty trusted him, she reminded herself. And her grandfather’s instincts about people were almost as good as his instincts about horses. All the same, she felt a wave of relief when, more than an hour later, the Jeep pulled into the parking lot. Patrick climbed out of the passenger side, wearing a shaky grin and a fresh gauze dressing taped to his head.
Jake got out and came around the vehicle. “Three stitches, but no concussion. The doctor says he’ll be as good as new.”
Walking up to where Kira stood, he handed her the credit card and the receipt. “The doctor also said Patrick should take it easy for the rest of the day. No running around in the hot sun.”
“Fine. Calvin’s in the gift shop, looking at books. I’ll send Patrick in to join him.” She took a moment to inspect Patrick’s new bandage, then directed the boy inside.
Jake gazed out across the parking lot at the color-burnished hills. “Calvin was pretty cool this morning, using his shirt to stop the bleeding while he called you on his phone.”
“He’s a great kid,” Kira said. “It breaks my heart that he was almost cyberbullied to death before he came here.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m sorry,” she said, catching herself. “Please forget what you just heard. It’s unethical for me to share information about my students.”
“Kind of like doctor-patient privilege?”
“Exactly. All I can say is that every one of these kids is hurting. In that way, they’re not so different from you.”
He flinched. “That’s a low blow.”
“Is it? What happened to your hand?”
“That’s none of your damned business.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “I’m not one of your sick, rich teenagers, Kira.”
His words stung. “Are you saying you don’t have a problem?” she demanded.
“All I’m saying is that I don’t need any help from do-gooders like you and your grandfather. And I’ll be damned to hell if I’m going to let you poke and prod me like a bug under a microscope. As soon as I’ve paid Dusty back for bailing me out, I’ll be gone like a shot. You’ll never hear from me again!”
“And what about Paige?”
A groan rumbled in his throat, like the sound of a lion in pain. “What about her?” he asked.
“Does she deserve to grow up without knowing her father—or knowing that he cared enough to be there for her?”
“Does she deserve to know that her father was a burned-out train wreck who won a bunch of medals for blowing up men, women and children—even little girls like her?”
Shocked into silence, Kira stared at him. She was saved from having to respond by the sound of her cell phone.
“That’ll be the girls checking in.” She turned away from him to take the call. “Yes, come on back here,” she said. “If you see Mack and Brandon, tell them to come back, too. It’s time to get some ice cream and head home.”
She made a quick call to Brandon’s cell phone, then turned back to see Jake walking away from her, toward the parking lot. “Where are you going?” she called, half-afraid she’d made him angry enough to drive off and leave them stranded.
He turned and gave her a withering look. “Calm down. I’m going to wait in the vehicle, maybe take a nap if I can manage it. Come on out when you’re ready to go.”
With that, he wheeled and strode away.
* * *
Half an hour later, they were on the road again. They’d left earlier than planned, but the students were all tired. When they got home, there’d be the horses to feed, then dinner, and then her first private interview with Heather, while the others did their schoolwork or watched a video i
n the den. And she’d need to phone Patrick’s parents as well. It would be best to have the boy there when she made the call. That way he could reassure them he was all right and make sure they knew the accident had been his own fault.
Buckled into the passenger seat, Kira glanced at Jake. He’d barely spoken to her since their heated exchange in front of the visitor center. But if he was still upset, he showed no sign of it. He drove calmly and carefully, his hands relaxed on the wheel, and the radio tuned to a mellow country station.
Behind them, the sun was low over the western hills, casting the saguaros into long shadow. By the time they’d passed through Tucson and taken the road into the Santa Catalina foothills, some of the students had fallen asleep.
Kira’s gaze traced the line of Jake’s profile against the fading sky. She’d always told Wendy he was too handsome for his own good. Even after some very rough years, he was still a striking man. Not that she should care. The last person she wanted to be involved with was her cousin’s widower, who’d loved his beautiful wife so blindly that he could never have seen what was coming.
But why was she even thinking along those lines—especially knowing that Jake had every reason to resent her?
Only as they were driving through the side gate to the house and Kira saw the lights of the house—the living room strangely dark—did the premonition strike her that something was wrong. When she saw Consuelo waiting on the porch with Paige, she knew she’d been right. Reaching over the console, she touched Jake’s arm.
“Let me out here,” she said, unclipping her seat belt. “Then park by the cabins. Tell the students to go get ready for dinner.”
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Kira opened the door and sprang to the ground. As Jake pulled away, Consuelo hurried down the porch steps. She clasped Kira’s hands, her face ghostly pale in the porch light.
“It’s your grandfather, querida,” she said. “He had a heart attack this afternoon. They Life-Flighted him to that heart care center on St. Mary’s Road.”