Harper kept the rifle up, finger on the trigger, tensely watching the bear. There were several jerking movements, but he didn’t get up again. His gaze snapped to the bear’s flanks, watching for his breathing. Because if he was still breathing, that meant the bear could rise and come at them again. He kept a bead on the head of the bruin, where he’d buried the first bullet.
Tara gulped. “Is he dead?” She anxiously watched the bear.
“Give it another half minute,” Harper replied in a rough voice, his rifle sighted.
“I wish he hadn’t charged,” Tara whispered, tears burning her eyes. “I hate killing anything.”
“So do I, Tara. This couldn’t be helped. I’m sorry …”
She reached out, barely touching his shoulder, not wanting to destroy his line of sight on the bear. “I know how much you love wildlife. You’re not a hunter. You’re a fisherman.”
“Yeah,” he said, slowly lowering the rifle, still watching the unmoving bear. “I don’t like killing anything …”
He was a medic. Harper saved lives, he didn’t take them. Although she knew combat medics did carry weapons and would kill if attacked or their team was under fire. It was in his DNA to save lives, though, and as she slowly walked around his left side, she saw the suffering in his eyes. He’d hated killing the grizzly, too.
“We need to call the Forest Service up in Jackson Hole,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “This has to be reported.”
Nodding, Harper said, “Just wait a moment. I need to go check to make sure he’s dead. He wasn’t wearing a tracking collar either.”
Most of the grizzlies in the Teton National Park and at Yellowstone had been tranquilized and had a radio collar fitted around their necks so the rangers could keep tabs on their whereabouts. “No, this bear isn’t wearing one.” She reached out, gripping his upper left arm. “Be careful, Harper. Grizzlies have been known, even after being shot, to bite or take a swipe at hunters.”
“Shay warned me about that first thing when I came to the Bar C a year ago,” he said. “I’ll be careful. You stay where you’re at.”
“I won’t move. I promise.” Some of the adrenaline was leaving her and she was beginning to feel the crash that always came afterward. “I’ll wait to call the rangers.”
“Yes, let me check the bear out …”
“Be careful, Harper … please?”
“Promise …”
Approaching such a huge animal, knowing how dangerous it was, Tara didn’t want Harper to go near the bear. She knew he had to. The whole day they’d planned had gone south. They would have to report this to the Forest Service and then wait here until a ranger came to take their statement, take photos and then get the grizzly removed. Harper wouldn’t be charged with killing a bear. This had been about protecting their lives and the rangers would understand that.
Harper approached from the rear of the bear, watching carefully for any sign of breathing. Tara understood his being cautious in approaching the bruin. She could see blood leaking out of a hole in the animal’s head, still feeling badly that they’d had to take its life. But if they hadn’t, one or both of them would have been mauled, bitten or possibly killed. Grizzlies were well known to go after hikers if they ran.
Leaning down, Harper remained at one end of the bear. He slung the rifle across his shoulder, placing his large hand on the bear’s foot, pulling at it a little to see if it moved. It didn’t. Moving to the center of the bear, he placed his hand on its thick fur, feeling for breathing.
Tara watched the hardness in Harper’s face. Was this what he looked like in combat? There was no sign of weakness in his expression, his gray eyes so pale they reminded her of an eagle tracking its quarry. There was tension in him, but he moved soundlessly, working his way forward toward the bear’s massive hump and shoulders. He’d stop, place his hand on top of the fur, press down, still trying to feel for any breath sounds. There was such a thing as a limbic action of the bear’s brain that could still react, even if it was dead, for minutes afterward. Tara knew Harper was very aware of that possibility, which was why he’d started at the rear of the bruin and was quietly and slowly working his way forward toward the head.
By the time he leaned forward from the bear’s neck, placing his hand on his head, the animal’s eyes were glazed and unblinking, Tara knew the grizzly was dead. Harper made a point of not getting within range of the bear’s massive front paws and those five-inch curved claws it had. He straightened and moved back a good six feet from the bear before looking over at her.
“Go ahead and call the Forest Service.”
She nodded and made the call. Harper came around the bear and talked with the supervisor from the Teton National Park, telling him what had just transpired. Then the bear would be taken away, checked by the Forest Service and a thorough forensics study performed on it.
Clicking off the phone, she said, “How are you doing?” His eyes were still nearly clear and Tara realized that when he felt in danger, the color changed. She knew that when he looked at her, desiring her, his eyes became a darker, smoky gray color.
“Feeling bad I had to kill the bear,” he muttered, giving the animal a look of regret. “I was hoping he wouldn’t get riled up over our scent, but he did.”
“I thought for sure he’d follow the elk and try to kill one of the babies.”
He slid his left arm around her waist, easing her around and away from the bear. “I had a bad feeling about it.”
“That gut intuition?” she asked, leaning into him, wrapping her arm around his waist, wanting his closeness, his protectiveness.
“Yes. Having PTSD comes in handy sometimes, doesn’t it?” he joked, cocking his head in her direction, holding her gaze.
“Yes, but most people aren’t going to run into a hungry grizzly,” she murmured. Squeezing him, she said, “I’m feeling so sad for the bear. I know you had to take him out, but I wish he’d made a different choice.”
Shaking his head, Harper led her to the other side of the canyon. “We all make choices all the time, Tara. The bear was no different. It just wasn’t the right one for him today.”
Hearing the heaviness, the thick emotions barely concealed in his tone, Tara pressed her brow against his shoulder, wanting to comfort him. “You’re a good shot.”
“I’d better be. We had one bullet standing between him and us.”
The derision in his tone was partly black humor, and Tara realized it was his way of starting to let down from the incident. She slowed as he eased the strap of the rifle off his shoulder and placed it against a nearby pine tree. Shrugging out of her pack, she leaned it against the trunk. Harper did the same. He lifted his cap, rubbed his hair and then grimaced, looking back at the bear.
“Hey,” Tara called softly, coming around, facing him, sliding her arms around his shoulders, “come here.” She hugged him, burying her face in the column of his neck, tightening her arms around him. The tension in Harper was palpable as she aligned herself against him. For a split second, he froze. And then she heard him groan her name, sweeping his arms around her so tightly the air whooshed out of her lungs. He pressed his face into her hair, clinging to her.
Sensitized to him, Tara felt a deep quiver within him, felt as if he wanted to cry, scream or shout out his regret over having to take the life of such a beautiful wild animal. Harper wasn’t a killer and never had been. Her closed eyes filled with tears as he kissed her hair, holding her so tightly, as if to breathe her into himself, to hold her forever.
Her heart opened wide and she relaxed, allowing herself to melt into him, to let him hold her as tightly as he needed. For an instant, Tara almost felt as if she were like a life preserver to him and if he released her, he would be lost forever. It was such a deep, eviscerating realization that it shocked her. Harper had never been needy. Even now, she wouldn’t say that he was. But emotionally? Yes, he needed her, needed some comfort, needed that moment where life was stronger than death. Tara understood that more than most
because she’d been in combat. She’d seen people killed and injured. She understood that perhaps Harper was in the middle of a flashback to a time when such a thing had happened to his team. Never had a man held her as tightly as he did right now.
Even through her sadness, she thought she understood what was going on within him, and joy rose in her heart, warmth spreading through her chest. She tightened her arms around him, silently letting him know she was there for him. That he could lean on her when he needed to. And that was the exact sense Tara was feeling from Harper. She wished they were alone. She would kiss him, hold him, make him feel better, not worse. New tendrils slowly opened within her heart. She recognized those fragile new feelings. She was falling in love with Harper.
Chapter Ten
Harper tried to hold on to his explosive flashback as he stood in Tara’s arms in that canyon. He’d broken out in a sweat, his heart thundering in his chest, feeling quivery inside, fear eating him up as he struggled to control it. He had no idea how she knew he needed her to throw her arms around his shoulders and pull him against her, but it saved him in ways he could never give words to. Just being able to bury his face in her loose blond hair captured by the knit cap she wore, steadied him. The spiral into that horrifying flashback made him grip her so hard he heard the air rush out from between her lips.
Eyes tightly shut, he clung to her, trying to wrest himself from the roar of gunfire, the screams, the blood and carnage around him on that cold Afghan dawn when they were attacked by the Taliban just outside a village. It was barely light when the attack occurred. Even now, as he sucked in a huge draught of air, he needed to smell something of life, that special honeysuckle shampoo Tara used on her hair and not the stench of metallic blood filling his nostrils instead.
As the grizzly charged them unexpectedly, the flashback simultaneously slammed into Harper. He didn’t know how he’d been able to shoot the charging bear in the head, stopping him. Even with his eyes open, he saw the flashback instead of the bear. It was a miracle he’d hit the animal at all.
With his eyes shut, his five senses ballooned, overwhelming him. He tried to stop all the sensations, to avoid the blips, like grainy, visceral photographs, but a flashback always captured him and he would relieve everything. Every last damned thing. Every death. Every scream. Every smell cloying into his nostrils, making him gag. He felt so damned helpless that cold March morning. Lives were lost. He couldn’t save everyone and guilt tore through him.
Only Tara’s warm, supple body pinned against him, his arms tight bands around her as he held her, kept his sanity, kept him stable. He needed to smell life, not death. He needed her warmth and softness, not the hard, brutal reality he saw playing out against his tightly shut eyes and across his brow like a horror movie. His mind tumbled, his emotions raw, eviscerating and in control of him. All he could do was hold her even tighter.
The blood on the bear’s head had thrown him into a deeper spiral as he’d opened his eyes, walked toward it to make sure it was really dead. He was torn between the past and the present, on a sanity-insanity tightrope.
After making sure the bear was dead, he wanted to protect Tara. He grabbed her by the waist, hauling her away from the carcass, wanting to place distance between them. Harper kept seeing the past overlaying the present. He had to get Tara across the floor of the canyon. He wanted that distance between them and that bear. He knew it was dead, but his other emotions, other needs to protect those in his team, made him more frantic inwardly, and it all focused on taking care of Tara.
His mind was like a bowling ball in a marble room where it rolled around, making him feel as if his control were going to slip away from his grasp. The past overlaid the present. Sometimes he’d see the green grass they walked through toward the pine tree grove on the other side of the canyon and then a splice of the firefight would slam in front of his eyes instead. He felt like he was living in two different realities at once, struggling to stay in the one with Tara. Just having his arm around her waist gave him purchase, gave him the driving need to stay in the present. Now. Not the bloody past.
By the time he’d leaned his rifle against the pine tree trunk, the flashback was beginning to overwhelm him. And to his surprise, Tara came to him, as if sensing his need for her. Amazed by her incredible intuition, Harper had never been more grateful than right at that moment, with her. He shook in her arms and he felt less of a man, worried that she wouldn’t understand what was really controlling him. When her gloved hand moved soothingly across his hunched, tense shoulders, something old and hard broke within him. Somewhere deep within him, untouched by the flashback, Harper knew Tara understood exactly what he was in the throes of, and she pressed herself even more surely against him, to steady him, nurture him, in her own special way.
And then he felt her lips brush his temple, her words low and broken.
“It’s all right, Harper, it’s all right. You’re here with me, not back there…. Just hold on to me; it will pass … hold on to me … I won’t let you go… .”
The words rushed through him, filling his heart, sending a calming sensation over the raging waters of his whipsawing emotions. He held her, fought to focus on her small, healing kisses along his temple, his hair and neck. God, he needed this! He needed her! Hot tears burned behind his lids. They leaked out of his eyes even though he wanted to stop them, worried that Tara would see him as weak if she knew he was crying. Olivia had accused him of being less than a man because he’d shake, cry and wouldn’t be able to control his emotions when flashbacks struck him. He’d be on the floor, in a corner, trying to hide; they were that overwhelming and powerful. She had been disgusted by his behavior, saying a man never cried.
Tara’s low voice continued to overlay his flashback. Words he couldn’t make out, but he could hear the tone of care and comfort in her voice. He was too torn apart to think coherently. Only the strength of her arms surrounding him, cradling his body against hers, small kisses meant to heal, her hand moving slowly up and down his back, was what he concentrated on. Little by little, the flashback began to lose its grip on him. It was because of Tara, who was strong when he was presently weak, that had helped chase it back into that demon hole where it burned angrily in his soul.
Harper had no idea how much time had passed. The quivering in his stomach, the gripping tightness around it, began to ebb away beneath Tara’s guiding him through the process. As his mind canted more and more to the present, leaving that horrific flashback to sink to the bottom of his psyche once more, Harper knew she realized what had just happened. Her touches were meant to calm and heal. Her kisses were soft and soothing. This wasn’t about sex. It was about one human being caring for another when they were hurting so deeply. The doors to his heart flung wipe open and he’d never felt the depth of feelings he now felt for Tara. She was unselfish, giving back to him, doing her best to help him get through it.
Lifting his hand, he released her, and she stepped away from him. He self-consciously wiped his eyes, avoiding her gaze, too raw to deal with her reaction to his tears. He wouldn’t apologize for them because he’d cried in the medevac as two of his teammates died en route to Bagram. He couldn’t stop crying at that time either.
“It’s all right,” Tara said quietly, lifting her hand, settling it on his shoulder. “Flashback? Killing the bear brought it on?”
His voice was rough. “Yeah …”
“It always helped if I did some slow, deep breaths when I was coming out of one.”
Barely glancing at her, he saw her expression was one of understanding, not condemnation or judgment, as Olivia’s had been. He made one more swipe at his cheeks, drying them. “I’ll be okay.” He saw her lips twitch, her blue eyes shadowed with knowing. “Maybe in a little while,” he added thickly. Her hand moved slowly up and down his shoulder, still soothing him. It actually helped him orient back to right now. The past was fading quickly, far more so than before, and he realized it was Tara and her unflappable, calm way. “How
did you know?”
“I saw it in your eyes when you looked up at me when you were checking to see if the bear was dead or alive.”
“My eyes?” He wiped his hands down the sides of his jeans, straightening, lifting his chin, holding her upturned gaze. There was such tenderness in her gaze that it made a lot of his self-consciousness dissolve. There was no censure in Tara’s expression … just sympathy and understanding.
“I once looked in a mirror when I was starting into a flashback,” she told him with a slight shrug, her hand slipping from his shoulder. “I hated what I saw. I looked like a crazed, insane animal. It scared me so much.”
“So you knew.”
Nodding, she said, “I could feel you starting to fly apart, Harper. I could feel you struggling to contain that monster. All I could think to do, all that I’d always wanted when a flashback hit me, was to be held tightly. Held and protected.” She managed a sad quirk of one corner of her mouth as she studied him. “That’s when I came to you once you put that rifle down against the tree trunk. I wasn’t sure what you would do. I know some guys strike out, fight back. I wasn’t sure …”
He stared at her intently, watching the breeze lift a blond curl against her pale cheek. She was rattled. It had been hard on Tara, too, Harper was sure. “I wouldn’t ever hit you.”
“In my heart of hearts? I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, Harper. It’s not in your DNA to strike out at others. You’re a combat corpsman. You’re there to calm and care for the injured, not lash out at them.”
“Logic is faultless,” he murmured, giving her a small smile of thanks. He felt more stable emotionally now and added, “It hit me out of nowhere. When the grizzly charged us, it triggered it.” He saw Tara’s expression sag in shock. “Yeah,” he grumbled, “that veil of the flashback dropped over my eyes. I couldn’t even see the bear anymore, Tara. I shot anyway. I was trying to push the flashback away, but it was too strong. It overpowered my sight.”
Lone Rider Page 13