Читать книгу Lone Star Survivor - Colleen Thompson - Страница 12

Chapter 3

The pinto was pretty enough to lead a parade, with bold black patches over brilliant white and a full and flowing mane and tail. But she seemed to have a mind of her own, a quality she demonstrated when Andrea tried to hold her back after she had mounted.

“You don’t need to haul on the reins like that,” Ian told Andrea, amusement written on his face. His own mount’s golden hide gleamed in the early-morning sunlight, the well-muscled animal as handsome as his rider. “Her mouth is sensitive.”

“Oh, am I hurting her? Should I— What do I do to keep her from running off with me?”

“Loosen your fingers, for starters, and grip her body with your knees, not your hands.”

Embarrassed to be caught holding on to the saddle horn, she gave the reins a few inches of slack. But inside, her muscles quivered, ready to bail if Princess took a notion to gallop away.

Instead, the pinto exhaled, sounding more relieved than about to race away, and Andrea found the courage to tuck an irksome stray lock back up beneath the riding helmet and out of her eyes.

“That’s a little better,” said Ian. “Now breathe deeply, from way down in the bottom of your belly. And ease up on the reins a little more. Like that, yes. Now move them both to one hand. All you’ll need to do is lay the reins on her neck, to the right to turn right, to the left for left, just like I’m doing here. See?”

She was grateful when he demonstrated, his amusement giving way to patience as he took her through the nudges, clicks and reining that he claimed would be enough to get her started.

As he expertly guided his mount and closed the paddock gate behind them, he eyed her critically. “We’ll still have to work on your seat.”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” Her breath caught as she reminded herself that the light teasing, the innuendo, was no longer appropriate between them.

When he laughed, though, she decided it was worth it. Worth easing her professional demeanor to help him relax around her.

“Hardly,” he answered as they headed for the range, riding side by side, “but mostly because the only girls I see around here are married, five years old or my mother.”

“What about Miss Althea? And there must be maids, I’m guessing?” Judging from the size of the house, it would take a team to clean it.

“Miss Althea’d crack me upside the head with a wooden spoon if she ever caught wind I was thinking about her or the maids’ seats. And you’re the first visitor we’ve had staying here since...” The spark in his blue eyes dimmed. “Since I...”

“Since you’ve been back?” she prompted.

She saw his throat work as he swallowed, caught his haunted look as he nodded in answer.

They rode in silence for a while, the creaking of the saddles and the clopping of the horses’ hooves the only conversation. She fought back her impatience to get started with her counseling, to finish this job and head back to Warriors-4-Life, where the lines between the past and present didn’t blur like hoofprints in the wind. But she reminded herself that Ian’s healing was what mattered and that pushing him too quickly would only shut him down again. So instead, she took a deep breath, forcing herself to enjoy the mildness of the morning sunshine and reminding herself that the ability to wait and to listen was worth twice as much as anything a mental health professional could ever say.

She was lost in thought when Ian told her, “We’ll pick up and catch the fence line I’ve been checking about a half mile up ahead.”

“How can you know where anything is? It’s like the surface of an ocean. I don’t see anything but grass.”

“That’s because you haven’t learned to really look yet, to see it like the horses or the deer or the coyotes. A lot of what’s out here lies beneath the surface. There are gullies and old streambeds, hidden groves of trees and cow paths.”

She looked around, still seeing nothing, then turned in the saddle and realized with a start that she’d lost track of the mansion and the ranch outbuildings, too. How was that even possible, if the land was as flat and featureless as her senses tried to tell her? “Guess you have to be born to this land. I’m so turned around, I have no idea of the way back.”

“I can teach you,” he assured her. “Show you, so you can always find your way back home again.”

“Like you did...” she said quietly, so quietly that she wasn’t certain he had heard her until she marked the way his shoulders stiffened.

“There,” he said, pointing to two tufts that were a brighter green than the mostly golden grasses. “Those are the upper limbs of cottonwoods we’re heading toward. They’re actually good-size trees—and you see the notch between them where the creek’s eroded a ravine?”

“So you go by the color of the treetops?”

He nodded. “And the time of year. Whenever you see that shade this late in the season, you know you’re close to flowing water—cottonwoods usually crowd the creek beds, and the cattle like to lie in the shade beneath them.”

“Sounds like an oasis.”

“Oasis...” he echoed, frowning over the word as if it had stirred some dark association. Before she could decide whether to follow up with a question, he added, “It can be until a storm rips through and sends a flash flood roaring though that ravine. Then it’s a damned death trap, those high walls hemming you in, heaven only knows who looking down on your location.”

Andrea’s stomach tensed as instinct warned her he was referring to a harsher territory. Did he himself even know what he was doing, or was she hearing from that part of him still wandering through foreign lands among those who meant to kill him, a part of him still desperate to get home?

“Thank goodness it doesn’t look like rain, then.” She gestured toward the thin silvery wisps painted over the blue sky, her need to reassure him stronger than her desire to draw him out. “And no one for miles around.”

“No one,” he repeated, his blue eyes unfocused until he shook off whatever reverie had gripped him. “Right. Of course, you’re right. Our nearest neighbor’s a half-day’s ride, and I always check the forecast. Every single day before I ride out.”

“You used to like surprises,” she said, remembering how she’d always been the one who’d wanted things locked down and certain. Remembering how she hadn’t been able to deal with it when he couldn’t give the security she craved.

“Not anymore, I don’t.”

Something in his tone had her feeling a little skittish as they rode single file down into the ravine. The narrow, crumbling walls seemed to close in on her, even after Ian stopped and pointed out a low rock outcrop behind them that marked the way back to the mansion.

Soon, however, Ian eased her worry, straightening in his saddle and leading the way with the natural air of confidence she had been drawn to from the first time she’d met him. Her faith in his leadership was soon rewarded when the ravine opened to a green and grassy hollow bisected by a swift but shallow creek splashing over rocks. The air cooled as they continued downhill, riding beneath the spreading arms of the cottonwoods and provoking a symphony of morning birdsong.

Mooing to protest the invasion, cattle rose from the hollow they’d claimed as a resting place and trotted along the barbed-wire fence line on the other side of the creek.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, marveling at the hidden world he’d shown her.

“Beautiful and a pain, too, sometimes. Cows are always using those fence posts to scratch whatever itches—if they’re not pushing ’em over, it’s some thunderstorm that’s washed them out. Look, there’s one now that needs attention.” Dismounting in one smooth motion, he used rock from the creek bottom to brace a tilted post.

“Want some help there?” she asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure she could get back on her horse without a mounting block.

“I’ve got it covered. Just relax and enjoy the view.”

She didn’t have to be told twice, her gaze seeking out one singer and then following the progress of a pair of bright red wings flitting among branches. She tracked the movement until she was distracted by what looked like the metallic glint of something moving above them on the hillside. Something that didn’t belong.

She stood in the stirrups and leaned to the right, trying to see it through the branches. “What’s that? I saw something move. There.” Though she’d lost sight of the movement, she pointed in the direction she’d last seen it.

He looked up from the strand of barbed wire he’d been tightening, a pair of pliers in hand. “What? You mean a bird?” he asked. “Or maybe a—”

She shook her head. “Something man-made, I think. A windshield, maybe, or something metal. Could someone be—”

He swore and rushed at her, his movement so abrupt the pinto shied away from his reach.

“Get down!” He closed in, grabbing at her leg. “Off the horse now. Gun!”

“No, Ian,” she said, recognizing the panic ripping through his voice, the glazed eyes seeing a time and place she knew was as real to him as this one. Clearly, he had tipped into a flashback, something she had witnessed so many times in clients. “It was only a reflection, I’ll bet, maybe some piece of trash blowing in the—”

“Gun, damn it!” This time when he lunged, he caught her belt from behind, and she screamed as he pulled her down. Her terror echoed with the horses’ whinnies as they bolted for the ravine’s entrance, the clatter of their hoofbeats followed by a shattering boom.

Lightning strike, she thought as Ian caught her in his strong arms and started dragging her toward the shaded hollow where the cattle had lain. She’d heard of bolts from the blue, even on the clearest days.

The second blast convinced her she was wrong, the loud plunk as the post Ian had been working on exploded. Someone was really shooting, firing on them here and now and not in Ian’s imagination. Had some out-of-season hunter mistaken them for game?

“No!” she shouted. “Don’t shoot at us! We’re down here!”

Ian clapped a hand over her mouth and ordered, “Quiet. Now,” through clenched teeth. One arm around her waist, he hauled her forward. Already knocked askew, her riding helmet fell as another shot echoed through the creek bottom. Grit spattered the back of her leg from where another bullet drilled the ground behind them, right where she’d been standing a half second earlier.

As her survival instincts kicked in, Andrea quit fighting Ian. Because whether or not this nightmare was rooted in his missing year inside the war zone, there was no denying it could kill them in the here and now.

* * *

His heart thundered in his chest, but Ian’s mind dropped into mission mode as he guided the civilian with him under branches and around rocks. Because the civilian was the mission, her safety paramount in his mind, no matter how confused he was to have Andrea here with him.

Hadn’t he left her behind in the peace and safety of Southern California? And hadn’t she left him, too, a memory slicing through the darkness like a shard of broken glass, saying that she wanted another kind of life, a life without his secrets? So it made no sense that he was half leading and half dragging her here across this shallow creek, in a place where he used to hide out when his old man got that dangerous look in his eyes. But with no time to stop and think it through, Ian accepted this bizarre tangle of the half-remembered like another of his convoluted nightmares.

He searched the deepest shadows, focused on finding the one spot where he knew Andrea would be safe. A few steps beyond the water, he pointed out a horizontal shelf of weathered rock that had been undercut by past flooding. Partly filled in by damp pebbles, it would be a tight squeeze on her hands and knees, but if she could wedge herself in that space, she would be well hidden from the person up top with what sounded like a rifle.

“Crawl under there, where he won’t see you.”

“Down there? In that hole, you mean?” Her eyes were huge with disbelief.

He nodded. “Back yourself in, and don’t come out, no matter what you hear or see.”

“What about you? There’s no room for both of—”

“Just do it, Andrea, and I’ll come back for you. I swear to you, I will.”

Their gazes locked, his blue with her hazel. And in that fraction of a second, some understanding passed between them. Face pale with terror, she blew out a shaky breath.

“You’d better,” she whispered, grabbing handfuls of his shirt, “because if you leave me out here all alone, I swear to you, Ian, I will... Hunt. You. Down.”

Dire as their situation was, he grinned at her bravado, then ducked his head to briefly touch his lips to hers.

Shock mingling with confusion on her beautiful face, she took two steps back and then crouched to do as he’d asked, crinkling her nose as she backed into the dank space. “There’d better not be spiders in here, especially those ones with the nasty, hairy legs.”

“You’ll be just fine,” he assured her, not wanting to mention that a scorpion encounter was a lot more likely.

Still able to see her eyes, he dragged a tree branch to disguise the opening and moved off without another word. Stooping to palm some stones, he hurled them farther downstream, setting off a clatter.

The sniper didn’t take the bait, probably wanting to get a visual before wasting another bullet. Or maybe he’d decided to cut his losses and get out, now that he had lost the element of surprise.

Whichever was the case, Ian zigzagged up the steep hillside, his progress as silent as the animals so often drawn here by the water. When he heard the deep thrum of an engine, he picked up his pace, not wanting to miss a glimpse at the SOB who’d tried to shoot them here, on his family’s spread.

Remembering his brother, Ian paused and pulled the phone out of his pocket—the phone that he had, thank God, at last remembered to both charge and bring along. But down in this damned ravine, it was showing zero bars—no service. He tried sending a quick text, but it just sat in the outbox.

Jamming the cell back in his pocket, he continued his climb. With every stop, he fought to hold on to his focus, but his mind kept slipping backward, toward a past that had the blue sky above him and the brush before him fading to the ink-stained silhouettes of buildings along a blackout-dark street, where he craned his neck to see a minaret against a star-strewn sky. The crescent-moon shape at its top marked it as a mosque. He breathed in the dense smells of a city, the cooking smoke tinged with exotic spices, the animal dung mixed with burning sandalwood. A reminder that life mingled with death here, death that waited to jump out of the shadows...

As the thrumming sound receded, he wondered, by returning here to Texas, had he brought death back with him? Were the gunmen who’d abducted him heading to the house to storm its walls?

He staggered to a stop, the realization ripping through him that he hadn’t lost his freedom in a remote desert ambush as he’d been told. Hadn’t been knocked unconscious and captured when an explosive device overturned his Hummer and killed one of his comrades. Hadn’t been in Iraq with his unit...because he hadn’t been a member of an army unit at all.

The knowledge doused him like ice water, the certainty that he’d never been what he’d told his family, friends and Andrea. So what the hell were you, if you weren’t really army? And how’d you get so screwed up you’d swallow your own cover story?

Not only that, but the army itself had backed the whole sham, sending officers to debrief him, military shrinks and doctors to poke around his head. Which had to mean they were operating under someone’s orders. Or more likely, some of them had really been CIA agents, trying to determine what he knew. And whether he was capable of accidentally spilling truths they preferred to remain hidden.

Was it possible they’d sent a team to guarantee his silence? Could one or more gunmen be waiting on the prairie above, knowing he must eventually emerge from cover?

Frozen to the marrow, he was blindsided by more fragments of the past, each more horrifying than the rest. A dark cell so cramped he couldn’t stand up, so rank that he could scarcely breathe. A pang of horror as the door clanked open and two pairs of rough hands dragged him out for yet another beating. A coil of loose chain in the filthy straw, dripping with his blood and buzzing with flies.

As he crouched among the bushes growing along the side of the ravine, he slowly became aware of the shifting of rock and the crunching of leaf litter, the thud of fast-approaching footsteps.

Footsteps of a new threat coming up behind him, the fate he’d let himself imagine he’d escaped.

* * *

Between Andrea’s cramped, uncomfortable position and the fear that at any moment, a killer would appear and shove a gun in her face, she was miserable enough without the ants that had found their way into her boots, crawling up her pant legs and stinging her for all they were worth. She shifted her position, trying to escape them, but pinch after pinch assured her that now that they had gotten past the protection of her boots and clothing, they meant to defend their home from her invasion—to the death, if necessary.

With no other choice, she crawled out of her hiding place and brushed at, swatted and stamped out every fire ant she could get to before she was hit with more venom. Shuddering with revulsion, she took a deep breath and assured herself that the stinging devils were gone and she would be fine, save for the itchy welts that would erupt.

As she pulled her boots back on, she nervously looked around, her stomach spasming with the fear that someone might have seen her wild “ant dance” or heard her muffled yips. But she spotted no one and heard nothing, no sign of the person who’d fired on them or Ian, either.

She tried to remember how long she’d waited, still and hidden, before the stings had become too much for her to bear. Five minutes? Ten? She couldn’t be certain, especially not with her heart thumping so wildly she wanted to crawl out of her skin.

She relocated to another patch of shade, where she crouched and fought to calm herself for the next few minutes. But no matter how many times she assured herself that an experienced soldier like Ian, who had survived so much, knew what he was doing, phantom worries stung every exposed inch of her heart.

Before he’d left, he’d seemed so sure of himself, so tough and so cocky, the way he’d smiled and ducked his head to surprise her with a stolen kiss. Her stomach fluttered with the memory, with the knowledge that she’d have to talk to him about it later. But other thoughts troubled her more as she recalled those moments when his blue eyes had drifted, his expression troubled as something she’d said left him grappling with memories. Memories his conscious mind remained too shell-shocked to face.

She’d seen flashbacks before, had read case reports of terrible things happening—accidents, assaults and even murders—in the wake of something as innocuous as a backfiring car, a slamming door or a loud scene during a movie. In a situation as reminiscent of wartime as this one, would Ian’s struggle with the buried ghosts of his past endanger him in the present?

As more time passed, she fought to hold back the rising tide of panic, telling herself it was a good sign that she’d heard no more shots. Reminding herself of how present and centered Ian had been when he had promised to return.

But eventually, her worry overwhelmed her, and there was nothing to be done except follow in the direction he had taken. As she walked, she prayed she would encounter Ian rather than the shooter.

She prayed even harder that when she did, he would still be the man she knew.