Bounty (Walk the Right Road) (6 page)

“So how long were you in the army?” she asked, taking a swig of the dark beer that now lingered with something bitter on her tongue. She must have pulled a face.

“Don’t like beer?” he asked, watching her every move. His eyes were on her, not wavering for an instant. It was unnerving.

“No, I had a couple this morning,” she said, realizing he kept diverting any talk about him and the military.

He nodded and didn’t seem surprised that she’d drunk this morning, as he gestured to a sliding glass door. “Let’s go out on the deck. I have a couple of chairs out there.”

She stepped outside and took the first one, a straight-backed wooden chair, an obvious castoff from someone’s yard sale. “I don’t normally drink, the occasional beer only. It was just this morning…”

“You were rattled, being called in to a murder that hit way too close to home. And no one knows about where you come from. I take it your friend…”

She let out a sigh of relief. “Sam, my former partner.” Diane swallowed the sick, dry feeling in her stomach.

“Sam knows about your past, and you weren’t expecting Casey to call you in. Am I close?” He scraped back the other rickety wood chair, and she watched as he lowered his large frame as if he hadn’t even been shot.

“You’re good at reading people. Is this like some special training you had or something?”

What would he say now, and how would he respond to all her prying? Instead of reacting, all he did was smile, and she stared at the scars on the side of his face and wondered if they hurt. The way the skin puckered close to his ear told its own story of the burns there.

“Or something,” he replied. He took another swig of beer and then leaned forward, watching her with an expression of compassion.

“You don’t talk much about yourself, do you?” she asked. She needed him to talk about something, anything, because it was starting to sink in how stupid a move it had been, shooting off rounds in her yard, even though she had five acres and had done it before. So did others in the area. Technically, it should have been okay. She was starting to pace her property line in her head, seeing it from where the downed tree was and the trails started. “So stupid,” she muttered.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I was just going through how close I was to the back of my property, you know, the line to the park. I didn’t think. I have five acres, but it starts closer to the front. I should set up my targets out front, but my land is more deep than it is wide. I just haven’t thought about people wandering around back there, because they never have. I’m sorry, Zac. Are you sure I shouldn’t take you to the hospital, get it checked out? I know you’re a doctor and all that.”

He reached out and gripped her wrist. “When was the last time you ate?”

Diane blinked. Her skin was on fire from his touch. She’d never had a man touch her with such concern. It was crumbling all her self-confidence and the ballsy front she always put up: Diane, who had to be the strong one. Everyone leaned on her, always had. She didn’t know how to handle his concern. “A burger before I came to the morgue. Sam stopped, made me eat it to absorb all the beer I’d downed so I wasn’t stumbling and falling over in front of you and Casey.”

“Do you like stir fry?”

Was he asking her to stay for dinner, or was he going to take her out? Or was this just a general question? “Sure, I like stir fry. Why?” She swallowed the lump jamming her throat, because the way he watched her was like the way a cat studied its prey, deciding what to do next. It was unsettling.

“I’m going to cook you dinner,” he said.

Diane was perched on a stool Zac had dragged over to the kitchen island. He had patted the seat, and she’d hopped up and sat to watch while he chopped fresh vegetables on a wood cutting board. Rice simmered on the stovetop built into the kitchen island beside him. The sweet aroma filled the room, and Diane’s mouth watered, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the food, from the fact that a man she’d just met earlier today was cooking for her, or from the man himself. He was wearing a pair of gray sweats and white t-shirt, having taken a couple minutes to change when he’d settled her in.

In those minutes, she’d considered bolting. She couldn’t figure him out. He wasn’t handsome or gorgeous in a pretty-boy way. He worked out, and it showed under his shirt and sweats with the cut of every muscle in his well-toned body. His face was scarred, not grotesquely but in a way that held a story. Each line, each expression, and the way he held himself, everything about him was so closed that she couldn’t read it.

He had a presence that came from deep inside him, that filled the space around him and reached out to her. She realized as she sat in silence, watching him, that he had the ability to either bring her into his space or keep her locked out forever. She clutched the glass of water he’d handed her when he lifted the full can of beer from her hands. She couldn’t drink any more beer, and he must have known. Here he was, the injured one, and he was taking care of her.

“What’s your story, Zac?”

He stopped his chopping and slowly raised his gaze. His expression was guarded.

“You won’t talk about yourself, and you’ve evaded or not answered everything I’ve asked you tonight. Now you’re cooking me dinner after I nearly killed you.”

He set the large knife down and wiped his hands on the dishtowel on the counter. He stepped around the kitchen island toward her. “Fair enough,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

Now he had her on the spot. “What happened that made you leave the military?”

“I was done.” He crossed his arms.

“That’s not an answer. You were injured, is that why?” She gestured to his scars, and he turned his face away so she couldn’t see the damaged skin.

“Shrapnel, we took fire transporting the wounded. I survived, end of story. Does my face bother you? Because it does bother some people.”

She was shocked that he would suggest she could be turned off by something so silly as a scar. “No, God, no. You’re stunning.” Her face heated instantly when she realized what she had said.

He frowned instead of smiling. “Tell me your story, Diane.” He slid his finger under her chin and lifted her blushing face so she was forced to look at him. She swallowed hard because she never blushed, at least not before she’d shared her shameful past with Sam this morning, even though what she shared had barely touched on the full story. She knew that the tasty bit she’d spilled had him looking at her differently, as if she wasn’t the tough chick who could take down a drug king, who could be a partner who had his back without question. He saw her as damaged, breakable. She knew it deep down in her bones, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

“Not much to tell, really,” she said. “Boring life. I work as a cop, investigate drug kings, build a case against them and try to put those scumbags away for a really long time.” She swallowed again as his long fingers lingered, sliding around both sides of her jaw.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. Tell me about where you came from, your childhood, why you ran away. What are you hiding from?”

She flushed again. “I don’t want you to think I’m weak or something.”

“You must have a pretty low opinion of me if you believe I’d think that.” He dropped his hand and walked around the kitchen counter to lift the lid on the steaming pot of rice, giving it a stir. He pulled out a frying pan from a cupboard, poured oil in the bottom of the skillet, and turned on the burner.

He turned away from her, and she couldn’t help feeling as if she were the bad guy here. Was he right? No, she didn’t trust people. She knew that. She had friends, and they talked about everything except her past, which she never shared with anyone. “I told Sam a little this morning. He knew I was having a problem, trouble speaking, so he brought out the beer, you know, liquid courage. It’s pathetic, but it helped. I spilled some of my story, not everything, but enough that he looked at me differently. He’s my friend. I’ve known Sam a long time, and we’ve been through what feels like a lifetime of shit. I regret telling him. He was uncomfortable. And if I tell you…”

“I won’t think less of you. We all have secrets, Diane, and it’s what you do with them that makes you stronger. I’m sorry about your friend, but you are so twisted up that you’re not thinking clearly. Bottling things up for years at a time, forgetting them, it doesn’t work, because buried things always break through the surface eventually at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.”

He opened the fridge and lifted out a plate of cut-up raw chicken, tossing it into the hot oil. It sizzled and popped as he stirred and focused on cooking dinner for her, something no man had ever done for her, ever. He had changed the focus of his attention not in a way that dismissed her but in a way that gave her a chance to absorb what he was saying. She hoped that was it, anyway. She’d never met anyone like him. He was hard to read and so much like her. The realization sent an unsettling surge of awareness through her.

“I didn’t know there was any other way,” she said. “I thought the way we lived was normal, even though deep down I always knew something wasn’t quite right. I didn’t know the pure joy that all children should know. I always felt as if I was a square peg and everyone around me was trying to shove me into a round hole, turning me into them, all the same. My mother was the fifth of seven wives to my father, Joseph. I was her only child, but I had seventeen brothers and sisters. The other wives, well, they fought for Joseph’s attention. I could see it in the undermining that happened between them, the jealousy from one or two, generally Elsa, first wife, and Myrna, the second.

“My father actually scheduled his nights with each of the wives. It was organized. The women were always in the kitchen. We had a main one that we all shared. The women cooked everything from scratch, prepared and baked for the week. It was a full-time job. We lived on a big piece of land nestled just across the border, in Canada, but my mother came from Arizona, where she was born. The brides were shuffled back and forth across the border. We ate every meal together, and it was crowded, and my father would sit at the head of the table as if looking over all of us, proud we were all his.

“I loved him, but as I got older, pre-teen, I noticed how he’d say he had reached a decision after many conflicting thoughts and that God had provided him the answer. The one that always stuck in my head was the underwear I was allowed to wear. Can you imagine someone having the right to tell you what color or kind of underwear you had to wear? Then, just like that, there was clothing I wasn’t allowed to wear anymore. It was replaced, and my old clothes were burned. It was then I started questioning openly. I said to him at the dinner table, ‘How can God only talk directly to you? If he’s all loving and we’re all his children, can’t we all hear him? Can’t we all talk to him?’” Diane cleared her throat as she swallowed the fear that squeezed it, remembering the way her father’s round face had darkened. His blue eyes had turned a lighter shade that resembled ice, the whites so pronounced that his expression sent the fear of God deep into her, and she remembered gripping her fork so hard it bent.

“What did he say, Diane? What happened to you for challenging him and making him look small?”

She was startled from her father’s image, burned into her memories so vividly that it had haunted her dreams every night for years after she left. It still hadn’t faded. “He shouted and threw his chair against the wall, and it splintered into pieces. He yelled out, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from her evil way and evil deed!’ Then he raised his fist in the air, and I know I feared the hand of God coming in right then, striking me down. The other mothers hurried their children out of the room, but they all returned to stand behind him. My mother was forced to remain with me as he spoke of the blood atonement, the spilling of blood for repeat sinners. I was so terrified he was going to kill me right then. I had dared to question him openly, and looking back now, I see he was threatened by my challenge. But I was just a scared kid asking a question because I didn’t believe that God only talked to men.

“It was decided I needed my mind cleansed, that all my schooling had filled my head with nonsense and thoughts of the devil. As I was subservient, a girl coming into the life of a woman who was owned by her father and her future husband, I was not allowed my own thoughts. He screamed, ‘There are sins committed for which there’s no forgiveness and which water cannot cleanse. The blood must run free!’ But my mother stopped him from whatever he was planning. I still don’t know how she did it, but I remember seeing her the next day, huddled in the corner of the kitchen, wearing a scarf around her head, her face covered with bruises. I couldn’t touch her, and I could see how hurt she was. Things changed after that day. I was avoided by the other children, told I was a horrible child by the other wives, that God would punish me for ever having questioned my father’s wisdom.

“My mother said nothing. She kept her eyes lowered and kept her distance from me. The family started growing, and my father added another wife. He was powerful, but not as powerful as the leader. My father could lose everything he had, his wives, his children, if the leader discovered what I’d said. It was the ultimate disrespect, what I’d done. All the wives, all of us kids, could have been given to another man. One night, on my fourteenth birthday, he announced that God had told him I was to be married, and he’d consulted the prophet. My husband was waiting for me. Arrangements were being made.