Crash Into You (7 page)

John’s face transfo
rmed when a very attractive blonde woman came out of the back room, snacking on fruit leather.   John’s wife Larissa had not aged a day since high school.   She cried out, “Oh my gosh!” when she saw Mark, and ran into his arms.  “How are you?  It has been too damn long.”

Larissa
kissed his cheek and looked up at him with friendly affection.  “Come over tonight. I’ll make up some chili and we can catch up.”

“I can’t,” Mark
said with genuine regret.  “In fact, I need to get going.  I just stopped in to see if I could find some clothes…  For a friend.” 

A slow, knowing smile appeared on
Larissa’s and John’s face.

“Has some woman finall
y got her hooks into you?”  Larissa purred, her eyes glinting with mischief.

Ma
rk winced. “No, just a friend.”   For the first time all day, he thought of Shelby Sloan at home in D.C., waiting for him to return to her. Neither Larissa nor John asked about Shelby because they didn’t know about her.  Mark had never introduced her to his family or friends, despite the fact that he’d been dating her off and on for nearly three years.    He had never even mentioned her in casual conversation.

Shelby
had reluctantly given him this time in Montana to “sort his shit out” as she put it, but she did expect him to return to her with a ring in hand.

He didn’t know what he wanted with her.   There was nothing “wrong” with Shelby.  She was beautiful, funny, smart
, successful in her job as a federal prosecutor.  And great in bed.  That last point lingered.   Sex with her had always been a whoop-de-doo thrill ride, but he’d begun to feel empty afterward.  A little sick. Despite all the sex with Shelby, there was no real “sexiness”.  No sweetness.  No connection.

Exactly when his needs in a woman transformed from the gross physical, he couldn’t say, but lately a part of himself that he didn’t understand seemed to need more than just a roll in the hay.

Just one look at Larissa and John together and any fool could see they were as crazy in love as they had been when they started dating in high school.   When Mark had dropped into Spanner for a couple of days to be with his family for Christmas last year, he had invited them over for dinner and drinks.  Larissa had curled up on the sofa beside John, and they’d barely been able to keep their hands off each other. Larissa was touching his hair, or his hand was squeezing her leg.  It was like their hands were magnets; they couldn’t resist touching each other.  After eighteen years of marriage, you’d think all that stuff had played itself out, but not with these two. 

He didn’t have that with Shelby.  He’d never had that with anyone.
 

Mark hoped the subject of his love life wa
s dropped. It was a distinctly depressing subject. 

He browsed some soft
cotton t-shirts and grabbed a stack of them in teal, beige, white, black and gray, then six pairs of soft, stretchy yoga pants.  Unaccustomed for shopping for women, he guessed Aimee was a size four.   Thin, fit, with taut womanly curves.    He prayed he was right; last thing he wanted was to insult her by either over or under estimating.   He also grabbed some cashmere socks for her since the hospital socks didn’t look as comfy as these.

As he signed his name to the credit card slip,
Larissa tried again.  “We’re going for a fifty mile bike ride tomorrow morning.  Why don’t you come with us?”

“Can’t,” Mark said and shook his head.  “But I’ll give you a call when I get some time, and I’ll call when I need some help out at the cabins.”

“I bet you will,” John joked.  Larissa punched her husband playfully in the arm.

“I’m holding you to that
,” she said and hugged Mark again.

By the time Mark arrived home, May had climbed up on the bed and was sleeping curled up on the pillow beside Lauren.  She lifted her head and looked up at him with her ice-blue eyes as he came into the room.

“
May, off the furniture,” he whispered.  May’s sweet, wise face looked at him as if he were crazy.  She had been an amazingly easy puppy to train, not messing in the house, not begging for table scraps and not jumping on the furniture.  But she didn’t seem inclined to move from her cozy spot by Lauren’s side.

He gently picked her up and put her on the floor.  She stretched extravagantly then lay down.

Lauren’s eyes opened.

“Was she bothering you?”

Lauren licked her dry lips.  “No.  I like her.” 

“She seems to have taken a liking to you too.  If she gets on your nerves, let me know and I’ll get
her out of your room.”

“She’s sweet.”

“I brought you some medications.  I’m going to get an IV going for you, which will keep the antibiotics flowing, and I’ll give a little morphine to help the pain.  It will also help you sleep.”  

“Mkay,” she murmured.

Mark held her slender arm, daubed the inside of her elbow with rubbing alcohol, and as gently as he could, slid the needle into her vein.  Once he got the morphine flowing she exhaled.  “Wow.  Nice.”

“What’s he pain on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life?”

“Six but dropping.”  She turned her head slightly to look at him.    “Why are you being so nice to me?”  Her drugged gaze searched his in a cautious way that made him think she was not used to people being kind to her.

“You were
in my barn.  That means you’re my responsibility,” he said with a gentle smile. It wasn’t the truth, but the truth would just confound her.  It confounded himself.   He just liked her.  Simple as Mother Goose.

Mark
sat by her beside until the narcotic had lulled her back to sleep.    Then he got up to leave.  “Come on, May,” he whispered, ready to shut the door. 

             
May looked at him, then put her head on her paws in a gesture that made it clear she wasn’t moving. 

             
“Suit yourself, weirdo,” he whispered.

             
He left the door open to let May come down when she was ready and walked downstairs.

             
Today had been so surreal he wasn’t sure what to do.   A glance at the horses outside in the paddock reminded him they still needed to be fed.  

Mark fed and groomed the horses, and as he brushed them down, his thoughts veered back to Shelby.  She’d been on his mind off and on for a month, and never in a good way.  He was trying to remember what he liked about her.  They had some history and that did count for something, he supposed.   When he returned from Afghanistan, she’d been quietly supportive, even if she didn’t really know what to do for him when he became withdrawn.  That was about that time she began to express her desire for “more.”   She suggested moving into his condo in Arlington.  He wasn’t ready for that so she countered they should at least be engaged.   He was definitely not ready for that, yet the total insanity of her wedding campaign had to be experienced to be believed.   She left wedding magazines around her apartment where she knew he would see them.  When they were out, she’d “spontaneously” see a bridal salon that she just had to pop into.   She pouted when she saw weddings on television, glaring at him with increasing anger.   It became an all-consuming obsession with her.

             
Claustrophobia was not sexy.  The harder she pushed, the more he withdrew; he barely even recognized her.  

When he quit the Central Intellige
nce Agency, she had been ebullient; she thought the change signaled a bright path forward for them both.   How wrong she had been. 

Within weeks of his resignation, the first allegations of murder in Afghanistan arose.
The ensuing scandal was a grotesque orgy of blame, blackmail, and wild speculation; in that kind of environment the simple truth was the first casualty.

The upper echelons of government scrambled to capitalize on the scandal and make a name for themselves. 
“He is a doctor out of control, complicit in the reckless murder of a detainee we now know was innocent,” the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had bellowed in front of news cameras. 

             
Mark’s identity had been classified, but his superiors at CIA were all too aware of who he was and the trouble he was causing.  He resigned.   His direct boss and thirteen others were fired. 

H
is career was in ruins. People he thought were friends were suddenly unreachable.  The other people accused of torture were advised by their attorneys not to speak to him. Everyone was in classic CYA mode.

When he was finally cleared of wrong-doing,
he felt nothing but disgust at the agency, the war, and the entire intelligence apparatus.  

He
needed time to get his mind right, to figure out what to do about his life now that he had no career and, though she was much less a consideration, figure out what to do about Shelby.  

His friends would have been amused by his quandary.  Normally he was very decisive.  But when it came to Shelby, he just didn’t know.  Every time he got close to calling it off, he’d wonder if he was throwing away a relationship with real promise – plus, she could be very sweet and convincing when she wanted to be.   He wanted to be loyal; he prided himself on his loyalty, b
ut he also wanted to be happy.

Because he could not ask her to marry him, they floated aimlessly in a less-than-stellar relationship that refused to die only because Shelby clung so hard when Mark tried to pull away.

              He watched the horses eat their oats and hay, backlit by the purple and orange sky.   Spanner Ranch was a peaceful place, a good place to heal his heart and his wounded psyche.  It was also a good place for Lauren to heal her body.   He listened to the silence of the cooling air, and watched a hawk dive and spiral in the fading light.   She had been so afraid that someone was after her.   If she was right, she was, at least, one step ahead of her pursuer and safe as long as she was here.   He would protect her.

Six

Carlos hunkered down in the passenger seat of the ten year old white van, watching the row house on Ontario Street.   The beater was probably a little out of place on the street of mostly Jettas and starter BMWs, but not enough that it would cause serious scrutiny.   It helped that the sun hadn’t yet come up and the shady trees made the street look even darker.

At
twenty past six, he spotted Seth’s Jeep turn onto the street, then slow as he looked for a place to park on the curb.

             
“That him?” one of his bodyguards asked from the backseat.

             
“Yeah.” Carlos slid down low in the bucket seat as Seth passed.  Over the rim of the dashboard, Carlos watched as Seth parked two cars in front of them.

He got out of his car, scanned the road, then
hurried toward the townhouse.  Seth was about six feet tall, a smidge too fat.  No doubt he thought of his bigness as pure muscle.   Carlos, on the other hand, was pure sinew and strength.  And he was ready to use it.

Seth
was walking up the flagstones and digging in his pocket for the key when Carlos stepped out of the van and slammed the door closed, sending the sound careening through the peaceful neighborhood.

             
Seth jumped as he turned around.   Carlos grinned.   Seth was nervous as a cat.  Good.  Carlos took a handful of the mook’s scruff of hair and dragged him up the steps of his townhouse.  It was early; people were just waking up to get ready for work and the street was still empty.   There wasn’t anyone to see. 

             
“Open the door,” Carlos growled into his ear.

             
Seth, pressed up against the door, tried to turn to face Carlos.     Carlos grabbed the pistol from his waistband and shoved the cold barrel hard into the cop’s kidney.  “Open the fucking door, Seth.  You want me to kill you right here?”

             
The door opened and Carlos immediately threw him up against the wall of the entryway.   Seth lifted his hands to defend himself but Carlos easily pistol whipped him, cracking the butt of the gun on Seth’s cheekbone.   He slumped against the wall, too stunned to produce much more than terror signals with every heartbeat.

             
Carlos leaned in close, so his face was nearly touching Seth’s.    “You know why I’m here?” Carlos asked. 

             
Seth allowed a little squeak of fear to part through his slack lips.    The edges of his eyes were tight.  He was scared like a little girl.  Carlos smiled, enjoying it.  Let the little pussy sweat it out.

             
Carlos chuckled and backed off.  He took a long look around the entryway.   A nice collection of arty black and white photos of boats hung on the wall.  On the table was a picture of Seth and a woman in a park.  Carlos picked it up, studying the girl.  Pretty, like one of those Ralph Lauren models with long, rich brown hair and green eyes.  She didn’t look too happy to have Seth’s arm around her, but Seth was grinning like a damn baboon.