Reckless Endangerment (23 page)

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a first.”  He smiled against his hand, remembering the thrill of leaping from the cliff, the feel of the warm sea engulfing his body, and the sounds of drunken taunts in the moonlight.  He thought of Peter and Samson, now both dead thanks to the war, and remembered his promise to Peter to take care of Hope.  He hadn’t done such a good job of that now, had he? 

“Do you ever wish you would have died, too?” McGee asked as if reading his thoughts.  “I do.  Life back here...it’s not the same and there’s no way I can go back either.  I’ve made some bad decisions, Colonel...some really bad ones since being back.”

“So have I,” he whispered against his fingers, gaze taking in the lights of the cars passing them.  “So have I.” 

“I wish I would have died, gone out with some glory while I had the chance,” McGee said as if talking to himself.  
“Now you sound like me and that’s not a good thing.”  He leaned his head back against the seat.  “C’mon, McGee, look at us...driving around Denver, Colorado, in a minivan after having Chinese and beer at my wife’s loft.  Life is good.”

McGee rolled his shoulders back, never taking his gaze from the road and grinned. “Not all of us have a wife like Shane waiting for us with yellow ribbons tied around God only knows where.  I’m surprised she talks to us...after everything.  You should talk her into going away with you, maybe relocating to Colorado Springs, being low key, raising your kid...you know, staying away from investigations that make you want to follow her in the middle of the night.”

“Have you met my wife?”  He grinned even though his instinct sharpened at the McGee’s words.  Something was off...but he didn’t know what.  He briefly remembered Hope’s late night visit the other day, her wondering who knew about the marriage, who could have put him in jeopardy. 

“I suppose you’re right. She’s not the kind of woman who backs off, is she?  Lucky for you, I guess...you know, because she didn’t give up on you.  She waited.”

He looked at the lights of downtown, his heart heavy with memories that he hadn’t wanted to remember for months, thoughts rattled with broken promises and questions. 

Chapter Fourteen

Dawn lightened the sky above the Rocky Mountains, making them appear like black chalk drawings against a sherbet colored background. Hope shifted in the confines of Devon’s hybrid.  Every muscle ached. Knots gripped her shoulder blades.  More than that, every gut feeling she had insisted she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Out of sorts, she shifted again and pulled at the seat belt pressing against her chest. 

They’d spent all night following a van from the construction site outside of Saint Mary’s Glacier to Grand Junction, on the completely opposite side of the state from where they’d begun.  She was tired, smelly, uncomfortable, irritable and hungry. 

“I hope this doesn’t turn out with us being listed as missing people,” Devon muttered before turning off the ignition.  “What do we do now?  Sleep in the car?  Get a hotel room?”

“I vote for sleep,” she said with a grimace.  “I’m getting too old for this.  I need a massage, a facial, a hammock and sunshine.  In that order.”

“Don’t forget the rum.”

“Thought that was a given.” 

The van had parked in the lot of this hotel, its drivers disappearing inside the main lobby.  Cold permeated the early morning air, proving it was not yet springtime in Colorado.  She winced and pulled her leather jacket closer around her body and wished she had a hot cop of coffee. 

She dropped her head back against the seat and watched the glass doors of the lobby.  “Where are these guys going?”

“I hope not to all the way to San Diego.”  Devon shot her a glance. “Is this worth it?  We don’t know what they’re up to...do we stay or go?  We only have Angel’s word about this entire story, some photographs to back her up, sure, but with Rourke’s death, there’s not much else to confirm it. Right now it’s all circumstantial.” 

“Well, let’s wait a few minutes, see if they’re staying or going before we make a decision.”  A look at her cell phone reminded her that she had a timetable today.  Michael was coming home.  Supposedly.  She had forms to fill out and plans to make.  Skulking in a parking lot at dawn had not been on the schedule.  Her hand shook as she tapped the phone against her knee.  

“We should have had Marshall come with us,” Devon said, her voice sounding overly loud in the car.

They settled into a companionable silence.  She crossed her arms across her chest in an attempt to stay warm in the early morning cool. 

“We saw these guys leaving the construction site…either we’re on the right track, or there never was a track to begin with,” Devon said. 

“We’re on the right track.”  She tapped her fingers against her thigh.  “They’re not coming out.  Maybe we should get a room, take turns watching the—”

The two men jogged from the lobby and returned to the van.  In a matter of minutes, they had driven to the side, out of view.  There was no way to follow without giving themselves away.  One black eye a month fulfilled her quota. 

“What do you think they’re doing?” Devon asked.

“Nefarious activities, I hope, or else this little adventure has been a horrible waste of time.”  She grabbed the handheld camera she’d been using on and off since they’d parked outside of the construction site around midnight. 

“Here they come,” Devon said.  “Looks like they loaded up.  Make sure you get the name of this hotel on the video.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re the reporter not the cameraman—remember that.”

Van returned to the road, riding significantly lower than before.

“How could I forget?  You’ve mentioned that at least a dozen times in as many hours.”  Irritation hovered just below the surface of control.  “Looks like they’re going back to Denver. Want me to drive?”


“We’ll switch off at the next gas station.”

She nodded and twisted in her seat again.  “I bet there are illegals in there.  We need more on film.  What’d you get last night again?”


“Nothing incriminating.  What about your research?”

“I’m getting there,” she muttered, flipping open the laptop again.  The usual adrenaline rush of chasing a story failed to stir.  Nothing, not even a spark.  She stared blankly at the screen before giving up.  “Dev, I’m tired.”

“Sleep then.”  Devon followed the van, careful to leave several cars between them.  “I’ll wake you at the next station.”


“Not that kind of tired,” she confessed, focusing her eyes toward the foothills.  “The kind of tired that makes a person want to disappear for months at a time.  The kind of tired that makes me want to curl into a ball, turn off my phones and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist. The kind of tired that makes me want to simplify.  That kind of tired.”

“Wow, that’s tired.” Devon smiled.  “Is this about the Colonel?”

She closed her eyes, leaned her head back and grinned at nothing in particular.  “We used to dance.  My head only came up to the middle of his chest when we danced.”

“Sounds nice. Where did—”

“In my hotel room.  Our entire relationship existed between four walls.  Outside of that room he was a soldier and I was a reporter.  Those were the rules.”

“So you danced in your hotel room…”  Devon sounded wistful.  “Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell.”  She hugged her arms around herself. “Dusty room.  Us in the moonlight.  We’d dance while we talked about what we’d do when we got home, what our favorite movies were, our favorite foods, you know, mindless stuff. So you see…” she opened her eyes to look at her friend, “it wasn’t all about the sex.  We talked.”

“I never said it was all about the sex.”  Devon didn’t take her gaze from the road.

“I forget how tall he is,” she whispered.  “I look at him in that damn wheelchair and forget that he used to toss me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, forget that he used to stand a head taller than the rest of his unit so I could always spot him from a distance, forget that I used to watch for that tall man in a crowd when he’d been gone for too long.  Is it bad that I forget that?”

“You haven’t forgotten.  You just told me.” Devon glanced at her.  “What aren’t you saying, Hope?”

“I want…” Tears blurred her vision.  She resented being tired, being weak. 

“What do you want?”

“I want him to hold me like he used to.  I want him to fight to get his life back.  I want him to order me around.  I want him to toss me onto the bed and fuck me again…hold me and fuck me.”  She blinked the tears away, determined not to cry. 

“Have you told him that?”

“No way.”  Eyes wide, she concentrated on the van in front of them.  “He’s obsessed with what he can’t do, that would make everything worse.”

“You should tell him that you remember him tall, how he made you feel, how you used to look for him in a crowd.  Maybe he wants someone to remember him without the chair.”  Devon shrugged. “Just a suggestion.  I know I would want someone like that telling me those things if I were in his position.”


“Maybe.”  She closed her eyes and kept quiet.

“What aren’t you saying?”

“He’s agreed to go to outpatient therapy and come home with me.  If we ever get home, that is. That freaks me out a little because I have never lived with anyone, not even in college.  And we…even though we are technically married, we never lived together full-time.  What do I know about being married?  Look at where I am right now.  Do I look very wifely to you?”

“Wifely?  I don’t even know what you mean by that.  Listen, relax.  You two are unconventional, isn’t that what you like about each other?  You’re both home now. It’s time to make it official.  You’ll adjust. If anyone can make it work, you can.”  Devon winked. 

An hour passed before the van veered off the interstate and stopped at a gas station.  Finally.  A bathroom slash soda break.  They jogged inside the gas station while the van lingered on the opposite side of the lot. 

When they exited, the van pulled out of the parking lot.  She paced while Devon filled the car with gas.  From her position, she could see the van pull back onto I-70, headed East toward Denver.  Instinct told her something was wrong.  Sunglasses in place, she looked at Devon’s car.  Habit had her reaching into her bag for her floppy Bermuda hat.

“Check the tires,” she told Devon as she inspected the ones on the passenger side.

“Something wrong?”

“A feeling.”  Her hands smoothed over the tires, looking for a slash, a nail, anything suspicious.  Blood thickened as the feeling that something was wrong intensified.

“Nothing. C’mon. We’re losing them.”

Remaining silent, she climbed into the passenger seat and picked up her cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Just checking messages.  I can’t shake this feeling.  Something is wrong.”  Only Becky had called to say she had taken Dude with her to work instead of leaving him after his morning walk.  “Do you think we lost them?”

“No, but you’re freaking me out with all of this feeling stuff.”  The car accelerated. 

Hair stood up on the back of her neck.  She started running her hands beneath the seat, turned and looked in the back seat, opened the glove box.

“For God’s sake, Hope, knock it off.  You’re making me nervous.”

“Someone was in this car when we went inside.”

“Are you psychic now?”

“No, I’m telling you…” She gave up trying to explain.  “I’m just glad I took my bag with me.”

“And the laptop is in your bag?”

“Of course.”

Devon shot her a curious look.  “You never leave that damn bag behind, do you?  Did you get in that habit when you were in the Middle East?  Never leaving anything behind?”

“Don’t analyze.”  Someone had been in this vehicle, she knew it even if she couldn’t prove it.  “There they are. See? They’re turning off in Glenwood.”

“I wonder why…” Devon muttered beneath her breath. 

“Something bad is happening.”  Instinct had her on the phone to the office.  She wanted the newsroom prepared…just in case.  Internal alarms were on high alert. 

“I told you to stop saying that. What are you going to tell Marion?  That we’re following a van to and from Denver and that you have a bad feeling? We’re supposed to be laying low, remember?”

The van veered from the town toward the National Park and popular hiking trails.  She relayed the information to a production assistant before snapping the phone closed.  With one hand, she set up the laptop.  With the other, she balanced the handheld camera on the dashboard. 

“Where’d they go?” Devon asked, the forest creeping in on them.  “What’d the office say?  That you’re crazy?”

“Shh…pull over near that trail head.  We’ll walk through the woods the rest of the way.”