The McClane Apocalypse Book Five (71 page)

“No,” she corrects as John pulls onto the
rutted, hidden oil well road that will eventually take them home.
“You’re stuck with me, mister.”

“I can think of worse places to be,” he jests
with a grin.

Reagan kisses his bicep and inhales deeply of
him.

“Now just how tired are you exactly?” John
teases.

She laughs and replies, “Are you
serious?”

“Always,” John says and squeezes her
thigh.

“Yeah, right. You’re never serious unless
we’re talking about sex. It doesn’t always have to be about sex,
ya’ know,” Reagan scolds half-heartedly.

John laughs loudly and pulls the truck off
the road and into a copse of trees. He cuts the engine. They are in
the middle of nowhere still miles from the Johnson farm, the first
farm on this trail. They always drive slowly on the rutted path
home so as not to tear up what few vehicles they have left.

“With us, it’s always about the sex, my
dear,” her husband teases and pulls her close for a kiss that
instantly has her squirming.

“What are you doing? Why are we stopped?”
Reagan asks with confusion when he finally pulls back.

“Proving my manhood?” John says with a cocky
smirk.

Reagan belly laughs and says, “I think you’ve
proven that enough over the last few years, Harrison.”

“I don’t know,” John murmurs as his hand
slides under her faded green doctor’s scrubs. “It’s feeling a
little affronted. I think I need to prove my point about our sex
life.”

Reagan chuckles and leans into him. Then he
pulls her tighter, kisses her more thoroughly and presses her down
onto the seat until she is lying beneath him and her smile has
vanished. Clothes are shed, fires ignited, windows steamed up. And
later as the depressing gray fades and the bright orange rays of
the sun just begin rising over the treetops, they resume their
trip.

“Promise me you’ll never leave, John. That
you’ll refuse to go if they want you back,” Reagan pleads.

“Right now, I’d promise to cut off my
right foot for you, babe,” he jokes, his eyes
wide
with exaggeration. “You have excellent timing
when it comes to asking for things.”

“I’m serious,” she reiterates more
emphatically, ignoring his insinuation about the sex.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he swears and
presses a kiss to the back of her hand.

Reagan rests her head against his shoulder
and holds fast to his muscular arm. The next thing she knows, he is
waking her and they are parked in the driveway by the
farmhouse.

“Hm, you seem even more tired than when we
left the clinic,” John says with a smile from the open door of the
truck.

“Wonder why,” Reagan jokes with a smile.

“Come on, sleepy girl,” her husband says as
he helps her down. “I’m gonna’ head out to the barn to talk with
the guys. I’ll be in shortly.”

“’
Kay, babe,” she returns.

“You gonna’ be downstairs with Jake?”

Reagan smiles softly. He knows her so well.
She offers a nod, places a quick kiss against his smiling mouth and
walks to the house without him.

“Hey, ya’ lazy bastard,” Kelly calls out as
John approaches the barn. “Glad you could finally show up.”

Derek soon joins in the hazing of her
husband. Reagan just shakes her head and climbs the stairs to the
kitchen. Hannah is there already, which is unusual. It’s not even
six a.m. yet.

“Want some breakfast?” her sister asks.

“Why are you up, Hannie?”

“Couldn’t sleep. Kelly couldn’t sleep either.
He just kept tossing and turning worrying about everything. I gave
up around five and just got up.”

“Let me get changed,” Reagan informs her.
“I’ll be right back.”

She forgoes climbing the two flights to the
attic and just strips out of her scrubs in the laundry room,
unafraid that anyone will walk in on her this early in the morning.
Opening the hutch, Reagan finds the stack of clean clothes always
waiting there. She pulls on a pair of dark blue sweatpants and
someone’s hoodie. It must belong to one of the men because it hangs
to her knees. She affectionately reaches out and touches one of her
grandfather’s freshly ironed and pressed shirts. This man, who was
her real father growing up, who led her to become the woman she is
today, still prefers an ironed button down and pressed dress slacks
instead of anything casual like a t-shirt or jeans. He’ll always
mean more to her than her biological father.

“The kids are all right. Everything at the
clinic went well… sort of,” Reagan relates to Hannah when she
returns to the kitchen.

“What’s that mean? Who did we lose?”

“One of Dave’s men. Also one of the younger
women isn’t doing well, but we’re on watchful waiting with
her.”

“I’m glad the guys have made contact with
this Dave man. Our family could always use more friends, especially
ones with military experience. I can’t wait to meet him. He sounds
very kind and good.”

“Careful what you wish for, sis,” Reagan says
as she slathers half of a biscuit with honey butter. “John says he
cusses worse than me.”

“That would be terribly difficult. He would
have to be some kind of professional heathen,” Hannah says with a
sly grin. “Don’t worry. Kelly already warned me.”

“What was the Hulk worried about? The clinic
or his brother?”

“He was just worried about Cory. He couldn’t
sleep until he heard from him.”

“I always worry more about whoever Cory
runs into,” she tries
at
a
joke.

“Reagan, he’s getting better,” her little
sister reprimands. “Here, have a piece of sausage.”

Reagan plucks the small, smoked link off of
the extended fork and gnaws away at it.

“What about you, sis?” Reagan carefully asks
after Hannah’s health as she walks around the counter to stand next
to her. “Are you getting better?”

Hannah stops what she’s doing and stands
there for a moment.

“Yes, I guess so,” Hannie admits, knowing
full well what Reagan means.

“It seems like you’ve been feeling a little
better,” Reagan tells her.

“It still hurts,” Hannah admits with a frown,
her mismatched eyes showing her pain. “I didn’t know it hurt so
bad.”

“Me neither, sis,” Reagan confesses softly
and wraps an arm around Hannah’s waist. “I miss Grams, too. Every
day. And I think about Em every day, too. It does hurt. I just
don’t want it to consume you. We need you around here. I can’t ever
lose one of my sisters, ok? I’m sure as fuck not as tough as people
think I am, so don’t leave me again.”

Hannah swallows hard and nods before whisking
away a tear.

“I won’t. I promise,” Hannah tells her. “And
don’t make me get out Grams’s rolling pin to use on you for
swearing in the kitchen.”

Reagan laughs and returns to her chair at the
island.

“I have high hopes for you, but I’m not so
sure about Cory,” Reagan laments, too tired to express a different
opinion about their adopted brother.

“I do,” Hannah argues. “He’s coming around.
Someday he’ll be able to remember Em without feeling so angry.”

“Maybe,” Reagan says just to be compliant.
She decides since they are uncharacteristically alone, to broach
the subject of their father. “How do you feel about Robert coming
home?”

Hannah stops in the middle of stirring
sausage gravy in the giant cast iron skillet.
A cool
expression comes over her fair countenance.
She resumes swirling the thick mixture around.

“He’s our father. He’s the rightful inheritor
of this farm. He has every right to come here.”

“Those are all facts, but you haven’t stated
how you feel,” Reagan reminds her.

Hannah sighs long and loudly and replies, “I
always felt like I needed my father or a father figure in my life.
I wanted him to come home so badly for so long. Now I just feel
indifferent. I have my Kelly and our daughter. I have my sisters
and all the children on the farm. And Grandpa more than anyone has
filled the void of a missing father for so long now that I just
don’t feel much of anything toward Robert anymore. Maybe that’s an
unbiblical way of speaking, but as you like to point out, he did
indeed abandon us.”

Reagan is surprised by her sister’s response.
She would’ve thought Hannah would be excited by their father’s
return. This change in her is because of the unstable status of the
country, her attack by one of the visitors, her loss of Grams in
her life and so many other factors. But mostly, if Reagan was to
guess, it’s because of Kelly. He makes her stronger, and Hannah has
more confidence in herself because of him.

“Yes, he did,” Reagan agrees. “I want to know
what his plans are, though. I want to know if he’s staying or if
this is just temporary. I want to know what he knows about the
country. He has a lot of answers that he needs to give us.”

“He’s sick, Reagan,” Hannah remarks.

“How did you know?”

Hannah sighs again, “When he hugged me before
going out to the cabin, I could tell he was frail.”

“I don’t care how frail he is, I want
answers. We deserve that much from him. If he came here to stake a
claim on the farm, that’s bullshit.”

“I don’t think he came here for that, but I
could be wrong,” Hannah says.

Reagan places a lid
over
the pan full of gravy and turns off the gas to
that burner for Hannah. Her sister has other burners lit with food
cooking in different
pans
. The
kitchen has regained its usual
wonderful
, comforting smells. This morning,
however, it turns Reagan’s stomach a little. The stress of last
night, lack of sleep and worrying about the kids being gone have
run her ragged. She feels like she might just puke that biscuit
back up.

“Then why do you think he came here? Why
now?” Reagan asks her sister who is usually more insightful than
her.

Hannah turns to face her and places the
dishrag she’s using to dry her hands onto the countertop. Then she
feels around until she locates the dough she must’ve been kneading.
A new line of distress blemishes the smooth skin between her
eyes.

“I think he came here to die, Reagan.”

Now she really feels like she’s going to
throw up. She hadn’t expected that response. She also hadn’t
considered it herself. She was so pissed last night at Robert, has
been so for years, that she hadn’t really looked that closely at
him. She’d noticed his weight loss, the graying of his hair, but
she hadn’t thought of him as being that sick. She’d thought maybe
he was down with a bug or weary from road travel or something
similar. She hadn’t thought anything like this. Perhaps Hannah is
right.

“Oh,” is all she can manage for an
answer. She’s supposed to be the doctor, but Hannah may have
intuited this one way before her. It shouldn’t really be that big
of a surprise. Hannah usually knows what’s going on before anyone
else, especially before her. She doesn’t even know how to take this
news. It may not be true. He may just be ill. They won’t know
anything until he talks
with
her
and Grandpa. There isn’t any sense in worrying about something they
don’t
know
yet. “I’m not sure.
Let’s just wait to see what he has to say.”

Hannah shrugs and says, “Sure.”

Reagan furrows her brow at her sister. She
can tell that Hannah has already come to a conclusion on the
matter.

“Well, I’m off to hit the hay unless you need
my help.”

“Burning food? No, get to bed,” Hannah teases
and waves her away with a spatula.

Even at this early hour, her sister is lovely
and fresh in her long white dress and one of Grams’s old white
aprons dotted with purple violets. Reagan walks closer, slides her
hand onto Hannah’s over the dough and presses a kiss to her
sister’s cheek.

“Thanks for breakfast,” Reagan
says softly
. “Love ya’ you
know.”

“I do,” Hannie says with a humble nod. “Get
to bed. Your patients will need you later today.”

Reagan smiles and walks away toward the
stairs.

“Love you, too!” Hannah calls after her with
a chuckle.

When she gets downstairs, Reagan passes
Gretchen coming out of her shared bedroom. She is dressed in the
same clothing from the previous evening. She also doesn’t look like
she slept much. There are dark circles under her
pretty
eyes. Her brother Lucas must still be asleep
unless he’s gone out with the men.

“Hey,” Reagan offers cordially.

“Reagan, right?” G asks.

“Yep, that’d be me.”

“You’re the doctor?” she inquires.

Reagan says, “Yup. Just like our dad.”

Gretchen scoffs and snorts in a most
unladylike fashion. She’s glad Robert had another defiant daughter.
It’s nothing less than he’d deserve.

“Yeah, right. He only uses that title when
he’s around people who wouldn’t be impressed with his military
ones,” G expresses with a wrinkle of her pert, small nose.

Her short hair stands up on end in
places in
spikey
disarray. Reagan
doubts that she would care. As a matter of fact, she’s pretty sure
Gretchen would prefer it messy like that if it meant pissing off
their father.

Reagan nods and smiles, “I’m sure. You can
head upstairs. Hannah’s making a huge breakfast as usual. Maybe you
can help.”

“Ok, I don’t know much about cooking,
though,” she says and looks at her feet.

“Yeah, me either. But she’ll boss you around
and show you what to do. She’s good at that.”

G’s head whips up with surprise and she asks
in a whisper, “Isn’t she… you know, blind?”