“WHERE IS HE?” Mavis asked. She’d changed from the work wardrobe she’d dirtied up into black jeggings and a tank. After checking on Cole and Briar to see that Gavin’s father had recovered from the heat, she’d hunted Gavin through Olivia and Gerald’s homey abode.
Harmony came down the stairs. “He’s taking a shower.”
Mavis could tell by her expression that she’d seen him. “How is he?”
“I don’t know.” Harmony shrugged. “He won’t talk. Not that he ever has about how he’s feeling.”
Because it’s weakness, Mavis knew. Gavin didn’t accept weakness. Most men like him, soldiers, didn’t. “Where is he, exactly?”
“Liv told him to use William’s room,” Harmony said. She grabbed the stair rail to stop Mavis from climbing up. “Whoa. Where’re you going?”
She’d promised not to let him drown alone. “I’m going up.”
“Mavis.” Harmony grabbed her hand to stop her from passing. “I’m not sure you should. Not right now.”
“Look,” Mavis said shortly, “you’re trying. Cole’s trying, Briar’s trying. No approach seems to be working. The other day at the inn, he was having flashbacks and…and I helped him.”
Harmony’s wide-arched brows lifted. “How?”
Mavis forced an exhale. She couldn’t tell her friend everything that had happened with her brother in the bougainvillea. And not because she didn’t know why, precisely, Gavin had responded to her touch. She couldn’t tell Harmony because of what Mavis had felt the moment she’d sensed Gavin’s walls trembling…when she’d thought maybe she had done the impossible. “All I really know is that for a few moments he felt safe enough with me—he trusted me—to help him out of it, and it worked, if only temporarily.”
Harmony searched Mavis’s face. She stepped aside. “I can’t stand to see him like this. I’m scared of what’s on this path if he keeps going down it alone. Do what you can for him.”
“Okay.” Mavis climbed the rest of the stairs. Glancing back briefly, she said, “Thank you.” For trusting me, too, she added, silently.
When Harmony nodded in answer, Mavis moved from the landing. The Leighton house was laid out with rooms tightly knit. An ideal nest that kept its inhabitants close. The master suite was on one side of the hall and William’s and Finnian’s rooms were on the other, connected by a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. Mavis had been there once. She’d gone from one boy’s room through the bathroom to the other so she could climb out the back window and escape without Olivia and Gerald’s notice.
It felt odd choosing the first door on the left. She’d dated William in secret so their families wouldn’t find out and make noise about the two making things more permanent. It was strange seeking another man through the same door, intruding on the space of her ex.
Gavin’s shirt she found hung at the foot of the full bed, and his shoes near the bathroom door. She heard the shower running.
She bypassed the shirt, stepped over the shoes and came to the door. Raising her fist, she quelled hesitation and rapped her knuckles against it.
She heard a curse. The door was snatched from the jamb. Gavin filled the space of the frame.
Mavis blinked. He was a mountain. Like Prometheus, he was a fricking beast. Toned. Muscled out—definition on top of definition.
There were ribs, however. Enough of a hint that on anyone else might’ve looked ordinary. On him, they smacked of self-neglect. His rib cage as a whole should’ve been lost to the ripple of abs and the scintillating muscles that honed his waistline to perfection. Behind the eyes, she saw truth. There, he looked gaunt. As if the sharp bones of his honest self peered through the coat of naked flesh.
She caught the moment…the very brief moment that his honest self reached for her. She nearly reached back.
Then he blinked. Resignation resumed. Annoyance followed. “What do you want?” he asked.
“No questions.” Placing her hand on the deep-inked, red-eyed wolf as black and forbidding as the storm he held inside him, she moved him back into the bathroom, stepping in, too, until she could shut them both in.
His expression turned puzzled as she shut off the tap in the shower stall. “What’re you up to now?”
“This is me pouring water over the fire,” she told him.
He stared. Shook his head. “No. No, this is you dressing up as a can of lighter fluid and throwing yourself at it.”
“Give me your thumb,” she said, extending her hand.
He held it back. “I’m fine.”
“You let me in the other day,” she reminded him. “Why?”
“I thought we weren’t asking questions.”
“Gavin. Why?”
“Maybe I was desperate.”
“Maybe you do need someone.”
“This is hell. I’m not dragging you into it.”
“I do what I want. And what I want is to help you. So stop being a man—a big stubborn man—and let me help you!”
The staring didn’t cease. She wondered how much he could see in the closeness of the whitewashed room, under the single bright vanity bulb. Not her pulse tripping against her throat. Not the frisson of nerves in her wrists and knees. Hopefully not the desperation pressed between her lips.
He brought his hand up to meet hers.
She fought a tumultuous sigh. There was dirt on his fingertips still. There was dirt on hers, too, despite several scrubbings in the powder room downstairs. It was caked red under both their nails. The scent of it, of their work together, came between them. She hoped he found it as grounding as she did. Gripping him lightly, she extended his thumb toward her. She moved her shoulders back, trying to grind the edginess out of her joints. She started to press her thumb and forefinger against the web between his. Then she stopped and bent her head, releasing a long breath that streamed cool over his thumb.
The shower steam, fine and damp, was suspended around them. Silence closed them in. She saw his lungs expand against his ribs and noticed his pulse trip against the base of his throat. His breath moved over the center part of her hair, at the apex of her brow.
She blew until she had to take several deep breaths of her own to catch up. Then she blew some more, until the silence was less entombing than it was enveloping. She blew until he relaxed by gradual inches. “When I was little…whenever I got anxious in the doctor’s office or something…my mom would do this. It helped me come back to myself. Just enough, anyway, to focus on my own coping mechanisms.”
“You could be speaking Latin right now…” he murmured.
She glanced up. His eyes were closed. Good. Letting her gaze rest on the ink of his chest, she licked her lips. It was beautiful. The wolf’s snout closed over the sinewed bridge where his arm met his shoulder. Teeth extended, it lunged from his right pectoral, fur matted. It was every bit a tribute to all the dark places she knew existed inside Gavin.
The sword was more telling. It scaled his left ribs and was sheathed beneath his beltline. The banner wrapped from hilt to point had writing on it. NOTHING LASTS FOREVER, she read. She didn’t have to ask to know that the roman numerals inscribed in the sword’s cross guard were Benji’s DOD.
It was skillfully rendered, just like the wolf. Beautifully done. He was beautifully done, ribs and all. She went back to applying pressure to the web between his thumb and forefinger and worked to bring her voice to the surface. “Wanna hear a joke?”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “You don’t have to do this.”
“How do two admirals greet each other?” she persisted.
“I don’t know, Mavis,” he said. “How do two admirals greet each other?”
“With a navel salute.”
He closed his eyes and winced. “No…”
“So I took a tour of a submarine once.”
Gavin rolled his eyes, rubbed his fingers against the underside of his chin. She heard the rasp of new stubble and was pleased when he played along. “Yeah? How was it?”
“Riveting.”
The stern line of his mouth wavered. “That’s…terrible.”
“A marine and a SEAL walk into a bathroom…”
Gavin’s mouth split wide in a grin. “That one’s better. Much better.”
Mavis struggled to inhale as her heart ratcheted against her throat. “You’re still here,” she told him plainly.
“Am I?” The mirth drained quickly, washing through like water in a sieve. “How do you know it’s me when I can hardly recognize myself in the mirror?”
She wanted to touch the laugh lines dying on his face. Except for when her father had been released from jail, Mavis couldn’t remember ever wanting to hold someone as much as she wanted to hold Gavin.
If he could just see himself the way his family saw him. The way she saw him…
She licked her lips, steadied herself. “What scares you most?”
The question caught him off guard. Still, a contemplative silence took hold.
“Say it,” she encouraged, bringing gentleness to her tone. “Out loud.”
Gavin rubbed his lips together. Then he said, “Using you.” He blinked, checked himself. “Using anybody.”
“Becoming a burden?” she asked.
After a beat, he said in a low, dark voice, “I am a burden.”
“That’s not what they say,” she said. “That’s not what anyone says.” He began to shake his head and she held up a hand. “When you love someone…really love someone, that’s not what it’s about. Ever.”
“Your rose-colored glasses are disappointing, Frex. I thought you knew reality better than that.”
She doubled back and tried another route, crossing her arms over her chest. “You used to run, long distance. You were the high school cross-country star. I don’t see you run anymore.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t have a lead rope.”
“You’re the last person I expected to box himself in with his own weaknesses.”
Frustration struck his face. “What’re you talking about?”
“Miss Zelda’s house is at the end of the street. Mine is at the beginning. It’s a straight shot, uphill one way, downhill the other. Perfect for running. My house is stacked on stilts, round, and is the only one with climbing roses on the mailbox. It’s hard to miss.”
“So?”
“So, run,” she told him. “Zelda’s right about at least one thing. Locking yourself indoors will get you a free neurosis spin. You won’t try yoga or meditation, but something familiar might give you a leg up. A conduit for all the adrenaline I know goes into the flashbacks—”
“Mavis.”
“I’ll lend you Prometheus. He knows the way like the back of his paw.”
“Look—”
“Try it,” she urged. “You’re an adventurer at heart. You must be craving a natural high like your next breath.”
“The way you talk, you know me better than I know myself.”
“Tell me you think about the future even if you can’t see one for yourself. Tell me you feel like you have a place in this world. Tell me you’ve lost your dream job but it’s okay because the civilian world holds so much promise.” When he only scowled at her, she turned her attention to his hand, took it back into hers. She massaged. “Tell me you refused Zelda’s job offer because you don’t think she extended it out of pity.”
He waited to answer, looking over her head. “What good am I to you? If it’s added protection you want, how’re you going to get it from Mary Ingalls?”
“Mary Ingalls is a badass and you know it.”
“I’m not. Not anymore.”
She visually stroked his features. It would have been wrong to trace them physically. The line of his lashes looked denser when he was fatigued, hooding eyes that appeared more copper than green under all this light. He was raw in every aspect and the metallic edges of him were pricking like briars through the iridescent undergrowth. “You are a badass. You’ve just lost your mojo.”
He shook his head. “I was trained to think differently. I was trained to channel fear into action. I shouldn’t have to deal with psychological BS.”
“But…?” she nudged when he stopped.
He shrugged a weathered breath from his chest. “But then Benji. And Boots. Then waking up one day without my sight… I can’t drive. I can’t read. At the inn, I’ve broken nearly everything in reach because I have no visibility on my left side—my dominant side. It’s the same reason I can’t cross traffic anymore, by foot or by car. It takes me a quarter of an hour to send a text message. You’re damn right I lost my mojo. I used to wander off, get lost just to see if I could make it back whole. The itch is still there, but now I get lost in supermarkets.
“It’s not just my sight, Mavis. Dad and Briar had a barbecue on the inn lawn to benefit the American Legion a week after I got back. The smell off the grill triggered me. They did all that for me and I couldn’t stay because I kept seeing burning bodies in my head, clearer than I could see the faces around me. I shouted at Briar because she came after me like you, trying to fix it…”
He stopped. His ribs pressed against his skin as he took a breath, to stop himself. To steady himself. Mavis watched him swallow and blink several times. The effort not to embrace him, cling to him, nearly overpowered her, but she kept herself back because he was holding it in. He’d been holding so much in.
He swallowed once more, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back. “I’ve spent my whole life punching my problems. Now I can hardly see to hit them.”
“The SEALs didn’t teach you?” Mavis asked, quiet. “To fight in the dark?”
His gaze settled on her once more, seeking for the first time.
“You were trained and conditioned for the fear that comes with war and combat,” she went on. “Not the kind of life you’d have to learn to live in the aftermath here, where there’s none of that.”
A vertical bar grew between his eyes. “Why are you doing this?” he wanted to know. “Why does every word out of your mouth sound right?”
She didn’t answer. The web between his thumb and forefinger became her primary focus as she deepened the massage.
He gave in to another sigh. “And why is it when you touch me—” his voice became gravelly “—I feel like you’re the only person who does so without a heavy dose of pity?”
She should let him go. Not that she could, any more than she could meet his eye.
His head dipped close over hers. “Explain that to me, Frexy.”
It was her turn to shake her head. Her heart was a drum. A big, loud drum in a silent room. Could they hear it downstairs? She knew Gavin could, with his adept, heightened senses.
He exhaled on a tattered laugh. “Kyle needs to come back and give me a good ass-whooping.”
“If he does…” she began. She stopped to wet her mouth. “I’ll give him one.”
“Because I’m at a disadvantage?”
“No,” she stated. She let go of his hand and found it best to say nothing more. She stood for a minute, staring mutely at his chest, unsure how to get around him to the door. When she spoke again, she was down to a murmur. “I’ll let you shower.” She moved in, intending for him to step back. He didn’t.
“You don’t feel safe anymore?” he whispered. “With me?”
She felt too much and that was a big, unprecedented problem. “You’ve never given me a reason not to feel safe with you,” she replied.
He cursed. Hanging his head, he stepped aside. “Go,” he gestured. “Go on.”
She went to the door, trying not to lunge for escape.
How did one escape oneself?
When she was on the other side of the jamb, she glanced back. His hands were braced on his hips and his head was still low. His right ribs faced her. She wanted to climb them with her fingers as if up a ladder. Her fingertips burned, guilty with possibility. “Let Miss Zelda, Prometheus and me take you home.” When he raised his head, she added, “We’re headed in the same direction.”
“Are we?” he questioned.
“Yes,” she answered, trying to avoid any subtext. His shorts were unbuttoned and loose around his navel when he moved. Her fingers weren’t the only parts of her that burned anymore, and she wondered how she’d gotten this deep when she didn’t remember diving.
He walked to the jamb. He reached for the door to close it, stroking her with metallic eyes. Reaching up, he grazed his knuckles across her cheek. “You’ve got dirt on your face, Freckles.”
She backed up quickly. “You said you were done. With Freckles.”
His lowered his hand and anchored it with the other by pressing his thumb into the center of the offending palm. “Sorry. I’m no good at promises.”
“You realize that’s a choice, right?” she said. “You choose to keep a promise or run from it.”
Gavin frowned. “Guru Bracken. That’s what I’m calling you from now on.”
“I’m not sure that’s any better,” she said as he shut the door. She heard the water running on the other side and showed herself out.
* * *
THE DOG BARKED at everything, even leaves skittering across pavement. He ran hell for leather after squirrels and other vermin. Gavin had even woken one morning at the sound of snuffing and howling from down below where Prometheus had wedged his large backside beneath the subfloor after he trapped the neighbor’s cat there.
It was too much to hope that the beast knew how to handle a leash. As Gavin tied his running shoes on the front step, he heard the dog panting lightly at his shoulder.
Gavin had stopped wondering if Mavis missed the brute. He’d stopped waiting for the dog to give up on him and go back to her. Prometheus had loped after him for ten days, straying outdoors only to do his business and flush trespassing critters and one skittish deliveryman off the property.
Gavin made sure both shoes were good and knotted before sitting upright. He eyed the road ahead. He eyed the dog who stared back at him companionably. Reaching out, he spread his fingers over his snout and rubbed. The connection had become unspoken, ironclad, the kind Gavin had only ever felt with another four-legged friend. A part of him had held back because of his experience with Boots. However, where he’d been avoiding Miss Zelda and Mavis, he hadn’t been able to reject the dog’s company.
“No leash,” Gavin decided. “You’re in charge. You with me?”
Prometheus pounced to all fours.
Gavin had snagged a ball cap from his duffel. He pulled it down over his head. Prometheus went down the porch steps and Gavin followed. “It’s been a while,” Gavin warned. “Go easy on me.”
Once they reached the street, Prometheus trotted across the asphalt. Gavin stopped as he sniffed a gray minivan parked on the tree-lined shoulder. Waiting for the dog to lift his leg on one of the tires and be done with it, he dug deep into a lunge. Muscles protested. He stretched them a mite farther before trying the other leg. He stretched his quads, holding each foot behind him.
He’d warmed up his calves and hamstrings when he realized Prometheus had drawn a full pacing circle around the van. Standing straight out of a groin stretch, Gavin left his hands on his hips and moved closer. “What’s up, boy?”
Prometheus lifted a paw to the van door. Gavin took a few steps down the road to view the van from the front. A shining silver sunshade veiled the windshield. He frowned as the dog continued to sniff at the seam of the closed passenger door. Then he whistled. “Come on. We can check it out later.”
Prometheus answered the summons, falling into a light trot. He looked back only once before closing the gap between him and Gavin, staying close to the narrow lane’s outer band. He stayed to Gavin’s right. Intuitive—just like his owner, who also never strayed to Gavin’s blind side.
The breeze picked up, peeling back the tight shrink-wrap cloak of humidity. The trees veiled most of the sun from street level, dappling asphalt that was cracked with age but not broken under Gavin’s feet.
He picked up the pace. He was sweating already. He was out of shape. But he wanted to push. To prove Mavis right, or to prove Mavis wrong? He wasn’t sure which.
The road inclined. Prometheus ran in time with the slap of Gavin’s shoes. Gavin’s ribs protested, but he fought it out.
Prometheus bounded ahead, giving a joyful bark that knocked Gavin off course. He saw the rose-covered mailbox out of his periphery. He gleaned the round house stacked on pilings beyond it. Slowing, he ground to a halt just before the road’s rocky edge.
Prometheus yapped up the walk to Mavis’s empty drive, all but skipping home. Gavin planted his hands on his hips as his lungs took gulps from the tepid, merciless air. Pivoting, he looked long in the direction he’d come.
Zelda had mentioned that the road from her house to Mavis’s was three and a half miles. The distance was nothing to what Gavin had run regularly while in the SEAL teams or even high school. But still…
When he had his breath back, he whistled through his teeth to catch Prometheus’s attention before tearing off down the lane back to Zelda’s.
They lapped it once, and then again the following day. On the third day, Prometheus chased something off into a neighbor’s yard. Gavin let the dog catch up, keeping the pace.
He drank fresh air, as thick as it was. He sipped it deep. He reacquainted himself with the zap of blood that moved like magic through every inch of him, the music of it swimming against his inner ear.
He forgot about the gray van. So eager was he to get it on again with his Nikes, he hadn’t thought to check or help Prometheus investigate, as he’d promised previously. He was halfway to Mavis’s when he noticed it again.
His pace slowed. This time, Prometheus gave the van a wide berth. Gavin, however, stared, trying to identify it as the same one from three days ago. As he and Prometheus ran on, he saw that the sunshade was gone. He thought he could make out a round face behind the wheel.
Something rumbled in the distance, bringing Gavin’s attention skyward. Also something he’d forgotten? To check the forecast. The overcast glint hadn’t seemed threatening when they struck out from Zelda’s. But he could smell rain as the wind dredged off the river, bringing its fishy perfume to crescendo. Prometheus pulled ahead. Gavin hurried to catch up as thunder knelled.
Prometheus bolted, his sleek back curving as he lunged up the incline.
Gavin waved when the dog tossed a look back over his shoulder. “You’re all right. Keep going.” Feeling like an old man, he lengthened his strides.
It wasn’t until Prometheus let out a frantic set of barks that Gavin thought to look around again. He nearly tripped over his feet when he saw what was creeping some fifteen yards behind him.
The van. Gavin stopped. The tires grabbed pavement and the vehicle came to a standstill.
Followed.
The skin on the back of Gavin’s neck tautened. Wariness sank in. The anger, too, and frustration. Goddamn. Not this again.
It’d been years since he’d been tailed. As long as a decade. But he knew what happened when he strayed to Fairhope and stayed there long enough for the news of his return to travel upriver.
Still? he wondered wildly. He was in his midthirties and she was still having him followed?
Anger quickly morphed into rage. Gavin couldn’t see the driver, no matter how hard he squinted. That didn’t stop him from following the towering impulse to approach the bastard in gaping steps. He raised his arms and his voice. “You and me. We got business, asswipe?”
The engine revved. Gavin kept approaching. The driver swung wide, but Gavin managed to grab hold of the passenger mirror anyway. He held on for two seconds, feet tapping fast on the asphalt to keep up. Six seconds. The van clipped a mailbox. Prometheus shrieked. The van was level with him now. The dog lunged for Gavin’s feet.
Gavin could see him going under the back tire. Boots entered his mind and he let go, instantly. He twisted to catch Prometheus’s black blur, going down on his arm and latching onto the dog’s studded collar with the other.
The van’s tires screeched to a halt, sideways across the road. Gavin glowered at the back window. His pulse came down as he waited for the driver to get out or drive off. The reverse lights on the van made Gavin come to his feet quickly. “Off the road,” he ordered Prometheus, watching the vehicle carefully.
The van crept back. It reversed slowly until Gavin could see through the driver’s window, whirring mechanically so he was face-to-face with the driver.
The man had donned a pair of sunglasses and a hat, pulled low over his forehead. “You all right, buddy?”
Gavin stared for a moment as Prometheus whined behind him, pacing a restless circle on the sandy shoulder. “Yeah.” He spat onto the asphalt. There was blood in his mouth. Hostile, he added, “You could’ve hit my dog.”
“Sorry,” the man said. He was younger than Gavin expected. Younger than Gavin, and by a stretch. “I got jumpy when you came at me like that. Didn’t know what to do.”
This guy knew who Gavin was and knew what he’d done overseas. He knew because she’d told him. “New on the job, are you?”
“Job?” the man said, feigning ignorance.
Gavin shook his hand. He looked around. The street was still. The rain was coming, the breath of it blowing sand across his legs. Prometheus’s whining heightened at the signs of the encroaching storm. His loyalty to Gavin kept him posted at his side. “You’re a PI. Right? Private investigator?”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because you aren’t the first,” Gavin volunteered. “Or the brightest. You boys are usually either a PI, a lover or both.”
The kid had the decency to bluster. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking abo—”
“I’m talking about Tiffany Howard,” Gavin snapped, “and how she hired you to shadow me. Don’t play dumb, Junior. You know what I am.”
The kid licked his lips, looking around once. Checking for witnesses. “She said you were a SEAL, but not to worry about it because you’re retired. You can’t see.”
“I can see plain enough!” Gavin lobbed the words in the kid’s face. When he twitched, Gavin fought the urge to draw circles with his feet, like Prometheus. Lightning tossed white light from a distance, setting Prometheus off with a fit of barking. Gavin tried to calm his anger.
It didn’t help that she’d thrown this greenhorn at him. She’d sent a sacrificial lamb on the hunt for an operative. Gavin could all but hear her…
He’s wounded. Just don’t make any loud noises. He won’t see you…
The hell with her, Gavin fumed silently. The storm clouds were closing in, making the world dark. “Where is she?”
The kid didn’t think to challenge the graveled question. “Panama City Beach.”
Gavin waited a beat. Prometheus’s head bumped against the back of his thigh, almost a shove. Gavin nodded. “Don’t let me catch you here again,” he told the man behind the wheel.
The guy didn’t hesitate to put the van in gear. He mumbled something about “thank you” and “goodbye” and was gone.
Gavin ground his teeth when he failed to read the license plate. He watched until the taillights disappeared around the corner. “Damn,” he said, scowling.
Did she think he was still a kid? Did she think there was anything left that she could say anymore to hurt him? Threaten him? Scare him off?
Tiffany Howard—the woman Gavin had once thought of as Mom—had left him well enough alone after Gavin had told her to stop talking to him, stop interfering. As a teenager, he’d learned to see the behavior for what it was, something he hadn’t been able to see as a child—psychological abuse. When he was a child, it’d been easy for her to love him. Tiffany only loved those she could manipulate.
That child had disappointed her, however. Because he’d grown into a man. Gavin was the picture of his father, Cole—Tiffany’s ex-husband. Bitterness had forested over the fertile ground of disappointment when he made it clear he knew his father was the better parent and that he wanted to live with him and Briar on a permanent basis.
There were times, like now, when he could remember how his face had stung. Being slapped was something he’d earned on and off as a mouthy boy.
Mommy won’t do it again. Promise.
He’d believed. Until she’d taught him something different about promises.
Tiffany had never been happy and she punished those around her who thought they could be. Even when that person was her own flesh and blood. Her offspring.
Prometheus brought Gavin back to the present, lapping his fingertips with his tongue. “All right, all right,” Gavin said, brushing him off. “It’s all right.”
Thunder rattled. Prometheus’s whine reached fever pitch. He hopped back and forth, then took off. Gavin joined him. His elbow burned. He’d jarred his right knee. More bleeding, he saw as he twisted his arm around to view the damage. Cursing raggedly, he picked up the pace. Zelda’s was farther behind than Mavis’s was ahead.
At Mavis’s drive, Prometheus made a quick turn off the road. The hiss of rain, a wall of it, chased him from the street and under the eaves of the odd round house.
Gavin came to stand in the mist blowing sideways under the covering. Soaking it in, he closed his eyes and listened. The patter of rain on water was near and seductive. God but he’d always loved the water, whatever body of it he could find.
Prometheus whined some more. Gavin touched the dog’s head, inviting him against the side of his leg. A summer storm had been the only thing to stir Prometheus before sunrise, cracking enough lightning for a club strobe and shaking the walls of the old house with the din of the righteous. Gavin had found a hundred-pound animal planted firmly in his lap, squealing like a lost piglet. He’d responded as any man should, by wrapping his arms around the beast, laying his head down close on the pillow next to his and rubbing his ear until the chaos ended.
It had been two nights since Gavin had dreamed of Benji—storm or no storm.
Maybe Mavis was right.
He knew she was right. Therapy dogs weren’t a joke. Trained or adopted from shelters, they comforted veterans with PTSD. Gavin had never thought of getting one of his own, but the potential had planted itself as much as Prometheus had on his right side.
The dog fit.
Unless Gavin left. The PI had been here for days. The news that Gavin was back in Fairhope, trying to make a stab at civilian life for the first time as an adult, had reached Tiffany, clearly. He’d see her at some point or another, he was sure. And he had little doubt she’d try to tell him what his itchy feet had told him at the inn…
Run. This is no place for you.
To hell with her, he thought again, with such vehemence his temples rang with it. He didn’t want to think about the headache that was Tiffany. He didn’t want to contemplate the mess that was his future with or without her telling him all the things he’d heard before. Not when, for a second, he’d learned to stretch inside the bounds of his own mind again—stretch and, just maybe, breathe.
“Stay,” he told Prometheus before ducking under the spray of the rain. Prometheus gave a protesting yap and the sky remonstrated. Nonetheless, Gavin went toward the promise of the river.
The grassy yard started to yield, softening to the water’s edge. He found the shape of a dock. The planks were stable, he noted as he walked to the end until the sound of water spread around him in a triumphant 360. Lightning flickered, not far off judging by the deafening boom that flattened over the top of him. Gavin didn’t move. He closed his eyes against the gray cast of the sky and the fast fall of fat raindrops and let his other senses open to the deluge.
“What are you doing, muttonhead?”
From overhead, the voice sounded teeny. Gavin followed it around and up in the direction of the first floor of the house. He shook water from his face, peering blindly. “Frexy?” he called.
“Get up here!” she called to him.
It wasn’t a question.
Through the rain, Gavin couldn’t see much except the dark flash of Prometheus as he scrammed to a set of stairs. Gavin found them, too. They led him to an open balcony. Gavin nearly grinned when he saw Mavis’s form leaning out of the open glass door to the interior.
“Wait,” she said, holding up a hand at his approach. “Jesus. Let me get a mop.”
Gavin glanced down. Rain sluiced off him, as freely as it peeled off the heavy bottom of the clouds. He ran his hand over his face, then over the top of his head. His hair was starting to grow, thick and black. It was about time for another fade. “I’m all right,” he called after her.
“You’re going to get struck by lightning,” she admonished from within. “I’m bringing you a towel!”
He waited several seconds before she came back. “Inside,” she instructed, handing him the towel as he crossed the threshold. “Prometheus, sit on the rug. You’re both drenched.”
Gavin dried his chest, then his neck, before rubbing the terry cloth over his face and head. It smelled like her. As he moved the towel down the length of his arm, he peered at the dim surroundings. “Athames?” he wondered, only half teasing.
“I’d be more worried about the poison broth,” she informed him. “Full moon brings it to totality.”
He cracked a smile and finished drying off. Still he dripped on her rug. Terry cloth was no match for sopping running shorts. “I forgot how quick these things pop up in the summertime,” he admitted, squinting through the glass of the door.
“You’re running,” she said in surprise.
“As if the info chain that runs hot between here and Zelda’s hasn’t already brought you in on that fact.” When she only stared at him, he forced the truth out. “You were right.”
“It feels good,” she surmised.
“Feels great,” he said. He sensed her silent mental probe. “Slept okay the last few nights. Don’t know if it’s something Miss Zelda slipped in the vegan entrées or…”
“At least you’re eating,” she said. “That helps, too. How’re the headaches?”
He lifted a restless shoulder. His good eye was slowly adjusting to the darkness. “Your power’s out.”
“Just,” she answered. “It’ll come back. The power company’s usually quick on the jump out here.”
He roved around the short space of the rug. He was still running high on adrenaline. It didn’t do well to keep him in place.
“You’re bleeding,” she realized.
“Huh?” he said. He extended his elbow. “Oh. Yeah.”
Her fingers were light on his skin as she went up on her toes to get a better look. “It looks like…road rash. Did you fall?”
He grunted.
She sighed at him. “I’ll get the kit.”
“Ice will be fine,” he told her instead.
“I can fix you up.”
“Just bring the ice, Frexy,” he told her. “I’ll do the rest.” Once she’d disappeared in what appeared to be the kitchen, he sniffed. He could tell her the truth. He could tell her about the van. Something stopped him. He didn’t want her to fuss, and he wasn’t going to stop running. And he wasn’t threatened. He wouldn’t cave to anyone who tried telling him he should feel that way, either.
He might be partially blind, but underneath, he was still a SEAL. SEALs took care of themselves—and of their own.
She came back with an ice pack. “This won’t do much.”
“It’ll do fine. At least ’til I get back to Zelda’s,” he reasoned. He made a grab for the pack. She kept it back, rotating around him to press it to the abraded skin herself. It was cold. His skin burned beneath it.
She paused a moment, waiting for him to flinch. When he didn’t, she said quietly, “You should be more careful.”
“It won’t happen again,” he informed her.
“Good,” she said, patting the point of his elbow over and over with the ice. “You’re lucky it wasn’t your face.”
“Ah, better the face than anything else,” he noted. “It’s already FUBARed.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
He glanced in her direction. “You like my face?”
She kept her attention on the rash. Her voice was a murmur. “I have trouble imagining anyone complaining about it.”
He felt a grin warming the rim of his lips. He laid his hand over hers. “It’s all right now.” When she took the pack away, he said, “Thanks. I haven’t seen you much lately.” Was it just him or was she wearing something strappy? He tried not to peer too closely. He saw legs, her legs. Pale, just like the rest of her. He wondered if they could boast a few leopard spots, too. Her feet were bare, he couldn’t help noticing. He cleared his throat and went back to being restless. “Avoiding me much?”
“You flatter yourself.”
“Maybe,” he mused.
“You look…better,” she observed. “Much better than the last time I saw you close-up. That makes me happy.”
He liked that she was looking at him. “You miss him? The beastie?” he said, pointing in the direction of hardwood flooring where he could hear Prometheus’s nails clipping in listless circles.
“He’s helping you. Far be it from me to pull rank.”
“Canine mommy trumps first-class petty officer?”
“Always,” she said. “But he likes being with you. Otherwise, he’d come back for more than just a rainy-day visit.”
“But I’ve robbed you of your guard dog.” He thought of the van. “You got a gun?”
She pulled a face. “Yes. A gift from my brother.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
“I don’t want to use it.”
“Do you know how to use it?” he asked again, planting his foot on the subject.
“Kyle taught me how to rack and fire,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t exactly been practicing. But I can handle a weapon even if the need for it won’t arise.”
“It could,” he warned. “If I doubted for a second you’d use whatever munitions you’ve got, I’d hand the dog back to you in a second.”
“I’ll use it,” she said, exasperated.
Thank God. “Thank you,” he replied. Again, he looked at her, good and long. He lifted a hand. “What are you wearing now?”
“What does it matter?”
“Well, it appears that your gams are showing.”
“Yes. We call these shorts,” she said, grabbing the high hem of the article of clothing that revealed so much.
“So you finally got the memo,” he said.
“What memo?”
“That it’s hot enough for the river to boil crawfish on its own.”
Mavis shifted toward the glass door. The light from outside undulated over her torso in a watery wave. “I guess with this water rising we might finally find out if there’s really an alligator living under my dock. And you’ll have a little trout to break your vegan fast at Miss Zelda’s.”
“You have a gator?” he asked, impressed.
“Possibly. Why do you think I told you to scoot from the river’s edge?” she asked, sounding amused at least.
He tried to see through the runny lines on the other side of the pane. It was no use. “I hear you and Zelda are driving to Mobile tomorrow to do your ghost thing.”
“Are you interested?”
With his forearm propped high on the door, he muttered, “You might want to start with a less loaded question.”
She didn’t touch him. Still, he felt her like a cattle brand. His neck heated.
She was the only one who, he thought, might still see him as a whole man, rather than half. Still, the skin at the base of his spine prickled, setting off a chain reaction until he felt the effect across the width of his shoulders. His toes curled.
Damn but Guru Bracken had a way.
They stood facing the wall of water for a long minute. Her Zen tone filled the vacuum. “I meant, ‘Would you like to tag along?’” He rolled his shoulder in a doubting shrug. She skipped ahead of his denial. “The job isn’t in the city. It’s rural. The bank foreclosed on a large property. The area is ripe for resale, but the family who lost the land hyped rumors that it was haunted. They ran a hayride attraction every year around Halloween.”
“The bank doesn’t think anyone will buy it with Overlook Hotel vibes?” he asked.
“You’d be surprised how fast a real estate prospect can dry up once neighbors start talking anomalies.”
“How often do banks call Scooby and the gang?”
She snorted softly at the reference. “The man handling the deed to the property is an old friend of Zelda’s.”
“She seems to have a lot of those.”
“Jealous?” she teased.
“I met Errol.”
“What’d you think of him?”
“Not what I expected,” he said. “He never says a word, just comes over to fish. I’ve never seen him exchange anything with her other than fruit and fishing tackle. He’s a lot like you.”
“How?”
“He stares holes into me,” Gavin said. He traced the shape of her nose in the runny light. “Great big holes.”
Her gaze turned from the window again to swallow him up.
He gnawed on his lip, then winced when the abrasion on the inside tore open again. He sucked on it for a moment until the blood flow slowed. He sealed it with a flick of his tongue.
If he could see anything clearly again, he thought…he’d want it to be her. He didn’t know exactly what is was about Mavis. “I don’t think I’ve made much of an impression on him. At least with you…well, you seem to like what you see.”
The sharp cut of her hair came down to veil the unshaded portion of her face, leaving him groping for an impression. “Errol is a man of few words. I think I’ve only ever heard him whistle on drives.”
“He doesn’t like drifters living with his girl,” Gavin wagered.
“You two have a lot in common,” Mavis said cryptically. “I’m sure you’d get along, if you took the trouble to get to know each other.”
“Blind and mute make a winning combo,” Gavin said sourly.
“You’re not totally blind; he’s not entirely mute, from what Zelda tells me. And there are thousands of different forms of communication. Pick one. Start from there.”
He gave a miniature salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Come with us.” The light hit her face again. “The weather’s supposed to be sunny. There’s no digging involved. As I understand, the land’s something to see.” When he rolled his eyes, she added, “You used to love coming to the farm and running like a fiend through the woods and fields.”
“I was twelve,” he reminded her. “Adolescence. Adulthood. War. You tend to lose the urge to run like something imaginary’s chasing ya.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, incisive. Her voice dropped as she tapped his sternum. “Weren’t you still trying to run two weeks ago?”
His mouth quickly settled into a frown.
“I’ll buy you a burger,” she offered. “A thick juicy one slathered in gooey white cheese.”
“Careful, Frexy,” he advised. “You’re talking food porn.”
“There could be mustard involved,” she went on. There was mischief in her voice. “Maybe onion rings…”
“Mmm.” His mouth watered. He shook his head, closed his eyes, to fight the temptation. “You know how to make a man hungry.”
“What do you say, frogman?”
He stopped fighting the need to smile at her. “You play dirty, Bracken. I like that.”
He was halfway sure she was smiling back.
The dog ruined the moment with a loud, solitary woof.
Mavis jerked. “Storm’s breaking.”
Gavin had to sidestep quickly as Prometheus bounded at the door. Mavis opened it just in time for his paws to scramble across the doorstep. They heard him darting quickly across the deck and down the steps. “He has a nervous bladder,” Mavis explained. She braced her hands against the small of her back. “So…we’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You win,” he stated with some surprise. He took a step back and told himself to keep going. “See you tomorrow, Velma. And the rest of Mystery Inc.”
“You’re not funny,” she remarked.
“I’m a little funny,” he said in parting before descending the stairs to the yard.