Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

“I’m surprised you remember that.”

He set the statuette down. “That was big news to those of us in the military. Some guys were pissed, felt coming down on them was too harsh, but I thought you did a good thing. We can’t pretend to be heroes if we’re acting like thugs.”

It felt strange to be alone with him here in her most personal space. No one had ever been here before. “Want a tour?”

Even as she asked the question, she realized that the adrenaline she’d been running on all day was fast disappearing, leaving her empty, exhausted.

“This is obviously the living room, kitchen, and dining area.” She walked through the kitchen toward the hallway.

“Hey, that’s my postcard.”

She turned to find him standing in front of her refrigerator holding the postcard from Dubai, surprise on his face. “You left it in my room.”

“You kept it.” His gaze met hers, something in his eyes that made her look away.

She turned and walked down the hallway toward the bedroom area. “This is the guest room where you’ll be sleeping. It has its own bathroom. Across the hallway is my office. The master bedroom is at the end of the hallway.”

While he glanced around the guest bedroom, postcard still in hand, she walked to the windows and closed the blinds, her head starting to throb again, the day’s events weighing down on her, the smiling face of the young suicide bomber stuck in her mind. “I should start dinner.”

“You don’t need to take care of me, Laura.” He set the postcard on the nightstand. “You should rest. Go soak in the tub or lie down for a while. I asked you out, didn’t I? Let me take care of dinner.”

“SOPHIE AND HOLLY said you’d been wounded, that you’re on medical leave.”

Javier nodded. “I’ll be back on active duty soon.”

They’d finished dinner a while ago. Javier had ordered chicken marsala, a dish he knew she loved, from an Italian place down the street, and they now sat on the sofa, a beer in his hand, a glass of white wine in hers. He was trying to keep her mind off what had happened today, though he knew that was probably impossible.

She had changed into faded jeans and a silky blue sweater that hugged her soft curves, the sweater picking up the blue in her eyes. “What happened? Or maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”

He told her only what he’d told the others. “There’s not a lot to say. We were ambushed. They had the high ground, put four rounds in me. I spent a few weeks in a hospital and then a couple of months in physical therapy.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were soft with sympathy. “Four bullets? You must have come close to dying.”

He shrugged. “It’s a hazard of wearing the uniform.”

“Have you ever thought of leaving the SEALs?”

“I signed on to do a job that most men can’t do. I still want to do that job.” The topic was getting close to a raw nerve, so he changed it, returning to an earlier subject. “If you love TV journalism, why did you go to work at a paper?”

“Standing in front of a camera . . . I just feel too exposed. I was looking into that lens, the tally light blinking red to show the camera was live when . . .”

AK fire. Screams. Blood spatter.

Javier had watched that scene explode from the other side of the lens.

She studied her wine. “That probably sounds lame.”

“No. It doesn’t.” It bothered him that she didn’t realize how amazing she was just to have survived. “How do you like the newspaper biz?”

“The people are good, but it’s . . . It’s not the same thing.”

They sat together in silence, B. B. King turned down low in the background.

“I kept it in my handbag.”

Javier didn’t follow. “Kept what in your handbag?”

“The postcard of Dubai City.” She took a sip. “You left it in my room. I kept it in my handbag. It was there the day I was abducted.”

“Oh.”

She avoided his gaze. “It was my memento of you, of that weekend.”

Did she understand what she was telling him? Until now, he’d wondered if he’d been the only one who felt that their weekend together had been something different, something special. He’d left Dubai with his head full of her, determined to see her again. Now he knew those three nights and two days had meant something to her, too.

“I’m glad you kept it.”

“The State Department sent my handbag and computer back with my suitcase to my mother in Stockholm. My poor mother! She’d just lost a daughter, and then she was faced with dealing with my belongings—my loft in Manhattan, my car, my bank accounts. She sold it all—every bit of it. My furniture, my clothes, the art on my walls. She gave the money to Columbia University in my name.”

Javier hadn’t known any of this.

“A few weeks after I was rescued, I learned that I had nothing except what had been in the suitcase and my handbag. My mother had kept most of that. She had this postcard hanging on her refrigerator. When I saw it, I remembered that weekend—all of it. I—I took the postcard back.”

“It must have been hard to find out everything you’d once owned, everything you’d worked for was gone.”

“I was grateful to be free, grateful to be alive. But, yeah, it was hard. It was as if I really had died.” She took another sip of wine. “Columbia returned most of the money, but I still had to start over.”

Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the situation. But Javier suddenly couldn’t keep his damned mouth shut. “I never forgot you, Laura, not for a day. When they said you’d been executed, I wanted to kill that bastard with my bare hands.”

He could count on one hand the times he’d gotten tears in his eyes—and the day they’d announced that Laura had been murdered was one of them.

She met his gaze, eyes filled with regret. “I forgot you. I forgot everything, everyone. I almost forgot myself. Every night during the last prayer I would use the silence to repeat my name in my mind in English and Swedish. I was so sure they would figure it out and that Al-Nassar would follow through on his threat to cut off my head.”

“We operators get training on how to survive captivity, but you did it on your own, alone. You won, Laura. You beat him.”

“Only because I was rescued.” She tilted her head away from him, a sad smile on her face. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep, when the nightmares are bad, I close my eyes and pretend that the men from that SEAL team are here in the loft in their gear, armed to the teeth and watching over me, the tall one standing watch over my bed. I know it’s silly, but there are nights when it’s the only thing that helps me sleep.”

Javier felt a hitch in his chest. She’d been comforting herself at night by thinking of him—without knowing she was thinking of him. “That’s not silly. You’ve been through hell, Laura. But tonight I’m here. You’ll be safe.”

Tonight, she wouldn’t need to pretend. Part of that SEAL team would be watching over her for real.

LAURA LEFT JAVIER watching the evening news and went to take a shower, needing to wash the reek of smoke and emergency room off her skin before she tried to sleep. Hot water and facial cleanser stung the nicks on her face, the lump where she’d struck her head tender as she shampooed, her mind dull from exhaustion. Or maybe that was the effects of the concussion. It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to think anyway.

She didn’t want to think about what had almost happened today or the teenager who now lay on a slab in charred pieces or the parents who were grieving the loss of their son. She didn’t want to think about her helpless daughter out there somewhere, a prisoner of terrorists. She didn’t want to think about what tomorrow would bring. And for a time, Laura let the water pour over her skin, her eyes closed, the heat and the scent of lavender soap soothing her, lulling her into forgetfulness.

She’d just turned off the spray when there came a knock at the bathroom door, startling her, making her pulse spike.

Javier called softly to her. “Laura, the police are here.”

“I’ll be right out.” She dried herself, combed her hair, and dressed, sliding into a pair of gray leggings and a purple oversized sweater, the muffled sound of men’s voices drifting from the living room.

There, she found Javier talking with Marc, a man she didn’t recognize, and Police Chief Stephen Irving, whom she’d seen on TV but never met before. The four men rose to their feet as she entered.

Marc gave her a nod. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.”

Chief Irving, an older man with a bristly white crew cut, held out a beefy hand, regarding her through world-weary blue eyes. “Ms. Nilsson, I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances. I admire your work.”

She took his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

“I believe you know Hunter, DPD’s SWAT captain.” He motioned toward Marc with a nod of his head. “This is Detective Brent Callahan. He left Boston PD behind to head our EOD unit.”

Detective Callahan reached out, shook her hand. Tall with dark blond hair, blue eyes, and a deep tan, he looked like a man who spent his life outdoors. “I’m sorry about what happened today. I worked EOD—that’s explosive ordnance demolition—for the army in Iraq and Afghanistan. My team and I are heading the investigation on the bombing. I’ll do my best to keep you informed and answer your questions.”

“I appreciate that.” Suddenly remembering her manners, she gestured to the sofa and two leather chairs. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Would anyone like something to drink?”