Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

Those words and the dark tone of Nate’s voice stopped Javier in his tracks. He turned to face his friend, some of his anger bleeding away.

“What are you telling me?”

LAURA PATTED THE mare’s velvety muzzle, fighting to hold back her tears. “I just want my life back. Some days I feel like this will never end, like the damage that bastard did will define my life forever.”

She was thinking not only of threats against her life, but of Klara, too—the little girl she’d been forced to bring into the world and wanted desperately to protect.

Megan reached out, put a hand on her shoulder. “I want to tell you something.”

As they walked to the next stall and the next, Megan told Laura how she’d been only fourteen and in juvenile detention for shoplifting when a group of guards started taking turns raping her. The assaults had happened almost daily and had gone on for weeks, until she’d told a member of the facility’s medical staff. But by then she’d been so broken that she’d spent the next decade fighting heroin addiction.

Laura felt sick for her—men brutalizing a child like that. Still, she would never have imagined that the polished young woman who walked beside her had been a victim of something so violent or a heroin addict. “I’m so sorry, Megan.”

“I was busted for heroin possession and went to prison, where I found out I was pregnant. They took Emily away from me an hour after she was born. I lost her to Child Protective Services. It took a long time and a lot of hard work to get her back.” Megan’s voice quavered. “But now I have Emily. I have Nate. I love my life. I’m happier than I ever thought I could be. And one day you’ll feel that way, too. They’ll catch these bastards, and you’ll be able to put all of this behind you.”

Megan couldn’t know she was treading on Laura’s deepest pain—giving birth to a baby in captivity and having it taken from her.

Tears blurred Laura’s vision, her throat tight. “Thank you. I hope you’re right. The men who hurt you . . . I need to know. Did they pay?”

“Yes. Three are dead. One is serving life in prison, and he won’t be raping anyone else. Marc shot him when he tried to kill Sophie, severed his spine.”

The same men had tried to kill Sophie?

Why did Laura know nothing about this?

You’ve never really taken time to get to know your coworkers. That’s why.

It was a mistake she intended to remedy—as soon as this nightmare was over.

“I know you must feel alone in this, but you’re not.” Megan smiled “Jack, Nate, and I want to be here for you. Your I-Team friends are here for you. They really care about you, Laura—Sophie, Kat, Joaquin, Matt, Alex. All of them.”

Laura felt touched to the core that Megan had trusted her with all of this. It couldn’t have been easy. “Thank you.”

They finished their tour of the stables, and then it was time for Megan to meet Emily’s bus at the gate.

Laura found her way back inside the house and headed up to her room, unable to take her mind off what Megan had told her, her head aching again, her body chilled from spending so much time in the stables. She was thinking about taking a hot bath when she remembered there was a sauna off the gym. She changed into her robe, grabbed a towel, and headed downstairs. She was passing the library when she heard it.

Guitar music.

She stopped, listened.

It sounded like classical Spanish guitar, the music darkly passionate with a melancholy feel that put an ache in her chest. It started slowly, then gathered momentum, notes spilling from the strings in a rich torrent, braced from beneath by deep, powerful chords that sounded like a pulse or a heartbeat. She pushed open the library door a crack—and saw Javier.

He sat on a sofa opposite a lit fireplace. His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed, his head bowed slightly, guitar in his arms. The fingers of his left hand moved over the frets, while those of his right moved over the strings, rich sound resonating from the polished wood. Then his hands fell still, and the music stopped.

He was looking at her. “Laura.”

Forgetting that she was wearing only her bathrobe, she walked over to sit on a plush sofa across from him. “I didn’t know you played guitar. Please. Don’t stop.”

His gaze fixed on hers, he began to play again from the beginning. Music filled the library’s two floors, its emotion drawing Laura in, holding her. How he could be responsible for all those notes, all that sound, she didn’t know. His eyes slowly drifted shut as the music began to build, his brow furrowing, the intensity on his handsome face growing as he gave himself over to his playing.

Laura had seen that naked passion on his face before, only then he’d been holding her, kissing her, making love to her. He’d been . . .

No. Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.

Despite the music, or perhaps because of it, she couldn’t stop the flow of emotion within her. A lump in her throat, she found herself unable to take her gaze off him as the music reached its climax, the power of it sending a shiver up her spine, stirring something behind her breastbone. As he plucked the last few notes from the strings, the sound reverberating through the room, she found herself blinking back tears.

He opened his eyes, his gaze locking with hers.

“That was . . . beautiful.” She swallowed hard. “You have real talent. How long have you been playing?”

The same hands that had once worked magic on her body plucked idly at the strings, loosing strands of melody. “I started after graduating from BUD/S. I needed a way to kill time and clear my mind, something to do during downtime. I took a few lessons, played when I could, took the guitar with me on deployments when I was able. At one point, Nate threatened to break it over a rock.”

Laura couldn’t help but smile. “He wouldn’t say that if he heard you play now.”

Javier’s gaze traveled over her, a puzzled expression coming over his face. “You’re ready for bed already?”

“I thought I’d go sit in the sauna and warm up.”

“Pretty cold out in the stables?”

It was then Laura noticed the shadows in his eyes. “Is something wrong?”

He looked away, strummed the strings. “Nothing’s wrong. I just have a lot on my mind. Enjoy the sauna.”

The words were out before she realized it. “Why don’t you join me?”

JAVIER STRIPPED DOWN to his skin, grabbed a towel from the shelf, and wrapped it around his hips, tucking the loose end in tightly, a sense of heightened excitement humming stupidly through his blood.

This isn’t about sex, pendejo. Think you can handle it?

By asking him to join her in the sauna, Laura wasn’t inviting him to make out. He needed to get that through both of his heads before he stepped out of the bathroom and joined her. For her, the sauna was just a social activity. In Dubai, she’d told him how her family—grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and even close friends—often sat together naked in the heat, a way of keeping warm and healthy during the long, dark Swedish winter. Knowing this had helped Javier understand why she’d been so comfortable with nudity, showing not a hint of shame.

She was probably naked now, lying back on the teak benches, utterly and beautifully bare, her hair fanned out around her, her arms stretched languidly over her head. A memory of silky, long legs, full breasts, and sweet curving hips sent a jolt of heat to his groin, threatening to turn his towel into a tent.

You might as well be her brother—or her grandpa.

And then like a nightmare it hit him—an image of his abuelos sitting naked in the sauna with the rest of his family, smiling at them all, their faces like wrinkled apples, their bodies . . .

¡Que mierda! Holy fuck!

A shudder ran down his spine.

He took a breath, blew it out, and opened the bathroom door, the heated floor warm against his feet as he crossed the room and stepped into the sauna.

Relief and disappointment hit him when he saw she wasn’t naked. She sat in one corner, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her body, concealing her from her breasts to her upper thighs, her legs stretched out on the teak bench, her ankles crossed, her hands lying relaxed in her lap. Her eyes were closed, her hair hanging in a single, pale mass over one creamy shoulder, steam making the ends curl.

He closed the door behind him, the bright scent of warmed wood filling his nostrils. He couldn’t help the way his pulse jumped at the sight of her, nor could he fight off a sinking sense of sadness. The Laura he’d imagined lying naked on the bench like some Nordic sex goddess had been the woman he’d met in Dubai. The Laura who sat there now, looking almost fragile by contrast, her back pressed into the corner, was the woman who’d survived eighteen months of brutality.

A woman who’s been hurt like she was hurt needs a lot of time and love to heal.

Nate’s words came back to him—not just words, Javier reminded himself, but insight based on experience. What Nate had told Javier about Megan had left Javier feeling like an asshole—for blowing up at Nate, for not knowing more about Megan, for getting too caught up in his own shit.

The whole world seemed to be wounded, broken, hurting.

Javier put that out of his mind and sat across from Laura, close enough to see her face clearly in the semidark, but not close enough for contact. He stretched out his legs as she had done, the wood warm and moist against his skin. “This reminds me of summertime in Humacao—hot and humid.”