Their only other meeting had been a few weeks after Noah was killed. Bennett had been injured in the same raid. Bad enough to get sent stateside and be given a Purple Heart. She’d been heavily pregnant and sallow faced and red eyed, her hair scraped back into a limp ponytail. A familiar black cloak of grief had weighed across her shoulders. The same outfit had stared back at him from the mirror every morning.
A different woman stood in front of him now. This one crackled with energy, with no hint of the guilt and grief that still plagued him. Somehow she’d come out the other side of Noah’s death with her hope intact, or at least refurbished.
“Did Noah talk about me?” she asked again. “About us?”
He refused to look her in the eye and admit her letters to Noah had provided him a lifeline. “Nights were long and lonely. It helped to talk. And Noah wanted to talk about you. He loved you.”
“Yeah, I know.” Her voice had softened.
He made the mistake of looking at her. Her eyes were a striking hazel framed by her thick golden-brown hair. What would she look like in the sunlight with a smile on her face? She was pretty in a way that made his chest ache.
Pity hid poorly in her eyes. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? He shook off the feelings of melancholy. “You seem to be doing well. You have a son.”
“I am, and I do. He’s five. Happy and good natured and sweet.”
“Like his dad then.” As soon as the words were out, Bennett wanted them back. “Or maybe like you, I don’t know—”
“No, he’s a mini-Noah in attitude if not looks.”
Noah had been over-the-moon excited that he was going to be a daddy. One bullet was all it took to steal that dream. The promise he’d made to Noah standing in the middle of a soybean field in Georgia still bound him to Harper no matter that he’d tried to break it with his gift of money.
“His name is Ben?”
“You didn’t know Noah wanted to name him after you?”
“Not really. No.” He remembered joking about the possibility with Noah, but the reality was sobering. And humbling.
The ensuing silence made him shift away from her stare. A shudder made its way down his back. Sarge had told him tall tales about a Mississippi swamp witch who stole poor wanderers’ souls. Harper looked prepared to extract his painfully.
“I’m glad things are well with you,” he said. “We’ve established I’m not taking the money back, so if there’s nothing else you need, I have work to do.” He walked away. His destination? Anywhere but next to her.
His rudeness was inexcusable, but he needed this woman gone and out of his life. The longer he was around her, the worse his insides became tangled. In BUD/S, an unknottable knot was called a whammy. Harper was his whammy.
“Actually, we have not established that fact.” She had followed him into the storage area in back of the shop where he kept equipment for overnight bookings. The lighting was dim. “But I’ll let it go for now, because I have other questions.”
He found a shadow and parked himself in it. Old habits. Even after all these years, his hands felt empty without a gun. Instead, he clasped Jack London’s fur, the softness and warmth a salve. “What kind of questions?”
“You were with Noah when he died.”
He hoped she couldn’t see his face. “Who told you that?”
“Allison Teague. Darren’s wife. Is it true?”
Truth, lie. Black, white. Dream, nightmare. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t telling her or anyone else. “You need to leave, Harper.”
The warning in his voice seemed to have no effect on her. She stepped closer. “Not until you tell me about the night he died.”
“Ask for the report.” He left the shadows feeling like a wild animal being chased out of its hidey-hole and pushed the back door open. The cold air washed over him and helped control the blaze of memories she’d sparked.
“I have and they sent me some vague bullshit meant for civilian consumption. I want to know if he was in pain. If he said anything. I want to know what his last moments were like.”
The wind tumbled her hair around her face and shoulders, her shiver noticeable. In spite of the hardships Harper had endured, she retained an enviable purity and innocence. People like Harper were familiar with TV death. Movie death. Not the stark reality of your best friend bleeding out in your arms. The pain of watching life leak out of Noah’s eyes, painfully, slowly, with a recognition of all the years he would miss with the love of his life and the child he’d never meet.
Some burdens were his to bear alone for the rest of his days.
“I know you miss Noah. I do, too. But I have nothing else to say.” He presented his back, his entire body tensed, his heartbeat blocking any noise. After what felt like an eternity, gravel crunched under tires and he looked over his shoulder. She was gone.
He should be glad she’d given up and left. Instead of relief, disappointment coursed through him.
Chapter 6
Past
“I’m not sure about this.” Noah smoothed the brown button-down shirt of his uniform.
Bennett slunk down in the backseat and hung on to the headrest to keep from getting flung across the seat into Noah on every turn. Hollis was driving, the only one of them with a car on base, and he darted down side streets like the local he was.
Hollis glanced up at the rearview mirror. “Not sure about what? Getting laid?”
“I’m only nineteen for one thing. The club probably won’t even let me in.”
Hollis chuckled, shook his head, and stopped short at the next red light. “Dude. That uniform you’re wearing is your ID and your panty dropper. That’s half the reason I joined up. Seen it all my life around here. The chicks go nuts over your bravery and shit. It’s not even a challenge, but I’ll take it.” Hollis exchanged a slapping handshake with Carter, who was sprawled in the shotgun seat.
Bennett kept his response to an eye roll. Hollis and Carter didn’t like him, but the way they avoided him at chow time and the whispers that stopped when he walked into their shared room didn’t bother Bennett at all.
But Noah had pleaded with him to come along, his nerves obvious, and Bennett couldn’t leave him hanging with Hollis and Carter as wingmen. That would have been plain cruel. Besides, seeing something beyond the concrete walls and the grinder while enjoying cold beer sounded appealing.
Carter draped an arm along the back of Hollis’s seat and twisted around, putting his large hooked nose in profile. The setting sun highlighted the constellation of acne on his visible cheek. “By the way, if we find some willing women, you boys will need alternative transportation home.”
Bennett couldn’t help but admire the man’s confidence, no matter how misplaced. “If you find a woman with beer goggles that thick then congratulations and have fun.”
Carter’s eye narrowed on Bennett. The attempt at intimidation fell short. Way short. Hollis’s laughter was like an engine misfiring. “Ah, the boys in the back don’t get it. But they will.” Hollis and Carter exchanged another slapping shake that seemed congratulatory before they’d even walked into the bar.
Bennett stared out the side window feeling a couple of decades older than Hollis and Carter. Not that he could fault them. Bennett had been them, or a lot like them, anyway, his first couple of years in the service. It was heady stuff until you realized the women only saw the uniform and didn’t care what was underneath.
Hollis pulled in to the parking lot of a squat white cement club with a neon sign and arrow proclaiming Gin Boogie Bar.
Clumps of people gathered around the parking lot, smoking and cutting up. From the corner of his eye, he caught the interested glances of a few women already. The bass beat of music thrummed his chest.
Noah fell behind and Bennett slowed his pace. Hollis and Carter disappeared into the blackened maw of the club.
Noah stopped and grabbed Bennett’s arm. He was looking around like someone might pull a gun at any minute. “This place is sketchy.”
To Bennett it didn’t look any different from the dozens of other bars and clubs he’d walked into over the years. He clapped Noah on the back. “Come on. Let’s grab a couple of beers and get the lay of the land. We can always get a cab back to base.”