| Subject: Big Blue Sky Part Ten |
Author:
Karen
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 14:27:21 08/01/06 Tue
In reply to:
Karen
's message, "Big Blue Sky" on 20:35:06 04/21/06 Fri
I've nearly reached a meeting of the minds with my builder. Just need to pick some colors like floor roof etc, then maybe I can relax and concentrate again.
Big Blue Sky
Chapter Ten
Brookes Ranch
Western Montana
0815 Friday
He heard the soft unusual sounds when he reached the bottom of the stairs. They were coming from the room to the rear of the house behind the kitchen. It was a general-purpose room, actually once a porch, then later screened in, and finally finished as a family room. Most activities took place here rather than in the more formal living room in the front.
He poured two cups of coffee from the pot that was gurgling the end of its brewing cycle. Someone must have finished off the breakfast coffee and started a new one. The only person he knew that might make use of that much caffeine was his Marine, and judging from the aroma, she was the one who had brewed it. Note to self, only pour half a cup, and finish it off with milk.
Walking towards the doorway, he saw she was deeply engrossed in her task. He didn’t want to startle her, but the slight movement of her head gave him reason to believe she was aware of his presence. He sat the cup near her and surveyed the table. It was covered with various types of firearms. Several obviously belonged to the ranch, but there was a very special looking rifle laying to one side.
It had just been cleaned, and she was starting on another.
“Thanks,” she said softly as the cup clunked gently against the table.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she flashed him a small distracted smile. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “All but the last,” he added ruefully.
“What do you mean?” she looked up.
“You weren’t there when I woke up. I don’t think I’m ever going to like that.”
“Oh Harm, I was trying…”
“I know, Mac, and I appreciate it. I appreciate your help last night, too.” He glanced sideways, and saw her duck her head in acknowledgment. They were okay he decided. “You should have awakened me though. I was supposed to help the kids clean the stables this morning.”
“No way, sailor. You needed to sleep it out. The extra treat of shoveling manure can wait another day,” she grinned at him. “Billy came looking for you, but I made a vague excuse and he accepted it. He did say that Joe would be back this afternoon to check on the bull. I don’t think he dares return until Shaun gets home from school though.” Her eyes twinkled.
Once Shaun had won his point, he’d taken full charge of the task of making the bull healthy once again. If belief in the Native American methods held any sway over medical science, he would succeed on sheer will alone. In that, Harm decided, he was very much like his Aunt Trish.
He surveyed the table then picked up the custom-made rifle. He knew by looking at it this must be the one that came from the ebony case, but if he’d had any doubt, the nearly imperceptible stiffening of her frame as he touched the weapon told him all he needed to know.
“I won’t break it, Mac, but if you’d rather…”
“No, it’s okay, Harm. Sorry,” she tucked her head more closely over the weapon she was cleaning. Stepping to the window, he checked the gun to assure himself it was not loaded. Bringing it to his eye, he looked through the expensive scope, sighting at the unoccupied hills in the distance.
“Whoa, this is quite a rifle, Marine. It has terrific balance and that scope is fantastic.”
“It’s custom made,” she stated the obvious, but volunteered no more.
“I see,” he replied, setting it carefully back on the paper that protected the table top. The fact she was cleaning the guns was telling him something. None of the weapons looked like they’d been neglected. Quite the contrary, even a couple of very old rifles and an antique shotgun looked in top shape.
“He used it in competition,” she offered cryptically.
“Was he good?”
“Very. I saw the scrapbook his mother brought.”
Harm nodded. He wouldn’t ask for more than she wanted to share.
“He had just been assigned to the SWAT team in his hometown. Then his guard unit was called up. He was so young Harm.” Her voice quivered slightly.
He gave her a moment to recover.
“He was only twenty-three…a degree in criminal justice…he wanted to be a good cop…make a difference.”
“And now he can’t.” He tried to make it a statement. Not demand any information.
She shook her head. “His shoulder was shattered. They repaired it…he can function normally, but he’ll never fire a weapon again.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Why this one, Mac,” he asked softly.
Her eyes came slowly to meet his. “You mean because there were sixteen others?”
He nodded again.
She shrugged. “Some were killed outright, a few weren’t injured at all, most were wounded too badly to fight back,” she shrugged as her voice slid away.
“You were wounded Mac, and so was he. You fought back.”
“We couldn’t give up, Harm. I mean we had to do something. God knows what they would have done to us if we’d stopped fighting. They wanted that truck,” she remarked needlessly.
“I know,” he responded with his signature reply. “You were in a bad situation, you did what you had to do. In a few more minutes…” he stopped. He’d said too much. He could hope she hadn’t caught it, but then he looked into her eyes and they both knew.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Mac, I…I’m sorry.”
“For what, Harm?” she asked gently. She knew that he couldn’t mean he was sorry for saving her. She wasn’t even going there.
“For…I don’t know…I mean I’m glad we were there…so close.”
“So am I, Harm. I hoped it was you, even knowing the chances were virtually non-existent,” she admitted.
“Why? I mean why me? We didn’t exactly part on the same page, and well, there are plenty of flyers in that part of the world.”
“Remember that night we spent in the desert?”
“You mean when…”
“Yeah, that one. My first thought when I saw those planes coming was that we were all going to be blown to hell without any help from the other side,” she smirked.
“We aren’t all that bad, Mackenzie,” he chided.
“Well, I knew you weren’t, and somehow I prayed in those few seconds it would be you, all the while knowing it was an impossible wish. I don’t know how you got there so fast, or how you found us, but I held my breath and prayed hard. Somehow, afterwards, I never quite believed anyone but you could have made that shot.
“There were four of us, Mac,” he reminded her.
“And you trained all of them, didn’t you?”
Silently he nodded studying her reaction with his wide aqua eyes.
“Two of them missed,” she challenged.
“No one missed, Mac.”
“Their bombs fell a mile down the road,” was her objection.
“When my wingman and I rolled out of our dive to check the terrain we saw another group crossing over to get behind you. I sent the other two after them.”
“Rolled out…there were more?” she verified. She’d never before realized that roll had an actual purpose.
He only nodded.
“I knew they were trying to spread out to breach our cover, but I didn’t know…we didn’t have a prayer did we Harm?”
“Sure you did, Mac,” he smiled quietly in an attempt to comfort her trepidation, “and an AWACS plane answered it.”
“How…how did you get there so fast?”
“We had just finished a shift flying CAP and were heading back to the carrier. When command got your call, we just happened to be about five minutes away. Pure coincidence Mac, nothing more.”
She relaxed a bit, although a new kind of tension seemed to take her in its grip. Even in her deepest wish that the pilot was Harm, she’d never believed he’d come looking for her. She knew whoever those pilots were, it was sheer coincidence they were in the right place at the right time. She’d learned to deal with the fact the intel had been scrambled and they’d been caught unprepared by the ambush, but now to learn it was far worse than she’d ever guessed…it would take time for her to assess this information…to compartmentalize it and work past it.
“You didn’t know,” he guessed.
“About the second unit up the road? No, we had no idea. I guess if we’d somehow made it past the first, we would never have had a chance anyway.”
Harm came to squat down beside her chair. “Look at me Marine, there’s always a chance. As long as you’re alive and you’re fighting, there’s always a chance. You did what you had to do and you did it well. Your friend as well,” he indicated the rifle. “I got hold of the after action report. If the two of you hadn’t fought as you did, no one would have had a chance. Remember Marine, the people who pinned that medal on you knew the entire story, and they don’t give those medals out frivolously.
“Did you know it was me down there, Harm?” She had to ask, unlikely as it was.
“At the time, no. Looking back…I felt something…a need to get this one more perfect than ever. I didn’t know why I felt that way.” He stood and took a few steps rubbing his hand over his sleep-tousled head. “I never allowed my team to do sloppy work. Just a feeling…it was vague. It wasn’t until the next day, back on the ship, that we heard who was down there. When I heard the JAG was a woman, and she fought alongside the men displaying extreme valor, I pulled a few strings and found out it was you.”
“I tried everything I could think of to get a pass to come find you.” He gazed through the window into the distance, remembering those painful, helpless moments, “but the Captain informed me that wasn’t going to happen, and you would be on your way to Germany before I could get there anyway. Within the week we were sailing for Japan. That’s when we had the layover for supplies and were sent back out again.”
“And that’s when you made the thirty-one phone calls?” she glanced at him from under her lashes. Not seductively, but stealthily, to try to see what was passing over his face. His life as he had lived it up until then, had changed because of those calls.
“Yes, I did, and even if I had known then what the outcome would be, I would have still made them, Mac.”
He turned to look at her, telling everything he had suffered when she’d made him go away. It was all there in his eyes. The look in her eyes, the look she returned to him, told him that if she hadn’t been cleansed by that firefight, she could never have come back to him. She had required the fresh start. It had been impossible for her to live her life in a straight line from that day she was released from prison.
They held the gaze for almost too long. Something more needed to be said, but she wasn’t ready for the emotion of more. It wasn’t her time yet. Finally, her eyes dropped back to the handgun she was cleaning. She began polishing it furiously, desperately needing to distract this conversation.
Carefully, he stepped up to her and laid his hand gently over hers. “When you’re ready, Marine,” he said to her then stepped back.
She paused for a moment, he understood, really understood. She wanted very much to share her feelings with him. Not the details, he had the details, but the feelings as each of those events occurred, but she couldn’t, not yet, not now. She wasn’t ready.
Taking a deep breath, he turned away, then back. “So why are you preparing the arsenal Mac?”
He was almost certain he knew the answer. He had deliberately couched his question in light terms, but he needed her to talk to him about this. If it was bothering her on a deep level, he had to know where her head was. There was every possibility they might have to confront the people who had killed his aunt and uncle.
“They’re still out there,” she answered. He had expected that. “They still threaten this ranch, our new family, and us. I can’t allow that,” she told him brusquely.
“Mac, it’s not even likely we’ll see them. The sheriff has a team of special investigators working on this. This isn’t the first ranch they’ve hit. They might not even come back,” he tried to brush aside her concerns.
“They’ll be back, Harm. I feel it. And I’ll be ready for them.”
“Hey now, there’s two of us here. There won’t be any riding out to meet the enemy alone,” he tried to keep it light. He’d almost lost her in a firefight once, he wasn’t at all certain he wanted her near this one of it occurred. But she was having none of it.
“Harm, don’t.” She put the gun down, stood up and looked at him square in the eye. “I’m a good shot, probably better than you,” she declared. “I’m not going looking for trouble, but if it comes looking for me I won’t ‘hide in the parlor with the womenfolk’.” she mimicked a line from an old western movie. “Don’t even think about trying to keep me out of this.” Hands on her hips she nearly breathed fire in defiance of any idea he might have of leaving her behind.
“Okay, okay,” he raised his hands in surrender, then flashed the smile that always melted her heart. “We always did work better as a team. We came through a lot when we had each other’s back. We’ll come through this too, if it happens.” Anyway, if he had her beside him it would be easier to keep an eye on her, and she was right, she was a better shot. There was no doubt in his mind, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have at his back.
She relaxed immediately at his reassurance, and smiled in return. “So, how about some breakfast, sailor?”
“I can make it,” he offered. “You’re busy.”
“I’ll make it, Harm. It’s not a problem.”
“C’mon Mac,” he peeked around the doorway. “Beth isn’t around right now. Let me fix us an omelet. Then we’ll go check on that bull, and see if Billy will let me ride a real horse today,” he bargained.
Her answer was another smile, this one surrendering to his wishes with a deep chuckle.
End of ten
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 