I should’ve known I'd chase him off.

Hell, I wanted him to run. I did. I ran him out. He left because I wanted him to, because he’s a freaking Southern gentleman and the kind of man who, when a lady says go, he goes instead of forcing himself on her or disrespecting her wishes.

Gabe's noble and good like that, respectful and kind, gentle and warm.

And I’m so mad at him for it, because when I said go I really meant fight me to stay.

How screwed up is that? I can’t even tell a man I need him to believe me, need him to support me, need him to stick to this lost cause with me and tilt at every windmill I want to go charging at no matter how useless it is.

Because I need someone to hold me up so I won’t fall down. Instead, I just have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing him away, hoping he’ll figure out that I need him to fight past the thorns no matter how much I make him bleed to just...

Stay.

I catch one glimpse of his face through the windshield of his truck, a long, grim, determined look before the headlights of his Dodge flick on, whiting out the early evening darkness and eclipsing any sight of him. The last I see is the Dodge backing out, reversing, then heading up the lane. Then he’s gone, and I want to scream, to fill the silence with something.

It's my own fault, really. I’ve got no earthly right to be mad at him when I’m the one who told him to leave.

I don’t have time for this. Don’t have time to be locked up inside my own head, stewing over Gabe, when I’ve got business in Redding.

It’s time to get out of here, and chase Harmon and his minions all the way to Hell.

I finish packing my things, check for my gun, then load up my car and hit the road. I’ve got to stop by Grandma’s to let her and Monika know I’ll be gone for a few days. Otherwise, they’ll panic when they show up at my place and I’m not around.

It'd be just my luck to wind up laying low somewhere where I won’t be able to answer the frantic texts or phone calls without getting shot. Then I’ll end up coming home to a missing person's report and a police welcome.

I love my family, but with the way things are right now? It’s way too easy to convince them I’ve been abducted by the Hillside Strangler. And he’s been dead for fifteen years, if you go by certain police reports.

I’ve almost got my story worked out when I pull up to the house.

Even if Gabe and I are quits, I can still use him. That wine country thing wasn’t a half-bad alibi.

I could say he drove up ahead to get a little bungalow ready, and I’m heading out to meet him. That a few days away are what I need to clear my head, I’m so sorry, I don’t feel right taking a vacation when Joannie’s still missing, but I just need to shake out the cobwebs and walk away from it for a bit so I can come back with fresh eyes and turn up a lead.

It’s so convincing I almost want it to be true, and I hate myself for the doubts that gnaw at me with every mile of blacktop under my wheels.

The lights are on in Grandma Eva’s kitchen. I park my beat-up old car and lock up, even if this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where you need it and my car isn’t the kind you’d vandalize. It’s habit. And paranoia.

I feel like that’s all I am, lately, this bundle of twitchy, razor-sharp nerves. But I feel a little more like a human being when Grandma throws the door open before I’m even up the walk, her smile broad and her arms wide, just waiting to pull me into a hug.

When she holds me close and I smell the soft cream and honey scents of her shampoo and that strange warm parchment-scent older women always seem to have, I feel like a human being again.

A daughter. A granddaughter. A sister. An aunt.

Anything but a hardened soldier with an increasingly hopeless mission.

I feel like a lover, even if I’ve just thrown my lover away like so much trash and told him he didn’t mean anything at all, then walked away from the pain brimming in those hazel sunrise eyes.

For a second, I can hide in my grandmother, and let it hurt. My throat is tight, and I bury my face in her shoulder and swallow it back, telling myself I won’t cry.

I might have told Gabe it wasn’t real, but he wasn’t the only one I lied to.

When I pull back, Grandma Eva cups my cheek and searches my face with her far too discerning eyes. “What is it, dearest? I haven’t seen you look this crushed since that Daryl boy rubbed dirt on your face in the playground.”

I manage a weak, watery smile. “Nothing, Grandma. I’m just tired. And I think you forgot I kicked nine-year-old Daryl Peterson’s ass up one side of the playground and down the other for breaking my heart.”

“That’s always the kind of girl you’ve been. Tough.” She pats my cheek with a bright smile. “Come on, come inside. I’ve just made supper.”

“Oh, well, I just wanted to drop by. I can't –”

“You can, even if only for a few minutes. Humor me. I feel like I don’t see enough of you lately.” She nearly drags me inside, with a conspiratorial look over her shoulder. “Busy with that boyfriend of yours, hmm?”

I wince. “Yeah. Something like that.”

But here’s my window, so I’ve got to trot out the lie and make it believable. If I’m telling the truth, I suck at lying, especially to Grandma. “That’s actually where I’m going now. Gabe... he thought it'd be a good idea to get away. You know, you get tunnel vision staring at the same problem, until you start to miss the important stuff. So he’s dragging me off to Napa for a few days. I just need to think about this from a different angle in a different environment. I know there’s one thing I’m missing that'll lead me to Joannie.”

The crack in my voice on that last line isn’t feigned. It’s a hard knot in my throat, a pain welling in my chest. Because even if I’m not going to Napa with Gabe, it’s true that there’s something that keeps slipping through my fingers like sand.

But that’s why I’m going to Redding. I know what I'm after.

I’ll find that missing clue without Gabe and his meddling.

Grandma ushers me to a seat at the dining room table. “Gabe won’t mind if you’re fifteen minutes late for a little food, will he? He seems like such a patient boy.”

“He is.” I take a shaky breath and try to steady my voice. “But we were going to do dinner when I got there.”

“Then you can take dinner to him,” she says firmly, already pulling out the Saran wrap and a Tupperware container. There’s a pot of goulash on the stove, its thick, savory scent floating over the kitchen.

Ugh. If I weren’t so sick to my stomach, my mouth would be watering, but even with my mind and heart a mess I want to laugh. My Grandma is incorrigible, irrepressible, and when she wants you to eat, you don’t really get to say no.

Before I know it I’ve got a Little Red Riding Hood basket draped over my arm, with a Tupperware container heavy with goulash, cushioned in by little wrapped pastries and other baked goods. There’s even a red-checkered cloth covering it.

Fitting, when I’m off to chase down the big bad wolf. All I need is the red hood.

I finally pull myself away, but not before snagging a couple of apple pastries from the stack on the counter and tucking them in my basket. I’ll need something sweet-tart but low sugar to fortify me for a long drive, and Grandma Eva always makes her apple pastries sour for something with a little crisp refreshing bite.

Grandma practically hugs my leg all the way into the car. I can’t quite understand why she’s being like this, when she’s normally so no-nonsense even if she’s loving, until I remember she believes I’m going to Napa Valley to be with Gabe.

The guilt burns in the pit of my belly.

My face flames red too as I settle behind the wheel. She’s really getting her hopes up, isn’t she? Probably already has grandbaby names picked out.

If she starts knitting baby booties, though, I’m calling an exorcist.

I hate this lie. It’ll make it that much harder to let her down easy when this is all over.

But I push the thought aside and focus my attention straight ahead on the drive to Redding. There’s a kind of timeless place I slip into when I drive, following hours of highway and the rolling scrub of California roadside.

It started on deployment – the days when I’d ship out on a new tour. I’d have to blank out what I was leaving behind so it wouldn’t hurt so much to walk away from home and family, but also keep my focus on what was ahead narrowed down to pinprick focus so I could think only about the mission, and not the fear of never coming home to Grandma Eva’s goulash ever again.

Back then it was long flights in the back of military cargo planes. Or bouncing over undulating waves on Navy-issue surface boats, heading out to a refueling station or top secret naval installation.

I'll never forget the submarines. Listening to the particular quiet of the deep, dark sea closing in around you, locking you in another world. All while this strange little fragile capsule of air and machinery and breakable human flesh braves crushing tons of ocean water pressure.

The inside of a submarine can make you and your fellow sailors feel like you’re the only people left in the world, and time itself has stopped.

There’s only the endless drift, and your little pod of quiet cut off from the rest of the world.

That’s my car, right now.

A timeless pod of silence, cruising through the ocean of night.

It’s eerily calming. I don’t even feel the hours on the drive, and by the time I check into the hotel I’d booked on Expedia, it’s past midnight and my head feels clearer than it has in weeks. I really did need to get away, but it’s not relaxation I need.

It’s solitude and focus, without distractions like hard-cut bodies and deep Southern drawls.

My room is small and somehow garishly bland, all beige and sand, but it’s clean and private and that’s all I need. I deposit my basket from Grandma on the table, dump my bag on the bed, and drop myself after it, stretching out muscles sore from hours in the saddle and wiggling my stiff, cramped fingers.

My phone bites into my rear, reminding me I’ve been sitting on it for ages, so long I’ve probably got the Samsung logo stamped on my butt. When I retrieve it, I’ve got four new text messages waiting.

Lovely. I hadn’t even felt the buzz. I always mute my phone when driving. My car’s too old to handle a Bluetooth speaker setup, and I don’t want to tempt myself to answer when I’m in heavy traffic.

I’m a safety first kind of girl, don’tcha know.

The messages are all Monika, and God I hate myself.

She’s so excited, when she hasn’t had anything to be excited about for months.

Hey, girl. How’s your Not-Boyfriend? I mean, Napa Valley sounds awful boyfriend-y. But what do I know about boyfriends?

That bit almost sounds like Grandma Eva, but Nika’s always been like that. When she was little our family would tease her about being four going on forty, then nine going on ninety – you get the idea.

Somehow, though, I ended up being the overly grown-up, too-serious one, even though she’s got two years on me. Sis just got the mannerisms of a cute little grandma in a twenty-something woman’s body.

I’m the one who’s old before her time.

When did I get to be like this? Or was I always this way, born to be cold and angry and distant with everyone but the two people I love most in the world?

Some people are born to be protectors, I suppose. It’s in our genes, wired with different instincts that make us hyper-vigilant, always focused on potential dangers.

We're the ones who alerted our primitive tribes to predators in the grass, who sensed the changes in the air long before others when a storm was coming or the earth was ready to shake apart beneath our feet. We can’t ever switch it off, even when there’s no danger in sight.

We make people uncomfortable, protectors like me.

Because we’re always on, so on they can’t shut us off. It makes them shy away from us. Maybe that’s why there are so few of us. We’re natural loners, so we don’t always pass on those genes that make us who we are.

Or maybe that’s my excuse. Maybe that’s how I explain away the person I became when my parents died, and I didn’t want to let anyone else close to me so I wouldn’t have to feel that loss ever again.

Maybe that’s how I explain away letting Gabe go, for his and my own good.

I don’t know how to be the kind of person who wouldn’t shred him again and again. I don’t know how to shut off with him, not completely.

And I don’t know how to let him be the one to protect me, instead of the other way around.

I stare at Nika’s next message. So is it really serious with you two? Because...Grandma’s talking spring wedding. Totally serious.

Wedding? Just end me now. They’re more invested in my fantasy life than I am.

Jesus. I’ve got to find Joannie. Got to. I can’t come back empty-handed, and then have to rip the Gabe rug out from under them, too.

I almost break it to Monika right then and there, typing out frantically.

There’s nothing there, sis. There will never be anything there. We just had a little fun to take my mind off things.

But the message sits there, unsent, waiting. Waiting to be shot at my sister’s heart like a poison arrow.

And I just can’t do it.

For once, the truth would be worse than the lie.

I close my eyes, exhale a groan, and delete those hateful words unsent. Not yet.

Let her have the distraction a little while longer, if it’ll lift her spirits. Grandma's, too. It’s better to break it to her in person, instead of over a text.

So I only send back, Never know. My crystal ball’s broken tonight, but the future could be good.

I get back a litany of emojis that look like she smashed her face against the phone. Hearts, fireworks, rainbows, smileys, thumbs up, sparkles. So many sparkles.

Christ, my sister.

I fall back against the pillows, running a hand through my hair and staring at my text messages. Nothing from Gabe. No missed calls, either.

I shouldn’t be disappointed.

I swear, I'm not.

Still can't stop my thumb from hovering over his contact. This bed is too big for me, too empty, and suddenly I picture the next fifty years of empty beds and silent nights.

I hurt. I hurt inside like someone’s smashed me against a rock and cracked me open to let everything soft leak out of my hardened shell, and I want to curl up against Gabe and let him hold me together while I put all my pieces back inside where they belong and talk myself into doing this. Even though I know it’s probably another dead end, and I just can’t bear to wholly face that just yet.

I can't stand to admit he's right.

Being alone has never bothered me before.

But that was before I knew what it was like to be together, even if I hadn’t realized at the time just what I had.

I should eat something. Shower. I hadn’t even bothered eating on the drive up like I’d intended, too lost inside my own head. Now, I just don’t have the energy or drive to get up.

This bed smells like strangers. Not like Gabe. I miss his rough, piny, masculine scent so bad it hurts.

I curl up as small as I can make myself, try not to think of home, and will myself to sleep.

I wake with my body angry.

My stomach’s buzzing like a nest of hornets, reminding me it’s not like me to not take care of myself, especially when I’m on such an important mission. That’s another thing you learn as a soldier.

All those stories about people forgoing food and forgetting everything but coffee in a frenzy of dedication? They don’t work. Your body and brain need fuel to fire on all cylinders. Even when you’re deep in the zone, you stop to eat if you want to stay sharp.

Skipping meals, for me, is just one more mistake I can’t afford. I’ve got to be on the ball, and I drag myself out of bed and brew up an extra strong pot of coffee before settling with my laptop and the bag of goodies Grandma sent Little Red out into the big bad world with.

First on top are the pastries I stole and forgot to eat on the drive. Not a bad choice for breakfast. Tapping at my laptop with one hand, I unwrap the apple pastry with another and take an absent bite.

And nearly spit it out. Instantly.

“What the –”

Instead of the wonderful flood of tart filling I’d expected, it’s the opposite. Cloyingly sweet and choking with cinnamon, so much I almost can’t swallow.

Working my mouth, I force it down, then grab my coffee mug and take a deep swig to clear my mouth.

Okay. What was Grandma smoking?

And why's the taste of cinnamon so overwhelming, so oddly familiar?

It’s bothering me enough that I tap out a text to Nika.

Hey, sis, quick question...is Grandma okay? She messed up this last batch of tarts real bad. If she’s screwing up her baking, I’m worried she’s not holding up as much as she pretends.

Monika buzzes me back in minutes. Huh? Grandma didn’t make those. Jim did. He’s been going around with baskets full of cookies and other goodies for all the neighbors, getting all weepy about moving and giving out going-away presents. He made pecan sandies for us because they’re my favorites, but the tarts were in there too.

More hearts and heart eyes. I eye the phone wryly, sighing, shaking my head.

I swear, if Jim Appleroth was five years younger, Nika would be dating him by now instead of just basking in the attention.

That solves one mystery, at least. If only they were all this easy.

But the familiarity is still bugging me, my stomach turning over as I look at the nasty tart.

That taste brings back a memory.

Joannie in her high chair, her little face screwed up.

I’m babysitting, because Nika’s got to work and Grandma Eva’s at some sort of ladies’ function with her senior citizen friends. Joannie won’t eat for me.

She’s glaring right at me with her face all tight like she’s a prisoner of war waiting out an interrogation. I’d laugh, if I hadn’t been trying to get her to eat for an hour.

It’s cinnamon applesauce today, her favorite, and normally it calms her down and has her reaching eagerly every time, but today she’s got her Szabo hat on and is being stubborn for no good reason other than because she can.

I try the airplane trick.

She lets out an exasperated sigh that blows her wispy baby-fine hair from her face, lips thrusting out, but still won’t open her mouth.

Hmmm. Maybe monkey-see, monkey-do will work.

Sighing, I scoop up another little bit on the baby spoon and slide it into my mouth, all cloying apples and sappy sugar and cinnamon until I swallow and smack my lips exaggeratedly, then scoop up another spoonful and offer it to her.

“See?” I force a smile, as she eyes me warily but starts to open her mouth. “It’s good. Auntie Sky loves it. Why don’t you try?”

I snap out of the memory with my eyes wet and realize I’m staring blankly at the data on the laptop screen. My rib cage feels like it’s collapsing.

I miss her so much. I miss her, I miss Gabe, I miss my family being happy and bright and wonderful and the only real place I could call home.

But most of all, even if it’s selfish, I miss me.

I miss who I used to be when I knew how to smile, how to love people, how to wake up every morning and look ahead to the pleasure of my job and my life and my family, and everything in between.

I left the Navy because I didn’t like the person it made me. Constantly on edge. Constantly on guard. Too claustrophobic, cold, and regimented. Not like the freedom and genuine friends I have at Enguard.

And I feel like I’m still stuck there. In that place. As that person.

But that person is whispering in my ear now, the former intelligence officer I used to be, whispering about those apple tarts. About the cinnamon. About Jim.

Why Jim? Why?

Unless...

Oh, God.

No.

Unless I’ve been looking in all the wrong places.