After a few weeks, the detectives had wrapped up their initial investigation of the incident. They had no one in custody yet but had a few leads. Jake had told the ranch hands to be on high alert for anything suspicious. In the past Renegade Ridge had been a peaceful, bucolic place, but after the recent turn of events, Jake felt he needed to protect himself, the ranch and especially Vanessa. Now, all that was left of the incident was a big black spot in the middle of the barn. Thankfully, Jake still had some cash left over from the sale of the calves to tie him over until the insurance money came in. Getting Kessler entirely out of his life was going to take time, but for the moment he was making progress.

It was a bright sunny Saturday morning when Jake and Vanessa decided to make a trip into town. When Jake pulled his pick-up into a parking space, he turned to Vanessa and said, “I’m going to duck into the shoe shop and pick up the pair of boots I had him re-sole.”

Pushing open the passenger door Vanessa replied, “I swear, Jake. Surely, you have enough cash to buy new ones. Why do you keep repairing those old things?” she asked. Then she stepped up on the sidewalk beside him.

Jake winked at her. “They’re my favorite. I never let my favorite things go.”

Laughing, Vanessa rolled her eyes. “You’re quite a charmer aren’t you, Jake Morrow?”

“That's me,” Jake teased. Then he turned and pointed down the street. “Hey, why don’t you go get us a table at Café Verona. I’ll meet you there shortly.”

Vanessa peered to where Jake was pointing and nodded her head. “Sounds good. On the way, I’ll stop at CVS to grab a few things on my list. If you get there first, go ahead and order us a glass of wine.”

“Drinking so early in the day?” he asked with a smirk.

“I have to. You’ve no idea what sort of monster I troll around with,” Vanessa called over her shoulder, laughing as she turned and strolled down the sidewalk. Jake paused for a moment before pulling open the door to watch Vanessa walk away. Her long ponytail swished from side to side keeping time with the swaying of her luscious hips.

Twenty minutes later, Jake stepped into the restaurant looking for Vanessa. “Jake!” Monica said with a smile as he approached the hostess stand.

“Hey, Monica. Is Vanessa here yet? She was meeting me.”

“No, I haven’t seen her, and I’ve been up here all morning.”

“Okay. Well, got room for us? I’m starving.” Jake asked with a smile.

“Of course, I always have room for my favorite couple,” she replied. “Come with me.”

Jake was surprised when she led him to the very same table they had sat at on their first visit there. He smiled and sat down in the same seat. The waiter brought two glasses of wine. He sat sipping his and put off ordering until Vanessa arrived. Glancing at his watch, Jake realized it had been twenty minutes since he had come in. Had she gotten stuck somewhere unexpectedly? Fishing out his phone, he hit ‘Venessa’ under favorite contacts to call her. The call went straight to voicemail.

Suddenly, he felt very uneasy. Motioning for the waiter, he paid for the wine and made a hasty retreat for the door. When he passed Monica, he called over his shoulder to her, “I’m worried about Vanessa, she’s late. Please call me if she shows up!”

Monica ran after him and yelled, “Jake, where can I tell Vanessa you’re going if….” He was already well on his way down the sidewalk toward the drug store. His blood ran cold when he spotted an ambulance with its back doors open not far from where they had parked. Jake was barely aware that he was running… Vanessa! Had something happened to Vanessa again!

As he got closer, the ambulance blocked his view. All Jake could see were the legs of someone laying on the sidewalk on the other side. Then Jake felt a pain in his stomach when he ran even closer and noticed the boots…. Vanessa’s boots. Breathless, he sprinted to her side… blood was flowing from her head. Her phone was on the pavement, shattered into pieces. Jake hovered over her. “NO…. GOD NO!”

Moments later, Jake was dimly aware of hands pulling him away and a voice telling him to let the paramedics do their job. It was Carl, the one local policeman he called a friend. “She’s going to be okay,” Carl told Jake, in a calm voice. “Let them take care of her.” It seemed like an eternity as he watched the paramedics work with Vanessa. Finally, she opened her eyes and sat up. Shaking her head, Vanessa gazed around her blinking with a confused expression.

“What happened?” she muttered, looking up at Jake.

“Someone took a shot at you,” a bystander told her.

“A shot? You mean like a gunshot?” Carl bellowed as his fingers brushed the butt of his weapon strapped to his side.

“Yes,” the woman responded. “I saw him. He had a pistol. She was walking across the street…” The woman pointed toward an intersection a few yards away. “He drove by and shot out the open window of his car before speeding down Main Street!”

“Oh my God,” Jake breathed. “Is she hit?”

One of the paramedics shook his head and said, “No… at least —”

“Check her again! Make damn sure you’re not missing anything!” Carl ordered.

“I heard the shot. I thought it was a car backfiring and turned too quickly. I fell and hit my head,” Vanessa moaned.

After Carl called for back-up to report that gunshots had been fired, he began inspecting the scene more closely. “She was lucky, the bullet hit her phone,” Carl called out as he began clearing people away. “Anyone that saw anything needs to stay, but please move out of this area to one side. As soon as forensics gets here, they’ll need to speak to you.”

About that time, Jake heard another loud popping noise and people screaming; then everything went black. He was dimly aware of Vanessa sobbing and paddles on his chest, jolting him back awake. She was sobbing quietly nearby as he seemed to bounce about. The paramedics were talking back and forth, words that he couldn’t quite make out in his foggy mind. He tried to speak, but someone in scrubs told him just to relax.

He was dimly aware of Carl talking nearby. “No, Vanessa. Let them work.”

“Get him on the gurney,” someone barked.

Jake felt as if he were outside of himself as they lifted him inside the wailing ambulance. He could hear Vanessa nearby, telling them she was going with him. Why could he hear them, but not speak? Was he dead? Thoughts ran through his head, crazy things that made no sense. They made his nightmares seem like a walk in the park.

“Wait, ma’am. Do you know the victim?” he heard a paramedic asking.

“She’s his girlfriend. She can go,” Carl explained.

“I’m here, Jake. I’ll make sure they take good care of you,” Vanessa was saying from nearby. He heard the rush of the doors shut and then felt the vehicle moving as sirens began to wail overhead. He was terrified. More so than he had been for a very long time.

“This is unit 202. We have a gunshot wound in route. Our ETA is five minutes,” he heard the driver say into the radio.

“Gunshot wound? Oh my God!” he thought to himself. First, someone takes a shot at Vanessa and misses and now they shoot him? Who? Why?

“How bad is it?” Vanessa was saying, sounding more than a little hysterical.

“He has a pretty nasty head wound, and the shock put him in cardiac arrest for just a moment.

I’m sorry,” he told her.

Jakes’ blood curdled in his veins. A head wound? Nothing about that sounded good. He rode in a sort of silent fear the rest of the way to the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness. Each time he came to, he could hear Vanessa’s soft, comforting voice. Next, Jake could tell the paramedics were giving Vanessa quick directions to the ER waiting room. Then Jake heard doors rush open and he entered a cool place beyond them. Moments later, everything faded away into nothingness, leaving Jake in a place he had hoped never to visit again — Afghanistan.

****

Jake’s feet hit the ground as he dropped and rolled high in the arid wasteland of Kabul Province. Cowering behind rocks with his brothers of the 82nd Airborne he quickly gathered up his parachute and hid it under a pile of rocks. Their mission was to ambush a Taliban convoy loaded with weapons. The Taliban had been out in force today, and Jake’s unit was outnumbered. He crawled forward on his belly along with the others and stopped behind a clump of brambles. There they waited until it was time for the attack. Air support had been ordered as back up for their mission.

Things went black again, and then Jake was somewhere else.

The stench of the dead bodies was unbearable. They were laying on the ground everywhere — eyes bulging out, mouths frozen open agape with bluish skin pulled taut around their skulls in a ghoulish mask. There were visions of things around him that Jake was unfamiliar with — a waterfall, a sailboat with yellow sails in the middle of a black lake and greyhounds racing endlessly around a track. Then he was surrounded by the report of automatic weapons coming from all directions as he charged into a darkened building before him, waiting to die.

The blackness was all around, swallowing him. Jake could hear voices, but they seemed far away. He trudged forward with his gun. His brothers were gone — he was alone. Jake was stranded in hell, waiting to be ambushed by an enemy he couldn’t see. All the sudden, there was a whirring sound from somewhere in the distance. Then nothing, he was surrounded by — quietness.

****

When he opened his eyes, he realized that the light was filtered. It took a moment to sort it out in his head. A bandage. It was a bandage of some sort. He must have gotten hit in the building. It was bittersweet. Hopefully, it wasn’t too bad, but maybe he could finally go home. He wanted so badly just to go home and never see these things again. He moved, and suddenly there was a hand on his. It was small. A nurse perhaps.

“Jake, it’s me. It’s Vanessa.”

Jake felt confused for a moment. Vanessa? Who was Vanessa? He struggled to think, but couldn’t conjure up her face, and still, he couldn’t speak. Something was blocking his throat. He had to get it out. Struggling to raise his hands, he found the tube and began to pull at it. The small hands stopped him, trying to hold him back.

“Nurse! Nurse!” the woman called out.

He could hear feet running in his direction. Who were they? American voices. That was good. Maybe he was home. Maybe his father was on his way.

“Mr. Morrow, can you hear me?” a voice said to him.

Jake struggled to speak, but only managed a gurgle. He felt a hand on his again, but not the small one from the first woman, the one who called herself Vanessa.

“It’s okay. Don’t try to speak. My name is Hannah. I’m your nurse. You are in the hospital. You’ve been shot, but you’re going to be just fine. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

Jake squeezed as hard as he could, but she repeated her request. He squeezed harder, and she let go, patting his hand softly.

“You’re weak, but I could feel you respond. You’re going to be fine.” Weak? He should have been breaking her hand as hard as he was squeezing! Maybe it wasn’t as hard as he thought. What did that mean for him?

Fear enveloped him as he heard a male voice now speaking. “Mr. Morrow? This is Dr. Blakely. You came through surgery just fine. The bullet grazed your temple and skull but didn’t enter the brain, so that’s good. There was some damage which we were able to repair and a significant loss of blood. Plus, there was some swelling from the trauma. It will subside in a day or so, but you may be a bit woozy and unfocused until then. We will be transferring you to intensive care shortly until you stabilize and then we’ll move you to a regular room either later in the day or possibly tomorrow. The good news is that you are going to heal and be back to normal before you know it.”

“Oh, thank you, doctor. Thank you so much,” the voice called Vanessa sounded incredibly relieved.

“You’re welcome. I’m going to have to ask you to step out for now, but as soon as Mr. Morrow is moved to ICU, they will let you visit with him briefly,” the doctor said to the woman.

The sound of footsteps retreated. They were leaving him here alone. Jake tried to move an arm back up to take out the tube but discovered his arms were tied down. Bastards! Where had Vanessa gone? He couldn’t quite place who she was, but he found that he missed her. How was it possible to miss a stranger so much?