Chapter Six
BY THE TIME Cole watched Annie drive up the long driveway at Hope Hill, everyone there knew what had happened to her house. She was going to stay in one of the empty rooms tonight because her place had to be inspected for structural damage. Cole sat on the front porch of the main building in an Adirondack chair one of the inmates had built. Patients, Annie would correct, but she wasn’t fooling him.
A calico cat slept in the next chair. Cole had seen about half a dozen cats around the facilities so far. They came and went as they pleased. He ignored the cat and focused on the woman.
Annie drove a green Prius. Naturally. The only way she could be truer to herself would be to ride a bicycle. Maybe she did that too. Cole wouldn’t be surprised if she only drove the car once a week.
He didn’t go to greet her or offer to carry her luggage. He hadn’t been waiting for her. He was taking a break. He only watched her because there wasn’t much to look at out here.
She didn’t appear hurt. She appeared . . . admired. A dozen guys crowded around her, some staff, some inmates.
Since the parking lot was well lit and they were heading his way, Cole could read a couple of lips.
“Are you OK?”
“Let me take that.”
“Man, that’s terrible.”
“I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
If they could, the men would have picked her up and carried her in their arms.
One of the guys wore a T-shirt that said MAY THE TREES BE WITH YOU.
Sucking up much?
Not that Cole cared. The patients and staff at Hope Hill could do whatever they wanted as long as they left him alone. And as long as they didn’t figure out his real reason for being here.
Annie smiled at the numb-nuts, laughed at something T-shirt guy said, asked how they’ve been. They wanted to take care of her, but she would have none of it and pulled her own suitcase. They followed her like eager puppies.
She was no sex kitten. She had to be close to thirty. Some of the guys were a good five years younger than she was. What did they see in her? Weren’t they bothered by all the woo-woo? Absorb negative electrons from the earth through the bottoms of your feet.
Cole stood from his chair and left her to her groupies. Might as well head off to the cafeteria and grab dinner. He had work to do tonight, but not until later.
After a bean burger and sweet potato fries—a miracle that nobody had choked the cook yet—he went to the gym. He couldn’t do weights with his injured arm, but he could run on the treadmill. Since most people were still at dinner, he had the place to himself. He liked it that way.
He ran until sweat poured down his body, until he pounded everything out of his brain, until nothing remained but his burning lungs and muscles. He was still running when Trevor Turner came in, a twentysomething former marine.
The kid made a beeline for the treadmill in the corner.
At a normal gym, the equipment faced the wall mirrors. Here, the equipment faced the room, because everybody here preferred having their backs to the wall. They didn’t like people behind them. Military habits die hard. As in never.
Another guy came in and went straight to the weights section, straight to bench-pressing. Alejandro Ramirez. Every time he lowered the weights and the bar dropped into place, Trevor startled. He sped up his treadmill, maybe to block out the clanging Cole couldn’t hear.
As Cole’s boots slapped on the rubber, he knew he had to be making noise too. Thump. Thump. Thump. He was no lightweight. Each step rattled the machine.
Trevor’s eyes jumped from Cole to Alejandro, then back. As both men kept up a steady pace with their own efforts, Trevor’s face became a mask of misery.
Did the noise bother him?
Cole shut off his machine and went over to the water fountain next to Trevor for a drink.
Trevor slowed his own treadmill but didn’t stop completely. “How long are you in for?”
Cole appreciated the wording. “As long as they deem it necessary. Initial sentence is four weeks.”
“You think any of this works?” The kid’s gaze held an edge of desperation.
“I know it does.” Cole said what the kid needed to hear. “I had a nap yesterday without pills.”
“Oh, man.”
The longing that brimmed in Trevor’s eyes twisted Cole’s cold, hard heart. He took another drink. “You should see the ecotherapist.”
Never thought he’d say those words in million years. Maybe the cafeteria had seasoned the bean burgers with brainwashing powder.
Trevor’s expression lit up. “I’ve been seeing Annie. Isn’t she great? Reminds me of my mom. Soft and strong at the same time, you know?”
Cole did know. Although, when he looked at Annie, he certainly wasn’t thinking about his mother.
Trevor said, “I have to do some concentrated psychotherapy right now. I do that in the mornings, then PT in the afternoons. I only have Annie once a week. I wish I could have her every day. I think she could make me better.”
“You’ll get there.”
“You think?”
What did Cole know? He’d only been here two days. “You bet.”
The aura of distress around Trevor faded. His eyes lost some of their jitteriness.
“I like the food here,” he said when Cole moved to walk away. “You think they’ll have cupcakes again tomorrow?”
“If they do, they’ll probably be gluten-free. Made from carrots or zucchini or, what was it the other day? Aubergine.”
Trevor rolled his eyes. “Total bait and switch, man. Sounds like French pastry. Turns out it’s freaking eggplant. Seriously.” He shook his head. “Still, better than MREs.”
“Not saying much, is it?” Dried dog turd was better than Meals Ready to Eat, the standard freeze-dried food packets used in the military.
“Where were you stationed?” Trev asked. “First I was assigned to JTF-Bravo in Honduras, then in Afghanistan.”
“All around. Little bit of this, little bit of that.”
Because the kid clearly needed the conversation to ground him, Cole lingered a few minutes to talk. He only left when more people came in. One of them, Marco, a tall black guy, acknowledged Trevor with a chin lift before limping across the big room to take the treadmill next to the kid.
Shane, a wiry Texan, headed to the weights. He checked his phone. He did that every couple of minutes. His mother had bone cancer, and he liked to keep in touch with her. He put the phone down, then stepped over to the TV in the corner and turned off CNN, which had been showing a Senate session on health-care reform.
“Love my country, hate the damn government,” he said, in case anyone needed explanation.
Cole thought about that while heading back to his room. As he cut through the courtyard, he caught sight of a small shadow under the great willow tree in the middle.
A civilian would have missed it. The branches of the weeping willow nearly touched the ground, making it difficult to see in there. But Cole’s sniper eyes had been trained to pick up the smallest movement.
He grabbed for his nonexistent weapon on instinct. Pain shot up his useless right arm. Then his brain caught up. Rehab. Safe. The tree was unlikely to hide insurgents.
If he were a betting man, he’d bet Annie Murray was in there, communing with nature in the middle of the night. Probably upset over her house.
None of Cole’s business.
They weren’t best friends. Or even friends, loosely speaking. He needed to get back to his room. He needed a shower, then he had a new thriller he wanted to read. And yet he couldn’t help himself. He swept the branches aside and stepped inside the dark cocoon of the tree.
Annie Murray sat with her slim legs crossed, her back against the trunk. She turned her face into the single sliver of moonlight so he could read her lips. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Now what?
Should have gone to the room. Cole shifted on his feet, then silently cursed himself. She was the weird one. So why was he the one feeling strange?
Backing out now without another word would make him look like an even bigger idiot, so he sat down facing her. “Can’t sleep?”
“Can’t stop thinking about the hole in my house.”
Cole nodded. Sitting under the tree with her in the dark felt disorienting. He wasn’t sure what he was doing here.
Chasing the peace of the meadow.
He still didn’t understand what had happened there. Maybe she’d hypnotized him. Only one thing wrong with that theory: he didn’t believe in hypnosis.
“The contractor will fix it.” Tree hugger or not, he didn’t like seeing her upset. He didn’t like seeing anyone taken advantage of. “Want me to come over tomorrow and have a talk with him?”
A tired smile stretched her full lips as she sat slumped against the tree. “Thanks. I should be able to handle it.”
She probably could. She was competent enough, and definitely the Zen type, not one to fly off the handle. Even now, peace hung around her like mist around mountain peaks.
That nap he’d taken with her at the clearing the day before had been a gift, and he wished he could return the favor.
“If you need help, let me know,” Cole said. “You should go to bed and get some rest.”
“You too.”
He nodded as he pushed to his feet. “Just came in to say hi.”
“You didn’t earlier. I thought maybe you’d had enough of me yesterday.”
Had she seen him on the front porch when she’d pulled up? He hadn’t thought so. He’d been in the deep shadows, and she’d been under the parking-lot lights.
Before he could comment, she said, “I saw you standing outside the branches. Your boots sound different on the gravel than sneakers.”
“Not me.” Cole shook his head.
She blinked at him, then murmured something that looked like “Oh Jesus, Joey,” before dropping her head into her hands.
The name rang a bell. “Would that be the stalker boyfriend?”
She looked up. “Ex-boyfriend slash stalker. He really is harmless. He thinks if he keeps reminding me how much he’s suffering, I’ll take him back.” She picked at her pants. “He’s a part-time driver for the laundry service that picks up the linen from the rehab center. But today is not one of his days. I didn’t expect to see him here.”
She stood and brushed off her jeans. “I have to go home to feed my animals. They’re in the garage. I’m allowed in there. Only the house was damaged.”
“What needs feeding at midnight?”
“Babies.”
Cole pictured a basket of orphaned puppies. During their session the day before, she’d mentioned something about needing a bigger backyard.
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’m all right.”
“Gives me something to do other than stare at the ceiling. Can’t sleep anyway.” He shrugged. “Not hearing anything . . . That only works when I have my eyes open. At night, when I close my eyes, I hear the explosions. Over and over.”
He was telling her the truth, but he was also manipulating her sympathies. He didn’t like the idea of her going out in the middle of the night. Not with a stalker ex-boyfriend on the loose. Whose ass Cole was going to kick, free of charge, gratis, if they ran into him tonight. It’d help him work off some of his frustrations. A little ass kicking might be more therapeutic than any of the treatment he’d received so far at Hope Hill.
Annie stopped to make sure he could read her lips. “You don’t take the sleeping pills?”
“Only every couple of days. Hate feeling groggy the next day.”
Her eyes narrowed for a second, as if she might object, but instead she nodded, then walked through the supple willow branches.
He followed her, the leaves feeling like a caress on his shaved head, like a fond goodbye from the tree.
He bit back a disgusted groan at the thought. One ecotherapy session, and he was getting as batty as she was. He needed to watch himself around Annie Murray.
He caught up with her as she left the facilities and headed to her car.
When he popped in on the passenger side, her hand hesitated on the key in the ignition.
“While I try to develop a friendship with my patients, I don’t normally take them home with me.”
“Is there a rule against it?”
“Not officially.” The dome light revealed that her eyes were red-rimmed. She’d had a rough week so far.
Cole had been part of it, no doubt. He’d given her plenty of grief yesterday. He bit back a disgusted grunt. He wasn’t fit for human company, dammit. But he wasn’t going to let her go out alone, in the middle of the night.
“I’ll be on my best behavior. I swear. Consider it therapy. Animals are supposed to help with PTSD. Right?”
She turned the key in the ignition. The dome light went out. She reached up to turn it back on. Presumably so he could see if she said something, but she drove out of the parking lot in silence.
“When can you go back home for good?” Cole asked when they were on the road.
She turned slightly, enough so he could read her lips. “I’ll find out tomorrow if the house is structurally sound. Apparently, the bathroom studs rotted away from water that’s been leaking behind the shower tiles for decades.”
Her slim fingers tightened on the wheel. “I seriously want to strangle the home inspector who missed that when I bought the place. I paid him to catch problems like this.”
Lips pressed together, she looked like she might be growling.
What would that sound like?
Cole batted the thought away. “I doubt a woman who wouldn’t break a tree branch in the woods would kill a man. I don’t think you’re the type for cold-blooded murder.”
“Nobody said anything about cold-blooded. Believe me, I feel pretty passionate about him right now.”
Her full lips forming the word passionate made him focus on them more carefully than necessary. She had great lips, fuller on the bottom than on top, almost to the point of looking swollen.
Generous lips. He’d heard the expression before but hadn’t thought about what that might look like, until now. Annie Murray had generous lips. No hardship looking at them at all. And he had carte blanche for staring.
He had to force himself back to the conversation. “Still couldn’t do it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You know a lot about killers?”
“Takes one to know one,” he said noncommittally.
She paled, which was a pretty good trick since she’d been plenty pale already. Her gaze darted to his. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I spent a decade overseas with the navy. We both know I wasn’t baking cupcakes.”
One hundred twenty-five confirmed kills.
They sat in silence as the car rolled through the night, down quaint small-town streets dotted with flower shops and bakeries. The Pennsylvania small town was a lot like Annie: too good to be true, too innocent and untouched.
Cole didn’t trust this kind of purity. It didn’t mesh up with all he’d seen and done in the service. He couldn’t picture belonging in a place like this.
She pulled over on an average-looking residential street, in front of a rancher that looked the same as all the others, except for the construction dumpster that sat by the curb. A yellow DO NOT CROSS tape had been wrapped around white porch columns, and it flitted in the night breeze.
The front yard was the size of a helicopter landing pad. The mailbox looked like it’d met some idiot high school kids with baseball bats. Actually, that last bit made the town feel more real for some reason.
When Annie headed to the two-car garage that stood separate from her yellow house, on the opposite side of the worn driveway, Cole loped after her.
“What’s going to happen to the house?”
“My cousin’s crew tarped the hole, in case it rains,” she said. “Anything more will have to come from a real contractor. Kelly’s guys could remove an interior, non-load-bearing wall or do cosmetic fixes. This is structural. Too big for them. I have a pro coming in the morning.”
She stepped into the garage through the side door, and Cole followed. When she flipped on the light, he stared straight ahead, dumbfounded.
He’d been prepared for orphaned puppies her bleeding heart couldn’t leave at the pound, but reality was so much worse.
“You run a skunk sanctuary?” He stood still on the fresh hay that covered the floor. He barely breathed. He couldn’t have been less inclined to move if he’d suddenly found himself in the middle of a minefield.
“I take in injured animals.” A touch of defensiveness crept into her expression, probably in response to his are-you-freaking-crazy tone.
“Cats and dogs are easy to adopt out once they recover. The cats at Hope Hill came from here. Wild animals go back into the woods, if they can be self-supporting. I find homes for those with permanent injuries.” Her shoulders lifted then fell—probably a sigh. “Nobody wants the skunks.”
Because most people aren’t completely nuts.
He didn’t say that out loud. Maybe he was regaining some of his social skills. Since that was one of the stated goals of his treatment plan at Shit Hill—hey, good going.
“I’d prefer not to get sprayed.”
“They only spray if they feel threatened.”
She moved to the minifridge—shuffling so she wouldn’t step on anyone—warmed milk in the microwave on top of the fridge, and made two bottles. Then she sat on a folded comforter in the corner, and the half dozen juvenile skunks ran over.
She said something that looked like “Come here you little stink muffins,” which made Cole’s lips twitch.
She gently pushed the first few off her lap. “Babies first.” She waited until another half dozen smaller ones made their way to her.
“Two abandoned litters.” She helped them on her lap, one by one. “The mothers were run over on the highway.”
She rotated the bottles among the babies and murmured to them. He didn’t see what, since her face was angled downward. He imagined she was making cooing mama-skunk noises.
Since all the skunks were crowding around her, Cole figured he might be safe now. He looked farther into the garage.
Boxes and baby gates blocked off the area. The light of the single bulb by the door barely reached to the far end. Pens and crates filled the entire place. He’d been so startled by the skunks, he hadn’t noticed them immediately.
Damn drugs. The sleeping pills kept his mind in a haze even on the days he didn’t take them. All the chemicals were piling up in his system. In what universe did he not have complete situational awareness at all times?
In this one, apparently—a whole new world for him. He despised feeling this freaking helpless and useless. Every single day, he knew he was only alive because nobody had tried to kill him.
His shrink, Dr. Ambrose, kept telling him he needed to learn to relax, needed to learn that he didn’t have to be on his guard around the clock anymore. Cole was a civilian now—danger no longer waited for him around every corner. But being a Navy SEAL had been indelibly written into every cell of his body. Telling him to relax was like tossing a fish in the air and expecting it to fly away.
He peered into the darkness where other animals moved, probably making noise he couldn’t hear.
When he looked back at Annie, she said, “They’ve already been fed. They just want to party.”
He gestured toward them with his head and quirked an eyebrow.
She responded with, “Go ahead.”
He didn’t turn on the overhead light, didn’t want to rile up everyone in the middle of the night. Instead, he stepped over a baby gate and waited until his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness.
A tabby cat with a splint blinked at him from a pillow. A black potbellied pig with a newly healed gash in its side rooted around inside a pen. A raven watched him from the rafters, one wing bandaged. Three blue eggs slept in a nest in a cage, under a heating lamp.
Another divider came next. Past that, five emaciated llamas and a one-eyed donkey turned their heads to stare at him. He stared right back for a couple of startled seconds before scanning the rest of the space.
Bags of food for various animals stood piled against the wall. Running the menagerie must cost a pretty penny just in feed.
The llamas and the donkey stuck to their corners and showed no inclination to get to know Cole better. He reached in with his good hand and scratched the pig behind the ears. If there were delighted squeals, he didn’t hear them. He went to pet the cat, but the cat swiped at him.
The raven gave him a squinty-eyed look that said Don’t even try. He couldn’t reach the bird anyway. He went back to Annie.
He found her half-asleep.
“What’s up with the llamas?”
She blinked at him. “People moved and left them behind.”
He glanced back, but that end of the garage was too dark to see the animals. She had saved them in the nick of time. They looked like they were still pretty close to starvation.
“What was the worst you ever had?”
“A tarantula that lost a leg.” A delicate shiver ran through her. “I hate spiders.”
“Did you save it?”
A tragic look came over her face. “A goat ate him.”
A strangled laugh escaped him. “What happened to the goat?”
“Adopted.”
“Do you ever turn anything away?”
She rubbed the head of one of the baby skunks with the back of her crooked index finger. “Not anything, not ever.”
That people like her lived in the world scared Cole a little. Too softhearted, too easy to take advantage of, too vulnerable. Annie Murray needed a keeper. Not that he was volunteering.
He watched as she slid down into the hay, flat on her back, her head on the folded comforter. The skunks were all over her instantly, like love-smitten kittens, snuggled into every nook, a different baby tucked against every curve.
She closed her eyes, the picture of peaceful bliss.
Cole stood against a nearly irresistible pull to lie next to her and be part of the magic she was weaving.
He never thought he’d be jealous of a skunk, but he wanted to be tucked against her breast. She had generous breasts to go with her generous mouth. She was murmuring something to her little charges that he didn’t catch, a soft half smile on her lips.
He wanted to sink into Annie Murray’s earth-mother goodness, dissolve in her peace.
She was the most wholesome person he’d ever known.
He was the opposite—too damaged in too many ways. He was deaf, and his right arm might never fully function again. He had nightmares . . .
He wouldn’t wish waking up next to him on his worst enemy.
In his dreams, either he was killing someone, or someone was killing him.
He was a killer. He’d been a damn good sniper before his right arm had been rendered useless. Maybe as punishment for his sins.
He didn’t care about the arm. He didn’t care about his lost hearing. He would gladly give more, give anything, if it brought back Ryan, his spotter, his best friend.
Since Ryan and the others had died, screaming in pain, Cole hadn’t been the same.
So no, he could not have the peace Annie Murray was offering.
She could barely keep her eyes open. She must have realized she was falling asleep, because she shook it off and came to her feet.
“I can drive back to Shit Hill,” Cole offered as they walked out to her car.
She glanced at his bad arm.
He saved her the trouble of having to ask. “I’m getting pretty good at driving with my left. We’re not on a racecourse. Small town, past midnight. The roads are empty.”
She nodded, handed him the keys, got in on the passenger side, and promptly fell asleep.
Who slept like that? At the drop of a hat?
Probably people with a clear conscience.
Although, he too had been like that while in the service. Soldiers slept when the opportunity presented itself. Once upon a time, he’d been able to nod off without a problem.
He drove her through town, stealing glances at her. She didn’t wake until he parked the car. She looked even softer and warmer, all sleep-mussed. She blinked at him and then looked around, processing that they were at Hope Hill. “Thanks.”
He opened his mouth to say No big deal, but from the corner of his eye he caught a dark shadow moving between buildings. He turned to catch more, but the shadow disappeared.
“What is it?” Annie yawned.
“Someone’s out there.”
She blinked out the window. “Maybe deer. It’s pretty late. They come out of the woods at night.”
“Could be.” But Cole didn’t think so. He knew a man’s shape when he saw it. “You don’t think it could be your ex?”
After a second of consideration, she shook her head. “Joey works the night shift at the gas station on Tuesdays. Even if he was here earlier, he’d be at work by now.”
Just another patient, then. Maybe even Trevor. Maybe the kid couldn’t sleep.
Cole could certainly relate.
He got out and tossed the keys to Annie, and then they headed to their rooms. They were in the same building: Annie on the first floor, Cole on the second.
He made sure she got to her door safely before he went up the stairs. But he didn’t go to bed.
At three o’clock, he eased out into the dark hallway. Everyone knew he was an insomniac. If he got caught, he had a ready-made cover.
He headed toward the main office.
When he’d told Annie his mother had been concerned about how he was handling his injuries, he hadn’t been lying. But his mother’s concern wasn’t the reason that Cole was at Shit Hill. He’d come because his former commanding officer had asked him to do some undercover work.
Two weeks ago, a brief, coded message had been texted from the rehab center to a known enemy agent in Yemen. According to his CO, a dozen more messages had been sent since, one nearly every day. Each contained military information at various levels of confidentiality—mostly troop movements and troop locations. Cole’s job was to find out who was sending the messages. He was tasked with quietly catching the end of a loose thread so that intelligence services could unravel the organization the traitor was feeding.
Thirty-six vets were currently being treated at the facility—all men. A coincidence, the others had told him. Sometimes they had female vets here too.
The staff numbered nineteen.
Step one was to narrow down the field of suspects. Cole had been working on that for the past two days.
The patients—some of them still active-duty—were the ones with military information, and Cole suspected the traitor had to be one of them. His CO was running detailed background checks, working the case from that end.
So far Cole had crossed off Trevor and Alejandro, then Dale, a grumbling marine. Trevor was too emotionally brittle to pull off being a spy. Alejandro and Dale had never been stationed in some of the regions the clandestine messages had mentioned.
Cole had talked to as many guys as he could. He’d had plenty of opportunity: in the cafeteria, in group therapy, in the gym. But he wasn’t going to overlook the staff either.
From the staff list, he’d crossed off Annie Murray. That left him with fifty-one more names on the combined list. He needed to cross off fifty names to find the traitor.
He stopped in front of the main door that led to the admin offices.
The hallway stood deserted. Next to the door, a little red light blinked on the magnetic card reader. Only staff could enter.
Cole reached into his pocket and pulled out the card he’d lifted from Annie’s bag while she slept on their way back from her house.
For the breadth of a second, he thought about the trust she’d put in him: letting him go home with her, then sleeping next to him as he drove her back.
If she found out that he was using her like this, their budding friendship would end in a hurry. Cole ignored a twinge of regret. He wasn’t at Hope Hill to make friends.
The man sat in his car two houses down from Annie’s house. She’d brought a patient home with her. Cole Makani Hunter.
The man in the car slammed his fist in the steering wheel.
He didn’t follow them when they left, after they’d spent a full hour in that damned garage. Alone. Together.
He knew where they were going. Hope Hill.
He needed time to calm the rage that flowed in his veins. He pictured Annie Murray, on her knees in front of him, offering a tearful apology. He pictured himself slapping her. Hard enough to make that smart little brain of hers rattle.
That would shock her, wouldn’t it? She thought he was all kind and soft and mild—as if he were half a man. He was a good guy, but that didn’t mean he was a wimp. One of these days, he was going to introduce her to the real him.
He found the thought arousing. He finally turned the key in the ignition and pulled into the street. He took the scenic route by the reservoir, the road deserted this time of night.
He saw one car, a white pickup, coming from the opposite direction.
Then the flash of a fox trotting out onto the road.
The pickup braked, but the back tire hit the fox with a glancing blow.
As the pickup moved on, the fox flopped on the road, stunned but alive—a large, beautiful beast.
The man angled his steering wheel and crossed into the opposite lane. Thump.
He stopped the car and looked into the rearview mirror.
One leg was still twitching.
The man put the car in reverse and backed over the stupid animal for good measure.
Then he pulled over and got out to inspect his kill.
Perfect.