I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (20 page)

Dilya sat on her cot and watched The Kee sit on hers. For two days The Kee had kept to herself. They didn’t eat at normal times any more. There was always some reason to eat when the food tent stood empty. The Kee didn’t talk to the String Man or kiss him or hold hands or speak to him.

Dilya’s attempts to cheer up The Kee didn’t work either. She’d brought out the book they were reading, but even the party in the tree didn’t help.
Go, Dog. Go!
always made The Kee happy, but not today.

They tried the game of string that the String Man called Cat’s Cradle. But by the time they reached the “carpet” figure, Dilya gave up.

And The Kee didn’t even notice. Her hands fell lifelessly back into her lap when Dilya took back the string. And The Kee sat on her bed and stared at the ground.

Dilya could feel the knot building in her stomach. She had enough food hidden under her bed to last a week. Maybe more if she was careful. And the four tall water bottles she’d stolen would be heavy, but in a pillow sack she could carry it all.

She didn’t want to go. She liked The Kee. She liked the way that grown-ups were nice to her here.

The knot in her stomach grew so tight, she couldn’t sit anymore. She rose to walk between the beds, six of them now. One just for her. She walked up and down the tent, trying to think, but her stomach was hungry and afraid. Her father always said when you were afraid was when you had to think the hardest, so she tried, though it made her miss him even more.

Everything had been good until they went to the beach place. She knew there had been a fight on the sailboat, but Calledbetty had made it better and they had returned to the boat. Building in the sand and visiting the castle. Those were the best days since her parents had died.

Dilya turned at the cloth wall of the tent and walked back the other way, The Kee didn’t even look up.

The sand by the sea had been so different from the desert. So wet that it stuck together if you were careful and kept it wet, but not too wet. And they had all been happy. She could remember playing with The Kee in the water and riding on the String Man’s back. Everyone had been happy.

Happy until the bus came to take them back to the desert.

Was the desert the problem? No, they had been in the desert before.

Was it the strange man who rode the helicopter into the night but didn’t come back? He had scared Dilya; she held her stomach. She hadn’t seen him up close, but he was bad. She knew it. If only she knew why she knew it. But The Kee and the String Man had come back without him. That was good.

No, the desert wasn’t the problem. The problem was the bus. Everything went wrong at the bus.

What could she do? She stumbled to a stop in front of The Kee. What was wrong with her? She’d bet that the String Man could fix it. But they didn’t see him anymore. They didn’t even fly on the helicopter at night. Worse than strangers. If they passed, he said hello to her but ignored The Kee. Not even another trip into the big city. No adventures in the market.

The Kee looked up and blinked at her. After a long moment, she spoke. Her voice rough, like she’d never used it before.

“Dinner, Dilya. Go. Eat with Archie.”

“Go, Dog. Go!” Dilya answered and ran to the door. Now The Kee and the String Man would be together. It would all be okay.

But The Kee didn’t follow. She sat on her bunk. Maybe she was hurt. Like when Dilya had been so sick.

She’d tell the String Man. He’d make it all better.

She ran back and wrapped her arms around The Kee’s neck. The Kee held her tight for a long moment, then let go and sent Dilya on her way.

Dilya would help. She ran from the tent seeking String Man Professor
domla
.

***

Kee would be fine. If Dilya would rather be with Archie, who could blame her. Kee was realistic enough to know that her own attitude sucked at this moment. No one wanted her anyway. Beale wished she were off the chopper. Archie had said he was done with her and now wouldn’t give her the time of day. He’d cheated. He’d shown her how to want more and then taken it back.

“Hard. Isn’t it?”

Kee spun to see who spied on her. That new girl stood in a dark corner by her cot.

“How long have you been there?”

Connie Davis answered her with silence. A silence backed up by a steady assessing gaze.

Like yesterday when Kee’d caught Connie rebuilding a section of the DAP Hawk’s tail rotor drive. Kee’d lit into her for taking apart something she didn’t understand. Kee’d never done one solo, though she probably could, with a manual. The things were tricky.

Woman had let her rant and fume without a single flicker in those hazel eyes until Kee wound down.

“There’s a service issue that we uncovered during training at the factory. We’ll be getting a notice next week about it. The transfer bearing on the MH-60M upgrade needs replacement every two hundred hours of operation rather than every three hundred as on the MH-60L. This one clocked at 212 at landing this morning. Therefore, I’m replacing it.”

Kee had glared at her. Glared at the repair log spread beside the meticulous work cloth where Connie had spread parts with a textbook-like precision. The Kee had sat in the dirt and watched in silence for two full hours, but she couldn’t fault the woman’s work. If she hadn’t been in such a foul mood, she might have asked for details about two techniques she hadn’t seen before.

Now, that same bland silence awaited her in her last sanctuary, the women’s sleeping quarters. Nowhere safe.

“What was your damned question?” Only way Kee’d be rid of her.

“I’ve been watching you. You don’t strike me as a happy person, at least not since I arrived. I’ve watched you with the kid. It’s not her. I’m thinking it has something to do with that First Lieutenant who planted you in the dirt.”

Connie crossed out of her dark corner and stood at the foot of Kee’s cot. Those hazel eyes hidden by the shadows. Outside the tent, the sun had dropped below the soccer arena’s high seating.

“His mood has been as foul as yours, except he hides it better.”

Great. Just what Kee needed. Another reminder that anyone could read her emotions better than she could.

“I’m thinking you two need to talk. One of you is too stubborn, and I’m betting that’s you.”

“What about him?” Kee bit it off. Too late. She’d already asked. Asked for advice from this weird, mechanic, middle-America android. Apparently unlike Kee, the woman never showed any emotion at all. If she had any. Kee couldn’t read her.

Connie tipped her head one way. Then the other. Puzzling at the problem, her eyebrows pulled down into a slight frown. Her feather-cut hair rippling down in soft waves.

“He’s… either sad or afraid. Perhaps both.”

“He should be afraid.” Kee really had to watch her mouth. The image in her mind of pounding her fists against him until he got his act together, or staggered away as a bloody pulp, would definitely get her booted for attacking a superior officer.

“Damn!” She leaned forward to grind at her eyes with the heels of her hand. “I’ve screwed this up and I don’t know what to do. He won’t even look at me.”

“Not when you’re watching. But when you’re out running, I’ve learned to expect no help from him on any repairs.”

“What else are you doing to Major Beale’s Hawk?”

Again the bland stare.

“Okay. Illegal change of topic.” Kee struggled to her feet. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Seriously. You might try talking to him.”

Kee hated the answer.

Almost as much as she hated that the All-American girl next door, Specialist Connie Davis, was absolutely right.

“Hey, Archie.”

He stumbled to a halt a dozen steps into the evening darkness past the chow tent and looked around for the voice’s owner. He’d almost forgotten the sound of it these last days.

“Kee?”

“Up here.”

He raised his gaze. He could just make out her shadow halfway up the end-zone seating. Farther away than he’d thought from the sound of her voice, the curved concrete tiers amplifying her soft call to this spot. In another few minutes, she’d be wholly invisible in the dark of the night.

He could feel all the joy of having Dilya once again as a dinner companion drain out of him. He fought the slide into anger with little success. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, which still hurt a little where she’d hit him, he considered his options.

“Please?” Little more than a whisper.

He’d never heard that from her. Not once that he could remember. Her plea tipped the balance, barely. He climbed up the dozen tiers. She sat, leaning forward, her hands clasped, arms resting on her knees. The dark of the moonless night now hid her. The bit of stray camp light caught in her eyes. The faint streak of blond hair showing in the starlight. Otherwise, nothing more than the vague outline of shadow against faded concrete.

A soft night breeze twisted and swirled across the tiered seating. Sometimes it snagged the last aroma of lasagna dinner from the cook tent. Sometimes the kerosene edge of jet fuel. Then it caught the desert warmth of Kee’s skin.

“Sit.” She patted the concrete beside her. “Please?”

Again that whispered entreaty.

He sat. Not too close. Not sure of her mood.

“I need you to explain something to me.”

“I asked first.” Archie was sick of explaining himself to her. “But instead you nearly busted my shoulder and smashed me into the dirt.”

“I did? Your shoulder? Are you okay?”

He rubbed the spot more from instinct learned over the last three days than from any remaining pain. “I’m fine.”

A silence fell between them. Awkward. Drawn out.

Her breathing was ragged, the only sound other than a couple of the guys’ laughter as they left the chow tent.

He wanted to reach for her. To hold her. But she had taught him that wasn’t something she took to well.

They waited until the loudest sound in the night was the occasional ping of the metal cooling on the nearby Chinook helicopters.

Now there were lights in two or three of the tents, and the brilliant splash of the Milky Way slashing across the sky. If he was patient, he could occasionally see the outline of a sentry posted atop the wall moving across the field of stars.

“You had a question.” Kee’s voice was rough.

Archie considered for a moment. Considered not asking and letting her go to hell. That she could think so little of him, that he would ever just use a woman, take advantage of one.

“Why did you pull away from me after Italy?”

“Why did you?”

“What?” they both said in unison.

Archie would have laughed if it didn’t hurt his heart so much.

“Damn it, Kee. You gave me back my mother. Then you shut down like a steel blast shield. Why?”

She sputtered for a moment. “I told you who I was. No one knows my past. Not my recruiter, certainly none of my soldiers in the 10th Mountain, not even the interviewers at SOAR induction. No one. And then you wouldn’t even speak to me.”

Archie closed his mouth and tried to remember the moment. So much had happened so fast. He’d never made love outdoors. And when she’d leaned her head on his shoulder, his heart had been gone. Given. “Sail, line, and anchor,” as his father always said.

Their kiss while sitting on the stone wall. His hand wrapped around the tiny mar on her flesh that had almost stolen her life. He’d never held anything so precious.

Then, in those few minutes while the bus stopped and loaded, he and his mother forever changing their relationship for the better. They’d found each other over a bridge he’d never imagined, that Kee had built and crossed so effortlessly. She’d changed his entire past in that moment.

“You, Archie.” His mother’s voice a whisper as he held her close. “You are the most important thing I have ever done. I love you so much.”

They’d never had many words, and hers had changed everything.

Maybe he had been distant from Kee, but not by intent.

“I had to rethink every memory, every event of my life from the new perspective Mother gave me. That you gave us. She is not skilled at speaking her thoughts, but I think she always did her best to constantly show her love. I can remember how exhausted she would be when she joined Dad and me for family events, and yet she did join. She didn’t go to bed afterward, she went into her home office. I thought she loved her job more than she loved us.” He closed his eyes to picture it and knew one of the many places he’d been wrong.

“I remember the sadness in Dad’s eyes each time he watched her go. I held that pain against her as well. But now I know that he didn’t hurt for himself, he felt sad for her. For the burden she’s chosen to carry. I know that ever since the Iron Curtain collapsed along with the Berlin Wall, the pressure on her has been immense. I half thought she’d be a casualty of 9-11, simply from overwork.”

He rubbed his face. How much had he increased his mother’s burden with his misguided judgments? That was a painful misdeed he could never repay. Somewhere in the air on the way back to the carrier he’d realized that. But at least he could stop adding to it now. He’d sent her a long letter, which should be in her hands in another day or so. Telling her how sorry he was. How much he appreciated her. How he’d try to be more aware.

“Kee,” he breathed the word like a prayer into the night. “You changed my life. You changed my mother’s life. It took me a while to absorb that change. But you’ve given me the most important gift of my life. You gave me back my family.”

Kee stared down at the vague shadow of her clenched hands. Her guts were churning. She hadn’t eaten since this morning, or maybe last night, yet she felt close to puking.

“So, it wasn’t me?”

“What do you mean?” Archie sat so close she could feel the heat of his body as a chill swept into the evening air. If the concrete of the stadium bleachers weren’t re-radiating the day’s heat she’d be downright cold.

“I thought—” Had she just been stupid?

“I thought that you wouldn’t want—” She couldn’t say it.

He didn’t respond. He simply left her the quiet space to get her own shit together as if that was gonna happen anytime soon. Always the perfect gentleman. Even when pissed. Pissed and sore. He remained the best man she’d ever met.

“—wouldn’t want someone from the streets. Who’d sold herself and her best friend to survive.”

“Is that what all this is about?”

She nodded her head, knowing he couldn’t see her, but it was all she could do. Her shoulders ached from hunching for so long. Her hair hung down like a curtain around her lowered head, shutting out all light.

Out of the dark, Archie rested a gentle hand on the center of her back. Rested it there as gently as the summer breeze on the Italian hilltop.

Rested it there as the shakes took over. Shakes turned to sobs and to the first tears she’d ever cried but the once on the boat. She wept. Each tear a searing pain that scored her cheeks like hot phosphorous tracer tracks.

She hugged her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She curled tight around the pain shuddering through her body.

Archie held her. Both arms now tight around her. She couldn’t even turn to rest her head against his shoulder. All she could do was sob and gasp.

“I. Was.” The words ripped out of her gut. “So. Afraid.”

“Shh. It’s okay.” He stroked her hair and she wept harder.

“So. Afraid. You wouldn’t.” Each word tearing her insides apart as it ripped free. “Want me.” The words shook her to the core. They shredded the Kee that she knew and left her adrift. The only thing worse than saying the words was having them out in the world.

She couldn’t breathe. Was past the ability to gasp breath. Not even breath to weep.

“Oh, Kee. I could not stay away from you if I tried.” A soft laugh. One she felt through his chest pressed against her shoulder. “And I tried. I don’t believe that I have ever been as unhappy as these last days without you.”

“Re-re-really?” She was such a mess. How could anyone want her?

He squeezed her more tightly. Until her whole body curled against him. But she couldn’t ease from her fetal ball.

He kissed her on top of the head. Like a holy benediction, it washed over her. The sobbing eased. Her throat let go enough that she could breathe, which she did in wracking gulps almost as painful as her weeping. Her muscles let go enough that now she leaned against him rather than simply being clutched by him.

Archie slid a finger beneath her chin to lift her face. She wiped her tears and nose on the sleeve of her shirt.

But he didn’t kiss her. He stopped with his mouth so close she could feel his breath. He slid his other hand down, not groping her breast as it brushed by. Down. Down until it rested on her side, just above her hip. Until it wrapped around where she’d been shot, where a hand had held her life in.

Then his lips whispered against hers.

Once again they sat on a stone wall around a sheep pasture. The Italian sunlight warming her skin. His heat scorching her insides. His mouth consuming hers with a feather touch and a deep caring with which no one had ever touched her before.

***

Kee needed to say a thousand things. But couldn’t think of one of them. Her body still ached from her weeping. She had never wept with that soul-wrenching pain too big to let out. Not even at Anna’s death. Not ever that she could recall. And she couldn’t stop herself around Archie. Somehow he created a safe place for her. A place where that stupid heart out on her sleeve kept showing itself.

How was she supposed to think when a man kissed her like this? And for the first time, a man kissed her knowing her past and who she was. That was something new.

Archie kissed her with the perfect attention he brought to everything he did. His hand on her hip, his lips brushing hers ever so gently.

It made her feel…

She smiled against his lips, almost laughed, though her throat was still rough and it sounded more of a choked gasp.

“What?” Archie pulled back a whisper’s length to ask, their lips still brushing.

“There was a moment. A moment I especially wanted to remember. So that I would know where to start. Or to start over. To pick up where we left off.”

He nuzzled her neck and breathed in deep and long before exhaling on a sigh. “What moment? What happened?”

“Our pagers went off.” Her voice sounded soft and slow, so languid she barely recognized it as her own. She rolled her head back to give him better access to the line of kisses he was placing along her collarbone.

He paused, then offered a low chuckle that erased the last of the chill that had wrapped around her this whole last week. Returning his lips to hers, he whispered a question.

“Kee?” A question that asked nothing and everything.

“Yes!” There was no other answer she could give, wanted to give. The lightness that wrapped around her filled her with a need. Not for sex. A need for a man. For one man. For this man.

No point in protesting, it would be a lie. No point in saying she didn’t want and desire, her body was alive with need for his.

She reached back to tug off her shirt and bra with a single move.

Archie stopped her motion with a gentle touch. “No, let me.”

But he didn’t strip her. He didn’t grab or peel or even pinch. Instead he traced her curves with infinite patience. Studied her in the dark like a critical terrain. The lightest trace of a single fingertip along her jawline, down her throat, and across her collarbone sent shivers that reached down her spine. He expanded his research, not attacking her breast but nuzzling the soft side through her shirt.

Kee floated, let all of her nerves calm and focus on the sensations Archie’s actions evoked. For the first time in her life, she did nothing. Nothing but lace her fingers deep in his soft hair. Nothing but turn to allow his investigation to travel farther down a particularly good path.

When at long last he removed her clothes, he did so one piece at a time. He traced how each fold shifted across her skin. She lay stretched on her clothes when he took her in his mouth. Slowly, ever so slowly with the patience of a master strategist she was really and truly learning to appreciate, he lifted her pulse rate a beat at a time. Drove her upward on such a smooth-flowing curve that when she broke the surface, all she could feel was surprise and pleasure.

He didn’t stop there. He took her higher than she’d ever been, until she floated disembodied in the night, arching against him, release flowing into release.

When at long last he entered her, he filled her so completely, so perfectly that she wept once more. The tears that slid from her eyes didn’t burn. Didn’t sear.

They healed. They mended and bound the pieces of her heart back together.

And when Archie kissed the tears away, drank in the ocean salt of her happiness, all she could do was float.

Archie drove her on and up until it scorched her body clean. Only then did he let himself go. She’d never felt so alive as the moment he settled onto her, her hands tangled in the luscious hair.

“I love you so much, Kee.”

“Keiko.” From Archie she wanted to hear it.

“Keiko.”

Men always said they loved you after sex, easy to ignore that. But the sound of her real name in his breathless whisper against her ear.

That was something special, something important. And something she’d not easily forget.

Nor his hand which had never stopped holding her side as he’d reveled in her body.

That still held her life as if it were a precious thing.