Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) (15 page)

“Now isn’t the time or the place for that argument,” he snapped.

“I never deviated from the training plan, Evan. I can’t help that everyone isn’t here. But I’m going to train the folks I do have.” Claire shook her head, refusing to budge. This was far bigger than whatever was eating at him. “What would you rather they take with them downrange? The fact that they all just died in the shoot house? Or the fact that they took a victory home with them tonight?”

Evan threw his Kevlar against the wall. “Claire, you know as well as I do that Engle can’t lead a fucking assault. She can barely make it to work on time.”

“And that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still got to run missions with this team downrange,” Claire shouted, finally matching his anger with her own.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reza close the door, effectively preventing anyone else from seeing them. It didn’t matter. Their voices carried over the walls of the shoot house.

“Aren’t you always telling me that we’ve got to meet the commander’s intent? He wants them to know how to do this.” She deliberately did not rise to the bait. There was something more important at stake than her ego or her wounded pride. “So instead of picking a fight with me, let’s fix it and get it right. By the numbers, if that’s what it takes. If it’s the only thing we do today, let’s do that,” she said quietly.

The door opened. Lieutenant Engle stepped through. “Sir, I know we’re not off to a good start. But we need to learn this. Captain Montoya is right. We need to be prepared for anything.” Engle swallowed, her skin pale. “We’ll stay until we get it right.”

Silence settled over the training area. Engle paused for a moment, then stepped back outside, closing the door behind her.

Claire stepped close enough that she could see the tight lines in Evan’s neck. She rested her hand on the heavy body armor protecting his chest. Right above his heart. “You can’t argue with that.”

She expected him to argue. To lash out.

Instead, he just turned away.

* * *

Claire lowered her hand after knocking on Evan’s door. No answer. She supposed it was for the best, given the backlash from today’s training and all the memories it had stirred up inside her. Shoving her hands into her jacket pockets, she headed down the hall toward the stairs, needing a run to burn off the leftover emotional energy.

Claire stepped outside into the pitch-black night, sinking into the thick, viscous slush outside the lodge. The only sound came from the humming of the lodge’s overhead
lights. Noise was a normal part of life in Iraq and she was long since used to it, so sometimes she had a hard time getting used to the quiet back home here in the States. Real quiet, not the kind brought on by noise-canceling headphones or drug-induced sleep.

The kind of quiet she found walking through a snow-covered trail in the woods. The farther she walked from the lodge, the deeper the quiet became. Soon the only sound was the crunch of her boots on hard packed snow, the huff of her breath freezing on the air. Feeling edgy and too tightly wound, she dug her thumb and forefinger into her eyes, trying to push aside the frustrated memories that had lashed at her all day.

Except that she could still hear the screams as the operations center burned around her in Iraq. She could feel the weight of the broken conference room table pressing on her lungs. The smell of burning flesh and sulfur. The smell that had stolen the joy of Fourth of July fireworks from her ever since she’d lain there helpless and screaming. She hadn’t counted on the training exercise to resurrect so much of her experience downrange.

She stopped, realization prickling over her skin. “Oh, Evan,” she whispered into the dark.

That was what must have set Evan off. The shoot house. It had to be memories. Otherwise, his reaction just seemed … insane.

She walked past a few folks hanging in a smoking area, noticing that most were drinking rather than smoking, ignoring the laws on public alcohol. Living up the moment as though tomorrow were just any other day. Funny how war could make you appreciate the time you had. But the longer she spent at home, the more she slipped back into the day-to-day rush of things.

She walked because she was too tired to go running. She walked to try and find a place to stuff the resurrected memories. Her cheeks burned as she closed her eyes, fighting to keep the sobs from tearing out of her throat. Her arms shook and she rocked silently, digging her fingers into her biceps hard enough to bruise. She frowned, fighting the violent shaking as the adrenaline and the emotion attempted to escape.

There was no single event that had scarred her. No one tragic death that had created some shell-shocked, burned-out GI. There was simply the war. The constant stress of combat. The strain of not letting herself fail. The thought that tonight could be the night her trailer was bombed and she would die in her sleep.

No, there was no single event that marked her soul. It was a lifetime of fighting. Her father. Her wars. All of it shaped the person that she showed the world.

But alone in the dark, on a cold wooded trail, Claire let herself fall apart.

And wondered where she would find the strength to put herself back together.

To put her boots back on and do it all again tomorrow.

* * *

Evan took a sip of his beer, staring into the darkness at the edge of his room.

He rubbed his thumb idly on the sweating neck of the bottle and listened as the door to Claire’s room closed. He was shocked by the strength of his reactions today. Old memories, never forgotten, long ignored, had risen like demons. Striking out at him, reminding him of the biting failure, the aching loss. The endless frustration that he should have done more. He’d made mistakes in battle that were almost as bad as the choices Engle had made today. It wasn’t disdain that had made him react the way he did.

He’d been that platoon leader that lost half his platoon because he’d made a bad call. It hadn’t been bad training that made him stop the exercise. It was the memories of death and dying that had overwhelmed him. The chaos erupting in the shoot house had made him lose his bearings, his sense of time. It had been impossible to distinguish between his bloody memories and what was going on around him and he’d lashed out at the only thing solid in the world at that moment: Claire.

He slammed back the rest of his beer, then dragged on some clothes to head to the bar. It should still be open for a couple more hours if he was lucky. He needed to drink, to
try and forget the burning, twisting pain that Claire’s quiet words had carved into his soul. He paused just outside her door, tempted, so tempted to knock. Just to check on her.

That was an excuse and he knew it. He didn’t want to be alone. Didn’t want to fight the god-awful memories by himself tonight. Claire, whatever else she might be, had her own demons. And as foolish as it was, the desire to peel back her layers drove him closer when he should have been going the other way.

He was a fool. Claire Montoya was convinced she didn’t need anyone. That her way was the only way.

He kept walking.

Because only a fool would want a woman who would never let him in. He could touch her skin, touch her body, but she’d never trust him enough to let him touch her heart. Not the way he wanted. And he couldn’t do that. Not with her.

Her terms were unacceptable, her barriers too high.

The phone. Please, sweet baby Jesus, tell her the phone wasn’t ringing. Claire rolled over, groping for the buzzing object. Vibrating steadily on the floor next to her bed, it paused, only to start up again a moment later. The only reason she’d heard it at all was because it had fallen on top of her uniform belt. The hard plastic vibrating against the metal was obnoxious enough to wake the dead.

She squinted, then closed one eye until the number came into view. She didn’t recognize it. “Yeah?”

“Claire?”

She scowled and blinked, struggling to see the digits on the readout more clearly. She couldn’t have heard that voice right. “Evan?”

“Wake up, Montoya, I need a ride.”

Claire dropped her head down onto her forearm and groaned. It wasn’t even two
A
.
M
. and they had to be back on the range in less than six hours. She tried to look on the bright side. At least Evan was talking to her again. She remembered what time it was. No, that was not a bright side. It was borderline criminal. “Is someone dying?”

“Nice.” She heard water running in the background before it abruptly stopped. She had the strongest suspicion that he’d just finished in the bathroom. Honestly, she didn’t know how she felt about that. “I need a ride. Before Iaconelli and I spend the rest of this little boondoggle in jail.”

What exactly was Evan doing out with Reza anyway? And where were they that they needed her to come and get them? “Are you drunk?”

Evan sighed hard. “Look, you don’t honestly think I’d call you if it wasn’t important? I’m half-cocked and Iaconelli, ah, Ike’s had a hell of a night. I can’t drive and
if I don’t get him out of here in the next hour, the bartender is going to call the cops, which means all of Fort Carson is going to know about this by tomorrow. Later today. Hell, whatever day it is.”

Claire sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, concern motivating her to actually move. She rested her forehead in her hands. “Captain America went out drinking. How ’bout that.”

“Are you coming or what?”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” she grumbled, and disconnected the call.

Iaconelli could have been in hell and she would have gone in after him. She’d done it plenty of times before. But Evan? Evan was another story.

But the fact that Captain America had not only gone out with the resident bad boy but had also gotten too drunk to drive roused her curiosity. The firefight at the shoot house must have screwed him up more than she’d guessed.

She swallowed and dragged her hand through her hair, then started digging through her clothes for a bra. Iaconelli was family, damn it. And while she didn’t know what Evan was to her, she knew couldn’t leave him.

That much she did know.

* * *

Half an hour later, Claire walked into the old railway car that had been converted into a bar by some enterprising soul. She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected from a bar called The Greasy Tube, but it definitely looked greasy and tubelike. The air was cold and thin, the kind of thin that made her lungs hurt from having to work too hard to pull oxygen from it. Even the thick smell of cigarette smoke was thin here, slinking into her hair and lungs like a sneaking thing.

She peered around the darkness, scanning faces that looked far too old and run
down to be in a place that Reza would frequent. He liked energy, this kind of seedy energy. Craved it. This place felt like a funeral. Or a wake.

The bar, such as it was, crouched at one end of the railway car. A couch that Claire suspected had a good chance of having fleas and several bodily fluids she’d rather not think about sat against one wall beneath barred windows. A stack of what looked like broken chairs and the tattered remnants of a table filled the space between the bar and the couch.

Reza was passed out, slumped over the arm of the couch, covering his eyes with one hand and snoring quietly. Impressive. It took a lot to drink Reza under the table. Claire flinched as the stench of old beer assaulted her nose and resurrected ancient memories.

The bartender was a tiny woman who looked like she was every bit of sixty, the kind of sixty that suggested hard drinking and even harder drugs. She was busy reading someone the riot act at the bar.

Evan. Slumped over the bar and leaning hard on his elbows to stay upright, he looked unsteady on his wobbly stool. She made her way over to him, squeezing past a couple who were swapping heavy doses of spit in a corner. Claire felt scuzzy just from being in this place. She approached Evan carefully and tapped him on the shoulder, careful to step back in case he was too drunk to realize it was her. She’d never been around a truly intoxicated Evan, and she didn’t know what to expect.

“Hey.” His smile was warm and welcoming. No, Evan wasn’t a violent drunk. Apparently, he was an extra-relaxed, charming drunk. Wasn’t that interesting?

He shifted and leaned his head on his hand, bracing his elbow against the bar. The movement stretched his T-shirt over his chest. Claire forced herself to look away. She didn’t do drunk sex, even with a charming, slightly intoxicated Evan.

“You have some serious explaining to do,” she said lightly. There was no judgment in her tone. She was more relieved than anything. She’d been worried when she
hadn’t been able to find him after the shoot house. Maybe Evan hadn’t come through the war unscathed, but she hadn’t expected to find him drunk at the bar. Not when he’d been giving her hell about Reza’s drinking. She could not—no, she would not—judge either of them. Something had snapped in Evan today, and she of all people could understand that.

* * *

“I think we need to get Iaconelli home.” His voice was thick and harsh, as if he’d spent the night shouting over loud music or mortar fire. He always lost his voice when he spent time on the range. He studied Claire carefully in the smoky light.

She had come. He was surprised. Maybe he shouldn’t have been. She sat down next to him on a crappy bar stool, looking every inch a warrior goddess. A chair scraped against the beer-soaked wood floor and Claire’s eyes snapped toward the sound, instantly on guard.

“What happened?” she asked. He was surprised at what he didn’t hear in her voice. Anger. Blame. No, it was more mild curiosity, tinged with … resignation? As though she’d done this a time or two.

“Some of the local boys decided they didn’t like the way Iaconelli looked. Then they heard me use his name and they were sure he was a terrorist who was here to bomb this shit-hole bar halfway to Wyoming.”

He watched a myriad of emotions flicker across her face as he spoke. She would be an avenging angel to those who wronged her friends, and there was no doubt that the flagrant racism of the local rednecks pissed her off.