Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers) (13 page)

Connie slipped out after dinner was over. She’d not managed a single word edgewise since stepping into the house. John had answered questions for her when it was clear she wasn’t going to speak. Couldn’t speak.

She stepped off the back porch and was assaulted by a thousand smells she could only guess at. Some were obvious. The fried chicken dinner on her lips and the woodsmoke drifting from the chimney that led to the wood stove warming the large and crowded living room where the whole family gathered even now. The cold night air carried something different.

Afghanistan’s night air had been tainted with mint and cooking lamb. The Muskogee night tasted almost as foreign. Hinted at memories she couldn’t place, couldn’t find.

Even the stars were foreign. A week ago the distant heavens had been bounded, held clear of the ground by the high silhouettes of the Hindu Kush to one side and the central Himalayans to another. At Bati camp, predawn there, just returning from missions, the stars were held even higher by the ever-present rim of the concrete soccer stadium that had become their home. Here the stars flowed right to the horizon, a flatness that ranged forever away from her.

“Have you had sex yet?” The sharp, staccato words rapid-fired at her back.

Connie took a quick step for more distance before she turned to face her attacker. Noreen stood just three steps away. The light through the window built into the kitchen door silhouetted her against the house. No, silhouetted her against her home.

“No.”

Noreen’s arms were crossed in front of her.

“You trying to get him in the sack?”

“John deserves better than that.” And he did. A man who cared so much about family.

Noreen grunted once. Her voice softened. “He keeps picking up these brain-damaged women. Sex and marriage seem to be the only topics they ever want to talk about. Most girls he brings home don’t get that he’s special. Like their heads don’t work right or something, 2-D heads in a 3-D world. You one of those?”

Connie considered the question. She knew what she wanted. And it wasn’t about family. She wasn’t trying to find some man just like her father. She flew with SOAR because she’d earned it. It had taken her half a decade of study to reach SOAR, and even John was reluctantly admitting that she might be seriously good at what she did.

Was she here with John to be healed? Not likely. She was here with John because he’d asked. Because she’d imagined a quiet Christmas together with his mother and father. Because the last person she wanted to be alone with for Christmas was herself.

“No,” she answered Noreen. “I fly with John. I know enough to truly appreciate his skills. Having nowhere else to go, I appreciate his kindness in inviting me.”

“You planning to marry him?”

“Never!” The word blew out of her mouth across the night in a cloud of crystalline white.

“John not good enough?” The sharp was back in her adversary’s voice.

“I don’t believe in family. Not as a soldier, not when I could die crossing the next horizon.”

They stared at each other in silence, three paces between them. One lost in the night, the other silhouetted by the home of her birth.

At length Noreen rubbed at her arms.

“You should come inside soon. John’s already missing you, though he hasn’t realized it yet.”

Noreen turned back to the house. Before stepping through the door, she paused, as if there was something more to say. But then she continued through.

And Connie was left to stare at the old clapboard house, in wonder that John could be missing her.

No one missed Connie Davis.

John slept like the dead. He and his brother had shared the big, old double bed until they were ten and Grumps’s sister had passed in her sleep. With her room opened up, John had the chance to sleep on his own.

He and Larry had traded stories long into the night. They’d talked about the farm. The success of the last season, the high cost of irrigation water versus driving in a couple more wells.

And they’d talked about flying, a little. The topic too foreign to any of them to sustain the conversation for long. His family didn’t really get it. They liked that he flew as a mechanic for the U.S. Army. But they thought he’d do a tour and come home, as had he. Now that he’d been in the service a decade, the family wasn’t so sure how to think about it.

Larry’d come to Campbell once on a visit and been smitten with quite a crush on then Captain Beale. He’d sworn to ten years of abstinence in mourning the day she’d gotten married. As John had expected, it had lasted about three days until Tamara Zulaski had thrown herself at him.

John had gone barhopping with Larry and Crazy Tim more than once during that weeklong visit. He and Tim drinking soda because they were always on call for flight duty, Larry getting mellow and happy, but no more. Larry and Tim had really hit it off, trading girl stories late into the night. John had brought Crazy Tim home a few times since. Each time, he and Larry had picked up right where they left off. They were his favorite two guys, but no girl could figure out how to pin either one down for more than a handful of months at a time.

When he’d noted as much to Paps, he’d laughed and tapped the center of John’s chest and gone on about pots and kettles. John always had more than his fair share of luck with the ladies, but he didn’t talk about them like war stories.

Paps was the one who came closest to understanding why John flew. He’d spent two years pounding the ground near the end of ’Nam. But his had been a different war. In a different era. One tour and he’d been done and come back to marry John’s mother, have kids, and work the farm.

John lay a moment longer in the sunlight that streamed across the bed.

Thought of the one thing that no one had asked him. Not openly at the dinner table, not covertly before shooing him off to bed. The question that his brother had not asked him last night, except with a long silence before they finally slept.

Sergeant Connie Davis.

One helluva good question.

She’d stood on the edge of his awareness all evening. Observing. Smiling. A gentle touch that left him as aware of her as he was of his family. An easy mix, a happy blend.

He swung out of bed and planted his feet on the floor. Cold wood worn smooth by ten thousand mornings. John fished a fresh shirt out of his pack and headed for the bathroom. Coffee, eggs, and bacon scents wafted up the stairs. Maybe he’d get a shower later. He thought about all of his hard work in Nevada yesterday, then six hours travel, and he turned toward the bathroom hoping someone had left him some hot water.

***

John thudded down the stairs a new man. Give him a mug of coffee big enough and strong enough to fuel a helicopter, and he’d be good to go.

No one in the sun-filled kitchen, but the oven was on warm. He hauled out the covered platter his mom had left in the oven. He briefly considered dishing some of it onto a plate. Instead, he grabbed a kitchen towel against the hot platter, picked up a fork, and dug in.

He leaned his butt against the warm oven and closed his eyes as he chewed. This is what it was about. At moments like this he couldn’t remember why he ever left.

Then he opened his eyes and saw exactly why he had. It was to fly with people like the Majors and Crazy Tim. And Archie and Kee. It was to make these people safe in their homes with kitchens this warm and this safe in the freest country on the planet. The one who had borne him and the ones who’d taken him in as family.

Protecting them came at a price. And was worth every drop of sweat, every aching muscle, and maybe, just maybe worth the good people who had died beside him as they flew. He sent a silent prayer for safety to the folks still flying nightly sorties out of Bati air base. He glanced at the clock. Probably coming out of preflight briefing about now. Grab some food, then fly.

God but his mama could cook.

He shoveled down another mouthful of French toast with farm butter and real sorghum syrup and poured himself a steaming mug. Balancing it on one end of the platter, he wondered where everyone was hiding.

The kitchen clock answered part of that. Almost ten. Grumps, Paps, and Larry would be out working for hours already. Fixing a combine, turning the corn stubble under to rot until spring, weeding the south beet field. If they’d done beets this year. It bothered John briefly that he didn’t know.

Noreen would be taking her first-semester, senior-year finals at Northeastern State. How did that happen? Twenty-two, an honors major in premed. Premed? She was supposed to be a model or married to the perfect man. Instead she was talking about emergency medicine. The first Wallace through college, and she was doing it with honors.

Mama must have gone to Janice’s rather than the other way round so that the kids didn’t wake him.

He started to laugh. Almost choked on a mouthful of homemade bacon, had to wash it down with more coffee. No, they weren’t worried about his sleep. Mama and Janice would be out rousin’ the troops. There’d be a hell of a party this weekend. Christmas just four days out.

There would be some serious shopping to do.

That stopped him. He’d grabbed some presents over the last month or so. Had a deal with Larry ’cause Janice couldn’t keep a secret to save her sweet soul and Noreen was too much of a snoop. He’d mailed packages home to his brother as he found them in Afghanistan or Italy or wherever SOAR led him, and Larry would have them hidden away somewhere until Christmas Eve.

But he hadn’t thought about Connie.

Wow! And what was he supposed to get her? Something to take apart and fix? He’d flown with her for three weeks now, been in the same unit for a dozen more, and he had no idea what to get her. “Pretty damn sad, Wallace. Pretty damn sad to not know that much about a person.”

And where was she anyway? Probably off with Mom and Janice and the kids.

He chewed on another piece of bacon but stopped half through.

No. That didn’t sound right.

She’d be more likely to be out doing the winter plowing with Paps. It had been good to see the two of them hit it off right away.

But she’d been quiet last night. Quiet even for Connie, which was saying something. He moseyed across the living room and down the hall, stabbing up some scrambled eggs.

But his old room was spotless. The bed made Army tight. Could bounce a quarter off the old quilt. He’d certainly never made it up like that. Her kit sat in front of his dresser, his old high school football trophies across the top. Her bag all perfectly neat, packed. She wouldn’t even have to break stride to get her gear and be headed out the door. Exactly as Henderson had ordered.

He’d scattered his crap around, as much old habits coming to the surface as to piss off Larry, who’d always been too neat-freak anal anyway.

So, where was she?

He listened to the house. Nothing. No one here. Not a creak or groan in the old wood.

“Strange to sleep in your bed.”

He spun fast enough that he lost the coffee mug. It spun through the air, leaving a trail of only a few drops. Thankfully, he’d drained it.

Connie moved forward from the door where she’d been leaning on the jamb and snagged the cup out of the air.

“You’d…” He swallowed against a dry throat. “You’d have made a good wide receiver.”

“We never lost.”

“We?”

“You don’t think I’ve spent seven years in the Army and never played ball?”

He thought about the pickup games he’d played over the years. Army was rough, they played for keeps. Football played as a contest of who was tough and who was tougher.

“Really?”

She left him hanging for a long moment, then flashed that killer smile as she returned his mug to his platter. And stopped there, not two steps away. So close he could smell soap and shampoo. He breathed in again, and that unique scent of Connie came through. “Damn!” was all his brain managed.

“No. But I played first base in Fort Rucker varsity softball for most of high school. And no one beat us. Ever.”

That was an image he could live with pretty happily in his brain. A uniform stretched tight on a beautiful woman. A woman athlete. One leg stretched back to touch the bag, leaning all the way out to snag the throw. Every curve of muscle etched clear in the moment.

He could feel the sweat on his brow.

“That’s a sight I would have enjoyed.”

Connie nodded. Not embarrassed. Not coy. Just matter of fact.

“So, are you going to eat all day?”

“I can think of something else I’d like to do more.” Couldn’t believe he’d said it.

For the longest moment, she simply watched him. Then she slid the plate from his nerveless fingers and slipped it onto the dresser top between his trophies.

Without hesitation, she took the step forward that placed her body against his, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him down to her.

For the first time, his hands slipped around her waist. With women in his past, his hands had either encircled impossibly slender waists that had no strength to them or there’d been plenty there to hold on to. He liked women and was thankful that women liked him. They were a joy to hold no matter what size they came in.

But Connie’s waist was the first that had ever fit his hands so perfectly. His fingertips rested against the soldier-strong muscles of her back right at the moment before they descended in that most feminine of curves. Connie had great hips. With his thumbs, he could feel the tight gut muscles from years of training, of a thousand miles run, of ten thousand crunches. In his hands, for the first time in his life, he held a woman of as near-perfect form as nature and the best physical training on the planet could produce.

Then she pulled his lips to hers and he was gone. Apple pie and cinnamon washed through his brain. Warm tropical and deep spice. Her mouth opened, welcomed, joined.

He’d thought Connie meek or timid. But that wasn’t right. And his thoughts were in no condition to puzzle out the answer to that.

Rather, he simply fed upon those soft lips and the strong tongue. And pulled her in, never removing hands from hips. Pulled her in until their bodies pressed together in a way that allowed no secrets.

Her arms around his neck pulled her chest against his, twin swells of soft heat. And hip to hip… all he could do was groan into her mouth as she drank him in.

When at last she backed off, he refused to let go, and she didn’t complain. She simply lay her head against his shoulder. Stood there and snuggled against him as if they’d stood like this every day for years. He rested his cheek atop her hair.

Soft. Her hair softer than it looked. Softer than he’d imagined.

“This is nice.”

He could feel the gentle buzz of her voice where her chest still pressed against his. Nice? He’d had women say several things when he held them close, and “nice” didn’t appear much on the list. But it was hard to be offended when she felt this way.

“Your sister wants to know if I’m trying to marry you.”

His sister? Marriage? What?

“Uh, what did you say?” he asked before the statement fully registered.

She pushed back just enough to look into his face, but not to drive them apart.

“Of course I said I was.”

That cleared his brain faster than a fresh mug of steaming coffee. He could feel the blood drain right out of his face, leaving a chill on his cheeks that slid down his spine. He’d brought home a crazy—

“Actually, I’m joking.”

He tried not to reveal the relief that flooded into him, but when you held someone this close, there wasn’t a pulse or a breath that wasn’t clear as an onboard intercom between them.

“But it’s nice that you care.”

Again she slipped her head against his shoulder and sighed as she snuggled there a moment.

“Maybe we’ll just use each other for sex?” He tried to make it light and funny. It came out a little choked from a throat gone dry.

She shrugged in his arms.

“Probably. Though it will piss her off pretty bad.”

Like he was going to let little Noreen have any say in the matter of what he did with…

Sex with Connie Davis? Somehow he hadn’t quite gone there. He knew her kiss blew his knees into butter, and her smile blew his brain into next week. He’d invited her home for Christmas, but he hadn’t quite connected that they would…

Here? In his childhood room?

Now? Who knew when his parents were coming back?

But he could feel the heat returning to his body. To have this woman against him, skin to skin. To feel himself inside her. That most certainly got his body’s attention.

“I told her I didn’t believe in marriage. I can’t tell if that calmed her down or upset her even more.”

John felt the cold wash down his body again, an ice chill this time. Freezing every reaction that had begun pounding him moments before with its heat.

Connie sensed it, must have felt the change where they still pressed together. She looked once more up into his eyes. That assessing, measuring gaze of hers.

Then her expression grew serious.

He felt her moving away from him even though his hands still encircled her waist, rested on those incredible hips.

“I don’t, John. Not for a soldier. Not when I could be dead the next moment. It’s just not fair. What my father did…” She stopped, the pain a sharp slice across her speech. Then a whisper. “Just not fair.”

Long before he could speak, she’d stepped from his arms, gathered his plate, and headed back toward the kitchen.