“Hey, little one,” he said, sounding extraordinarily gentle as he bent over her.
With him so close, Trina could see the dark shadow of what would be stubble by evening, the slight curve of a perfectly shaped mouth...and a white scar that angled from one clean-cut cheekbone to his temple, just missing his eye. That was an old one, she felt sure, not the wound that had him on leave. Her teeth closed on her lower lip. If he turned his head at all, they could almost—
No, no, no! Don’t even go there.
The muscle in his jaw spasmed, and she held herself very, very still. Lowering her gaze didn’t help, not with impressive muscles bared by a gray T-shirt. And then there was his thigh, encased in worn denim.
Maybe he’d turn out to have a girlfriend living with him. Joseph wouldn’t necessarily know.
“Here we go,” he said calmly, and scooped up Chloe, tucking her against his broad chest and rising to his feet. A moment later he’d slung the duffel over his opposite shoulder, and looked at Trina with raised brows as if he’d been twiddling his thumbs waiting for ten minutes. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.” She jumped up too fast. His hand clamped around her upper arm, making her suspect her eyes had done whirligigs. She blinked a couple of times and repeated, “Yes. I’m fine.” Slight exaggeration, but she could do this.
He studied her for longer than she liked before releasing her. “Okay.”
Vicky trailed them to the back door and locked it behind them. Gabe paused only for a moment to scan the landscape, then strode toward the trees. With so little undergrowth on this dry side of Oregon, the lodgepole and ponderosa pines didn’t offer much cover, nothing like a fir and cedar forest would have on the east side of the Cascades where Trina had grown up. Gabe paused now and again and looked around, but mostly kept moving. At first, she was disconcertingly aware of how silently he moved, while she seemed to find every stick or cone to stomp on. Crackle, pop... A jingle teased her memory.
She couldn’t hold on to such a frivolous thought. She felt his gaze on her a few times, too, but didn’t dare let herself meet his eyes. The pain increased with each step until Trina felt as if fire were licking at her back again. Sheer willpower kept her putting one foot in front of the other. She stumbled once and would have gone down, but he caught her arm again.
“Almost there,” he murmured. “See that black truck ahead?”
She didn’t even lift her head. He nudged her slightly to adjust her course, but without touching her back. Trina didn’t remember how much she’d told her brother about her injuries.
She almost walked into the dusty side of a black, crew-cab pickup. He unlocked the door, tossed the duffel on the back seat and placed Chloe there, too. She looked tiny on the vast bench seat.
“I don’t have a car seat for her anymore,” Trina heard herself say. Right this second, that seemed like an insurmountable problem.
“I’ll drive carefully.” He buckled a lap belt around Chloe, who stared suspiciously up at him. Then he closed her door and opened the front passenger door. “In you go,” he said quietly, that powerful hand engulfing Trina’s elbow. “Big step up.”
He didn’t quite say “upsy-daisy” but coaxed her and hoisted until she was somehow in. He closed this door with a soft thud, too, rather than slamming it, and was behind the wheel in the blink of an eye, firing up a powerful engine. When she made no move to put on the seat belt, he did it for her, not commenting on her grip on the armrest or the way she rolled her weight to the side.
He backed out and accelerated so gradually she was never thrust against the seatback.
“How long?” she asked, from between gritted teeth.
“About half an hour. Do you have pain pills?”
“Yes, but...”
“Take them. Are they in the duffel?”
She nodded.
Gabe reached a long arm back, his eyes still on the road, and tugged the duffel until it was between the seats. The bottle of water he handed her was warm, but it washed down two pills.
“You okay, Chloe?” she asked.
No answer, but Gabe’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. “She’s nodding,” he said quietly.
“Oh, good.” She thought that’s what she’d said. The words seemed to slur. Leaning her cheek against the window, she closed her eyes.
* * *
SHE DROPPED OFF to sleep like a baby, Gabe saw. That’s what she needed. He was sorry he’d have to wake her up when they got to the cabin.
The little girl was not asleep. She sat with her feet sticking straight out in front of her, her arms crossed and her lower lip pouting. Eyes as blue as his watched him in the rearview mirror. Clearly, she expected the worst. He kind of liked her attitude. He tended to expect the worst, too. That way you were prepared. Optimists could be taken by surprise so easily.
Once he made it onto the highway, he could relax a little. The couple of vehicles he could see in the rearview mirror hadn’t followed them from town. At this time of morning, most traffic was headed south into town, not north out of it.
He checked on the kid, to see her eyelids starting to droop, too.
Another sidelong glance made him wince. Trina’s contorted position had to be miserably uncomfortable. Burns, Joseph had said, without being specific. Gabe would have known they were on her back even if she hadn’t told him, since she’d done a face-plant on the window to avoid making any more contact than she could help with the seat. Twisted as she was, he saw a thickness that could only be bandages. Or, hey, Kevlar, but that wasn’t likely.
Since Joseph talked often about his sister, Gabe had known they were close. Funny his friend had never mentioned that she was a beauty, or a shrink of some kind. The stories had all been from their childhood, or repeating some amusing or pointed observation she’d made about life in general, politics and shifting international alliances more specifically. She probably followed the world news with more interest than most people did because she knew her brother was bound to get involved in a lot of the messes.
Gabe wondered in a general way what it would feel like to have parents or someone like her worrying about him. Would he be as anxious to get back in the action if his death would devastate someone else?
Impatiently, he shook off the descent into sentimentality. No family, no reason to think about it.
Instead, he circled back to the beginning. Katrina Marr would be spectacular with makeup, a snug-fitting dress and heels. Face showing strain and streaked with char, hair a tangled mess and wearing sacky, faded blue scrubs and thin rubber flip-flops, she was merely beautiful. With expressive green-gold eyes and hair the color of melted caramel, she was tallish for a woman, slender rather than model-skinny, and still possessing some nice curves.
One corner of Gabe’s mouth lifted. Could be this was why Joseph never mentioned his sister’s appearance. He might give one or more of the guys the idea of looking her up someday while on leave.
Fully amused now, Gabe thought that was just insulting.
But his amusement didn’t last long. To stay vigilant, he couldn’t afford any distraction. Somebody was gunning for the cute kid who’d now slumped sideways in sound sleep—and Gabe had no doubt Joseph’s sister would jump in front of the bullet to save that kid.
His job was to make sure that never happened. Plan A, he calculated: hide them. Plan B: make sure he fought any battles that did erupt. Plan C: take the bullet himself.
Trina opened her eyes to a dim room. The window was in the wrong place, she saw