Lone Star Survivor
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Colleen Thompson
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Chapter 1
Waves of searing heat shimmered above the empty road, the endless road he had been walking for hours or days or all his life. How long didn’t matter, only that blurred spot in the distance, beyond the sea of dry, gold stalks, where the blazing sun reflected off what had to be a lake. The sight of it made his parched mouth ache with the memory of water, cool and fresh and unimaginably luxurious as his body slipped through it, graceful as a seal’s.
While his blistered feet stumbled forward, the walker’s mind returned to a jewel-bright pool of turquoise. As he sat along its edge, lush green fronds waved in the sultry breeze and giant coral blossoms spilled their honeyed fragrance. A woman in big sunglasses swayed toward him, a floral sarong molding to the sweet curve of her hips and a deep blue bikini top holding her firm, round breasts in place. But it was her smile that sent lust spearing straight to his groin, that dazzling smile so white against her summer tan.
“Ready for another?” she invited, offering him some creamy, icy beverage in a clear plastic cup. A chunk of juicy pineapple balanced on its rim, so vivid in his memory that he could almost taste it. He could almost taste her on his lips, too, just as he could feel the dark river of her long hair running through his fingers, gleaming strands of chocolate he’d watched her brush so many times.
He smiled, reaching for her. And felt the pain of his chapped lips splitting, tasted the thick, salt tang of blood instead of the hallucination’s sweetness. The mirage teased in the distance, a lie woven from refracted heat waves. You’ll never make it back to her, not even if you walk to the earth’s ends.
But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t, not while every step carried him closer to the oasis he dreamed of. Toward it and toward a woman, her name as lost to him as his own.
He knew one thing, though. He’d loved her. Loved her even if... The rest shimmered in the heat and vanished, an absence permeated with the bitterness of loss. There was fear as well, the anxiety that he’d done something unspeakable to poison what they’d had. That he’d been someone who deserved the scorched red skin, the knotted beard and the half-healed scars he’d glimpsed in the window of the pickup that had pulled over to offer him a ride an hour earlier. Or maybe it had been yesterday. Impossible to know, since time had grown as slippery as a live fish squirming in his grasp.
A single, splintered second pierced through his confusion: the moment when he’d met the driver’s eyes. Dark eyes, shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. A cowboy hat, like the ones they wore back in Texas. Like the ones he’d used to...
Before he’d been able to wrap his parched brain around the thought, those dark eyes had flared wide. The driver had hit the gas too hard, the back end of his pickup sliding around to spray the walker with pebbles. An instant later, the truck sped away in a plume of dust that he could still see hovering above the oasis.
The walker stopped and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to clear them. Because that growing smudge on the horizon—that was from now, not before. For a moment, he wondered if it could be the same truck whose driver he’d frightened away before with his appearance. Some buried instinct warned him the man might be returning to mow him down or shoot him, leaving his body to the blistering sun and the scavengers that he’d sensed watching, following his movements with hopeful, hungry eyes.
At the thought of dying here, of finally stopping, he felt an odd blend of disappointment and relief. Resignation, too, since there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it, with nothing but flat, oddly familiar rangeland on either side and no strength left to flee. So instead, the walker kept putting one foot before the other, figuring that if he died, it might as well be one step closer to the mirage on the horizon...and his memory of the poolside beauty who’d meant everything to him before he’d somehow, he felt certain, driven her away.
It was a blue-eyed man who pulled up beside him minutes later in a newer-model truck, a dark-haired man who reminded him of someone. Maybe of himself, or at least the version of himself who’d swum through cool blue waters.
Taking off his straw cowboy hat, the driver jumped down from the cab. Tall and muscular, he wore a rolled-sleeved cotton shirt, worn jeans and a single bead of perspiration, running from his temple to his jawline. Color draining from his tan face, he stared directly at the walker, searched his eyes with an intensity that made his heart hammer.
The walker took a step backward, glancing over his shoulder, his muscles coiling as he looked for an escape route.
“I told that fool pup of a cowhand to quit talking crazy,” said the driver, unblinking as he stared, “telling me he’d seen a man who looked like—looked like my dead brother out here on our land. Then I cursed him for leaving some poor, lost stranger way out here on his own in this heat, without even offering a drink of water.”
“You—have w-water?” The idea of it, the possibility spun from his dreams, was so powerful that he stumbled closer, forgetting his fear as trembling overtook him.
“Yeah, sure. Here you go, man.” The driver reached back inside the truck and pulled out a plastic bottle beaded with condensation. He cracked open the sealed lid and handed it over.
The walker was so overwhelmed by the cold moisture in his hand that he barely noticed the uncertainty darting through the other man’s eyes or the moisture gleaming in them.
“Ian, is it really you?” he asked, letting the question hang as the walker chugged down half the bottle.
When he started choking, the driver warned him, “Slow down. Slow down and take it easy. There’s plenty more where that came from. Food and clean clothes back at the house, too.”
His coughing over, the walker glugged down the rest of the bottle. When he was finished, he peered suspiciously into the blue eyes. “Why?” he asked, searching the stranger for some agenda. “Why would you do all that for me?”
“Could be one of two good reasons. Either because I don’t cotton to the idea of a stranger dying on my land. Or because you’re a walking, talking miracle—my only brother, Captain Ian Rayford, come back from the dead.”
* * *
Andrea Warrington stared down at the file her boss, retired army colonel Julian Ross, had handed her, her throat tightening the moment she read the name Captain Ian Rayford.
What she had to tell the man sitting behind the battered desk, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened against the late summer heat, would be awkward enough under any circumstances. But despite the fifteen-year difference in their ages, Andrea had recently accepted the handsome forty-six-year-old’s proposal, so bat-sized butterflies attempted to flap their way free of her stomach.
Telling herself that putting it off was no longer an option, she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, just as she would have advised the wounded vets she counseled here at the Marston unit of the Warriors-4-Life Rehabilitation Center. “I—I’m afraid I can’t take this assignment, Julian. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about myself and Captain Rayford.”
“Sit down, Andrea, please.” He gestured toward one of the mismatched folding chairs in front of his desk, the rich bass of his voice warmed by a gentlemanly Southern accent. Six months after the ribbon cutting that had opened this donation-supported unit, they were still getting by with whatever castoffs they could scrounge, mainly because Julian, who had been named director shortly before the center’s opening, insisted on using every penny of the funds raised to provide services for their growing roster of military veterans. Though many bore physical reminders of the ordeals they had endured, the majority had come to Warriors-4-Life to deal with the fallout of combat-related brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder. The workload kept Andrea, the center’s one practicing psychologist, along with two counselors and a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who worked under her direction, hopping, but she didn’t mind her packed days—not when she knew for a certainty that she was saving lives.
Besides, the crazy hours and emotional challenges had drawn her closer to the handsome older man who had started out as her boss before evolving into much more. She admired him; she respected him, but it was love that was making the words knot in her throat.
She claimed a seat where a rattletrap oscillating fan on the desk could swivel back and forth between them. “I think I mentioned to you I was engaged before,” she admitted, the breeze blowing a strand of long, dark brown hair—an escapee from her clip—into her face. “It was one of those whirlwind affairs, everything moving at light speed.”
She flushed, remembering the heat of it, the passion, how exciting it had felt to be caught up in something so out of her control. But thrilling as they might seem, whirlwinds had the potential to cause a lot of damage. The kind of heartbreak she’d sworn she would never risk again.
“It didn’t take long for me to realize he was lying about his deployments. There were other disappearances as well, with no warning and no explanation. I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty, so I broke it off.”
A smile touched Julian’s brown eyes like a warm breeze from his Savannah boyhood. He’d promised he would take her one day, to see the historic Victorian home where he’d grown up before it had passed out of the family. “Everyone has a past, Andrea. I didn’t imagine you’d lived underneath a bell jar for thirty-one years before you’d met me.”
“Yes, but bizarre as it might seem, it was this man, Ian. Captain Rayford. He was still just a lieutenant then, and I was working on my doctorate. I—I should’ve told you, I know, after the news broke that he was found alive.”
For weeks following his return, the “Texas miracle” was all anyone could talk about on the morning shows and social media. While Ian himself refused all interviews, the army had been left scrambling to explain how one set of charred remains could have been mistaken for another after some overworked soldier in the military’s mortuary center had failed to follow proper DNA procedures to identify the body.
“So why didn’t you say something?” he asked. “Surely, you can’t imagine I’d hold you accountable for any of the suspicions brought up about his escape from the terrorists holding him?”
“No, of course not. It’s just...” Though she couldn’t put an answer into words, she felt it in the warm flush that rose to her face, the aching heaviness in her chest.
“You still have feelings for him,” Julian suggested, though his sharp, brown gaze seemed more curious than judgmental. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, it’s not that.” She raised her hands, not wanting to hurt this good man’s feelings. “It’s only—when he was reported killed in action, it brought back a lot of memories. The good, along with the bad.”
Her gaze dropped, avoiding his, but because she’d learned the hard way that lies of omission could be the worst of all, she forced herself to look up. “I cried a lot at night. For months, I cried for him.” Even after she’d met Julian, she’d come to work some mornings with her eyes red and swollen. His unfailing kindness, his steadiness had planted the first seeds of healing in her.
“I’m sorry for your grief,” he told her. “But I assure you that I understand it. Possibly better than you can imagine. You see, the army personnel who debriefed the captain passed on his full dossier with the referral. I saw your name listed on his contact list, to be notified in case he was killed in action.”
The burning in her face intensified. “He must have added me two years ago, when we were still together.” She still remembered the horrendous shock that had followed the knock at the front door of her apartment back in San Diego.
“That’s not my point, Andrea. My point is, I feel certain—and the army psychologist I consulted is in full agreement on this—that your past connection to Ian Rayford could be the key to recovering his missing memories.”
She shook her head. “You mean he’s still suffering amnesia? Was he found to have a brain injury?”
“If you’ll take a look at the file—” the fan swung around to ruffle Julian’s short, bronze-colored hair, a crop of silver threaded through it “—you’ll see that’s not the case, though he does have some residual scarring. From the torture, they believe, in attempts to extract intelligence on US targets.”
“But he was cleared of those suspicions,” she was quick to say. “And anyway, after a soldier’s captured, codes are changed, right? Sensitive locations scrambled?” She was aware American civilians working in a war zone office had died or disappeared soon after Ian’s capture, but few details had been reported, and surely, the bombing of their building could not be laid at the feet of a man who had suffered heaven only knew what torments.
Julian nodded, but his brown eyes looked troubled. “Officially, he was absolved of any responsibility in the bombing and given a medical discharge. Considering the hero’s welcome drummed up by that Rayford woman’s story—”
“Jessie Layton is his brother Zach’s wife, isn’t she? The journalist?” Andrea narrowed her eyes, trying to get it straight in her mind, since she’d never met Ian’s family. They’d been estranged for years, he’d told her, though he’d avoided going into details—something that should have raised another red flag. But then, Andrea had her family secrets, too, issues so painful they’d sent her into counseling when she was in her teens. The relief she’d gotten, the insight into the dynamics that had destroyed her family, had led her to pursue the study of psychology.
Julian nodded in answer to her question. “Cutting Captain Rayford loose, giving him the benefit of the doubt, was the only thing the military could do, especially since he was diagnosed as having dissociative amnesia as a result of torture.”
Andrea lifted a brow. “Not to mention all the suffering the screwup over the body caused both his family and the other soldier’s. What a PR nightmare that boondoggle’s been.”
“So I’m told,” said Julian, “which brings us back to you.”
Apprehension crawled over her skin like live ants. “Let Michael take him. Or Connor. He’s a real pro, and the guys love that he’s ex-military himself.”
“Neither of the counselors will do, or Cassidy, either, for this case,” Julian said, though as a psychiatric nurse-practitioner, Cassidy had both the experience and the ability to dispense any necessary medications. “You see, Captain Rayford has refused to come here. Refused to leave the family’s ranch at all. Says he’s had enough of shrinks poking through his head—”
“So you want to send me, a psychologist?”
“The man doesn’t need or want a psychologist right now, but a friend, he might accept. And a trained friend, someone with your sensitivity, might find a way to break through. A way to help a man whose plight has drawn so much attention—and a way to help us, too, at Warriors-4-Life.”
She folded her arms beneath her chest. “Really, Julian? That’s what this is all about? The money?”
He sighed. “Come on, Andrea. You know I’m 100 percent focused on these soldiers. But as director, fund-raising is a big part of my job description, and if we don’t get donations up before next quarter, we’re going to have way bigger problems than a broken AC system.”
Worry fluttered in her stomach. “I know we’re working on a shoestring out here, but what do you mean, way bigger problems? We’re not—tell me we’re not in danger of shutting down already. We’ve barely gotten up and running, and more and more returning soldiers are applying for our help every day. They need us, desperately. Where else can they go, if they don’t have places like this when their lives come crashing down around them? Who else will prepare them to reintegrate into their families and meaningful employment?”
He held up a hand to stop her. “You’re preaching to the choir. There’s no need to sell me on what we do. I never would’ve come aboard if I weren’t 100 percent behind it.”
“I know that. I do.” Like everyone else who worked at Warriors-4-Life, Julian had accepted little more than the use of one of the center’s Spartan housing units and a nominal salary in exchange for his sixty-to eighty-hour workweeks. He even donated a portion of his military retirement pay to the cause, saying he couldn’t encourage others to do something he wasn’t doing on his own. Inspired by his generosity, Andrea gave whenever she could, as well, despite the mountain of student loans she would probably still be paying into her dotage.
“Then don’t look so shocked that I’m thinking practically. I have to. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to scale back the number of young men and women we can assist—and reduce our staff levels, as well.”
She gritted her teeth, thinking of how overworked all of them were already, how many sacrifices they had made. And the look in his eyes told her that if the cutbacks didn’t solve the issue, the doors they’d fought so hard to open might be forever shuttered. What would happen to their clients, then, people like twenty-year-old Ty Dawson, who’d gone missing for hours just yesterday after a lawn mower had kicked up a stone and cracked a window. He was found shaking and hiding in the darkened corner of a storage closet.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll rearrange tomorrow morning’s schedule and try to get back by—”
“Your schedule’s cleared, for the time being. Michael, Cassidy, Connor and I will all pitch in while you’re away.”
“Away? What do you mean? It’s, what, an hour or so from here to Rusted Spur? If I leave early, I’m sure I can be back by lunchtime to help cover the afternoon group sessions.”
Julian shook his head. “For the next two weeks, you’ll be staying at the ranch.”
“Staying at the ranch? With my ex-fiancé? Are you serious? You won’t— This won’t worry you at all?”
She studied his face and caught the flicker of discomfort. But he quickly squared his shoulders and reclaimed his usual composure. The composure that had made her feel so safe.
“I’ll admit I was hesitant at first. You know about my ex-wife, about what happened between us?”
Andrea nodded, remembering what he’d told her about a marriage in his twenties—and a wife who’d eased her loneliness with multiple affairs during his deployments. He’d spoken of it matter-of-factly, but she had seen the hurt, the vulnerability lurking behind his solemn brown eyes. And she’d sworn to herself she would be the wife that he deserved.
He reached across the desk and found her hand, then squeezed it. “I refuse to let it change me, let that pain turn me jealous and suspicious when you’ve done nothing to deserve it. When I could never imagine a consummate professional like yourself—a generous, decent woman—betraying what we have.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t.” She’d learned her lessons young; she would never be her father. “Especially not for a man who broke my heart. But I will do my best to help him, just the way I’d help any other client who was hurting.”
“Then it’s settled,” he answered with a nod. “I’ll need you to log in and update your contact records daily, but I’m told there’s wireless available.”
“When have I ever forgotten my logs?” It was a protocol she frequently reminded the counselors to follow, since the portion of their funding received from government grants depended on the number of recorded contact hours. The case notes themselves, however, remained password protected, covered by patient confidentiality.
“Also,” Julian said, “I thought you’d like to know that when Captain Rayford’s family extended the invitation for you to come, they mentioned they’d set up a suite of rooms for your use.”
“A suite of rooms, just for me?” It sounded like paradise, since her own quarters consisted of a single bedroom in the women’s dormitory, where female staff and clients alike shared a communal bath and kitchen.
“Play your cards right, and I’ll throw in some bubble bath.” From across the desk, he winked at her, a gesture so at odds with his usual demeanor that it made her laugh with delight.
“Ooh la la.” She waggled her brows at the man who’d asked her to keep their engagement under wraps for the time being, to avoid causing any suspicions of favoritism among the staff. And given that there was no way either of them could visit the other’s room without drawing speculation, the physical side of their relationship had been largely confined to their imaginations—a situation that was growing more frustrating by the day. “But it’d be ever better if you could join me in that bathtub.”
He smiled. “With or without strategically placed bubbles?”
“Up to you, Colonel,” she teased, standing when he left his chair and came around the desk.
He pulled her into a warm embrace. “I promise you, my darling, by the time you come back to me, I’ll have figured out a way to break the news to the others. And after that, no more sneaking around like a couple of teenagers.”
“In that case—” she smiled up into his brown eyes “—I promise you, I’ll do everything I can think of to get Captain Rayford’s memory back in record time.”
