“You question things, the purpose of everything, trying to find your own way and the meaning of things.”
Her brother had gone through that phase, hormones kicking in, stubborn, certain he was invincible.
“And then things happen.”
She lay there, listening through the darkness, thinking about what he had been through, what her brother had been through.
Things that changed you, he'd said earlier.
It was the closest he'd come to opening the door on what he'd been through, a glimpse of the doubt that haunted him, the painful losses that Anne had mentioned.
“There are moments where everything else is stripped away,” he said softly, almost a whisper.
“And faith is all you have left.”
He leaned against the window frame, the edge of the shade pulled back, staring out into the night. A sound had him turning back into the shadows of the hotel room. It came again, something murmured, then the sort of restless movement that came from dreams. She stirred again, mumbled something, an arm thrown across the bed.
Bad dreams.
He knew all too well how dangerous they could be. They took you places you didn't want to go, and then all too often pushed you over a cliff into that dark abyss. They made no sense, a jumble of images and experiences that could leave you in a cold sweat, clawing your way up out of them.
She made another sound, moving restlessly in that dark place as he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
There were tears, he heard them in the tangled words that wrapped around a name—her brother. And he was reminded that there were all kinds of casualties, not just those lost in some nameless corner of the world.
“Teiris,” he whispered in Gaelic, brushing a tear from her cheek—something Anne used to say to comfort him as a child.
The words were old, spoken in dozens of languages over a scraped knee or something that frightened. And it all meant the same—Everything is all right. You're safe.
“Go back to sleep,” he whispered.
He should have tucked the blanket around her and gone back to his make-shift bed. He'd slept in enough chairs, at an airport waiting to go out, on floors in a dozen places that all blended together. Hard places.
Instead he lay down on the bed and pulled her against him. She sighed, a soft, broken sound, then turned into him and burrowed deeper, her head on his shoulder.
She smelled faintly of soap from the shower that morning at Danny's flat, rain and wind in her hair, the saltiness of tears, and something else that was all woman.
It was more than sex. It was that something that came after two people made love, something warm that whispered of something that every human being needed. He pulled her closer, and slept.
She sat up, memories mixed with traces of dreams. She hadn't been alone in that bed, but she was alone now. The hotel room was quiet, except for the distant sound of a door slamming somewhere down the hallway. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and another memory returned from the night before. She glanced back at the bed.
Under any other circumstances she would have had a good laugh at herself. James Morgan was not her type, completely opposite of the men she connected with, including that brief arrangement that had ended up nothing more than paperwork ayear later. Married and divorced in twelve months, more or less—most of it less.
The physical attraction was there. She had to admit that James Morgan in jeans, without a shirt, and that tattoo, had tapped into something that could only be described as physical. But there was the other side of what that tattoo and the scars on his shoulder represented.
Given half the chance, he would go back to Afghanistan or Iraq, or some other hot spot in the world that was broadcast on the evening news. The same as her brother.
She found the hastily scribbled note beside the coffee brewer.
“Back in thirty.”
Less than twenty minutes later, she stepped out of the bathroom, the smell of coffee, dark and strong. She caught the look, the surprise when he caught the fact that she was dressed in nothing but a towel, then the frown. She ignored all three as she went straight for the coffee.
“The clerk at the front desk said there's a store not far, some sort of cyber café.” He closed the flap on the backpack, trying to ignore the towel and the woman in it.
Sleeping together fully clothed was one thing. Simple. Standing that close to a woman wrapped only in a towel—a very small towel—was anything but simple. It pushed at him. He pushed it away.
“I called Innis. He's going to take a look at Cate's cell phone account.” Among other things, he thought. The frown tightened, but he didn't say anything. Not yet. He wanted to see what Innis found. If he was right, it was a game changer.
