“So you’re working for one of those good-looking Cain boys, the one who just bought the Iron River Ranch.” Cathy Miller was a buxom, broad-hipped woman with silver-streaked brown hair. Tory had a hunch she knew everything that went on in Iron Springs.
“He was a war hero, you know,” Cathy said. “Famous hereabouts. He was a sniper in the marines. Killed a hundred enemy soldiers while he was protecting our troops. There’s a story about him in a book about the war.”
She hadn’t known, but she’d love to read it. “I didn’t know about the book, but now that you mention it, I remember hearing something on the news about a war hero returning to Texas.”
“That’s him,” Mrs. Miller said. “That’s our Josh.”
Tory wondered why he’d left the military, if he’d been wounded as she suspected, wondered if he’d bought the out-of-the-way property in the hope of finding a little peace.
Before she headed back to the ranch, she was going to stop at the bookstore, see if they had a copy of the book.
Tory took the brown paper bag with the liniment. “Thanks, Mrs. Miller.”
“Oh, it’s just Cathy. We don’t stand on formality around here. What was your name?”
Tory pretended not to hear her as she shoved open the door, ringing the bell above.
“Say hello to Josh for me,” Cathy called after her.
Tory turned and waved. She had hoped to get in and out unnoticed. At least the woman didn’t know her name. Not even the name she was using.
Two hours after she’d left, she headed back to the ranch with a brief stop at Mrs. Thompson’s to pick up Ivy. Wearing a borrowed blue-flowered smock made for one of the granddaughters over her pink-striped dress, Ivy grinned from ear to ear. “We had so much fun, Mama!”
Tory felt a tug at her heart. It wasn’t fair to continually uproot the little girl. She needed stability in her life, a place she could feel safe and loved.
Tory needed to start working on a plan, researching different cities, other states. Surely there was somewhere Damon couldn’t find them.
Surely.
But the bitter truth was there was no way to know.
By the time she got back to the ranch, the book tucked into her purse, the urge to read it, to know more about Josh was nearly overwhelming.
As soon as she finished putting the groceries away, she took Ivy back to the trailer, unpacked her own food, and curled up on the sofa in the living room. While Ivy played with one of her dolls, Tory opened the book and immediately became immersed.
A trade-size paperback with photos, the title wasMilitary Snipers.It was a collection of true stories about men who had served as snipers in the army, SEALs, and marines.
Thumbing through the pages looking for Josh’s name, she found it in a story called “Ultimate Hunter.” It told of a group of marines on a mission gone wrong, twelve men trapped in an abandoned building, little more than a mud hut, in the desert sixty kilometers outside Kandahar. The men had come upon an unexpected force of Taliban fighters and been pinned down with no way to escape. They had been trapped for hours, three men killed as they held off the assault through the night.
In the darkness, Josh had managed to find a way out. He’d been able to skirt their attackers, a group of well-armed insurgents bent on killing every last American soldier, and set up a sniper’s nest behind a mound on a ridge a quarter of a mile away.
The enemy, armed with AK-47s and shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades called RPGs, were little by little destroying the structure providing cover for the troops, exposing the men and making them easy targets. It was only a matter of time until all of them were killed, and there was no help on the way.
From Josh’s position on the distant hill, he eventually managed to take out every Al-Qaeda soldier, all twenty of them, allowing his remaining men, some of them severely wounded, to cross the desert to the extraction point, where they were picked up by helicopter and returned to base.
According to the article, it was only one of a number of successful missions Josh had completed before he was severely wounded and eventually left the special operations branch of the marines.
Tory closed the book and sat there stunned. She had rightly guessed he was a soldier. What had happened to him was part of his past, part of what made him the man he was today. She had a feeling he had bought the ranch as a way to heal, to leave the past behind and look toward the future.
Before she left Texas, she would do everything in her power to help him.
* * *
The days on the ranch had been progressing smoothly. With the warm, sunny weather, the pastures grew lush and green. And yet Josh had been feeling restless and edgy, as if lightning might strike out of a clear blue sky or a tornado might appear on the horizon.
Though the clock seemed to be ticking down to something he couldn’t quite grasp, there were chores to be done, things he needed to accomplish.
Along with his regular chores, he had started Tory working with Satan. Nothing dangerous, just feeding the stallion, petting him, talking to him. Mostly, just getting acquainted, winning the stallion’s trust.
