Alex (In the Company of Snipers) (8 page)

He nodded at her to continue, so she did.

“I’m really sorry I wasn’t very nice to you this morning.” Her next words burst out in a rush. “I didn’t know who you were, you know, and you picked me up, and you scared me. I mean, here I’m trying to figure out why these dogs are following me, and then you show up, and you’re talking to me like we’re supposed to know each other. Do I even know you?”

His handsome smile turned mischievous. “You don’t remember last night at all, do you?”

“Last night?” Worry crinkled her forehead.
Oh, oh. What did he do to me?

He smiled wider. Those blue eyes sparkled. That didn’t ease her misgivings, not one bit.

“At first, I thought you were dead. To make a long story short, I cleaned you up, fed you, and put you to bed. You’re telling me you don’t remember any of that?”

She shook her head. “I guess I don’t know much.”

“Do you remember what I told you this morning?”

“I think so.” She squirmed. It seemed like a long time ago, and it didn’t end so well. “You told me about your dogs, and you made breakfast, and then I kinda freaked out.”

“Yes, you did.” His voice turned tender. “Why?”

“It just scared me, and … I don’t know.” She felt lost all of a sudden. The truth was he had scared her, and she didn’t know why except that she was entirely at this man’s mercy. That didn’t seem like a good thing, no matter how nice he was.

He shrugged like it was no big deal. “Let’s start over then. I’m Alex Stewart.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m, umm, Kelsey.” Her brain failed to provide her last name.
Everyone has a last name, don’t they? He did.

“Nice to meet you.” He nodded to her in friendly acknowledgement. “I came here for a vacation with my dogs. The silver one keeping track of tonight’s dinner is Smoke. You’ve already met Whisper. He’s already decided you’re his, so I suspect he’ll keep following you around. Hope you don’t mind. Anyway, don’t worry about your memory. It’ll come back sooner or later. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

Whisper leaned into her side like he needed to remind her he was there.

“Hi, Whisper,” she said, her hand on his wide forehead. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

“Whisper, down,” Alex scolded, but Kelsey grabbed the big mutt before he had time to obey.

“No,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m not scared of him.” The heat of embarrassment blossomed up her neck, so she snuggled Whisper for an extra long time. Her words made it sound like she was scared of Alex.
Should I be?
She didn’t have time to worry about that because his previous words had sunk in. “Did you say you cleaned me up, and put me to bed?”

Kelsey pulled at her pant leg. That explained the bandages and the greasy ointment on the rest of her. It also explained the baggy sweatpants and shirt she was wearing. She might not remember much, but she was pretty sure she had better taste than this. So this stranger, this Alex Stewart guy, had washed her, spread ointment on a large portion of her naked body, changed her clothes, and put her to bed like a child? She cringed. She couldn’t remember any of it, yet he acted like it was no big deal. Part of her wanted to cry, while the rest of her was just plain embarrassed. What else did he do?

If Alex noticed her discomfort, he didn’t let on. “Yep. Got you cleaned up and fed. Just like I’m going to do now.” He lifted the fish basket up with a bemused smile in his eyes. “Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat.”

Five

Alex

“Are you going to eat that?”

Alex could not keep the smile off his face. Four fish was not enough. To say Kelsey ate dinner was an understatement. Devoured was more like it, and now she eyed his plate.

“Are you still hungry?”

She licked her bottom lip. “Maybe.”

He slid the last trout out of the basket and onto her plate. “Be careful of the bones.”

“It’s really good,” she mumbled, her mouth already half full of fish.

The question of whether she liked fish was put to rest. They had already gone through a second pan of rice also. She chased the last kernel of rice across her plate with her fork. It did not get away. This woman was feeling better. A lot better.

Despite her black eye and bruises, she had a very pleasant face tonight. She wiped her mouth and fingers with a paper towel and tucked the towel into the elastic on her sweat pants. That made him smile. Those pants were way too big—for now. The way she was eating, they wouldn’t be too big for long.

“Whew.” She scrunched her shoulders when she caught him looking. “I like fish.”

“I see that,” he smirked. “You like rice too.”

“I do.” She nodded, a mischievous light in her eye. “Sorry, but I was really hungry. All I need now is a piece of chocolate.”

“I almost forgot.” He jumped up and went quickly into the cabin for his backpack, returning with a couple of mini-chocolate bars. He offered one her. “I always bring a couple of these when I’m hiking.”

She took the closest. “Thanks. I was just kidding, but this is a nice treat.”

“Will one be enough?” he teased. She wasn’t really kidding. He knew a hungry woman when he saw one.

“Yes.” She ripped the end of the wrapper with her teeth and expertly removed the bar. At the first bite, she closed her eye, savoring the morel as she slowly chewed. “Mmm. I like chocolate too.”

“You are feeling better, aren’t you?” Listening to her moan over a piece of chocolate made him smile. Kelsey was definitely going to live.

“Don’t you feel like you just need a teeny piece of chocolate after you eat?” She finished the chocolate with a satisfied smack of her lips.

“Nope. That’s a girl thing.” He sat on the steps with her. “Us guys just need meat, huh, Whisper?”

The big dog had made himself comfortable right between them. They sat in silence as the fire crackled and popped. She sighed, and even that little sound made him smile. Daylight still shone at the tops of the giant pines, but shadows deepened in the forest. Smoke tendrils from the campfire smelled good, Alex had food in his stomach, and he was feeling pretty mellow. It was a comfortable moment, but he could tell she was becoming nervous again. She fidgeted with her napkin and wiped her puffy eye.

“Since I can’t tell you a whole lot about me, maybe you could tell me something about you?” She glanced at him sideways.

Alex leaned back on his elbows, stretched his legs down the steps and contemplated an answer. Her anxiety was back. It seemed to come and go. Food obviously made it go.
Mental note to self—catch more fish tomorrow.

“What you really mean is who the hell am I?”

“Maybe.” She ducked with a shy smile.

“Okay, so you already know my name and my dogs’ names. What else would be interesting?”

“Maybe like where you live when you’re not at your cabin?”

“That’s easy. Alexandria, Virginia.”

“Is that very far away?”

He smirked at her innocent question. Even the best answers didn’t mean much to an amnesiac.

“It’s a couple thousand miles that way.” He pointed east. “I try to get out here every June to do a little fishing. My old man left me this land a long time ago. This time, I got a little sidetracked.”

“Sorry.” She blushed again. “Guess that’s my fault.”

“Nah.” He waved it off. “Just glad I was here to help.” He couldn’t believe the lie that just rolled off his lips, but it sounded true. He acknowledged it. He was glad he had helped her.

“Where is here?”

“Well, we are in Washington State—”

“That much I know. It’s funny. I do remember some things, like I know I live in Washington. I just don’t know … where.”

“The official post office address for this place is Spanaway.”

“I guess that’s helpful once I remember where Spanaway is.” She giggled very quietly. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. I mean, look at me. I’m all beat up, and I look like heck, and you’re trying to help. It’s just that ….” She scrunched her shoulders again. “I don’t know, it just feels good to laugh, you know? For some reason, it feels really good.”

Alex sobered at the knowledge he possessed, and she did not. There was a reason laughing felt good to Kelsey. Her laugh had a sweet, musical quality. She should do it more often.

He debated telling her about the Amber Alert and her own endangered status, but it felt too soon. Too cruel. How do you tell a woman who is just getting on her feet that her husband is trying to kill her? That he may already have attempted murder? How do you knock her back down? He couldn’t do it. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow ….

“So tell me more. What’s in Alexandria, Virginia?”

Her question jolted him back to safer topics. “Work. Started a business. Needed a break.”

“Cool. So you’re a savvy businessman then?”

Alex snorted at her very kind description of himself. Here he was sprawled out in dirty jeans with an old flannel shirt. He had a baseball cap on his head and probably had hat hair for sure, plus he hadn’t showered yet today. Savvy was the last thing he was. “Let’s just say I started a business. Right now, it seems to be running me.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s a long story.” He watched the fire. “Thought I had a good idea awhile back. Even got a surprise benefactor to ante up the cash to get it off the ground.”

“It’s successful then?”

“The demand’s greater than I anticipated.” He shrugged as the gloomy predicament of his business invaded his thoughts. Success should make a man feel a whole lot better than he felt. That it didn’t was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. The old adage that money wasn’t everything annoyed him, like he didn’t already know that? That lesson had been stamped indelibly into his heart exactly four years ago when he had lost—them.

“Cool. So you’re making lots of money, and you’re successful. That’s supposed to be a good thing, isn’t it?” Her face lit up with her cheerful summarization of his life.

“I guess.” He stared at the dying embers, not wanting to share anymore.

“But it’s not?”

“Let’s just say it’s not what I expected.” Alex stood and stretched before he tossed a couple more logs in the fire pit. He settled back on the steps by Whisper, hoping she would stop asking questions. She didn’t.

“What? You don’t like to work or something?”

He noticed no recrimination in her voice, amazement maybe, but no judgment. She just wanted to know.

“Just didn’t think I’d get stuck behind a desk all day.” He suppressed his impatience. “Maybe when I get a few things figured out, I’ll be able to spend more time with my agents. That’s what I’d rather do.”

“Agents? Like insurance agents? Secret agents?” Kelsey fidgeted with her broken fingernails as she listened. “What kind of business did you start anyway?”

Again, Alex deliberated how much he should tell her, so he gave her the simplified version. “I’m an ex-Marine. Once I left the Corps, I didn’t fit in civilian life. Most people don’t realize how hard it is for a guy to leave the service, especially in my line of work. Anyway, a lot of good men are coming back from overseas. I needed something to do, and they needed work, so I started a covert surveillance business.”

She studied him intently. “What’s covert surveillance?”

He studied her, not sure how much information her brain could process right now. She seemed to have some capacity for remembering. He just didn’t want to overload her the first moment she felt halfway decent.

“It’s not a big deal,” he muttered. “We do undercover work. Most of it’s just a game of watch and report, kind of like the work private investigators do. For instance, think about the drug trade in Afghanistan. I’ve got a contract on my desk for two agents to do surveillance over there. All the State Department wants is to understand how heroin is impacting that country.”

“Okay. That’s interesting.”

“And we’re all ex-military snipers.”

Kelsey blinked hard. “Snipers? You’re a sniper?”

“Do you know what a sniper is?”

She nodded rapidly. “You shoot people.”

He couldn’t help the smirk on his face. “Not always. We were all in special ops. I’ve got two vets from the Vietnam era and a couple from Afghanistan and Iraq. I haven’t hired a Navy SEAL yet, but it could happen. We’re trained professionals, and we try real hard not to shoot people. We do good work.”

She gulped, but he wasn’t sure if she understood what he had just told her or not.

“Not what you were expecting?”

“No, it’s just that I ….” Kelsey stared at her fingers.

“A lot of folks don’t understand guys like me. You’re probably thinking you’re out in the woods with Hannibal Lecter, huh?” The moment he used that descriptor he wanted to call it back.
Damn it, Stewart. Think before you speak. Just once. Think. After all she’s been through….

“No.” She spit the word out. “I was trying to say that a very nice man, and you’ve been taking care of me, and feeding me. Besides, you have two dogs that love me. I don’t think a murderer would be as nice as you are. I don’t think ….” She paused, looking directly at him. “I’m not afraid of you. I was this morning, but … I’m not now. You’ve helped me. A lot. And, umm, you keep feeding me.”