more from the insurgents who had held him for three days.
And then the target’s head popped up above the door frame like a fox leaving its den. Colt’s hands went numb and he dropped his rifle.
It had been eighteen months, but he knew he would never forget that face. That was his former girlfriend, Kacey Doka. She’d tried to convince him not to join up after he graduated. Not to leave her behind. He had explained that if she wanted to get off the rez, this was their way. He hadn’t wanted to go because he loved it here, couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But Kacey could and he loved her enough to try to give her what she wanted. It had cost him, deeply.
He had planned to give the signing bonus and his pay to her, but she wouldn’t take it. She wanted them to go together, but he had committed himself. How had he messed that up so badly? She had not answered his letters. When he’d finally made it back home on a psych discharge, her home was the only place he’d stopped before coming here. Kacey had left, her mother said, months ago. She hadn’t been back, wasn’t expected back. But she sure was back now.
Kacey glanced up the hill toward his position, the sunlight highlighting her black hair blue. Colt flinched. Had she heard him drop his rifle? He watched her glance back the way she had come. From here, he could not see much of the road because of the trees. But she would have a clear view.
What was she doing here after all this time? He’d been home for months. Had Ty called her? That thought made his stomach flip. The only thing worse than being a walking basket case was having Kacey Doka know about it.
“Colt?” she called to him.
He pressed his back to the flaking bark of the ponderosa pine and squeezed his eyes shut.
Go away, Kacey. Please.
“Colt, it’s Kacey!” She was shouting now. Judging from the sound, she was cupping her hands to her mouth to amplify her voice. “I need to see you.”
No, you don’t. Not like this.
Ty had sent her. Damn his meddling older brother. Colt had told him he didn’t want to see anyone. That he wasn’t ready. Had Ty given up hope that he was improving? But he was. He made it through more than one day without a panic attack. But the nights were very long. He knew his lack of sleep wasn’t helping. But he wouldn’t take anything that Ty had offered.
“I’m in trouble, Colt. Please, please answer me.”
Trouble?
Colt’s eyes opened as he pushed himself off the tree. What kind of trouble could she be in?
Was this a trick?
Despite her mother’s neglect, Kacey had done well in school, missing only when her mom took off, leaving Kacey to take care of her siblings. Ty told him that Kacey had been accepted at Phoenix University and planned to use her Big Money for as long as it lasted. Big Money was what they called the allotment of the tribe’s revenue distributed annually, but kept in trust for members under eighteen. The distributions often went for vehicles, something big and flashy. Colt noticed that there never was another new truck after that first one. He knew thirty-year-olds still driving that Big Money truck. So he had not spent his on a vehicle. Instead he kept his for them, him and Kacey. He figured his pay, his bonus and Big Money could get them a house right here on the rez.
He was certain that if he could get them their own place and provide her a real home, she would change her mind about leaving. To do that, he’d enlisted in the Marines. That was when she’d ended it between them. When Ty told him she’d gone, Colt had been expecting it.
Had she used her Big Money to run away?
She’d loved him once. He knew that. And he had loved her, which was why he wasn’t going to let her see him now. It would kill those feelings she’d held as surely as a snake crushes a baby bunny.
But he could see her. He’d give himself that at least. Just for a minute and then he’d go.
“I’m coming up there. Don’t you shoot me, Colt Redhorse, or so help me, I will tell your mother.”
His mother liked Kacey and she was worried about him. Ty had said so. And his mother wasn’t well. Why didn’t Ty tell him that Kacey was back? He could have used a little warning to prepare.
He heard the crunch of her footsteps as she crossed the gravel on the road. Her tread was slow and heavy. And she gave a cry as if she was in pain. Colt popped his head around the trunk of the tree. What he saw made his jaw drop.
Was Kacey pregnant?
She was! Very, very pregnant and she was holding her swollen belly as her face twisted into a mask of pain. His eyes widened. He’d seen that same expression on his mother’s face when she went into labor with his little sister, Abbie. He’d only been six, but the fear made the memory stick.
Was Kacey in labor?
That was impossible. You’d have to be crazy to come up here to deliver a baby. He craned his neck to see her as she momentarily disappeared from view behind the trees. She was heading for the trail they had used to climb up to his family’s cabin. She knew the way.
Kacey had been a part of his family, had spent more time living in his house than in hers. Not that he blamed her. But she’d go home when her sister Jackie or Winnie would come and tell her that their mom was gone again. Running drugs for the Wolf Posse, Ty said, taking her cut in either money or product.
Colt moved parallel to Kacey as she walked along the road toward the trail, catching flashes of Kacey between the tree trunks. She looked thin, despite her swollen belly, and pale as if she had not been in the sun in months. Her gait was a scurry that combined the side-to-side rocking motion of a woman far along in her pregnancy with a girl in a hurry. She held both hands under her belly. Why did she keep looking behind her?
Kacey stopped, hunched and turned toward the road. What could she see that made her eyes round and her mouth swing open like a gate? Kacey ran now. She ran to the woods and rock outcropping with a speed he would not have believed possible.
“They’re here! Colt, do you hear me? They’re going to take me again.”
Again?
Oh no, they are not.
Colt didn’t know who they were or why they were after Kacey. What he did know was that they wouldn’t succeed in reaching her. He had the high ground, a rifle with extra rounds and the will to kill anyone who threatened Kacey. He might be a mental mess, but he remembered what it felt like to be in love with her. But now that memory only made his chest ache and his breathing hitch. Whatever part of him that understood how to love a woman had died back there in Afghanistan. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect her. He would, with his life.
Colt moved to a position that gave him a good vantage of her car and waited as the second vehicle approached. Colt lifted the rifle, pressing the familiar stock to his cheek and closing his left eye. The crosshairs fixed on the gray sedan.
He felt centered, calm, relaxed.
The first shot sent a bullet at the driver’s side of the windshield. The glass should have shattered into tiny cubes but instead remained intact. The second shot went to the passenger’s side. If there was a passenger behind the windshield, he should now have a bullet in his
