been away four long years. To be precise, four years, one month and fourteen days.
Still, the road seemed as familiar as the back of his hand.
So had the drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.
Fifty miles of highway, the turn onto Country Road 227, the endless length of it bordered on either side by fence posts, the cattle standing still as sentinels in the quiet of night and then, almost an hour later, the bashed-in section of fence that seemed to have always marked the juncture where a nameless dirt road angled off to old man Chambers’s spread.
And he’d only stopped to check for IEDs once.
A record.
Jake made the turn onto the road, even after all these years automatically steering the ‘63 Thunderbird around the pothole by the bashed-in fence that marked the Chambers boundary. It was on the old man’s land, which was why nobody had filled it in.
“Don’t need nobody messin’ with my property,” Elijah Chambers would mumble if anyone was foolish enough to suggest it.
Jake’s father despised the old guy but then, the General despised anybody who wasn’t into spit and polish.
Even his own sons.
You grew up with a four-star father, you were expected to lead a four-star life.
Caleb used to say that when they were kids. Or maybe it had been Travis.
Maybe it had even been him, Jake thought, and came as close to a smile as he had in a very long time, but he squelched it, fast.
A man learned to avoid smiling when the end result might scare the crap out of small children.
Jake drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.
Maybe his best move was to turn the car around and head for …
Where?
Not D.C. Not the hospital. If he never saw another hospital in his lifetime, it would be too soon. Not the base or his town house in Georgetown. Too many memories and besides, he didn’t belong on the base or in D.C. anymore, and he’d sold the town house, signed the papers just yesterday.
The truth was, he didn’t belong anywhere, not even here in Texas and absolutely not on the half million acres of rolling hills and grassland that was El Sueño.
Which was why he had no intention of staying very long.
His brothers knew it and were doing their best to talk him out of leaving.
“This is where you belong, man,” Travis had said.
“This is your home,” Caleb had added. “Just settle in, take it easy for a while, get your bearings while you figure out what you want to do next.”
Jake shifted his weight, stretched his legs as much as he could. The Thunderbird was a little cramped for a man who stood six foot three in his bare feet, but you made sacrifices for a car you’d rebuilt the summer you were sixteen.
Caleb made it sound easy.
It wasn’t.
He had no idea what he wanted to do next, not unless it involved turning back time and returning to the place where it had stopped, in a narrow pass surrounded by mountains that needled into a dirty gray sky….
“Stop it,” he said, his voice sharp in the silence.
None of that.
He was going to spend a couple of days at the ranch. See his sisters. His brothers. His father.
Then he’d take off.
Seeing his sisters would be great, as long as they didn’t do anything stupid like tear up. The General? That would be okay, too. He’d probably give him a pep talk and as long as it didn’t go on forever, he’d survive it.
As for his brothers …
To hell with it. There was nobody here to see what passed for a smile on his scarred face and the simple truth was, thinking about Caleb and Travis always made him smile.
The Wilde brothers had always been close. Played together as little kids, got into scrapes together as teens. For as long as any of them could remember, they’d always loved the same things. Fast cars. Beautiful women.
Trouble, with a capital T.
Peas in a pod, their sisters teased. Half sisters—the General had been married twice and the brothers and sisters had different mothers—and it was true.
Peas in a pod, for sure.
They were still close, even now, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to talk him into this visit—
Except, he’d done it on his own terms.
Well, more or less.
They’d wanted to send a jet for him.
“We have two of the damned things at El Sueño” Travis had said. “Hey, you know that better than we do. You’re the guy who bought them, supervised their interior design, that whole bit. Why fly commercial if you don’t have to?”
Why, indeed?
The part Travis hadn’t mentioned was that Jake hadn’t only bought the Wilde planes, he’d piloted them.
Not now.
A pilot with one functional eye wasn’t a pilot anymore, and the thought of returning home as a passenger on a jet he’d once flown was more than he figured he could handle.
So he’d told his brothers he didn’t know when he’d be able to leave, blah, blah, blah, and finally, they’d eased off.
“It’ll be simpler all around if I just get in Friday evening and rent a car.”
As if, he thought now, and smiled again.
He’d been paged as soon as he stepped into the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He’d considered ignoring the page but finally he’d gritted his teeth and marched up to the arrivals desk.
“Captain Jacob Wilde,” he’d said briskly. “You’ve been paging me.”
The clerk behind the counter had her back to him. She’d turned, professional smile in place …
And blanched.
“Oh,” she’d stammered, “oh …”
It had taken all his determination not to tell her that, yeah, despite the eye patch, she was looking at a face that was better suited to Halloween.
He had to give her credit. She’d recovered, fast. Got back her phony smile.
“Sir,” she’d said, “we have something for you.”
Something
