He pulled onto the grass, stopped the car again and got out.
There was a stand of old oaks to his left, and a footpath that led through them.
Jake set out along the path. A breeze carrying the gurgling sound of Coyote Creek winding, unseen, alongside, accompanied him. Dry leaves crunched under the soles of the cowboy boots he’d never given up wearing.
There’d been a time he’d loved nights like these. The crystalline air. The distant glitter of the stars.
Back then, he’d look up at the sky as he just had and wonder at the impossibility of standing on a planet spinning through space.
His hand went to his eye socket. The taut skin below it.
Now, the only thing a night like this meant was that the cold made his bones, his jaw, the empty space that had once been an eye, ache.
Why would the eye hurt when it didn’t exist anymore?
He’d asked the doctors and physical therapists the question half a dozen times and always got the same answer.
His brain thought the eye was still there.
Yeah. Right.
Jake’s mouth twisted.
Just went to prove what a useless thing a man’s brain could be.
The bottom line was that it was cold and he hurt and why he’d got out of the ‘Bird and set off on this all-but-forgotten ribbon of hard-packed dirt and moldy leaves was beyond him. But he had, and he’d be damned if he’d turn around now.
The trail was as familiar as the gate, the road, his old Thunderbird. It had been beaten into the soil by generations of foxes and coyotes and dogs, by ranch hands and kids going back and forth to the cold, swift-running waters of the creek.
Jake had walked it endless times, though never on a cold night with his head feeling as if somebody was inside, hammering to try and get out.
He should have taken something. Aspirin. A couple of pills, except he didn’t want to take those effing pills, not even the aspirin, anymore.
By the time he emerged from the copse of trees and brambles, he was ready to turn around, get in the car and head straight back to the airport.
Too late.
There it was.
The house, the heart of El Sueño, a brightly lit beacon. Sprawling. White-shingled. Tucked within the protective curve of a stand of tall black ash and even taller oaks, and overlooking a vast, velvety lawn.
Somewhere in the dark woods behind him, an owl gave a low, mournful cry. Jake shivered. Rubbed his eye. The skin felt hot to the touch.
The owl called out again. A faint, high scream accompanied the sound.
Dinner for the owl. Death for the creature caught in its sharp talons. That was the way of the world.
Some lived.
Some died.
And, goddammit, he was getting the hell out of here right now …
You can’t run forever, Captain.
The voice was clear and sharp in his head.
Somebody had told him that. A surgeon? A shrink? Maybe he’d told it to himself. It wasn’t true. He could run and run and never stop—
The big front door of the house flew open.
Jake took a quick step back, into the shelter of the trees.
There were people in the doorway. Shapes. Shadows. He couldn’t make out their faces. Music floated on the night air.
And voices.
Many voices.
He’d made it clear he wanted to see nobody but family.
A useless request.
His sisters would have invited half the town. The other half would have invited itself. This was Wilde’s Crossing, after all.
Okay.
He could do this. He would do this.
Just for tonight because the truth was, deep in his heart, he still loved this place more than any other on earth. El Sueño was part of him. It was in his DNA as much as the Celtic ice-blue of his eyes, the Apache blackness of his hair. Centuries of Wilde blood pulsed through him with each beat of his heart.
“Dammit,” he said in a soft growl.
He couldn’t deny it—but he couldn’t understand why it should matter. The past was the past. What did it have to do with the future?
Two different army shrinks had given him the same answer. The past was the basis of the present, and the present was the basis of the future.
Jake hadn’t returned for any more lie-on-the-couch-and-vomit-out-your-secrets crap. He’d never given up his secrets to start with. What was the point of having a secret if you handed it off?
Besides, the shrinks were wrong.
The pain behind his eye, his nonexistent eye, had become a drumbeat. He rubbed the bone around it with a calloused hand.
He thought again of the stories he and his brothers had grown up on.
“Never forget,” the General would say. “Everything we are, everything we have, we owe to the courage and convictions of all those brave men who came before us.”
The brothers had all grown up waiting for the chance to carry on the tradition. College first, because their mother would have wanted it. Business management for Jake, law for Caleb, finance for Travis.
But Jake had been the only one who decided to become a soldier. He’d joined the army, longed for, and snagged, training flying Blackhawks, often on covert missions.
He’d loved it.
Taking out the enemy. Saving lives when nothing and nobody else could do it.
Suddenly, with gut-wrenching speed, he stood not in the dark Texas countryside, but in a place of blood and fire. Fire everywhere …
“No,” he said sharply.
He drew a shaky breath. Straightened his long, tautly muscled frame and stood as tall as his aching head would permit.
He was not going to make that mental journey tonight.
Tonight, he would be the son his father had wanted, the man his brothers had known, the guy his sisters had adored.
The owl called out again. The bird was a hunter. A survivor.
Yeah, well, so was he.
He
