“I need you and you’re here. It matters.”
“I know I sound like a broken record, Candace, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good. I don’t want you to go anywhere. And I don’t think I have the energy emotionally to believe anything outside of you staying. Forever.”
“Finally, something works in my favor.” I kiss her, biting back an offer of chocolate cake I’d make another time. Not now though. Not when worries for her father, dictate her state of mind.
I settle back into my seat, crank the engine, and turn up the radio to Jason Aldean’s “She’s Country.” By the time I’m on the main highway, I’ve convinced her to sing along with me, and the mood is lighter. Candace laughs and the smile she casts me lights me up right along with her face. I want to keep that smile on her face. This woman rocks my world. She’s brave. She’s strong. She’s a warrior, my warrior, and the idea that I haven’t been hers is not a good one. I was a fool to leave her, and for what? She’s right when she says that she was in the line of fire anyway, and I wasn’t here to stop that from happening.
I pull us into a parking spot near the door and kill the engine, the radio with it. Candace doesn’t reach for her belt or the door. I unhook my own belt and turn to face her. “A penny for your thoughts,” I say, and just that fast, she’s facing me, her seatbelt sliding back into the seat barrel.
“She was murdered, Rick,” she declares, her voice strong, anger crackling in her tone, all signs of the smiling country girl gone now.
“We don’t know that, baby,” I say. “And going down that rabbit hole leads to no place good. You know that, right?”
“So, we should leave it alone?” she challenges incredulously. “Are you serious right now, Rick Savage?”
“Hell no, I’m not suggesting we leave it alone, but one thing war has taught me is that distraction is deadly. Fretting, worry, and obsessive thoughts create emotional weakness. Fuck the hell out of me when your mind wants to go to those places. Otherwise, fact find—which we’re doing for you—prepare, and then act. And shoot your damn gun.” I open my door. “Let’s go do that now. I’ll come around and get you.”
I climb out of the Porsche 911 and she doesn’t wait on me. She’s out when I’m out and I get it. Inaction feels worse than action, when the world is spinning out of control, at least out of your control.
“I want the truth,” she says, and the conversation continues where it left off. “I want justice. What if all of this began before we even met? What if the day you met me, I sealed your future? I made you a killer.”
I catch her waist and walk her to me. “I told you, Candace, nobody made me what I was but me.”
“But what if—”
“It started before us,” I supply. “Yes,” I reluctantly conclude, not wanting to pull her farther into her rabbit hole, but also not willing to deny her the truth. “I think it might have.”
“That man who came to our house after the funeral. He was in a black SUV. He met with my father inside the back and when my father got out, he wasn’t happy. They had words and then my father barred past me where I waited and wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Your father is a high-ranking officer,” I remind her. “There’s no way he can avoid a wartime update, no matter what the day.”
“Right,” she says. “That’s true.” She glances down and then immediately back up. “It feels like it was more.”
“We’ll find out. Walker is looking into your mother’s death. And we’ll look for connections to us now, where they exist. Fact find, prepare, and then act.”
“Fact find, prepare, and then act,” she repeats.
“Start preparing by showing me how you handle that Sig Sauer.”
“Not as well as I want to handle it.”
“You will soon,” I promise. “When I’m done training you, that gun will be your third arm.” I close my hand around her hand and lead her toward the door, determined to make her as deadly as I am. The problem is that I can’t make her bulletproof. I guess I’ll just have to be her body armor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Candace
Rick holds onto my hand a bit too tightly as he leads me toward the side door of the turquoise blue building that is the shooting range. That grip feels telling. Like a sign that he’s afraid he’s going to lose me. I’m not sure if that’s about him feeling our past is still chipping away at our future, or that there’s a killer among us that plans to make me, and us, next. I think it’s both and the idea that my entire family, including the man I have loved for nearly a decade of my life, have always been game pieces in play. This idea angers me. This idea makes me want to fight the way my parents, and Rick himself, have fought for this country. I want to fight for them. I will not be a victim.