Countdown. Lindsay McKenna

backed into a corner now, with no other option that he could see. His strong, brown fingers wrapped around the highly polished brass doorknob. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door, praying that once he heard the painful story, Ramsey would let Annie Yellow Horse be reassigned.

      * * *

      Joe tried to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth as he left Ramsey’s office. He felt tired, beaten and disappointed. Annie Yellow Horse was his partner—whether he wanted her or not. Ramsey hadn’t been moved by his tortured confession about the haunting past that walked with him every moment of every day. He stood in the passageway, feeling lost and guilt-ridden. Dammit, why did Annie Yellow Horse have to be so likable? One thing Joe knew: he couldn’t go back into the office and face her right now. It wasn’t her fault, even if he was just a little jealous of her tracking credentials. No, he didn’t dare to get close to a woman brig chaser ever again—even on a strictly professional basis. Their line of work was too dangerous, too filled with unknowns, to risk his heart again as he had with Jenny.

      Joe walked slowly back down the passageway, uncertain of his destination. He just needed time to settle his roiling emotions, raised by talking about his sordid past. Blinking back sudden, unexpected tears, Joe shoved open a door that led him outside to a small alcove of thick green grass, a few silver-barked eucalyptus trees—and some much-needed solitude. Several picnic tables and benches were scattered around the lawn beneath the shade of the huge, graceful trees, but, thankfully, no one was using them.

      Sitting down on one of the benches, Joe watched without interest as several robins hunted for worms on the recently watered grass. The dry heat of the California desert ebbed and flowed around him, but he didn’t really feel it. Off in the distance, he could hear a helicopter lifting off a pad at the base airport. He loved his life as a marine. And he liked Captain Ramsey. The man was fair, but he was blind, too. Maybe the captain’s feelings for Libby Tyler interfered with his ability to see that keeping Annie and Joe together was the wrong thing to do.

      What was he going to do with Annie? Joe sat for a long time, hoping that his gut would unclench, that his heart would stop aching. It was the first time he’d told anyone here about Jenny. He’d come to Camp Reed shortly after that tragic situation, and no one here knew what had happened. Joe didn’t want them to know. It was too personal, too gut wrenching, to have the story talked about over lunch or at the NCO, the non-commissioned officer’s, Club.

      Slowly rubbing his face, Joe was startled to see Annie’s features appear before him. Lowering his hands and opening his eyes, he cursed. Somehow, he was going to have to keep her at bay, keep her from ever bonding with him the way most brig partners did over time. But how the hell was he going to accomplish that? Already his protective instincts were working overtime. Annie’s face was vulnerable—not the tough marine facade he had expected. How had she lasted six years in the corps? Even her voice was soft. He could see nothing hard about her; she had remained entrancingly feminine despite the responsibilities she carried on her shoulders.

      Frustrated as never before, Joe slowly eased off the bench, immune to the beauty that surrounded him as he slowly trudged back into the building toward his office. He had no answers to his questions. And right now, he was angry. Angry at Annie Yellow Horse for stepping squarely and unexpectedly into the turmoil of his life. He needed her the way he needed rocks in his head, Joe thought, disgruntled.

      “Sergeant Donnally?”

      Annie’s husky voice, low with concern, intruded on his spinning thoughts and torn emotions. He snapped a look to the left. Annie was standing there, extending his hat to him. Her face looked serene, although her eyes reflected concern—for him. Swallowing hard, Joe rasped, “What is it?”

      “Captain Ramsey just ordered us to get to the stables as soon as possible.” She shrugged a little and ventured a small smile. “Here’s your cover. I already put everything else we’ll need in the HumVee.”

      Taking his hat and settling it on his head, Joe stood there, filled with anguish. Somehow, he had to ignore Annie’s ethereal beauty. Somehow. “Yeah,” he croaked, “let’s get going.”

      “Do you want me to drive?”

      “No, I will.” Joe saw the question in her eyes, but refused to offer an explanation. He knew by the way she was reacting to him that he must look like hell. He certainly felt like hell.

      Annie tried to ignore the hurt of their confrontation yesterday at Captain Ramsey’s home, when Joe had tried to discredit her hoofprint clue. Luckily, the captain, who had grown up on the same reservation she had, understood that hoofprints were as unique as fingerprints. But it had been a minor incident, so Annie let it go. As she fell into step with Donnally, she tried to ignore new hurt that sprang from her heart as they moved into the passageway. It was impossible for Donnally to disguise the fact that he didn’t like her.

      Casting around for some way to defuse the unhappiness radiating from him, Annie said, “I grew up on the New Mexico desert and my folks raised sheep for a living. My mother is a medicine woman, but she weaves rugs, too. I guess I was kind of a tomboy for a Navajo girl, because I liked herding the sheep better than learning to weave. One of the things I had to learn in a hurry, though, was how to track strays from the main flock. Sometimes a ewe that was ready to birth would leave the herd to have her baby. Out there, coyotes were just waiting for strays, because it meant a meal to them.”

      Joe opened the door that led out to the parking lot. He was trying desperately not to listen to Annie’s soft, enthusiastic voice. Heat from the morning sunlight was overcoming the previous night’s coolness, and he inhaled the salt-laden air deeply.

      Annie hurried to keep step with Joe, determined to break the ice with him. “I had to learn to track those ewes before the coyotes got to them and their new babies. That’s when I realized that no sheep’s hooves were the same.” She laughed a little as he slowed down to get into the waiting HumVee. “Can you imagine me, as a nine-year-old, following ten or fifteen sheep trails, trying to sort out which one belonged to the pregnant mother?”

      Annie climbed in and sensed a bit of a thaw in Joe’s jutting jaw. Closing the door, she continued, “No one taught me about the differences in the way a hoof looked. I just kind of learned out of desperation, if you want to know the truth. I knew if I lost a mother and baby, I’d be blamed by my family for not taking care of something more helpless than I was.”

      Joe turned the HumVee down the street that led to the main boulevard, which would take them to the west-gate area where the stable facility was located. The warmth of Annie’s laughter, the intimacy of the way she confided in him, unstrung him. “Did you ever lose any sheep?” he found himself asking, against his will.

      Thrilled, Annie tried to keep her hopes from getting too high. At least Joe was talking to her. “Almost. I must have run down about ten sets of tracks on the red desert where we lived, and all of them came back to where the flock was grazing. My brother Tom kept watching the flock, and I’d take off running again. My lungs hurt, my legs hurt, and I was crying on top of everything else. I didn’t want to shame myself. You see, I’d begged my parents to let me be a herder. They told me that if I couldn’t do the job my brothers did, I’d have to learn the things women are taught and stay out of a man’s world.”

      Joe nodded, the pain around his heart miraculously easing beneath Annie’s spontaneous warmth. A large part of him wanted to know about Annie—as a person as well as a marine, but it was a dangerous area to tread. The better he got to know her, the more risk there was to both of them.

      The look on Joe’s face encouraged Annie as they drove down the busy boulevard. The line of his mouth had eased, if only a bit, and she could feel him listening with interest to her story, so she continued. “It was near evening, and a lot of the ewes lamb at night. On about the twelfth trail, I noticed that this sheep had a chip out of the left side of one hoof. I found her at twilight.” Annie smiled fondly in remembrance. “She was just birthing, and a pack of coyotes was stalking her. I ran at them, yelling and shouting to scatter them.”

      “You did?” Joe turned briefly. It was a mistake. The joy in Annie’s eyes was his undoing.