Conard County Marine. Rachel Lee

and solitude was the illusion of a door.

      Then Glenda had been there almost every minute. After the hospital, Glenda had taken her back to her apartment to help her pack, and at most she’d been alone for twenty or thirty minutes when her sister ran out to get more boxes or something for them to eat. Those minutes had seemed endless, her nerves crawling every single second, impatience for Glenda’s return driving her nearly nuts. How many times had she come close to hiding in a closet during those interludes?

      The memory of that could shame her, but the feelings had been overwhelming. Were still overwhelming. The idea of coming home had looked like the answer to everything. Apparently not.

      She sat in the house she had spent a lot of her childhood in and she still felt the crawling fear, still felt that if she just looked over her shoulder she’d see...what? Something. Something bad. God, she must be crazy.

      Coop stirred finally and came to sit cross-legged on the floor at her feet. “I won’t leave you alone,” he said. He held out a hand, palm up. Asking, not demanding. Apparently aware that he was a stranger and she might fear a man’s touch.

      That careful, gentle invitation called to her, however, and she reached out, laying her hand in his. He squeezed gently, but in no way made her feel trapped. She could slip her hand away as easily as she had given it.

      “You can’t promise me that,” she said finally.

      “Not every minute of the day, obviously. I need to visit Connie and her kids. But I can do that when your sister is home, which is most of the day usually. And tonight, for sure, I can be right here in this house.”

      She started to feel small. “I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to ask that of you. You came here to see family, not to babysit me.”

      “Who said I’d be babysitting? You’re an attractive, interesting woman. I won’t mind at all.” He smiled, but only with his blue eyes. They crinkled at the corners, and his expression was warm.

      For a few seconds, Kylie didn’t answer. In those moments she was suddenly a girl she’d almost forgotten, one who had once thought it would be wonderful to share her life with a man, a man like this one who could be powerful and gentle at the same time. She had the worst urge to climb off the chair and curl up in his lap. To let him take care of her. Almost at once she rebelled. What the hell was she thinking? The Kylie she had been before the amnesia had been strong, capable of taking care of herself. She couldn’t let this weaken her like this.

      She spoke, dragging her thoughts back to reality. “I don’t know what could be interesting about me. All I’ve done is whine.”

      “I hadn’t noticed. Look, you’re dealing with a tough problem. Talk about it as much as you want.”

      “Do you talk about your problems?” She watched him start.

      “My problems?”

      “You’ve been in combat, haven’t you? Surely you’ve got some wounds from that.”

      He looked down, but didn’t release her hand. “I don’t talk about that much, for obvious reasons.”

      “But you’ve learned to live with it?”

      He glanced at her, his expression almost rueful. “I’m still learning. I’m good at hiding it.”

      She sighed, feeling the warmth of his hand. This wasn’t wise, not in her current state. She was letting a man get too close—worse, a stranger. What was she thinking? Had she become that desperate for comfort? The only comfort she was going to find evidently had to come from within herself. “Maybe I should hide it, too.”

      “Why? I talk with other people about my experiences. I’ve just found it’s wiser to reserve them for other combat vets. We’re all on the same page. Unfortunately, I don’t know who else would be on the same page with you.”

      Except him, she thought. He probably came closest. He’d undoubtedly been under attack. Maybe even wounded. He might understand better than anyone.

      “I don’t like being scared,” she said quietly. “Especially of something that’s over. I don’t like the fact that my whole career plan blew up. If I had to forget something, the attack would have been quite enough, without forgetting all the time I put into school. But that’s where I am, and I’m already sick of feeling sorry for myself. I need to move on.”

      “Of course. But you’re scared. So...it’ll take a little time. You’ll grow comfortable again. Promise.”

      Then he smiled and astonished her by leaning forward to drop a quick light kiss on her hand. Then he rose and stretched. “I want more coffee. You?”

      She hadn’t even touched hers and it had grown cold, but it sounded good now. “Thank you.”

      Then she was alone again, although not entirely. She could hear him in the kitchen, but it was as if her internal vision was shattered somehow. She could look around the room and recognize every single item except the new TV. Her grandparents’ living room, hardly changed over the years except for the chair she sat on. It should have felt like home. Except something was preventing her from feeling that. In its silent emptiness it had become part of the threat that stalked her. An unresolved threat. The man who had tried to kill her was still out there, and from things she suspected she hadn’t been intended to hear, they thought she’d been attacked by a serial killer. Someone who had done this before and would do it again.

      So how could home even feel safe?

      * * *

      Coop stood in the kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee. The last one had mostly gone down the sink drain. He liked his coffee, but he didn’t like wasting it. Like when he was in the field, and he’d be lucky to get an opportunity to make one lousy, warm cup of instant coffee. Precious coffee.

      Thinking of Kylie was opening a can of worms inside him, too. He couldn’t imagine how alone she must be feeling. She was walking a path that no one else could walk with her. Everyone was trying to make her feel better and take care of her, but that wasn’t enough. She needed to face that demon, or at least talk to someone who understood it.

      As he waited for the coffee to finish, he wondered if he should open his own can of worms for her benefit. Just a little. To show her that someone really could understand. Holding things inside rarely did much good, which was why he’d been taking full advantage of various veterans groups where folks could get together and share those stories that couldn’t be heard by other ears. That shouldn’t be heard.

      But Kylie wasn’t going to find a support group for the surviving victims of a serial killer, or any kind of killer, around here. And he doubted there was a whole lot of support anywhere for the victims of amnesia.

      Which left him, he guessed. Maybe he could find one story to share with her that would let her know he understood what it was like to live with crawling fear even when you were safe. Yeah, he was getting better at it, but that didn’t mean he was fully past it.

      He returned to the living room with two mugs, saying, “I guess I should have asked if you want tea. That seems to be Glenda’s poison.”

      She gave him a wan smile. “I like coffee, too. Thanks.”

      “It’s the staff of life for me.” Then he volunteered a bit to see what kind of reaction he got. “When I was in the field, we had packets of instant coffee. I was lucky if I could warm it up a little. These days I’ll take a real cup of coffee any time I can get it.”

      “I’d imagine so.” Her eyes followed him as he returned to the couch. He could feel her gaze, an instinct as deep in the human race as it was in any prey animal, but honed in his case by experience. When he sat facing her again, he got socked once more by how pretty she was. But it wasn’t just that she was pretty. His body had chosen a very inopportune time to react to a woman. This one was in no condition for that.

      But how to reach her? He scoured his memory for a way to relate his experience to hers. Maybe generalities, he decided.