Free Conard County Marine by Rachel Lee Page A

was overreacting because of past experience, but he couldn’t do it.
    Somebody had tried to kill Kylie once. That sure as hell didn’t mean they wouldn’t try it again.
    He stood outside awhile longer, feeling as if the weight of his field equipment were settling onto his shoulders, familiar with its weight, straps, pockets and tools. He had the worst wish that it was really there with him.
    Then he felt the prickle again. This time he didn’t bother to look around.
    “Stare you, SOB,” he muttered. “Stare all you want. Because if you try anything, you’re biting off more than you can chew.”
    *
    Todd wished he could have heard that conversation, but since Connie and Coop were cousins it had probably been about her kids. Then he picked up the bouquet from the back of his car, and once Coop disappeared inside, he headed for the door.
    He’d been too abrupt in his visit when Kylie got home. Time to make amends. Time to make her feel he wasn’t a threat.
    But after only five steps, he stopped. Something was wrong. He could feel it.
    Not tonight, he decided. He’d pay his visit tomorrow, in the daylight when it wouldn’t seem as unusual, an easy-to-explain drop-in and an apology for turning up so unexpectedly the night she arrived home. He looked at the bouquet in his hand and decided it would survive overnight.
    Yeah, tomorrow, under better circumstances, he’d work on persuading her he was just a friend, not a threat.
    Because he wasn’t. Yet.
    *
    When Coop returned inside, he found Kylie and Glenda had moved to the living room. When Glenda beckoned him with a nod of her head, he joined them, taking the remaining end of the couch.
    “That was a nice visit from Connie,” Kylie remarked. “I’m glad I’ll see the kids in the morning. With three years missing...I can’t imagine how they’ve changed.”
    “They change fast at that age,” Glenda agreed. “But you’ll still recognize them. Taller, mouthier and looking like clones of their mom and dad.”
    Kylie smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”
    But she wasn’t really, Coop could tell. The tension that had returned on their walk still rode her and hadn’t really let go. It would probably remain with her in the morning, as well. If he didn’t understand what she was going through so well, he might have sighed.
    But he understood it perfectly. He went through some version of this every time he returned from a combat zone. And no matter how you adapted and settled in, you could never return to the old normal, the innocent kid you’d been when you started out. Your life remained haunted, your sense of security and safety permanently damaged.
    Sometimes he’d wished he could forget it all ever happened, but now, considering Kylie, he had to accept that forgetfulness would never do the job. The scars went beyond memory, beyond the conscious mind, to a place too deep to restore. The best you could ever hope for was to make peace with it.
    Kylie was a long way from that, and as he listened to her and Glenda talk casually about safe and unimportant subjects, he wondered what the hell would happen to Kylie if she recovered her memory. Would she be able to deal with it? If it came in small bits, maybe. But what if she got slammed with the whole thing at once? She might drown in it.
    At least his experiences, awful as many of them had been, had mostly been parsed out over time. There’d been breaks, times he’d been able to hunker down in relative safety at a base and deal with it. And the rest of it...well, there was a certain acceptance and adaptation to being at war when you dealt with it day after day. Adjustments made. A change in the way of thinking.
    Kylie wouldn’t get that, however he looked at it. Her trouble had apparently come out of nowhere, an attack in the night without warning. No time to prepare, no time to deal or adjust, and then...nothing but the remaining terror.
    He hoped she never remembered that attack. Never. While he understood