Free Native Born by Jenna Kernan Page A

turned her attention to Cassidy.
    â€œCassidy, do you have any family out here?” asked Glendora.
    Clyne did his best to pretend he wasn’t listening.
    Cassidy swallowed her mouthful of pie and returned her fork to her plate, correctly judging that the interrogation had finally reached her. “I’m an only child, but both my parents are gone.”
    â€œOh, I’m so sorry. How many brothers and sisters have you, Cassidy?” asked Glendora.
    â€œNone.”
    Glendora blinked as she absorbed this. Clyne knew that his grandmother wanted more children but also had had only one, his mother.
    â€œI see,” said his grandmother. “Where’s home?”
    â€œI’m an army brat. Moved around a lot. New England, DC, then up in Alaska for a little while. I also lived in Germany.”
    â€œHeavens. A world traveler.”
    Rootless , thought Clyne. With no home and no people. Only herself and her stolen daughter.
    â€œHow did you choose the FBI?” asked Gabe.
    Now his brothers were getting into the action. Clyne glanced at his watch, wishing the evening away.
    â€œI enlisted in October of 2001,” she said.
    Clyne’s head jerked up because that was when he had joined the US Marines. Back then he had felt the need to defend his country. Now he only wanted to defend his people and their land.
    â€œI met my husband in basic training. He was deployed before me.”
    Glendora blinked, her gaze shifting to Cassidy’s left hand but their guest wore no ring. Many FBI officers did not.
    â€œYou’re married?” asked Glendora.
    â€œI was. For seven years. He was a tank commander until he died in Afghanistan in his second deployment, March 4, 2011.”
    There was a moment of absolute stillness. Cassidy had successfully silenced his grandmother. Clyne did the math and realized Jovanna had been adopted when she was about four and she had been seven when Walker had died. The US tank commander had been her father for only three years. How many occasions had he been home during that time? They would have given him leave, of course. But army tours were two to six years each. Had Walker re-enlisted to support his family?
    Cassidy met his gaze with a challenge and held it, those flashing eyes now reminded him of seawater, as blue and deep as the Pacific Ocean. And now he realized what made her different from every other woman he had ever met. She was a warrior and she was a survivor. A veteran who, like him, had lost someone important. Not comrades, though perhaps she had. She had lost her husband.
    He looked at her with new eyes, his head cocked as he wondered if he dared to ask if any of the men and women in her unit had been lost.
    â€œHe signed for a second tour?” asked Clyne.
    â€œYes. I stayed home with Amanda and Gerard re-enlisted for another four years. I joined the bureau after my daughter started school. Gerard came home whenever he could.”
    Clyne’s head dropped. He’d made so many assumptions and felt ashamed of himself. He’d even asked her when they had divorced. He rubbed his hand over his forehead and prepared to apologize.
    â€œBut I’m not the only veteran at the table. Clyne was in the US Marines. Also enlisted after 9/11. Deployed to Iraq.” She turned to him with a sweet smile. “A sharpshooter, right? Thirty-six confirmed kills.”
    He sucked in a breath. All eyes turned to him as if suddenly he was the stranger at the table. He’d never told them.
    Clyne stood and grabbed Cassidy by the arm and hustled her out of the room. She went along but once in the foyer she tugged away, breaking his hold with such ease it startled him into stillness. He’d forgotten that Walker was a fighter, too.
    â€œWhat’s your problem?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t talk about that time.”
    She snorted. “Maybe you should.”
    He tilted his head to one side, wondering where she got the nerve to tell