Pamela Clare - Striking Distance

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stay inside where it’s warmer. Brrr!” Megan pretended to shiver. “Sophie e-mailed to ask whether she and Marc should bring some elk steaks to share tomorrow.”

“If they want to do that, it’s fine by me, but he’s still not touching the grill.”

Megan ducked back inside, laughing to herself.

Nate looked over at Javier. “Ever tried elk?”

Javier shook his head.

“My brother-in-law goes elk hunting with a crossbow every fall. It’s good eatin’—nice and lean.” Nate took a swallow of his beer. “He and McBride brought down a five-hundred-pound cow this year. That’s what we call female elk, by the way—cows.”

“You’re not letting that go, are you?”

“Nope.”

But Javier was only half-listening, talk of the barbecue putting his mind back on Laura Nilsson. Would she come? Would she recognize him? If she did, would she be glad to see him—or would she feel blindsided?

And what will you say to her?

What could he say to the woman who’d been in his thoughts for so long?

He had no idea.

Emily, Megan’s five-year-old daughter whom Nate had adopted, stuck her blond head out the door, then disappeared inside, her high little voice drifting back to them. “Grandpa Jack, they’re not shoveling. They’re just sitting on their asses like you said.”

“Hey, old man, quit nagging!” Nate shouted toward the door, a grin on his face.

From inside, Javier could just make out Jack’s voice. “Now, Miss Emily, you know there are words that only grown-ups can say, and ass is one of them.”

Javier chuckled. “Your dad is something else.”

“Yeah, he is, and he’s teaching Emily to talk like a soldier.” Nate took another drink. “Truth is, she’s been good for him. He loves that little girl. You should have seen the pride on his face when the adoption was final and her name became Emily West. She and Megan—they’ve helped fill the emptiness my mother’s death left inside him.”

Javier could remember the day Nate’s mother had died. They’d been in Afghanistan, and Nate had gotten a call from his father. She’d passed suddenly and unexpectedly of an aneurysm. Nate never had a chance to say good-bye.

“You thinking of giving Emily a little brother or sister?”

Nate nodded. “Megan applied to law school. If she gets accepted, we might decide to wait till she graduates. If she doesn’t . . . Well, she’ll be pretty disappointed. She wants to help young women who get into trouble. She had a rough life and wants to make sure other girls have a better chance.”

“That’s a worthy goal.” Javier knew next to nothing about Megan, but he didn’t like the idea that she’d had a hard time of it growing up. Whatever her past was, she certainly seemed to have moved beyond it.

“How about you? You ever going to get married again, raise a few kids?”

Javier glared at Nate. “Are you my mother? She asked me the same thing when I was home.”

She wanted him to buy a house somewhere nearby, marry a sweet Puerto Rican wife, and give her more grandkids while she was still alive to enjoy them. But he’d had a wife, and she’d run off with some cabrón from Silicon Valley midway through their first married deployment—less than a year after they’d tied the knot. Why would he want to go through that again?

Nate studied him for a moment, then took one last swill. “Well, I guess we’d best get to work if we want to get the patio shoveled in time to get back to the horses.”

It was a big patio with a built-in gas grill, a fire pit, stone benches, a few outdoor propane heaters, and a couple of picnic tables.

Javier got to his feet, pain shooting through his left thigh. “Tell me again why you have barbecues in the middle of the winter, bro?”

Nate looked at him like he was an idiot. “We like steak.”

LAURA MET SOPHIE in the cafeteria for a late lunch, both of them opting for the salad bar over the burgers. They made their way to a table in the back of the nearly empty room, Laura grabbing a bottle of mineral water on the way.

“I can’t believe the FBI isn’t going to do anything to help you.” Sophie stirred sugar into her iced tea.

“That’s not exactly what they said.” It was close enough from Laura’s point of view, but she was a journalist and had to be fair—even if she was furious. “The special agent in charge—Agent Petras—said they had no evidence that Al-Nassar’s threats were credible or that I was in any danger. He said they were monitoring the situation and that they would act if they found evidence that a threat existed.”

“Having a terrorist leader put a fatwa on your head doesn’t count as credible?” Sophie jabbed her fork into her salad. “Good grief! What does?”

What Al-Nassar had done didn’t constitute a fatwa, but Laura didn’t feel like explaining. Besides, it wasn’t what the FBI agent had said, but how he’d said it.

“Petras was smug, so condescending. He talked down to me as if I were a nuisance, as if I’d cried wolf or something—when he wasn’t staring at my boobs.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Why do men do that? Do they think we don’t notice?”

Laura had no idea. “What’s so infuriating is that I didn’t contact the FBI. I wasn’t the one who asked them to come.”

Sophie frowned. “Who did?”

“The U.S. Marshal Service.” Laura wished they hadn’t.

Sophie got a knowing look on her face. “I bet that’s the problem. There’s no love lost between the FBI and the Marshal Service.”

Then Sophie told her how her husband, Marc, the SWAT captain, had been deputized by the U.S. Marshal for Colorado a couple years back when Natalie Benoit, a friend and former I-Team member, was in danger from a Mexican drug cartel. She’d just started telling Laura how the cartel had abducted Natalie off a bus, when she caught herself. “Oh, God! Sorry! I’m sure you didn’t need to hear that.”

“Don’t apologize.” For a moment, Laura had forgotten about her own situation. “I’m not the only journalist who—”

Her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the display.

Him again.

Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, because when Sophie spoke again, she sounded worried. “Who is it?”

“Derek Tower, the man who owns the company that handled my security detail.” Laura told Sophie about him—his phone calls, the accusations he’d fed to the press, his demand that she meet with him. “When I got out of the meeting with the FBI, I had another message from him. That makes three today.”

“Have you considered getting a restraining order against him?”

Laura had thought about that. “I’m not sure he’s done anything that could be considered threatening. If pestering people with phone calls and e-mails were an actionable offense, you and I and everyone else in the newsroom would be in jail.”

“You’ve got a point there.”

For a while they ate in silence.

Sophie set her fork aside. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Yes.” Laura could always refuse to answer.

“How do you stay so calm? If I were in your shoes, I’d be scared to death.”

That wasn’t the question Laura had been expecting.

“I am scared.” She hated to admit that. She was tired of feeling afraid. “I just try not to let it control me. If I did . . .”

If she did, she’d never leave the house.

Sophie took out a pen and wrote a phone number down on a clean napkin. “You and I haven’t known each other for a long time, but . . . if you ever need a place to stay, a place where you can feel safe, you’re welcome at our house. Marc—Mr. SWAT Captain—wouldn’t let anything happen to you. He’s armed to the teeth.”