Justine Davis - Operation Reunion

“Mostly good.”

“You don’t seem like you’d need a lot of protecting.”

“I don’t,” Hayley said. “But they love Quinn, and he loves me, therefore…”

She ended the simple yet moving statement with a wave of her hand.

“Nice,” Kayla said, trying to quash the now familiar ache that was always threatening to crush her, making it hard to breathe.

“Very. And unexpected.”

Hayley’s cell phone chirped the arrival of a text message. She excused herself to glance at it. Kayla guessed, from the way her mouth curved into a soft smile, that it was from Quinn.

Kayla glanced around, looking for distraction from the pain that was so close to the surface. She’d been surprised when Hayley had directed her so far out; in fact, she had begun to feel a little leery the farther they’d gone. She supposed that was why it was Hayley, because if she’d been riding with Quinn, she would have been a lot more nervous; for all his offering to help he was still a stranger.

At just the time she really began wondering if she’d made an awful mistake, they’d arrived here. They’d left the city limits of Redwood Cove and entered a more rural county area. The three-story green building was somewhat isolated in a clearing hidden by a thick stand of tall evergreens. The color blended with the trees, making it even harder to spot. There were no markings, not even a street number or name.

“Sometimes we make people unhappy with us,” Hayley had explained. “So the less obvious we are, the better.”

Off to one side was what looked to be a large warehouse, and on the far side of that, a flat concrete pad with markings painted on it, and an orange wind sock that had been barely stirring in the minimal breeze. A landing site for a helicopter.

“I would have thought you’d have an office in Seattle,” she had said.

“Quinn picked this one, and he’s not a city boy at heart,” Hayley had answered.

No trace of the city here, Kayla thought now as she sat at the large table. The windows here in the top-floor meeting room were large, giving a full view of the rest of the clearing, the trees that ringed it and the sky above. Which was blue today, a clear early-summer day that made the long gray days of winter seem worth it.

Something moved in one of the trees, a large maple amid the firs. Kayla leaned forward, curious, and her breath caught when she realized it was a bald eagle. No, two of them, she thought, a pair, looking as if they were snuggling together on the sturdy branch.

“And that,” Hayley said, “is one of the reasons Quinn set up on the third floor even though we’re only using half of the first and the second not at all. They come here often.”

That bit of information reassured her in a way nothing else could have; the idea of a man like Quinn choosing to situate his office up two flights of stairs just to watch birds—albeit glorious, magnificent birds—was somehow very comforting.

“Tell me about Dane.”

Kayla stopped breathing altogether for a moment as the pain she’d quelled for a moment rushed back. Was she that easy to read? Or was Hayley just that perceptive? Probably both, she thought.

“He’s obviously crazy about you,” Hayley said.

“He was.” Even Kayla could hear the ineffable sadness in her voice. Just the sound of it made her sadder still.

“And you?”

“I’ve loved him in one way or another since I was fourteen.”

Hayley simply waited. Kayla sighed.

“That’s when we moved here. I met Dane the next day. I climbed the tree between our houses and couldn’t get down.”

“So he is literally the boy next door?”

“He was then, yes. And he was…wonderful.”

She hesitated. She didn’t want to say anything that made them think badly of Chad, not when she was asking them to believe her and help prove him innocent, but she also couldn’t not give Dane his due. He might have given up on her, on them, but she couldn’t deny he’d stuck with her longer than anyone else would have, that he’d been there for her every step of the way until even his considerable patience ran out.

“He was like a brother at first,” she said. “Only nicer.” The subtext “compared to Chad” was there, and she guessed Hayley knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. Besides, didn’t all siblings abuse each other in that familial sort of way? “Dane laughed with me, not at me, for being a skinny, bookish girl with braces. He knew how it felt to be the odd one. You wouldn’t believe it now, but he was kind of a geeky-looking guy back then. People teased him, so he understood how I felt.”

“He certainly grew up nicely.”

She smiled. “Yes, he did. We kind of made a pact. To work on ourselves, but not to let them change who we were inside. We couldn’t change other people, but we could change ourselves, challenge the stereotypes.”

“That’s pretty deep.”

“That’s the kind of thing we talked about. We used to have long, esoteric conversations about the state of the world and how to fix it, what era of time we’d like to go back to and why, that kind of thing. Even though he was a couple of years older, Dane never treated me like a dumb kid who didn’t know anything.”

She missed those days, she thought. And wondered if Dane did, too—missed those long talks about everything but themselves because they were fine and destined for a long, happy life together.

“So, you set out to what, change what people assumed?”

Kayla nodded. “Dane started working out and found he actually liked it. Pretty soon he was so fit and strong nobody bullied him to his face anymore. He could throw a football better than any guy in school, but no matter how much they recruited him he wasn’t interested. That caught people’s attention. He never changed who he was. He was still into computers, but he was making that cool.”

“And you?”

“I swore I’d never be ashamed of being smart. Never try to hide it. I’d kind of started to do that because I thought the cool kids might like me better.”

“It’s been my experience,” Hayley said with a wry smile, “that most of the ‘cool kids’ are in fact anything but.”

Kayla laughed. “That’s what Dane said.”

“When did he stop being your surrogate brother?”

Kayla blushed. “I always had a crush on him. But he…well, I was just a kid. The difference between fourteen and sixteen is a lot bigger than sixteen and eighteen.”

“Is that when it changed?”

“Sort of. At least, it started to, and then…my parents were killed.”

“And Dane was there for you.”

Kayla nodded. “Every minute. He never left my side. He took care of things I couldn’t, did things I didn’t have the presence of mind to even think of.”

She fought off the memories, trying not to let them swamp her. It didn’t happen often anymore, but when it did, it was as fresh and vivid and horrible as if it had been yesterday.

She felt the warmth of a touch and realized Hayley had reached across the table to put her hand over hers.

“I can’t imagine.” Those vivid green eyes were fastened on her and full of warmth and concern. “That you’re even upright is a testament to your strength.”

“Dane used to think that,” Kayla said with a sad smile. “Now I’m afraid he just thinks I’m crazy.”

“Ten years is a long time.” Hayley’s voice was very even, and Kayla wondered how hard she was having to try to keep it that way.

“So I should give up on my brother?”

“I didn’t say that. You are between the proverbial rock and a hard place.”

“Chad has his flaws—I’m not blind—but he’s no killer. I can’t just quit on him. People say I should forget about it, but—”