Lindsay McKenna - The Defender

Katie walked quickly up toward the office area. “I’m very lucky. Iris has been a guardian angel to my raptors.” She wanted to forget she’d blurted out her sordid past. After all, Joe was a stranger applying for a job—why had she told him about her unknown mother? Mentally kicking herself, Katie knew why. Finding her mother had been her sole focus since she’d turned twelve years old. Why had the woman abandoned her? Did her mother not love her? Was she such an ugly baby her own mother had wanted nothing to do with her? Was she an inconvenient pregnancy, born into her mother’s life at the wrong time? Was that why she’d been given up for adoption? Biting her lower lip, Katie forced all of her dark past deep down inside herself. She halted at the desk. As Joe sauntered up the aisle, stopping every now and again to appraise the raptors, she took several deep breaths to calm herself.

“I imagine it must be hard not to know who your mother is,” Joe said in an understanding tone. “That’s a heavy burden for anyone to carry.”

“Yes, it is.” Katie wanted to change topics. “So why don’t we move on to a happier topic? Do you have a résumé I can look at?”

Joe nodded and drew a folded paper from his back pocket and handed it to her. When their fingers met and touched, hers felt cold. “Here it is....”

Katie’s hands trembled as she unfolded it and forced herself to read. Some of her stress melted away. “You were in the Marine Corps?” Glancing up, she gave Joe a sympathetic look. “First, thank you for your service. I’m so sorry you got injured. Are you okay now?”

Touched by her apparently genuine concern, Joe said, “Yes. I’m fine now. It was while I was recovering at Bethesda Medical Center that I was sent to Eddie as part of my rehabilitation. He was in the Army during the Vietnam War era and offered his services to the neurology department at the hospital. I got lucky enough to be assigned to him and began to learn falconry.”

Katie looked up at this man who seemed supremely confident. She couldn’t see the wounds of war on him. “But you had a head injury.” Brows drawing down, she asked, “No other symptoms from it?”

“Just one.” Joe touched the left side of his head. “I’ll get a migraine maybe once a month. They’re brought on by stress.”

“Ugh, migraines.” Katie wrinkled her nose. “I hate migraines! I get them myself from time to time.” She tilted her head and searched his face. “Does your migraine lay you low? When I get one, I need a quiet, dark room, and then, I can sleep it off.”

“Mine are the same. Noise just amps up my pain.”

“I feel for you,” Katie said. “Any other injuries? Anything that would stop you from doing the work needed around here?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Studying the résumé, Katie gasped. “Why didn’t I see this before?” She looked up, satisfaction in her expression. “It’s nice to have a hometown person for this job,” she murmured.

Joe grinned. “Yes, I am. Does that hurt my chances?” He’d said it with a teasing tone and saw her suddenly smile. Her lips were full and soft. And when Katie’s mouth widened, his heart skipped a couple of beats. She couldn’t hide any emotion. There was no veneer, no mask in place on Katie that he could discern. It would make his job easier provided she hired him.

“No, no, that’s great. And your parents must live here, too?”

Joe told her about his mother and father. “On weekends, I’m working with my dad to learn his ranching and landscaping business.”

“I see. And your address? Are you at their home?”

He was impressed how quickly she put things together. But then, in Joe’s experience with falconers, they were highly intelligent and, like the raptors they saved, had extraordinary observation and alertness skills. “Yes, there’s a smaller home near the ranch house and I’m living there.”

Katie sighed. “You’re so lucky to have a mom and dad....”

As he heard the yearning in her whisper, Joe felt his heart suddenly wrench in his chest. He drilled her with a look, trying to ferret out whether she was telling the truth. But he was flummoxed. “We get along well with one another” was all he said. Yes, there was real pain in her eyes. For a second, he thought he saw tears building but Katie dipped her head.

Clearing her throat, Katie studied his résumé some more. “So you want a full-time job, five days a week with me, and you’re working with your dad on weekends?”

“That’s right.”

Katie asked in a concerned tone, “How long before you move into ranching as a full-time job?”

Joe knew she worried that if she hired him, he’d leave. “Not for ten years,” and he added a half smile to his answer. Instantly, he saw relief in her face. The stress fled the corners of her delicious mouth. If Katie was this easy to read, he’d have no problem figuring out the connection between her and Janet Bergstrom. “My father isn’t ready to retire. My coming home rather unexpectedly because of the wound I received in Afghanistan got him thinking about offering me the ranch.” Joe opened his hands. “I can’t go back into the military. This IED concussion ended my career. I hadn’t really figured out what I was going to do after the hospital released me and I got my walking papers from the Marine Corps. When I was sent to Eddie for rehab, I fell in love with falconry. My dad called me and asked me to come home and offered to teach me the business, and I accepted.”

“I know about your dad’s landscaping business because Iris hired him to come out here with his construction equipment to level the land where the facility would be built. I remember him. He was a very nice person.”

“My dad is an easygoing type and he’s built up an eco-friendly landscaping business here in the valley over the years.”

“Did you want to become a rancher?”

“I loved the military. I was an officer and I was a good leader. I wanted to put in my twenty years and retire.” Shrugging, Joe said, “You know how life can twist and turn? I knew my two tours in Afghanistan would be dangerous. I lost some of my people to IEDs. And then my turn came.” Joe told her the truth. He purposely left out that during his recovery the FBI had asked him to work for them. He’d spent a year in training after the six months of rehab. The FBI had wanted to put him as an undercover operative in Katie’s life. They wanted actual proof the daughter was working with the Los Lobos cartel.

“I think it’s great your dad has offered you a new career.” Katie smiled a little. “This way, you can be home to enjoy your parents and this beautiful area.”

The wistfulness in her tone told Joe she was wishing she had the same life as he did. After all, being abandoned at birth would be a huge emotional hole in anyone’s life. Gently, he said, “Yes, I count myself lucky.”

The glass doors slid open. Iris Mason stepped in wearing her gardening gloves, a bunch of weeds dangling from her left hand. “Hey, am I disturbing you, Katie? Hi, Joe, nice to see you again.”

Katie lifted her hand. “Hi, Iris. I see you’re weeding again.” In the morning, Iris could usually be found out in her flower beds. “Do you know Joe Gannon?”

“Yes, I do. Glad you could make it out.” Iris dropped the weeds in a nearby barrel and pulled off her muddy gloves.

Joe nodded deferentially to Iris. “Good to see you again, Miss Iris. Looks like the weeds are losing.”

“Oh, they are. Amazing how weeds spring up overnight.” The woman smiled up at him before turning her attention to Katie. “What do you think? Is Joe a good choice to work with you out here?”

Katie handed her the résumé. “What do you think? You’re the one paying his salary.”