Keeping Promise Rock

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

4760 Preston Road

Suite 244-149

Frisco, TX 75034

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Amy Lane

Cover Art by Paul Richmond http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61581-346-9

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

January, 2010

eBook edition available

This one is dedicated to all of those people who chose family first and dreams second, because they know that making a dream come true isn’t nearly as much fun without someone to share it with.

MY FRIEND Wendy has been running a horse ranch mostly by herself for the last twelve years. She has killed seventeen rattlesnakes with a shotgun, can break a horse and show it and win medals, and has never, ever let anyone tell her that a woman can’t do this alone. This book’s for my friend Wendy.

My friend Julie has followed her husband around as a Navy wife for over twenty years. She has worked her way back from a hand injury in a motorcycle crash via knitting, takes shit from absolutely no one, and has read more than any human being I know of. This book’s for my friend Julie.

My friend Barb has lost every adult she’s loved with her whole heart in the space of a year, and she’s still raising her children and fighting for her home. This book’s for my friend Barb.

My friend Bonnie will answer her e-mail at three-thirty in the morning because she knows that sometimes a time difference makes no difference in how much she’s needed. She’s spent a year and a half telling me that the people who are mean to me about my writing are fuckers and clueless bastards, and really? I can’t hear that enough. This book’s for my friend Bonnie.

My friend Roxie has lived a full, fierce life with enough empathy and self-assessment to look upon the screw-ups of others with compassion and understanding—she is creative, amazing, and reserves judgment except in the case of blatant meanness or bigotry, and then she has no mercy. This book’s for my friend Roxie.

My friend Saren sends me
Supernatural
videos constantly, even if I don’t have time to look up others to send back to her, and she has a husband who offers me virtual brisket with my real Top Ramen.

Without her happy indulgence of my weird aging-cougar obsession with young and tasty veal, this book would never have been written.

This book’s for my friend Saren.

My friend Matt has a really flaky wife who would rather write than do housework and who keeps pinning the family’s hopes on what should probably have stayed a hobby with mystique as opposed to an obsession for success. He is kind, empathetic, and never yells at me for traffic tickets even if they send us to the verge of bankruptcy, and he still loves me after twenty years. This book is especially for my friend Matt.

January, 2010

Present Day: Farah, Iraq

CARRICK JAMES FRANCIS grew up in Levee Oaks, California. While not exactly Death Valley, it was pretty hot in the summer—the temperature reached the hundreds fairly regularly between June and September, and a hot wind blew through the valley when the delta breezes were too fucking lazy to move.

After two years in Iraq, he was starting to wish it had been Death Valley. If he’d grown up in Death Valley, he figured driving an ambulance in Kuwait wouldn’t feel like the seventh sphincter of the armpit demon living in hell’s tenth colon.

“Two years and I still can’t believe this place makes my hometown look good!” Crick had to shake his head in disgust. His whole life, he’d hated Levee Oaks. He’d almost gotten expelled from school for painting

“White Trash Capital of California” on the water tower. If Deacon hadn’t painted it over before the whole town had seen it, he would have been.

Just one more thing he owed Deacon Winters for. One more giant favor he’d returned with complete dumb-assery.

“Yeah, well,” Private Lisa Arnold was saying, “you won’t be here much longer, Punky, so you need to quit your bitching!” Crick’s partner shook her head next to him, as cute and blonde and perky in full gear, flak jacket, and helmet in the front of the ambulance as she would have been wearing bottle-cap shorts and a halter-top at a family reunion. She’d always been a little burst of sweet ’n cool in the middle of the desert, and Carrick had grown to love her like a sister. An older sister, of course. He’d 6

had enough of cleaning, diapering, and feeding his little half-sisters to last a lifetime.

Carrick blew out a breath and looked at the armored transport trucks in front of them—a whole lot of soldiers getting to go home. But first, they had to look down the long road of sand and sand and nothing but fucking sand from Farah to Baghdad, where their flight would take off.

“How long again?” They drove an ambulance with full a/c, mostly because half of what they treated was heat exhaustion. There had been wounds—and that had been bad enough, food for nightmares—but three-quarters of their job had been handing out fluids and ice packs, keeping the combat units from poaching their brains like eggs in the roasting pan that was the Middle East. The a/c was more of a suggestion than a rule, really—a pleasant suggestion, most times, but nothing like the good ozone-eating a/c of a department store in California.

Lisa looked at him sideways. “Five days. Here to Baghdad, BD to Turkey, Turkey to Germany, Germany to LA, LA to Sac. Badda bing, badda boom—you’re home, boy, and this gig, it ain’t nothing but a bad memory!”

Crick smiled and looked at her softly. “Gonna miss you, Popcorn,” he said, meaning it. It had been a long, miserable two-year tour—the biggest fucking mistake of his dumb-assed life. By the time Lisa Arnold had showed up, perky and kind and tough as nails, Crick had been thinking seriously about dancing naked in a minefield, just to make it end.

But Lisa had showed up, and she’d been nosy and perky and in his face… and then she’d found out the one thing Crick hadn’t wanted anybody in the Army to know, and he’d been sure he was fucked.

And she’d saved his life instead.

“You won’t miss me when you get home and he’s waiting for you.” She risked a glance off the road—purely against protocol—and in the face of that cute, scrunchy, freckled affection, he tried not to let his anxiety show.

“You think he’ll be okay?” He didn’t even want to ask her again. He didn’t want to think about what life would be like back home if Deacon hadn’t been able to pull himself through, hadn’t been able to keep himself grounded for the last four months. The man had lived his entire life as a paragon of virtue—until Crick left him and his world fell apart.

Lisa shook her head and frowned absently at something hazy that was ripping through the glare in front of them. “Oh, now baby—you read me the letters. Please, don’t—”

The sentence never got finished. The transport in front of them exploded, became shrapnel, and ripped through their bus like a thousand serrated throwing stars, glowing red with the blast.

Crick tried for the rest of his life to forget Lisa disintegrating, shattering in front of him, while he was thrown around like a ragdoll in a drier—a ragdoll made of flesh and a drier made of knives.

Right before his head smacked earth, protected by that damned helmet, he had a moment of perfect clarity.

Oh, goddammit, Deacon—I should have given you more time.

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Crick