One True Heart (5 page)

The smile slid off his face. “I wish it were that, kid, but I'm here with orders for you.”

“I'm out of the army, remember. Odds are this leg will never heal to normal. At best, I'll limp. At worst, I'll always wear a brace. So, no more assignments. No more orders.”

Hughes didn't offer her any sympathy. “The higher-ups are delaying those discharge papers for a while. There's something Uncle Sam wants you to do here, Captain.”

For a blink she wondered if she might be still dreaming. What could she do for her country in Harmony? With one leg in a cast the only assignment she was ready for would be “speed bump”. The height of her agenda lately seemed to be eating, sleeping, and kissing some guy she couldn't figure out.

Sergeant Hughes pulled up a ladder-back chair that crackled with his weight. He leaned in close. “I can't do much explaining. I think they thought you wouldn't talk to anyone but someone you knew, so they dug around and found me. The government wants you to do what you've been doing for twelve years, Captain. They want you to do it here.”

“That makes no sense. Nothing ever happens in Harmony. There is no threat here.” She considered the possibility that Hughes had cracked up in his old age. “I'm trained to spot the needle in the haystack. The one person out of hundreds who might be a threat to all.”

“This time you won't be looking for someone who is about to cause trouble. This time they want you to look for someone trying to blend in and be invisible. A year ago the feds figured out that a man with ties to funding trouble all over the world just might be from, or hiding out in, the Panhandle of Texas. We've got men in Lubbock, Amarillo, and Plainview, but this guy is leaving little paper trail. He could be anywhere.”

Millanie shook her head. “I can't help.”

“You can, Captain. You'll take this assignment.” He softened slightly. “It's what you're trained for, spotting people who don't belong. Plus you know folks here, or have family who know everyone for a hundred miles around. This guy
may be faking it, but he doesn't think like most people do. He thinks of hurting and killing people as a political statement, not a crime. He lives by a different set of rules and he's been here long enough to think he's safe.”

Millanie's mind began to work. “He'd be hiding out here, not from around here. He'd stick out unless he was very careful.”

Hughes smiled. “Right, and my guess is he'd be rich or close to it. He'd have all the updated computer equipment. Maybe a private plane. Definitely a fast car. Correction, he'll have more than one.”

“If he's smart, he'd be social too. Folks would be quick to point out a loner who moved to town.” She could almost see him. “He'd be involved in the community. Maybe join a church or donate to a cause for charity. He might even date, or marry a local girl. Men who have years to embed go deep, and then when it gets too hot for them, they walk away from everything, including families they've started.”

The sergeant laughed. “That's it, use that brain. Keep your eyes open. Get involved and when you spot him, watch his every move while we investigate him. Men who make up their history always have holes.”

Millanie had no choice but to accept the assignment. “What else do you know about him, Sergeant?”

“Nothing except for a message intercepted from a pilot saying he had to make sure he had enough gas in a plane to make it to the Panhandle. He crashed over near Pampa with enough arms onboard to start a small war. The guy embedded here had been giving the orders, but the pilot was a ghost. No ID and burned too badly to check fingerprints.”

“We'd better add a small airstrip to the list of things about the man we're looking for.” She knew several of the big ranches had strips. Not that they needed them. In most places the land was so flat a plane could land just about anywhere.

Millanie mentally started a list of what she'd need. A car. A secure computer. A contact person she could trust. A weapon.

A half hour later when Hughes stood, she hugged him, knowing that she probably wouldn't see him again until someone found this threat among them. The next and only person she'd discuss her progress with would be her contact. Not even her family could know what she was doing.

“A contact will get in touch with you. He'll have the computer skills you'll need for tracking. I'll have the rest of what you need sent over.”

She watched him walk away, already filing away possibilities of where to start in her brain.

Millanie stared out at the shady street in the heart of town. Sarge didn't know it, but he'd just given her a reason to stop feeling sorry for herself and wake up. She could do this mission. It was what she'd been trained for. If evil lived in this town, she'd find it.

M
ONDAY

Drew Cunningham planned to drop by and check on Millanie McAllen at the bed-and-breakfast, but calamity came in small doses. He taught a class at the little college in Clifton Creek, an hour's drive from his home. One flat tire. Then Drew ate lunch on the drive home. One spilled drink. All afternoon he worked at his computer until he had to stop and fight a gang of wasps who'd decided his cabin would make a good home for them. Three stings. Toss in one bloody knee from trying to avoid stings.

But no matter what happened, the kiss he'd shared with Sleeping Beauty still lingered in his mind. He'd never kissed a woman like that in his life. All out and free. Like it meant something. Like he could learn to care. Most of the women he knew near his age were just friends. A slight kiss on the cheek, that's all. It played in with the image they had of him, he guessed. That old nice-guy thing again. So why had he stepped out of his usual role with a woman he hadn't said more than a few words to?

In his college days he'd always been too busy for more than an occasional one-night stand and, after college, his work as a teacher had consumed him until one day his world shattered. After one school shooting, his normal changed. He needed silence. He needed to be alone so he didn't have to worry that one day someone near him would be bloodied. Would be dead. It was hard to think of developing a relationship when his whole life was broken.

Drew had crawled into reclusiveness and never planned to come out. The world was too deadly a place to roam. He had learned that the hard way. Every night, even in his dreams, he always smelled blood and heard the screams. In daylight he could escape into his work, or he'd run until he was too tired to remember for a while. Slowly, he was able to think of other things and be content to live in his simple, safe life. For a while, until the nightmares returned.

Two years ago he'd finally stepped out and agreed to teach one class at a nearby college. The class was small. The door was always locked to outsiders.

At first teaching had been hard, painful almost, but slowly he relaxed and gained an ounce of the love he once had for it.

Only Monday morning, the lady he'd driven to Harmony Friday night was still there, walking through his thoughts. When he remembered her, he could push the horror back into the shadows, let it lie in the past for a while. She was different than any woman he'd known. Strong, confident one moment, then somehow broken the next. In her eyes, he saw the same fear that he lived with. Maybe what drew him to her was simply that she knew the same secret he did. The only difference was that he'd had years to hide his away so that no one saw it.

The world was not a safe place. But he could pretend, and maybe she'd learn to do the same in time.

When he'd held her, kissed her, he felt so alive. Just thinking about it made him smile. He hadn't been the only one losing control Friday night.

Control was something he never lost, and from the look
in those green eyes, she wasn't used to stepping off the safe path either.

Even today he couldn't seem to concentrate. He stared out his cabin window, watching the wind attempting to blow down the trees while he tried to figure out why he was so attracted to a woman he barely knew. She had no fashion sense and looked wounded in both body and soul. If she was as broken as he was, they couldn't be good for one another.

If he had a type, which he didn't, she would definitely not be it.

Flipping off his computer, he decided to walk.

The lake was down because of the drought, but the house he'd rented was in the woods, not near the water. He passed the cute country café and general store owned by the Morgans. The place looked like it belonged on the cover of a travel magazine and not nestled in the middle of a small lake community.

Luke Morgan had retired from a job with the ATF to take over as the first sheriff of Twisted Creek. All the folks at the lake had formed a town and hired him. Since they'd incorporated and begun improvements, the population had doubled. There was even talk of rebuilding the old lodge that burned years ago, and most of the new cabins looked like they belonged more on a fancy golf course than at a lake.

The cabin Drew rented was old, basically one room with a loft barely wide enough for a bed. He always laughed and said he never lost anything because he could see everything he owned from any spot in his house.

Luke Morgan had been his friend since college. Luke was a grad student during Drew's freshman year, but they'd always gotten along. After college, like most people, they lost touch.

When Drew had been wounded and shattered five years ago, Luke, without calling to ask if he was needed, had flown halfway across the country to stand by his side. The media had been everywhere, wanting to know about the young teacher who'd faced down a killer, wanting Drew to
tell how he felt, what he'd thought when he'd heard gunfire on campus. Why he'd carried a lifeless student out of the building.

Drew had no family to go to. He couldn't think after the hospital released him with a pocket full of painkillers and two healing gunshot wounds.

He couldn't sleep or eat or think.

Luke had loaded him on a plane and they'd flown away from the life he'd known since college. At Twisted Creek Drew had mended, body and soul. Except for once a year when he flew back to Chicago. The same day, the same month. Drew flew back to stand before the graves of the two students he couldn't save. There in the silent graveyard he'd say he was sorry one more time. He should have acted faster. He should have seen the danger. He should have blocked more than two bullets.

Drew had made up the lie about going to visit his mother as he got to know people in Twisted Creek. He wasn't ready to tell anyone but Luke the truth about why he made the flight to Chicago. He just wanted to let his two students know that even if he couldn't talk about them, he'd never forget.

Then he'd catch the last plane back to Texas and his life. He didn't like to think he was hiding out; he was simply resting. Only Drew wasn't sure he'd ever grow stronger.

His half-sister Karaleen, who called herself Kare, had found him a few years ago, but none of the media had. Maybe after five years no one was looking for him. She bought into the fact that her brother was simply a professor working on a book in his free time. She knew nothing of the violence that had driven him to Texas. Now and then, she'd tell him his lifeline didn't match his life, but he explained it away by saying he wrote about exciting people, and their stories must have somehow flowed through his blood and become a part of him.

She might know little about him since they'd connected two years ago, but he hadn't known she existed until she showed up at his office door at the college.

She'd somehow found him, thanks to the Internet. He'd just stared at her when this wild child of twenty-two explained she'd just dropped out of her third college and needed a place to hide out until her parents got over the shock of her grades. Apparently, she'd known about him since birth and thought now was the time for them to meet.

Drew had no memories of his father except what Kare told him. Cunningham had left his first wife and Drew before Drew could walk. Then, years later, Cunningham married again and had one more child, Kare.

Maybe it was the fact that they had different mothers, maybe it was her growing up in California and him in New York, but they were as different as night and day. He loved watching her and wondering what it would have been like growing up knowing he had a little sister. She'd lived in the same farmhouse, fifty miles from any town, with two parents until she'd left and started college
hopping
, as she called it. He'd lived in a different apartment every year with his mother in Queens. Nature was nothing more than a subject in science. He never had a pet or saw grass that wasn't surrounded by concrete as a child.

Walking through the woods, heading back to his cabin, he thought about how hard he'd studied for a scholarship. Back then he'd known exactly what he wanted—out of the life he had. His mother died from a drug overdose the summer before he left for college. That fall he registered, taking two part-time jobs and a full load of classes. Everything he owned was packed in two boxes. He wasn't sure where he was going or what he'd become, but he knew he was never going back.

By his senior year he decided. He wanted to be a great teacher in a school like the ones he'd gone to. He wanted to inspire his students to climb out of the world of poverty, gangs, and crime. Until the shooting, it had been working.

After the shooting, he felt the same as he had when his mother died. He had to get away, and he could never go back to where he was the day before he heard gunfire.

Five years ago he'd stepped away from the life he'd built
and started all over. Like a chameleon, he'd changed everything. When he walked away from Chicago, he left no forwarding address. His one friend, Luke, had helped him build another life. No tough high schools. This time he'd make his living researching and writing. Drew finished his doctorate online and finally became Professor Cunningham for one small class.

Luke Morgan had proved a good friend. When Morgan agreed to help Drew, he kept both his promise and Drew's secret. It seemed natural for Drew to move close, and there was an open cabin at the lake that he could rent. Paying cash for everything. Staying off the grid, he claimed.

Drew moved into a ready-made life, and Luke's friends became his friends. The job at the college was easy and offered him plenty of time to write. Now there was peace, his teaching, the writing he never seemed to finish, and his half-sister. Yet he never forgot where he came from. Every day when he walked the woods, he took in the silent beauty of nature like a rare gift he'd never tire of seeing.

The late-afternoon sun touched the treetops as he circled back to his cabin. He noticed the front door was wide open. An odd hour for a break-in, he thought.

Drew didn't straighten, didn't show any sign of alarm. He simply walked. The last break-in at his place had been a masked raccoon.

When he stepped onto the porch, he saw wet footprints. Small. Human. Drew shoved the door slowly open. “If you're a robber you're dead meat.”

A child squealed with laughter. “What would I steal? Books? They're no good. Most don't even have pictures.”

Drew puffed up as if ready to defend his cabin. “I'll take no prisoners.” He saw a flash swing up into the loft of his cabin on a rope he'd tied to the ceiling for that very purpose. “This is my castle and I'll defend it fully.”

“You don't frighten me,” the intruder shouted. “I got Indian blood, white man. I'll have your liver for lunch.”

Drew grabbed the boy as he swung again from the loft railing to the top of the windowsill a few feet away. Laughing,
tickling, and swearing threats from
Treasure Island
, Drew tossed the boy and let him tumble onto the couch.

Jefferson Morgan bounced up and began to jump on the old couch. “I didn't break in. The door was unlocked, and all I stole was your graham crackers. You should buy Oreos. I like them more.”

Drew walked to the wall that served as his kitchen. “Did you leave me any?”

“Two, but you won't need them. Mom says to come over and eat leftovers. We got meat loaf and lasagna plus a lot of no-name, no-good vegetables.”

Leftovers at Allie Morgan's place were better than anything he could cook. “Come on, Jeff, I'll race you through the trees to your back door. If I win, you have to eat your no-name vegetables.” He almost tripped over his briefcase and jacket as he rushed out ahead of the kid.

They were off toward the café, beating down paths the boy knew by heart. Jeff, despite his hatred of anything green to eat, was getting faster. Drew was breathing hard by the time they hit the back door of an addition built onto the original café and store.

“We tied,” Drew announced. “You have to eat a carrot and some lettuce.”

Jefferson Morgan frowned. “Don't give them names. Vegetables are just leaves and roots and seeds. They don't need names.”

Drew laughed as he followed the boy to the small café.

Luke and Allie joined them for the late lunch they always had on Monday after Drew taught his class. The couple was within ten years of the same age, but there was something about Luke that made him seem older than his years and something about Allie, with her small frame and quick laugh, that would always make her seem more girl than woman. But together they worked. Her teasing him, him adoring her.

Drew sometimes thought that if life were a circus, Luke would be the lion and Allie the lion tamer. Since he'd shown up at their place, he'd always known them as a couple and he had a feeling neither would be whole without the other.
Her grandmother had died the year Allie and Luke's son, Jefferson, was born. They said even after Alzheimer's had taken her mind, she never forgot the boy's name. She'd sit on the porch of the general store and talk to the baby like they had a lifetime of things to say to each other, and he never cried when in her arms.