***
“Why are we going to base?” Sunny asked for the third time since he’d told her they needed to throw on their clothes ASAP and meet with the military security police.
Not that he’d answered her the other two times, beyond saying it had to do with the search for Ted and Madison’s bodies. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere else with him, otherwise. She’d been away from home long enough. But the need to find out more about Ted and Madison’s disappearance was too strong for her to bail out now.
Clothes tossed on haphazardly, she thrust her arms into her parka and followed him down the last flight of stairs leading out of his top-floor apartment. Chewie’s paws click, click, clicked double time behind her.
“Wade?” she demanded for the fourth time and counting.
He zipped his parka without missing a step on his way toward the looming front door ahead. “It will all make sense when we get there. I don’t want to give the wrong impression until we have all the facts.”
Dim morning sun filtered through the frosted glass around the door. A second-floor resident in the restored house peered out into the hall, a woman wearing a man’s bathrobe. The door closed quickly as the disheveled lady ducked back inside.
Enough. Breathlessly, Sunny stopped on the bottom step, gasping in air cooler than the apartment, but nowhere near what they would both face outdoors.
And wasn’t that a metaphor for this whole moment? She had one chance, one second, to segue herself from being a part of the amazing connection they’d shared upstairs—and bursting out into the cold harsh reality. She’d experienced a once-in-a-lifetime night with him, and while she’d known it had to end, it was being stolen from her too quickly, too abruptly.
Chewie stopped alongside her by the rows of brass mailboxes for the apartments above, his furry bulk offering unfailing support as always. “Damn it, Wade, do you really expect me to follow you without question?”
He pivoted hard and fast, his face tight. “If you want unconditional honesty and explanations, then that street runs two ways, baby. Feel free to join in.”
His words smacked her with their fierceness—and truth. She was holding back, expecting things from him that she wasn’t willing to give in return. And right here, right now, as she stared at his strong and honorable face she wondered if maybe, just maybe, a decade and a half of silence could be shared.
As the scent of bacon and eggs from a nearby breakfast wafted into the empty hall, she swallowed hard, trying to find the words. She hesitated an instant too long.
Wade nodded shortly, pulling his hood up. “That’s what I thought.” He threw open the door to a covered walkway connected to the stretch of garages. “We need to leave.”
Her feet leaden with regret, she started after him. By the time they finished on base, the money would have been wired from her brother. The gym provided a cover of anonymity for him in transferring funds. She’d hoped to spend the morning losing herself and her fears with Wade in his bed, maybe in his shower. But that wasn’t going to happen.
She braced herself for the first blast of morning air as she stepped outside. Chewie whimpered beside her.
Her gloved hand fell to her dog’s head. “I know, buddy. It’ll be okay.”
Waiting by the garage as Wade rolled up the door and headed in to warm the engine, she looked up at the morning sky to blink away surprising tears. Blues and purples blurred together as the morning fought the night for dominance. The world was waking slowly around her with the echo of engines running, other dogs barking in the distance. The scent of coffee carried from the mom-and-pop diner across the street. A snowplow chugged and she stepped out of the way to avoid the slosh of sludge.
The world was so damn normal. Busier than her kind of normal, but still… Things felt safe here. Nice.
Chewie whined again, tugging on her jacket, pulling toward the house again.
“I know it’s cold. We’ll be in the truck in a minute. See”—she pointed—“here comes Wade now.”
The midnight blue Chevy backed from the garage, stopping, idling. Wade launched out of his side and walked to hers. The quaint, gentlemanly gesture stabbed at her already tender heart. She started toward the vehicle.
Chewie growled lowly, a feral, fierce sound she’d only heard once before when she’d come across a baby bear by a melting pond. Muscles bunched under his thick fur with only a second’s warning that he was about to—
Bolt.
Her dog raced across the icy road in a blur of black-and-white. Straight toward a man across the street, an anonymous blob of parka with a huge hood shading his face as he stood in front of the diner. He looked like countless other people bundled up, but the full facial covering seemed suddenly sinister.
If Chewie attacked—her sweet gentle pet that had never hurt a soul—he might well sign his own death warrant.
“No!” she screamed for her dog, to the man, desperate to stop the horror unfolding inexplicably before her. “Chewie, come!”
A car turned the corner by the diner, fishtailing, sliding straight toward her dog. Without thinking, she shot forward, her boots slipping, but she wasn’t going down. She waved her arms, trying to snag the driver’s attention, warn her dog, do something to stop this nightmare from unfolding.
Two big hands—Wade’s—stopped her short and she toppled backward into the slush, helpless to do anything but watch as he sprinted forward, toward her dog. In front of the car. The world merged into sounds and shapes.
Squealing brakes.