The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two (27 page)

At 8:30 and having not studied much other than John’s sleeping body, Reagan checks on the horses. When she returns to the cabin, John has risen and is in the bathroom. The bucket flush signals his finish, and he comes out wearing only his boxer briefs again and nothing else... again.

“Hey, boss, what’s for breakfast?” he asks so nonchalantly as if he hadn’t tried to kiss her only three hours ago. He probably doesn’t remember it. His unruly hair is standing on end in places.

She crosses the room, digs in her sack, and tosses him a package of the same pre-made coffee cakes that she’d eaten earlier which he catches one-handed even while carrying the bucket.

“There’s tea on the stove if you want some,” Reagan offers.

John grimaces as if tasting something bad, “No thanks to the tea. Watcha’ reading?”

Reagan holds up the book so he can read the title and gets another grimace. She returns his frown and scolds, “Hey, there are a lot of women living at the farm. We might need this information someday. Of course, Grandpa has some background in gynecology, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Reagan shrugs, “He doesn’t talk much about what he did when he graduated med school. But I know that he has worked in gynecology and obstetrics. He told me so. I just don’t know if it was during a residency or if he interned somewhere or what. He’s delivered babies for some of his local patients, house call kind of thing.”

“Hm, your grandpa’s been around the block in the medical world. He’s really smart. So are you, little Doc,” John quips as he inhales the coffee cakes.

He’s taken a seat right beside her, setting the edge of his bare foot on her chair. Why the hell does he do that? It’s like he is trying to claim his territory. She has news for him, though. Her chair, her territory and she knocks his foot down, getting a smirk in return.

“I’m not as smart as he is, trust me. Grandpa’s written papers that have been published in medical journals on infectious diseases, women’s health and, in the last ten years or so, on natural healing. He has some very unusual ideas on holistic healing. That’s why he disappears so much. He’s working. Sometimes he’s out picking some herb or root in the woods and documenting on them,” Reagan explains proudly.

“He seems to think you’re smart. I mean heck, Reagan, you graduated med school at twenty-two. That’s not exactly something to scoff at. Most of the time I have no idea what you’re even talking about,” he jokes as he polishes off his coffee cake and washes it all down with another can of warm soda. Gross.

“You’re gonna be buzzing on sugar,” she observes to which he grins. “And why don’t you put on some clothing?”

“Don’t you like the view?” he asks as he stretches both arms overhead and yawns.

She’d like to tell him to put on a shirt at least, but the view is actually interesting. She can see every muscle, tendon and sinewy section of his chest, arms and stomach. He would make a good anatomy study.

“No,” she snaps anyways. “Get dressed.”

John chuckles and retrieves his discarded, but neatly-folded pair of dirty jeans in a stack of equally neat clothing on the floor against the wall. His Army jacket is also folded and laying on the floor. He tugs on a pair of socks after the jeans as Reagan rises and walks over to him as this piques her interest.

“What are all those patches on your jacket? Did you have to earn all of them?” she asks. John picks up his jacket and holds it still folded in his hands for her to see.

“Yeah, sewed them on myself,” he tells her.

Reagan is incredulous. “Really? You sewed these on?”

“Yeah, most of us know how to sew so that we don’t have to wait forever to get them back when we send them out to be sewn on.”

“Wow, I can’t sew at all. Sue will have to sew my jacket over there back together,” she hooks a thumb toward her muddy, ripped jacket lying in a discarded heap on the other side of the room.

“You know how to sew sutures. I’d say that’s more important than sewing on a bunch of worthless patches,” he scoffs.

“These aren’t worthless,” she reprimands. “You had to earn them, so they obviously all mean something. Like this one. What’s this for?” Reagan points to the sleeve of his heavy canvas jacket that has patches and emblems all over it.

“Airborne and underneath, see here? Ranger. Me and Kelly are part of the Airborne Rangers,” he explains.

“Cool. So you jumped out of planes, like parachuted?” she asks with genuine interest. She’s scared of heights. The last thing she’d ever do is jump out of a stupid plane. She hated even flying in one. It’s strange now not to look up into the sky on a clear blue day and not see jet streams.

“Yep. Planes, helicopters, whatever they wanted us to jump out of, I guess,” John says with a laugh. “My dress uniform, which I didn’t bring, looked a lot different. It had all the pretty junk on it. Luckily I didn’t have to wear that monkey suit too often. Funerals.” The look on his face has turned glum, which is highly unusual for John.

“What are these?” Reagan points to funny looking feather designs on the collar and effectively changing the topic from becoming too depressing. When she looks up at John, he’s not looking at his jacket but at her.

“Just Sergeant stripes,” he says with a grin.

“Not “just Sergeant stripes.” These are important. That’s your rank, right?”

“Yeah, that
was
my rank. Master Sergeant. That and a buck and I could buy you a soda. It’ll probably be lukewarm, though,” he says with a gentle smile, the smile she’s become so used to.

Reagan chuffs at him through her nose. “Well, I’m a doctor without my degree or license. So at least you have this as evidence of who you’re supposed to be, who you were before this all started.”

“Guess we’re a pair of misfits, huh?” he asks. “I don’t think anyone would argue that you’re a doctor, Reagan. Your grandpa said you’d come home sometimes and work in his practice helping him. I’d say you’re a doctor in just about anyone’s book.”

“What’s this one?” she points with her dirty fingernail. Apparently she hadn’t cleaned up as well as she’d thought from last night’s graceful fall down the hill. Again when she looks up at him, John is only looking at her. Finally, he regards the badge pinned tightly to his jacket.

“Demo expert. Issued by the D.O.D.” he explains patiently. “I volunteered to learn how to disarm and work on all sorts of bombs, incendiary devices, nukes, bio-haz, chemical weapons, whatever.”

Reagan tries not to think of his fingers and the fact that he has picked up one of the curls that has come loose of her ponytail. He twines it around his finger.

“Gee, that sounds fun,” she says with irony. “And what’s this?”

“Come on, boss. I gotta do a perimeter check. We don’t need to go over all of these,” he complains with a patient chuckle. For some reason, he doesn’t want to talk about his patches.

“What’s this?” she presses as she points to a different badge.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

“No, duh. I want to know,” she insists. “Tell me.” John grins down at her the same way that he does when Ari or Justin is annoying him.

“See the lightning bolts and the sword? It just means we’re a part of a psych ops team, and the Secretary of Defense or the President can send us on short notice anywhere in the world to work on... missions,” he sort of explains.

“What sort of mission?” she prods. He frowns and gives her a half roll of his blue eyes. There are still others on the other sleeve she’d like to know about, too.

“Just missions,” he evades, takes the jacket from her and places it back on the floor- after he refolds it.

“Psych, like psychology?” Now she
has
to know.

“Sort of,” he evades again. When he straightens, he plunks his hands on his hips. Reagan just raises her eyebrows, waiting for him to answer her. “Fine. When this was originally just an idea we were supposed to go in and deal with the locals, conduct civil affairs, that sort of thing. It kind of changed as the times changed. It also gives us the authority to interrogate the local hadj.”

“The local what?”

“Muslims, bad-guys, people who wanted to kill Americans on big scale levels. Like the attack on the capital or on New York City thirty years ago? Or the many other times they’ve gotten away with it,” he tells her and reaches for her curls again. She swats at his hand.

“So, you interrogated people. Like how? Water-boarding and stuff?” she inquires. This shit is fascinating. Her dad never spoke of his military work. She doesn’t think as a Colonel that he did this sort of work, though.

“Do you always have to know absolutely everything about... everything?” he asks and she gives him a nod. Why would he find that unusual? Doesn’t everyone want to know everything? John sighs and continues, “Yeah, like water-boarding with heavy emphasis on the “stuff” part.”

Reagan considers this a moment. “Hm. Good.”

“Good?” This time his eyebrows rise.

“Yeah, good. I’m glad you guys were given that authority. Hey, it’s war, not a tea-party,” she pluckily tells him and turns away to retrieve her notebook again.

“You are the strangest woman I know,” John says as he pulls on his boots.

“Maybe you’ve just been hanging out with the wrong kinds of women, genius,” she adds as she opens her book again. She’s reviewing a study on cervical cancer. Absentmindedly she chews her pen’s eraser.

John laughs loudly at her comment and adds, “Yeah, I’m starting to think so, too.”

He takes his rifle from the table, slings it over his shoulder, which is still shirtless, and leaves the cabin. He’s going to get soaked. She hears him chuckle again outside. It makes her smile- to herself only.

Chapter Sixteen

Kelly

They hadn’t returned with Doc until 2:30 in the morning from the Reynolds farm, and Hannah had fallen asleep against his shoulder in the truck. Doc hadn’t commented, but Kelly’s sure he probably wasn’t thrilled about it, either. When they’d arrived at the farm, Kelly had voluntarily carried her to her room, where Grams had tucked her in and Kelly had made a quick departure from that particular space. At 5:30, he’d risen to milk the cows, but Cory and Derek had sent him back to bed and offered to do it themselves. He hadn’t needed to hear the offer more than once. And now as he consults the clock on the wall, Kelly sees that it’s late morning. Time to get moving. Farming waits for no man, or in his case, retired soldier.

When he reaches the kitchen, Grams is washing her hands at the sink and Hannah sits at the island. She’s wearing fresh clothes, and her hair is damp as if she’s just showered. It’s getting the back of her white dress wet. She is uncharacteristically tired, supporting her face on her hand which is propped on the counter.

“You two need to eat up. Everyone else is already done,” Grams advises as she sets two plates in front of them. “Your grandfather’s still in bed. He’s out of practice for these late nights.” She chuckles once and leaves the room without another word.

Hannah reaches for her glass of water. “I’m too tired to eat. I’m not a late-nighter at all. I don’t know how Grandpa used to do this. No wonder he always took a lot of naps,” Hannah says on a wide yawn. She looks so adorable and fresh this morning that Kelly leans over and kisses her forehead, which makes her startle and then smile.

“You sure
smell
good for pulling an all-nighter, well almost an all-nighter,” he teases gently. “You’d better eat your breakfast or your grandmother is gonna come back here.”

“She won’t even know, silly. She’s gone upstairs,” Hannah tells him. How the hell does she know that? He’d thought Grams had gone to the music room. He’s learning, however, not to question Hannah’s canine ears.

“She’ll know,” Kelly corrects her. “She’ll sense a disturbance in the force.” This Star Wars reference makes her giggle. Apparently she knows the famous movie line. Of course, everyone knows that line. It made a big comeback a few years ago, and nearly every theater in the country had run it. He’d caught the first episode while on leave but had never made it for any others since he was sent to Syria shortly after. Justin even has a few of the action figures, Kelly’s noticed. Making Hannah giggle is worth about anything to him. She just illuminates a room with her smile and easy, infectious laugh.

They mostly eat in silence, but from time to time, she brings up topics that he really doesn’t want to discuss with her like having kids. This is definitely one topic that he has no wish to cover with Hannah. It will only lead him to thinking of sex with her, which will lead to him getting his ass thrown off the farm.

Rain hitting the metal porch roof gives him the perfect out. “Seems like that rain’s gonna go on all day. Gonna be hard to get work done,” he interrupts her talk of babies. It is a tad rude, but the alternative was to get sidetracked by the scooped neckline of her dress and the cleavage that he views when she leans on the island.

“Oh, Derek was just in here right before you came upstairs and said that he doubts you’ll be able to get much done like this. If it’s raining this hard all day, then he said you guys can work in the barns,” she offers brightly.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. It’s hard to move around when the weather’s like this,” he tells her.

“Were you ever on a mission or something when it was storming?” she asks so naively.

Kelly just about chokes on his sausage-gravy-laden biscuit. Then he laughs heartily. “You never cease to surprise me, Hannah.”

“What? Are you laughing at me?”

“No, sweetie, I’m not laughing at you. I just forget that you’ve practically lived your whole life on this farm. I’ve been on just about every kind of mission in about any weather condition you can think of.”

“Oh... yeah, duh,” she self-reprobates. Kelly reaches under the extended counter top of the island and squeezes her thigh.

“It’s ok. I like that about you. You’re innocent, and that’s not a bad quality to have, Hannah,” he tells her with absolute honesty. He does like that about Hannah. Unfortunately, he also likes a lot of other things about her, too. She gets a funny little frown on her face and looks away. Obviously she wants to seem worldlier to him, but to Kelly she’s perfect the way she is.