To the Brink (42 page)

Darcy let out a breath that was heavy with relief.

"Thank you again," Morgan said. "We'll let you know if we need anything else from you, but for now, your depositions should be more than enough to seal this up good and tight. The fact is, and don't take this wrong, but the issue of your abduction and the attempted murder will most likely never become a part of the state's case."

"Small potatoes compared to treason," Darcy said with a smile. "I understand. And believe me, I'm fine with never seeing that man's face up close and personal again."

"Freedom," she said, taking a deep breath of the summer air when they stepped outside. "No more ducking and running."

"Yeah. It feels good," Ethan agreed, standing on the steps beside her.

She tipped her head back, drew in another breath, free of the pinched, life-threatening tension she'd felt for the past two weeks.

"Thank you," she said, turning to this man who had risked his life for her. It said so much about him. And yet here they stood. Quiet suddenly.

"So," he said after a long moment, "where do you go from here?"

An unreasonable disappointment swamped her. He hadn't asked,
Where do
we
go from here?
He wanted to know where
she
went from here.

And it reminded her that nothing had really changed between them.

"Home," she said, and meant it with everything in her. "I want to go home."

Chapter 28

CINCINNATI, OHIO

ONE WEEK LATER

Darcy sat on the front porch of the
old house she'd called home for the first eighteen years of her life. She leaned back against a porch post, feeling lazy and a little lost, and watched the sporadic late afternoon traffic shuttle by on the quiet street.

It was almost twilight and she was pleasantly saturated with the scents and sounds drifting comfortably around her. Cut grass and motor oil. The roses her grandmother had planted still climbed the trellis in the tiny flower garden beside the front steps.

Her dad had painted the porch swing just before she'd come home. Darcy could smell that, too. Along with her mom's hair spray and the lingering scent of the diner on her uniform.

A porch board creaked when Darcy's mom shifted a hip so she could face her. "So, how long before that wanderlust of yours takes hold again and we have to give you up?"

It had been a little over a week since Darcy had flown home. When she'd shown up at her parents' door, there had been a lot of crying and laughing and hugging. Her sister flew in from Chicago for a few days, too—and the crying had started all over again. It had been wonderful. And exactly what Darcy had needed.

Darcy looked into her mother's beautiful green eyes, framed now by fine lines of fatigue and time.

"I'm not so sure wanderlust is the issue that it once was for me, Mom."

Her mother was wise. Wise enough not to dig or pry into what had happened to change Darcy's mind. And when a cab pulled up and they could both very clearly see the tall, ruggedly handsome man climb out of the backseat, Darcy's mother was also wise enough to make herself scarce.

Ethan.

More than surprise made Darcy's pulse jump.

Her mother stood, then squeezed her shoulder. "I'll just go see what your father's up to in the backyard."

If Darcy were as wise as her mother, she'd follow her into the house, then right on out the back door.

But Darcy wasn't wise. And she didn't follow. She just sat there. And watched with an unreasonable hope expanding in her chest as Ethan walked up the cracked sidewalk toward her.

He was wearing a pair of snug, worn jeans, the kind that came off the stacks in department stores but looked like designer originals on him. His arms were strong and tan below the short sleeves of a shirt the color of his eyes.

Blue eyes. Amazing eyes that never left her face as he stopped on the walk in front of her.

"Hi," he said in that low and lush voice that always prompted the beginning of a meltdown.

Up close, he looked tired. No. Make that weary. A world-worn weary that made her want to reach out to him.

She folded her hands on her lap and resisted the urge. "Hi."

"You look good," he said, and finally looked away, his attention landing on the porch roof, then wandering to the windows, the little flower garden, none of which he'd ever seen.

"Nice place. Homey," he added of the regal old house that had been built by her grandfather and cared for over the years with much love.

"Yeah," she agreed. "It's a great place."

Then she willed herself to ... to what? Breathe, for one thing.

She didn't know what to do. What to say. She wasn't even sure what she was feeling.

Or maybe she just didn't trust what she was feeling. She loved this man. Would always love this man. But she couldn't recommit her life to someone who, in the final windup, was incapable of sharing what mattered most. His life. Both the good and the bad.

Okay. No one had said anything about recommitting. And yet... he was here.

"You doing okay?" she finally asked, because he seemed so
uncertain
standing there and because
uncertain
was a word she had never associated with Ethan Garrett.

"Yeah. I'm good. Fine. Urn..." He lifted a hand. "Can I sit?"

"Oh, sure. Of course. I'm sorry." She scooted over to make room, annoyed with herself for making him stand there so long. "How's your leg?"

"Good. It's good."

He propped his feet on a lower step and his elbows on his knees. Then he stared at the hands he clasped between them. "I hope it's okay. That I came, I mean. Without calling."

She studied the slash of his dark brow, the firm line of his jaw, the slight hollow of his cheek that defined his intensely handsome features, and felt an ache of loss so sharp and deep it made her dizzy.

"Why are you here, Ethan?" He hadn't come all the way to Ohio just to sit on her parents' front porch. And she couldn't stand this strained politeness a moment longer.

Behind her, she heard the back door open, then close.

He glanced over his shoulder, then back at her. "Maybe we should walk."

When he stood, she hesitated for a long moment, mesmerized by the hand he held out to her—the strength of it, the scars, the short, neat nails and healthy veins running beneath tanned skin.

Finally, she took it. With an ache in her heart. And that damn unreasonable hope still clogging her throat.

Ethan had taken Nolan's advice. When he returned to West Palm a week ago, he'd spent that week aboard the
EDEN,
the boat the old man had bought and restored when Ethan had still been a kid.

"There's something about being aboard her," Nolan had said, working to convince Ethan. "I don't know what it is. Just you, the water, the boat. Helps you think. Maybe it's more that it
lets
you think."

Nolan ought to know. Last year, he'd lived on the fifty-six-footer for almost three months after he'd separated from the Rangers. He'd needed time to get his head back together and out of the scotch. Of course, Jillian was, in part, responsible for helping Nolan make that transition.

But the
EDEN—
well, as it turned out, she'd been responsible for Ethan getting his head on straight, too.

"It's very possible that I'm going to blow this big-time," he said as they walked toward the end of the block in the quiet, older neighborhood.

"Just say what's on your mind."

"Right," he said, regrouping and decided to just blurt it out. "The thing is, you were right."

Beside him, her hands tucked in the back pockets of her jean shorts, Darcy walked with her head down. She didn't break stride or look up from what appeared to be rapt fascination with the cracks in the sidewalks. "What was I right about?"

"About me blaming you. For Tel Aviv."

Her steps faltered, then stopped altogether. She tipped her face up to his. God, he loved that face. And those eyes that could dance with intelligence or fire or laughter. There was no laughter now. Now there were questions. And, thank you God, there was hope.

He started walking again, his eyes fixed dead ahead of them. He could smell hickory from backyard grills being fired up for dinner. A kid—maybe ten, maybe twelve—sailed by on the opposite side of the street, working his skateboard for all he was worth.

"I blamed you and didn't even know that's what I was doing until you pointed it out to me in D.C." He pushed out a sound of self-disgust. "And even then, I told myself you were way off base."

She had questions. He knew she had questions, but she let him tell this his own way.

"It took last week to figure out that you were right. That I
did
blame you. And as for the reason why ... well, it's pretty screwed up."

"The God's honest truth," he hurried on even though his explanation made him sound like a head case, "is that it was just easier that way.
Much
easier to blame you than to accept it was
my
fault because... well, hell, if I took the blame, then I'd have had to actually
deal
with it, wouldn't I? And if I'd had to deal with one death, then I'd have to deal with ... all the others."

The others. God, there had been so many others.

Beside him, she was silent. But she was listening. If her heart was beating as hard as his, they were both in trouble.

"Look," he continued, still groping for the right way to get this out. "The reason I badgered you to go back to the states was just like I said. I wanted you safe. But what I didn't say was that even more, I wanted you someplace where who I was ... what I did, would never touch you."

"You were a soldier, Ethan. What you did was your job."

"Yeah. My job. 'Join the Army. See the world. Kill the bad guys.' It... it all sounded so noble, you know?"

"It
is
noble," she said softly.

"Yeah. Yeah ... it's noble as hell. Until you live it. And then it's just... real."

Her hand touched his arm, soft, caring. "Ethan—"

He shook his head. Stopped her. Now that he'd started talking, he didn't seem to be able to stop. "I'd killed so much. I'd never realized how... I don't know... how dead it had made me inside. But it's how all of us guys dealt with it, you know? I mean, how else could you live with something like that? You couldn't think about it. It would drive you crazy. So you pushed it away. You buried it deep. And you pretended it wasn't a part of who you really were while you prepared to kill again."

He swallowed hard. Thinking about this and sorting it out by himself had been one thing. Saying the words aloud to the one person he needed to understand was another. And remembering ... actually forcing himself to remember felt like a bloodletting.

"It was my job," he said, ashamed when his voice broke, ashamed of the need to defend what he'd done. "Killing the bad guys."

He drew an unsteady breath. "And then you came along. And for the first time in longer than I could remember, you reminded me what it was like to be a man. Just a man. Not a killer.

"And that's what I was, Darcy. Whether I was doing it in the name of patriotism or democracy or God, I was still a killer."

A killer. A killer. A killer.