6. Perimeter Check #2
The dream hits vividly. High-definition.
She isn’t sleeping in the guest room. She’s here. Straddling me. The weight of her sits heavy and real on my hips. Her hair creates a curtain around us, shutting out the storm, shutting out the mission.
She doesn’t look scared. She looks hungry.
Her hands, those capable, surgeon’s hands, track the scars on my chest, mapping the damage. She leans down. Her mouth brushes my ear. She whispers my name, but it lands like a command.
Boyd.
I reach for her. I grip her hips, burying my fingers in her flesh. She’s wet. Heat radiates from her, searing through the denim, searing through me. I surge up to meet her. No hesitation. No protocol. Just the friction of skin on skin, the slide of possession.
I take her. I drive into her with a violence that should terrify her, but she meets it. She matches it. She rides the edge of the storm with me, her nails digging into my shoulders, her breath hitching in a rhythm matching my pulse.
Mine.
The word echoes in the dream, endless and absolute.
Mine.
I snap awake.
My eyes fly open, staring at the ceiling. The room is gray. Morning light filters through the storm shutters, cold and indifferent.
My pulse slams against my ribs. A hard, jarring knock, nothing like rest.
I tighten my grip on the gun before I even register the threat.
But there’s no threat. The house remains silent. The wind died down to a low moan.
The only enemy is my own body.
I’m hard. Painfully, undeniably hard.
My erection strains against the zipper of my tactical pants, adamant and refusing to stand down. The dream didn’t release the pressure; it concentrated it. The image of her face, the phantom feel of her heat, it’s all still there, layered over the waking world like a hallucination.
I groan, a rough sound scraping my throat.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to banish the image. Trying to force the blood to go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
It doesn’t work.
The ache creates a physical demand. A throbbing reminder of failure. I failed to lock it down. I failed to keep the distance.
I throw the blanket off.
I sit up on the edge of the couch.
I drop my head in my hands, digging the heels of my palms into my sockets until stars explode in my vision, and I breathe.
In. Out.
The air in the den tastes stale. Recycled. It tastes of confinement.
I need to hit something.
I need to destroy something.
I look at the gear bag. The handle of the Winkler Tomahawk sticks out, black micarta against the gray nylon.
Pure motion.
I grab my boots. I shove my feet into them, lacing them with jerky, aggressive movements. I pull the laces until they bite into the instep, welcoming the pinch of pain.
I stand and adjust the fit of my pants, ignoring the friction, ignoring the stiffness, refusing to subside.
I grab the axe. The weight of the head feels comforting. Balanced. Lethal.
I unlock the side door. The heavy deadbolt slides back, and I step out into the white again.
This time, I don’t walk.
I wade through the snow to the woodpile. It’s a stack of seasoned pine and birch, buried under a foot of fresh powder. I clear a space and set a log on the chopping block.
I swing.
Crack.
The wood splits clean. The sound rings sharp, satisfying. A violent release of energy.
I set another one.
Swing.
Crack.
I fall into the rhythm. Lift. Swing. Impact. Reset.
It’s meditation in motion. The burn starts in my shoulders, spreading down my back, firing the muscles coiled tight since the hospital garage.
I focus on the mechanics of the motion: the rotation of the torso, the snap of the wrists.
I focus on the cold air biting my lungs, scouring out the scent of her that seems to permeate the house.
Swing. Crack.
She’s a witness. A liability. A job.
Swing. Crack.
She’s smart. She treated her own wound without flinching.
Swing. Crack.
She looked at me last night in the kitchen like she wanted to crawl inside my skin. And God help me, I wanted to let her.
I swing harder, the axe biting deep into a knotty piece of pine. It doesn’t split. It sticks. I wrench it free, the wood groaning.
I’m sweating now, despite the freezing air. I strip off my thermal shirt and toss it onto the porch railing. Steam rises from my skin, a visible aura of heat against the gray morning.
I set the log again.
And then the weight of a gaze lands on my back.
Not instinct. Not metaphor. A biological fact: the skin between my shoulder blades tightens, nerve endings firing in a pattern I learned to trust in sniper hides in the Hindu Kush, in crowded marketplaces in Caracas before the shooting started.
I don’t turn around. Not yet.
I grip the axe handle tighter.
I swing. The log shatters.
I reset.
I know where she is. The master bedroom possesses a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the side yard. She’s there. I can picture her: tangled hair, sleep-softened face, maybe wearing one of the oversized T-shirts I left in the dresser because she didn’t have pajamas.
She’s watching me.
The thought floods my bloodstream like a shot of pure adrenaline. It shouldn’t. It should act as a tactical concern. A breach of protocol.
Instead, it’s carnal.
Let her look.
The beast inside me uncoils, stretching its claws. I want her to see me. I want her to see the violence, the strength, and the scar tissue mapping my life. I want to be acknowledged as the threat I am. Better if she fears me than if she trusts me. Fear keeps her distant. Fear keeps her safe.
I work harder. My exhalations plume white in the cold. My muscles burn, a vicious, clarifying ache that almost drowns out the want.
Almost.
My left shoulder screams. The rotator cuff. It’s an old tear, a souvenir from a door breach gone wrong three years ago. It never healed right. I never gave it time. Now, with every upswing, it grinds.
I ignore it. Pain equals information. It tells me the machine runs hot. It tells me I’m still alive.
I finish the pile. A mound of split wood lies in the snow, enough to heat the house for a week if the grid goes down.
I drive the axe into the chopping block with a final, resonant thud. It buries deep, quivering like a tombstone.
I stand there for a moment, ribs working like bellows, letting the sweat freeze on my skin. Letting the cold numb the ache in my shoulder and the ache in my blood.
I grab my shirt, wiping the sweat from my face, and turn.
She’s there.
Not at the window. At the door.
She stands on the small covered porch, wrapped in a thick, gray wool blanket I keep in the linen closet. Her feet shoved into her boots, unlaced, the tongues flapping loose. Her hair forms a dark, messy halo around her face.
She stares at me. Wide-eyed, dark, unblinking.
She takes it all in: the steam rising from my shoulders, the sweat slicking my skin, the scars mapping the history of my bad decisions. She looks at the jagged line over my ribs. She looks at the burn mark on my forearm.
She doesn’t look away when I catch her.
That’s the thing about Iris Kincaid. She doesn’t flinch. She looks at the blood. She looks at the wound. She looks at the monster and dares it to blink first.
I walk toward her. The snow crunches under my boots, a loud, intrusive sound.
“You’re up early.”
My voice grates rough, unused, and hungry. It scrapes the silence.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Her voice sounds quiet, but it carries in the thin air.
“The wind.”
“It’s just wind. It won’t break the glass. The glass is rated for Category 5 hurricanes and .308 sniper fire.”
“I know.”
She clutches the blanket tighter, pulling it up to her chin.
“It’s the isolation. It’s loud in a different way. The silence is loud.”
I stop at the bottom of the steps, putting us eye-level. I can smell her from here: vanilla soap again, cut with the faint lanolin warmth of the wool blanket. It hits me harder than the cold. I swallow down a sudden, sharp surge of desire.
“It’s safe. Silence is safety. Noise is a threat.”
“Is it?”
She steps forward, coming to the edge of the porch railing. She looks down at me, her gaze clinical now, stripping away the bravado.
“Your shoulder.”
I tighten my hand on the shirt.
“What about it?”
“You’re favoring it. The left one. Every time you lift the axe, you compensate with your latissimus dorsi. The scapular rotation is limited. You hitch at the top of the arc.”
I stare at her. Even half-asleep, wrapped in a blanket, she diagnoses. She takes me apart.
“I’m fine.”
“You have a tear. Rotator cuff. Supraspinatus tendon, most likely. Old injury, probably. But you’re aggravating it with the cold and the repetitive motion.”
“Doctor.” I drop my voice an octave, flashing a warning. “I’m not your patient.”
“No.” Her gaze drops again, tracking the jagged scar over my ribs, a souvenir from a knife fight in Caracas I nearly lost. “You’re evidently indestructible.”
“I break just like everyone else.”
“Do you?”
She looks back up and holds my gaze.
“Because from where I’m standing, you look like a machine. You treat yourself like equipment.”
“Machines don’t bleed.”
“Exactly.”
The air between us tightens, charged enough to spark. She’s not just arguing; she’s pushing. She probes the perimeter defenses, looking for a way in. Looking for the man inside the weapon. The fault line.
I let the silence stretch. Let her feel it. Let her feel the cold radiating off me.
“Go inside. You’ll freeze.”
My voice turns calm. Flat. An order dressed up as concern.
“I’m not cold.”
There it lies. The defiance. The spark.
I step closer. I move up one step. I don’t crowd her space yet, but enough that she has to tip her chin up to keep eye contact. Enough that my shadow swallows hers.
“Inside.”
Something flickers across her face. Cold calculation.
She weighs the order. She weighs the man giving it. Her body answers before her pride catches up, a subtle shift of weight, toes angling toward the door even as her eyes stay locked on mine.
She hates my attention. She hates that I read the compliance in her posture before she even offers it.