Chapter 16 #3
We’d texted them a photo right after we had them done, but it wasn’t the same as having us all together.
“Gorgeous,” he says. Then he runs a finger down the numbers, each one passing beneath his fingertip. “They did a good job. I like where it is.”
I swallow when his finger hits the last number, and he pulls it back, leaving a trace of heat down my tattoo.
After pulling the sweater back in place, I lean my head against the seat and stare out the windshield, reminding myself that it won’t do any good to try and go back there in my mind when we’ll be pulling in tomorrow.
He rolls his own sleeve up past his bicep and twists it toward me, grinning, to show off his matching set.
The coordinates on his arm are now surrounded by other tattoos, all the way down to his wrist. The biggest is a bone frog, representing team members lost to missions, and beneath that, Cory’s name inside a cross.
I remember when Hollis called me crying after what happened.
I thought I might throw up when I first picked up the phone and heard her sobbing like that, thinking the unimaginable had happened to him.
But it was Rhett’s best friend who hadn’t made it home, while Rhett was still fighting for his life in a hospital somewhere.
The whole thing had hit too close to home.
Seeing Cory’s name on his arm makes my stomach turn when it could have so easily been him. I want to run my own finger across each one of the letters, but he drops the sleeve down before I can.
“You miss it?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the road. “The lake?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I tell him. “It’s been too long.”
He glances at me, smiling. “Was the last time the summer after graduation when you and Holl were there without us?”
I’ve been back once after that, but it only cemented what I already knew. And I don’t feel like I need to tell him about that.
Instead of answering, I turn the question back on him. “Have you?”
“Not once.” He side-eyes me, accepting my non-answer by turning the next song up. It’s “Paradise City”, which he will no doubt be changing to Bailey City.
Then he dips his left hand out the window and begins waving it up and down in the wind, thumping the outside of the car door to the beat of the song.
I close my eyes, still shaken from seeing that cross with Cory’s name, but he has no idea what the sight of that just did to me. He’s so relaxed right now that he may as well be road-tripping on a real vacation. I wish I could tell what he’s thinking.
“You seem wildly chill, considering we’re driving seven hours to escape some deranged stalker,” I call out over the music, wondering how I can adopt a piece of that laid-back attitude he’s captured, especially considering we only left my apartment behind a few hours ago.
“I’m used to it,” he says.
“You’re used to coming home to a break-in?” I ask.
He gives me a look.
“No. But in my line of work, when everyone around you still has air in their lungs, it’s a good day.”
Oh. I stay quiet, feeling the one extra year of wisdom he has on me grow just a tiny bit.
“Listen, I’m not saying that what happened to your apartment isn’t total shit.
It is. And that guy is going to get his day in court because of it, if he’s lucky enough to make it there after I get my hands on him.
” I swallow back the visual that springs up, instantly praying the police find this guy before Rhett does.
“But when you’ve lived your entire adult life trading one high-stress situation for the next, days like this become the norm.
You learn how to relax between them real quick because that in itself becomes survival. ”
I study his profile across the console.
“Still doesn’t put me in the mood to sing,” I tell him.
He taps my knee again. “Singing relaxes me. Just don’t mistake these killer drum solos here for me taking a break.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I’m constantly watching what’s happening around us,” he says, checking the mirrors again.
“For what?”
“Well, for example, back at the last small town, we had three cars fall in line around our car, two behind and two in front. The two in front both turned right on Lennon Avenue, and the red Chevy Cavalier had the back left taillight burned out. The white Corolla’s bumper was rusted in the center.
Both male drivers, middle-aged, balding.
But not our guy.” He recites both license plates as easily as his phone number.
I nod, thinking he’s done, but then he goes on.
“The red truck behind us had a driver hang back a couple of car lengths, so I couldn’t see their face, which doesn’t mean anything sinister per se, but I’ve made a mental note of it.
Black ballcap. No license plate in the front.
Ever since that driver turned off a few miles back at the gas station, I haven’t seen any other cars out here.
And that’s just within the last twenty minutes. ”
I look in the rearview. I hadn’t noticed any of that.
“How do you do that?” I ask, frowning.
“Notice cars?”
“No, sit here singing your lungs out while memorizing license plates and car models with driver details.”
“Observation is the name of the game. No reason for me to be here without doing it.”
“Except for the killer snacks,” I say, holding up the two bags of Doritos and a half-eaten pouch of peach gummy rings we picked up at the last gas station. “And because your ability to murder song lyrics is uncanny.”
“Obviously, that, too,” he says, adding a wink to his grin.
I toss it all back down at my feet.
“Sounds exhausting,” I tell him, trying to imagine managing that much surveillance while acting completely unbothered.
Most people run from danger, while Rhett had run directly at it. He made this type of thing his life’s work. Protecting people and things worth protecting. And at such a young age.
After Rhett was shot, the story of that mission had been leaked all over the news.
Grainy videos of the six-year-old boy being reunited with his tearful parents across a dark tarmac, brought home by a secret SEAL team mission.
But it wasn’t until Hollis had called me that I knew it was his team, and that his buddy had been killed right beside him in the raid to bring the boy home.
It was everyone’s worst nightmare, except he’d managed to survive it.
Rhett reaches across the dash to turn the volume up, just as the next song begins to build. Giving me the sense that he doesn’t want to talk about his training or what he’s doing to keep us safe out here anymore.
Within the first few notes, I recognize the song. It’s John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
His grin grows so wide that it weakens all my reserve, and I already know what’s coming.
A classic. It could have been our theme song from our summers in Cedar Shores.
“Lord, how do you remember all these?” I ask, laughing.
“You better join in this time. Don’t make me pull over . . .” He narrows his eyes with a dangerous glint tucked in each one. “And I will pull over, Bailey.”
It makes me laugh, and I figure, what the hell? If Rhett can sing like this, after everything he’s been through, then so can I.
“You couldn’t stop me even if you wanted,” I tell him. We all used to sing this one as kids growing into teens, so I know every right and wrong word of it.
Rhett starts, changing the lyrics from “West Virginia” to the state we’re currently driving west in.
I roll my window down, too, and throw my arm out to the side, just like him. Filling my lungs before joining in.
This was our go-to song for starlight bonfires or evenings out on the docks while our parents played card games and drank gin martinis on the patio behind us.
I grin at him while he taps my bare knee to the beat with just one finger, and we belt out this next part together. Changing “country roads” to Bailey Jones and “West Virginia” for West New York as we speed down the road toward a place I never thought we’d see together again.