A Soldier in Conard County by Rachel Lee

Author:Rachel Lee [Lee, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-16T14:16:04+00:00

Chapter Five

Gil strode out of the kitchen, if you could call it striding while he was leaning on a cane. His hip felt as if fiery pokers were digging into it and that at any moment it might just suddenly give way.

He was glad that Miri didn’t follow him, though. He was venturing too near to some things. Flashbacks to those awful hours when Al had been hit, when they’d gathered him up and raced over rugged, defiant terrain to reach the landing zone and the helicopter that might save his life. Six men, using everything training and God had given them to keep up a punishing pace.

But they’d been too late.

Until the day he died, Gil was never, ever going to forget Al’s screams, his demands and pleas that they just kill him, his prayers that God would take him now. Al had never reached the painless place of shock. He’d never lost consciousness. He’d suffered every damn second.

Until the very end, when he was gone before the chopper set down. Morphine? Maybe. They’d done the best first aid they could, but his wounds were severe, severe enough to have killed him. Maybe the horror was that he’d hung on so long. But then, Gil hadn’t seen a whole lot of clean kills in combat. Nope.

He could still hear the sounds, smell the odors, feel the effort, the fear, the bullets blowing out the muzzle of his rifle. He was there again, but without losing his place in time and space. He could still see Miri’s living room around him, could hear her stirring in the kitchen. The sound of the wind blowing crystals of snow against the glass reached him. Not a flashback, but a powerful memory.

The memories he could handle. They were never far away. But slipping his cogs and falling into the past? No thanks. Wherever his future might lead him, flashbacks would only complicate everything. Especially if there weren’t obvious triggers he could avoid.

He walked over to the wide window that overlooked the street and saw no mercy in the blowing blizzard. Hard to believe that just yesterday afternoon he’d been sitting in the Bakers’ ranch yard enjoying the warm sun and a barbecue. Meeting a number of people with backgrounds like his. A welcoming group on a beautiful day.

Now he was looking at winter reclaiming the world, as if it realized it should never have let go. Yesterday had been out of sync, and probably all the sweeter for that.

Out of sync. He rolled the words around in his head, because if there was one thing he’d figured out a long time ago, it was that he was out of sync with the world he was supposed to return to eventually. But now, after being wounded, he felt more out of step than he ever had.

Ah, hell, no point thinking about it. He wasn’t a brooder by nature, although since getting out of the hospital and basic rehab, he’d been inclining that way.

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