Shooting Starr

draped loosely around Caitlyn’s. He saw Eve lean close and point, and Caitlyn swing her video camera upward toward a helicopter hovering overhead, just exactly as if she could see it there.

Jake didn’t say anything, but C.J. knew he’d seen them, too. There was a certain quickening, a kind of electricity, an alertness that had nothing to do with the senses. Whatever it was, he recognized it in Jake because it was going on inside himself, too, and he felt a sense of kinship with the man that didn’t have a thing to do with blood. Funny thing was, he didn’t even know Jake Redfield all that well-they’d run into each other at the major family get-togethers, and that was about it. Now, though, he found himself thinking about the man, wondering what made an FBI agent tick, and how it must be to feel about a woman the way he obviously did for his wife, Eve.

And then out of the blue he was thinking about his brothers and their wives-Jimmy Joe and his feisty, redheaded Mirabella, Troy and Charly, with that dry sense of humor and chip-on-the-shoulder attitude of hers. For the first time ever in his life he thought about the people he knew who were head over heels in love with their mates, and knew how lucky they were. And for the first time ever in his life he knew that there was an emptiness inside himself and that it was called loneliness.

What he couldn’t figure out was why he was having those thoughts and feelings while his eyes followed, as if stuck to her by a magnet, the slow and graceful progress of a woman who was, in all the ways that counted, a stranger to him. Yeah, a stranger; she was right about that, after all.

Strange? What else would you call a blind woman with silver eyes, a hijacker of trucks, a rescuer of battered women, and a kidnapper of children-an incredibly beautiful woman who at the moment was hiding herself and her bandaged head in the all-concealing robes of a woman from Afghanistan?

Strange…or crazy, maybe?

Jake, who’d been scanning the thinning crowd with eagle eyes, suddenly seemed to relax. He let out a breath and muttered, “She’s something else, isn’t she?”

C.J. replied fervently, “She sure is.”

He was fairly certain they were talking about two different women, but that didn’t matter. They were most likely both right.

They stayed where they were until the crowd began to thin out and they saw Eve give the wrap-it-up signal to her crew. They watched the two women make their way to the van followed by the other members of the crew, and then the seemingly endless process of getting all the equipment stowed, buttoned down and loaded up. Finally, Eve and Caitlyn climbed into the back of the van and disappeared from view. The rest of the crew sorted themselves out and found seats. Doors slammed. Nobody but the two men watching from behind the crepe myrtle paid any attention whatsoever as the van pulled slowly out of the hospital parking lot and bumped into the street.

Jake looked over at C.J. and let out a breath. “That’s it, then. They’re off. From here on I guess it’s up to you.”

C.J. glanced at him, then squinted off in the direction of the disappearing van. “Yes, sir,” he said.

It was up to him, all right-tell him something he didn’t know. Up to him not only to keep Caitlyn Brown safe, but to somehow put her life back on its rails. Seemed like a lot to expect of a man most people would have thought was still trying to figure out his own direction in life. C.J. was well aware there were some who’d have said it was too much.

They’d have been wrong. C.J. didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.

He didn’t know, either, how to describe the way he felt, watching that van drive off down the road with Caitlyn Brown inside. Bigger, somehow, than he’d felt only a few weeks ago. Definitely older, but also denser…stronger…more like steel than human flesh and bone. Maybe, he thought, thinking of fairy-tales again, it was something like the way one of those knights of old had felt when he strapped on his armor and took up his sword and shield and rode off to find him a dragon to slay.

Caitlyn woke from a light doze as the car’s tires crunched over graveled ground. All motion stopped, and Eve’s touch was a feathery tickle on her arm.

“Caty-honey, we’re here.”

She heard Eve’s door open and felt the caress of a breeze that carried with it the smell of fall and the feel of evening…a coolness, a softness and the rich brown smell of leaves. Eager for more of it, she groped for the handle and opened her own door without waiting for help, and then she could hear the faint spatter of the leaves as they fell all around her, shaken loose by the breeze. In the distance she could hear doors opening and closing, footsteps and voices and the soft woofs of well-mannered dogs.

She swung her legs around, felt with her feet for the ground and stood up, and then had to clutch the door to keep from falling. Her head swam with dizziness-a little from car sickness, perhaps, but mostly just exhaustion. Though she’d managed to sleep a little after they’d exchanged the bumpy van for Eve’s comfortable sedan in Atlanta, it had been hours since they’d left the quiet and safety of that hospital room. Too long for someone recovering from a head injury to be out of bed.

“Hold on, I’m coming…” Footsteps crunched and Eve’s worried voice came closer. “How’re you doing, hon’? You okay?”

“Just a little tired,” Caitlyn muttered, hating her swimming head and hollow stomach. This weakness was new to her; she couldn’t remember ever having had a sick day in her life before. Not like this. “I’ll be okay…”

“It’s been a pretty long day,” Eve consoled, in her bright and cozy way, as she hooked an arm around Caitlyn’s waist. “Don’t try to be brave or sociable, nobody expects you to. You’re probably going to want to go straight to bed. Plenty of time tomorrow to start getting acquainted…learning your way around. Hold on to me, now-”

“My head aches,” Caitlyn said in a small voice. Damn the weakness. Damn the pain. Her ears rang; she drew a shivering breath, on the verge of confessing that she simply didn’t have the strength to take another step. She thought how appallingly humiliating it was going to be to collapse in a heap in front of total strangers.

“Here-what the hell are you doing?” The voice was gruff as the welcoming woofs of the dogs, soft as the patter of breeze-carried leaves.

She shuddered and felt the breeze of movement and the warmth of a solid body, and an arm much bigger and stronger than Eve’s wrapped itself around her waist. Another hooked behind her legs, and she gave a gasp as she felt herself swept up, then cradled against a heaving chest, a thumping heart. A warm, earthy scent filled her senses, strange but somehow familiar…a mixture of soap and Southern cooking and diesel fuel and man, and a hint of an aftershave she’d never learned the name of.

“I got you…”

“Put me down,” she said faintly. “I’m too heavy to carry.”

“Shoot, you don’t weigh as much as a feather,” C.J. scoffed. But his breathing was quick and sharp, and she was certain he lied.

And yet she couldn’t bring herself to struggle, or even argue, not another word. Which ought to have astonished her, alien as it was to her nature to surrender any kind of control without a fight. Except that this didn’t feel like surrender at all. It felt…nice.

Was it shameful to enjoy this so much-the feel of muscular arms around her and the steadfast thumping of a man’s heartbeat against her cheek? If it was, Caitlyn thought with a silent sigh, then so be it. So be it.

She only knew then that she was weak and he was strong, and it felt good to rest her head against his shoulder and let herself be rocked by the rhythm of his long, masculine stride. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch across the gravel…then the hollow thump of booted feet on wooden steps, scuffing and scraping across wood planks, the squeak of an old-fashioned screen door.

Soft voices, kind voices…

“Bring her right on in here this minute, son. Poor little thing…I expect she’s about worn-out.”

“Sammi June’s room’s all ready for her, C.J. It’s the one closest to the bathroom, and she’ll be next to me so I can look in if she needs anything. That’s the second-”

“I know which one it is,” C.J. said with an impatient-sounding grunt. “It was mine before it was Sammi June’s.”

“Are you hungry? I’ve got roast chicken and butter beans and mashed potatoes ’n’ gravy and squash pie out in the kitchen…”