Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(130)



It was hard to swallow. She was so low, she barely bothered to scold herself for the envious, unworthy thoughts.

Screw it. Who had the energy? She hadn’t wanted to come to this soirée. She would have preferred to stay alone in Sandy, in Aaro’s forest. Huddled in the extension to Aaro and Nina’s house that they kept for guests. Taking long, solitary walks in the forest.

But Nina and Aaro had nixed that idea. They were afraid to leave her alone in her current fragile state, though the danger was past.

She’d missed all the initial drama in her drugged haze at the Intensive Care Unit. They had been quarantined, not that it had mattered at the time that the doctors and nurses attending her had been helmeted and swathed. Who cared, when you felt that bad.

When she finally came out of the fog, she started asking for Miles. Nina, bless her soul, had been there for her, spelled from time to time by the other McCloud woman she’d met at the safe house, Edie. Even Tam had made a few appearances, though she was uncomfortable with sickbed duties, like providing ice chips or helping Lara to the bathroom.

Lara appreciated their efforts, but she wanted Miles.

Nina had been the one to explain the situation. It was just as Miles had warned her. They had locked him up. For weeks.

It wasn’t so much the issue of the crimes for which Greaves had framed him. Miles had hidden his smartphone in the lining of his coat, leaving it in recording mode, so that everything that had been said near the souped-up microphone from the moment he walked up to Greaves’ house had been recorded. Greaves’ assistants, Silva and Levine, had confessed that the evidence at the cabin had been planted, that Barlow’s murder was Anabel’s doing, and corroborated Miles’ claim that the three men buried on his property had been killed in self-defense. The process of exonerating him had been slow, but inevitable.

It was the recording itself, the profound weirdness of it, that had raised red flags. People from various levels of state and federal law enforcement had decided, for a time, that Miles might be a threat to national security. After that, it had been impossible for anyone to contact him. And he had refused to let her head-text. Those walls stayed bricked up. It hurt so badly, his silent, flat refusal.

But not as much as it had hurt when they finally let him go.

He hadn’t come to her. Three weeks and still nothing. She was trying to face that stark fact, to process it. The second they let him go, he’d vanished. To his friends’ bafflement and dismay.

At first they had made excuses for him, assuring her that he’d be back. Those assurances had eventually petered out into embarrassed silence. He’d appeared out of nowhere, saved her life, made her fall into mad and frenzied love with him, and then hauled ass, no explanation. He hadn’t contacted her once. Not even to dump her formally, if that was what was happening. She just had to assume, surmise, infer.

He hadn’t even needed Lara’s testimony, in the end. The cops had interviewed her, of course, but they clearly considered her a head case after all her travails, and were talking to her just as a formality. So her fervent testimony on behalf of Miles’ heroism was irrelevant. He wasn’t thanking her for it. He wasn’t speaking to her at all.

Oh, God, whatever. She was alive and free, thanks to him. And grateful for both things. Sort of. When she forced herself to be.

She hadn’t been able to think about practical matters yet, like supporting herself. They’d all assured her that she didn’t need to worry about it. Nina and her friends had filed a lawsuit on her behalf against Greaves’ vast estate for damages, and the chances were good that they’d award her a huge chunk of money, once the legal machinery had ground through it all. Not that money could compensate her for months of soul-killing darkness, or being turned into a human oracle, or losing Mother and Dad. It was kind of hard to give a shit, actually.

Whatever. A pile of money. Fine. One less thing to worry about.

She had to stop sitting around and holding her breath, waiting, hoping. She had to start living her life again. Maybe she could run away, travel the world. Wander through Prague, trek in Nepal, sleep on a beach in Bali. Anything to distract her from that bricked up wall in her head. That stupid conditioned reflex she had, to continually reach for his mind for comfort, like Pavlov’s dog. She couldn’t stop throwing herself at that wall, though she was bloodied and bruised from her efforts. She needed neural reprogramming. Urgently.

The door slid open, and Liv stepped out, gorgeous and vivid in a red cashmere wrap. “Hey,” she said gently. “It’s so cold out here.”

Lara hung on to her patience. “I’m all right. Really.”

The women flanked her, and insistently escorted her back inside, into warmth, music, sounds of kids playing. Rich, appetizing cooking smells. Too much normalcy. She hardened her belly to iron, breathed through her nose, and smiled, enduring it.

They led her back to the kitchen. Many of the women were congregated there, watching Becca, another of their friends that she’d met that day, decorate a fancy chocolate cake. Becca smiled at her.

“Taste?” she offered, dipping a spoon into a chocolate glaze.

There was a commotion at the door as Lara shook her head. Someone on the porch was knocking. Margot peered through the door.

“Oh, boy. Liv, run and get Erin,” she said. “Her sister’s here.”

Everyone got ominously quiet as Liv scurried into the other room.

Shannon McKenna's Books