Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(132)

There was a nervous silence. “To go where?” Nina asked.

“To go drive up to this place in the mountains that you guys all evidently know about, but didn’t tell me for fear of upsetting poor Lara in her delicate state,” she said. “To plant the toe of my boot in that cat bitch’s swishy little ass if she even tries getting near my man.”

Tam’s chuckle broke the stunned silence. A wad of car keys sailed up. Lara snagged them out of the air, one-handed. “Take mine,” Tam said. “Cat bitch ass-kicking is a cause that I always support. Just let me get the kids’ car seats out before you leave.”

“Lara.” Nina looked worried. “Please, don’t go off on a tear. Just take it easy. You have to take things slow.”

“No,” Lara said. “There’s times to take things slow, and there are times to make a move. He can turn me down if he wants to. I won’t break. I promise. I’ve been through worse. Much worse. I’ll be fine.” She looked around, and repeated it, more forcefully. “Really. Fine.”

“Of course you will,” Nina said, sniffing.

A chorus of reassuring echoes followed that statement.

Lara turned to Nina. “I need to get my bag out of the trunk of your car,” she said. “I need to change.” She turned to Margot. “Could I borrow a needle and thread from you? And some makeup? And a blow dryer and a round brush?”

“I’ll go get my sewing kit.” Margot exchanged discreetly delighted glances with the other women in the room. “Use the bathroom off the master bedroom. All my stuff is there. Help yourself.”

Lara closed herself in the bathroom after Margot had gotten her what she needed, and stared at her reflection. She looked so pale. Fragile. And sick to death of it.

She was done wafting around, looking wounded and ethereal. If the hell she had gone through had been good for anything, it had to have taught her that much.

She shrugged her coat off and got down to it.





The waiting was killing him. Weighing down on him, like a pile of broken rock. It was so hard to breathe.

The wind off the mountain peaks was below freezing, and burning the hell out of his ears. Miles hunched down into the collar of his coat as he paced the site he’d mapped out for the house, trying to lose himself in pondering the best angle for the big picture windows.

He’d forgotten a bunch of basic items when he loaded the camper onto the back of his pick-up to drive up here. A warm winter hat was one of them. Damn, it was cold up here. Inside and out. Body and soul, every day that he waited. It was turn-the-knife torture, knowing that Lara perceived his silence as abandonment, but every time he started to give in to the urge to go to her and drop to his knees and beg for mercy, something stony and implacable stopped him. Whispering, wait.

He couldn’t muddy the waters now. Or he would never know if Greaves’ taunt was true, or if the guy had just been blowing smoke.

The entire extended McCloud Crowd had been up to chastise him, one after the other, after they’d hacked his location. Probably it was the property purchase that had tipped them off. He certainly hadn’t told anyone, not even his parents. As soon as the Special Task Force types had let him walk out of there, he’d contacted a bunch of realtors. Given them his wish list, his price range. Told them he could pay in cash.

They’d leaped to accommodate him.

It hadn’t taken long to find the perfect place. But three days after he’d parked himself and the trailer here, his friends had begun to arrive. An unending procession of lectures about what a shithead he was, how sad and fragile Lara was, how she was losing weight, yada yada. Breaking his balls, breaking his heart. Tam had been the worst. It made her frantic, that he’d finally jettisoned Cindy and found a girl who was worth the effort, and now he was deliberately f*cking it up.

It was impossible to explain. Yeah, he was miserable. Lara was miserable, too. But she was free. Free to make a move herself, if that was what she chose. Free to feel her feelings, whatever they might be. Not a cocktail of drugs, stress, extreme circumstances. Not a result of being locked up inside his mind. No head-texting, shield swallowing, coercion or psi sleight of hand. No dirty tricks, not even plain old guilt or gratefulness, or obligation, God forbid. None of that shit.

Just her own naked truth. One that she had to come to alone.

He looked around at the frost-encrusted mud of the building excavation he’d begun the week before. It was the wrong time of year to start building a house. He wouldn’t pour the concrete for the foundation until spring. Even so, he didn’t want to be anywhere but up here. This place represented all his hopes for the future.

Snowflakes blew sideways in the blustery wind, into his stinging ears. He rubbed them, and caught slight of a flash of headlights.

He peered through the trees. A green VW Beetle. Oh, God. The last person he wanted to see, on the tail end of a very long list. Cindy.

She drove up the long, winding driveway, and parked down in the churned, frozen mud next to his trailer. She was a garish pink spot of color in the drab greens, whites, browns, grays of the landscape as she picked her way up the rugged footpath that he was going to have to extensively landscape. Telekinesis might actually come in handy when it came time to manipulate massive stepstones of granite. Only if no one was looking, though. He tried to be rigorous about not using the psi, but every now and then, he cheated. Like with the Task Force types. He’d resisted the urge to the bitter end, but on week seven of the interrogations, he’d begun to delicately nudge those guys into deciding that he was not just harmless, but literally killing them with boredom.