What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(38)

“Mommy?”

Kellen realized she had locked eyes with the goddess, and was hypnotized by that wild angry stare. Not good. Not now. She pulled the jar of peanut butter out of the duffel bag, opened it and stuck her finger in. She took a scoop, put it in her mouth, and passed the jar to Rae.

Rae giggled. “Mommy! We’re not supposed to use our fingers!”

“In a minute, I’ll cut up an apple and find the protein bars.” Which were crumbs by now, but why worry about that technicality? “Right now, let’s get some good stuff into us.”

Rae giggled again and dipped into the peanut butter.

That giggle. Maybe the forest muffled the sound. Probably it carried for miles. “You know what would be a good idea? If we had some kind of alarm that would warn us if the bad guys were coming.”

“I like sirens! Can we have a siren?”

“Did you bring one?”

“No, but I’m not the mommy!”

The kid had a point. The mommy should have come better prepared, and when the mommy got back to civilization, the mommy was going to personally undertake a trip to Washington, DC, to place her boot up Nils Brooks’s uncaring ass. “Since we don’t have a siren, I can only think of one thing that would surprise these guys and make them yell. What if we built a giant spider web and strung it on the bushes around our nest?”

Rae licked her fingers one by one, thoroughly removing the peanut butter. “How?” She looked around. “Are there giant spiders?”

“Better than that.” Kellen slowly drew Rae’s blankie out of the bag. “We have lots of yarn here. If we take this apart—”

Rae lunged and grabbed. “No!”

Kellen released the blankie. “Your grandma can put it back together for you afterward.”

Rae hugged it to her chest. “No!”

“Your blankie wants to keep us safe. It has magic love woven into it to keep us safe.”

“That is bullshit!” The kid was too smart.

“Rae. You don’t say that.” My God. Kellen sounded like...like a parent. Like her aunt. Like my own mother.

Rae stuck out her jaw and looked like that photo of sulky little Cecilia that always made her mother laugh. The memory caused such an uprush of emotion that, before she realized it, Kellen had tears on her cheeks.

“Mommy?” Rae sounded truly horrified. “I’m sorry. I won’t say it again.”

“It’s okay, sweetie. I’m just tired.” And scared to death. Not for herself, but for Rae. Kellen had never had a mission like this. Not in the stony depths of Afghanistan, not in the sandy deserts of Kuwait, not in the terrorist attack in Germany. She was home, in the US. Everything was supposed to be safe and easy. She wasn’t supposed to be staring at a seven-year-old and feeling...feeling...things.

She didn’t want to feel things. She didn’t want to remember... Afghanistan, a twist of metal, the smell of burned flesh. She didn’t want to know that if she failed, death would follow. Death...

“Mommy?”

“It’s okay.” Kellen wiped at her eyes. “Let’s call it bull pucky from now on. About your blankie. Honey, we have to use it for protection. If I could figure out anything else to do, I swear I would. Your grandma can put your blankie back together. Please? Let’s do this.”

In slow motion, Rae offered the blanket to Kellen. “You.”

“What?” Kellen was so confused.

“When we get home, you make it again.”

And now horrified. “You want me to take the yarn and knit you a blanket?”

“Crochet.”

“What? Crochet? I don’t know how to crochet. Your grandma—”

Rae crossed her arms over her chest. “Grandma says any idiot can learn to crochet.”

Remembering the events of the day, Kellen muttered, “I have the qualifications then.” Louder, she said, “If I promise to crochet the yarn into a blankie again, you’ll let me use it as a trap?”

“A cobweb! Promise!”

“Oh, pucky. I promise.” Kellen began to unravel the stained yellow blankie. What had she got herself into now?

Rae doubled over with belated laughter. “Mommy, you said pucky!”

Kellen looked at her daughter sideways. “If you don’t tell Grandma I said that, I won’t tell Grandma you said bullshit.”

“Deal.”

Kellen wound the yarn around branches that hung over their rocky refuge and down around the perimeter, sure that if someone stumbled on their hiding place, the yarn would indeed act as a spider web and trap them long enough to give Kellen time to wake and defend them. When she got down to the last six-inch square of crocheted yarn, she tied off the thread, clipped it and handed the square to Rae. “Here. This is the heart of your blankie. It will keep you safe.”

Rae snatched it and cuddled it to her cheek. “Oh, blankie, I love you,” she whispered.

Kellen felt like a scumbag. When she was a soldier, she thought she was doing the hard job. No one ever told her being a mother was a wiggling wormy bag of guilt, worry and difficult decisions.

Well, except Max. He’d made it clear enough, and now Kellen knew—he hadn’t exaggerated. If anything, he had toned it down. “Do you remember all the stuff we talked about today? About defending yourself with sticks and rocks?”