What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(56)

“Did a mortar hit the house?” he asked calmly, as if by being composed he could make things better.

Never never. “That would have been too easy. No. They killed them.” Looking back, Kellen didn’t remember falling to her knees. She only remembered being on the cold barren ground, staring at the pyre where three innocent lives had ended.

A burned-out house. A melted coil of metal. The stench of desperation and death. Why was it always the innocents who paid?

Max slid his fingers between hers, loosened her fists. “Who’s they?”

“I don’t know.” She looked up, racked by guilt. “Maybe the insurgents. But probably their neighbors.”

“Why would they do that?” He didn’t sound as calm now.

“They had reason. The insurgents would burn down a whole village if one person was believed to be an American informant. So when the villagers killed a widow, an eight-year-old girl and a three-year-old girl for consorting with an American, they were protecting themselves and their families.” Sometime in the telling of the story, she had stopped crying. Now the tears came again, fewer, hotter, more painful. She pulled her hands away from his and used toilet paper to keep the tears under control. “Ghazal and her children died because they were desperate enough to consort with...me.”

Max watched her... Oh, he watched her kindly. But he knew now what she was. A fool and a butcher. “You didn’t kill them.”

“No. They would have probably died anyway or been forced into...” She shook her head. “There are so many sides there. There’s no way to tell an enemy from a friend. I don’t know who saw me, who told on me and Ghazal and her children. But when I saw Rae, and she said she was mine—” her own child, and she never knew “—all I could think of was that Slinky, stretched, melted, blackened, and the girls who, for one moment, had played with it and been happy.” She looked Max right in the eye. “No matter where I went, no matter what I did, I never helped anyone again. I never looked at another child. I kept to my own kind, to my comrades who would fight and maybe die but not helplessly. Not hopelessly.”

“That’s why you were always running away from Rae.” Max nodded. He got it now. “You were afraid you were going to love her, and disaster would follow.”

“Disaster arrived. I came on this mission. She came along.” Kellen leaned forward and in a voice that shook with intensity, she said, “I swear to you I didn’t know she was there until it was too late.”

“I know.”

“Earlier you said that I—”

“I know she sneaked away to be with you. I know you would never have deliberately brought her along.” He sounded disgusted—with himself. “I yelled because I wanted to blame someone besides myself.”

“Why would you be to blame?”

“Because I’m her father and I know how that devious little brain works. I should have seen this coming. As soon as I read her note...” His voice rose again. “Do you know how scared I’ve been?”

She just didn’t care. “Do you know how scared I’ve been? Those men murdered a helpless man for that head. They tried to kill us. What they would have done to a child—” Kellen’s throat closed. Pure panic pumped through her veins. Everything she hadn’t allowed herself to feel during the trek up the mountain, she felt now.

Max pulled her into himself as if he wanted to be part of her skin, her muscle, her bone. He hugged her, and he held her, and he must have done something special because slowly, ever so slowly, the terrible sense of being broken began to heal. After a long time, he whispered, “You brought her back to me. That’s all that matters. You had a second chance to save a child, your child, and you did it.”

“I never want to do anything like that again.”

“Ha! Have you met Rae?”

She pulled away, incredulous at his lack of sympathy. “Could I spend five minutes basking in relief?”

“Sure. Bask.” With finely tuned humor, he said, “She’s still asleep.”

Kellen wiped her face and blew her nose. “Thanks,” she muttered. She looked up.

Max was smiling as if he saw something wonderful in her; in snotty, blubbering little ol’ her.

She tossed the tissues into the wastebasket.

He took the roll of toilet paper out of her hand and put it to one side. “Done with that?”

“Um, sure.” Her voice quavered a little.

He stroked her cheek, pushed her hair behind her ear, cupped his hand behind her neck.

Together, they leaned toward each other. Their lips almost touched, and—

The workroom door slammed open.

They jumped apart.

Zone couldn’t see them, but he announced, “The Triple Goddess is real. She’s real. This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

“Um. Great, Zone,” Max said. “That’s just dandy.”

Kellen leaned around the back of the recliner and viewed Zone, standing there with his glasses in his hand, his eyes shining with excitement. “Whoop.”

“Yes!” Zone punched the air, went back into the workshop and slammed the door.

“Where were we?” Max asked.

“I think we were going to, um, kiss. But the moment is gone. Right?”