The Majors' Holiday Hideaway. Caro Carson
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battalion commander stayed, wishing each person a happy holiday as the team cleared out with alacrity, everyone dialing their cell phones as they left to give their families the good news. Aiden was in no hurry. He had no one to dial.
Only one person came in the door instead of out, and that was Captain Helen Pallas, who’d no doubt sprinted over from the brigade headquarters building to see her husband.
They were both in uniform, so they could not share any newlywed hugging and kissing—thank God, because Aiden couldn’t leave before he gathered up the papers it turned out he didn’t need—but their high five, a hard slap of victory, made up for it. Just the sound of that clap made his hand sting.
“Pack your bags,” Helen said. “We’re going to Europe, baby.”
“We’re what?” Tom asked.
Aiden stacked papers and listened as his new neighbor explained that she’d set up a house swap with an old friend in Belgium.
“How long before I knew the exercise was canceled did you know?” The laughter and approval in Tom’s voice as he spoke to his wife gave Aiden another pang of...wistfulness. He remembered what that had been like, to have a coconspirator. A friend. A lover. Long ago—it felt like a million years ago.
Helen made a show of checking her watch. “About fifteen minutes.”
“You set all this up in fifteen minutes?”
She pretended to dust off her fingernails on her camouflage lapel. “That’s right. One European honeymoon, arranged in fifteen minutes. We’re already on the list for a Space-A flight to NATO headquarters tonight. If we don’t get a seat, then we’re going standby on a commercial flight to Amsterdam out of Austin, and we’ll rent a car and drive to Brussels. Colonel Reed already signed my leave form. Any questions?”
Tom looked past her to the battalion commander. “Can I get a leave form signed in the next half hour, sir? I hope the answer is yes, or else I’m apparently going to miss my own honeymoon.”
Helen turned to Aiden. “Major Nord, I hate to impose on you. My friend India will take care of our dog once she gets to our house, but there’s going to be about ten hours where we’re passing each other over the Atlantic. Could you come over and feed Fabio in the meantime?”
Aiden had already met Fabio, a golden retriever with long, flowing hair. Aiden and the Crosses had already exchanged house keys, too. Not only were they all in the same brigade, theirs were the only two houses along half a mile of road.
“If you’re not going anywhere yourself, sir, that is.”
“I’ll be home.” Rattling around an empty house.
“Great. Can I leave your name and number for my friend, just in case she has any questions?”
“The name is India?”
“Yes. I’ve known her a long time. She’s...well, she was my mentor, really, when I was first commissioned.”
“She’s some kind of weird savant with languages,” Tom offered.
Swell. A mentoring, motherly, older lady who studied foreign languages and took vacations alone, in houses that were out in the middle of nowhere.
“I doubt she’ll need you,” Helen said, “but just in case.”
“Sure. Give her my number.”
At this rate, a call from Tom and Helen’s house sitter would probably be the most exciting thing that would happen to him all week.
She was running on empty.
International travel was always draining, but this trip had been especially so. India had only fallen asleep for little fifteen-minute, neck-straining naps on the plane, despite spending the hours before her flight not sleeping, but instead gathering up every single thing Gerard-Pierre had littered around her house. The books she’d stacked neatly in the hallway outside her apartment door. She respected books; they hadn’t done anything wrong. The rest she’d dumped into a pile in the hallway.
The bra she’d hung on the century-old doorknob. Explanation enough in any language.
India checked the pickup truck’s gas gauge. Her body wasn’t the only thing rapidly running out of energy. She’d found Helen and Tom’s pickup waiting for her at the airport, right where their text had said it would be. The tank had been almost half-full, surely enough to cover the distance from the Austin airport to the countryside beyond Fort Hood. She’d passed a dozen gas stations leaving Austin. A half dozen through Georgetown. More in Killeen...but when Helen had said her house was out in the middle of nowhere, India had forgotten how big nowhere could be in the States. She’d been driving for ninety minutes, enough to have gone to another country from Belgium, but she was still in Texas, driving past miles of land occupied only by grazing cattle and the occasional barn. Sheesh.
She had just decided it would be wise to turn around and head back to the last gas station she’d passed when she saw a mailbox, the standard American kind, a black metal shoebox with a rounded top, mounted on a wood four-by-four. When she’d been a little girl, she’d thought the shape looked like the Road Runner tunnels that the Wile E. Coyote was always trying to enter—with no luck. He was shut out, denied, every time.
Gold letters on the black metal read 489. Who opened this mailbox every day without even thinking about how easy it was? India slowed the truck as she passed the driveway. Its single lane of asphalt ran for at least a quarter mile, unwaveringly straight, to a classic two-story brick home. The colors of the bricks were distinctly Texan, though, gold and beige and cream that reflected the afternoon sun, which was bright even in December in this part of the world.
She didn’t need to turn back, after all. Helen’s house number was 490. Her mailbox was up ahead, a little sentry on the side of the road. India hit her turn signal, then scoffed at herself. Who was there to signal? Her truck was the only vehicle on the road. But as she slowed and started to turn, she looked down Helen’s straight driveway—and tapped the brakes.
Someone was there.
The garage door was open and, even though a red pickup blocked most of her view, India could see that someone was moving around. A thief.
She didn’t turn in, but kept driving. Tom and Helen had a dog, but Helen had texted her that the dog would be at the neighbor’s house, so India could sleep off her jet lag without having a dog wake her. A barking dog might have scared off a thief, but the house was empty.
Don’t be crazy, India. Why would a thief go to an empty house when the owners are out of the country?
Not so crazy. India could dial 911. Maybe. She’d turned off cellular data on her phone to avoid astronomical international roaming charges. Wasn’t 911 supposed to work from all phones, regardless? But she didn’t have an American phone. Maybe it wasn’t programmed for that emergency service. How long would it take a sheriff to get out here, anyway? The thief would have plenty of time to help himself to whatever he wanted and then drive away with a flat-screen television in the back of his pickup.
She stopped the truck on the road’s shoulder. Think about this, India girl; stay awake. She scrubbed her hands over her face, then dug in her bag for a peppermint. The bracing flavor woke her up. She turned the truck around and drove by one more time, slowly. The parked red truck was awfully nice, shiny and new, hardly the getaway vehicle of a criminal.
She pulled in the driveway of 489 to turn around and head back, feeling exceedingly stupid. She was just tired. And emotional—she’d failed to protect her own home. Hadn’t that thought been relentlessly circling in her head as she’d kicked out Gerard-Pierre? Well, kicked out his stuff, anyway. That was why she was thinking of homes being invaded.
Damn. She’d passed her own