Courage Under Fire (Silver Creek #2) - Lindsay McKenna Page 0,39

to make an in-depth study of. He’d go to Dan and ask for his help in assessing Bannock, wanting to bone up on his profile. He knew the sheriff could get him information that only law enforcement was allowed to see. He’d sit in Dan’s office and read it, absorb it, and remember it. Because he realized now, more than ever before, Dirk was going to hunt down Cari.

This time, he would make the difference. He’d stand between them. And he’d take that sick, twisted druggie down, just like he had his enemy combatants in Afghanistan. This time around? Cari was going to be protected, but he would never tell her what he planned to do or how he was going to find out everything possible on Dirk before her stepbrother could strike again and kill her.

Chapter Six

June 3

Chase wanted to say so much more to Cari, but he grimly realized the amount of pressure that she was under. As they walked around to the parking lot at the pizza parlor, he fished out the fob to the truck. Cari looked stressed by their talk and she had good reason to be. Her once flushed cheeks were now pale. She had her hands tucked in the pockets of her lightweight jacket. Her lips were pursed. He slowed as they got to the truck and he opened the door for her.

“Are you sorry you told me?” he asked quietly, holding her darkened gaze. “Just talking about it, I imagine it’s all avalanching emotionally on you again.”

“How could you know that?” she asked in a whisper, leaning against the truck, looking up at him.

He shrugged. “I was behind the lines in Afghanistan for five years as a sniper. I was always in harm’s way. I had orders to take out certain Taliban or ISIS leaders and would be dropped in under cover of night. Sometimes it took me a month to locate my quarry, and all that time, I was in enemy territory. There were never any clear lines of demarcation between safe and dangerous, Cari, between the Afghans who were pro-USA and those who sided with the Taliban and the ISIS terrorists groups.”

She studied him. “I guess I never realized just how much danger you were in, Chase.”

“Well,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood, “you don’t come from a military family. You probably aren’t too up on military things.”

“You’re right. We really are from two very different worlds.”

“And yet,” he said, keeping his voice light in hopes of pulling her out of her dark, dangerous past, “we have a lot of things in common. We both love the Earth, we’re ecologically and environmentally oriented, we like the animals and insects, and we’re both working toward making the world a better place to live. Those are strong ties that we share.”

She nodded, looking down at her feet and then lifting her chin. “You’ve killed men.”

“And a man is trying to kill you.” He saw her face change, sag, and that haunted look return to her eyes. “In my case? I was taking out the enemy who were murdering Afghan villagers—men, women, and children. They’d torch their villages, rape the women, murder the children. What I was doing was an act of protection, trying to give those villagers a chance to live and thrive.”

“Did you like what you were doing?”

“No . . . never. But what do you do if evil is walking the land? Murdering innocents? Do you let them keep on doing it? Or do you put things in place to permanently stop them?”

“I never thought about it in those terms.” She sighed. “I cry when a bee gets accidentally killed when I take out a super panel. I could never do what you have done.”

“When evil stares me in the face, I’m not going to let it kill me. And not everyone has those kinds of reflexes built into them, or to do the right thing by confronting that evil, even if it haunts us for the rest of our lives.” He saw her nod, sadness in her eyes, but he sensed it was for him, not for herself.

“I guess . . . well . . . my mother’s Hawaiian family had warriors in it, and I grew up hearing how they fought for their king, to keep their land. My father was an airline pilot and before that, he’d been in the military and flew combat aircraft. Maybe I didn’t get the gene on how to survive or