I stood firmly on the side of the landowners, no matter who tried to sweet-talk me or guilt me into changing my stance.
The door blew open, cutting off my brooding thoughts. Time to get to work.
Once again I was left to lock up Clementine’s all by my little self. I took a second to breathe in a lungful of clean air. My least favorite part about working at the bar was reeking of cigarette smoke at the end of my shift.
So quit.
And do what?
Four vehicles remained in the parking area. Not an unusual occurrence since most folks were smart enough not to drink and drive. I’d nearly reached my truck when the back of my neck prickled. Déjà vu rolled through me until I realized I had been in this exact same position just last night. And like last night, immediately my gun was in my hand.
“Show yourself.”
“It’s me, Gunny.”
“J-Hawk?”
“Yeah.” He materialized beside me, seemingly out of nowhere, which sent a shiver down my spine. I had no idea he’d been so close.
So much for my lightning-fast reflexes. “What’re you doing here?”
“I just wanna talk to you.”
I kept the gun leveled on him. “If you’re here to try and win me over about the pipeline, save your goddamn breath.”
“Fuck that and fuck you. Jesus. That’s not why I’m here. You know I’d never…” He swore. “Can you put the gun down? Please?” He waved a six-pack like a white flag. “Near as I can tell, none of your regular bar rats are around to give you dirty looks for sharing a brew with me.”
I ignored the bitterness in his tone, knowing he’d understood the downside of taking on such an unpopular job when he’d signed on for it. “A beer sounds good.” I jammed my gun in my pocket and dropped the tailgate. My ass absorbed the metal’s coldness, causing another shiver.
The truck bounced as he plopped down. He handed me a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I laughed. “Where’d you find this?”
“At Stillwell’s. I figured it’d be appropriate.”
After we each cracked one open, I chinked my can to his. “To cheap beer.”
“And priceless memories.”
“Man, I forgot what a sappy dork you are.”
Jason fake-coughed “bitch” in his fist.
I laughed again and sipped my beer. “You know, this stuff ain’t half bad.”
“Ssh. I’m trying to discern the origins of the different flavors of hops.”
This was the J-Hawk I remembered. Not the bloated blowhard who’d been blathering bullshit across my home turf.
We’d met in Afghanistan. As the only two Dakotans in our little slice of hell, we ribbed each other endlessly about the rivalry between our sister states, tossing jokes and insults, but look out if anyone else made a derogatory comment about “The Dakotas.”
Major Hawley was an Army Ranger with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Group, and one of the few clued in to our all-female Black Ops section of the 82nd Airborne Division. Being stationed together across Europe and the Middle East made us uncommonly close-some of us closer than others.
The military discourages fraternizing, a rule I’ve adhered to for the most part. We all got lonely. We all missed the intimacy that only comes from sharing a bed with a lover. We all dealt with it in our own unique ways. But some chose to disregard the rules completely-like J-Hawk and my teammate Anna “A-Rod” Rodriguez.
I figured out they were sneaking around long before anyone else. Not because A-Rod spilled her guts to me, but because they’d gone out of their way to avoid eye or body contact when in mixed company. Making goo-goo eyes at each other in the chow line would’ve been less obvious.
Jealousy that A-Rod was getting laid on a regular basis while the rest of us weren’t wasn’t my issue. They were adults. They understood the repercussions if the brass caught wind of their hookups. But it bugged the crap out of me that J-Hawk had a wife and kids at home in North Dakota.
Anna, who was the biggest skeptic I’ve ever met, actually believed the line of bullshit cheating men used: J-Hawk’s wife didn’t understand him. So Anna felt no guilt whatsoever about being with a married man. She fell helmet over combat boots in love with him.
I dreaded the day it’d turn ugly between them, because it was inevitable. When that day came, I was the one who watched helplessly as two lives crumbled. Right then I swore no man would ever wield that much power over me.
“Mercy?”
My focus snapped back to him. “Yeah?”
“I see you’re still throwing off those leave-me-the-fuck-alone vibes.”
“When something works, I go with it.”
He laughed. “I take it Sheriff Dawson isn’t cowed by that attitude?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I waited out here to talk to you last night. Shouldn’t be sexy as hell when a woman pulls a gun on you, but for some reason it is. Then he was in your face, but arresting you was the last thing on his mind.” J-Hawk waggled his eyebrows. “So how long have you two been dancing the horizontal mambo?”
I sidestepped his question. “You didn’t think it was so sexy when Anna held a gun on you that last time.”
J-Hawk’s good humor vanished. He crumpled the beer can and tossed it into my truck bed before reaching for another. “No. It wasn’t sexy. Half the time I wish she would’ve pulled the trigger.”
I nearly gave myself whiplash my head whipped around so fast. “Why?”
“Look at me. My life sucks, and it ain’t looking to get better any time soon. My wife ain’t ever gonna leave Minot. ‘Army Ranger’ on a résumé doesn’t mean squat. Titan Oil was the only company that’d hire me.” He paused and drank. “What about you? How’d you end up tending bar?”
As I debated telling the truth or sticking with my standard noncommittal answer, I drained my beer and reached for another.
“I won’t say everything was hunky-dory after I returned from outprocessing. I tagged along with Jake, learning what it took to run a ranch this size. When Hope lost one of the babies, I ended up on nursing duty. Long story short, I resented feeling like the odd woman out and moved into the foreman’s cabin. By then the bad dreams started, and the only way to stop them was drinking until I passed out.”
“Every night?”
“Pretty much.”
He whistled again.
“We’re all warned about the adjustment time after retirement, especially just coming back from combat, I just didn’t think it’d be so hard to swallow that I’d gone from being a trained-”
Why don’t you just blurt it out for the whole damn world to hear, Sergeant Major?
J-Hawk placed his hand on my knee. “I know what you are.”
Took a second to gather my thoughts. Seemed pathetic to admit to a superior officer that I needed a crutch to handle my demons. “It got to the point I ended up drunk-dialing an old family friend. He knows what it’s like.”
“He’s been in the war machine?”
“Not ours. Vietnam. Rollie put the screws to me, and I listened. John-John had an opening at the bar, which sounds like putting a fat kid in a candy store. But most nights I’m so sick of dealing with booze I don’t bother with it when I get home.” I swallowed another drink. “But I’m also too tired to figure out what the hell I want to do now. Bartending ain’t it, that’s for damn sure.”
The silence between us stretched into night sounds of crickets. Rustling grass reeds. The occasional yip of a coyote.
Finally J-Hawk spoke. “Could you ever see yourself doing what Anna does?”
“Hiring myself out as a merc?” I shook my head. “To be honest, I’d rather bartend.”
“Do you talk to Anna often?”
“Jason-”
“I know, I ended it like a total asshole.”
“No argument from me.”
“What Anna never understood was it wasn’t my choice.”
“It was your choice to get involved with her when you were already married.”