Page 55 of Acting on Instinct
People, after all, couldn’t just drive onto a military base. A group of trained soldiers with rifles would hold Uncle Nadir’s goons at bay.
She could sleep at Ty’s.
She would stay until Ty came home, even if it was weeks away, and then ask him what to do.
Heck, she could marry him, move onto the base, and stay there forever, maybe never leave.
Ty wasn’t reupping. He would be on base for two more months, and he had no specific plans for where he’d go next, but still ...
Yes, being married might be safer. And two months was something.
She knew that was just wild thinking.
If she were going to marry Ty for safety, she would have done it as soon as he asked her when they got back from Tanzania.
But the fort was safe. People couldn’t just go in. It took a lot of hoop-jumping and background checks in order to have the long-term pass that allowed her to go to his house.
She was forty-five minutes away from the safety of the gate.
While Kira was vigilantly looking for people who might be following her, she had her radio playing loudly, so loudly that she couldn’t hear the thoughts running through her mind.
She was not Lula, and she was most certainly not Ty.
She wasn’t London’s step-daughter, Christen, with her hotshot, low-flying, superhero moves, who married an American war hero, Gator, who got his name from barehanded fighting everything from terrorists to swamp alligators.
Yet, somehow, Kira had surrounded herself with people whose powers and capabilities defied imagination. And who was she?
She was an academic. A romantic.
Her nervous system wasn’t set to titanium like the wives of Ty’s Unit brothers.
Kira felt soft around everyone in that world.
She felt like tissue paper in comparison.
Ty said that wasn’t true. When London’s dog was attacked, Kira snatched the puppy off the ground and stared down a growling Rottweiler. “That takes guts,” he’d said. In Tanzania, she was the steady one that everyone looked to. In the D.C. attack, she’d stood up and answered the terrorist’s questions when Ty wanted her to be silent and small to avoid attention. And she’d held her ground against her family for a decade of constant pressure.
“You,” Ty said, tipping her head back, brushing the strands of her long hair out of her face, and kissing her with such gentleness, “you are strong when you need to be. But not everyone has to be a warrior. I am in awe of your tender spirit, of the kind eyes you focus on everyone around you.”
And she’d agreed with his assessment that she simply was made to be something else. The world needed all kinds.
But a little skill right about now would be enormously helpful.
And here she was, Fort Bragg. She’d made it. She was safe.
There was a line at the guardhouse, which was surprising. Concrete barriers were placed in a serpentine pattern, the kind that forced cars to slow to a crawl as they funneled the vehicles forward. Kira knew from one of their friend’s embassies in Qatar that security chose that configuration to stop suicidal drivers from plowing through the front door and detonating their vehicles.
This wasn’t the usual setup that she’d moved through in her past visits.
Kira glanced at the clock, and it was after two. Maybe this was what they did at night.
As she edged closer, Kira saw that they had sniffer dogs out. And there seemed to be more guards than usual. The soldiers dressed in what Ty called “full kit” with body armor and helmets. These weren’t the standard MP patrol uniforms.
Maybe they chose the late hours for a training exercise?
The process was slow, and Kira was fine with that. She was safely under watchful, capable eyes.
Each car moved on through the gate; it was fine.
