Page 25 of A Veteran's Desire

“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

My gaze rakes over her, needing to know she’s okay. Her gaze meets mine, and there’s a quiet strength in her expression that makes me proud.

“I’m fine. I got your text. Abby is in the room with the boys. I made her lock the door, and then I got the shotgun.”

She speaks rapidly, and her trembling is turning to shock. I put my hands on her shoulders, needing to touch her, to confirm she’s okay.

“I was so scared something would happen to you.”

I pull her to my chest. She leans against me, her soft body seeking comfort, and I open my arms and fold her into me.

I can’t hold her close enough. If I lost Hannah, I’d lose everything. She means everything to me, and in this moment I realize she’s right about what she said in the orchard. I need to forgive myself. It’s selfish to hold onto my guilt and my shame when the woman I love needs me to be strong. When she needs me to stay right here and love her. That the best thing I can do to honor Mason is to live the life he would want to live, in love and happiness.

13

HANNAH

An hour later, I watch the taillights disappear down the driveway. Finally, I’m left alone in the kitchen with Grant and Abby.

The past few hours are a blur. When I saw Grant’s text about someone being on the property, I hustled Abby into the room with the boys and instructed her to lock the door and barricade it. Then I got the shotgun.

When I heard the man at the bottom of the stairs, I knew I had to act. My nephews were asleep in their beds, and I couldn’t let him get any closer.

I’m glad I didn’t have to use the shotgun, but I would have, to protect my family.

I shiver and Grant tightens his hold on me and pulls me closer to him.

He hasn’t left my side since the intruder made off into the night. He got away in the car that was waiting on the old access road.

We’ve had law enforcement here and a bunch of Grant’s veteran friends who turned up decked out in bulletproof vests and headgear.

Grant has a bone bruise on his ankle from where he hit the cabinet. I wanted him to go to the medical center, but he refused. He didn’t want to leave me alone.

The intruder dropped something on the way out, and I made a copy of it on the scanner Rachel keeps in her home office before handing it over to Owen.

I smooth it out now, and we glance over the paper. It’s an aerial map of the disputed parcels of land.

“Is all this over a piece of land?” I can’t fathom how someone can go to such extremes for land. “What is it that we have that they want so much?”

“And what were they searching here for?” Abby asks.

We’ve been over it a dozen times in the past hour, and we’re no closer. We’ve tidied the papers back into the cabinet and none of it is anything worth taking. It’s just insurance documents, warranties, and forty years of Pops’s receipts.

“The deed to the farm, is my guess.” Grant’s voice is quiet. “They want to know what it shows.”

And then I understand, and my skin goes cold.

“The bakery.” I twist in his arms to look at him. “That’s what the bakery was all about.”

He doesn’t look surprised. He’s been sitting on this for days.

“Beth’s copy was the only thing that went missing,” he says.

They thought it was real. Somebody went looking for our deed, found a sixteen-year-old’s art project on tea-stained paper, and came back for the real thing.

“Did they get upstairs?” Abby asks.

“No.” I tell her. “And I checked Pops’s safe. It’s still there, still secure.”