Page 8 of Embattled Return

The blue and white handicapped placard hung from the rearview mirror and she gave John an appreciative look. He didn’t dig it out of the glovebox very often. Normally he parked out in no man’s land in parking lots, leaving himselfjustenough room for the driver’s side lift to work. A couple of times the practice had backfired when someone had parked beside him, not leaving him enough room to maneuver or get in the vehicle.

As she watched Logan struggle on his crutches, she was very glad that John had forsaken his vanity for the day and parked closer to the elevators.

Logan watched as John rolled onto the platform and snapped himself in, then locked his wheels. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he murmured.

She smiled. “It is pretty cool. You ought to see the all-terrain chair he got for Christmas.”

Logan’s eyes widened a little, and he looked like he was going to ask her more, but she waved him to the truck. “Chad will put your bags in the back and you’ll have to work it out with Chad who rides shotgun.”

“Logan can have it,” Chad said, slamming the tailgate. “I’ll ride in back with Shannon.”

“I don’t need the front,” Logan protested, scowling.

“You’ll appreciate the room to stretch your legs. Go ahead,” Chad said, swinging up into the back.

With no other option, Logan climbed into the front passenger side seat, settling his crutches beside him. He wrapped the seatbelt around himself and snapped in, and John reversed out of the space, hands working the controls on the wheel perfectly. They were quiet until they were in the bright Colorado sunshine and heading toward the Denver skyscrapers in the distance.

“So, where are you from, Logan?” John asked him.

“Virginia, now. My dad moved away from Denver about twenty years ago.”

“He was a child when he left,” Shannon said, leaning forward to rest her hand on John’s hard shoulder. “So I was giving him some highlights on the flight out.”

John flashed the man a grin. “If you can imagine doing it, it’s probably here.”

Logan smiled slightly. “That’s what Shannon said. I don’t know how much of anything I’ll be doing.”

John shrugged. “Well, we’ll figure out some family details and you can decide. What branch of the service were you in?”

“Army,” Logan said, sliding a look sideways. “Almost six years.”

John scowled, and sighed heavily. “Well, Army’s better than nothing, I suppose.”

Then he winked, and Logan barked out a laugh. Shannon had heard it before. John had an ability to find veterans anywhere and if they weren’t Marines, they tended to be teased unmercifully. They usually took it with good grace, though.

“Army wasn’t my first choice either. I had planned to go to college first.” Logan admitted, “but my dad had been in the Army and he... well...”

“You had something to prove. Where were you stationed?”

Logan stared at him for a moment, as if John had said something that maybe needed to be corrected, but he let it go. “Fort Benning. Intelligence services.”

John nodded once. “Been there many times. Beautiful area.”

“It is. I won’t miss the heat, though.”

“I don’t know,” Chad murmured. “You should hang out in Texas for a minute.”

Logan laughed a little, shaking his head. “Nope. I’ve been there. Felt like I ate a plateful of dust by the time I got where I was going. And I’ve never had a worse sunburn...”

Chad laughed. “Yeah, she’ll get you. Although, I think Afghanistan was worse in a way. Or maybe it just seemed that way at the time.”

“Afghanistan was worse than any place else on earth,” Logan said slowly, turning to look out the window.

The three of them shared a glance and Shannon was a little surprised Logan had been there. He was younger, so she would have expected him to be more familiar with Iraq. But, what did she know? If he’d been in Intelligence it was hard to tell what he’d done or where he’d been. The look on his face, though, and the tone of his voice told her there was more to the story, but the mood in the truck had changed. She needed to lighten it up.

“So tell me about my boys. How did they do?” John gave her a serious look in the rearview mirror and her heart dropped. “What?”

“I never knew what you had to deal with when you took them in on your own. I’ll go with you next time, and every time you think you need me.”

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