Page 85 of What Doesn't Kill Her

“The nurses’ aide?”

“Yes. She left you alone because she was in the corridor, receiving a marriage proposal. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. But I still don’t understand how the Army would take you. I searched... It never occurred to me to check the military.” He was asking the questions now, wanting to know, to understand. “How could they let you in? You were too thin. You were weak. You had the scar of a gunshot on your forehead!”

“I faked it well. They liked my degrees. They loved my degrees.”They weren’t really my degrees, but I presented them as if they were.She hesitated.

My name is Kellen Adams, and that’s half a lie.

She should tell him, but they were just now beginning to talk about the important things. Naked. After making love.

She wanted to tell him the truth. About her. About who she really was.

Shewouldtell him the truth. “Max?”

He watched her with anticipation, as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Go on.”

Across the room, Zone’s communications panel came alive with two words.

“Mommy! Daddy!”

33

At the sound of Rae’s excited voice, Max vaulted off the bed and flung a blanket over Kellen, dragged the comforter over his shoulders, then stood blinking. “Wait,” he said. “There’s no video.”

“Right.” Kellen pulled the blanket off the bed anyway.

Still wrapped in the comforter, he headed toward the satellite station and flipped the switch. “Hi, honey. Did you make it home okay?”

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Rae could hardly speak—for about two seconds. Then she was off and running. “Bills Brooks took me on a tour over the top of the winery and I saw everything from the air, and I waved at everybody, and Grandma clutched her chest, and Mr. Brooks put the helicopter down right in front of the winery, and he told me when I got out to wave like the Queen of England, and I did!”

“That’s great, sweetheart.” Max gestured Kellen over. “So now you’re with your grandma?”

“I’m right here, Maximilian.” Verona sounded more than a little stern. “It was a thrill I wasn’t expecting to see my youngest granddaughter drop out of the sky with a stranger.”

Max looked helplessly at Kellen.

Kellen stepped up to the microphone. “We should have called you, Mrs. Di Luca, but after Rae left Max had to help me back into the lookout... This trip hasn’t been good on my hip and I don’t know if Rae told you, but I was shot.”

“Shot? She told me it was nothing but a scratch!”

“I did say that to her.” Kellen didn’t even have to work to put a chill in her voice. “Not long before I passed out.”

Pause. “Oh.”

“Mommy, are you okay now?” Rae asked.

Phooey. Kellen had wanted to scare Verona, not Rae. “After Zone sewed me up, I was fine. You saw him do it.”

“I want to be a doctor,” Rae announced.

“I thought blood made you sick.” Verona sounded surprised.

“It used to,” Rae said.

Before she’d seen a lot of it. Before Verona could connect the dots, Kellen asked, “Is Mr. Brooks still there?”

“He left before I could even thank him for bringing her home,” Verona said.

“He had to take the Triple Goddess someplace safe.” Rae sounded very serious. “Grandma, it’s animportant historical artifact.”

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