The Tin Man by Nina Mason Read Free Book Online Page B

wind coming in through the broken window was blowing pieces of hair in her eyes, making them water. As she pushed back the wisps, she started thinking ahead to where they were going. Her grandfather was staying on an Amish farm near Intercourse. Someone he knew—a friend at Independence Hall or maybe the Philadelphia Inquirer, she couldn’t recall which one—had arranged it for him.
    “The farm is perfect,” he’d relayed to her in a recent letter—their only reliable means of communicating. “There are no telephones, no television, no radio, no internet, and no unwanted visitors. If you want to keep in touch, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: write me a letter!”
    She shot a glance toward Buchanan. Had he dozed off? She didn’t think so. His whole body was stiff with tension. Her gaze roamed over him. He had a nice build for a guy his age. Did he work out? His mouth was a lipless line. She imagined it relaxing as she kissed it, softly, imploringly. Desire fluttered in her abdomen like a startled bird in a cage. She hadn’t kissed a man in more than a year; hadn’t had sex in even longer. What might Buchanan be like in bed? Tender, fierce, subdued? Would she ever find out?
    With a sigh, she returned her focus to the dark road. Why did she always seem to fall for guys who were emotionally unavailable? Was it fear of commitment? Fear of abandonment? Or simply a subconscious attraction to men like her father? She had enough self-awareness to understand that she kept her feelings compartmentalized, but not enough to know what to do about it. Her mother used to tell her that if she continued to keep all her emotions bottled up, they’d eventually take her over like slow-growing cancer cells.
    Scenes from her mother’s last days crashed in uninvited, impaling her heart. How frail she’d looked, wasting away, struggling to breathe, in that hospital bed with all those scary tubes in her arms. How deeply Thea regretted, then and now, every cross word she’d ever said to her mother.
    As she drew t he curtain on the past, her gaze fell upon the box of Marlboro Lights—the same brand that had murdered her mother—Buchanan had tossed on the dashboard. Bitterness struck her heart like a poisonous snake, sinking in its fangs. As the venom spread through her bloodstream, she snatched up the cigarettes and flung them out the window.
     
    * * * *
     
    “Do what you will, but you’ll get nothing out of me.” Buchanan was back in Baghdad, back on the floor, hooded and bound. Hands yanked him up roughly. Bam . Yanked him up. Bam . Yanked him up. Bam.
    “ You can beat me to death,” he bellowed through a mouth full of blood. “I still won’t talk.”
    Back on the stool.
    “Why were you on the Apache?” the Iraqi demanded.
    Bam.
    He didn’t get up. He couldn’t. He was in too much pain.
    “ Buchanan?” It was a woman’s voice.
    A hand clasped his upper arm and started shaking.
    “ Jesus, Buchanan. Snap out of it. You’re scaring me.”
    The woman again. Who was she? He started to come back.
    “ Kelsey?”
    “ Try Thea.”
    Who the hell was Thea? And why did she sound so perturbed? He tore off the blindfold, blinking as he looked around. It was dark. He was in a car in the middle of nowhere. He shot a glance at the woman behind the wheel. She was pretty. More than pretty, actually. And then, everything came flooding back.
    “Are you okay?” Her brow creased with concern.
    “I’m fine .” Dear God. What had she witnessed?
    “You were yelling at someone that you wouldn’t talk,” she said. “Even if they killed you. Was it the gunman from earlier?”
    “No .”
    “ Who then?”
    “No one who matters anymore.” He wished she would drop it.
    “Was it the blindfold?”
    “Sorry?”
    “The blindfold,” she repeated. “Did it trigger something? Some old trauma?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about .” He cleared his throat. Avoiding her gaze, he crossed his arms over his chest.