Page 54 of Jacques

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. For so long, I had one goal, one direction, and I focused all my attention on attaining that goal.”

“Becoming a Ranger?” Jacques asked softly.

Danny stared straight ahead. “Yeah.”

“Ever thought about going back in the Army?”

“No,” she said with conviction. “Besides not feeling safe there, I failed at the first battle I faced after earning my tab. How can I be a part of a team when I don’t trust my own ability to fight back? Why would anyone want me to have their six?”

“So, what’s next for you? Do you want to take over running the Crawdad Hole eventually?” Jacques asked. “Rene has to retire someday.”

Danny snorted. “Rene will still be serving beer and bar food when he has to use a walker to get across the floor. That man never quits.” She shook her head. “The problem is that I don’t know what I want. Maybe I’ll be happy to keep working with Rene. I think I should go back to school and get a degree or learn a trade. Nothing gives me that same sense of drive and determination that I had when I made the cut into Ranger School.”

“What was it about being a Ranger that appealed to you?”

She glanced out the side window. “It started as a challenge. I wanted to be one of the women who made it through the course—not to prove I could to anyone but myself. When we were in the thick of training, through the hardest trials, I changed. I learned that I didn't just want to make it through. I wanted my classmates to make it with me. It wasn’t just about me. It was about the team, the people who would go into battle with me. We were family. We had each other’s backs. We were there for each other.” She glanced down at her hands in her lap. “And then we weren’t.”

Jacques reached his hand across the console, like he did when he sat with her on the sofa at night.

Danny laid her hand in his palm and watched his fingers curl gently around hers.

“I didn’t know who attacked me. I didn’t know who I could trust. The men I thought would have my back didn’t. At least, I thought they didn’t—until Tobin showed us the text he’d sent and the one I supposedly returned. He did check on me.”

Jacques pulled into the boarding house parking lot and released her hand to shift into park. He didn’t move to get out. “It could’ve been one of them.”

Her lips twisted. “I thought of that, and since I believed none of them had bothered to ask about me, I wondered if they might all have been involved. If not in actually assaulting me, then they might’ve been complicit in not stopping the one who did. I know better now.”

Danny shook her head side to side. “I was not in a good place back then. Every man who came near me made me flinch. My mind spun with scenarios involving every man I’d ever come into contact with at Fort Benning. I couldn’t step out of my room without being a paranoid wreck.” She sighed. “I saw a therapist. It helped, but not enough. I couldn’t go on to my next assignment until she signed off on my mental health. I refused to reenlist and finally processed out.” She raised her hands, palms up. “I ran away from it all and ended up here in Bayou Mambaloa.” She clapped her hands on her thighs. “So, the short answer to your initial question is that I haven’t found my calling. Now, do you still want to make jambalaya or run as fast as you can from this basket case?”

He reached out and brushed his fingers against her cheek. “I’m not running. I think you’re brave and that you’re working it all out. I think between you and me, we’re going to make some mighty fine jambalaya.” He smiled and winked. “Come on, French. The past is in the past, and the future promises to be delicious with homemade jambalaya. Only it’s not going to make itself.” He shoved his door open and hurried around to her side to open hers.

He reached up and helped her down, pulling her into his arms and lightly brushing her lips with his.

“Just so you know,” she said, “I’m done being scared. I’m done flipping out whenever a man touches me, and I’m done living in the past.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m just beginning to get my life back, and I’m not going to let anything get in my way of living it to the fullest.”

“That’s my girl,” Jacques said. “Let’s get this party started.”

They each grabbed a bag from the rear of the SUV and entered the boarding house. A family had taken up residence in the shared common room, playing a board game.

Jacques and Danny waved and said hello as they climbed the stairs to the second floor and Jacques’s suite.

Over the next couple of hours, Danny and Jacques worked together to make jambalaya, mixing the recipe he’d found online with the one Danny had saved from her mother’s recipe file. They chopped veggies, steamed rice, mixed spices into sauce, told dumb jokes and laughed more than Danny had in years.

The resulting jambalaya was amazing. By the time they’d finished and cleaned the dishes, Danny knew what she wanted to do next.

Before she could voice her decision, Cleyburn called to update them on his in-person visit with Sarley at the hospital. Sarley was recovering and reiterated his story about being hired to watch Danny. When he’d reported that Danny had returned to her apartment carrying papers, his contact had instructed him to search her apartment after she’d left, gather the documents and place them in his mailbox. He’d found them in a fire-resistant box and left them in his mailbox. They’d been gone by morning.

“So, someone got my medical records,” Danny said. “We still don’t know who hired Sarley.”

Jacques’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID. “It’s Swede.”

He answered and hit speakerphone. “I’m with Danny. You’re on speaker.”

“Good. I have some follow-up information,” Swede said. “I got lucky and tracked the burner phone number used by the guy who hired Sarley to a shop in the DC area. The man paid cash, but I was able to get the date and time it was purchased and tapped into the shop’s video surveillance system. The image was a little fuzzy, but I compared it to the people you’ve had me run background checks on. It looked to me like it was Major Todd Beaumont.”

Danny met Jacques’s gaze. “He arranged for the hotel rooms Hale paid for at the hotel where I was staying that night."

“I guess we’ll be talking with Beaumont,” Jacques said.