The Edge of Courage (Red Team) by Elaine Levine Page B

on Elm Street. He, too, got out and leaned against his car, his arms folded. The look he gave her made it clear that if she didn’t resolve the situation in short order, he would.
    “Hey, Rocco,” she said in as calm a voice as she could muster when she came even with him. “What are you doing?” He didn’t respond. She looked him over, checking to see if he’d hurt himself. Maybe he’d fallen on his run, hit his head.
    “Are you okay?” she asked, touching his arm gently. No response.
    She stood in front of him. He was taller than she was, so her position did not break his line of vision. He just kept staring out over her head. “Rocco, you can’t do this.” The sides of his jaw tensed, the only sign he was aware of her presence. “Please. You’re scaring people. You’re scaring me.” His gaze dropped from the distant granary to her eyes.
    Mandy couldn’t stop a sigh of relief at the break in his concentration. “Hi.” She smiled at him, uncertain how much of what she’d said he’d heard. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m standing here.”
    “I see that. But you can’t. You can’t do this.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “You’ve been here for hours.”
    “So?”
    “There are laws about loitering. How did you get to town?”
    “Ran.”
    “You ran ten miles? While it was still dark?” she asked.
    “I had to get here before dawn.”
    “Rocco,” she sighed, “we have to go. We can’t stay here.”
    “You go. I’m staying.”
    Before she could ask him why, another man walked up to them. He clapped Rocco on the back, then offered his hand and a friendly, “Welcome home. Thank you for your service.”
    Rocco turned and looked at the man with such animosity that the man dropped his hand and backed a step away before quickly moving along. Mandy sent him an apologetic look, but he never saw it. “You can’t make trouble like this.”
    “Like what? I’m minding my own business. They should do the same.”
    She could see he was getting irritated, but he was watching her more and the granary less. “You ran down here in the middle of the night. You’ve stood here all morning. What you’re doing makes no sense. You have to be hot and tired and hungry—”
    His frown made furrows between his brows. The hard planes of his face became rigid. Something flashed in the back of his dark eyes. Pain. Memories she would never know, could never understand. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about me.”
    “Hey, now. There’s no call to talk to a lady like that,” another good Samaritan said as he paused next to them.
    Rocco flashed an angry look at him and snapped, “Fuck off.”
    Mandy sent the man a look and gave him a slight nod. He moved away to stand with Officer Jerry. “I don’t understand why you’re here like this,” she replied to Rocco.
    He spun her around, gripping her with an arm across her body, using his other hand to hold her jaw and point her face toward the old steel walls of the grain silo. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Officer Jerry straighten and Sheriff Tate wave him back.
    “What do you see?” Rocco asked her.
    Mandy tried to draw a breath, but his grip was too tight to allow much air. She could feel the tension in his body. “I see buildings. People. A road. A highway. A railroad. The old elevator.”
    As close as he was holding her, she felt the long draw of air he pulled into his lungs, felt him press his face to the crown of her head. She wondered if he was aware that he was touching her. Maybe he only had issues when someone else was doing the touching.
    “What are those things?” he asked.
    “What things?”
    “What you see. The buildings. The road. The people? What do they make?”
    Mandy felt close to tears. In some elemental way, she knew her answer was pivotal, but she didn’t know what the right answer was. “I don’t know, Rocco.”
    “What do they make?” He shook her. “Look, Mandy. What are they?”
    “It is my town.”
    “Yes.