Excerpt: Just Before Dawn

Bailey’s throat had closed over with emotion and her eyes were stinging with tears long before she heard the knock on her door. She’d seen him pull up. Seen the other car behind him. And when Nathan leapt from the truck in his dress blues, Bailey’s heart had sunk to her feet like a lead weight.
He at least had the wherewithal to leave the knocking to someone else. Nathan came walking right on in, as he always did. Two steps into the foyer and he removed his cover - the Dixie Cup, as it was affectionately termed - and cast his gaze about. He didn’t have to look far to find Bailey. She was curled in a ball on the sofa, knees pulled tight to her chest. Their eyes met and Nate could have fallen to pieces.
“What happened?”
Her voice came out in a tone barely above a whisper. Skin blanched white, drained of any speck of color. Nathan could see the tears in her eyes that Bailey was stubbornly refusing to let fall. She was clutching the throw pillow so tightly, Nate was almost positive she was going to rip it to shreds.
Better that than me, he thought. But he was getting a slight inkling that he would be taking the brunt of her grief. Nate took a breath to steady himself and went to Bailey, kneeling down in front of her.
There were any number of ways he could have spun the story. He could have sugar coated it, could have made it into some giant tale of heroism. But the plain truth of the matter was that Charlie had been going about his usual routine. He’d come up for rotation on security patrol and had geared up to go out. The patrol had been fairly quiet until their Hummer had been ambused. From what Nate had been able to gather, Charlie had gone down fighting, but it just hadn’t been enough to keep himself alive.
When Nathan finished relating the story to Bailey, he watched her carefully to gauge her reaction. She sat there staring at him for a moment or two, which in a situation like this stretched out into an eternity. After her silence, she chewed on her lower lip before finally responding.
“Thank you.”
Bailey let herself fall back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling fan as it swirled round in the usual fashion. Uncaring, unaffected. She wished she could deal with losing Charlie that easily. Just keep spinning. Like that kids’ movie, only a lot less cute.
“Bailey,” Nate started softly. “Are you going to be alright?”