Page 29 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

TWO

Sometimes his survival felt more like a curse, than a blessing.

Seven men lost their lives due to an improvised explosive device, but he’d walked away with only a mild traumatic brain injury.

His mates—his team—died. He’d lost his military working dog too.

But he got to survive…with their deaths on his conscience.

Their funerals were seared into his memory.

The crying sisters. The devastated parents.

The grieving widows and their children. And there was nothing he could do to fix it.

His commanding officers refused to let him keep fighting to honor his men’s memory.

Tyler Reid roughed a hand over his face as he drove his Toyota Hilux out of town.

His right hand gripped the steering wheel…

but not because of traffic. Even at noon it was light and calm.

He took a deep breath, failing to relax.

Relaxing had never really been a part of his life.

He checked an intersection before crossing it.

He wanted to keep fighting. But the SAS threw him out.

Gave him a medical discharge and told him to try something new.

Yeah, right. Something new.

How had his superiors not realized that the military was his life? He’d hardly left the Army base. He volunteered to go into war zones. Never had he considered doing something different in his eight years of service. And six months after his discharge, he still hadn’t figured out what to do.

“I should have just died.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel.

His phone rang on the console. The caller ID appeared on the infotainment system. Koen.

Tyler frowned. Weird time to get a call from his mate. Koen lived right here in Alice Springs. His gaze drifted around the vehicle. Did he put a tracker in the vehicle? Yeah, Koen had been concerned about him. But no way did he go that far. Not yet. With a sigh, Tyler answered. “Hey, mate.”

“Where are you at?” Koen asked.

“Alice Springs. I’m on my way home.” And he still had another twenty-four hours to drive before he got there. The Kimberley was remote, with only a few small towns in the area.

“Where’ve you been?”

Tyler glared at the infotainment system. His mate didn’t need to keep track of him. He took care of himself just fine. He was better off alone anyway.

“C’mon. We talked about this.”

“The TBI hasn’t gotten any worse. If anything, it’s gotten better.

” Tyler rested both hands on the steering wheel and held back a sigh.

The severe headaches he suffered the first three months after the explosion were debilitating and made Koen refuse to leave him alone.

Now that he’d gotten past that, Tyler lived in self-imposed isolation, but Koen still kept tabs on him to ensure he was okay. And Tyler was fine.

“Yeah, fine,” he muttered. As if it was fine that his men died, and he survived only to be stuck doing absolutely nothing.

He needed to be out there fighting, as long as things didn’t go wrong again.

The military had discarded him because they said he was done.

They believed he had nothing left to give.

What if they were right? He shook the thought from his head.

“It’s great to hear that,” Koen said almost absently.

Screech!

Tyler winced. It sounded like a squeaky door or something heavy behind scraped against the floor. What was Koen doing? Rearranging furniture?

“I need your help.”

Help? It had to be something really bad if he called Tyler.

He always called Mandawuy “Mandi” Jirra.

They’d been good friends for years and always looked out for each other.

“What’d you do this time?” He slowed the vehicle and pulled into a parking lot.

If he had to turn around, this would be quicker. He sat back and waited for a response.

“I’m supposed to ask that.” Koen huffed. Despite the joke, he didn’t have his usual cheerful tone. He sounded…distressed.

“Why didn’t you call Mandi?” The Aboriginal Australian lived in the same town. A much more certain way of getting help than calling Tyler.

Something fell on Koen’s side of the phone. “Because I need you. This is a life-or-death situation.”

Life or death. The words got Tyler into motion.

He spun the Hilux around and sped onto the road.

A dozen possible scenarios ran through his mind of what Koen might have gotten himself into.

The older man had worked in the SAS with Tyler, but had gotten himself into some “secret” stuff a couple of months ago.

Maybe that secret stuff put him in danger. “You at your house?”

“Yeah.” Koen sank into a squeaky chair. “And slow down. I’m fine at the moment.”

Tyler eased his foot halfway off the accelerator. He took a deep breath and let it out. The mention of a life-or-death situation was unexpected. Koen worked so hard to keep him out of trouble for the last six months. Now he was, what? Drawing him into it? “What’d you do?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

It had to be bad since Koen refused to speak about it over the phone.

“Right. See you in five.” Tyler hung up and focused on the directions he’d memorized over his time staying at Koen’s.

While his TBI had improved a lot, he still had some issues with his memory.

Not enough to be concerned about. Just enough to annoy him.

Six minutes passed before Tyler pulled his vehicle into the empty driveway.

He put the ute into park and killed the engine.

As he got out, he searched for threats. A few civilian vehicles drove in and out of the neighborhood.

A woman two houses down the opposite side of the street was pruning plants in her front yard.

An SUV next door backed out of the driveaway.

Definitely not threats. He glanced at the neighboring houses crowding Koen’s place.

The green grass between the homes was hardly enough to be considered a yard. Too tight. Too confining.

This was why Tyler had moved out to the Kimberley. He needed space after what happened. A lot of space. Which he got in Western Australia.

He strode up to the front door. Lifting a fist, he knocked, half expecting Koen to throw the door open. He didn’t. Tyler frowned and knocked again. “Koen?” No sound came from inside. Where was he?

Tyler stepped back from the door. The translucent glass windows in the door provided a certain amount of privacy that was lost by the tall windows on either side. He shifted to those, but with the dark interior, he couldn’t see anything.

He grabbed the door handle. Locked. He dug into his jacket pocket for his keys. More than once, he’d tried to give Koen’s key back, but the older man had insisted that Tyler keep it just in case. After unlocking the door, Tyler tucked the keys back into his jacket and entered the house.

The spacious home was lit by the afternoon light coming in through the back windows.

It also revealed that someone had torn the place apart.

Tyler let the door click shut behind him as he surveyed the mess in the living room.

Pillows were thrown around. His boots crunched over what had once been a vase.

The couch sat at an odd angle up against the coffee table. A few picture frames lay on the table.

Who had wrecked the place?

“Koen?” He itched to grab the pistol that had been holstered on his hip six months ago. Now he had no weapons. Australia didn’t allow its citizens to carry or own weapons without a legitimate reason, which didn’t include self-defense. One of the few things he disliked about his home country.

Careful steps brought him deeper into his mate’s home.

On the left, he got a glimpse of the kitchen.

Items from the drawers lay piled on the counter.

All cabinet doors were shut, though. He moved silently through the living room.

Without a pistol, he couldn’t clear the space as he’d been trained, but he wasn’t about to rush into any area, even if he just spoke with his mate five minutes ago. What had happened in that short time?

“Koen.” Tyler headed down the hallway off the living room. It led to the master bedroom and bath, as well as an office space. He checked around the corner of another hall to get a view of the bedroom.

Koen sat on the floor, surrounded by boxes and their discarded contents. He rubbed the day’s worth of stubble on his jaw as he stared at the picture frame in his hand. His eyebrows were drawn together in a look of worry, but he wasn’t hurt.

Tyler entered the room. “Mate, what’re you doing?” Had the man single-handedly wrecked his own home? The bedroom was more upturned than the living room. Piles of clothes crowded the bed, and shoes were strewn about the floor, as if the closet had been emptied.

His mate looked up. “Tyler.” He stood. “Pardon the mess.” Lines of exhaustion marked his face. He smoothed down his wrinkled button-up shirt, then stepped over a couple of boxes. His left hand gripped the picture.

Something was wrong. Really wrong. In Tyler’s twenty-six years of knowing Koen, he’d never seen his mate this way. He was always so cheerful and did everything he could to bring a little bit more sunshine into the lives of others around him. Now a weight rested over his shoulders.

“What happened?”

Koen shrugged. “I was looking for something.” He stepped past Tyler and headed back into the living room.

“No kidding.” Tyler swiped a hand over his face and followed his mate into the small dining room off the kitchen. Behind the circular table, a door led to the garage where Koen kept his SUV. Puppies yapped from the small space that Koen had created for the unexpected litter his dog had.

“Those pups are doing great.” Koen pulled out a chair and sat at the table. He set the picture on the table and covered the manila folder lying on the smooth surface with his hands. “I’ll give you one when they get bigger.”