At the Quietest Word

by M. L. Buchman

  “Wimp.”

  “I wasn’t the one whose ass ended up in the dust.”

  Anton started explaining to Hannah, the only one of the four seated at the very front who hadn’t been there, “I just tripped, is all.”

  :He does go on,: Michelle sent forward. Her position placed them back to back, less than a meter apart. He could feel her there. Could feel the heat of her and it had awoken something inside him that he’d thought was dead.

  :His life expectancy is dropping rapidly,: Ricardo replied. Michelle had touched him as if it was the most natural thing, as if he wasn’t a horrifying mass of scars and destruction. Her hand had slid across his back like he was still human.

  :Just think about that kiss, then think about the fact that he isn’t getting any from anyone.:

  Think about that kiss? Even Wonder Woman couldn’t have a kiss with the power of that one. :He doesn’t have a girl? Why not?:

  :Ask him.:

  :My guess, he keeps pissing them off.:

  :Ha! Like you don’t (majorly strong query)?:

  “Goddamn it, Jesse. They’re doing it again. Necking with their brains.”

  “Yep, seem to be.” Jesse was definitely Texan, trying to be agreeable with everyone.

  :Anton never struck me as the jealous type.:

  :Oh, he’s not. But in the past he has offered to murder anyone who so much as touched me.:

  :Uh, he’s over that now, right (amused but desperate-sounding query)?:

  “Hey, semi-brother,” Michelle called out over the muted roar of the jet’s engines.

  “What do you want, Missy?”

  “What happened to your offer to kill anyone who so much as laid a finger on me?”

  “Huh!” Anton grunted out, then looked across at him. “Sorry, buddy. Hate to do it, but I’m going to have to put you down like the little weasel you are for kissing my semi-sister.”

  “Bummer. Thanks so much.”

  :(Giggling happily).:

  “And here we all were thinking it was just the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Jesse quipped.

  “Thought you were staying out of this.” Hannah slapped down on the brim of Jesse’s cowboy hat, forcing him to push it back up before he continued.

  “If you can tell me what this is, I’d be more than happy to stay out of it. Why, just a month back, I was no more than an innocent flyboy for the 160th SOAR. Now we’re flying to God alone knows where, with neither a hoot nor a holler about where we’re headed.”

  Ricardo grimaced.

  As soon as the location shoot was done, Isobel had been given a week off while the operation filmed lesser characters and other B-roll that they needed from the ranch. Next week they’d be shooting in a period log cabin somewhere in Idaho.

  “While you’re all on hiatus,” Colonel Gibson had found them within minutes of the last clap-board snapping out the end of filming, “I thought you might enjoy a little trip.”

  The sun had set by the time the ranch helo delivered them to the Great Falls airport where the sleek little Army Gulfstream jet had been waiting for them.

  Jesse and Anton had been so busy being gobsmacked that Major Mark Henderson (retired) was their pilot, that no one realized what was going on until it was too late.

  Only after they were aloft in the jet did they figure out that Gibson had led each member of the team to think that he’d given clear instructions to one of the others of Shadow Force. He’d actually given no instructions at all.

  Ricardo had to admire that, even if he didn’t appreciate it. The man was a master tactician in ways that Ricardo could never match.

  :Any theories?:

  :About what? Where Gibson is sending us or about why you’re such a jerk?:

  :What (question exclamation).:

  :Jerk (double, triple exclamation).:

  :Still, what (question). Why am I a jerk?:

  “Isobel,” he could hear Michelle’s voice easily over the well-muffled engine noise. “If a man gave you a steamy kiss hot enough to be dialing 911, then doesn’t try to get another, what would you call him?”

  “Sad,” Jesse whispered at him.

  “Dog meat,” Anton didn’t try to hide his assessment. “’Course, you’d be dead if you did try.”

  “I would call him a jerk,” Isobel said serenely.

  “And if hasn’t even mentioned liking it?”

  Whoops.

  His sister sighed loudly, “Then I would have to say that he’s my brother.”

  Under the cover of everyone’s laughter, he sent, :I didn’t want to be pushy.:

  :There’s not pushy and then there’s comatose.:

  In the silence that followed, Michelle wondered if she’d gone too far.

  The silence between them stretched long enough for the other’s laughter to fade and take up another conversation.

  Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! She couldn’t seem to help screwing up around Ricardo. They needed to be on a much louder plane and not have telepathy. Then they couldn’t talk and she could maybe keep her foot our of her mouth for ten seconds in a row.

  She had to be so careful around Ricardo and she kept screwing up. He’d been in a medically-induced coma for three weeks as part of saving his life, and he almost hadn’t come out of it.

  Forbidden to go to him, she’d spent her time in Isobel’s apartment. Except when Isobel forged through her brother’s prohibition against visitors, the two of them had simply huddled in the same apartment together—only rarely speaking but both taking comfort from it. Isobel dithered over choosing her next script and Michelle lost herself in the EMT courses.

  For nine months, they’d lived together for the first time in the decade since college.

  Not once had they spoken of Ricardo beyond his present condition; it was as if neither of them had dared. Michelle had moved out the week before he was released, careful to leave no trace of her presence in Isobel’s guest bedroom.

  Michelle looked at Isobel, but she was looking at something beyond Michelle’s shoulder.

  It was all the warning she had before Ricardo pressed the release on her seatbelt and hauled her to her feet.

  :Hey!:

  He ignored her protests and led her by the hand to the rearmost seats. She glanced back, but her view of the others’ expressions was blocked by Isobel moving forward to join them in Ricardo’s vacated seat.

  :Ricardo! What the hell?:

  He pushed her down into one of the only side-by-side seats, the last pair at the back of the plane. When she didn’t snap her belt buckle, he reached across and did it for her before latching his own.

  “What happened to the ‘yourself first’ rule?”

  “That’s oxygen masks.”

  “Same. Same.”

  “Does everything have to be a challenge with you?”

  “No,” at least she didn’t think it did.

  Ricardo didn’t say a word.

  She waited until she couldn’t stand the silence any longer, :I’m sorry.:

  :For what?:

  :For the comatose remark.:

  :Seriously.:

  Michelle wanted to bury her face in her hands. The churn in her gut had her looking around for the nearest barf bag.

  He remained stonily silent; his hands clasped tightly in front of him.

  :I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.: The last sounded like a wail in her head. That one moment had been so good and she’d screwed it up so badly that—

  :I meant it like, Seriously (question mark). You think I don’t know that I was tortured or comatose or any of the rest of it (query). Could wish that you didn’t know, but that ship already sailed.:

  “Can we just talk? Out loud?” Her gut still twisted in such a painful knot that she wasn’t sure about whether or not it was safe to breathe.

  “You first.”

  “I don’t seem to be having much success with that.” When he didn’t start, she reached out. :Please. (begging shamelessly) (or shamefacedly).:

  :I�
��: Ricardo forced himself to speak aloud. “I already talk more to you than I do to anybody.”

  “Not Isobel.”

  “Okay, maybe not…but maybe. Are you jealous of my sister?”

  “Yes!” :Oh God, don’t tell her I said that.:

  “Like she wouldn’t already know. Remember what she can do.”

  Michelle glanced forward. If Isobel was aware of Michelle’s feelings, she wasn’t making any sign.

  Anton’s laugh rolled down the plane. He held out a palm and Isobel high-fived it.

  Please let that not be about her.

  “You’re jealous of Isobel because I speak to her? She’s my twin.”

  “Maybe jealous is the wrong word. Envious?”

  “Of what?”

  :I wish I’d never said anything.:

  :Too late. Give, Bowman.:

  Michelle wished she was braver than she knew she was.

  Ricardo slipped out a hand and took one of hers, lacing their fingers together.

  Not trusting her thoughts, she spoke aloud. “I listened to you for six days of hell. At first, I figured you weren’t real. I thought you were just a scary-as-shit nightmare. For six days it was, from our mental breakthrough until Anton saved you.”

  “Wouldn’t have made it through even those days if it wasn’t for the hope you gave me. Took me a while to believe you were real as well. Didn’t know there could be that much goodness out there.” He reached out with his free hand and drew a line of fire down her cheek with a soft touch.

  How could he be so wrong? About everything! She wasn’t any of that. Desperate to not have to say that, she just blundered ahead…

  “Do you remember what you were begging for the whole time?”

  “To make it stop.”

  “No. You were begging me to tell your sister that you loved her. Nothing else. Just that.”

  “Oh, right.” He tightened his hand in hers. “Okay then. It’s just that after Daddy skipped on us and Ma had to work so hard, Isobel practically raised me. She’s more my mother than Ma ever was. I went Army to help keep Izzy safe. I sent her all my paychecks to stay in college after Ma died.”

  “I—” But she couldn’t say it.

  There was just no possible way.

  She wanted someone to love her that unconditionally.

  She wanted…the man who could place his words in her head to love her that much.

  Even if she didn’t know whether she had the capacity to love him back.

  Chapter 7

  “What the hell you up to, man?” Anton jostled him awake with an elbow to the ribs, too hard to be an accident.

  Still in the plane. Still night. Scattered lights far below said they were still at cruise altitude.

  “Ugh! You’re an ugly mug to wake up to.” Ricardo rubbed his eyes and tried to make sense of the change. He’d been holding Michelle’s hand. Finally feeling at peace for the first time since forever, he’d been lulled by that ultimate sleep aid for any Spec Ops soldier, the soft roar of a jet engine prior to a mission. And he’d woken to—

  “Hey! I like this ugly mug.”

  “I’d rather be looking at your sister’s. Way prettier than you.”

  “Yeah, she got all the beauty and I got all the brawn. Just don’t be saying that kinda shit around me, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, Ricardo, I get that my sister is a hot number, but she’s just Missy in my head. My semi-sister or whatever she decides to call us this month. I don’t need you or any other half-pint twerp messing with that.”

  “Trust me, I feel your pain,” he nodded forward to where Isobel sat opposite Michelle. “Except I get the whole world telling me that about her: movie posters, sexy trailers, all of it.”

  “Ouch, bro. Didn’t think of that. But just…lay off, you know.”

  “Do I still get to kiss her?”

  “That something you planning on doing again?”

  “Hell yeah. If she’s willing, I absolutely am.”

  “Shit,” Anton sighed deeply. “And I really liked you.”

  “Liked?”

  “Gonna have to bust your ass up into teeny tiny pieces. Trust me, it’ll hurt you more than it’ll hurt me but it’s still gonna hurt, ’cause, you know, you’re the man, bro.” Anton held up a fist, like asking for a friendly fist bump.

  So Ricardo gave it to him.

  Then Anton dropped his fist—about the size of Ricardo’s head—back into his lap.

  “Tell me how it is you two have the same parents but don’t sound anything alike.”

  “Dude, weren’t you listening none? We got no parents in common. They’re—”

  “You two have had the same parents since you were three, no matter who birthed you.”

  “But we’re—”

  “Yeah, semi-siblings, like you’re a truck convoy or something. Give it up. So what’s the difference? You play good old country boy to the hilt and she’s—” Ricardo shrugged. He wasn’t sure just what Michelle was.

  “I sound like a good old country boy because that’s what I am. Ma and Pa weren’t nothing fancy—just North Carolina farmers. I mighta gone military, but I always wanted to be just like them. Whereas Missy…”

  “Wanted to be anything else?”

  Anton nodded. “Yeah. She was never content. She has a really good ear, so she’d listen to all these online video tutorial things, copy their accents. You’d never know who was gonna show up at the dinner table. French, Scottish, even this weird Yankee stuff that she said was authentic Massachusetts fisherfolk. I had to threaten her with the murder of her Smurfs collection to get rid of the California Valley girl. Ended up with this accentless thing that she says is from the Pacific Northwest.”

  “She doesn’t sound so accentless to me.” In fact, her softest Texas was music to his San Antonio-bred ears. So much so that now he heard her like that in his head as well.

  “That’s your fault. Goddamn it, I am gonna have to smush your head down to peanut sized. Oh, some of it’s Isobel’s fault, but that whole Texas-Latino thing she’s got going is mostly your shit.”

  Languages had always been a bitch for him. There wasn’t a Delta operator alive who couldn’t wield at least two or three extras. He could learn the vocab and grammar fast enough, but getting the sound right was a real bear. Mexico and South America were the biggest pain. Every country’s accent was so regional that blending in was a total bear.

  “What does she sound like when she’s just being her?”

  “Hell if I know, man.”

  “But you’re her brother.”

  “Semi-brother, yeah. And to show just how little I know, it’s your sorry self she wants to be kissing.”

  “But she could do so much better.”

  Anton eyed him strangely, “You believe that shit?”

  “I know that shit.”

  “Damn it!”

  “What?”

  “Now I really am going to have to pound your ass, Ricardo. At least hard enough to pop your head out of it. A woman like Missy comes at you, you do not turn her away.”

  “Not even to save myself an ass-whupping from her semi-brother?”

  “Not even.”

  Ricardo glanced forward, but Michelle was hidden by the seat backs. It wasn’t like she could have gotten off. She had to be here.

  :Hey,: he sent up the aisle. He just wanted to see if—

  :Go away.:

  He waited, but that was it.

  Crap!

  Too bad this was an Army C-37A. It meant the galley was dry, because he’d be really happy to get drunk right at the moment.

  “What was that?” Isobel arched one of eyebrows at her.

  “Just me telling Ricardo to go away.”

  “Like opposite corners of the plane isn’t far enough?”

  Michelle shook her head. It was nowhere near far enough.

  “What do you have against my brother?”

  Michelle glanced across the aisle at Hannah and Je
sse, but they were both asleep—with their ankles overlapping for crying out loud. She turned back to Isobel but didn’t have a good answer, so she offered a bad one, “Everything!”

  Isobel laughed right in her face.

  “And no, I don’t need you to tell me that my feelings are mixed up worse than a ladybug hatch.”

  “I try never to listen in on my friends feelings. It is too intrusive.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  “However, if you’d like I could—”

  “No!”

  Again that silver-screen laugh that was so human and friendly that everyone thought it was fake, but Michelle knew was the real Isobel shining through.

  “Maybe you could just tell me what Ricardo is—”

  “Eww! No. Why do you think I learned how to block my awareness of other’s feelings to begin with? Knowing what your twin brother’s emotions are is actually very creepy.”

  Michelle recalled the first place Ricardo’s defenses had gone was that he loved his sister like a sister. But what if…“Are his feelings that weird?”

  “Yes, at least to a female.”

  “Eww!” How did she not know that about him?

  “Knowing that the most important thing in his entire life is baseball? For years and years. T-ball, sandlot softball, the high school team. Girls would throw themselves at him and—”

  “You’re not going to tell me that he’d ignore them? He doesn’t strike me as the sweet, virginal type.” More like the darkly dangerous outsider—silent, but always watching.

  “No. But he never cared about one of them like he did baseball. Not even when they were both busy—”

  “Okay, way too much information.” Michelle stared up at the plane’s ceiling trying to picture something that…foreign. Her teens had been about frequent mistakes, wildly passionate, deeply heartfelt mistakes—thankfully no really horrid ones. And maybe the boys had been thinking about…She’d have to agree, “Eww!”

  “Do you really want to know what Ricardo is feeling?”

  “No!” Michelle covered her face with both of her hands. “Yes,” she mumbled without looking up.

  “Ask him.”