She couldn’t argue with him there. They sprinted toward a far door and burst into the cool night air before dashing to the safety of his truck.
24
Saturday, April 22, 2017, 0230 hours EDT, Raleigh, NC
Abigail pulled on a pair of sweats and reached for her tank top. Her arm twinged. No surprise there. It’d been aching ever since their dust-up with the MS-13 gang members. She checked it in the mirror. Only a black line of stitches. No blood or anything. She’d have to get Gabe to re-bandage it.
Her shower had refreshed her, but she couldn’t sleep because her insides still jangled. From adrenaline, nerves, or the hot chocolate Nick had prepared for her, she didn’t know.
After adding a tank top, she opened the door and peered through. Silence, something she expected in the wee hours of the morning. The door to the guest room where Marti slept was closed.
Nick had put her gear in the study and pulled out the futon couch so it formed a bed. “I’ve got the futon in my study made up for you, so whenever you decide not to cause trouble, you’ll have a place to sleep,” he’d groused after he’d finished interviewing Gabe and her. And you, Romeo,” he turned to Gabe, “you’re in the basement. Now to go and scrape some MS-13 off the pavement and your hardwoods.”
Then he left after admonishing them to lock everything up and turn on the alarm. He’d probably be back by dawn.
No problems there. Abigail had armed the alarm with great pleasure. Maybe now she could make sense of things. And she didn’t want to be alone. Outside, thunder rumbled low. Lightning flickered through the blinds over the study’s window. Double the not-wanting-to-be-alone part as one of the first storms of the season made its presence felt.
Grabbing her backpack, she made her way down the steps to the basement. The quiet sound of typing filled the air. Gabe seemed hard at work on something. Of course, he’d been waiting for her to finish so he could get cleaned up.
An idea popped into her head. Before she realized it, she blurted, “Hey, Dav—” She crashed to a halt, then stammered, “Hey, hey, hey. I’m done.”
His fingers paused. His focus remaining on the screen, he cocked an eyebrow and resumed tapping. “Sorry. Working on something.”
She settled beside him. “What?”
“An idea.”
At least he hadn’t seemed to notice her blunder. “Which is?”
“To be determined.”
“Gabe!”
He grinned. “Sorry. I like to keep my cards close to the chest until I’m sure.”
“Have at it, then.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out the small Bible she used. Once more, she found the verses in Romans about God working things for the good of those who loved Him. Lord, I’m confused. Truly, I am. Especially about David. Why had her mouth almost blurted his name a moment ago?
Crap.
Wrong word. Wrong time.
Because you love him. You don’t want to admit it, though. That still, small whisper seemed to come from the Holy Spirit.
No, I don’t love him.
Bull.
Would her conscience be quiet for once?
She needed to focus on the case. She pulled out her folder containing Jonathan’s description of the tragedy eight years before that had taken the lives of ten of his best friends and almost that of David. For a moment, she ran her finger over her brother’s work. She checked the date. 8/14/2010. Where had she been that night? Maybe with her friend, Karen. They’d often met for coffee or Bible study. Her friend had helped Abigail recover her faith as she worked through the tragedies of losing her parents and attempting suicide.
She closed her eyes. Gradually, that evening filtered into her mind. It’d been hot. Sultry. A typical North Carolina summer night. Time with Karen in God’s Word refreshed her. That was the first night during her six-month leave of absence that she felt hope instead of fear. Maybe things would work out. Maybe she and Jonathan could recover from losing their parents, and maybe she could return to work that fall. She came home to find the kitchen dark. The same with the living room. Where was her brother?
She found him in his study, his gaze intense, his eyes focused on something he wrote as if his life depended on it. She watched him for a full minute.
Nothing, no sign of recognition, only the knit brow he’d worn when the nightmares from The Incident hounded him. Lord, give him peace. Please! With that, she crept away, completed her bedtime preparations, and crawled into bed, all without disturbing her brother’s task.
Now, she knew why.
Tons of pages lay before her, at least twenty. He’d written it all out. The singularly worst day of his life, all now before her in his neat cursive. She began reading.
That morning started like any other in the village. I rose before dawn and grabbed my Bible to have some alone time with God in my rack before everyone else woke up. It was a good time. I read Psalm 91...
She set the papers on her lap. Every soldier who loved God had read that psalm at one point or another. Had God protected Jonathan that day? Some would say no, that He certainly hadn’t protected him or his friends who’d died. But He had.
An ordinary day quickly turned to one of attack. A boy, a watcher the chieftain had posted at the crest of the ridge, shouted the warning. Everyone’s training kicked in. The village militia and Mighty Men snapped to their positions.
Then the bloodletting began.
The entire village, save for Nabeelah, and ten of the Mighty Men perished within half an hour, not because of any lack of training, but because of the sheer numbers of Taliban attacking. Though Jonathan hadn’t provided a precise number, Dash, the captain of the team that had saved the three survivors, reported over a hundred Taliban dead. By Jonathan’s count, more than twice as many had descended upon the village.
Abigail shook her head in amazement.
Jonathan’s words reported in stark black pen strokes every event, every detail. She could almost hear the crackle of gunfire, the screams of the dying. She could taste the dust, the dirt covering him, David, and Nabeelah, not to mention the dead bodies of Jessie and Ray, who’d died beside Jonathan. The Taliban had known what they were doing. Using snipers, they picked off Jessie and Gizmo, the communications sergeants. Then they focused on the command structure. First Captain, their commanding officer, with a grenade. Next, Tidwell, chief warrant officer and second-in-command, via gunshot. And then...
Hot tears suddenly filled Abigail’s eyes as Jonathan described in gory detail first David’s neck wound Jonathan patched up and then the bullet that slammed into his friend’s leg with such force it cracked his femur. He’d nearly bled out, would have done so had it not been for the tourniquet Jonathan applied. Through her brother’s words, she saw the blood on the floor, on his hands, on his friend. She heard David’s cries despite his bravery.
Abigail rested her forehead against her fists. David, I never knew. You don’t talk about it, so I never knew the pain you endured. You were so valiant, fighting until you could literally fight no more. A lion’s heart. That’s what you have. Yet a tender lion. Is this hole you have in your memory God’s way of protecting you?
The ache filling her heart shocked her. She forced herself to continue reading. From her own investigation, she’d thought she’d understood the devastation her brother experienced. She hadn’t.
She set the pages down. New anguish filled her. Jonathan thought he’d failed the village and his friends, David especially. And finally, Nabeelah when DIA took her away in the middle of the night. That evening after the attack, as she’d held him as he’d wept for his friends, she’d known the events of the day had devastated him. What she hadn’t understood was the way the events had nearly destroyed his will to live.
“Abigail?”
Huh? Oh. She sat on a plush leather couch of a basement man cave, not on an Army cot in the middle of Ghazni Province.
Still holding his laptop, Gabe knelt in front of her and brushed her hair back. “Abigail.”<
br />
“I-I’m fine.”
His finger lifted a tear from her cheek. “No, you’re not. Want to talk about it?”
How could she explain her grief when she couldn’t put it into words for herself? “Not really.”
His sherry brown eyes clouded, but he held his peace and settled on the couch beside her. “I have a theory.”
She pushed a smile through her sadness. “Which relates to the cards you were holding close to your chest?”
“Yep.” He tapped a few more keys and set the laptop on a coffee table. “Marti told me about the glass house. It seemed like somehow, someone knew you were going to be with David and Jonathan Thursday. You didn’t tell Sal, did you?”
“Nope. I just reported that the interviews were taking longer than anticipated. Period.”
“Someone tipped him off. That got me to thinking. Had someone set up tripwires?”
She heaved a sigh. “You lost me.”
“Sorry.” He shook his head and smothered a yawn. “You’re not a geek like I am. I meant what if someone set it up so that if anyone accessed any information related to Katrina Miller, it’d send a signal to that person? Sal knew about the Mighty Men investigation, but he didn’t know we were looking into Katrina Miller.”
She stared as her weary mind slowly made the connection. “Like he might have directed someone?”
“You got it.” He raised his hands above his head and arched his back. “Sorry. Long day.”
“That’s the truth.”
“Anyway, I dug around a little bit. Just enough to know that someone really clever did set up tripwires. I make one wrong move, and they know I’m there.”
“I don’t want to put you in the cross hairs—”
“I know.” He reached up and sifted some of her hair between his fingers. “That’s why I’m stopping. I’m so tired I could make a stupid mistake.”
She nodded. Her gaze automatically slid back to the pages on her lap.
He touched her hand. “Jonathan’s story?”
“In all of it’s glorious, gruesome detail.” She curled her fingers around his. “I could never imagine losing ten of my closest friends in one day—half an hour, to be exact. He did.” That infernal lump filled her throat. “I had no idea of the way it almost broke him. Or maybe did break him.”
“Why do you say that?”
Her mind shifted to eight years before, on the afternoon of April 15 when she’d come to his temporary quarters at Camp Romeo. “He was sitting on his rack. His hands were shaking. I... I think the shock was beginning to wear off. He was beginning to realize what had happened. His friends were dead. And David was...”
She couldn’t continue.
Gabe pulled her close so that she rested her cheek on his shoulder.
She drew in a shuddering breath. “DIA took Nabeelah away that night. I went to the village the next day. When I got back, it was like I couldn’t get through to my brother, like he’d put up this wall around himself.”
“Maybe that was the only way he could continue to function.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged.
He peered at her arm. “You want me to put something over those stitches?”
“You mind?” She couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—meet his gaze. If she did, she’d start crying again.
After a moment, he heaved a small sigh. “Let me go and get cleaned up first. You gonna be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
With a kiss to her temple, he rose and dug around in the duffel he’d brought with him.
Abigail stretched out on the soft leather couch. Ah. Now this was nice. Reaching up, she pulled down the fleece she’d noticed folded along the back. She closed her eyes. Maybe sleep would steal her away to oblivion where she could forget about David.
Hardly.
All too well, she remembered her night from the September before, the way he’d held her as she’d tried to sleep again after her nightmare. His build had been so firm, so welcoming, a badly needed harbor during the storm that had been the Colonel Boone case. And what had she done? She’d told him their breakup was his fault because of his lack of trust. Maybe so in some ways, but in others?
Is it worth it, tossing aside what I had with him?
She thought she’d drawn her line. She was done with him.
Still, David had been willing to cross it, to try and work things out. Shouldn’t she have met him in the middle?
No.
She turned on her side as she thought about that one. David was stuck in Burning Tree, a prisoner of his general mistrust of people. Gabe was in her life now. He understood her. Cared about her. They had fun together. Had attraction. All too well, she remembered his kisses from the beginning of the week. Totally enjoyable, something she could quickly get used to. Then David’s just forty-eight hours—was it really just two days?—ago. Oh, wow. Every part of her being had rejoiced at that kiss.
Hot tears burned her eyes as she squeezed them shut. Lord, it’s not fair. I want to be with Gabe, to feel all of those feelings I felt for David, not be attracted beyond measure to someone who’s too scared to trust You and others. It’s not fair! One escaped and slid down her cheek.
Yag.
Once more, David Shepherd had made her cry, even if she wasn’t with him.
Gentle fingers feathered her cheek. “Abigail?”
Gabe sat on the edge of the couch, his hair mussed, his skin warm from his shower.
She forced her eyes open.
“Jonathan’s story can wait, okay?”
She pushed upright. “I know.”
He resumed his seat beside her and touched her arm. “How are the stitches?”
“There.”
“Is it hurting?”
She shrugged. “A two on a scale of one to ten. I think I banged it earlier tonight.”
“And our wild ride a little bit ago didn’t help.”
She nodded. Her nose quivered as he leaned close to tape some gauze over the wound. Ah, soap. Something she associated with him.
Gabe kissed her shoulder, which had been left bare by the tank top she wore.
She turned her head.
As he covered her lips with his, she closed her eyes and tried to let his presence fill her. When she came up for air, she ran her hand down his chest. “I feel kind of naughty.”
He smiled. “Because we’re making out in your ex-husband’s basement?”
That did it. She chuckled. “Something like that.” Then she sobered as she thought about the reason why they were there. “Gabe?”
He paused from where he kissed her neck. “Yeah?”
“Do you mind if I sleep down here tonight? I... I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“Not at all.” Finally, he released her and whispered that they absolutely had to get some sleep.
Abigail snuggled on the couch underneath the fleece. A few moments later, darkness filled the room as Gabe switched off a lamp beside the couch. His lips brushed her temple, and he murmured, “G’night, Abigail.”
He sighed as he lay down on the floor next to the fireplace.
As she drifted toward the void of sleep, all she saw was the deep concern in David’s eyes that September before.
25
Saturday, April 22, 2017, 1200 hours EDT, Raleigh, NC
Abigail sat cross-legged on the futon in Nick’s study. She stared at Jonathan’s papers on her lap and her cell phone on the canvas beside her. Her head felt full of fuzzies. Yag. Her late night had truly messed her up. Thanks to her normal wake-up time, her eyes had popped open at ten, hardly enough sleep when she’d gotten to bed at four that morning. Gabe slept sprawled on his back near the fireplace. She crept upstairs with her backpack in hand and found a note from Nick.
The detective had come in at six and crashed into bed for some shuteye. Coffee was ready to go in the coffeemaker, and he’d pointed her in the direction of some food for breakfast. With sweet rolls in her stomach and a steaming c
up of coffee beside her, she intended to dive further into Jonathan’s pages.
Her burner phone trilled. Without looking at the Caller ID, she grabbed it before it could ring again.
“Abigail, hey.”
Oh, no. David. She couldn’t hang up on him, especially when her heart jumped at his baritone. “Where are you?”
“Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Stone’s holed up at some estate on the Outer Banks.”
She frowned. “What?”
He repeated himself, then added, “We’re going in tonight to get him. Me, Jonathan, and Frisco. Bryson’s manning the boat.”
“Wait a minute.” She scratched her head. “By sea?”
“It’s the only way. Pray for us.”
Abigail’s eyes filled. “Always. Please, come back.”
“You know we will.”
Her thoughts turned to what she’d read the night before. He almost hadn’t come back eight years ago. She tried to stave off the fear. Before she realized it, she blurted, “I love you.”
“I love you as well. We’ll talk later. Take care.”
Suddenly, she wanted to keep him on the line, to tell him her thoughts, to try and make him understand everything, including her desire to pick up the pieces after arresting Sal. But no. Nothing made sense now.
“David?”
Only silence. He must have already hung up.
Now she had nothing to do except to dive back into her work. She picked up the pages and continued reading where she’d left off the night before.
At the end, she hit pay dirt.
Though he finished his chronology, Jonathan provided an assessment of the attack from the tactical eye of a soldier. Everything he said backed up what he remembered years later. The attack had been too coordinated. Too precise. The Taliban had known they needed the overwhelming force of numbers, who to hit first, where the fortified positions were, and how to compromise them. Most likely because Jessie—God rest his soul—had passed along that information to Sal, who in turn passed it to Shamal Khan.
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