by Sienna Mynx
“We have your…report,” said the man, calmly raising his thick eyebrows in challenge. “What else can you tell us?”
Liam felt Alexa’s glare burning into him.
“With all due respect, sir, I wasn’t about to give up anything about Operation Scorpion to some snot-nosed kid fresh out of Annapolis. To hell with that.”
The man looked pointedly over Liam’s left shoulder and his escort, the red-faced kid, left the wardroom without a sound.
“I had a feeling you were holding out on us.”
“Goes both ways, Mr.—”
“Green. Paul Green.”
He doubted it was the man’s real name. Liam had been given a Paul Green identity once on assignment, and he assumed this man’s name was no coincidence. No one else in the room seemed to get it. Looking more closely, Liam could see the man was ex-military, still fit and steely-looking, watchful and ready. He was old enough to have been in one of the early CT units, long before Liam was even born, and if the brass had him here, out of retirement, consulting most likely, then there was probably a very good reason.
“So it was Amir Sarkhir. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Liam said bitterly. “I was his personal trophy whipping-boy. Kind of got used to it, actually.”
The man chuckled, but no one else did. Liam reclined, reflecting on his ability to withstand physical pain. Fuck them all: they never broke him, no fucking way. He exhaled once, and in a low, calm voice, recounted his capture. It was then he learned they thought he had been on the airlift out of the Afghan mountains. But like the captain of a ship, Liam wasn’t moving off that rock until every last one of his men was.
Liam shared how the discovery of a hidden IED had him putting a wounded kid in his place on the transport. He was going to hike out on his own after he held Amir’s men back so the rescue could get off the ground.
He took a hit, fleeing into the mountains with a busted kneecap. He spent weeks recovering in an Iraqi hospital until Amir’s men showed up one night and discovered him. They killed all the kind people who’d prayed over him and nursed his wounds. Liam told this part of the tale through gritted teeth. The rest of his recovery was just mind over body. He knew his leg was shot to shit for the rest of his life. He was lucky it hadn’t needed to be amputated.
Over the following months he remained confined for days, completely alone. Several times, he thought he’d starve to death. Then they’d take him to a cell, feed him, and clean him up. Once done, they’d dress him in a military uniform that was not his own—to Liam, it looked to be Pakistani but he was never sure—and march him around the camp. Then Sarkhir would offer him sweets and try, with his limited English, to charm him. When that didn’t work, the beatings would resume. Early on, Liam suspected that two things saved his life: he was their highest-ranking capture, and even when tortured, he never showed them weakness. Liam suspected Sarkhir liked the game, enjoyed trying to break him. Several other captured soldiers had been tortured and killed for sport, most of it done right before Liam’s eyes.
He felt his chest tighten with rage as he recalled the horrors. It was the loneliness that was the worst part of it. There were days he’d have cut off his dick to hear Kennedy’s voice, feel her gentle touch to remind him that she’d be there for him. To hear her softly whisper in his ear that eventually he’d return home and she’d be waiting.
Over the secure line, the Secretary of Defense started in with his questions. Liam managed to offer some useful information. His memory did have gaps. There were blackout moments where his mind had just shut down. But what he did remember, he shared, right down to Sarkhir’s quirky habits. He liked Nintendo; there was a console somewhere in the compound. Liam could occasionally hear Sarkhir’s distinctive laughter through the walls as Sarkhir’s men walked him, blindfolded, to a cell. He recalled Sarkhir got frequent headaches, ones that probably could have been handled easily with a couple of Tylenol, but he refused to take them. And until they discovered Liam understood Arabic, Sarkhir and his men would converse freely in front of him. Sarkhir spoke of two wives and children, and a younger brother who lived in America.
At this, Mr. Green looked over at the man next to him, then back to Liam.
“Did you ever see this man? The wives?”
Liam shook his head. Liam couldn’t give them times or dates, either, because after the first time they’d put him into the hole, he never had a sense of time. He was still having trouble understanding he’d been gone five years. One moment it felt like days, then the next, infinity. His head was that fucked up.
The debriefing lasted two hours and Liam constantly wanted a fresh glass of water, no ice. He needed something to quench his eternal thirst. Once the meeting ended, they told him again he was a hero.
“When do I get to see my family?” he interrupted.
“Your rescue story is being arranged to best protect you, and those still serving,” replied Alexa. “You’ll learn more about it soon.”
“Does the media know?” Liam asked, a little hopeful. Maybe Kennedy did know and fought like hell to get to him.
“No,” Alexa replied flatly.
She shifted forward in her seat and made a cutting motion across her throat. Liam glared while she offered a well-rehearsed closing to the gentlemen on the secure line. Then she smiled across the table at Liam. “We have intelligence that Sarkhir has several cells in the States—run by his brother. That’s why it’s imperative we keep your rescue contained. He thinks you died. We want it to remain that way for now.”
“No!” Liam barked.
“It’s been decided,” Alexa said dryly.
“By who? You? Why hasn’t my family been told? I want to speak to my wife!” He slammed his fist on the table.
No one spoke. This troubled Liam. Why did men he called brothers refuse to look him in the eye?
“What is it? I know there’s something. You can’t even fucking look at me.”
“Gentlemen.”
Alexa wasn’t the ranking officer in the room this time, but men from both sides of the table began to rise and walk, single-file, to the door. Liam stared hard at Ant and Eric. Both turned their faces slightly to Alexa, who nodded that they could stay. Liam felt himself coiled, tight, ready to unload on someone. The lady colonel looked like a better and better candidate.
Alexa reached for a small finger-control and turned on the video feed. Liam’s gaze switched to an image of Kennedy. She held a small girl. His breath caught. The girl looked to be no more than three. She was more hair than anything, just like his sweet Kennedy. They grinned at the camera, for him. Liam let go the first genuine smile he’d given in five long years.
He’d just met his baby girl, and her name was Mackenzie. He wiped his hand down his face and blinked to be sure the vision was real. It had to be. No dream ever felt so vivid. He shook his head and laughed. Still, Anthony and Eric cast their heads down. “Why the fuck are you all so grim? Look at her. Look at my girl. Ain’t she beautiful? And look at…Kay. Damn. Damn. Kay is still gorgeous, ain’t she? Damn. Look at my girls.” He gasped.
No one rejoiced with him.
“Brother,” Eric cleared his throat. “Kennedy took it hard when you went down. She was about six months pregnant then. She never made it into the seventh month and—”
“What?” He looked at Mackenzie. She looked perfect. No little girl on the planet could look any sweeter. What could be wrong? “Tell me.”
“She went into labor early,” Alexa blurted out. “Preeclampsia is what the doctors called it. Almost hemorrhaged to death. Both of them barely made it out alive.”
Liam’s eyes went to the image of his girls again. He felt the walls close in on him as a dark wave of dread settled in his gut. “She needed me,” he said hollowly.
Vasquez sat forward. “Liam, it was hard on all of us but it was never your fault.”
Liam never cried in the five years they beat him until his body gave out. He never dropped one fucking tear. But this, to
know that Kennedy nearly bled to death trying to bring their daughter into the world, was too much to bear. He blinked away tears that fell despite his efforts. “Is Mackenzie all right?”
“Look at her,” Eric said and all eyes went to the screen. Alexa switched slides to Mackenzie’s pre-school picture. He hadn’t noticed it in the other picture, but in this one he saw it. She had Kennedy’s smile.
“She’s your daughter; she’s a fighter.” Alexa smiled.
Liam gazed upon the miracle before him. He couldn’t wait to hold her. “Give me their file. I know there is one.”
Eric and Vasquez exchanged looks.
“Give me the damn file. What the fuck is going on?”
He tried to accept the fact that his disappearance had almost cost them their child. Now he wanted to read every single detail of her little life. And how his sweetheart recovered without him.
Eric grabbed Alexa’s remote and Vasquez handed over the file. Liam wasted no time. His eyes were glued to the documents. Kay remained in Fayetteville. His sweetheart had never left. He feared she’d gone back to her mother, who would undoubtedly erase every trace of him from Mackenzie’s life.
On the screen, slides flipped past, then stopped. He felt the display of light rather than saw it. But the silence enveloping the room forced him to lift his gaze. In that moment, he wished he hadn’t. He wished he’d delayed the reality just a little bit longer. Whoever said ‘ignorance is bliss’ spoke the truth. What he saw on the screen cut him to the core.
Kennedy’s wedding picture. A dress she never wore with him. When he married her they stood before the justice of the peace with her in a blue sundress and flip-flops and him in a Green Day T-shirt and sneakers. On her wedding day, she wore a slender, fitted flowing white gown with a beaded corset top that tastefully lifted her cleavage. The kind of dress in those magazines she used to collect around their place. He promised one day to buy her a fancy dress, a big diamond, invite her mother and father and all those snooty relatives of hers that hated him, then do it big. He made a lot of promises he didn’t keep. Now he had to face the image of the man who stepped in and did just that. Gave his wife what he never could. Holding his daughter, who wore a ring of flowers around her head, was Phil Freeman.
“What the fuck is this?” Liam whispered. His heart wouldn’t be convinced. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it had been some secret mission to keep her safe, fool his enemies that she wasn’t connected to him. Yes! The government had staged some fake wedding.
Vasquez was the only one brave enough to clear his throat and speak. “Freeman was a friend to her…after. He was there with her mother, helping when little Mac was in the neonatal unit. It was touch-and-go for a minute. The doctors were shocked at Mac’s recovery. Her lungs weren’t quite developed, and she got an infection.” Vasquez took a breath. He spoke so fast.
His accent, usually barely detectable, now ran his words together.
Liam didn’t mind. He wanted to hear the part about the marriage being staged. Get to that fucking part!
“Phil…well, Mackenzie needed special attention and he was um, he was there to help when she came home. She only weighed four and a half pounds, brother. She was so fragile. So was Kennedy. Fragile, I mean. Her depression had her barely functioning. We all had to do what we could. She wouldn’t let her mother stay, her mother only made things worse. Kay barely let Angelina help. And Eric and I were deployed, so Phil, he um, he was there to help.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” Liam’s voice hardened and his hands curled into fists. Where was the part of this being for Kennedy’s protection? The part where they disclosed another operation, one that kept his woman out of harm’s way, not in the arms of this motherfucker.
Alexa sat forward. “She fell in love with him, Liam. That’s what this is.”
“With all due respect, Colonel, shut the fuck up!” Eric shouted at her.
Alexa blinked. Her face registered shock, then outrage at Eric’s outburst.
Liam took the blow straight to his heart and it shattered. He’d known unspeakable pain, but nothing compared. This was his girl, the only woman he’d ever loved, not just with another man but married to him.
Maybe it was possible. Maybe Kennedy could forget him and move on. Maybe. She had been young when he met her, and they’d been separated when he had to go to school, enlist, and then ship off to training and missions that stole years from them. Born into that snooty family who thought he was some cradle-robbing dirt, maybe distance could tear them apart.
Liam first saw her at a house party and thought she was just another snot-nosed bitch. Until she smiled at him. Her smile forced him to cross the room despite himself. Back then he had little respect for anything, least of all women, something he’d learned at his stepfather’s knee. He’d watched years of abuse heaped on his mother. But Kennedy had been different. Her love and trust for him made him different. She looked at him like no other girl ever did, like he was some kind of hero. Silly as it sounded, he needed someone to believe in him.
One night at a party in the Hamptons, she got close to him. Real close to him. And he forgot this girl wasn’t an option. He looked down into those big brown eyes of hers and lost himself. She gave herself to him. Told him she loved him no matter what anybody thought about their differences in race or class. Said she would be his girl. And it didn’t take him long to believe. Maybe she could fall for another man, maybe. With any other man he’d try to understand—maybe. But not this man, God help him, any man but this man.
“She fell in love with Phil Freeman?” He repeated the words as if pronouncing a foreign language.
“Brother, listen to me.” Eric shot Alexa a withering glare. “They just got married last year. She didn’t believe us when we said you were dead. She almost lost her mind. She started saying she talked to you in her dreams. She even turned away from her faith. She met with psychics to find proof you were alive. She didn’t give up until we intervened and convinced her to. We practically forced her to. She only recently moved on. Do you understand? Kennedy loves you.”
“She married that fuck!” Liam spat.
Eric shook his head “Only a year ago, man. He was just…there. Fuck. Fuck.”
“I never stopped believing you were alive,” Alexa said softly.
Eric shot her a look and put his huge hand down on the table, like he’d use it for leverage if he needed to. Alexa glared.
“Liam, man, you have to understand what happened when you died.”
“Oh, I fucking get it,” he said through clenched teeth. “You got your bars and that motherfucker got Kennedy. This is what I gave my life for? THIS SHIT? You swore to me you would protect Kennedy. All of you. And what you do? Sit back and hand her off to that…creeping bastard. To that—” Liam began to wheeze. The overexertion left his head swimming. He wanted to turn the table over. Punch and gut every motherfucker in sight, starting with the three friends who sat back and watched his life go up in flames. But he couldn’t even stand without help. He couldn’t even speak. There was no air.
“I told you both we shouldn’t have told him. I told you,” Alexa said.
“Shut up,” Liam snarled. “You never gave a shit about Kay. This is exactly what you wanted.”
“That’s not true—”
“SHUT UP!” he shouted.
He could give a pointed shit about their rank. All of their staring faces made him dream of murder. He wanted to snap something, namely Alex’s slender neck. Liam closed his eyes. In his head he heard the screams and whimpers of the other POWs. He remembered telling them it would pass, that one day they’d be free again. Their suffering would only be temporary. He could smell the blood, his own blood as it ran down his back and chest, and mixed with the piss and the shit caked to the dirt floor of their prison. He wanted to scream.
“Liam? Are you okay?” Alexa asked with a shaky voice.
He forced the door shut in his mind. The madness couldn’t overtake him. Not now. He couldn
’t give in just yet. He leveled his hooded gaze on her. “The fucking marriage ain’t legal. She’s my fucking wife. Hell, I was MIA, it’s just been five years, she can’t remarry—”
“You were KIA, Liam,” Alexa reminded him.
“AM I FUCKING DEAD?”
Alexa withdrew. Liam couldn’t take another minute. If there were a weapon near him he couldn’t be sure what he’d do: take one of their lives, or even his own. He grabbed for his crutches with shaky hands. The idea of Phil Freeman touching Kennedy, holding her, laughing at him and mocking everything he shared with her… it became too much to bear.
“Wait, Liam, wait.” Alexa rose.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” he wheezed. Liam managed to summon enough strength to stand. To be a man. Everyone stood, tense, hands up and out, but no one dared move. Liam braved one last look at Kennedy in Phil’s arms. Before sunrise my ass. You gave up on me. They should have left him in that fucking hole and let him die with his memory of their love. It was all he had.
As he limped out to the passageway, he glared at the linoleum floor. He let go a bitter laugh. In his darkest moments over the years he thought there would be hope outside of his hell. Now he knew the only hope he had was buried with him in that fucking desert.
***
“Mommy? I don’t want to take a bath.” Mackenzie stood in the doorway of the hall bathroom wearing nothing but her flowery underpants.
Kennedy walked up the hall. Since when had this become a democracy? “Why, Mac? Why don’t you want to take a bath?”
“Because Auntie Harper lets me take showers.” She pointed behind Kennedy to the shower enclosure. Mac’s crinkly, bushy hair almost reached the middle of her back. Kennedy grabbed a banana clip from the sink and pinned the wildness to her daughter’s head. Mackenzie swatted at her mother’s hands.
“We agreed no more showers at Harper’s, missy.”
Mackenzie pouted. Kennedy walked her over to the tub and rolled her undies down. She set her in the tub. The phone rang and Kennedy’s head shot up. Phil would be telling her he expected to work all night again, all the more reason not to bother answering. Besides, she couldn’t leave Mac. Even if nothing dangerous happened, by the time Kennedy got back, there would be more water on the outside of the tub than the inside. She decided to let it go to voicemail.
