by Amy Gamet
He wasn’t sure he knew anymore. It wasn’t as simple or straightforward as he earlier thought. He had an obligation to this man, greater than he’d allowed himself to realize, the distance between them and the time that had passed acting like some sort of pass on responsibility. But now that Trevor was standing face-to-face with him, he knew he couldn’t just shoot the shit and walk back out that door.
Mac was drowning in an ocean of trouble, and he desperately needed someone to throw him a line.
“My girlfriend’s working here for a few months. She’s an actress. Brooke Barron’s.” The name usually got a reaction, but Trevor could have been talking about the weather for how much it ruffled Mac’s feathers.
“I mean why are you here, talking to me, now?”
Thoughts worked to join together, ideas still percolating in his mind. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“You didn’t come by before.”
Hawk shrugged. “Never been in France before.”
“I was at Walter Reed for five months.”
Trevor looked down at his hands, for the first time seeing his own culpability in his friend’s downward spiral. “I know.” He lifted his head. “I should have come to visit. I heard you weren’t doing so well.”
Mac laughed without humor. “That’s one way to put it. What did you hear?”
“While you were at Reed? That you were damn lucky to be alive but not feeling so grateful.”
“And after Reed?”
Hawk hesitated. Everything he’d heard was clearly true, evidence surrounding him in the tiny stone house. He lifted his chin. “That you’re drinking yourself to death, waiting for your wife to come back.”
“And kids. Two girls and a boy.” Mac shuffled into a sitting room, Hawk on his heels, noting their surroundings. Muted paintings of farmland. Bookshelves full of books. Nothing here reminded him of Mac at all, yet the man had been living here for years. This was wrong, all wrong for Mac. He shouldn’t be here, alone, wallowing in his own self-pity and waiting for a woman who might never come back. He was a warrior. A true hero, and it hurt to see him so down on his luck. “You ever think about going back for another tour?”
“Hell no.”
“What about service? Private security. That sort of thing. You’ve got the skill set.”
“No thanks.”
“You could be doing some good instead of holed up in this house.”
Mac cocked his head, peering into his drink. “What do you know about it?”
“I know you were the best goddamn CO I ever had, and I can see right now you aren’t doing anything positive.”
Mac stood. “That’s my prerogative, Hawk. You walk in here, take one look at me and you think you see something you can fix. Well, I’m not a broken machine. I don’t need a couple of parts and a little WD-40 to get my joints moving again, Hawk. I had a life. A big, full life with two legs and a career and the prettiest woman in the world in it. You want to know what you can do to help me? Lose everything you’ve got, then come back here and we’ll talk about doing something positive.”
Hawk couldn’t imagine what he’d gone through. Just the thought of losing Olivia was enough for him to break out in a cold sweat. Mac had lost his wife and three kids. A leg, for God’s sake, and he was right. It wasn’t the same at all.
But there was something he wasn’t considering. He had a talent, a gift, that could help the world become a better place. “It’s not okay for you to waste it,” said Hawk.
Mac raised his voice. “I don’t need your help.”
“Bullshit.”
Mac walked toward the door. “Get out of my house. The next time you think about visiting, do me a favor and change your fucking mind before you get here.”
Hawk didn’t move. The answer was right there, so obvious it had been staring him in the face. Mac needed to be useful again, and Hawk was in need of a man with special talents. He met Mac’s eyes, noting the inward tilt of his angry brows. “Work for me,” Hawk said.
“What?”
Hawk crossed to him. “You heard me. Work for me. I need more flexibility, the ability to be with Olivia when she’s working out of town. I need to be the boss.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got to look into it, but I want to open a HERO Force office in New York, and I need someone to run it. I want you, Mac.”
Mac laughed. “And you’re asking me to come to New York? The rumors aren’t wrong, Hawk. They’ve got me pegged.”
“So unpeg yourself and get the hell back to work.”
“No.”
Hawk put his hands on his hips, in awe of the diminished man who now stood in front of him. “You’d rather sit here and rot.”
Mac walked to the door, holding it open for Hawk. “I’d rather sit here and rot—by myself and on my own terms.”
“You mean drunk.”
Mac wasn’t as fast as he used to be. He swung at Hawk’s face, his closed fist landing squarely in the other man’s hand.
This was what it had come to, how bad it had gotten. He could see in Mac’s eyes another punch was coming, so he spun on his heel and left. You couldn’t save everyone.
The victim had to want to live in order to survive.
7
Olivia awoke at the first light of dawn. She hadn’t felt this good in ages.
She stared at herself in the mirror and sighed, noting the trace of a smile that clung to her lips. Having Trevor here was good for her, facing her fears about their relationship like shining a light into the shadows and finding there was nothing to be afraid of, after all.
She could picture their life together. Trevor in her bed day in and day out, happiness a steady trickle through her soul. She would marry him, become his wife. Maybe even have a child someday.
There would be no more movies in foreign countries, that was for sure. Being away from him was too difficult and life too short to balance that equation. No, they’d stay together in the States and she’d pass on roles like this in the future, her need for security easily trumping her career ambitions.
Sure, it does right now. But what about a year from now, when your stalker is gone and you get offered the part of a lifetime?
She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about that now. No need to borrow trouble from tomorrow.
She dragged eyeshadow over her lid. The makeup artists at the studio would remove it, but she didn’t care, wanting to look good for Trevor when he returned.
She picked up a fat brush and applied blush to the apples of her cheeks. The makeup crew would be appalled, always choosing to accentuate the hollows in her face over the peaks. But this was the look she preferred, and it felt good to look like herself for a change.
The door unlocked and she grinned. “I was starting to wonder where you went.” She withdrew mascara from her bag, the door to the room closing behind him.
“I’m right here, sweetheart.”
She turned and screamed, but the dark figure was already upon her, his big hand covering her mouth as he pushed her down. This was it, everything she’d been afraid of since she’d gotten the first letter. This was her stalker, the man who wanted to see her naked, who wanted to see her dead.
He dragged her from the room. All she could think about was Trevor and how much she loved him, praying she would see him again.
8
Olivia was gone.
Trevor was pumped full of adrenaline, his reaction all consuming. His emotions were wrecked, completely short-circuited, every molecule of energy directed toward a tactical response.
“Are you drunk?” he asked Mac, who sat beside him in Olivia’s rented car as they flew toward the studio.
“I could shoot an apple off a nun’s head right now.”
“Good. I need you on your toes.”
“Do you know where they’re holding her?” asked Mac.
“I don’t even fucking know who took her.” Hawk slammed his palm on the top of the steering wheel. “The director. My best guess at this po
int is the director, Evan Lockheed.”
They careened around turns and through hillsides.
“Whoever took her isn’t likely to have brought her to the set,” said Mac.
“Right. But all possible suspects should be at the studio thirty minutes from now. I need to narrow it down. Get addresses. I don’t fucking know where to start.”
Trevor cursed himself and the length of time he’d spent talking to Mac before heading back to the hotel to pick up Olivia. God only knew what time she’d been taken. All that remained was a scribbled note in the stalker’s handwriting—I’m taking what’s mine.
He pulled into the studio lot, his gun holstered at his side and Mac two steps behind him. Just like the first time he’d come on the set, there were no barriers to entry, and he cursed colorfully.
In the distance a man sat in a classic director’s chair, an open binder in his lap. “Lockheed!” Hawk snapped, and the man’s head came up. “Where is she?”
The director stood up, dropping the binder to the ground. “Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hawk grabbed him by the collar. “Olivia, damn it.”
“I thought she was with you.”
Mac bent down and picked up the binder, flipping through it. “Is this the right handwriting?” he asked, showing the pages to Hawk.
“No, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t write the letters.”
“The stalker’s letters? I assure you I did not,” said Lockheed.
Hawk loosened his grip on the man’s shirt but didn’t let him go. “It’s someone with access to the script.”
“That’s half the people on the set!” squeaked the director. “More than that, if they really wanted to get their hands on a copy.”
“Trevor!” Olivia’s voice rang out, Trevor twisting around to find her. She stood on the roof of the same building the sniper had shot from, a big man half-hidden behind her.
“It’s the goddamn bodyguard,” said Hawk.
People all around them were screaming, dropping to the ground or running away. Lockheed cursed and pulled away from Hawk, desperate to get away, and Hawk let him go as he looked for cover, finding it behind an apple cart. Mac was ten feet away behind another vendor stand.
Hawk pulled out his weapon. “Let her go!”
A gunshot echoed through the set for the second time in as many days. “That son of a bitch is shooting at us,” said Mac.
“Cover me,” said Hawk. “I’m going in.”
“Got it.”
Hawk ran for the building as Mac fired, darting for the cover of the overhang and making it safely across the lot. He moved quickly around the building, again scaling the ladder that ran up the back, just as he had when he first arrived at the set.
Olivia was in even more danger this time. If the bodyguard wanted her dead, she would already be so long before Hawk made it to the top of the building, and he chanted, “No, no, no,” under his breath as his muscles pulled him toward the top. The continued play of gunshots gave him hope Mac was keeping up a major distraction.
Olivia was crying as he crested the edge, her captor coming into view before her, the twisted lines of her face speaking to her terror. He pulled his gun, another hidden at his ankle if he needed it. “Let her go!” he yelled.
The bodyguard turned toward him, yanking Olivia with him, holding her in front of his body. “She is evil. A witch, here to kill us all.”
The guy was a whack job, the look on his face all too sincere. He remembered his training on how to deal with someone who was delusional. “No, you misunderstood. She’s a young woman. Innocent and good.” He took a slow step toward the pair.
The bodyguard raised the elbow of the arm holding the gun, pushing the weapon into Olivia’s neck and making her whimper. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Okay, I won’t. Look, I’m staying right here. We can stop this right now. Just let her go.”
“She needs to die.”
She cried more loudly, almost howling now. Hawk trained his weapon on the man, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. “Let her go! You’re making a mistake.”
A sound of gunfire exploding in a steel barrel rippled through the air, the bodyguard and Olivia falling to the ground. For a moment Hawk didn’t know if one or both of them had been hit. “No!” The single word was ripped from his rib cage as he rushed to her side just as Olivia moved to free herself from the bodyguard’s big arms.
Hawk kneeled down in front of them, a pool of blood quickly spreading across the tarred roof beneath the bodyguard. He couldn’t see the shot that had taken him down. He checked for a pulse, finding a weak one. Hawk signaled the all clear to Mac and told him to call an ambulance before moving again to Olivia, cutting the ropes that bound her wrists with his pocketknife. “What happened?”
“I was waiting for you. He just walked in and grabbed me.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“He tied me up and threw me in the back of a van. I hit my head. He kept mumbling about how I ruined everything.”
He pulled her tightly against his chest. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“Where were you? You were gone so long.”
“I’m sorry. I went to see an old friend. My partner in arms down there on the set who just saved your life.”
“I think he’s going to be my friend, too.”
Hawk smiled and tried to laugh, but a sob came out. “I think he already is.”
9
Mac sat in a small row of chairs outside Brooke Barrons’ hospital room, Hawk by his side. His head ached from a lack of alcohol, the fluorescent lights of the hallway humming too loudly in his brain.
Look what you’ve done to yourself.
He leaned his head back against the painted brick wall and let his eyes close a beat too long. It was tempting to drift off, to disassociate, to leave. But that wasn’t what he was going to do.
He flexed the fingers of his right hand, the feeling slowly returning with pins and needles as the local anesthetic wore off. He’d sustained a long gash up his forearm from the goddamn apple cart that had taken twenty-seven stitches to sew up.
It felt good to be useful again.
To fight with his hands and defend something worth saving. It had been a long goddamn time since he’d done any such thing. Hawk’s words to him back at the house rang through his head in an endless circuit. Something positive. You don’t get to waste it. Work for me.
It was a fucking pipe dream from where he was now to where Hawk was asking him to be. A leap longer than any faith was great. It had never been his intention to become a drunk, to fall off the edge of society and lock himself up in a three-hundred-year-old house in another country. He just hadn’t known what to do next.
How to move on.
He could see Ellie in his mind’s eye, her rich brown eyes forever laughing, her pale brown skin dotted with freckles year-round. The first time he’d set eyes on her she’d been sixteen, with full breasts hidden beneath an Aerosmith T-shirt and curvy legs stuffed in jeans she’d outgrown.
Her beauty had shone through it all.
He been in full uniform, ready for departure and more than a little filled with pride. He’d kissed her that day, her tentative response and unschooled technique telling him she was innocent and untouched. As their passion heated, she’d offered herself to him completely. It had taken every bit of restraint he possessed to turn her down, and he knew he’d hurt her feelings even as he promised to come back when she was old enough for more.
The words were spoken casually, but he never forgot them. It was Ellie’s voice he heard in his dreams, Ellie he talked to in his mind when he was alone and deployed. He came back four years later and found a grown woman in that sweet girl’s place—a grown woman who’d been saving herself for him.
He took her virginity in a real hotel room, a half bottle of champagne, and as much gentleness as he could muster, holding himself above her and watching her expressive face as her body accommodated
his size. He’d been given a gift—one he didn’t deserve—that began with her body and ended with her heart.
They were married six weeks later.
Ellie was pregnant before he left for his second tour, the pictures of their baby girl capturing his heart just as quickly as her momma had done. By the time Mac met Hawk, he and Ellie had been married eight years and had three children together, but the sum total of their time together stood at less than eighteen months.
He’d been a fool not to listen when she told him of the sleepless nights, her need for a flesh-and-blood man beside her in bed more often than not. But he’d been in love with the job just as much as with her, the SEALs becoming his mistress. Now that his eyes were open, he knew every single nail he’d hammered into the wood of their coffin, but it was too late to get Ellie back.
“Thanks for what you did back there,” said Hawk, pulling him out of his reverie.
“No problem.” His voice was hoarse and deeper than normal, his hangover obvious.
“I would have been dead in the water without you. And Olivia—shit. You saved her.”
Mac reached in his pocket. “I forgot to give you this.” He handed Hawk the small box with the engagement ring inside, the slightest pang in his chest. He longed to give his friend a piece of advice, but who would listen to an old fuckup like him?
Don’t take her for granted.
“Where’d you find it?” asked Hawk.
“On the ground as the EMTs loaded Olivia into the ambulance.”
Trevor opened the top, gazing at the glittering diamond with a sigh. “I screwed up, Mac. I never even considered her phone could be used to locate her.”
“Shit happens. You did the best you could.”
“It wasn’t good enough. I’m not leaving her alone like that again.”
Mac crossed his arms over his chest and stretched out his legs. “Age-old problem. How are you going to be there for her and get your work done, too?”
