The SEAL's Special Mission

by Rogenna Brewer

  Mal reached into an overhead cupboard and got down a bottle and two canning jars that were obviously used for drinking glasses. “Care for an adult beverage?” She got out the ice tray and poured herself a drink over ice. “Found a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon tucked away. I’ve been saving it for a rainy day.”

  “No, thanks,” he said. “Alcohol dulls the senses.”

  She raised her glass. “I hate to drink alone, but sometimes you need to dull the senses.”

  He eyed the half-empty bottle. “Okay, sure, why not?”

  She poured him a drink and they clinked glasses. “To cabin fever.”

  She pushed the bottle aside and leaned back against the counter.

  “This has been hard on you and Ben, I know,” Nash said. “And I am sorry.”

  “What?” She held her hand up to her ear. “Was that an apology, Mr. Nash?”

  “I know how to apologize.”

  “No, you know how to give orders. Other than that you don’t say much.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “There’s not much to say.”

  “Used to be you wouldn’t shut up. You’d get going on a subject and then Cara would look at me and just roll her eyes. Make this man shut up.” The corner of Nash’s mouth turned down. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, she loved you for it. So did I. It was part of your charm.” She smiled into her drink and then took a swallow.

  “I think that’s what I miss most,” he said. “Not being able to talk about her.”

  They were both quiet for a minute. Mal looked into her drink again and then set it down without taking another swallow. She couldn’t if she wanted to. Her throat constricted around her next words. “Yeah, well, for me it’s not having anyone to talk to.”

  “I didn’t kill her, but I am the reason she was killed.” He reached for the bottle and topped off their glasses.

  “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

  “What, that I’m guilty? Culpable?” He took a swig of the Wild Turkey.

  “That you didn’t kill Cara.”

  He searched her face. “Maybe it’s just the first time you believed me.”

  She shifted away from him to face the countertop. “I wanted to believe you.” She traced an old cut mark in the scarred Formica. Some wounds were too old and too deep to mend. “My parents, the prosecutor—they wouldn’t let me near you. I didn’t know how to navigate JAG.”

  “Belief takes faith.”

  “Maybe I needed to hear you say it.” She slammed her glass down on the counter. “‘I did what I had to do’ is not a denial.”

  “But maybe it was the truth.”

  “And when the military investigators and lawyers asked me questions, I spoke the truth. And when I took the stand, I spoke the truth. You didn’t even testify.”

  “The right to remain silent is one of those rights you read me.”

  “Such a rookie move.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it.” He screwed the cap back on the bottle. “I made the deal before the trial was even over. I had evidence to exonerate me, but it was more important to keep it under wraps so I could go after Cara’s real killer.”

  “You—” His revelation turned her world upside down. His casual shrug seemed out of place. “Why would you do that to Ben, to me? My parents? Your mother?”

  “Cara was my life.”

  “Now Ben’s your life.”

  “Mal, you know that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? This doesn’t end with my testimony.”

  “It could. You’re a protected witness. You could testify remotely. They’d alter your voice and turn your face into thousands of pixels. Nobody has to recognize you.”

  “Mal, my cover is blown.”

  “You can walk away with a new identity. Ben and I could go with you.... We’d have to go with you.... We’re not ever getting our lives back, are we?”

  “I’m sorry, Mal.”

  “I think I kind of knew.” But maybe it was just now hitting her what that would really mean. A laugh escaped and she looked up at the ceiling to keep from crying. “I had this plan to take Ben and run should you ever come after him. It would have worked, too. I keep four different storage sheds, one in each direction leading out of the state. I have money, lots of money.” Nash had signed all his and Cara’s assets over to her that day at Miramar. “I have Mom’s life insurance policy. And once his condition started to deteriorate, Dad put everything in my name....

  “I used to lie in bed at night and dream of starting over. But I guess I never really understood what that would mean. At least we’ll all be together if...”

  “I’m not going with you, Mal.”

  She knew that, too. It was foolish to hope.

  Suddenly she felt the need for distraction—to turn the subject away from the personal and back to the board again. “There is one thing I haven’t been able to figure out.” She tacked her own picture near Christopher Tyler’s. “I don’t know if this means anything, but Tyler transferred to the Denver field office two years ago. He hit on me pretty hard when he first arrived. I mean I couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into him. He asked me out a couple times, but I always said no. It was actually beginning to feel like stalking. I was on the verge of going to H.R. when he just stopped. At the time I thought I’d gotten my point across, but now I’m wondering... He used to ask me all kinds of questions about Cara’s murder. About you. Like he was digging for information. But then, like I said, he just abruptly stopped.”

  Nash took a swig of his drink. “Two years ago Bari started growing suspicious of me. Right after a big bust.”

  “But you stayed?”

  He nodded. “I was able to divert their suspicions from me.”

  “How?”

  “I set someone else up to take the fall.” He threw back the last of his bourbon. “And then I married Kahn’s sister, Sari.”

  “Excuse me?” Mal couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly. She would have doubled over, the pain was so acute. “You remarried?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like, Nash? All this time I thought what you’d done, what you were doing was some sort of penance for Cara.”

  “Mal—”

  She held up her hand to stop him from saying anything else. “I can’t talk about this right now.” She set her glass down when what she really wanted to do was slam it. And then she left the kitchen with as much dignity as possible.

  * * *

  NASH TRUDGED THROUGH knee-deep snow with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. No matter how much distance he put between himself and the cabin, he couldn’t escape the accusation in Mal’s eyes. He could have explained away his second marriage as a sham he’d only entered into in order to maintain his cover.

  Mal might even have understood.

  Sari was his wife in name only, an assumed name at that. It had never been real for him. The union had been forced on them both by her father and brother.

  A test of loyalty for him. A punishment for her.

  It was easier to maintain the whole undercover facade when you didn’t stray far from the truth. Nash had never presented himself as anything other than a grieving widower—a man who’d lost his wife and son in childbirth. It helped explain his lack of interest in women. And family.

  He’d played his part. Worked his way up through the al-Ayman terrorist network through the leader’s son, whom he’d helped escape from Gitmo. That wasn’t exactly part of the script—he was supposed to feed information higher up through a doctor on staff. But he knew it was only a matter of time before the guards stopped buying his excuses for medical attention.

  He’d staged a hunger strike, knowing he’d be taken
to the infirmary and checked out by the medical staff, or as a last resort, force-fed. Most of the Camp Six prisoners joined him in his rebellion in one form or another.

  He and Mac had gone over escape scenarios. Nash knew the prison camps, the base, the entire island of Cuba like the back of his hand, and he also knew that he’d go for it if he ever got the chance. And then he’d gotten his chance.

  The government’s mission, while parallel, wasn’t exactly the same as his, which was retribution for his wife’s murder. The disappointment came in discovering that the lowlife who’d killed her had been so close at hand and was already in custody.

  So Nash made sure his wife’s killer was included in the escape plan.

  The murderer even got a taste of freedom, but no more than that before gators got a taste of him. Nash had left the man’s corpse to rot in a mangrove swamp.

  While Nash could have disposed of Bari just as easily—and to his way of thinking the world would have been better off—Nash needed Bari alive. The younger son of the Mullah Kahn was a worthless piece of crap with a porn addiction and no real ambition. Nash spent four long years dragging the bastard up the terrorist chain of command just to get the young thug noticed by his own father.

  A low-level pervert like Bari Kahn eventually found his footing in sex trafficking. Big Daddy Mullah Kahn had more than just his toes dipped in sex and drug trafficking to keep the family terrorism business afloat.

  No operative had ever wormed his way into a terrorist organization as deep as Nash had and then lived to tell about it. He’d been feeding information to the intelligence community for seven years. He’d come close to exposure a couple of times. But he’d always been able to either take care of the rat undetected or pin his misdeeds on some other lowlife. Then two years ago his handler had turned up dead—an experienced CIA operative whose cover had been blown. While Nash had been able to mask his emotions at seeing the man dead, his hands were so dirty by that time they’d never be clean again.

  But he’d systematically been able to build a case against the man who’d ordered the hit on his wife from the inside. And he’d been able to play it cool even when faced with the ultimate test of his loyalty. Kahn never expected he’d marry his sister. But what choice did he have?

  Now the U.S. wanted to try Kahn in a Manhattan court.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN NASH RETURNED TO the cabin, all was quiet downstairs. He unwound the scarf from his neck and hung the borrowed winter coat on the rack, then he locked the rifle back in the cabinet. He’d rather have the weapon within easy reach, but locking it up was a concession to Ben’s safety. But of course, he kept his handgun on him.

  He heard the shower blasting away upstairs and figured Mal was getting ready for bed, which suited him just fine. The less they saw of each other this evening, the better. He couldn’t wipe her unspoken accusation from his mind. If he’d had the choice he never would have remarried, but the fact that he had didn’t lessen his first marriage or the love he felt for Cara.

  You do not have the luxury of stopping to think things over.

  He needed a distraction in order to get rid of the unsettled feeling in his stomach. So he set about building a fire in the hearth. But not twenty minutes later a feeling even more unsettling came over him. He could still hear the shower blasting away upstairs. But since they conserved the propane, the sporadic use of the generator meant they never had much hot water. No one in this house took twenty-minute showers.

  He reached for the gun tucked to his back.

  He kept off to the side of the stairs where his weight was less likely to make the steps creak. He didn’t know what to expect as he checked in on Ben first. The boy shifted peacefully in his sleep. The hall bathroom was empty. As expected, the sound of running water came from the bathroom in the larger of the two bedrooms.

  He tried the knob to the bedroom. The door was locked.

  He tried knocking. “Mal?”

  She didn’t answer. Not that she would even have heard him if she was in the shower.

  He would have left it at that, but heard a muffled sob coming from inside.

  “Mal!” He knocked louder.

  When she didn’t answer this time, he reached into his back pocket for an old motel key card he kept there for these exact situations. The lock on the interior door was there for privacy more than safety, so with a little jiggling of the hand he slid the key into position and disengaged the catch. While all his efforts might just get him a slap to the face, he needed to reassure himself that everything was all right, especially since Mal hadn’t been in the best state of mind when he left.

  Though he did fully expect a slap to the face for breaking and entering into her private domain.

  She wasn’t in the bedroom when he entered.

  The bathroom door was open and the light on. The shower was still running and the muffled sobs were no longer muffled—they were the heart-wrenching sobs of a woman grieving. He should back out and leave her to it.

  There were times when he, too, just wanted to break down and cry for everything he’d lost, but he had never allowed himself that luxury. He was afraid if he did he wouldn’t stop.

  These past few days had stirred up those old feelings.

  And that’s what pushed him forward.

  Mal was probably simply releasing some of the frustration she’d experienced over the past few days. But Nash needed to know that with certainty before he could leave.

  Mal was tough, but the events of the past few days had demanded a lot of her.

  “Mal,” he addressed the closed shower curtain so as not to startle her as he stepped into the bathroom. Instead of the get the hell out that he was expecting, another sob escaped from lower in the tub than he would have expected. The shower spray hit the curtain with no silhouette to break it.

  He pulled the curtain aside to find Mal huddled in the tub. Knees drawn up to her chest and her hand covering her mouth to muffle her sobs. He couldn’t tell the tears from the water blasting her, which was like ice. He reached in to turn it off.

  He grabbed the nearest towel and wrapped it over her as he helped her from the tub. She didn’t protest, but she didn’t help him, either. She simply allowed him to drag her to her feet and then out of the tub. He rubbed the towel over her in an attempt to warm her up. He tried to dry the tears with a corner, but they just kept coming.

  She raised her scraggly red head to look at him. The vulnerability he saw there nearly broke his heart.

  “She loved you.” The words escaped on a broken sob. “How could you?”

  Nash tried to lead her out of the bathroom but she wouldn’t go any farther than the bathroom door. Leaning back against it, she looked up at him with accusing eyes. “I was ready to believe in you again.”

  “Mal—” She’d given him the perfect opening to explain away his second marriage. At least that’s what he thought this was all about. What else could it be?

  He understood Mal felt betrayed on her sister’s behalf. There was no closure with murder. Not even in killing the man who’d carried out the crime, and certainly not when you thought your brother-in-law had committed a crime of passion and then found out that he didn’t. Only to discover he’d remarried. “I will always love Cara. She was my first...”

  His last. His everything.

  Mal shook her head from side to side. She didn’t seem to be willing to listen. She just kept repeating, “She loved you.”

  “Mal, stop.” He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him.

  “I loved you,” she said on a broken whisper.

  There it was. That thing that had always been between them. He hadn’t been so dense in his teens and twenties not to notice.

  Cara had even pointed it out to him on occasion. “Be careful with my sister’s heart. Someday you’r
e going to have to break it.”

  Dropping his hand to his side, he held her gaze with his own. “I know.”

  “I wanted to believe you.” She wasn’t even trying to hide the tears now. “You could have made me believe you.”

  He knew that, too.

  He could have played on her feelings for him, but he hadn’t wanted the responsibility of those feelings then any more than he wanted them now. Not that he had to worry about that anymore since she’d used the past tense for love.

  She had loved him. But she was over it. He was glad of it. “I only want what’s best for Ben. And you.”

  He moved to reach for her but Mal shrank from his touch, refusing to budge when he tried to help her toward the bedroom.

  “Of all the dangerous things I imagined you doing all these years, walking down the aisle was never one of them. I thought you lived in a barbed-wire world. Now I find out it was all white picket fences. Dare I ask if Ben has any siblings? Because you already have one son who’s never known his father.”

  Her barbs cut at the truth, but they were far from reality.

  “Do you think I don’t know what I’m sacrificing?”

  “Do you? Do you really, Nash? Because you’ve gone on living your life your way, while my sister paid the ultimate price because of it. If everything you’ve said is true, then she died because she married you—a man who chose to be a Navy SEAL. The same man who chose revenge over raising his own son—”

  “You think that was a choice?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. What you call sacrifice I call selfish. I see now why my sister was divorcing you. She was the one making all the sacrifices. She hated your job. What you were. Who you’d become—”

  Nash took a step back as if Mal had slapped him. It was like fighting with Cara all over again. Except it wasn’t, because Cara had not fought with words. His wife had never said the things his sister-in-law was saying to him now, but he still knew them to be true.

  Cara had used silence to get her point across.

  He’d hated those sulky moods. And he’d been too eager to dismiss them as pregnancy hormones even though it had been that way since they were teens.