Hard to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

Jake stared at him. “I’m not letting you get into trouble—”

  “I broke into Cal’s office.”

  “Christ.” Jake propped his elbows on the stair behind him and stared at the ceiling. Why Cal was still hiding things from him was the biggest mystery of all, and the part that bothered him the most. He needed every ounce of ammo to fight this bastard. “Do I want to hear this?”

  “No. Especially not today,” Nick said.

  “But you’ll tell me anyway,” Jake said firmly.

  “But I’ll tell you anyway,” Nick repeated. “Rafe was raised in foster care after his father died. At least six of them, from the time he was eight until he was seventeen. His mom left when Rafe was still an infant—they couldn’t find her.”

  Jake curled his fists, didn’t want to hear this. None of this. But he had to. “Go on.”

  “It’s not pretty.”

  “Beatings.”

  “Yes.”

  Jake screwed his eyes shut. “There’s more.”

  “Yeah, there’s more.” Nick paused. “He was severely molested in one of those places.”

  “None of that is an excuse for what he did,” Jake said fiercely.

  “I’m just giving you his psychology. Like you asked.”

  You have to know your enemy.

  “That could’ve been …”

  “No. That’s not you. It never will be.”

  “If it had gone beyond beatings …”

  “You would’ve gotten through it. You’re not him, Jake. You never could be. You’re not damaged.”

  “Yeah? Why is he damaged and I’m not?” Jake demanded.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I know you do.”

  “You’re wrong.” Nick stared him down as he rubbed the small, white scar at the base of his throat the way he always did when he was angry or upset.

  “Why? Because you say so?” Jake grabbed the folder out of Nick’s hands and twisted it between his own as if to destroy it. “If Steve had taken things further …”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. That’s still not you.”

  “And it wasn’t Rafe either. Not until when he finally snapped.”

  “In case you forgot, you already snapped,” Nick reminded him, not unkindly. “And that wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t just blind rage, Jake. Steve tried to kill you.”

  Jake didn’t answer him.

  “I could kill Cal for getting you involved in all of this,” Nick muttered. “You lived through it and came out stronger. You put it behind you. What happened with Isabelle has brought it all back.”

  “If she brought it out, that means I never really put it to rest in the first place. Means I’ve been pretty damned good at lying to myself.”

  “You haven’t been lying to yourself. I think you’re falling in love.” Nick’s voice grew hoarse. “Jake, you’re the final defense for Isabelle against Rafe. That’s always the most important, because it’s the hardest one to breach.”

  Jake nodded, because he knew that, stared down at his hands, which were still clenched around the file. He eased his grip, slowly. “It doesn’t make sense—to get through the Delta screenings, the psych evals … they would have picked this up.” He steeled himself and opened the file, flipped through the too familiar social work papers and police reports.

  “Screenings aren’t perfect. They missed this one—picked it up two years into his work with Delta. That’s when they discharged him, dishonorably. Defying a direct order.”

  But Jake had stopped listening, was staring down at the page in front of him so hard the lines of type began to blur. “Rafe’s dad was military. He was killed.”

  “Yeah, when he tried to kill another sailor. Shot in self-defense. What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Kevin March killed James Markham. Kevin March is Rafe’s father.”

  Nick’s eyes darkened. “Rafe’s father killed Isabelle’s dad?”

  “It’s worse than that. Cal was the one who killed Rafe’s dad.” Jake closed his eyes as the picture on Cal’s desk flashed in front of him; the only sound breaking through the roar of blood between his ears was a small, stifled gasp.

  He turned swiftly to see Isabelle standing at the top of the staircase, wrapped in a blanket. She’d heard every damned word.

  “Isabelle …”

  “Is that true? What you just said, is that true?” she demanded as Jake took a few steps up toward her.

  “It’s in the file. I recognized the name from the picture on Cal’s desk.”

  Nick put a hand on Jake’s shoulder before he stood and went quietly down the stairs, leaving Jake alone with Isabelle.

  “Did Rafe talk to you about your father?” Jake asked her.

  “Yes. He asked questions,” she said slowly. “About my father. Uncle Cal too. I just thought he was making conversation.” Her voice grew thin, trailed off. She stared straight ahead, her eyes focused on nothing.

  Jake sat as still as he possibly could. Hard, when all he wanted to do was reach out and hug her. Tell her it was going to be all right.

  Except that he didn’t know what all right was anymore.

  “So Rafe came after me specifically—it was more than just kidnapping the daughter of a senator for money.” She grabbed for his arm, as if that would ground her, as if that could stop everything that had been set in motion far too long ago. “Doesn’t he know that his father was the one who did something wrong? My father, Uncle Cal … they were the victims.”

  Jake didn’t say anything.

  “They were the victims, just like I was.”

  “You were a victim, yes,” he said.

  “You think there’s more to the story?”

  “I don’t know—something doesn’t seem right about all of this.”

  “Rafe is crazy—look at his background!” she yelled and then she took a step back as if trying to take back her words.

  Of course, she’d heard everything, heard him talking with Nick about Rafe’s background, and Christ, he was losing his touch if he could let an untrained woman sneak up on him like that.

  Nick was obviously losing it too, was too close to this, the way Jake was.

  “Jake, please, I didn’t mean—”

  “Not now, Isabelle.”

  “You’re not like him.” She grabbed at his shoulders, and he resisted her touch for the first time ever.

  “Not now. Just go downstairs … go to Nick. Please do that for me.” He barely ground out the words, hers echoing in his head, over and over.

  Rafe is crazy—look at his background.

  He clenched his fists, trying desperately to hold it all in, hold it together until she left the room.

  Finally, she nodded, obviously upset, and went past him down the stairs.

  You’re nothing like him …

  Jake knew he was nothing like Rafe, and yet he was always waiting to see if the good inside of him would continue to prevail. His controlled temper was one indication of just how tightly he’d learned to hold himself in check—and right now, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do that.

  He waited until she was out of his view before he went into his room and let it out by trashing the bookshelves, the coffee table, flipping the couch—because screw counting to ten. No, this release was so much better than that.

  But this full-blown explosion by his own hands could overtake him until he was beyond caring. Beyond everything.

  He’d betrayed her by not telling her the truth, and somehow he ended up feeling like the one who’d been betrayed.

  Rafe is crazy—look at his background.

  But Isabelle had done nothing wrong, and he’d done everything wrong from the start.

  Isn’t a man more than the worst thing he’s ever done, his old CO’s voice whispered in his ear.

  He stopped cold, tried to fucking breathe. None of this was helping. Nothing would help except getting rid of the man who was still coming after Isabelle—would keep coming after her
until he got what he wanted.

  Jake still couldn’t figure out what that was, and Cal wasn’t helping. But this blind rage was taking his eye off the prize. His first concern was Isabelle’s safety, had to be. He’d deal with everything else later.

  When he flexed his fists open, and shut and then open again, his blood was still running too far above a boil for anyone’s comfort, including his own.

  Cal sat with his back to the windowless wall, the Sig Sauer in his hand as if waiting for the inevitable. And when the phone finally rang, he picked it up without hesitation.

  “I need to know why.”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said. In his hand he held the journal he’d found in the mail. It had come in a plain brown envelope—return address, Norfolk, Virginia.

  Kevin March’s old address.

  For the past hour, before the phone rang, he’d forced his hands to stop trembling, to hold steady while he read the journal, and he knew there was no turning back, dread filling him with every turn of the musty, yellowed pages.

  All those years, James had known about Cal’s betrayal and he’d done nothing but love Isabelle as if she were truly his biological child.

  All these years, Cal had never thought about how he’d ripped a father away from a son, John James March, when he’d killed Kevin.

  His name had been changed when he’d been adopted briefly by his second family. The family he’d been taken from after the molestation happened. And still, he’d kept that name, hadn’t gone back to the name Kevin had given him.

  Had Rafe known this entire time? Could he have waited patiently, planned his revenge in order to strike at just the right moment—in the process hurting everyone Cal had ever loved? It didn’t seem possible, and yet still, Cal had always known what happened in Africa would come back to haunt him.

  “The truth’s going to come out—all of it.”

  “I’m going to lose everything. I’m prepared for that,” Cal said. It had never been his anyway. Not really. Not when it was all built on lies and deceit. A house of cards.

  “Yes, you’re going to lose everything.”

  “I’ll do anything you want, Rafe—you just keep your goddamned hands off of Isabelle.”

  “You’re not the one giving the orders anymore, Admiral. And I’m not making any promises.” Rafe cut the line and Cal did the same, turned his cell phone off and threw it to the side.

  He laid the gun down on the desk, grabbed his car keys and prepared to pay for his crimes, prepared to turn himself in and deal with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Dealing with his own conscience would be far worse.

  He didn’t have time to react when the cold, hard steel butt of a gun came out from the shadows and caught him on the side of the head.

  CHAPTER

  21

  The noise coming from the second floor—Jake’s rooms—echoed throughout the house.

  “What is he doing up there?” Isabelle asked Nick, who ignored her in favor of staring out the door. It was only a few minutes later, when the noises stopped and Chris came into the living room, that she got some answers.

  Chris’s right cheek was red, looked like it would swell soon, but he brushed it off. “It’s nothing. He’s all right.”

  “He’s not all right. None of us are all right.”

  “He’s as all right as he’s going to be,” Nick said tightly. “Drop it. Let’s concentrate on what we have to do.”

  “I need to go to him,” she said.

  “Now’s not a good time,” Nick started, but Chris cut him off.

  “Now might be the best time. Go ahead, Isabelle. We’ve got this covered for a while. We’re not going to let anything happen to you. But you’ve got to start making some decisions about your safety, before we get called in and can’t help you anymore.”

  She nodded, left the kitchen and Nick and Chris behind, hesitated briefly before heading up the stairs, and again with her hand on the doorknob leading to Jake’s room.

  It was time for her to put an end to this confusion once and for all. Nick and Chris would keep her safe while she resolved this. That part of it—her safety—was out of her hands now.

  Resolving things with Jake wasn’t.

  The door wasn’t locked. She pushed it open without knocking and found herself looking across the room at him.

  He’d just come out of the shower, wore only a towel around his waist. He’d tried to keep the area with the stitches dry. It looked raw and ugly, but it was on its way to healing.

  Everything was on its way to healing.

  He didn’t say a word, stared her down—and that should have warned her away, but it didn’t. She closed the distance between them so she could run a finger along his wet bicep. She watched the water run along the rivulet left by her touch.

  “It’s not a good time.” Something in his tone should’ve scared her, should’ve turned her away. But she stayed.

  “You’re not all right.”

  He laughed softly. “No, I’m not. Not today. By tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.”

  “I keep trying to tell myself that too, but it’s not working,” she said. “I don’t think it’s working all that well for you this time, either.”

  “What the hell do you want from me?”

  This was a different Jake—not the calm, cool man who’d helped walk her through a lot of her fears. No, this was the man who, at this moment, was trying his best to break any bond there was between them.

  She paused, not sure if she was going to be able to get the sentences out. But she pushed back her tears and her anger and she asked him what she’d wanted to from the night she’d met him. “I want to know everything. The whole story. Why you did what you did. Why you understood. Why you cared.” She paused. “I want to know why you have those nightmares.”

  “Today’s the anniversary of the day it happened. The day I killed my stepfather,” he said. “Tomorrow, it’ll be over and I won’t have to think about it for another year. So yeah, my monster might not be breathing, Isabelle, but he’s definitely not dead.”

  His body was sleek and hard without a hint of give. Even the scars seemed to be in the right place on him, giving him the appearance of a warrior, scars from a different kind of combat, but combat nonetheless. Fights he’d survived. Fights that had made him stronger.

  Yes, she could follow his lead.

  Barely breathing, she traced the scars on his back with two fingers the way she hadn’t done when they’d been outside in the woods earlier. And he stood stock-still and let her do so. When she got to the large one that ran straight across his lower back, she finally spoke.

  “This is why … when you said you didn’t like doctors. The questions. They all must ask so many questions …”

  He didn’t answer, his biceps flexed, the only thing giving away just how hard it was to stand still under her inspection.

  “When?” she asked, shook her head as she stared, ran a tentative finger across one of the thick, roped stripes—maybe from a belt—and then along a thicker one across his lower back—from a chain, if she had to guess … God, she should at least be as strong as he was.

  “Started when I was little. Lasted until I was fourteen.”

  “When you—”

  “Yeah.”

  She swallowed, hard. “I … I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “Why? Why would he do this to you?”

  “He was a drunk, Isabelle. They don’t typically need a lot of reasons.”

  “I don’t understand how someone could do this to a child.”

  “Don’t bother trying—it’ll never make sense,” he said. “It’s over. Done with.”

  “Except in your dreams,” she said and he drew in a hissed breath and jerked his head toward her. She repeated his own words back to him from the night of the rescue. “Sometimes admitting it the first time’s the hardest.”

  When she said she’d remembered everythin
g about that night of the rescue, she’d meant it. Every single word he’d spoken. She’d held on to them like some kind of Holy Grail, because they’d kept her breathing, moving, able to cope with life beyond those seventy-two hours Rafe kept her hostage.

  “And sometimes it’s the worst thing you can ever do.” His tone didn’t hide the pain well at all, as if he’d given up trying to hide that from her. It was a good sign.

  “Your stepfather’s dead. There’s nobody who can hurt you. Why can’t you just tell me …” She trailed off, because of the look in his eyes. She’d hit on something. “You’ve never actually told anyone this story, have you?”

  He shook his head and turned away from her, faced the window while he spoke. “I never had to tell.”

  “But Chris and Nick …”

  “They lived it with me. Saw the cuts and bruises—I never had to tell them. They saw the aftermath of that night, but they never asked me about it.”

  “The police must have asked.”

  “They did.” His voice was taut. “I told them that I didn’t remember anything.”

  She put her lips to his bare shoulder, to keep from sobbing, because that wasn’t going to help him at all. He didn’t back away from it, or flinch, but he didn’t respond either. He drew in a ragged breath and he continued, staring straight ahead.

  “I remember most of it, but the end … I was unconscious. The police were able to piece together what happened, based on what they found that night.”

  She lifted her head. “What did they find?”

  He turned and hesitated briefly before dropping the towel. Her eyes took a slow travel down his body—a magnificent body of hard muscle, and even so, her eyes immediately caught on his hip, on the raised, still angry red scar surrounded by a ring of white that looked …

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That can’t be …” She dropped to her knees so she could take a better look at it, ran a shaking finger over it the way she had all his other scars. But this—

  “This is a brand,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She continued to trace the raised welt of skin, maybe as big as a man’s fist, and not fresh. But the memory of how it happened was still fresh in his mind, at least for today.