Return to Tomorrow

by Marisa Carroll

  Lonnie handed her the canteen clipped to the wide canvas belt of his jungle-patterned fatigues. “Here. It’s not very cold but it’s wet.”

  “Thanks.” She took a sip. “Lonnie, where’s Brett?”

  With tired eyes, he was watching the men replace the floor stones and sweep away the spilled dirt. He was silent a moment. “He’ll be along soon,” he said finally. “You know something?”

  Rachel shook her head as she replaced the cap on the canteen and handed it back to him.

  “Billy owes me a buck.” He gave her a sad, weary smile. She noticed, suddenly, that there was a lot more gray in his red hair than there had been when she first met him. He looked old and diminished, although he couldn’t have been much more than thirty-five or thirty-six. “I bet him you’d show up sooner or later, no matter what you told him last night.”

  “I only came to warn you that my brother knows about the deal with Khen Sa.”

  “We know that, too. The colonel has better sources of information than the DEA will ever have.” It was the first time she’d heard him refer to Brett by his military title. It made the man she loved seem more of a stranger to her than ever.

  “I figured that, too.” Rachel lifted her chin. “I don’t want anything to happen to my brothers.”

  Lonnie nodded. “Come on over here and sit down.” The laborers had finished filling the hole and replacing the floor stones. They trooped out of the temple ahead of Rachel and Lonnie, carrying their rifles and buckets and thatch brooms with them. They sat down, side by side, on the wide, shallow steps and watched the activity in the courtyard.

  “Are you going with Brett to make the deal with Khen Sa?”

  “Yeah.” He rested his elbow on his upraised knee and dropped his chin onto his fist. “I’m straight, Rachel. I have been since we talked that day, by the well. Do you remember?”

  She pictured the cool, tree-shaded inner courtyard in her mind’s eye. It was peaceful and beautiful, even in its ruined state. She longed to be sitting there now, instead of in the hot noonday sun. “I remember.”

  “I’ve tried before to kick the habit. It never worked. Maybe it won’t work this time. I found a monastery where they try to cure addicts. It was a hell of a treatment, the worst two weeks of my life, but so far, it’s worked.”

  “Maybe this time it’s because you want it to.”

  “Maybe. I want to be with Brett and Billy. I don’t want to be a hindrance to them, maybe get them hurt or killed. I have to make it this time, Rachel.”

  “You can do it.” She laid her hand on his arm. His skin was tight and dry, the bones too prominent. There were dark shadows under his green eyes and deep lines of pain and stress bracketing his mouth. “I know it can’t be easy for you.”

  “I’m trying my damnedest to stay clean this time but it’s hard. Jesus, it’s hard.” His hands were shaking. He shoved them into the pockets of his pants. “There’s no place to go but inside my own head. I’ve spent fifteen years trying not to remember what’s locked up inside me. Now I haven’t got anyplace to get away from the memories.”

  “I know, Lonnie. I don’t have any place to hide from myself anymore, either.” They didn’t look at each other, but he reached out and folded his hands over hers.

  “I miss my dreams. I don’t know how long I can last without trying to get them back.”

  “Lonnie…” A jeep appeared out of the forest and drove up alongside the truck. Rachel had been so absorbed in the conversation, she hadn’t been aware of its approach.

  “It’s the colonel and Billy.”

  Rachel shaded her eyes. It was Brett and Billy in the jeep, both armed and dressed in the same camouflage-patterned fatigues and soft-brimmed hats as the others.

  Lonnie stood up, then reached out a hand to help her do the same. “We might as well let him know you’re here, right off. The turnoff for the road they’re drivin’ is about three hundred yards ahead of where you came in. I doubt they saw your truck.”

  “I wish I’d known about that road. It would have saved me a long, hot hike.”

  “If the colonel don’t want you to find somethin’ around here, you won’t, and neither will your brothers.”

  BRETT PICKED UP the M16 from the front seat of the jeep and slung the strap over his shoulder, as he watched his men loading the last of the gold bars into the truck.

  Billy gave a long, low whistle. “Well, if that don’t beat all.” Brett swung around to see Rachel walking across the clearing toward them. “Guess I owe Lonnie a buck.” She was wearing brown slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. Her hair was shoved up under a Tigers’ baseball cap. She smiled at Billy but wouldn’t meet Brett’s gaze, focusing instead on a point somewhere near his left shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” He didn’t think it would be this hard to see her and not touch her, reach out and take her in his arms.

  “Last night Billy said…” She did look at him then and their eyes locked and held.

  “Everything’s changed since last night. Something’s spooked Khen Sa.”

  “I know.” Rachel lifted her hand and laid it on his arm, briefly, a fleeting caress that shook him to the foundation of his soul. “I came to warn you. Get out of here, go someplace where they can’t find you. The authorities know about you and Khen Sa. They’re looking for you.”

  “How do you know that, Rachel?” He could see in her eyes how hard it was for her to say the words, to warn him, when she believed what he was doing was wrong in the eyes of man and God.

  “My brother told me.” She closed her eyes, as though fighting back tears, but when she opened them again, the blue-gray depths were clear, though shadowed by sorrow. “I took Father Dolph’s truck and came here to warn you.”

  “Billy.” He didn’t look away from her.

  “Right here, Colonel.”

  “Better take the jeep and check out the padre’s truck. If Simon McKendrick is anywhere near as thorough as I suspect he is, it might be carrying a homing device.”

  “That’s impossible.” Rachel came to her brother’s defense in the space of a heartbeat. “How would he know I’d steal Father Dolph’s truck and come to warn you?”

  “Because he thinks like I do. How many vehicles are there at the camp, not counting bikes and scooters?”

  Rachel looked puzzled. “Three or four, I don’t know. Four, I guess. The pickup. A jeep and two flatbed trucks. I couldn’t drive the trucks. And there was Simon’s rental car. I…I didn’t think I could get the keys out of his pants pocket without waking him up.” She raised her chin defiantly. “I didn’t have any trouble getting the keys to Father Dolph’s pickup out of his office, though.”

  “I bet you didn’t.” He didn’t smile at her but he wanted to. She looked pleased and contrite all at the same time and it was an engaging combination. “Your brother wouldn’t have any trouble figuring that out, either. He probably planted homing devices on the pickup and jeep, just on principle.”

  Her face paled. “Then I’ve only made it easier for him to find you by coming here.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. It makes no difference, Rachel. We’re pulling out in an hour, anyway.”

  “Brett.” She clutched his arm with frantic fingers. “Don’t do this, please. Keep the gold. There must be hundreds of thousands of dollars here. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you have to deal in death and misery, as well?”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Rachel’s gaze swung in Lonnie’s direction. “Do you want others to live through the same hell heroin has put you through?”

  “No. That’s why…”

  “Can it, Lonnie. We don’t have time for long-winded speeches.” Brett clenched his jaw so tight, he could feel a muscle jump in his cheek. He didn’t have time for this, time for her, for them, now. This deal was too important to let anything interfere, no matter what it cost him personally. There were too many lives at stake.

  “I’ll go with you, Brett. Anywhere you
want, if you’ll only walk away from this.” His heart slammed against his chest. If he had ever harbored any doubts about how much she loved him, they burned to ashes at the sound of her words. She was offering herself, freely, completely, and she was turning her back on everything she thought was right and honorable in the world.

  “Rachel…” He’d kept his own counsel for so long, he didn’t know where to start.

  “Tell her, Tiger,” Billy said gruffly, “so she can tell Ahnle. If something goes wrong, I don’t want the woman I love to think I was nothin’ but a filthy, rotten drug dealer.” Brett twisted his head. His eyes locked and held with his friend’s. “It ain’t much to ask, man.”

  “What is he talking about?” There was a note of panic in Rachel’s voice he’d never heard before. He swung his head back to find her staring at him as though he were a stranger. “What is he trying to say?”

  “We aren’t dealing for Khen Sa’s heroin for ourselves, Rachel,” Lonnie said quietly, proudly. “We’re working for the king, himself. Brett told me two days ago.”

  “The gold belongs to the Thai government.” Brett covered her hand with his. Her skin was as cold as ice.

  “The government? I don’t understand.” She not only looked confused, she looked terrified. “Billy?” She turned to him. “Please, explain.”

  “We aren’t the bad guys, Rachel. We’ve been workin’ with the Thais and Uncle Sam to bring this deal off.”

  “I didn’t know.” She closed her eyes as though to block out the sight of his face, or to contain some inward pain of her own. “Micah was right all along. You should have told me.” There was a desperate little catch in her voice.

  “No one is supposed to know,” Brett said, and there was no way he could disguise the grimness in his voice. “There’ve been too damned many leaks already.”

  “Then please, Brett, don’t go.” She looked at Billy, at Lonnie. Her eyes were enormous in her pale face, their color the blue-gray of thunderclouds before a storm.

  “We have to go through with it, Rachel. There’s no backing out now.”

  “Even if it gets you all killed?”

  “Yes.”

  She laughed then, a funny, choked little cry that froze his blood. She pressed her fingers to her lips. Her voice dropped to a ragged whisper. “Then you are a knight in shining armor, after all. And I’m still nothing but a whore.”

  She turned and ran toward the temple.

  “Rachel, wait.” Understanding blazed through him. Suddenly he knew what sort of nightmares from the past still haunted her.

  “Go after her, man,” Billy hissed. “She’s hurtin’ bad. She needs you.”

  “So does this mission.” His men, his duty came first. The habit was too deeply ingrained to be shunted aside without a struggle.

  “I know that.” Billy slapped his hand on Brett’s shoulder, made him look at him. “But if this deal goes sour, don’t come up to me outside the pearly gates and tell me you wish to hell you’d have told her you loved her one last time.”

  So Billy felt it, too, that awareness at the base of his brain, in his gut, that told him something was wrong.

  “How long will it take you to check out the padre’s truck?”

  “Give me thirty minutes.” Billy grinned.

  Brett made his decision. “Give Lonnie the word on your way out of the clearing. Come after me when you get back.”

  He’d set his own timetable, made his own deadline. He had thirty minutes to be with Rachel. It wasn’t much, but it might have to be enough to last them both for a lifetime.

  RACHEL SLID INTO A HEAP at the base of the well and pulled her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to help keep the misery trapped inside. It had all come rushing back to confront her in the time it took to draw a breath, in the time it took for her to realize that Brett was the man Micah had always insisted he was—brave, loyal, true to himself. And she was the worst kind of liar, because she lied about herself and to herself.

  She felt soiled and shamed and betrayed. Her carefully filtered memories could no longer block out the reality of the past. She remembered it all, the hands, the faces, the bodies, as she was passed among them, one after another….

  “Rachel!” Brett’s voice came from far away. She didn’t look up when his shadow blocked the light; her mind had turned too far inward. “Rachel?” He pulled her to her feet, wrapped his arms around her, but she couldn’t feel his warmth and stayed rigid in his arms. He shook her, hard enough that her teeth rattled in her head. She felt his insistence, the strength of his will and knew he wouldn’t leave her to the past.

  “Brett, let me go,” she begged. “Please, let me go.”

  “No.”

  He pulled her tighter into his arms. She felt the rough cotton of his shirt as he pressed her face against his chest. She could smell the jungle dust on his clothes, the dampness of his skin, the faint clinging odor of pipe tobacco, and she wanted to stay there, safe and loved, forever. Except that he wouldn’t love her anymore, not after he knew the truth.

  “Tell me, Rachel. Don’t keep it inside any longer.”

  “I can’t.” She shuddered and struggled once more to be free. The sanctuary of his embrace was too tempting; it weakened her resolve. She needed to be alone where she could control the horror, shut it away, seal it off again in that hidden corner of her mind, so that she could go on as if nothing had happened and only she would know about the aching numbness in the center of her soul.

  “Yes, you can.” He leaned against the base of the wall, pulled her more firmly into the saddle of his hips and tipped her chin up so that she was forced to meet his eyes. “Whatever you did in that camp, you did it to survive.”

  She looked at him and her tears blurred the rugged, beloved outline of his face. Watching him was her penance. She had to see his love for her die when she told him the truth. “I sold myself to the camp commanders, each one of them, in turn. And over the course of four years, there were quite a few.” She heard the brittle harshness of her voice and barely recognized it as her own. She waited for his censure, his withdrawal, but it didn’t come. He only held her tear-filled gaze and was silent. “When we were hungry enough, or cold enough, I even accommodated the guards so that I could get us another bowl of rice or an extra blanket.” She struggled against closing her eyes to keep from seeing the disgust he must surely feel for her. She couldn’t do it; she dropped her lashes and felt the tears fighting to break free.

  “Who do you mean by ‘we’, Rachel?” His question and quiet, matter-of-fact tone caught her off guard. Her eyes flew open.

  “Father Pieter…and the others.”

  “What others?” She could have withstood his interrogations if he’d ranted and raved, but his calm, soothing voice, the gentle stroking of his hand on the back of her neck, were her undoing. She turned her cheek into his palm and let him gentle her, as though she were a frightened kitten.

  “The other women and children. There were sixteen of us, all Vietnamese, except for Father Pieter and me. They kept us separated from the men’s side of the camp. I…I never knew if there were any other Americans or Europeans being held there.”

  “You felt responsible for all of them, didn’t you? You bartered yourself to keep them all alive.”

  “I was the camp whore.” It was an ugly word. It was an ugly truth.

  “Were the other women raped?”

  “Yes.” She was crying now and couldn’t seem to stop. “You don’t have to try to point out the error of my reasoning. I know what happened to me wasn’t any different than what happened to them. My brain knows that,” she said helplessly, “but my heart says differently.” Dry, choking sobs rose in her throat and she swallowed hard to push them back. “After a while I quit fighting. When they sent for me I went. Willingly.”

  “No. You did what you had to do to survive. That’s all. That’s what we all did over here. Lonnie. Me. Billy. All of us.”

  Rachel shuddered. Th
e past was too close; nausea boiled up inside her. “I kept on going until I realized, finally, that I was pregnant. They left me alone after that. I think it was an embarrassment to them. No one wanted to be held responsible if any of the brass from Hanoi showed up. They moved Father Pieter and me apart from the rest. The guard started taking long walks away from our compound, leaving us alone. Then one day we just walked away into the jungle.”

  “Jesus Christ.” His fingers bit into the flesh of her arms. “You’ve kept this to yourself all this time?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to know. It was so long ago. The officials in Washington believed me when I said the camp commander raped me and the baby belonged to him. My family believed me because they love me. When I begged them not to talk about it anymore, they did as I asked. They think I’m noble and brave and good because I survived and I’m going on with my life, as if it matters….” She laughed and shook her head. “How wrong they are.”

  “You were a victim, Rachel,” he said between clenched teeth. “A prisoner of war. You had no choice. Nothing that happened to you, nothing you did was your fault.” She shook her head, letting the scalding, shameful tears free at last. “Rachel.” There was a note of desperation, of pleading, in his voice she couldn’t resist. “Look at me! Listen to what I’m saying. I love you, Rachel. What do I have to do to make you believe me?”

  “Don’t say that.” She lifted her hand and covered his mouth with her fingers. “Don’t. Not now. All these months I’ve lied to everyone, lied to myself, most of all. I passed judgment on all of you. I thought I was better. I thought I was wrong to love you. Not because of me, but because of what I believed you to be, a common criminal. I was so damned smug, so damned self-deceiving. I’m not worth your love.”

  “Yes, you are.” Brett grabbed her arms, shook her so hard that her hat fell off and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. Her head dropped back and she was forced to look at him, be caught up in the limitless depths of his blue eyes once more. “I love you. God, Rachel, there’s no time.” He pulled her close, set his mouth on hers and kissed her as though he’d never let her go.