Show of Force

by A. J. Quinn

  After several minutes, she heard the doctor swear under his breath. He had just removed the filthy bandage wrapped around Evan’s upper arm, and as she peered over his shoulder, Tate could clearly see marks where the bandage had been.

  Initially they looked like an intricately designed tattoo. But on closer inspection, she realized they were cuts. A pattern of sweeping cuts, made with a sharp blade.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God. Tate clenched her jaw and remained perfectly still. Wanting to help and knowing there was so little she could do, she stayed out of the way.

  She should have been better prepared, but the realization of what Evan had endured threatened to bring her to her knees. Exhausted and heartsick, she could only stare as Greg lifted Evan’s T-shirt. His action revealed another deep laceration, this one several inches in length and badly infected. It started at Evan’s ribcage and snaked just underneath her breast.

  Evan’s eyes fluttered as he examined the cut, but she squeezed them tight and flinched as the doctor continued to probe past a combination of fresh and old bruises and cuts. Tate tried to detach herself as each injury was revealed. But she failed miserably, and she struggled to find a spot on her lover’s body that wasn’t beaten or bruised.

  “Her knee’s a mess,” Greg said quietly. “But we won’t know the extent of the damage until we can get her into X-ray.”

  “She hurt it when she ejected,” Walker informed them. “It never really healed and then Khalid kept forcing her to use it. Kept making her stand or walk, knowing how much it hurt her.”

  Tate closed her eyes and remained silent until the doctor finished assessing Evan’s injuries. “How is she?”

  “Bad enough. In addition to the knee injury, there’s a GSW—sorry, a gunshot wound—in her right thigh.” He paused as he adjusted the flow of the IV. “She’s also got contusions and lacerations, and a definite case of malnutrition. The wounds themselves won’t kill her and she’s already survived the shock and blood loss. But the infection that’s set in…that’s another matter.”

  “She got shot when we tried to escape a couple of nights ago,” Walker said quietly, never taking his eyes off Evan. “She should have gotten away, but I fell and Evan came back to help me. I told her she should keep on going, but she just laughed and came back anyway. That’s when they tagged her. She was bleeding pretty badly, but the bastards wouldn’t do anything to stop it. They just literally dragged us back to their camp and spent the next ten hours beating the shit out of us just for fun—no offense, ma’am.”

  “Not to worry, I’ve heard the word before.” Tate tried but couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Can I ask why?”

  “Why what, ma’am?”

  “Why would you try to escape when the prisoner exchange had already been negotiated?”

  Walker turned dark eyes in her direction, his lips pressed together in an expression Tate could only interpret as anger and regret.

  “Khalid told us we’d stopped entertaining him. He said in case we were too stupid to understand, it meant we’d outlived our usefulness. Then he told us about the exchange. But what he said was we were going to be executed—decapitated—and he’d arranged to exchange our bodies for some prisoners currently being held near Kabul. His idea of a joke, I guess.”

  He swiped with one hand at the sweat on his face before he continued in a flat voice. “But even if he hadn’t told us his plans, we already knew we had to try to get away. Khalid was killing Evan, slowly but surely, one cut at a time.”

  “To what end?”

  “I honestly don’t know, ma’am. He took some kind of perverse pleasure in bleeding her, and Evan—she was getting weaker with each day that passed. Then she started running a fever, for maybe a week or so, and it got so she couldn’t keep down what little food they gave us when they remembered to feed us. Neither of us knew how much longer she’d last.”

  Tate listened with increasing dread. She stared again at the rope burns around Evan’s throat, wrists, and ankles, at the cuts on her arm. And she wondered about the extent of the damage she couldn’t see.

  “It turned out that bastard Khalid had the last laugh. He set us up. He made it possible for us to escape just so he could hunt us down like animals.”

  Evan shifted suddenly, shuddering in pain. Groaning and flinching away from the doctor’s touch, her eyes opened and she stared at Tate before saying something in a soft, pain-filled voice. Tate couldn’t make out the words and waited impatiently until Greg finished what he was doing. “What did she say?”

  “She asked me if she was dead.”

  “What the hell would make her think she’d died?”

  “That’s easy.” Greg smiled for the first time since they’d landed in Afghanistan. “She looked up and saw you and said she thought she’d seen an angel.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Landstuhl, Germany

  Shortly after one thirty in the morning, Tate closed her eyes, fighting as yet another wave of fatigue swept over her. It clawed at her. Threatened to pull her under. She held her breath and tried not to drown. She’d managed to get some rough sleep on the long flight from Kandahar, and earlier she’d caught another hour or so while waiting for Evan to come out of surgery. But too much had happened. There were too many emotions to deal with. And as the adrenaline high that had kept her going over the last few days wore off, she found herself struggling to stay awake.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t sleep. And in any case, a doctor with a sympathetic face had offered to give her something. But Tate had refused, knowing it wouldn’t help.

  She wavered on the cusp of madness.

  She wasn’t suffering from an inability to sleep. She was awake simply because she was too afraid to fall sleep. She felt strangled by an all-consuming, irrational fear that if she went to sleep, Evan would somehow disappear. She was afraid she would wake up to discover it had all been a dream. A product of her mind’s inability to accept the truth.

  She would discover Evan had really died on that cold and lonely mountainside in Afghanistan.

  So she’d pulled a chair next to Evan’s bed and sat with one foot hooked on the side rail. It left her within inches of Evan, and her body sparked with memory. But she didn’t trust herself to move, barely trusted herself to blink, as she pushed her hair out of her eyes with an unsteady hand and watched Evan as she slept.

  There were changes, of course.

  Evan’s face was thinner, honed by her recent experiences into sharp planes and angles. Her cheekbones were more pronounced and there were lines where none had previously existed. What she clearly needed was time. Time to heal. Time for swelling to recede and the bruises to fade along with the memories.

  Tate marveled at the combination of softness and strength, saw the ghosts of laugh lines by her eyes, and longed for the moment when those storm-gray eyes would open. Reaching out, she touched Evan’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

  Almost immediately, the contact settled her. Grounded her. Evan’s skin was warm to the touch, and if she moved her fingers slightly, she could feel her pulse beating strong and steady.

  Not that she needed to. If she wanted, she could simply look up and watch the numbers and lines dance across the array of impersonal machines monitoring Evan. But she preferred the real connection she found and the feeling of Evan’s heart beating beneath her fingertips.

  Evan had been asleep since they’d brought her up from recovery, two hours post-op. Sedated, bruised, and bandaged, with intravenous lines running into both arms while another tube provided oxygen. But she was alive and that was what Tate focused on as she touched her gently and let her know she was there.

  A nurse came in, but she didn’t say anything other than acknowledge Tate with a nod. She simply went about her business. Hung a fresh bag of clear fluid and adjusted the intravenous flow. Checked Evan’s vitals and made notes in her chart.

  Tate checked the time and wondered where Alex was. She knew Althea and Robert were on their way, Althe
a having called when they’d landed at Ramstein Air Base. But there had been no word from Alex.

  He had to know Evan had been rescued. Hell, he probably knew as soon as it happened, if not before. Twin telepathy, he and Evan called it. Of course, now that she thought about it, maybe that connection helped explain why Alex had such a difficult time believing Evan was really dead. He’d said he couldn’t feel her gone.

  At the time, no one had understood what Alex meant. But after the proof of life video surfaced, Tate wondered if perhaps they all should have tried a little harder to listen and understand what Alex had been saying.

  *

  For the next hour, Tate watched with growing unease as Evan’s temperature started to climb. Her hair, already sweat soaked, grew tangled as she thrashed back and forth, gripping the sheets at her hips with tight fists, while soft sounds of distress fought their way past her bruised throat.

  Reacting instinctively, Tate whispered her name, trying to call her back from the nightmare that held her. “You’re all right, Evan,” she said softly, hoping on some level Evan could hear her and know she wasn’t alone. “You’re safe now.”

  Evan mumbled an incoherent response, but she slowly began to settle. Encouraged, Tate continued to talk to her, using quiet words to reassure and gentle touches to chase away the dark shadows haunting her.

  And whether it was in response to the sound of her voice or her touch, Evan’s body gradually stilled. The tense muscles relaxed, the frown smoothed out, and her breathing slowed, until the covers were once again softly rising and falling with each breath. As if she had found some peace.

  “Tate.”

  Just that, the soft murmur of her name, and Tate’s heart stuttered. “I’m right here,” she responded and smiled. “Right where I belong.”

  *

  With a sigh, Tate leaned her head back. She’d been talking to Evan for the past couple of hours, sometimes reading to her from a copy of Life of Pi she’d had in her backpack, other times simply talking about some of the places they’d been to and the things they’d done.

  One of her favorite memories kept coming to mind: the trip to Chamonix made all the more memorable because it had turned into their official coming out as a couple. When Tate finally admitted to herself what was in her heart, that she and Evan were not simply having an extended fling, they had become inextricably entwined—body, mind, and soul.

  Closing her eyes, she smiled as she reminded Evan of that fateful trip and the first time she’d met Alex.

  “You went ahead, catching a ride on a military transport as far as Geneva. I followed a couple of days later because I needed to clear up a backlog at work after my trip to Afghanistan. Of course, the extra time didn’t help because while I was supposed to be concentrating on work, all I could think about was how we’d be using the holiday to openly acknowledge our relationship. To each other…and to your family.

  “You probably knew how nervous I was—especially when it came to your mother—but I was really looking forward to finally meeting your twin. And as it turned out, Alex was the only one up when I arrived ahead of schedule because, at the last minute, I was able to catch an earlier flight. But Alex didn’t seem to mind. He just grabbed my suitcase with one hand, waved away my apology with the other, and introduced himself.”

  Tate stared at her lover for a long moment, and then smoothed Evan’s hair away from her face. “As if he could have been anyone other than your brother. Tall and slim like you and just as heartbreakingly beautiful. Mirror images. Except he didn’t have to deal with the constraints put on you by the navy, so he could get away with the dark, bad-boy look he was cultivating—the one that drove your mother crazy, with the diamond studs winking in his ear and the scruff covering his jaw.”

  Momentarily swamped by the flood of memories rushing to the surface, Tate’s voice wavered, but she cleared her throat and forced herself to continue, convinced Evan could hear her and determined to maintain the connection. “Alex made it clear he knew there was an ongoing something between us, and he gave me such an intense once-over. But obviously I passed because he said your taste in women had improved and that quite clearly I was good for you because you seemed happier than you’d been in a long time. And that even Althea would be able to see it. I knew then and there Alex and I were destined to be friends.

  “You knew we would be, of course. But did you have any idea how much your brother terrified me with his talk of ski mountaineering and off-piste skiing?” she asked the still sleeping Evan. “God, when Alex told me you’d made arrangements for all of us to go heli-skiing, I kept picturing myself tumbling and falling headfirst down a mountain and having to wait for a Saint Bernard to come and rescue me. I got dizzy just trying to follow Alex’s conversation, never mind coping with the idea of being dropped by a helicopter on top of a mountain, miles from civilization. But just as I was trying to figure out how advanced a skier needed to be to accomplish this horror, I felt you come up behind me.”

  Tate remembered the sudden warmth that had spread through her body, followed by a brief spark of electricity when Evan’s fingers had trailed across her back. Fresh from a shower, with her hair still wet, Evan had smelled of sandalwood soap, clean mountain air, and desire as she’d wrapped her arms around Tate.

  “You whispered in my ear and told me not to worry. Promised you’d look after me on the slopes. Then suggested that I could return the favor après-ski.”

  As if manifested by her thoughts, Tate heard approaching footsteps followed by a cough and turned her head to see Alex standing in the doorway. An apparition so like Evan when he flashed his megawatt smile it left her feeling oddly unsettled. Moving quickly, she rose from her seat and crossed the room to him in three steps.

  His presence was reassuringly familiar as she leaned into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist and closing her eyes against the sudden rush of emotions. The onslaught left her dizzy, and she felt something crash inside her, fragmenting, forcing her to remain with her face buried against Alex’s neck until she was certain her eyes would stay dry.

  “God, I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispered, when at last she was able to speak.

  With her senses already on overload, it took a moment longer before Tate felt the tension coursing through Alex’s body. Before she noted how anguished his beautiful face looked in the dimly lit room. “Oh, Alex, baby. It’s okay. Evan’s going to be fine. I promise.”

  “I know,” Alex grumbled. “She’ll never let me live it down if she finds out I’ve been crying like a baby over her.”

  Knowing him as she did, Tate understood how badly he wanted to be strong. Like Evan. For Evan.

  She said nothing while Alex wiped the dampness from his face with the back of one hand while using the other to draw Tate closer to the bed, where he could finally get a close-up view of Evan.

  “What the hell did they do to her?”

  The horror in his voice was clear, as was the rhetorical nature of his question. Tate was grateful he expected no answer. Bending over the bed, his expression a mix of joy and pain, he pressed a gentle kiss on his sister’s forehead and stroked her hair, watching the dark strands sift through his fingers. There was a reverence in his touch, Tate thought, and such exquisite gentleness, almost as if he was afraid that Evan would shatter and disappear.

  Or perhaps, like Tate herself, he was having difficulty believing she was really there. Alive. In their lives once again.

  Tate swallowed and because it was her nature to touch she reached for Alex’s hand. She laced her fingers through his, both wanting and needing his strength and offering hers in return while they both continued to watch over Evan.

  She was so wrapped in the moment, in watching Evan, that it was some time before she realized someone was missing. “Where’s Nick?”

  “He’s off trying to find us a hotel room. I told him it had to be a suite, so you can stay with us.”

  Tate opened her mouth to protest, but Alex stopped her.
“You’re not spending twenty-four/seven in this hospital, Tate, and one of the nurses told me Evan’s probably going to be here at least a couple of weeks.”

  “But, Alex—”

  “Tate, love, you of all people must know that getting her back is only going to be the beginning of a long road home for Evan. We may not want to talk about the elephant in the room, but the truth is none of us have any idea what she’s been through these last months when we all thought she was dead.”

  Tate closed her eyes and saw Evan bloodied and bruised, kneeling in front of Khalid. She thought she’d dealt with it, but it all came back now, all but overwhelming her.

  “The point,” Alex continued, “is she’s going to need all of us—but you in particular—to be strong for her when we get to bring her home with us.”

  “You’re right, of course.”

  “I know I’m right. And you’re toast. I’m sure the doctors in this hospital have seen dead people who look better than you.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’m well aware I’ve not even managed a shower in a couple of days.” She started to laugh, then realized Alex wasn’t joking.

  Alex didn’t smile back. “I’m not talking about that. I’m saying you need to rest. You should be sleeping. Have you eaten?”

  “Alex, it’s the middle of the night.”

  “Let me rephrase that. When was the last time you ate?”

  “I’m not sure.” Tate shrugged, swallowed, and tried again. “Maybe yesterday morning…no, I was in Kandahar yesterday morning. I think it might have been the night before.”

  “Tate, you know better.” Alex tapped a finger on the line furrowed in between her brows as he continued to watch her. “What’s going on in there?”

  “I just don’t want Evan to be alone when she wakes up.” Tate sighed and slid her hands into her pockets.

  After a long moment of silence, she looked up at Alex. “It’s ironic, but Evan and I…we never got around to talking about what would happen when she finished her service commitment. Whether she was planning to go home. Where home might be.” She released a tight laugh. “I had every intention of talking with her about it the day she was due back in Bahrain. I planned to convince her we belonged together. And if that didn’t work, I planned to tie her to my bed until I wore down her resistance.”