by Gayle Wilson
Chapter Fourteen
Rafe couldn’t think of anything else that needed to be done before he left. Everything related to the mission had been set into motion. He already had the keys to one of the cars Griff kept in the garage here in his pocket. All he had to do was throw his bag into the trunk and head out.
The only thing stopping him was the knowledge that too many things had been left unsaid. He hadn’t apologized to Hawk for the ridiculous accusation he’d made. He hadn’t explained to Griff the fear that was the basis for his determination to do this alone. More importantly, he had treated Elizabeth as if she weren’t entitled to be told the truth.
It wasn’t that he intended to tell her now. It was simply that he hated to leave things as they were between them. As melodramatic as it sounded, this might be the last chance he’d ever have to make them right.
Maybe Griff and Steiner had conspired to send him to her house, but the ultimate responsibility for going there had been his. At any point along the way, he could have refused.
He hadn’t, because he couldn’t. As soon as Griff had made the suggestion that Elizabeth might be in danger, providing him with a legitimate excuse for contacting her, he had leaped at the chance.
They had had a long time to deal with the loss of what had once been between them. Now, thanks to his inability to stay away, they were again being forced to deal with those same painful emotions.
He had told himself a dozen times that anything he tried to say could only make it worse. A clean, surgical break is always best. He had known that six years ago. Nothing had changed.
He picked up his suitcase, into which he’d tossed the clothes he’d changed out of, and walked out of the bedroom. As he clicked off the light, the upper story of the house was plunged into darkness.
The others were still working in the study downstairs. They had spent hours there using Cabot’s computer and his connections within the international intelligence community to gather as much information as they could about Adler Jorgensen and his organization.
Elizabeth had been right about that. You use anything an enemy of this kind gave you to bring about their destruction. Anything except those you love.
He reached the top of the staircase leading to the lower level and stood in the darkness a moment, knowing that Elizabeth was sleeping in the bedroom across the hall. He could almost feel her nearness, a physical connection that remained as strong between them now as it had ever been.
He closed his eyes, picturing her face when he’d seen her this afternoon. The strain of the previous two days had been etched on her features, and in her eyes had been all the questions he had never answered.
If he hadn’t been able to bring himself to answer them before, when it might have made a difference, there was no point in trying to now. After all, he didn’t want disgust to be the last emotion he would ever see in her eyes. Or, and the thought was more unbearable, he didn’t want to see pity in them. Either would be infinitely worse than what was already there.
He lowered his foot to the first step. Then, as if his body possessed a will of its own, he brought it back to the top again. He set down the suitcase and in a couple of strides crossed the hall to the closed door of Elizabeth’s bedroom.
He hesitated, drawing a deep breath before he allowed his fingers to close around the knob. He turned it, the door opening soundlessly, but he didn’t enter.
He allowed his eyes time to adjust to the level of light inside the room. After a few seconds he could identify the various pieces of furniture by their shape. The bed was before the windows, the small mound in the center drawing his gaze.
As exhausted as she had been, Elizabeth would be sleeping too soundly to know he was here. He stepped inside, his footfall reassuringly silent on the thick carpet. He reached back and pulled the door almost closed behind him, giving them some privacy. He paused, again listening.
Thankfully, there was no reaction from the sleeper on the other side of the room. Now that he was here, this close to her, he realized that the last thing he wanted was to talk. Or to explain. He preferred that she think of him—if she ever did—as the cold, uncaring bastard he had pretended to be rather than to have her understand what he really was.
All he wanted, he decided, standing in the black silence, was to look at her before he left. Something to remember besides the strained, bitter lines into which her face had been set when she’d confronted him this afternoon.
Then he would disappear from her life again, just as he had before. And no matter the outcome of the mission he was about to undertake, she would be safe.
He slowly crossed the room, stopping beside the bed. Here, finally, he could hear the slow, regular breathing he had listened for at the door.
Elizabeth lay on her side, one hand folded under her chin. She was wearing the same clothing she had worn this afternoon, as if she had lain down to rest for a few minutes and fallen asleep.
Gradually, in the filtered moonlight, he was able to discern her features. The strain that had been so evident this afternoon was gone, hidden by the lack of light or dissolved by the relaxation of sleep. She looked at peace. She looked exactly like the woman she had been before Amsterdam. And if he were the man he had been then…
But he wasn’t. The difference that one event had made in his life was the crux of the estrangement between them. An estrangement that couldn’t be changed by any explanation he might try to make.
He had no doubt that if he told her what had happened to him, she would respond with the appropriate platitudes. And she would mean them.
It was what would happen through the days and weeks, or perhaps, because this was Elizabeth, through the months that followed that he feared. Her gradual realization that what he had told her in the kitchen of the summerhouse was nothing less than the truth. He wasn’t the man she had loved. He could never be that man again.
She turned her head against the pillow, brow furrowing. Fearing that she might awaken, he took a step away from the bed, the carpet disguising his movement, but he couldn’t make himself leave. Not yet.
Instead, as soon as her features relaxed, he moved toward the bed again. As he had in the car today, he allowed his fingers to touch a strand of hair that lay against her cheek, dreading and yet also anticipating that she might yet awaken to his touch.
Her breathing had slowed, however, evincing a return to a deeper level of sleep. Reluctantly he lifted his hand, holding it a long heartbeat above the curve of her cheek. Resisting the impulse to allow his fingers to brush against the smooth skin beneath them. He had never known such temptation.
Or such certainty that to do so would be the biggest mistake of his life. Far better to leave it as they had this afternoon. No promises. None that he would ever have to break.
He took a step back, putting distance between himself and the enticement Elizabeth had always been. Still she slept, the slight rise and fall of her breasts visible in the moonlight.
“There was no one else,” he whispered, the words hardly a breath in the darkness. “No one who was ever like you. There never will be.”
Then, before he lost his resolve to do what was best for her—all that had kept him from taking her in his arms—he turned. He re-crossed the room without hurrying, pulling open the door he had left ajar to step out into the hall. Without looking back at the bed, he eased it closed behind him.
As soon as he’d picked up his bag at the top of the stairs, he was almost running down the steps, his free hand trailing over the banister. Head lowered, he had reached the bottom before he realized someone was standing there. Startled, he looked up, straight into Lucas Hawkins’ eyes.
And discovered, unbelievably, that his own were blurred with tears. He blinked to clear them, hoping the light was dim enough to hide that unwanted moisture.
“Good luck,” Hawk said, holding out his hand.
“Better lucky than good,” he said, his fingers closing over the skilled ones of the team’s marksman.
“I’m sure,” he said quickly. It was typical that this man, in spite of the angry words they had exchanged this afternoon, would offer to put himself into a danger they both understood far too well. “I wanted to apologize—” he began, only to be cut off.
“Don’t,” Hawk ordered. “You were right. I wouldn’t allow Tyler to be used as bait. I shouldn’t have expected you to feel any different about Elizabeth. I didn’t realize you two were still…”
Hawk allowed the awkward sentence to trail. Neither of them was the kind of man who talked easily about emotions, particularly these.
“We aren’t,” Rafe said shortly.
He had already begun to move again when Hawk’s question stopped him. “Any message you want me to give her?”
That I love her. That I always have and always will. And if I were a different man…
“No message,” he said.
He stepped around Hawk and headed toward the waiting car. The first step on a journey that could end only in a death—his or Adler Jorgensen’s.
AS SOON AS the bedroom door closed, Elizabeth opened her eyes, wondering why she had let Rafe go with saying anything. When he had first opened the door, she had been unsure of his purpose in coming, so she had pretended to be asleep.
She had decided after this afternoon that the next move must be up to him. She had told herself that over and over during the long hours that had passed since their confrontation in the driveway.
Then, as always, he had thrown her surety about his feelings—and even about her own—into confusion by those whispered words. There was no one else. No one who was ever like you. There never will be.
An answer to the woman’s question she had asked at the summerhouse. And she couldn’t doubt the quiet sincerity of them. And if she hadn’t been such a coward…
As soon as the word formed in her consciousness, she sat upright on the edge of the bed. Rafe had come to find her, if only to say goodbye. An overture, which in her hurt and uncertainty she had refused to acknowledge.
She ran across the room, throwing open the door he had closed. There was no sign of Rafe.
She walked across to the bedrooms on the other side. The doors were open, but there was no one inside either of them.
She turned to the head of the stairs. She stood in the darkness a moment, listening. Although she could hear nothing moving below, there was something about the quality of silence on this floor that indicated it was empty.
She started down the staircase, but before she had descended halfway, she realized someone was coming up. A man, obviously, but there wasn’t enough light to distinguish which of the four who were in the house tonight.
Then, given the events of the past few days, she felt a frisson of anxiety. What if this wasn’t one of those four men? What if this was someone who wasn’t supposed to be here?
“Rafe?” she questioned.
“You missed him by a couple of minutes.”
Her throat closed, aching against the finality of Hawk’s words. Knowing what lay before him, she had allowed Rafe to leave without bridging the gulf that lay between them. A gulf that had widened in the last few hours.
“Something wrong?” Hawk asked.
“I thought…” she began, and knew it was all too difficult to put into words. She had too many unanswered questions herself to attempt to make explanations to someone else. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I know you’ll think it’s none of my business…”
Hawk was the second person today who had said that to her. This time her inclination was to listen.
“We’re friends. You’re Rafe’s friend, too. I suppose in a way it is your business.”
She couldn’t see his face, not well enough to read those harsh features. Despite the permission she’d given, several seconds passed before he spoke. When he did, it didn’t have anything to do with her relationship with Rafe.
“If you do what we’ve done long enough, it’s bound to have an effect. For some of us that means we’ve become cynical about how we view the world. A deep-rooted, untrusting cynicism about every person and institution in it. For others…” He paused, seeming to search for the right words. “For others there’s just a kind of…overload of evil. An exposure to too much of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.”
“Are you talking about Rafe?” she asked, wondering where this was going. “About the bombing?”
“I think Rafe was already into that overload before Amsterdam. He lost a good friend when Paul Sorrenson died. And what those bastards did to him and Duncan—”
The words were abruptly cut off. Maybe because Hawk was remembering, as she was, exactly what had been done to Culhane by a terrorist cell in Basra.
“It brought home to all of us the barbarity of the people we were dealing with. Then, almost immediately after it happened, in the embassy bombing Rafe came face-to-face with the worst that human cruelty can devise.”
She had heard a few of the horror stories that had come out of that day. None of them from Rafe, of course, but even secondhand, they had chilled her to the bone.
“And instead of getting help in dealing with what he’d seen,” Hawk went on, “Rafe set out to get revenge. I would probably have done the same thing—I have done it—so believe me, I’m not criticizing. But…I think all he’d gone through festered inside him during the year he stalked Jorgensen. And since,” he added. “He’s never dealt with it.”
“Words of one syllable, Hawk,” she begged. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“The shrinks have a name for everything. Maybe it matters to them that they can call it something. That overload of evil. They named it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A lot of guys who made it back from Nam had PTSD. Rescue workers in Oklahoma City and New York suffered the same symptoms, but by then everybody understood that they would. A natural consequence of being confronted with what man is capable of doing to his fellow man. Society was prepared to help them deal with the effects of those bombings.”
More words than she had ever heard Hawk string together in all the years she’d known him, she realized. And the quiet compassion in his deep voice, echoing in the close darkness, made them even more poignant.
“At the time when Rafe should have had that same support, he was hunting down Gunther Jorgensen. Maybe having that focus held him together for a while, but the mind can absorb only so much horror before it breaks under the burden.”
Post-traumatic stress. Everyone was familiar with the term. At least now they were. And yet ridiculously she had never once thought about it in connection to Rafe. Someone who was always in total control. Contained. Almost emotionless.
For the first time she realized something she should have known—even back then. Those aspects of his personality, the very ones she had most admired, were probably the worst possible combination for the kind of damage Hawk was talking about.
Rafe, who always had to be in control, had been faced by a series of unspeakable human cruelties over which he had no control. Barbarities his very rational mind could find no way to rationalize.
“How did you know?” she asked, fighting a growing guilt that she hadn’t.
“Griff kept track of us after the agency dissolved the team. It took him a while to unravel some of the identity puzzles the experts had created, but eventually he found all of us. All who’d survived.”
“Are you saying…Rafe told Griff?”
Despite the darkness, she could see the quick upward slant of Hawk’s mouth. “I doubt Rafe has ever told anyone. Griff is pretty intuitive. And don’t forget, he’s dealt with a few traumas of his own.”
Griff, too, had survived a terrorist attack, this one aimed at Langley itself. His slight limp was a constant reminder of the incident.
“Did he suggest to Rafe that he get help?”
The smile had disappeared. Hawk’s lips flattened as he hesitated over the answer.
“I
don’t know,” he admitted finally. “Griff is also pretty good at keeping his mouth shut. I know he invited Rafe to join the Phoenix, and I know Rafe refused. Maybe in the course of that refusal… Maybe he said enough that Griff was able to figure out what was going on.”
“What is going on?”
“Specific to Rafe, I don’t know. But the symptoms vary only in severity. The longer they go untreated—”
“The more severe they become,” she finished for him. That must be something she had read or heard after the New York attack, although she had no recollection of exactly where.
Hawk nodded.
“Flashbacks?” she asked, pulling out information she had apparently filed away in her brain.
As she articulated the word, she had a mental image of that strange incident after the explosion in Magnolia Grove. One second Rafe had been fully engaged in what was going on, obviously concerned with making sure she was all right. The next it was as if someone had broken the connection between them. His eyes were no longer focused on her face. Whatever he had been seeing, she realized only now, had not been the reality before him.
“One of the more common side effects,” Hawk confirmed. “Nightmares. Assorted sleep disorders. An inability to feel. A tendency to isolation.”
An inability to feel. A tendency to isolation. Including a rejection of those who cared about him?
“And you really think that Rafe…” She hesitated, still trying to come to grips with the idea. “All because of what happened at Amsterdam?”
It seemed incredible that an event that had occurred so long ago should still have such profound effects. She found that especially hard to fathom because of the kind of man Rafe Sinclair was.
“Amsterdam. Paul’s death. Duncan’s mutilation. Rafe was with the group that rescued him, remember. And maybe… Maybe even Jorgensen’s death.”
“But—”
