Eight Years: A Novel (Trident Trilogy: Book One)

by Donna Schwartze

  She’s only about twenty feet from me now. I get a better look at her. She looks like she just came off the beach—cutoffs, T-shirt, flip flops. Her skin and hair both still radiate the sun’s glow. She takes a stool at the bar, her back toward me. Her hair sways back and forth as she settles into her seat. I’m hypnotized. I want to dip my hands deep into it, and feel it flow over me like water.

  I hear her saying something to Pete. It sounds like she’s ordered something other than beer or whiskey. That’s really where his bartending skills start and end. Pete leaves to get her a drink that I’m sure is going to be nothing like what she ordered. She turns her stool around and looks right at me. She sees me looking. I don’t try to hide it. She smiles slightly to acknowledge, but not to encourage, and looks away. The disappointment shoots all the way through my body.

  I’ve seen her type before. Not often. Certainly not in this town. A woman like her is like a mirage—an illusion sent to trick you into thinking something on the horizon could actually quench your thirst. But in the back of your head, you know it’s not real. You’re never even going to be able to get close to it.

  I don’t look away though. I’m not sure I physically can. My eyes dart up and down her body not sure where they want to land. There’s so much to look at. I’m enjoying the subtle curves peeking out of her loose V-neck T-shirt when she crosses her legs, drawing my eyes slowly, all the way down her long, long legs. As I’m thinking about how I’d like to start at her ankles and run my hands all the way up until they disappear under her cutoffs, I notice suddenly that the legs have started walking toward me.

  “I’ll play,” she says to us, to me, to the team.

  Seeing what we see every day, it takes a lot to bring us to a complete stop. But, here we are, seven grizzled operators stopped in our tracks, leering thirstily at the mirage.

  Butch is the first to recover. “You’ll play with us? Not sure you know what you’re getting into, ma’am.” He extends out the word “ma’am” to highlight his Georgia drawl. It’s one of his go-to pickup moves.

  “Oh, I think I probably do.” She doesn’t look too concerned.

  “We’re like professional pool players, darlin’,” Butch continues. “You ought not to mess with us.”

  “I’ll take my chances, but I get to pick my partner.”

  Amused, I watch as my team all suddenly straighten up like they’re in the operator version of a beauty pageant, pumping out their chests and trying to smooth their beards.

  “I want curly back there.” She points to Mouse. As usual, he’s the only one not seeking the spotlight. Currently, he’s trying to blend into the wall.

  “Mouse? All this on display, and you want that?” Butch is flexing so hard, I think he might pop a bicep.

  “Women are always suckers for the strong, silent type. Am I right?” she says turning to Clark, one of the naval analysts assigned to our team. Clark rolls her eyes. She’s about as interested in us as we are in her.

  “Well, she’s not going to say anything because she knows y’all, but trust me, she looks at those curls,” the mirage says, nodding toward Mouse, who is about to keel over from all the attention being leveled at him.

  She smiles, picks up a cue, and walks past all of us on her way over to Mouse. Our heads turn one at a time as she slowly passes by. Our eyes linger on her perfectly curved backside, as her sweet, heady scent fills our nostrils. It’s fucking intoxicating. All of it. The entire show. Her eyes lock with mine for a second and she does a double-take. I’m used to it by now. No one expects that color of blue coming out of my worn face. My eyes are the only thing that don’t seem to age about me. She recovers quickly, but she knows I noticed.

  She finally gets over to Mouse. She presses her body lightly to him and whispers into his ear. I’m suddenly filled with an unwarranted jealousy. I want to rip her away from him. I don’t hear what she’s saying, but I hear Mouse reply, “Yeah, do your thing. I’ve got your back if you miss.” He puts his hand on her waist and pulls her a little closer as he answers. My jealousy is overflowing now.

  “What in the damn hell are you doing?” Butch brings me back to reality. “If you get any closer to him, you’re going to render him useless as your teammate. Mousie won’t be able to walk soon.”

  “I’m discussing strategy with my teammate. You’re familiar with strategy, right?”

  Damn, does that mean she knows what we do for a living? It kind of disappoints me.

  “The only strategy Mouse is going to need is how to hide what’s going on in his pants right now,” Hawk says from the corner. We all laugh at the honesty of it. The rest of us are getting hard just watching her, much less touching her.

  “Do y’all want to talk all night or play pool?” she purrs, suddenly throwing in a Southern accent. She knows who she’s dealing with. A lot of us are Southerners or Texans. She’s using all of her ammunition.

  “Okay, Strawberry Shortcake, let’s see your stuff,” Butch says.

  It’s not until now as she moves directly under the light that I notice her blonde hair has flicks of red running through it. Her hair, like the rest of her, is perfect. She looks like a fucking angel to me. She puts a hundred down on the table and waits patiently for the rest of us to follow. I’m so mesmerized. I temporarily forget that I’m expected to play in the game. I fumble for my hundred and finally put it down on the table.

  “Y’all okay if I break?” she asks as JJ picks up the money and starts to rack the balls. I’m back in game mode now. I nod to the table without saying anything. Ladies first.

  She walks over to the head of the table and bends over slightly. Thank God I’m not standing behind her. I would have been rendered useless. Bryce’s eyes are laser-focused on her ass. I think he might be in shock. I look up to see her about ready to break, her eyes lock with mine. She breaks without looking away from me. It’s so fucking sexy.

  “Stripes,” she says. I finally look at the table. Perfect break. I think we’re about to get hustled.

  She moves around the table with military precision. The striped balls are falling into the pockets like obedient soldiers. It takes her about five minutes to clear the table. I’m guessing she’s done it faster, but I can tell this is more of a show to her than a competition. And, all of us are enjoying every last minute of it.

  “Eight ball, top left.” She gestures slightly toward the target pocket.

  Straight in. I’m not even sure it touched the sides. She straightens up, puts her stick on the table, and walks over to JJ to collect her winnings. He’s fanned the bills out like playing cards against his chest. He’s going to make her work for it. She looks at him directly in the eyes and plucks the bills out of his hands slowly, one by one. God, she has balls. There aren’t many men who would stare at JJ that long.

  She walks over to Mouse and gives him his two hundred and a little wink. He winks back. I’m not liking where I think this is headed. But then, just as suddenly as she approached us, she walks away.

  “Thanks for the game, boys,” she says, the Southern accent gone.

  “What? That’s it?” Butch says. “We don’t get a chance to win our money back?”

  “Maybe another time. I need to get some rest. I have a big meeting in the morning.” She looks right at me when she says it, knowing I should have figured it out by now.

  I watch her hand her two hundred to Pete. “I’m picking up their drinks tonight,” she says, nodding over to us as she walks out of the bar.

  And then it hits me, like a grenade blowing up in my face. Her meeting tomorrow is with me, with us. She’s our new CIA agent.

  Well, this is just going to be fucking inconvenient.

  Chapter Ten

  Baghdad, Iraq

  2003

  Mack was two months into a three-month deployment in Iraq. The last month was always the toughest on him. He had to manage his e
xcitement about being close to seeing Millie again with being focused every last minute he was here. Lack of focus could get him or his teammates killed, but every day he got closer to seeing Millie, he felt like he lost just a little bit of his clarity.

  Millie always made him a drawing for every day he was going to be gone on deployment, with countdown numbers on the top of each one. Mack pulled that day’s drawing out first thing every morning. They became like a lifeline to him. Beatrice helped Millie count out how many drawings she would need, and then helped her pack them into an envelope for Mack to take with him when he left. Beatrice always had a soft spot for Mack growing up, and it had transferred over to Millie. At least she was able to protect Millie from absorbing too much of Camille’s crazy while he was gone.

  “Let me see today’s drawing,” said Chase, Mack’s team leader, as he walked over.

  Smiling, Mack held up the drawing of the butterfly. At least half of her artwork had something to do with butterflies.

  “She’s quite the little Picasso already,” Chase said. “You still trying to train her up?

  “Yeah, she’s a crazy good swimmer already. Decent shot for as little as her hands are still,” Mack said proudly. “The only thing I’m worried about is her self-defense skills. She’s not taking to it.”

  “She’s only eight years old, dumbass. She doesn’t need to be a Krav Maga master just yet,” Chase said, rolling his eyes.

  Mack knew that Chase was messing with him, but he really was getting worried about Millie’s lack of interest in his self-defense training. She’d taken so readily to swimming and shooting, but he just couldn’t get her to focus on hand-to-hand defense.

  “If you’re trying to make her the first female SEAL, I think Demi Moore has already beaten her to that,” Harry chimed in from the corner of the room.

  Mack laughed. There was little to no chance of that. First, he’d never allow her to be in the military, and second—and more importantly—she had the focus of a drunk bird. As she’d gotten older, their conversations had started to physically wear Mack out. Following her train of thought was like watching a pin ball bounce unrestrained through the machine.

  Last time he was home, he’d been working with her on perfecting an army crawl. He bought a pair of fake night-vision goggles so they could try an assault in the dark. He told her to crawl through the corn stalks in Camille’s garden to see if she could sneak up on him undetected. After waiting ten minutes for her to crawl only fifty feet, he decided to flank her. He snuck around from the back and started crawling through the garden to surprise her. He was twenty feet away when he heard her singing. He got closer to find her on her back, goggles on top of her head, looking up at the stars through the stalks. He grabbed her foot before she even knew he was anywhere near her. She definitely didn’t have a future as a special forces operator.

  “You know it’s been eight years, man,” Chase said quietly to Mack. “There’s nobody coming for her. You need to pull back the defenses a little.”

  “Yeah, I know, but even just in everyday life, you know, if I’m not here, I want her to be able to protect herself,” Mack said.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you, but if it does, I’ve got her. Mariel and I will make her one of our own. You know that,” Chase said.

  “And if you’re gone, too, what happens then?”

  “Then Harry’s got her or Clem, and on down the line. You know how this works. She’s family. Someone is always going to have her back,” Chase said.

  “I don’t want Clem anywhere near my daughter. Ever. No matter the circumstances,” Mack said.

  “Roger that,” Chase said, laughing as he headed to the showers.

  Chase was Mack’s best friend. They’d known each other since Mack joined Chase’s team. He knew Chase would die defending him but more importantly, he’d die defending Millie. Chase was the only one who knew the entire story, and he’d never told anyone, not even his wife.

  Mack remembered the day he’d received the phone call telling him he had a daughter. The man on the other end of the phone spoke with a heavy Slavic accent that made it almost impossible for Mack to understand what he was saying. Mack finally recognized he was talking about Nejra, the woman he’d worked with when his team was assigned to Sarajevo. The man said Nejra had gotten pregnant with Mack’s baby. He had slept with her several times, but he’d always used protection, so his first thought was that her family was trying to shake him down for money.

  The man continued, telling him that Nejra’s brother had murdered her in an honor killing. Nejra was Muslim, and Mack knew she had a brother. He guessed it could be a possibility, but he didn’t think it seemed likely. The man told him the brother was going to kill the baby if Mack didn’t come over to Bosnia to get her. Now, Mack just thought it was a set up to kill him for sleeping with Nejra.

  The man quickly hung up without leaving his name or number. Luckily, he had called Mack at the base. Mack had their intelligence team trace the call. He only had to do a little research on the man who called to figure out his connection to Nejra was legitimate. And he found out, sadly, that Nejra had died, although the official cause of death was listed as natural causes.

  Chase advised him vehemently against going over to Bosnia, but he knew Mack was determined, even if he had to go AWOL. There was something in Mack’s gut that made him feel like the man on the phone was telling the truth. Chase gave him two weeks’ leave, telling everyone that Mack had to handle a family matter.

  Mack located the baby within a day of being in Sarajevo. Nejra’s brother still had her. By what Mack had been able to put together, the baby had to be at least two months old. If the story was true, he wondered why the brother hadn’t killed the baby yet. Mack observed them for almost a week. The brother took the baby out with him when he left the building to go to the market, visit friends, whatever, but he always left her in the apartment when he went for prayers at the mosque.

  Mack spent days trying to determine how to decide if the baby was his without tipping anyone off. He’d almost decided just to confront the brother when, one day, he was observing them and caught a glimpse of the baby’s bright red hair through his binoculars. A bolt of electricity surged through his body. He knew right then that the baby was his.

  Mack waited for the next time the brother left for the mosque, and just walked in and took the baby. He realized he was committing an international crime that could land him in jail for life or get him killed, but he didn’t care. His gut was telling him this was his baby, and he wanted to get her out of there.

  He flew all the way back to New York without anyone questioning him. He told everyone his wife had died in childbirth, and he was taking the baby home. The flight attendants flocked around the baby the entire flight, helping him feed and change her. Mack had no idea what to do with a baby, so they saved him. He looked helpless, and he was for maybe the first time since he was the baby’s age.

  Mack had a paternity test done first thing when they got to New York. She was a hundred percent his. He hadn’t really considered what he would do if she wasn’t. He felt certain since the day he saw her hair, and the feeling had cemented within him the moment he picked her up off the floor of that apartment.

  After he got her a birth certificate in New York, he’d gone to Virginia Beach and spent a few days with Millie alone before he talked himself into going down to the Outer Banks to try to convince Camille to take care of her. He and Chase agreed it was probably the safest place for Millie in case anyone was following him.

  Mack had lived on pins and needles for almost two years after he’d brought her back, but slowly over the years, his fear had almost gone away. He still jumped every time he heard a Slavic accent of any kind, but thankfully, in Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks, that didn’t happen very often.

  Chapter Eleven

  Millie

  Virginia Beach, Virginia<
br />
  2019

  As I drive up to the naval base, my palms begin to sweat. My mind is racing. My heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of my chest. I’ve never had a panic attack, but I’m sure this is what it feels like.

  “Ma’am. Can I help you?” The guard is talking to me, but my mind is still spinning from thinking about the last time I pulled up to this gate. It was eight years ago, but it suddenly feels like yesterday.

  “Ma’am?” The guard is leaning down, and looking cautiously into my open window.

  “Sorry. Yes, I’m here to meet with Harrison Culver. Captain Culver,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  “Name?”

  “Harrison Culver.”

  “I mean your name, ma’am.” He’s looking at me like I’m an idiot. Or I’m high. Or both.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Millie Marsh.” I suddenly feel sixteen years old again.

  “Wait here.” He walks back to the guard gate.

  I force myself not to look over at the last place I saw my dad. Where he dropped me off at my car. Where he told me he’d see me in a few days. My eyes are focused firmly on my steering wheel when the guard walks back over.

  “You can go in. Captain Culver is expecting you at eight hundred. Do you know where you’re going?”

  I try to focus as he gives me directions to Culver’s office. Apparently, I didn’t focus well enough. I have to text Raine to give me directions again. She’s waiting for me as I get out of my car.

  “I see you’re wearing your super agent costume,” Raine says, smiling. I’m wearing a black pantsuit, white button-up blouse, hair up in a top knot, glasses, heels—my power look.