Mason Walker series Box Set

by Alex Howell

  “Yes, dad, like the baseball team,” Clara said as she stretched forward to lengths Mason knew that he would never get to.

  “So who all are the outfielders and who all are the pitchers?”

  “Really, dad? You’re going to carry the joke that far?”

  “Hey, you said it was like the baseball team, I’m just asking the logical questions.”

  “Dear God,” Clara said, rolling her eyes with a gentle smirk.

  Despite the jokes, Mason could not help but be impressed with her knowledge of birds. It was just yet another reminder that Clara was throwing herself full force into the world, choosing to err on the side of overloading, rather than the side of too little. She wasn’t exactly a bad student before, but the level to which she had elevated herself went far beyond where she had been.

  “Huh, well, let me know what else you hear,” Mason said as he stood, dusting off the pine needles and dirt that had accumulated on his shorts. “Maybe you’ll hear the Toronto Blue Jay or… I dunno, the Philadelphia Eagle?

  “I will,” Clara said, finishing off some other stretches, choosing to drop the joke by ignoring it entirely. “But, you know, Dad, there’s a different kind of learning that’s teaching me a lot.”

  “And what’s that?” Mason said, thinking nothing of what she had said.

  “This.”

  What do you mean? Mason thought even as the answer came to mind that he wasn’t sure he liked. She wasn’t exactly referring to the cardio she got from running with him.

  “This, running with you, going to the gun range with you, taking martial arts classes with you… it’s like life skills.”

  “Yeah,” Mason said, trying to end the conversation there.

  It wasn’t an accident all of those classes had happened. Mason never, ever wanted to go through what had happened three months before again—he never wanted Clara to feel like the helpless princess who needed rescuing ever again. He never wanted her to be in a spot where she had to rely on the help of others. Mason did not expect her to stand up to an entire unit of Navy SEALs and hold her own, but if he could so much as prevent a night-time purse robbery, the training would all be worthwhile.

  That was the idea at the time, at least. The more training that she had, the more she seemed to enjoy it, and the more Mason began to fear that she was becoming a little too comfortable with Mason’s old line of work. She was an 18-year-old going to Stanford, not a small-town boy like him who needed the military just to get out of Concord, Georgia.

  Maybe if she had resisted the idea of learning to shoot a gun or practice self-defense, Mason would have somehow felt more justified in it. But her embracing of everything that they had learned left Mason a little uncomfortable. It was like she was too eager to learn about it.

  Too eager to get into action.

  Better to know it and not need it than to need it and not know it.

  But what if she knows it and doesn’t need it, but then decides to force herself to need it somehow?

  Stop having such stupid thoughts, Mason. Focus on what you can control.

  “You do a lot for me, dad, and I really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah,” Mason said again. “I just do what I can.”

  “Dad.”

  Mason looked down to see Clara holding her hand out, asking for help up. Mason quickly went over, offered her his hand, and lifted her up. Before he could let go, though, she pulled him in close for a tight hug.

  “Seriously, thank you,” she said. “I love you.”

  Mason bit his lip, listened to the bird song filling the air, and squeezed back. No, Clara wouldn’t do anything stupid. Clara would only use what she had learned to protect herself and her friends, if need be. Nothing about her was going to cause Mason any headaches.

  He hoped.

  “I love you too, Clara.”

  1

  August 17th, 2028

  1:28 p.m.

  Baltimore, Maryland

  The training never stopped.

  The running, weight-lifting, and self-defense training comprised most of it, but, unlike most people who maybe took a couple days off here and there, Mason only let his daughter take off once a week. The five-mile run took place four times a week, though Mason was willing to let the mileage drop if it went up on a different day. The weight-lifting took place three times a week. Boot-camp style training and self-defense work also happened three times a week. There could be no rest, no downtime, and no slack, most especially given Clara’s imminent departure for the other side of the country.

  It was the kind of schedule that could turn even the laziest of American slobs into mean soldiers who could take down the enemy, but, for Mason’s part, he just wanted the enemy to not even bother with Clara given what she knew. After all, most attacks happened because the victim looked easy to attack; the more Mason could get her to walk with confidence, the less likely she’d ever have to bother in the first place.

  At first, he’d done it as a way to help her get her mind off of everything that had happened. Though Mason’s mind tended to drift when he ran, Clara seemed to find a meditative peace that she couldn’t anywhere else. Mason hadn’t intended it to go any further than just the occasional run, but Clara had soon fallen in love with it so much that she demanded more. They had to go further, do more, and challenge themselves more. Admittedly, Mason wondered if this was therapy or coping—or maybe a little bit of both—but he wasn’t about to complain. As long as it worked and she didn’t show any signs of breaking because of her past, the rest was just semantics.

  It was also a chance, he knew, for her to build up some mental skills as well. Whenever they worked out, if her body language started to suffer, he would call her out on it immediately. He never wanted to see her shoulders slouching, a groan coming from her body, or any body language that suggested anything other than complete confidence. Body posture, perhaps more than skills and knowledge, mattered in deterring others.

  “Enemies don’t want to spend more energy than they have to on the strong,” he would always say. “They want the weak. Look strong, and you drastically reduce your chances of getting hurt.”

  What he hadn’t told her was that as a woman, that went doubly so—no man would ever dare to take advantage of her. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he knew full well whoever she met would know he was a Navy SEAL and a black ops member and, oh yeah, he was the one that foiled the domestic terrorist plot to start World War III. But, it was nice to know that Clara being a woman would help her stand up.

  When she’d gotten good at that, he would encourage her to analyze other people. How did that other girl on the trail look from a body language perspective? How about the guy grunting loudly at his weights? What did they all carry? It was Mason’s way of getting Clara better at reading people. She couldn’t just be a person who passively repelled would-be attackers; she had to be the one who could see them from afar, study their intentions, and perhaps move to a different walkway or part of the bar accordingly.

  It might have all been overkill if Clara didn’t enjoy it, but she seemed to get such a kick out of it that, if Mason stopped, especially with only a few days before he had to take her to Stanford, he knew he’d have to face hell from his only daughter. He’d be getting a treatment of his own medicine in a way; the monster he had raised would come back to get him.

  And on this particular mid-day, he decided to fill in the training with something a little different—something a little more…

  Deadly.

  BRAP-BRAP! BRAP-BRAP! BRAP-BRAP!

  Clara slowly lowered her gun as she looked at the target far ahead. Mason waited until she had placed the gun on the platform, the barrel pointed away from both of them—that was a fun lesson teaching her to pay attention to that the first few rounds—and looked. She had done reasonably well, although she hadn’t had the perfect accuracy that Mason had seen her achieve before. For how little she had practiced though, Mason wasn’t about to overly critique her—incremental pro
gress was what most mattered here, not perfection.

  That, and just the threat of shooting a would-be perpetrator usually ended any potential situations before they became too bad.

  “Everything all good?” he asked as she removed her ear muffs.

  “Yeah, just missed,” she said, a little frustrated as she dropped her gaze and let her ear muffs hang to the side. “I pulled a bit quicker than I wanted to.”

  She knows how she messed up. That’s promising.

  “How come?”

  She groaned, fidgeted with her hands a bit, and then turned to him. The expression on her face was one of eager disappointment, like she resented having failed but was excited to get it resolved.

  “Just… felt like if this were a real situation, and there was a gunfight going on, I couldn’t wait that long. If I waited to pull the trigger, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I?”

  While that was a true question to come from Clara, it left Mason a little reeling. Most gunfights barely lasted any real amount of time, and the kinds of gunfights that Clara would hopefully never find herself in would only consist of a couple of shots—a gunfight in the event of a robbery, an attempted kidnapping, that sort of thing. The notion that she’d be involved in full-on firefights or search-and-rescues was a little mortifying.

  “Well, yes, in a way, that is true,” Mason said, taking care to pay particular attention to his words. “However, what you’re describing is the kind of thing that would be used more in an offensive situation. What I’m teaching you is only for defensive purposes. You don’t have any reason to use such weapons in an offensive situation. And, if you did, we’d be having a whole lot different conversation right now. You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Hopefully,” she said, a word that struck to the core of Mason.

  Hopefully…

  Three months ago, I would never have thought “hopefully she’ll need this” because I never thought she would.

  Hopefully…

  Although he could not wrap his head around General Jones and his actions, there was some advice he had given Mason and the rest of his black ops platoon many years ago that still resonated with him. He had since learned the advice had not originated with General Jones, but he nevertheless attributed it to him on the basis of learning it from him first.

  “Hope is not a course of action.”

  That told him that what Clara had just said either meant that she had forgotten that lesson… or there was something else to Clara’s answer that she had not anticipated. And it told himself that the fact that he was even thinking in terms of course of actions for Clara…

  “What do you mean, hopefully?” he said, hoping that he sounded more curious than interrogative—with the added benefit of calming him down some.

  “I mean that, hopefully, I never have to pull a trigger outside of the range, and, hopefully, if I do, it’s only to protect myself, but if so, well, then, hopefully’s not really going to work, you know? And in that case, hopefully…”

  She’s rambling again. She’s nervous about something. It was just like with her prom dress.

  Slightly higher stakes now, though. Especially since that boy isn’t in the picture anymore.

  “Clara,” Mason said, cutting her off in as gentle a tone as this. “What are you getting at?”

  Clara bit her lip, usually a sign that she was about to admit to something that gave her no comfort at all and would probably put Mason in the same situation.

  “What I’m getting at,” she said, slowly. “Is that I don’t want something like a few months ago to happen.”

  No. It will not. It will not!

  “Jesus, it’s not,” Mason said, his voice rising and his body feeling hotter. “I’m going to make sure of it, OK? Nothing like that is going to happen to you. I’m going to raise hell within the White House if that happens.”

  The look that Clara gave Mason stung him, because it was the one thing that he had not expected to see.

  Doubt.

  Doubt that he could protect her. Doubt that he could live up to his word. Doubt that what he said was true.

  “You OK?” Clara said.

  “I’m fine, it’s—”

  “I know you’re fine in that way, dad,” she interrupted back. “But as soon as I mentioned that, you went from calm to, like, angry and starting to become ill-tempered.”

  They’d had one long talk about everything that had transpired about a week after the incident, with the guidance of a military therapist. It had been a tough talk to have, mostly because Mason kept beating himself up because of it. Due to the intensity of that talk and the harsh words that Mason kept hearing throughout in his head, he did his best not to bring it up. Perhaps more sessions would have provided some value, but both Clara and Mason had mutually agreed to leave the past in the past.

  But now, the one person left whom he loved seemed very intent on bringing it back up. And to do it so close to her going to school…

  “I know what happened hurt both of us,” she said. “Like, it really sucks, and we’re both going to remember it for a while, I know. I just… I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Clara.”

  It was too easy of a dismissal, Mason knew, but he just couldn’t find anything else to say that didn’t leave him extraordinarily uncomfortable.

  “Can I ask you something, dad?”

  “Of course. What’s up?”

  “Have you forgiven the country yet? You still seem quite angry about it.”

  What a loaded question.

  Is it really my country’s fault if one single rogue member did something like this? Why should the actions of one person define what an entire country may or may not have done?

  On the other hand… it’s not like this was a one-man show. General Jones had help from several of my so-called brothers in the SEALS. Several diplomats. Too many people who had helped him that shouldn’t have.

  Granted, it wasn’t the highest reaches of the White House; it wasn’t the president or anyone else. But how could they not have at least suspected something?

  “I don’t know,” Mason said truthfully. “You know how I spent the Fourth.”

  “Inside, reading a lot,” Clara said, leaving out the part about how he was grumpy and disinterested in doing anything more than sleeping and waiting for the day to pass. “I just want to make sure you move forward, dad.”

  “I’m working on it,” Mason said with a huff, having gone long enough in this conversation. “Come on, we got some boxing stuff to take care of.”

  Mason knew he was leaving Clara hanging—he knew that he owed her another conversation on this topic and the topic of her future before she headed out.

  But not right now. Not in the middle of a gun range. Not during the intensity of their workouts.

  “I know,” she said with a sigh, as she removed all of her equipment and walked with him to the automatic car, a Jeep—Mason had gotten rid of the last vehicle after everything that had happened, a bit tired of the constant reminders of why he had last used that vehicle. “I… never mind.”

  Mason didn’t ask her to elaborate.

  He got in the front seat, reclining the seat as he tried to process everything that had just happened. He knew that any good shrink would have told him he needed to think about what had happened, to think about what it all meant, to think about how he thought about it—a sort of meta-process that would help him detach and better understand his own behavior. But what did a shrink know? Who had been betrayed by their own country in such a personal, brutal manner? It sure wasn’t any shrink that Mason could have seen.

  “Sometimes, I think this is harder on you than it was on me.”

  Jeez, really not gonna drop it today, huh? Might as well—at least it’s calm and quiet in the car here.

  “What makes you say such a crazy thing?” Mason said, trying to add a dash of humor to the conversation. But it had only come across as judgmental, and the pouting look on Clara’s face told hi
m he’d misjudged this one.

  “It’s not crazy,” Clara snapped. “Dad, seriously. I’m going to be on the other side of the country soon. Stanford’s not Johns Hopkins. You’re going to have a lot of time on your hands, and, if you’re not careful, it might hurt you. I just don’t want to see you hurt, you know? Like, I know it’s hard, but if it were easy, it wouldn’t have made all the news that it did. Maybe… I don’t know, instead of being bitter about it, you could see it as a way to get back into it.”

  Mason, realizing that he had come across as too harsh a second ago, let her continue her rambling, but, at the end, he regretted giving what she had said about him any value. The idea that he would ever get back into his old life voluntarily was preposterous. What he had done was a one-time thing, done out of the love of his daughter, and nothing more. As soon as he knew she was safe, he’d done everything he could to ensure he’d never have to go through that nonsense again.

  Yes, perhaps the constant runs, the psychological training, the gun ranges, and the striking were all a bit counter to the idea that Mason had moved on from that, but, as soon as Clara left, he didn’t have any plans to continue such training regularly. Maybe he’d go shooting once a month and go running three times a week, but it would be more for self-upkeep than training for a battle. His previous life had taken time away from Clara and Bree, had put him in the line of fire far too many times, and seen him witness the death of too many friends. There was nothing glorious about it; the only good it did was ensure that in times of extreme stress and danger, Mason could protect those he loved.

  Which he had done and did not see any reason to do again.

  “I…”

  Mason’s voice trailed off as he sought to make sure he chose his words better than last time.

  “I suppose I could,” he said, hoping to give some validation to the words Clara said, if not himself the confidence to believe in them. “I just don’t think that it would be best for me, honestly. That’s a hard life that exists because of the failings of humanity, not for the sake of bettering it.”