Operation: Fallen Angel (Shepherd Security Book 4)

by Margaret Kay

  Doc let loose a whole new rant of vulgar adjectives, mostly focused at himself. “She’s a child, for fuck’s sake. You know what that makes me, don’t you?”

  Lassiter let out a burst of sarcastic laughter. “Jesus, Doc. She’s twenty-four years old.”

  “You don’t understand,” Doc argued.

  “Make me,” Lassiter challenged.

  Doc was silent, messing with the tinfoil containing the fish fillets again. He nodded towards the cabin. “Make yourself useful and go get us a couple of plates and forks.”

  Lassiter brought himself to his feet and went to the cabin. He had his heavier coat with him too when he returned. The night chill was creeping in. He held the plates while Doc retrieved the fish. He opened the packets and checked several fillets before leaving them on the plates.

  “You got another beer in there for me?” Doc asked Lassiter.

  Lassiter handed it over. “You got more to go with your story?”

  A frown curved over Doc’s face. He took several bites of fish before he answered. “Yeah. Because she is Catholic, and since we were convinced we were going to die, we said vows, promising to be faithful, marrying each other with no witness, just before God.”

  Lassiter took a bite of the fish, digesting that piece of info from Doc. “It’s good,” he said. Then he took another before speaking again. “So, your wife is in Seattle.”

  “No, my wife is dead. Victoria was my wife, and I killed her. I’m not going to do the same to that innocent young thing in Seattle.”

  Lassiter narrowed his eyes on Doc. “I thought we dealt with this. You did not kill Victoria.”

  “I didn’t pull the trigger, but I didn’t stop her from doing it to herself either.”

  “Everyone deals with grief in their own way. You weren’t there for her because you shut down, poured yourself into your work. That was your way. But you didn’t kill her.”

  Doc squeezed his eyes shut. He could still see that sonogram image of his baby in his head. A day later, a drunk driver, Victoria in the ICU, and no more baby. “I shouldn’t have transferred to active duty and stayed deployed after. I should have gone home to her. She needed me and I let her down.”

  Lassiter nodded. “You were twenty-five years old. A kid yourself. At some point, you’re going to have to forgive yourself.”

  “I don’t deserve forgiveness,” Doc said.

  “What about Elizabeth? What does she deserve?”

  “A life without someone like me in it,” Doc shot back without missing a beat. “She doesn’t need an old man who has seen what I’ve seen, lost everything as I have. She deserves someone young and hopeful with a future, someone capable of loving her.”

  “Doc, what happened to Victoria and your unborn child was tragic. No, you weren’t there for Victoria, but did you think for even a second that she would take her own life?”

  “Beforehand, no. I didn’t think twice about it. But looking back after, the signs of the depression were there clear as day. I was too wrapped up in my own grief to see it though.”

  “You weren’t looking. You were focusing on saving the lives you could, the men getting shot and blown up on the battlefield. It was your defense mechanism for dealing with the one you couldn’t save, your child,” Lassiter said.

  Doc never thought about it in those terms. After the car accident he flew home to Houston. He had a two-week emergency leave to sit next to Victoria’s bedside. They planned their unborn child’s funeral. They cried together. They mourned the loss of any future possibility of having a child together. The damage to her uterus required it be removed or she would have died too.

  “Her mother brought her home from the hospital after I was back in the Sandbox and stayed with her. She was supposed to see a counselor. I thought she was.” Doc put another log on the fire. He gazed up at the sky, now pitch-black behind the many constellations that graced the heavens. It was a stunning display.

  “It’s natural you’d think of Victoria after taking vows with Elizabeth.”

  Doc snorted out sad laughter, tears filling his eyes. “Life is cruel. I hadn’t thought about any of this for a long time, was doing just fine. I sure as hell didn’t need any of this shit coming back, especially now.”

  “But now that it’s back, you need to deal with it.”

  Doc nodded. “I am in my own way. It took the first two weeks up here to get my head back on straight.”

  “And now that it is, what have you figured out?”

  “Well, for starters, I don’t owe Elizabeth anything. She’s a sweet kid, but we don’t have a relationship. We don’t have a future. I’m not in love with her. Hell, I’m not sure I’m capable of loving any woman.”

  “That’s a whole other discussion we’ll get to later. Regarding this last Op, what else have you figured out?”

  “Everyone, including me, is going to die. I can take precautions, but the timing is not in my control. When my number’s up, it’s up.”

  “You’ve always known that. You’ve seen more death than most,” Lassiter reminded him.

  “This was different. It was the first time I truly thought it was going to be lights out, my number up. I accepted that and made my peace with it.”

  “So, if you made peace with it, what’s the issue?”

  Doc sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Lassiter waited a beat for Doc to continue. He didn’t. “I’m calling bullshit on that. You’ve had two weeks to think about it and work it out.”

  “Joe, can we let this lay for now?”

  Lassiter laughed. “You’re not getting off that easy.” He watched Doc add another log to the fire. “Give me something substantial. Something that justifies two plus weeks up here without talking to me. You know why this protocol is in place. I gave you time to get your shit together, trusting you wouldn’t blow your brains out up here.”

  Doc shook his head. He knew what it was, what he didn’t want to fess up to. He stared into the dancing flames of the fire and avoided eye contact as he spoke. “I was a total douchebag, with Elizabeth. I shouldn’t have slept with her, shouldn’t have married her, and I sure as fuck treated her shitty when we left her at Andrews. I told myself it was for her own good, that I left her the way I did, but I could have done it differently. You should have seen the look on her face. I hurt her and that was wrong. What the fuck is wrong with me?”

  Lassiter was satisfied they were finally getting to the core of what was eating at Doc. “Let’s break this down one at a time. Why shouldn’t you have slept with her? And don’t give me that she’s a kid. She’s not. She’s a twenty-four-year-old woman.”

  “She was a nun, innocent, a virgin. Under any other circumstances she never would have slept with me or anyone else.”

  “But the circumstances were important to the context. What if you had said no, and she was indeed raped, brutalized, and killed as you both expected would happen?”

  Doc ran his fingers through his hair and grabbed his temples with both hands. “I know, that’s what makes this maddening.”

  “Doc was she really that innocent? She was serving in a hellhole. Certainly, she was more experienced than you are giving her credit for.”

  Doc gazed at him with a laser-focused stare. “Yes, and no. She had seen enough to be jaded but chose not to be. She knew all about sex, the mechanics and chemistry of it, but had never had it.”

  “Did you enjoy it?” Lassiter asked.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, asking that?”

  Lassiter chuckled. “You did and you’re beating yourself up for it.” He watched Doc for a few seconds. He had a fire in his eyes, a self-loathing fire, and a gut-eating agony. “No, you’re not beating yourself up. You’re crucifying yourself for it.”

  “I’m not discussing this with you anymore.”

  “For now. We’ll move on to why you shouldn’t have married her.”

  “That’s fucking obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Enlighten me,” Lassiter pro
mpted.

  “I only did it to sleep with her. She’s Catholic. If we weren’t married, in God’s eyes it would have been a sin.”

  “And again, if you’d both been killed, it wouldn’t be an issue. That was the context you said those vows to her.”

  “She released me from the vows after we were set free,” Doc murmured.

  “Did she release herself?” Lassiter asked.

  Doc shook his head. “I doubt it.” The truth was he didn’t know. He hadn’t bothered to ask her.

  “Hardly seems fair,” Lassiter remarked. “I can see why this is eating at you.”

  “I don’t love her, Joe, am not right for her. Hell, I didn’t even ask her what she wanted when we left Africa. I just told her what it wasn’t going to be for me and sent her on her way.”

  “Is that how you could have handled it better to not hurt her?”

  “Yeah, that and more. I handed her cash because she didn’t have a dime on her to make it home. Cooper messaged Shepherd, who arranged an airline ticket for her. He took up a collection from the team. I gave her every cent I had on me. She had the clothes on her back that Madison gave her. That was it.”

  “What else could you have done?”

  “I could have brought her back with me and let her stay at my place, bought her some clothes and stuff she needed, let her get on her feet before she went back to Seattle. I could have been kind and not so eager to get rid of her.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Joe pressed.

  “I didn’t want her to think we had a future and I damn sure didn’t want to sleep with her again.”

  “Which would have happened if you had her at your place.”

  Doc shook his head not wanting to admit it. But he knew Lassiter would know if he spoke anything but the truth. “Probably.”

  Lassiter smirked. “You are allowed to move on from Victoria, you know.”

  “That’s not what this is about,” Doc insisted.

  “You have not had one real relationship since her, have you?”

  “And I still haven’t.”

  “Yeah, you sent Elizabeth away to be sure of it.” Lassiter paused watching Doc again. This wouldn’t be an easy fix. Doc had well over a decade of self-loathing regarding Victoria’s death he hadn’t really dealt with. He’d buried it, pushed his self-guilt down so far that even Lassiter hadn’t known it was there. Well, now he did, and Doc would deal with it. He’d make sure of it.

  “It was for her own good.”

  “So, you’ve said.” He grabbed the last two beers from the bag. He handed Doc one and then twisted the top off his. He sucked down a drink. “But what I haven’t heard yet, is what is it you really want.”

  “To be left alone.”

  Lassiter grinned. “We both know that’s not going to happen.” He took a drink. “Jackson, Cooper, Garcia, all the members of your team have a woman in their lives. Doesn’t that make you feel at least,” he began.

  “No,” Doc interrupted. “It doesn’t make me want what they have.”

  “It can be done, a woman, a child, while doing this job.”

  “I think I’ve hurt Elizabeth enough. She sure as shit doesn’t need any more from me.”

  “Hum, you seem fixated on that woman being Elizabeth. That wasn’t what I was saying,” Lassiter remarked.

  “What do you want from me, Joe? Tell me what you want to hear, and I’ll say it.”

  Lassiter laughed. “You know that isn’t how this works. You, my friend, have some work to do to forgive yourself before you can even think about being in a relationship. You were right about that when you said she doesn’t need any more from you, not in your current state, anyway. There is no room for her or anyone while you are carrying around what you are. And I’m not going to let you bury it again. It’s out now and damn it, Doc, you’re going to deal with it this time.”

  Fine, just fucking fine, Doc thought.

  Indigo

  “Do you feel ready to be back?”

  “Return me to duty, let me go fishing for another few weeks, I don’t particularly give a shit,” Doc said. He stood in front of the window in Lassiter’s kitchen, gazing out at the mall parking lot again. It had been three weeks since they got back from Africa. It felt more like a year.

  Lassiter eyed him suspiciously. That wasn’t the reply he was expecting. “Are you ready to be back? That’s the question. Have you worked out what you needed to work out that initially made you request two weeks from me?”

  Doc gazed at the ceiling as though the correct answer would display in bold black letters over the white tiles. “I’d like to say I have. I have mostly, but,” he paused for a long couple of beats. “Look Joe, I won’t try to BS you. Way too many thoughts about the car accident and Victoria’s suicide came back, thoughts I thought were dealt with long ago.”

  “Dealt with or buried?” Joe asked.

  Doc shook his head. “When we talked up at the cabin, you gave me some things to think about. I never thought that I was compensating, helping those to survive that I could. But yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. Out there, there was so much death, it was like it helped me to accept that our baby had died, that death was normal, expected. I don’t know.”

  Lassiter nodded. Now they were making progress. “And the vows you made to Elizabeth, did they bring back your married life or your vows to Victoria?”

  Doc shook his head. “You know, not at first. But memories crept in. Her youth and innocence were not what Victoria was at all.” He let loose a string of curses. He paused, frowned, and shook his head. “Victoria was no angel before we got together. We had sex in my truck in the bar parking lot the night I met her. I was captivated by her. She was beautiful, sassy, and so confident. When I popped the question, I was so worried she’d say no, but she didn’t. But then life got complicated, and I joined the National Guard for the extra money. I knew deployment to the Sandbox was a possibility and sure as hell, eight months later our unit got called up. We didn’t know she was pregnant when I left.” He paused and chuckled. “I think she got pregnant the night before I shipped out.”

  Lassiter smiled and nodded to encourage him to continue.

  “When I got the call from her, I was thrilled. But what we were going through over there was pure hell. The attacks and roadside IEDs caused casualties that never stopped coming. I found myself caring less about home and what was going on with Victoria, than I did about what was going on over in the Sandbox. I changed. And after her car accident, all I cared about was learning all I could to save more lives. I checked out on her. And the worst part is, I can’t say it had anything to do with my unborn child’s death. I can’t say it wouldn’t have happened had he lived and been born.”

  “Well, you’ll never know because that is what happened. And don’t discount how life changing it is to serve overseas in a combat zone, especially as a medic.”

  “I know,” Doc agreed.

  “Do you feel you’re still that person you changed into, or do you think you could be a checked-in caring partner?”

  Doc shook his head. “I don’t want to find out and I sure as hell don’t want to subject anyone else to a life with me if I can’t.”

  “So, if you know for sure or are at least sure you don’t want to find out then why did this thing with Elizabeth dredge all this up? Or was it something specific to Elizabeth?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Figuring that out is your job, isn’t it?”

  Lassiter chuckled again. “It’s a joint project.”

  “Why do I get the feeling we’re not done with this?”

  “Probably because we’re not.” Lassiter grinned. “When we talked last, you said that you know you hurt Elizabeth, but it was for her own good. The question I have for you is how it made you feel? What were you thinking about?”

  Doc’s steely gray eyes focused on Joe Lassiter. “I felt nothing. I thought nothing. I did what was best for her.”

  Lassiter doubted that. Doc was a master at buryi
ng what he didn’t want to think about. He didn’t want Doc to bury these feelings about Elizabeth too, but he knew when to push and when not to. And this was not a time to push Doc. He knew the man well enough to know that.

  “Do you remember when we talked after the Inverness Academy job?” Lassiter asked. Doc nodded. “When we talked about the dead girl and the one you had to sedate, did you think about your child at all during any of that?”

  Doc shook his head. “I’ve never thought about Daniel during any mission. He was never a living breathing child and I’ve never envisioned him as one. He’s in my memories as that sonogram image, nothing more.”