Page 17 of Maximus

“What does POW mean?” Liam asked.

“Prisoner of war. That means that someone was captured and held by the enemy until his or her friends could come rescue them,” Max answered.

Liam’s body went solid and he glanced over his shoulder at me. Shit, I knew what he was thinking.

“You know a lot about this,” Liam mumbled.

“I was in the Navy.”

That’s right, Tex did say Max was in the Navy. A SEAL.

“You were?” That announcement piqued Liam’s interest.

“I sure was. I joined when I was eighteen and served twelve years.”

“So you’re a veteran, too?”

“Yep.”

Eli and I stood slightly to the side during Max and Liam’s exchange, and I watched Liam visibly relax after he heard Max had been in the military. My son assumed that made Max a good guy.

“Which uniform did you wear?” Liam pointed to a group of mannequins wearing different uniforms.

Max moved to the exhibit, Liam hot on his heels ready to soak up any information Max imparted.

“This one.” Max motioned to the typical white sailor uniform. “We called it our crackerjacks. But it’s really the enlisted dress uniform. This one is white, but it also comes in a dark navy blue. The blues are so dark it looks black.”

“What did you do in the Navy?”

Max blinked before he quickly covered his discomfort.

Interesting.

“I was an intelligence specialist. That’s just a fancy way of saying I read reports, then I wrote reports about what I read.”

Intelligence specialist? I thought he was a SEAL.

Liam nodded his head up and down like he understood what Max was talking about, even though it was very likely Liam had no clue.

We spent the next twenty minutes wandering around the room. Liam asked a thousand questions, Max patiently answered, and Eli and I just followed.

When Liam ran out of questions, he suggested we go outside to look at the trains. My son did this under the guise of his little brother wanting to see them. Which was interesting, because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think that Liam was trying to act older than he was in front of Max.

During the tour, Liam stood a little taller, got closer to Max, and listened to every word he said with clear interest.

An hour later, I was starving and I’d learned more about trains, thanks to Max, than I ever wanted to know. I was also paranoid. The longer we were out in the open, the more worried I became.

“Stop worrying. Nothing’s going to hurt you,” Max whispered, standing close. “You and the boys are safe.”

Safe?

I didn’t think we’d ever truly be safe. Not that we’d ever been.

I nodded instead of speaking and Max sighed like he was annoyed at my noncommittal gesture.

“I’m serious, Eva. I won’t let anyone hurt any of you.”

“Thank you.”