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Sometimes Lauren had a tough time believing Kazak was Spetsnaz. Those Russian black ops warriors were tough. There was a soft, almost tender side to Kazak, that she couldn’t ignore. Lauren slowly found herself warming up to him because he was laid back and easy to get along with in the team. “Cal needs to talk, pure and simple. He needs to bawl his eyes out. Somebody needs to just hold him and let him cry.” She saw Alex grow uncomfortable. “You guys really suck at emotions and showing anyone a little human care. Do you know that?”
Alex sighed. “I can listen. But if he starts to cry…,” and Alex gave her a desperate look and admitted hesitantly, “it makes me very uncomfortable to hold him. I feel helpless. I do not know what to say or do.”
Snorting, Lauren shoved the chair back and stood up. She stretched and began to walk, getting circulation back into her body after sitting far too long. “You know, God gave men tear ducts. Now, that isn’t lost on you, Kazak, because you’re a combat medic. You know anatomy.” She turned, hooking her hands over her hips, giving him a bruising stare. “Tear ducts mean you can CRY, big guy. And Cal needs to cry. He’s got to let it out, because anyone with a set of eyes can see it’s eating him alive from the inside out.” She remembered when he’d cried out on the beach shortly after Sky was kidnapped.
Alex nodded. “You women are much wiser and far stronger than any man will ever be.”
Brows flying up, Lauren stood there, shocked by his quiet admittance. Alex wasn’t smiling now. He was utterly honest, his eyes reflecting the truth. “God, save me. A man has actually admitted the fact. You’re damned right we’re stronger. We know how to work with our emotions, not sit our asses with them and pretend we don’t have any.” She jabbed a finger toward him. “No one can force Cal to cry. You just can’t walk up to him and tell him he needs to cry and get it off his chest.”
Alex nodded. “Yes, you are right.” He rubbed his wrinkled brow. “But how can I talk with him, Lauren? What should I say to help him speak of what he carries?”
Lauren groaned, closed her eyes, and shook her head. The silence deepened in the room. Finally, she raised her head, her eyes narrowed on Kazak. “About the only way any of you operators are EVER going to cry is to get stone drunk out of your minds. Drink him under the table. Then, maybe he’ll talk. Or if you get lucky, cry.”
“No… I do not want to do that. Alcohol… well… it is a crutch.”
“Obviously, you aren’t Russian.” Lauren walked back to her chair and sat down. “Those guys drink vodka like it’s water and not alcohol.”
“Which is why so many Russians have died of alcohol poisoning.”
“Or pickled their livers and died early,” Lauren added, sipping more coffee. She didn’t want to be moved by his gesture to help Cal. The guy was without guile. He truly cared for Cal and his predicament. And whether Lauren wanted to admit it or not, she was touched by Alex coming to her for counsel. Only her close circle of teammates trusted her to that depth. And Kazak was a shadow in her life.
Alex cocked his head, studying her grim face. “If I try to trigger him to talk, then I just sit and listen?”
“Yes, without comment. Unless he asks your opinion, then give it.” She saw the worry in the medic’s large, intelligent hazel eyes. “You would act like a witness. Just sit and listen. That’s what Cal needs.”
Alex compressed his lips, his brow furrowing deeply. “I have a sister, Lauren. Kira is two years younger than me.” He sat up and opened the pocket on his cammies and produced a photo of her, handing it to Lauren. “I love my sister with my life. When she was a young nurse in the Russian Army, her unit was attacked by Chechen terrorists. They killed all the men who were already injured there at the medical forward operating base. Then they killed the doctors. They gathered up all the nurses and they were all gang raped repeatedly. Many of them died of internal hemorrhage.” His voice fell and emotions clearly showed in his thickened tone. “Kira was never the same after that. I was not there. I felt guilty because I was supposed to protect my sister, and I could not. She became a shadow of herself. When I finally got emergency leave to fly home, to be at her side at the St. Petersburg hospital, I was nothing but a mess of emotions. When I sat with her, tried to find out what happened, she was like a wooden doll. She refused to speak of it.”
He gave Lauren a sad look. “I am not very good at getting anyone to talk. Not even my sweet, loving sister.” Alex rubbed his face and rasped, “It was me who cried. I cried for her, for all the pain she experienced, the terror she felt being violated like that. I cried for myself because our parents were gone. We had very little family left, just far distant cousins. Kira had no one. I visited her every day for five days. Every day I asked her so many questions. She just laid there in bed, her eyes blank, as if her soul had been murdered. And perhaps it has been.”
“God,” Lauren whispered, shaken. “I didn’t know this, Alex…” Lauren managed, her voice strangled. She reached out, briefly touching his hand that had curled into a fist on the table as he’d spoken about Kira. “I’m so sorry…” Lauren choked, her throat tightening with unexpected emotions. She saw him raise his head when she’d grazed his thick, hard knuckles. There was something in his darkened eyes that she couldn’t decipher, but whatever it was, it was warm and good, flowing around her like an invisible embrace. She had to be tired and wasn’t reading Alex accurately. She must be exhausted so much that she was beginning to hallucinate, which is what sleep deprivation spiraled into.
“That is why I asked you for advice about Cal. I am not good at this. Now you know why. I am terrible at it. But I lay in bed listening to Cal pace. I swear by all that is holy,” and Alex pressed his hand to his broad chest, “I can FEEL how he is feeling.”
Lauren grunted, pulling her hand back, her fingers tingling where she’d connected with Kazak’s fist. “I understand now,” she murmured. “But you’re being too hard on yourself. There’s horrible shock after being raped, Alex. Surely you know that because you’re a combat medic? Or do they just teach you how to fix men and not women out on the battlefield?”
“No… it is male oriented,” he admitted. “But I took other courses regarding women, pregnancy, and childbirth, because I was out in the field. Often, women in remote villages needed help of that kind. I wanted to be able to render them aid.” He smiled a little. “I have delivered six babies to date. They all lived.”
Lauren felt her heart open. It was the strangest, most uncomfortable feeling she’d ever had. “You’d be good with babies,” she muttered. “You’ve got an obvious tender side.”
“Is that a compliment?”
Lauren gave him a flat stare. “Well it wasn’t an insult, Kazak.” She watched him blush and avoid her gaze for a moment.Unbelievable.The guy wore his heart on his sleeve. Who knew? Kazak wasn’t like the Spetsnaz she’d met. Lauren wrote it off to the fact he was a medic and therefore, passionate about saving lives, helping to aid those who suffered. He had a more sensitive conscience, was all.
“Look, just ask Cal how he’s doing. Ask if there’s anything you can do for him. All right? That should get the ball rolling.” Lauren sighed. “I’m so damned tired, I’m going to keel over.”
“Me too.” Alex rose. “May I will drive you home?”
Usually, Lauren hitched a ride with anyone else but Alex. Tonight, she felt differently. Jack, her roommate, had already left, and she had no way to get home. Probably because she was so rummy she couldn’t add two and two together, her usual defensiveness wasn’t in place. “Yeah, fine. Let’s get the hell out of here…”
June 25
Cal sat outon the picnic table on the sun deck, looking at the cold, glimmering stars overhead. It was 0300, the middle of the night. He’d tried to sleep, tossed and turned. He imagined Sky being tortured by Yerik Alexandrov. It tore him up. He couldn’t stop the terrible scenes he imagined that kept running through his sleep deprived brain. Cal allowed himself to be soothed by the gentle lap of ocean slapping against the huge rocks that surrounded Coronado Island, guardians that stopped it from being eaten away by the Pacific Ocean. He sat in his pajama bottoms, perched on the tabletop, his feet resting on the bench below. He leaned his elbows onto his thighs, hands clasped between his opened legs. His heart felt like ground up, raw meat. It never stopped hurting. In the last week, Cal had made grief his best friend. The frustration ate at him until all he wanted to do was scream and go ballistic.
His team, Lauren, Jack, and Alex were working like dogs twenty hours a day, nonstop. Master Chief Butch had thrown several SEALs down on sick leave onto the project as well, doing grunt work for them, going through thousands of pieces of intel. He heard the rear door open and quietly closed. Sensing it was Alex, he turned. There was enough light from the kitchen night light to see the medic’s tall, muscular figure. Alex wore a pair of loose shorts, naked from the waist up. He looked exhausted.
“Why don’t you go back to bed,” Cal growled in way of greeting as he Cal and sat on the picnic table with him.
“Could not sleep,” Alex said thickly, rubbing his face tiredly.
