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He pulls away from me, his breath teasing my lips. “Are you ready for a shower now?”
“Definitely.”
Lucas might’ve warmed me up, but I’m more than happy to wash off the rest of day.
He helps me off the counter and turns on the hot water in the shower.
Then the two of us spend the next while washing each other, confessing our love, and making love once more.
Lucas told his brothers not to show up for two hours. He knew he and I would have a lot to talk about first. It’s a good thing he had that foresight. We’re just clearing away our dinner plates when the doorbell rings. Three times. In rapid succession.
“That would be Garrett.” Lucas puts the last plate in the dishwasher.
I head for the front door to let Garrett in. Kellan, Troy, Emily, and Zara are with him on the porch.
“Have you checked yet if any of those messages in the mythology books were an email account login?” Kellan asks as soon as he walks through the front door.
“We’ve been slightly busy.” Lucas’s words are for Kellan, but his eyes—full of love and amusement—are directed at me.
Lucas’s laptop is on the coffee table. We all take a seat, with me sitting next to Lucas on the couch. He turns the laptop on and tries to log into what we figure is the correct email account. After a few attempts, we’re in. Aiden4justice is the login name. CATFISH is the password.
I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but it wasn’t the dozen or so emails that we discover were sent from this account back to this account. Each email has a file attached. They are the only emails in the inbox.
Lucas clicks on the first email received. He reads the contents. “Fuck!” He mutters the word, but the seismic boom can be felt around the room.
My insides knot, and I can barely breathe, waiting for him to tell us what he’s found.
“What is it?” Zara asks.
He scrubs his hand down his face. “What do you know about how I injured my shoulder?”
Zara and Emily exchange puzzled glances. “You injured it while you were in the Marines, and it led to you being honorably discharged from the military. You were later diagnosed with PTSD, but other than that…” Zara lifts her shoulders in a that’s-all-I’ve-got shrug.
“The day it happened, Aiden and I had been assigned to do security surveillance.” He threads his fingers with mine, and I have a feeling whatever he’s about to tell me has far-reaching consequences. “We had done this numerous times and had gotten to know a few of the town’s civilians. One in particular was a seven-year-old boy. He didn’t speak English, but he always had a smile for us. The candy bars Aiden sometimes sneaked him probably didn’t hurt either.”
A not-quite-there smile curves on Lucas’s face. Even though he’s sitting next to me on the couch, his expression hints he’s back in Afghanistan. With the little boy.
The smile vanishes, replaced by a storm cloud of emotion. Pain? Disbelief? Confusion? It’s impossible to get a grasp on what he’s feeling. And if not for the slight tremor in his hands, I would think he’d been turned into a stone statue.
My heart aches for him. Aches for everything he’s had to deal with in the past twenty-four hours. His memories of what happened in Afghanistan won’t make things any easier for him tonight when he sleeps.
If he sleeps.
I squeeze his fingers, letting him know he’s not alone. I’m here for him.
“We had just been talking to the boy and were walking away when a series of gunshots went off behind us.” Lucas stares at the coffee table without seeming to see it. “We dove for cover and tried to figure who was doing the shooting: allied soldiers or the Taliban.
“That’s when we saw the boy was on the ground, bleeding. Without thinking what we were doing, Aiden and I ran toward him. I have no idea what we planned to do. Save him? Maybe. A bullet hit me in the shoulder. I don’t remember much after that. Aiden and I were discharged due to injuries sustained that day, but neither of us were the same after that. That mission’s codename was Catfish.”
My chest feels as though the air has been knocked from my lungs, and it’s taking several seconds to draw the oxygen back in. This is the first he has shared with me about his time in the military. Now I understand why. It also explains so much about the past twelve hours, including his reaction to not being able to save the boy who went missing in the mountains.
“The email account Aiden set up,” Kellan says, “it has to do with the mission?”
Lucas nods. “It basically details the truth about what went down that day. Only it wasn’t the enemy who was responsible for the boy’s death and possibly the bullet that found its way into my shoulder. It was Captain Andrew Tanner.” Lucas looks at me, his expression tortured, bleeding. “You know him as Drew. Ashley’s father.”
“Oh, God.” I barely hear the whispered words over my thundering heartbeat, my brain piecing together what this could mean for Ashley, for her family.
“From what Aiden’s email states, one of the men in our unit was killed the day before by one of our own. I knew the man had died. I didn’t know how. Drew went to cover it up, and in the process, accidentally killed the boy. There’s a list of individuals also involved in the cover-up—all five of them.”
