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“Oh, no. It’s okay! Thanks for trying.”
The worst part is, she actually sounds grateful.
“I still need to get it back today. I’ll let them know it needs some work. They can take it from there.”
“Follow me over to your parents’ house. I’ll drive this thing, just to make sure it holds up like it should.” I feel like I’ve taken a direct hit to the gut, especially once Red leans in, closes her eyes, and stamps a quick, discrete peck on my cheek.
I’m all kinds of fucked now. Screwed, blued, and tattooed.
I need to kill her goddamned brother. But how do I make that happen when, as much as I’m too sick to admit it, I’m starting to need her smile?
The truck runs fine on the first few miles to her parents’ house. No surprises.
The poison eating my guts is another story.
I tell myself the same shit over and over: hands on the wheel. Focus. Don’t let it fucking get to you.
Every time, it’s nothing. I just see Adam in my head, giving me that look I’ll never forget before we rushed the compound.
“Sir, if we don’t make it out of this for some reason…give my best to Bev. Take care of her. She’s only one state over.”
My eyes drill through him. A nervous tick stings my face for reasons I don’t understand. “Shut the fuck up, Henderson. It’s the same song and dance we’ve done a thousand times. In, out, marked, and clear before the hawks swoop in to mop up the remains. Easy.”
That’s how it should’ve been. I stormed through the brittle gate with my unit telling myself it was, repeating the lie. I began to believe it.
Then we got hit. Pinned down in the ambush those fuckers laid, the one we would’ve avoided if someone hadn’t pushed his bad intel. The place wasn’t nearly as unguarded as Jackson’s friends in a Pashtun clan said. A fuck of a lot less deserted than the drone photos showed, too, which must have caught them when they were concealed, out on patrol, who knows.
His mistake was the worst fucking hour of my life.
First I watched two of my men, two of my best friends, cut to pieces. Zane and Erik, knees cut out under them, heavy rounds that wouldn’t stop after they hit the dirt. Adam was the last man alive, his leg chewed up by sniper fire.
I tried to save him. Tried so fucking hard.
But the asshole, Lieutenant Jackson Kelley, knew we were hosed. He called for air support without checking if my team was clear, thinking we were already dead. Or maybe the prick just ignored my screams over the radio, too fucked up and damaged to go straight to command.
I’ll never know what he heard, or didn’t. It doesn’t really matter.
I know what happened next.
In another life, it might’ve been a miracle I survived the screaming shrapnel whizzing by my head with nothing worse than a clean slice across the forehead. But there was nothing miraculous about what was left of Adam.
One blinding flash and he was gone. Most of him. I still held his hands. The rest of him long since swept away in chaos and fire from above.
“Shit!”
Back in the present, I slam on the brakes. The black ice on the road nearly runs me into a ditch, and I have to work to pump the bandaged brakes, slowing the vehicle just short of a dip in the Mississippi.
Red’s car in front of me never slows. Apparently, she doesn’t notice. I’m grateful because Mia’s with her.
It’d be too sick an irony for my little girl to see daddy suffer the same fate that took the bitch who gave her birth. I may be fucked in the head, but I’m not ready to die. I’m not giving up, however rough this gets.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not while I have promises to keep.
“Ugh. Great timing.” Worry strains Red’s voice, instantly catching my attention.
“What now?” I growl, slamming the truck’s door. We’re parked in front of an average upper middle class house in town, her walking slowly toward me, Mia in her arms.
She doesn’t know I was already here Christmas night. That’s something I’ll keep to myself.
“She shouldn’t be out here in this weather. Just…play along, Marshal. Please.” I follow her eyes to the lonely figure on the porch. It’s an older, thinner woman with a restless darkness in her eyes.
She’s standing there, watching us, not a flicker of recognition in her face until Red opens up. “Hi, mom! Whatcha doing outside?”
So, this is her. The mysterious Mrs. Kelley, the woman who gave the most beautiful girl I ever laid eyes on life, and the only person in this town who might be more screwed up than me.
“What does it look like? I was hoping you’d bring a little angel here to keep me company one day.” Her face lights up, eyes fixed on my daughter. “What’s your name, sugar?”
