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“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie said brokenly. “Boomer…”
“He was shut out and trying to get in. He knew something was wrong.”
“He usually wakes me up…”
The dog whined again just as the other two Secret Service agents made it into the house and yelled up the stairs.
“Stand down!” Chris yelled, disentangling himself from Jamie and passing him over to the dog, who was trying to offer comfort only to find another human in his way. Chris scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room, leaning over the banister and looking into the set-jawed faces of his colleagues. “Stand down,” he repeated. “It was just an accident, everything is fine.”
“What happened?”
“It was just an accident,” Chris repeated firmly. “Mr Barratt’s gun fell on the floor. The safety was off, that’s all.”
Slowly, the agents accepted the explanation and turned, heading down the stairs again and out, calling in the status report.
“First Son secure. False alarm.”
Chris sighed and returned to Jamie’s bedroom to find him still on the floor, his face still buried into the fuzzy neck of the Labrador, breathing more stable. Chris crouched and gently touched him on the shoulder. Jamie flinched a little.
“Hey,” Chris murmured. “Are you okay?”
Jamie raised his head and looked at Chris, face pale and eyes still wide with shock. “I don’t know what happened,” he rasped. “I don’t know how Boomer got locked out. He’s supposed to wake me up when I have nightmares. This has never happened to me before…”
“It’s alright,” Chris said softly, pulling Jamie to his feet.
“I almost killed you…”
“But you didn’t,” Chris reassured him.
“I could have…”
“You didn’t.”
Chris sat on the bed and kneeled in front of Jamie, hands gripping his shoulders. He took a few deep breaths and gave Chris a shaky smile.
“They didn’t tell you about the nightmares, did they?” he asked.
“No,” Chris admitted.
Jamie shook his head with disbelief.
“How long have you had them?”
“Ever since I got back. They used to be every night, but gradually they got down to maybe once a week. I guess talking to you and Andy tonight triggered this one. It’s not the usual one I have…”
“I’m sorry,” Chris said guiltily.
“It’s not your fault.” Jamie smiled weakly and pushed his hair back from his face. Boomer lay beside Chris at Jamie’s feet and looked up at him with adoring brown eyes. “I guess they didn’t give you the particulars of what happened to me over there either?”
Chris shook his head and Jamie began to recount his experience. Chris listened in horror as Jamie told him of the beatings, about how they whipped his feet with broom handles and broke the bones several times.
He told Chris about the whippings, the water-boarding, the drownings, and the electrocution. About being left naked and shivering and bleeding on the ground every night only to have it all done the next day. About how they filmed it and mailed it to his mother in an attempt to coerce her into pulling all troops, handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban and to free all the Taliban prisoners that the USA had taken.
Jamie had known that no matter how much they made him suffer, they were demands that the President of the United States could never meet, but a small part of him hated that she didn’t give in to save him.
Jamie’s voice had remained calm and soft throughout the whole tale, but it had caused him to shake again.
