Before Sunrise (4 page)

Phil eased up on his pillows and switched on
the light of the lamp next to the bed. “You got court in the
morning, Kennedy. Why don’t I put her back to bed?” He had been
sweet to offer, especially since he got in late and had an early
morning as well.

Mackenzie wrapped her arms around her
mother’s waist, forcing her head under Kennedy’s chin. “No, I’ll
take her. Go back to sleep. Don’t you have to get up soon and go on
base?” she asked, scooting with Mac’s hold growing tighter around
her waist.

“
Yea, but anything for my
girls. Damn, what time is it anyway?” Phil reached for his watch.
Kennedy shook her head at his language. One thing about having a
military man as your husband, the language was something you could
never exorcise from his mouth.

Kennedy wheezed. As much as she hated to
admit it, Mac as they called her, had grown too big to carry. She
managed to rise from the bed with her pampered child in her arms
and take her from the room.

Kennedy and Phil had only been married a
year. Still, he’d been just as much a father to Mackenzie as if she
were his own. Without his support and friendship she and Mac might
not have come to the healthy and secure place they were now. Grief
can do many things to a person. For Kennedy, grief had almost cost
her the life of her child.

She walked down the cold,
dark hallway toward her daughter’s room, wishing she’d put on her
slippers. Returning her daughter to her yellow-and-black
bumblebee-d
--d
ecorated bedroom, she carried Mackenzie to her twin-sized
canopy. She laid her down first, then scooped under her legs to
draw the covers over her.

“
Now where’s this
monster?”

“
Over there,” Mackenzie’s
tiny voice whispered. She pointed a small finger shakily toward the
closet door that had been left ajar.

“
You told mommy that he hid
in your bed?”

Mackenzie nodded. “Yes, but he went into the
closet when you came.”

“
Ah. I see.” Kennedy’s
turned to look again. She peered at the darkness beyond the door.
To her surprise, tiny, beady eyes peered back out at her. She
approached and reached for the doorknob.

“
No, mommy! Don’t.”
Mackenzie whined, yanking the covers over her head.

“
It’s okay. I’m not afraid
of no ugly ole monster.” Kennedy winked. She snatched the door
open. A four-foot tall black Barbie dropped out. Phil had it
especially made for Mackenzie’s third birthday.

“
Aha!” Kennedy said. “So
here’s the monster.”

Mackenzie lowered the sheet slowly. She
blinked those long dark lashes over round brown eyes.

“
Its just Lily. See?”
Kennedy brought the doll to the bed.

Mackenzie’s smile lit her entire face. She
put her tiny fingers over her mouth to cover her giggles. “Oh!
Sorry, mommy. It’s just Lily,” came more giggles.

Kennedy shook her head, and her pink satin
headscarf slipped back from her forehead. She reached behind her
and tied the knot down securely. “Somebody has a birthday coming up
soon,” Kennedy said, accepting the doll from her daughter, then
placing it in the rocking chair where Phil usually read to
Mackenzie.

“
Yes, I’m gonna be five.”
Mackenzie held up her five tiny fingers.

“
You sure are. On Christmas
Day, no less.”

“
Do you think daddy knows I
will be five, mommy?” Mackenzie yawned and pointed to the picture
of Liam on her dresser. He wore khaki camouflage pants and a green
T-shirt over a solid, muscled chest. He posed next to a Jeep in the
middle of the desert somewhere. Even now, when her gaze fell upon
his picture, love surfaced and made Kennedy’s heart turn over. The
photo was the last sent by him before he died.

Liam’s sly grin and clear blue eyes
glistened from under a camouflage cap. If it weren’t for her
friends and Phil, she wouldn’t have survived her grief, especially
since she’d been just three months pregnant when he’d been called
away.

“
Yes. Daddy knows, silly
girl. Now give mommy a kiss goodnight.”

“
Eskimo kiss,
mommy!”

“
You bet.” Mac giggled when
Kennedy rubbed their noses together. She then kissed her brow
lovingly. “Love you, baby. Sleep tight.”

“
How old is
daddy?”

Kennedy smiled. “Where are all these
questions about daddy coming from?”

“
I wanna know. He a hero,
ain’t he? Heroes have birthdays, too? And Christmas? Heroes have
Christmas.”

Kennedy stared at her daughter. She looked
once more to the picture of Liam. Mac always talked about her
father in the present tense. Her little girl even told a few fables
over their imaginary relationship. But Kennedy never talked to her
about Liam unless Mac asked. She wondered about her daughter’s
curiosity. Phil said it was normal. Maybe it was. Still, it pained
her to think of Liam.

If she reasoned through it, she could guess
the true source of Mackenzie’s curiosity. A soldier from Fort Bragg
had recently visited Mackenzie’s class and Mackenzie had become a
superstar when the soldier told the pre-K students that her dad had
been a hero. Mackenzie came home and forced Kennedy to pull out
every photo she had of Liam. Even Phil had joined in to tell the
few stories he knew of him, which made Kennedy smile, because she
knew the two men couldn’t stand each other the several times they’d
crossed paths.

“
Oh, daddy is about 34,”
Kennedy said, smiling down at her.

“
Ooooooo, he old!” her
daughter said, her eyes round as saucers.

Kennedy laughed. “Yes, he’s pretty old…just
like Daddy Phil is pretty old.”

Mackenzie grabbed her purple teddy bear and
stuffed under the covers with her. She turned over. “Okay, night
mommy. I’m okay now.”

“
Night, baby.” Kennedy
smiled.

She walked over to Liam’s photo and picked
up the silver picture frame. In the photo he had been off on one of
those covert missions he could never talk about. He’d e-mailed her
this picture and she had printed and framed it.

“
You are pretty old, aren’t
you sweetie?” Kennedy said. She kissed his image and gave a deep
sigh. She set the picture down, then walked out of the
room.

***

Aircraft Carrier ~ Mediterranean Sea

Liam swallowed roughly. His throat burned as
if he were choking down shards of glass instead of saliva. It took
some effort but he managed to open his eyes. Nothing made sense. He
blinked. He blinked again. All he could make out were shadows and
shapes, and the constant buzzing noise. So he closed his eyes and
lay there perfectly still. He’d wait for darkness. He’d learned to
love darkness. There was calm in darkness, peace. Liam used his
mind over his body, and regulated his breathing, down to his
heartbeat, until he felt it slow within his chest.

Liam became aware. The cushion of the bed
told an unexpected story. This wasn’t another hellhole to be
tortured in. He had comfort. Liam opened his eyes. Focus returned.
He recognized the shadow, as it took form, to be a nurse. Navy. He
could tell by her uniform. Her hair was neatly pinned back under
her cap. She had kind eyes and a sweet face, and that alone made
him think he again had slipped into a dream. He felt her lift his
wrist to check his pulse. She glanced up, then away, and then back.
The nurse dropped his arm and backed away from his bed in
shock.

Well, hell. She wasn’t the only one.

“
Lieutenant! You startled
me, sir. Welcome to the land of the living, sir,” she
gushed.

Liam tried to speak. He
couldn’t. The nurse immediately got on an intercom. He heard her
give a quick report. During her short bursts of speech, Liam
employed every sense he could control, trying to understand his
surroundings. The pure, clean air had definitely been filtered,
and
cold
; he
didn’t smell the desert dry heat or the stench of his excrement.
His vision sharpened on the details of his quarters. He’d been put
on a ship. The cold in the room, the painted steel walls, the low
ceiling and mounted medical apparatus looked distinctly military.
Yes, he was on a ship. If he remained perfectly still he could feel
the thrum of the engines, far below.

The time spent in captivity, he’d lived
almost entirely in his head. He’d imagined himself places far and
wide, anywhere but the hell he actually dwelled in. Some days he
convinced himself he swam in the cool ocean, or played golf with
Eric and Vasquez. Even better, he’d be home on the tan-and-blue
sofa, watching the Vikings and knocking back a brew while Kennedy
slept underneath his arm. But none of those moments felt as real as
this one. It confused him. He owned his fucking dreams. Dreams were
the one thing they couldn’t take from him. In his dreams he had
Kennedy, her sweet, soft body pressed to his as she made him repeat
his promise that on his return date he’d be through the door before
sunrise.

That promise he kept each and every time.
Liam would roll her under him and she’d stare up at him with
worship in her eyes. He hated to admit it, especially then, but he
liked the undiluted, unwavering love he found there. Not many
people gave a shit about him in the world. Kennedy’s faith in him
had been complete. She’d run away from her family at seventeen to
go with him when he joined the Navy. Her devotion made him feel
like a man, her man. Those moments were a constantly visited dream
for him. And even though they could get vivid, loving her, kissing
her, the moment he tried to hold her always felt hollow and
disappointing.

The metal door clanged open.
Liam’s head felt heavy, but he managed to cast his gaze in the
direction of the arriving visitor, a captain. This was no dream.
He’d know that scarred face anywhere.
Get
the fuck out of here
!
Boy’s a motherfucking Captain
?
Vasquez, or Ant as Liam called him, was the same height as Liam,
with deep olive skin and dark, curled locks, and it spoke to his
Chilean descent. They’d sweated and bled under the same sun,
kicking ass together in the desert.
And
look at this motherfucker now
. Liam stared
at the oak leaf on Vasquez’s lapel. Dressed in full uniform,
Vasquez removed his cover and tucked it under his arm. He stared
grimly down at the thickly bandaged lump that was Liam’s
leg.

Fuck, I need to get out of
this bed and kick your ass, Ant! Where the fuck am I? How the hell
have you been? What took you so long to find me,
motherfucker
? Liam shouted in his head. All
he could do was manage a weak smile at the sight of his friend. But
his surprises didn’t end there. A tall, thin woman stepped into the
narrow space alongside Vasquez. She wore a khaki suit jacket, with
more bars on the lapel than there should have been, and her red
hair was longer than he remembered. Even pulled back off her face,
it almost touched her shoulders.
Alex
. She looked different; powerful
in a way he couldn’t put a name to. It made him uneasy. Liam tried
to focus on what exactly her collar insignia represented.
Definitely wasn’t any Marine classification he knew. Last he saw
her, she’d been a helo driver, holding a lower rate than
Vasquez.

Liam lay there, stunned. Alexa Sinclair
appeared beautiful as always; even he had to admit that. Her
porcelain-white skin and pouty full lips used to drive the men in
her unit nuts. But she’d castrate any man who dared to reduce her
to a piece of ass. She had been tough beyond compare. She hadn’t
been the first female helicopter pilot in the services, but one of
the couple-dozen who’d seen combat. Alexa was part of the elite
group who’d survived hostile live-fire. He and Eric used to joke
that she probably had teeth in her crotch, ready to shred a man’s
cock before the first nut.

The truth he’d never shared with Eric burned
his gut. Alexa tried to get on him a few times and more than once
he’d been tempted. They’d been caught in some wicked shit. And what
the hell, he was a man. Long months in the desert away from Kennedy
made the beast in him thoughtless. He’d never crossed the line,
though Alexa offering to get him off in his sleeping bag one night
could be constituted as such. He’d almost gone for it—his utilities
had gotten unzipped, something that made him feel like absolute
shit right up to the present moment—but Liam could honestly say he
turned the sex down. As far as he was concerned, why dine on a
hamburger when you’ve grown accustomed to steak? No woman could get
him like his Kennedy.

Next through the oblong door came Eric.

Eric Drake’s presence filled the room. This
brother should have been a politician he was so smooth, even under
extreme pressure. Nothing dimmed that spark in his eyes and sly
smile. Skin a dark Hershey-brown, head shaven, he was a chick
magnet with his calm manner and slick tongue. Eric had come up to
the unit from SEAL Team Four, same as he had. Liam suspected he’d
fucked Alex more than once, but he’d never confess. He, too, wore
an oak leaf, which meant this motherfucker outranked him, too.
Liam’s gaze cut back to Alex, whose collar insignia his weak mind
struggled to explain. Could this be some branch of the Navy he
didn’t know, and if so, how the hell was that possible since Alex
had been a Marine? Was this why he was he even afloat, aboard ship?
None of it made any sense. These were the three people closest to
him in his career. They were also the three people closest to him
in his personal life.