Before Sunrise (8 page)

“
What do you want to know?”
He looked directly at the only man in the room not in uniform, the
only one who had not been introduced. The guy had that CIA-spook
look about him.

From directly across the table, Alexa
cleared her throat as a warning to him. Liam ignored her.

“
We have your…report,” said
the man, calmly raising his thick eyebrows in challenge. “What else
can you tell us?”

Liam felt Alexa’s glare burning into
him.

“
With all due respect, sir,
I wasn’t about to give up anything about Operation Scorpion to some
snot-nosed kid fresh out of Annapolis. To hell with
that.”

The man looked pointedly over Liam’s left
shoulder and his escort, the red-faced kid, left the wardroom
without a sound.

“
I had a feeling you were
holding out on us.”

“
Goes both ways,
Mr.—”

“
Green. Paul
Green.”

He doubted it was the man’s real name. Liam
had been given a Paul Green identity once on assignment, and he
assumed this man’s name was no coincidence. No one else in the room
seemed to get it. Looking more closely, Liam could see the man was
ex-military, still fit and steely-looking, watchful and ready. He
was old enough to have been in one of the early CT units, long
before Liam was even born, and if the brass had him here, out of
retirement, consulting most likely, then there was probably a very
good reason.

“
So it was Amir Sarkhir.
Wasn’t it?”

“
Yes,” Liam said bitterly.
“I was his personal trophy whipping-boy. Kind of got used to it,
actually.”

The man chuckled, but no one else did. Liam
reclined, reflecting on his ability to withstand physical pain.
Fuck them all: they never broke him, no fucking way. He exhaled
once, and in a low, calm voice, recounted his capture. It was then
he learned they thought he had been on the airlift out of the
Afghan mountains. But like the captain of a ship, Liam wasn’t
moving off that rock until every last one of his men was.

Liam shared how the discovery of a hidden
IED had him putting a wounded kid in his place on the transport. He
was going to hike out on his own after he held Amir’s men back so
the rescue could get off the ground.

He took a hit, fleeing into the mountains
with a busted kneecap. He spent weeks recovering in an Iraqi
hospital until Amir’s men showed up one night and discovered him.
They killed all the kind people who’d prayed over him and nursed
his wounds. Liam told this part of the tale through gritted teeth.
The rest of his recovery was just mind over body. He knew his leg
was shot to shit for the rest of his life. He was lucky it hadn’t
needed to be amputated.

Over the following months he remained
confined for days, completely alone. Several times, he thought he’d
starve to death. Then they’d take him to a cell, feed him, and
clean him up. Once done, they’d dress him in a military uniform
that was not his own—to Liam, it looked to be Pakistani but he was
never sure—and march him around the camp. Then Sarkhir would offer
him sweets and try, with his limited English, to charm him. When
that didn’t work, the beatings would resume. Early on, Liam
suspected that two things saved his life: he was their
highest-ranking capture, and even when tortured, he never showed
them weakness. Liam suspected Sarkhir liked the game, enjoyed
trying to break him. Several other captured soldiers had been
tortured and killed for sport, most of it done right before Liam’s
eyes.

He felt his chest tighten with rage as he
recalled the horrors. It was the loneliness that was the worst part
of it. There were days he’d have cut off his dick to hear Kennedy’s
voice, feel her gentle touch to remind him that she’d be there for
him. To hear her softly whisper in his ear that eventually he’d
return home and she’d be waiting.

Over the secure line, the Secretary of
Defense started in with his questions. Liam managed to offer some
useful information. His memory did have gaps. There were blackout
moments where his mind had just shut down. But what he did
remember, he shared, right down to Sarkhir’s quirky habits. He
liked Nintendo; there was a console somewhere in the compound. Liam
could occasionally hear Sarkhir’s distinctive laughter through the
walls as Sarkhir’s men walked him, blindfolded, to a cell. He
recalled Sarkhir got frequent headaches, ones that probably could
have been handled easily with a couple of Tylenol, but he refused
to take them. And until they discovered Liam understood Arabic,
Sarkhir and his men would converse freely in front of him. Sarkhir
spoke of two wives and children, and a younger brother who lived in
America.

At this, Mr. Green looked over at the man
next to him, then back to Liam.

“
Did you ever see this man?
The wives?”

Liam shook his head. Liam couldn’t give them
times or dates, either, because after the first time they’d put him
into the hole, he never had a sense of time. He was still having
trouble understanding he’d been gone five years. One moment it felt
like days, then the next, infinity. His head was that fucked
up.

The debriefing lasted two hours and Liam
constantly wanted a fresh glass of water, no ice. He needed
something to quench his eternal thirst. Once the meeting ended,
they told him again he was a hero.

“
When do I get to see my
family?” he interrupted.

“
Your rescue story is being
arranged to best protect you, and those still serving,” replied
Alexa. “You’ll learn more about it soon.”

“
Does the media know?” Liam
asked, a little hopeful. Maybe Kennedy did know and fought like
hell to get to him.

“
No,” Alexa replied
flatly.

She shifted forward in her seat and made a
cutting motion across her throat. Liam glared while she offered a
well-rehearsed closing to the gentlemen on the secure line. Then
she smiled across the table at Liam. “We have intelligence that
Sarkhir has several cells in the States—run by his brother. That’s
why it’s imperative we keep your rescue contained. He thinks you
died. We want it to remain that way for now.”

“
No!” Liam
barked.

“
It’s been decided,” Alexa
said dryly.

“
By who? You? Why hasn’t my
family been told? I want to speak to my wife!” He slammed his fist
on the table.

No one spoke. This troubled Liam. Why did
men he called brothers refuse to look him in the eye?

“
What is it? I know there’s
something. You can’t even fucking look at me.”

“
Gentlemen.”

Alexa wasn’t the ranking officer in the room
this time, but men from both sides of the table began to rise and
walk, single-file, to the door. Liam stared hard at Ant and Eric.
Both turned their faces slightly to Alexa, who nodded that they
could stay. Liam felt himself coiled, tight, ready to unload on
someone. The lady colonel looked like a better and better
candidate.

Alexa reached for a small finger-control and
turned on the video feed. Liam’s gaze switched to an image of
Kennedy. She held a small girl. His breath caught. The girl looked
to be no more than three. She was more hair than anything, just
like his sweet Kennedy. They grinned at the camera, for him. Liam
let go the first genuine smile he’d given in five long years.

He’d just met his baby girl,
and her name was Mackenzie. He wiped his hand down his face and
blinked to be sure the vision was real. It had to be. No dream ever
felt so vivid. He shook his head and laughed. Still, Anthony and
Eric cast their heads down. “Why the fuck are you all so grim? Look
at her. Look at my girl. Ain’t she beautiful? And look at…Kay.
Damn.
Damn
. Kay is
still gorgeous, ain’t she? Damn. Look at my girls.” He
gasped.

No one rejoiced with him.

“
Brother,” Eric cleared his
throat. “Kennedy took it hard when you went down. She was about six
months pregnant then. She never made it into the seventh month
and—”

“
What?” He looked at
Mackenzie. She looked perfect. No little girl on the planet could
look any sweeter. What could be wrong? “Tell me.”

“
She went into labor early,”
Alexa blurted out. “Preeclampsia is what the doctors called it.
Almost hemorrhaged to death. Both of them barely made it out
alive.”

Liam’s eyes went to the image of his girls
again. He felt the walls close in on him as a dark wave of dread
settled in his gut. “She needed me,” he said hollowly.

Vasquez sat forward. “Liam, it was hard on
all of us but it was never your fault.”

Liam never cried in the five years they beat
him until his body gave out. He never dropped one fucking tear. But
this, to know that Kennedy nearly bled to death trying to bring
their daughter into the world, was too much to bear. He blinked
away tears that fell despite his efforts. “Is Mackenzie all
right?”

“
Look at her,” Eric said and
all eyes went to the screen. Alexa switched slides to Mackenzie’s
pre-school picture. He hadn’t noticed it in the other picture, but
in this one he saw it. She had Kennedy’s smile.

“
She’s your daughter; she’s
a fighter.” Alexa smiled.

Liam gazed upon the miracle before him. He
couldn’t wait to hold her. “Give me their file. I know there is
one.”

Eric and Vasquez exchanged looks.

“
Give me the damn file. What
the fuck is going on?”

He tried to accept the fact that his
disappearance had almost cost them their child. Now he wanted to
read every single detail of her little life. And how his sweetheart
recovered without him.

Eric grabbed Alexa’s remote and Vasquez
handed over the file. Liam wasted no time. His eyes were glued to
the documents. Kay remained in Fayetteville. His sweetheart had
never left. He feared she’d gone back to her mother, who would
undoubtedly erase every trace of him from Mackenzie’s life.

On the screen, slides flipped past, then
stopped. He felt the display of light rather than saw it. But the
silence enveloping the room forced him to lift his gaze. In that
moment, he wished he hadn’t. He wished he’d delayed the reality
just a little bit longer. Whoever said ‘ignorance is bliss’ spoke
the truth. What he saw on the screen cut him to the core.

Kennedy’s wedding picture. A
dress she never wore with him. When he married her they stood
before the justice of the peace with her in a blue sundress and
flip-flops and him in a Green Day T-shirt and sneakers. On
her
wedding day, she wore
a slender, fitted flowing white gown with a beaded corset top that
tastefully lifted her cleavage. The kind of dress in those
magazines she used to collect around their place. He promised one
day to buy her a fancy dress, a big diamond, invite her mother and
father and all those snooty relatives of hers that hated him, then
do it big. He made a lot of promises he didn’t keep. Now he had to
face the image of the man who stepped in and did just that. Gave
his wife what he never could. Holding his daughter, who wore a ring
of flowers around her head, was Phil Freeman.

“
What the fuck is this?”
Liam whispered. His heart wouldn’t be convinced. Maybe it was a
joke. Maybe it had been some secret mission to keep her safe, fool
his enemies that she wasn’t connected to him. Yes! The government
had staged some fake wedding.

Vasquez was the only one brave enough to
clear his throat and speak. “Freeman was a friend to her…after. He
was there with her mother, helping when little Mac was in the
neonatal unit. It was touch-and-go for a minute. The doctors were
shocked at Mac’s recovery. Her lungs weren’t quite developed, and
she got an infection.” Vasquez took a breath. He spoke so fast.

His accent, usually barely detectable, now
ran his words together.

Liam didn’t mind. He wanted
to hear the part about the marriage being staged.
Get to that fucking part
!

“
Phil…well, Mackenzie needed
special attention and he was um, he was there to help when she came
home. She only weighed four and a half pounds, brother. She was so
fragile. So was Kennedy. Fragile, I mean. Her depression had her
barely functioning. We all had to do what we could. She wouldn’t
let her mother stay, her mother only made things worse. Kay barely
let Angelina help. And Eric and I were deployed, so Phil, he um, he
was there to help.”

“
What the fuck are you
saying?” Liam’s voice hardened and his hands curled into fists.
Where was the part of this being for Kennedy’s protection? The part
where they disclosed another operation, one that kept his woman out
of harm’s way, not in the arms of this motherfucker.

Alexa sat forward. “She fell in love with
him, Liam. That’s what this is.”

“
With all due respect,
Colonel, shut the fuck up!” Eric shouted at her.

Alexa blinked. Her face registered shock,
then outrage at Eric’s outburst.

Liam took the blow straight
to his heart and it shattered. He’d known unspeakable pain, but
nothing compared. This was
his
girl, the
only
woman he’d ever loved, not just with another man
but married to him.

Maybe it was possible. Maybe Kennedy could
forget him and move on. Maybe. She had been young when he met her,
and they’d been separated when he had to go to school, enlist, and
then ship off to training and missions that stole years from them.
Born into that snooty family who thought he was some cradle-robbing
dirt, maybe distance could tear them apart.