Captive at Christmas (12 page)

Viv laughed, a sound that, long ago, had his body aching for her touch. But now, not a single thing happened. No response. Except to make him think of Hannah. “I will let Kayla do the filling in when you collect her. As for everything else, you’ll be pleased to know I have typed up a list of rules and things I’ve made her follow. Obviously you’re…” she paused, covering the phone while she cleared her throat. “Excuse me. You will make up your own as you go along, I just thought a few guidelines might be helpful. You never struck me as the kind of man who knew much about children.”

Mac joined her laughter this time. “You’re not wrong there although I’ve got a feeling I can handle it. My eyes have been opened to what the rest of the world lives like. But Viv, I can’t come get her. Kayla will have to fly over on her own. Is that alright?”

“She’s a big girl, Mac. She’ll be fine.”

“Viv, were you ever going to tell me about her?”

Silence. And then, a breathless sigh. “I did attempt to, once. A long time ago.”

He waited, unmoving, lips parted in expectation of the rest of her explanation. Breath escaped in puffs of white, dissipating high above his head in the frigid mountain air.

“We just celebrated her first birthday and I dialled the number I had for you but it had long been disconnected.” Without giving him a chance to argue her point, Viv continued. “Of course, I could have tried harder. And to be honest, I knew exactly where you were the next time I did try. But after a while, I wondered if there was any point in revealing the information to you. Kayla was growing up and she’s always been so attune to the emotions of others. I suppose I was protecting the pair of us then.

“On her tenth birthday, Kayla asked me to tell her all about you, so I did. Leaving out a few unsavoury details, mind you. And then there were the times I was bitter and I might have said a thing or two about the less than wonderful parts of your character.” She gave a short chuckle and Mac joined her. “Eventually, I’m certain she would have sought you out on her own. She’s so bloody clever, I don’t have a single doubt that she would have been successful in her mission. Even before I fell ill, Kayla began to show signs that she was ready to know more about her father. I sent out word and located you, but… You were not exactly in the best position to be contacted at that point.”

The small and tight-knit group of colleagues they shared would have been the best source of information in that instance. Mac couldn’t fault her and he felt she needed to hear it in her last days. “You had your reasons for keeping it to yourself and I want you to know that I don’t hold it against you, Viv.”

“Thanks, Mac. Just promise me you’ll try not to be too hard on her? I-I need you to say it. Need to hear the words.” The crack in her voice, heavy with emotion cut through him.

“I promise, Viv. I’ll do the best I can to make sure she’s happy.”

She breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you, Mac. At least I will be able to go in peace, knowing she’s in good hands.”

Not knowing what to say to that, Mach turned the conversation back to Kayla and together, they made arrangements for her arrival to the United States. He spent the better part of an hour on the phone and when he finished the call and went back inside, a sense of tranquility replaced the dread.

Part of that was because of Hannah, her tousled hair draped around her shoulders as she sat at the island counter, holding a steaming mug. The shy, lazy smile shot a jolt of lust through him, bringing his semi-aroused state up to DEFCON one.

“Good morning,” she whispered guardedly.

Why did he suddenly get the feeling she was pulling away from him?

Perhaps memories of the previous twenty-four hours had her acting so withdrawn. Mac could think of no other reason for her sudden timidity.

Unless she heard a part of his conversation with Viv.

No, Mac shook his head.

That couldn’t be the reason. If she
had
heard anything, Hannah would probably be asking a bunch of questions. Telling him everything would work out just fine.

To set her at ease, he pushed off his boots and purposefully walked over to her. With possessive force, he claimed her lips and she expelled an appreciative, throaty man. That sound alone would haunt him for the rest of his days.

“Mmm, yeah it is a good morning,” he whispered at her lips. “How are you feeling today?”

“I…I haven’t had a nightmare as horrible as that for months now. I thought I was over the worst of it, thought I might be reaching a point where I could come to terms with what I witnessed.” Her chin dropped to touch her chest. “I’m embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. You’re not the only one who has them.” Mac waited for Hannah to respond, but she just stared into the mug, possibly seeking comfort or some explanation as to why she suffered in her sleep.

Up until about six months ago, he had been suffering as well. Memories that came with the newest scars he managed to accrue plagued his mind, awake and in sleep. It took a very good friend and a hell of a lot of therapy – something he would never admit to anyone – for him to reach the point he was at today. Still, when he looked back at that last mission, Mackenzie almost lost himself in the horror he faced.

The hate-filled muddy brown eyes, narrowed in loathing, the frowning lips that spewed propaganda and cursed him to the fires of hell … Mac remembered every detail belonging to the faces of his captors and those who tortured him. He doubted that he would ever be able to forget those particulars, even as they faded a little over time.

The basic images would always be there in the back of his mind, haunting him until his dying days. But then he heard his friend and therapist’s voice in his head, reminding him that he was back on U.S. soil. They couldn’t hurt him any longer.

However, what stuck with him most of all was the pain. Mac prided himself on strength, on stamina and his ability to adapt physically to any situation. Thanks to one particularly sadistic man, he’d suffered permanent nerve damage on his back. Whatever the bastard did to him before cauterizing the flesh and effectively sealing the wound, it caused him a hell of a lot of agony when touched. No doubt the sick son-of-a-bitch was some kind of failed doctor. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Mac eyed Hannah, whose gaze still lingered on her mug. From what he managed to ascertain over the course of the night, her nightmares were about her brother Erik and his accident.

She must have witnessed it. And for a woman who had never seen much violence up close, a man being hit by a car as he crossed the street would be intense enough.

“The mind is a complex thing,” he spoke to break the silence. “Some people have forgotten entire chunks of their lives, yet one single memory remains. They can try every method available to attempt to recall the others with no luck. Hannah, this is all quite recent still. It’ll take some time for your brain to recover from that trauma.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.” A sardonic laugh slipped past her lips. “You would think that someone who spends her life trying to make others understand what their loved ones are going through would be less…damaged.”

From their first meeting, Hannah gave him the impression that, despite his past, he mattered. He might not deserve her, but Mac did feel as if he mattered to her.

So Hannah calling herself damaged was a slap in the face to both of them.

The woman didn’t know how untrue her statement really was.

Gripping both of her shoulders, he shook a little sense into her. “Dammit Hannah, you should know better than to say something so insulting. You are an exquisitely beautiful woman, smart as hell, and funny too. You’re strong, stronger than a lot of people I’ve known, and you’re grounded too. And, you put everyone in the whole damned world before yourself. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Hannah?”

Staring up at him through wide eyes, she offered a solemn nod of her head.

“You really don’t know just how special you are, do you?”

This time, she shook her head and extricated herself from his grasp. “Do you want some coffee?” Hannah moved about the kitchen as if she hadn’t heard him.

“We’re not finished here, not by a long shot.” When he reached her, Mac pinned Hannah against the counter. His hips were flush with her abdomen and he held her wrists. “Talk to me. I want to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”

~~~

Shutting her eyes, Hannah blocked everything out and that image from her dreams emerged in the fog of her mind. Erik crossing the street to meet her for lunch, he moved in slow motion when the crosswalk light changed, giving him the right of way.

She had waved to him, experiencing that familiar joy of seeing his smile as he returned her gesture. Then, when he’d made it halfway across the street, the sound of squealing tires drowned out the usual downtown Vancouver street noises.

As clear as the day it happened, she watched her brother’s body hurled into the air, as if by magic. The car was just a blur of darkness, speeding away from the intersection where.

Erik hit the ground with a sickening thud while her heart dropped down into her abdomen.

She knew she had to move, to get to him, but her feet were trapped, sunk into the concrete below. Frozen where she stood, Hannah watched with wide, unblinking eyes as a thick, crimson puddle spread out beneath him.

Only when someone bumped her shoulder from behind, rushing into the intersection, was Hannah able to react. She screamed for people to get away from him, for them to leave him alone, but someone else held her back. They secured her hands and clamped her to their chest while those onlookers rushed to his aid.

But even they were too late. The force of collision and his resulting injuries caused irreparable damage. By the time she broke free of the arms holding her back, Erik was gone.

“Hannah?”

She looked up into a pair of concerned eyes. “It was just so sudden. I… One minute he was walking across the street, waving and smiling, and the next…I…I never even got a chance to say goodbye to him.”

The moment he pulled her to his solid chest, Hannah broke down in wracking sobs. Since the last time she saw her brother, no male figure held her in such a comforting way. Erik had consoled her like this when they lost their parents, holding her close and rocking back and forth while she cried her heart out.

Then he was there for the unsuccessful relationships, her failures and that ever looming anniversary of Mom and Dad’s death. He had been the one constant left in her life, despite going off to God knows where and doing only He knew what, Erik always managed to come home to her.

There were a few times when she’d gotten a call to say he would be delayed but of course no other information was given. Erik’s ‘handler’ as Ben preferred to call himself – he joked that it made him sound more important than he really was – had a soft spot for Hannah and knew she worried about her brother and his chosen profession. After Erik died, he was reassigned and sent overseas somewhere. Since then, she hadn’t heard from him in years.

Each time Erik returned, their routine was always the same. He would act the part of the devoted brother for a few hours and then disappear into the basement of their parent’s house – the very same building that she turned into the home of
Help for Heroes
– and lock the door. It wasn’t until after he was gone for good that she went down there to see what he had been doing. Hannah recalled the horror of his little dungeon, so dark and cave-like.

Apparently, he had transformed the lowest level of the house into a reconstructed cell, not unlike one he spent a few months in somewhere – she didn’t know where. The thing she couldn’t understand was why. It still didn’t make sense to her. If he had been rescued from that hell, why did he want a reminder of the time he was held there?

“Oh, Hannah,” Mac sighed, pulling her out of her thoughts. The long fingers of one hand massaged her scalp while the others produced intricate swirls on her back.

In spite of the moment, she asked Mac what he thought of Erik’s little cave-type space and what he thought it meant. He remained silent for a few minutes until she leaned her head away from his chest to see his face. A mask of what she assumed to be practiced indifference strained against his clenched jaw, twitching every few seconds as he ground his teeth.

She knew that look, the look of a soldier attempting to restrain his or her true emotions from their loved ones. It meant she’d stumbled across something hidden inside him, something that he most likely did not wish to relive.

Mackenzie must have been held somewhere like that, and she already knew he was tortured. He mentioned his latest scars were recent – that long painful looking one on his back. Of their own volition, her fingers slipped higher until she felt the thick welt beneath his shirt and he flinched. A shuddering gasp escaped her throat at the knowledge that she might have caused him any pain. Hannah pushed her hands into fists and allowed them to fall to her sides.

“I’m sorry.” She let her chin drop to her chest.

Forcing out a harsh breath, he collected her close again. “It’s not your fault, Hannah. I know it will take a hell of a long time for that one to heal. Even then, it will always hurt. Sick, sadistic…” Cursing under his breath, he tightened his grip until she felt the thudding of his heart against her face.