Hold On (Delos Series Book 5) (29 page)

The Seattle airport was large and noisy. Going through customs, people were crowding around me, everyone in a hurry, wanting to get home. I felt as if I were crawling out of my skin. I wanted to scream. I wanted quiet. I couldn’t handle all the chatting, the noise, the pushing, and the bustling about. By the time we got out of there, I was an emotional wreck. Dara took me to a women’s bathroom and I stayed in there to get away from it all for a while. That break helped me get my act together.

I felt so stupid, so weak, Beau. It’s as if my skin has been turned inside out, and I’m so raw and emotionally volatile. I was never so glad to get off a flight as I was in Butte, Montana. Seeing my whole family waiting for me was like coming to you, walking into your arms. I had a feeling of safety, and of being loved.

My parents are worried about me. I can’t talk about what happened yet. I know they want to understand, but not yet. My grandparents, thank goodness, aren’t pressing me about it, and it’s easier being around them. Grandpa Graham is a lot like you: he asks me lots of questions. And he’s okay if I don’t completely answer them. He’s so wise and I feel so safe around him.

How are you? How’s your leg doing? Is it on the mend? What’s the weather like there? I just talked to Dara yesterday evening and she’s so excited that Matt will be home in less than two weeks. She deserves to be happy. Is there going to be a USO show for you guys at Bagram?

Have you heard from your family? How are they doing? I’m sure they’re sad you can’t be home for Christmas.

The weather here is picture-postcard beautiful. I took ten photos with Grandpa’s Canon digital camera and he helped me convert them into small JPEGs for you. I took photos of the ranch that I’d like to share with you. Please let me know how you are? Be truthful about it. Don’t tell me you’re ‘okay.’”

Beau, I miss you terribly. I’m sure you don’t miss me because I was such a pain in the ass, but I have to once again thank you for saving my life, giving me my life back, and I’ll always be grateful to you, Beau.

Big hugs,

Callie

It felt as if someone were carving up his heart with a dull steak knife. Beau printed a copy of it and then saw the ten photos Callie had sent along. He scanned them rapidly, hoping there was one of her among them. There was! His heart hammered as he looked at the photo of her with her grandparents, standing together against a pipe-rail fence. On either side of them were horses with friendly looks on their alert, shaggy faces.

But Beau’s gaze stayed focused on Callie. She was in a red knit cap, her hair loose and free around her white parka. Grandma Maisy was on her right and Grandpa Graham on her left. Between them, how pale and strained Callie looked.

Beau’s mouth tightened. He missed no details, not in his line of business, because missing a detail could get you killed. The darkness in Callie’s green eyes scared him. She was trying to smile but couldn’t quite carry it off. Her arm was still in a sling.

Now he had no doubt—he needed to be with Callie. Would she ask him to come visit her? Would she hint in that direction or give him a clue as to whether he was welcome or not? Or had she gotten as close as she could to asking for him to walk back into her life by saying she missed him desperately? Women talked in code, that was for damned sure. He was a man of action, and it was painful to do nothing.

Beau turned away to answer the emails from his own family. He decided to hold off on answering Callie’s email for a bit. He was never spontaneous about important decisions, and he wanted to read it more carefully.

*

Graham McKinley watched
his granddaughter cleaning out one of the oak box stalls in the horse barn. He stayed out of her line of vision. It was a wintery midafternoon, and he’d been in the house earlier when he’d heard a muted scream from behind Callie’s bedroom door down the hall. And then, minutes later, she’d hurried down the hall in her winter gear, racing out the porch door and following the shoveled snow trail that lead to the horse barns.

His wife, Maisy, was in the office at the other end of their huge, three-story home. She wouldn’t have heard Callie’s scream. From the day she’d come home, Graham had known that his granddaughter was still suffering from her experience in Afghanistan. She’d been home five days now, and every day, she had worsened, it seemed. No matter what the family did, it didn’t help her. What would?

It hurt Graham to hear his granddaughter crying when she thought no one else was around, hiding out in the stables to get the privacy she needed. She couldn’t use her right hand yet, but Callie was creative. Holding the pitchfork beneath her left arm, she could lean down in the stall, slide it along the concrete floor, and scoop up a bunch of straw and horse poop. She would then walk it out to where she had a large wheelbarrow nearby. The gray horse that had been in there, Ghost, her favorite thoroughbred mixed quarter horse, was standing quietly in cross ties, watching her.

Something had to be done to help Callie. Graham eased from his position in the shadows and quietly walked down the aisle in her direction. Ghost nickered a hello and Callie looked up. She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve, straightening after dumping the load of manure and straw into the wheelbarrow.

“Grandpa! What are you doing out here?”

He smiled a little, picking up another pitchfork hanging on a wall hook. “Might ask you the same thing, Callie. Want some help cleaning Ghost’s stall?”

“Well . . .” Her voice faltered, and she gave him an embarrassed look. “Sure . . . I guess . . .”

“Come on,” he said gruffly, sliding his arm around her shoulders and giving her a gentle squeeze. “Let me help you.” Her eyes were dark with the pain she carried within her. Callie had never asked for help; she and Dara had grown up independent and self-confident. This was a side of Callie he’d never seen.

“O-okay . . .”

For the next fifteen minutes, they silently worked together. Callie was still crying and sniffing. Graham knew his granddaughter well: she was a stubborn little thing, and until she was ready to reveal what she was carrying inside, no one could pull it out of her.

Her nose was red and her eyes were red-rimmed. They worked quietly together, and pretty soon, the stall was cleared. Graham brought over a fresh bale of wheat straw and threw it into the stall. Then he pulled out his Buck knife and cut the twine around the ninety-pound bale. Callie helped him spread it all around, a nice mattress for Ghost, who would appreciate the fresh, clean-smelling straw. The barn had fifteen box stalls, and every one of them needed to be cleaned every other day.

It was a constant job, and one that Graham’s wranglers normally did. But his men and women were on holiday, and he was short-staffed.

“This was awful nice of you to help out here,” Graham told her, taking both pitchforks and hanging them back on the barn wall. “I’ll get Ghost and bring him in here.”

“I’ll go get him a flake of hay,” Callie said, turning toward the stacked alfalfa.

Afterward, Graham asked her, “What else were you going to do out here?”

Shrugging, Callie whispered, “I don’t know, Grandpa . . .”

“Want to sit with me over there?” He gestured with his gloved hand toward two metal chairs sitting near the open door of the tack room.

Callie nodded, trying to stop crying. Just her grandfather tucking her beneath his arm and pulling her against his tall, strong body made her feel better. As they sat down, she said, “Grandpa? You were in the Marine Corps. You’ve never told anyone about it, or what you did when you were in.”

He smiled a little, resting one boot over his knee. “Well, mostly because what I did was top secret, baby girl.”

Her eyes widened, and she stared at her sixty-five-year-old grandfather. “Really?”

“Yep. Why?”

She melted beneath his warm blue gaze, feeling his love for her. Wiping her face with her fingers, she said, “The man who saved my life—Beau Gardner . . .”

“Yes?”

“H-he reminds me so much of you in some ways. He’s Army black ops and top secret, just like you. He’s very kind and gentle. He never raised his voice, always had a smile for me. Even in the worst of it, when we were running to get away from the Taliban, he seemed so calm, so sure of himself.”

“He’s Delta Force, right? I recall Dara calling and mentioning that Beau was one of the men on Matt Culver’s team.”

Nodding, Callie whispered, “It’s so hard to talk about this, Grandpa. N-no one understands . . . but Beau did. Just being around him calmed me down immediately. He just has a way with me, like you do.”

“He sounds like a very special person, Callie.”

“H-he is. He saved my life . . . but I put him in danger in so many different ways.” Looking up, she asked, “Did you ever go into combat? Did you have to shoot an enemy?”

Nodding, Graham said quietly, “Yes, I did.”

“You never told us,” she said, gazing at him in wonder.

“Baby girl, it’s not something a man ever wants to talk about to someone who doesn’t know the territory.”

“Right,” Callie said, nodding between sniffles. “I-I had a nightmare earlier, and I woke myself up screaming.”

“I heard you.”

Callie’s eyes widened. “Oh . . . God . . . I’m sorry, Grandpa . . .”

He lifted his hand. “No need, Callie. You went through a lot, from what I can tell.”

“W-we both did,” she said, her voice low with anguish. “I-I miss Beau so much, Grandpa. I wish with my heart, my soul, he could be here with me. He was there. He knows what happened . . .”

“What’s stopping you from asking him to come for a visit?” Graham asked suddenly, surprising her.

“Uh, well, I don’t think he’d come, Grandpa.” She got up, beginning to pace, her hand against her mouth, more tears falling.

Graham sat watching Callie move back and forth, and his heart was raw with pain. He knew a lot more about what she was going through than he had let on, but he’d never tell her. More important, he recognized the signs of severe trauma, or what they now called PTSD. “Tell me why, Callie. Why wouldn’t he come to see you? You said you had a good relationship with him before the ambush.”

Over the last five days, Graham had begun piecing together things that Callie had let slip. She was like a huge jigsaw puzzle, and if he hadn’t been a Marine Corps sniper, he wouldn’t have put it together as he had.

Callie halted in front of Graham. “B-because . . . oh, Grandpa, don’t tell anyone this, okay?”

“Promise, cross my heart and hope to die, baby girl,” he said, making the symbolic sign with his hand over his Sherpa jacket.

“I-I placed Beau in danger. He got shot twice because of me.” She sobbed and choked out, “I ran! I got scared and ran, Grandpa. He told me to crouch down behind a huge pine tree trunk and not to move. I was well hidden there. But when the Taliban on horseback got closer, I ran. I was so scared!” She began to sob earnest, humiliated by her actions.

Graham slowly unwound and walked over to her. She was a little thing compared with his six feet five inches. Without a word, he drew her gently into his arms, allowing her to press her face into his jacket and cry with wracking, body-shaking sobs. He took off his other glove, rubbing her back and patting her shaking shoulders. Now the rest of the pieces fell into place. This was what was really eating at Callie—that she’d run when Beau Gardner had hidden her so he could take care of the bad guys trailing them.

He pulled a white linen handkerchief out of his back pocket and pressed it into Callie’s damp left hand. The pain in her cries ripped into an old wound he carried deep within himself. Never had he thought that one day, one of his beloved granddaughters would ever receive a wound similar to his. Rubbing her shoulder, he let her cry it out, because he knew from long ago that crying had gotten him through his own private hell as a Marine.

Finally, she stopped crying and blotted her eyes dry with his handkerchief.

“Sometimes, baby girl, we need a special person in our life who can help us through something like this,” he told her gruffly. “And it sounds like this Gardner fella might be exactly what the doctor ordered for you, Callie.”

She gave him a miserable look. “But I’ve disappointed him so badly, Grandpa. I’m sure he won’t have anything to do with me. I got him shot because I ran and I didn’t stay hidden.”

Shrugging, Graham asked, “Did you tell him that?”

Sniffing, she mumbled, “No, but in so many words I did . . . I told him I knew I was a huge disappointment to him.”

“What’d he say?”

“I-I don’t know. I turned and walked away from him. I-I couldn’t stand to hear what he might say to me. I know I’m a coward . . . I ran . . . I didn’t trust what he told me, and I put his life in jeopardy because of it . . .”

Graham nodded, pursing his lips in thought. “First of all, you’re a McKinley, and there aren’t any cowards in our family that I know of, Callie.” He touched her nose. “You were a civilian, completely untrained in military tactics, and you were scared for your life. Now, if you’d had training like Beau Gardner did and then you ran—yes, you would be disobeying a direct order.” He placed his finger beneath her chin, looking deep into her suffering eyes. “But you weren’t trained, Callie. You did the best you could at the time. You thought you were gonna die, didn’t you?”