Mark (In the Company of Snipers Book 2) (22 page)

Endless stretches of stony silence followed, punctuated with outbursts of contempt and derision. The old man kept himself absent and occupied, turning his dairy farm into a twenty-four seven workload and avoiding his only child in the process.

Never knew what she saw in you. You ain’t nothing but trouble and another mouth to feed.

Mark blocked the relentless words. Still, they came.

What’d she think dying like that? I was gonna raise a snot-nosed kid by myself? Why do you even bother coming home?

Young Mark had withered before his father’s suffocating reproach. He became an invisible child, a burden and a millstone around a hateful man’s neck. In the hopelessness of utter rejection, the boy spent his time proving himself, making up for failures that weren’t his to make up for. It was never enough. Nothing mattered, not excellent grades at school or how many bales of hay he could toss in a day. His father looked through his only son like smoke. The boy was never seen again.

Those ugly memories crushed the hope out of Mark again. His father was right. Mark was nothing. He deserved nothing. Unloved meant unlovable. He could not change his fate anymore than he could find Libby. He wasn’t worthy. That’s why he had lost his mother then, and why he would lose Libby now.

Stupid boy.

So lost in the hate-filled rant in his head, Mark didn’t hear the quiet footfall behind him until a hand rested on his shoulder. It was a man’s hand. A strong hand.
Damn.

Alex.

“What do you want?” Mark twisted away from the touch. The last person he needed was his boss. Harley or Zack maybe, but Alex? Never. Hell. He was the problem.

“Come on, Mark. We’ve got work to do.”

And he was so freaking calm.

“Let me be.” Mark jerked his shoulder out from under Alex’s hand.

Alex ignored him, brushed the dirt off Mark’s shirt, and hooked his hand through Mark’s arm to pull him to his feet. That was the last straw. He pushed Alex away again with an elbow flying. He wiped his face as he finished getting to his feet by himself, and he came up swinging. Half of him wanted to knock Alex down, maybe even knock him out. He could take Alex. Maybe then he’d feel a little better.

But the other half wanted so much to believe. Harley and Zack trusted Alex. Murphy and Roy, too. Not Mark. He didn’t respect Alex, and he didn’t like him, especially now that he had given away their only leverage. No ransom? How would they ever get Libby back now?

But Mark trusted Harley and Zack. That’s all that restrained him now. Like it or not, it was Alex who stood on home base with him.
Damn.

“Why’d you tell him no ransom?” Mark demanded.

“They’re not going to give her back.” Alex was as calm as Mark was angry. “You already know that.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know anything for sure. Neither do you. I could get that dope out of Jon’s casket. It’s only a couple hours away. You could work with the FBI to open the rest of those graves. We could get it done today. I know we could. They’d get what they wanted. They could tell us where she is and then—”

“They have no intention of giving her back, Mark.” The calm turned to steel in Alex’s voice. “We have to find Libby ourselves.”

“But you don’t know that.” He shoved Alex away. “God! You’re so damn sure of everything, aren’t you? Well, I’m not. I have to try. I have to do something. We don’t even have to dig that crap up. You could get your hands on that much opium from the FBI. Couldn’t you? They keep some on hand for things like this. They’d give it to you. I know they would.”

“Think about it, Mark.” Alex met him head on. “The Russians killed the family in West Virginia for no reason. They hit the safe house in Spencer for no reason. They never went near the cemeteries where the dope’s buried. Nothing about this has to do with recovering the opium. It might have started out that way, but that’s not what is going on now.”

Mark stared at his boss. Logic penetrated his out of control emotions.

“We are going to find her.” Alex still sounded so sure of himself.

Mark’s last shred of resolve evaporated into outright panic. “I can’t do this anymore,” he ground out. “God, Boss! I can’t sit here and wait for her to die. That’s all I’m doing. I can’t do it! Not again!”

Alex stared, and Mark stared back. In his frustration, he had just revealed too much of his soul to the man he wanted to hate. Neither blinked.

“You might not believe this,” Alex began softly, “but I can be an ignorant ass.”

Mark looked twice at that incredible understatement.
Yeah. That’s one of the words I’ve used for you.

“I’ve only given up twice in my life, once when I lost my wife and daughter, and once with Kelsey. I’m not letting you make the same mistake.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Mark said. Nothing made sense right now, especially the words coming out of his boss’s mouth.

“Then maybe I don’t know you like I thought I did,” Alex said quietly.

With a frustrated swipe over his face, Mark tried to concentrate. Alex finally said something right—he didn’t know a damn thing.

“Let me tell you what I see. First of all, son, you are no quitter. You’re a damned fine sniper. That doesn’t say quitter in my book, not by a long shot. Speaking of which, I happen to know you held the record for the long shot in your unit. Second of all, that little girl loves you, Mark. Anyone can see that. And she’s out there somewhere. What do you think she’s doing right now?”

“She’s dying.” Mark’s voice cracked as his fear poured out. He squeezed his head between both hands like that could ease the failure that consumed him from the inside out. “God! She’s dying because I can’t find her. What do you think she’s doing?” He hurled his words like a fistful of daggers, wishing they’d mow Alex down like the house of cards he was.

Alex steadied him with a hard grip on his shoulder, his voice as stern and tough. “No. No. No. That’s not what she’s doing. Get that out of your hard head once and for all. Think better, Mark. Think. Picture Libby. Do you honestly believe that little girl of yours has given up?”

Mark looked straight into those icy blues. They seemed to pierce straight into his soul, as if Alex could see what he was thinking, what he was truly made of instead of the emotional mess he’d turned himself into. His eyes and ears opened. There was something else mixed with that raw power that Alex wielded so effectively, something Mark hadn’t seen until now. Something he needed more than anything else.

Alex said that little girl loves me.

The memory of Libby swimming at Lake Wissota flashed into his mind. She was a competitive swimmer, even against two men who could easily out distance her. Man, did she give them a run for their money. She was so gorgeous in her red swimsuit, her gold hair piled high on the top of her head, always working at getting her way with that teasing smile. She’d charmed him and Jon both. They were both head over heels in love with her.

What would Libby be doing right now? What would she be thinking? Would she give up? Would she just quit breathing? Would she wish to die? He couldn’t imagine her doing that, not for the life of him. Nothing about her said quit. Like mother – like daughter.

The image of Rosemary patiently waiting at the hospital for Marie to wake up crystallized in his mind. Wherever Libby was, she was waiting, too. For him. She had faith. She believed.

Alex said I’m a damn fine sniper.

Alex had been so full of rage on the drive to Spencer, but he had selected Mark to go with him into the cornfield. Not Zack.

Alex called me son.

Mark stilled. It was Alex standing with him now, no one else. Right on cue, Alex gripped his shoulder. They stood eye to eye.

“Come on, Mark. I can’t do this alone. Get your head back in the game. Focus. Let me work on Castor one more hour. He knows where Libby is. I’m sure of it.”

Mark dusted the dirt off his pants, wiped his face with the tail of his shirt, and looked his boss over one more time. For the first time, he saw the wicked scar along the length of his boss’s left jaw line. Alex had obviously broken his nose once or twice, too. It was crooked as hell.

“Okay.” Mark blew out a deep breath and planted his feet. “Let’s get outta here, Boss.”

They turned toward the Yukon where sweet Kelsey waited for the men in her life.

“Remember that equalizer you were telling me about at the picnic?” Alex asked before he opened the driver’s side door.

“Yes,” Mark said quietly, still sniffing and wiping his face. Kelsey didn’t need to see him like this.

“Good.” Alex leaned across the roof of the vehicle. “That just might be the best decision you ever made.”

A light!

Libby jolted awake.
Am I saved? Is Mark here?
She hadn’t really seen a light, had she? It happened again. She chuckled.
Maybe it’s Tinkerbelle? Hmm. So this is how insanity feels. It’s not too bad.

When the air inside her dungeon turned colder, her skin grew warmer. Inhaling hurt as much exhaling. Sick. Delirious. Buried alive. It couldn’t get much worse. At least she wasn’t hypothermic. Shivering was supposed to be a good thing and she was doing plenty of that.

Dreams and images invaded every prayer or poem. She was never sure if she actually slept anymore, the line between day and night non-existent.

So this is how I’ll die – sick, alone, and insane.

Like an out of control carnival ride, her fevered mind took her up through childhood memories and down into high school dances. The prom. One minute she was twirling like a top on the dance floor with Mark, and the next she was riding the tilt-a-whirl with Faith and Marie, screaming their heads off like they did every year when the fair came to town.

Libby drifted. She was tired. And sick. She dozed, content to let the illness have its way.

“Come on Peewee. We don’t have all day.”

Faith?

Libby awakened in the middle of the huge Clifton vegetable garden alongside – Faith? Nah. It couldn’t be?

“You’re supposed to help me weed today, remember.”

But Faith is dead. Isn’t she?

Libby reached for her sister’s white gold hair to confirm this was only apparition. Instead of cold stone, she touched carefully plaited braids beneath her fingertips.

“Hey! Get your mitts off my hair. I just washed it.” Faith tilted her head up to show off her hair. “Marie helped me with the braids. It kinda gives me a Jamaican look, don’t you think?”

Libby couldn’t speak. The orange beads mingled in Faith’s braid did look exotic, but –
Faith? Is this real? Am I already dead?

Faith looked up from where she knelt weeding. She winked like they shared some wonderful sisterly secret. In a heartbeat, Libby believed. This was real. The darkness in her soul lifted as the wonderful Wisconsin sunshine poured down upon her.

I don’t know how this happened, but I’m okay. She called me Peewee. I can do this. Weeding is fun with Faith.

The normalcy of her surroundings confirmed her conclusion. As usual, they sang while they worked, simple silly songs that made the chore go faster.
I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,
and then
Old McDonald Had a Farm, E-I-E-I-O.
Libby sang her heart out. This was real, the most real thing she’d ever felt. Faith could call her whatever she wanted.

The music lifted Libby’s heart. Her voice blended perfectly with her older sister’s. They were two crystal sopranos singing in the garden, her father’s own songbirds.

Faith worked down her row of string beans so much faster than Libby. Further and further she went until Libby lost sight. All she could hear was,
E-I-E-I-O
just around the corner of the tall bean poles.

“Don’t go so fast,” she complained.

Like a little sister lost in the supermarket, she ran to catch up. Faith was already around the next corner of the tomato cages, singing like she hadn’t gone anywhere.
E-I-E-I-O
. The garden turned into a maze. Faith kept weeding and singing. Libby kept running to catch up.

“Not fair!” She plopped down, digging her bare toes into the warm garden soil. “You’re not playing fair, Faith.”

In the midst of her pity party, a yellow dandelion, dirt clod and all, sailed over the high tomato cages and bonked her on the head. She jumped to her feet. “Faith. Come back.”

Peeking through the tomato vines were the glorious blue eyes of the older, wiser sister. Like a beacon from home, they met the searching blue eyes of the younger sister who had been left behind.

“Don’t leave.” Libby stretched to touch Faith—one more time.

In the clearest voice, her sister answered in her usual I’m-so-much-smarter-than-you voice, “I’m gonna tell Mom if you don’t stop following me.”

Libby woke to the cold dungeon of her reality. It was only a dream, but the heavy fragrance of sun-warmed tomato vines and good loamy earth still filled her nose. She drew a deep breath, pulling it into the deepest part of her lungs.

Faith is going to tell Mom.

How many times had Libby heard that in her short life? Those were her older sister’s real words, exactly what Faith would have said if she’d actually been there. Any other time they would have stung, but now they wrapped around Libby like a comforter sent from home.

She shook the chill off her arms. She understood now. Faith had gone on ahead. It wasn’t Libby’s turn to follow.

Not yet.

Alex surprised Mark.

It was Kelsey in that interrogation room.

“I don’t know about this.” Mark brushed a hand over his head.

Alex hadn’t taken his eyes off his wife. “Kelsey’s good with people. Give her a chance.”

And then what? She was in there all by herself with a cold-blooded murderer. The poor woman’s feet tapped a relentless beat on the linoleum the second she sat down. She had taken two things in with her, a folder and a hair clip. The clip kept snapping opened and closed.

Mark held his breath, calculating how fast he could get in there if Castor made one wrong move. The man had gone from a slouching deadbeat to an all out pervert, looking her up and down like she was in anyway a possibility in his pathetic life.

She’s way out of your league, dirt bag. Touch her, you die.

From the moment she entered the room, Castor did sit up a little straighter and paid attention a little differently. He smoothed his hair off his face, at least the portion he could reach with his hands still in cuffs and chained to the table. He didn’t exactly volunteer information, but he did look her in the eye, which was more than he had done with Alex.

Kelsey offered a tentative first move. “Do you, umm, mind if I talk with you for awhile?”

“Knock yourself out,” Castor snorted. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

“Would you like some coffee? I could get a cup for you if you‘d like.”

“Yeah, right,” he muttered. “You Feds are pretty dumb if you think I’m falling for the good cop, bad cop routine again.”

“I’m not a Fed or FBI.” Kelsey glanced at the two-way window, trepidation written all over her face. “I’m just Kelsey. I teach kindergarten.”

Mark growled. “I don’t like this, Boss. What if—”

“Knock it off.” Alex stared at his wife. “She’s just getting started. Let her be.”

She shifted her feet, crossing them at the ankles and uncrossing them again. The clip in her hand snapped open and closed a few more times. “Okay, so, umm, the reason I’m here is because I think you’re a nice person. Deep down inside, you’re a good guy.”

“You don’t even know me, lady.” Castor looked away.

Mark’s heart went out to her. Round one had definitely gone to Castor. What was Alex thinking?

Instead of saying anything more, she swept her hair up and clipped it high on her head so only a few tendrils hung down. Castor glanced at her, and did a quick double take. Pulling her hair up like that made her look elegant, but it also revealed the scars on her forehead and her left cheekbone. Want to or not, he watched her a little closer. She had Mark’s attention, too.

“Anyway.” She blew out a big breath like that simple act of putting her hair up took a lot of courage. “I can tell you’re a good man by the way you talk. It’s in your voice.”

“You been listening to me talk a lot, have you?” he snarled.

Round two, Castor. Kelsey, zip. Mark grimaced. She had better come up with something more than her opinion if she intended swaying this dirtbag.

She shook her head. “No, but like right now, just the way you looked at me when you said that, I can see it in your eyes. You don’t have a mean bone in your body. Not really.”

“What do you know about mean? Ask that guy who was just in here.” Castor nodded toward the door. “He’ll tell you. All Marines are mean bastards.”

“Well, umm.” She gulped. “I know the difference because I used to be married to a mean man.” She traced a line over her eyebrow and down her cheek, exposing the side of her lovely face to this predator. Her hand shook, and Mark groaned. This was such a bad idea.

“What happened?” Castor’s tone softened when he actually looked at her.

“W-w-well,” she stuttered under his close scrutiny. “I guess you could say he didn’t see me like I was a real person. I was just something he used to make himself feel powerful.”

Castor shifted in his seat. “He hurt you? Bad?”

“He was a coward, Mike.” Kelsey spoke more confidently now. “He wasn’t like you at all.”

Mark’s ears perked up. She had just called Libby’s kidnapper by his first name.

“But you don’t know me,” Castor whispered.

Mark saw it now. Kelsey was playing to his good side, like he actually had one. In her gentle way, she was helping him remember the man he might have been.

“No. You’re right. I don’t know you. I mean I’ve never met you before today, but I can see it in your eyes. I really can.”

“What?” Castor asked sincerely. “What do you think you see?”

Kelsey leaned across the table and locked eyes with Michael Louis Castor. Mark froze. She had just put herself in the danger zone.

“I see a very strong man who doesn’t know who to trust,” she said softly. “I see a good man who wants to do the right thing. He just doesn’t know how.”

Mark held his breath. She sure saw something he didn’t.

“But I need to know something, and maybe you can tell me,” she continued. “How can a man as handsome and strong as you hurt someone like me?”

Castor gasped. The hard look flashed back over his face. Mark cringed. Why on earth did she have to go and ask something like that? She had just blown it with that question. Big time. Game over.

Kelsey leaned across the table, still searching Castor’s ugly face for what Mark didn’t know. She hadn’t asked that question with any anger in her voice. Instead, it came across like a sad curiosity. It hung there unanswered between the abuser and the abused, between the strong and the weak. Now it was Mike’s turn to shift nervously in his chair as Kelsey put a face to his crime. Mark held his breath while the drama unfolded between a sweet angel and a man headed to hell.

“I don’t know,” Castor finally whispered.

“I don’t know either,” she said quietly.

“Why are you asking me crap like that, lady?”

Kelsey blew out a small sigh. “I guess because he killed my little boys, Mike, and sometimes it’s all I think about.”

“Damn it, Kelsey. Not that.” Alex stood with his arms crossed, one fist raised to his chin, and his eyes locked on his wife. Mark never thought he‘d live to see the day. Alex was biting his thumbnail.

She kept going, her voice filled with quiet anguish. “I guess there doesn’t have to be a good reason to hurt another person. It’s kind of like a snowball. Once it gets pushed down the hill, it just keeps rolling, doesn’t it?”

Castor readjusted his sitting position, straightening one leg, and then the other until they were both pushed to the end of their shackles.

“Why’d he do that to you?” he asked quietly. “How could anyone hurt you?”

“I don’t think he meant to at first.” She wiped her eyes. “He always said he was sorry afterwards, but it’s like he was broken inside, like he never knew what a happy family was about.”

“Like hell he didn’t,” Alex muttered. “He had her and the boys until he—” He froze, straining to hear the conversation from the other room.

“I’m sorry.” Castor’s voice had softened. “I mean it. I’m sorry.”

Mark stepped back from the window. He couldn’t watch Kelsey anymore, so he watched Alex instead. The man was wound tight as a drum. The depth of his love for his wife radiated from him like an ocean wave, but there was something more. Mark blinked as the truth hit him. At some deeper level, Alex believed he was a lot like Mike.

“Me, too,” Kelsey whispered. “Losing a child is the worst pain in the world. I used to ask God to let me die, it hurt so much.”

“She’s got five more minutes, and this is over,” Alex muttered.

“I don’t see how anyone could hurt you.” Castor shifted nervously again.

“Are you married, Mike?”

“No. I’ve been kinda busy.” He calmed as the conversation turned to a more normal topic. “You know, I was a Marine, and work and all.”

“That’s too bad.” She studied the grain in the tabletop with her index fingernail. “I bet you would be a good husband. A good father, too.”

He shrugged, offering a sad smile. “I had a girl once.”

“You did?” Kelsey brightened. “What was her name?”

“Juliette. She left me.”

“Oh, no.”

Her sincerity surprised Mark. She wasn’t playing this guy. It sounded like she really felt bad for the jerk.