FATAL DECEPTIONS, page 7
Her eyes looked suddenly frightened and confused. “Mac–”
He stopped her with a hand in the air and a hard look that damn near killed him to deliver. “No. You don’t need to speak. You need to listen.”
The first tear fell then and he almost folded. She soldiered up, though, fought them back, but the harshness in his tone cut her deep. He’d intended it to. He had to make her listen. He had to make her understand. He’d cut off his right arm before he’d intentionally hurt her, but for her own good, he had to hurt her now.
“I don’t want you to come back here. Ever. I don’t want to hear from you again. I don’t want to see you again.” He forced himself to hold her gaze even as she seemed to crumble and Ian stepped to her side and gripped her shoulders to keep her on her feet.
“Mac...” Pleading. Desperate. “You don’t mean that.”
He hardened his heart. “I’m not the man you married, Rachael. I’ll never be that man again. And I’m not a man who can be what you need.
“I’m not getting out of here, Rachael,” he pressed on, praying to God his voice didn’t break, that his will didn’t bend.
No matter that he could see her heart was breaking.
No matter that he’d thought his own heart wasn’t capable of experiencing this crushing pain.
“There will be no innocent verdict,” he said firmly. “There will be no appeals. No reversal. No leniency. No parole.”
Her chin dropped to her chest. She drew a trembling breath. And he hoped to God that he never had to come into this room again and see the spot where the tears he’d caused now landed softly and stained the floor.
“My face, my name, everything about me but the headlines have been erased from the world outside this prison. I don’t exist out there anymore. I never will again.”
He glanced at Ian, silently begging him to understand that he had to do this. But Ian had looked away, his jaw tight, his body rigid in a way that told Mac that Ian knew exactly what came next and that he didn’t know whether to hate him or admire him for it.
Ian finally looked at him. And with a crisp, grim nod, he let Mac know that he understood. He didn’t like it, but he understood.
Emboldened by Ian’s acceptance, he finally said the words that would rip his heart as deeply as it would Rachael’s. “I want you to file for divorce.”
Her head snapped up. Tears streamed down her face. “No. Mac. No. You don’t mean that.”
“Do it,” he said standing abruptly then nodded toward the guard indicating he was ready to go back to his cell. “If you don’t file, I will.”
Chapter Ten
The dream. It was there again this morning. Lingering just out of focus like it had been every morning since the day Mac had told Rachael to file for divorce.
Scattered puzzle pieces. Unraveled strings. Convoluted negatives interspersed with black-and-white prints then colored digital pictures and sounds and faces and shadows, all hovering on the fringe of his consciousness.
He closed his eyes. Tried to recapture it with clarity. Tried to figure out what it meant. To erase the shadows and see things clearly. And he drifted to sleep again. And saw her.
Rachael. She didn’t fit but she was there. He saw her face, smiling, laughing as she rolled over on top of him naked and warm and wanting him. They were in their bed, making love. Her amazing skin felt so soft and fragrant and hot. So smooth as she moved over him, her silken hair brushing his face, her warm breath caressing his lips, his cheeks, his eyes until she covered his mouth with hers and fell with him off the cliff, spiraling downward to that place that was only theirs. That place where they became one and nothing, not heaven, not hell, not earth could deny the love that they had for each other.
“You need to go away now.”
His voice. He’d said that.
He actually told her to leave him. While she cried. But she did as he asked. She slowly pulled away. Dispersing like fog, unraveling like a bolt of red silk as she drifted farther and higher away from him until all that remained was her scent and the illusion that she’d been there with him in the night.
In her place there was pain. His head. Oh, God, his head throbbed and stabbed at his brain and somewhere in the near distance a rifle fired as he fell to the floor. A shadow loomed just out of reach of his vision. A man. A uniform. His back to him as he fired again, a rapid burst of rifle fire. More smoke, wafting from the rifle barrel.
And Jack. Jack fell to the ground in front of him. Lifeless.
Mac fought to open his eyes. To see. To help. But the pain. It knifed into his skull, unrelenting, blurring his vision, demanding that he close his eyes, even as he squinted to see the blood pooling around Jack’s body - the life go out of his gaze.
Jack. Someone shot Jack. Jack with the daughter the same age as Addie. The Afghan man thousands of miles from home where Mac wanted to be with Rachael.
Someone shot Jack, he thought again. He was that someone. He didn’t know why. He shot Jack. They said he did it even though Ian and the guys, they all said they didn’t see him do it. They said they didn’t see it. But Jack was dead.
Someone … someone … someone he knew shot him. Just there. Just beyond the reach of his awareness. Just outside the door of answers. Within reach of the window of truth. Someone who … who shouldn’t have shot him. The same someone who hit Mac in the head with his own rifle. Because he’d let him take it from him. Hadn’t expected him to take it. Because he’d trusted him. He’d just walked into the room with him and Jack. Walked up behind him. Hit him with the rifle butt and knocked him senseless.
He was familiar, that someone. Mac knew him. There was something … something ….something about him. His walk. His height. His ease in entering the room.
“You shot him,” the MP said when he dragged him up off the floor and slapped on handcuffs. “You shot him. Why did you shoot him?”
“I shot him? I did? Why did I shoot him?”
“You didn’t shoot him. You couldn’t have shot him.” Rachael. She was back. Hovering over him. Believing in him. Championing him. Tears spilling from her eyes. They landed on his face like warm rain drops. They tasted of her. Of love and fear and sorrow. They tasted of salt and stung his eyes.
That’s when he opened them. Realized he’d been dreaming. Realized it was his own tears that tasted of salt and stung of frustration.
“And there’s nothing I can do? Nothing you can do?”
Dillon Nelson sat behind his walnut desk. He sighed deeply, rocked back in his chair and gave Rachael a sympathetic look. “If he no longer wants to retain my services, I can’t force him to keep me on.”
“But I could retain you on his behalf, right?”
“To what purpose, Rachael? He won’t see me. He’s not cooperating. You’d be wasting your money.”
The nightmare just kept getting worse.
“He told me to file for a divorce.” She looked past Nelson to the window in his corner office. Outside the first-floor office, strangers walked by. Traffic moved. Life went on.
“I know,” Dillon said. “He told me his plans. I’m so sorry Rachael. If there was anything I could do, I’d do it. Mac … well, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. Frankly, you’d be doing yourself a favor if you did as he asked.”
“I’m not filing for divorce.”
“I understand. It’s not a decision you make in haste. And you don’t have to.”
Nelson rose, walked around his desk and edged a hip onto the corner, sitting in front of her. “The Army will reinstate their attorney to work on his behalf so Mac’s assured of representation. But if he refuses to cooperate with him as well … his hands are also tied.”
She closed her eyes, pinched back tears. “I can’t believe this is happening to us.”
Dillon was silent for a while, letting her deal with her thoughts.
“My advice, Rachael? Keep digging into his friends, platoon members, his higher in command. Maybe see if you can get the army to spring for some neurological testing. Something’s keeping him from remembering. Whether it’s the physical trauma or an emotional trauma, his memory is locked tight. A breakthrough on that front could be huge.”
She nodded, stood and extended her hand. “Thank you. Thank you for your help and suggestions.”
“My door is always open if you or Mac need me for anything.”
She shook his hand and turned to go.
“And Rachael. Keep the faith. Hopefully you’ll find something or someone who can shed some light on what actually happened that night.”
After she’d left Dillon Nelson’s office, Rachael picked herself up mentally and emotionally and followed his advice. She kept digging. She made calls. Texts. E-mails. She prodded. She begged. She pried. And days into her search, she actually thought she might have found something.
Excited, her hand shaking, she called Ian. He’d know how to proceed from here.
“His name is Cal Reynolds. He was a private, assigned to Mac as an office aid.”
“Yeah,” Ian said thoughtfully. “I might have met the guy. “Tall, drawl.”
“Right,” Rachael’s excitement mounted and she gripped the phone tighter. “He’s from Tennessee. His deployment ended a few weeks ago and I caught him at home on R&R. He maintains that he has a memory like an elephant and can visually picture everyone who went in and out of Mac’s office while he was on duty.”
“To what end?” Ian asked, sounding skeptical.
“I don’t know. Maybe … maybe he saw the person who planted the heroin only he didn’t know that’s what was happening. Someone in Mac’s office who shouldn’t have been there. Or someone who dropped in a little too often. Someone he saw leaving but didn’t think to ask why he’d been inside. Maybe he just didn’t realize that’s what he was seeing at the time.”
“It’s a stretch, Red.”
“It’s something,” she said adamantly. “Something in a world with a whole lot of nothing.”
Ian was quiet for a time and she suspected he was about to gently tell her not to get her hopes up. Instead, he surprised her.
“Tell you what. I’ll stop over tonight. Bring pizza. We can talk about this guy. Maybe, if we see potential, I can pay him a visit.”
“A visit? To Tennessee?”
“Why not?”
“Because it would take you away from your work. And travel isn’t cheap. I can’t ask you to do that.”
“We’ll figure something out. I’ll see you in an hour.”
When a military man says an hour, the time doesn’t vary by more than a few seconds. True to his word, an hour later, Ian showed up with a takeout pizza, a bottle of wine and a container of mac and cheese for Addie.
“EenEen!”
Addie ran to him. He’d barely cleared the door when she hit him low, wrapping her arms around his knees and holding on tight.
“Adoration,” Ian said handing off the pizza and the wine to Rachael. “A man could get used to it.”
Adoration was the word, Rachael thought, smiling as Ian bent to pick up Mac’s daughter and tickle her which had Addie exploding into a torrent of giggles.
“You’re a genuine giggle box,” Ian told her and carried her into the kitchen behind Rachael.
After devouring her mac and cheese and even a little of Ian’s pizza, Addie wound down quickly.
“I’ve got her,” he said, carrying Addie back to the living room and sitting down with her on his lap while Rachael cleaned up the kitchen and poured them both another glass of wine.
Addie was already asleep, her head on Ian’s shoulder, his big, gentle hands holding her close when Rachael found them.
“Wish I could fall asleep that fast.” She set the wine down on the coffee table.
“Probably has something to do with the vodka in the sippy cup,” he said, grinning over what had become a standard joke.
“Here.” Rachael reached for Addie. “I’ll take her. Get her settled in her bed.”
“Can I do it?” Ian asked, with so much affection and tenderness in his voice that Rachael didn’t even consider denying him.
“Knock yourself out. Her pj’s are in the top drawer of her dresser. She’ll need a night diaper. The thick ones on the end of the changing table. If you run into any trouble, just yell. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just sit here and play bad mom and guzzle wine.”
“You do that,” Ian said. “Relax a little.”
Rachael sat down on the sofa, tucked her feet under her and stared vacantly into the fire. She loved being a mother. She truly did. But sometimes having a little help on the home front was as much of a blessing as say … this glass of wine. And the quiet. And the knowing she wasn’t carrying it all alone.
Ian. Ian had been nothing short of amazing.
She knew that she relied on him too much. Enjoyed his company too much.
And that realization stung. Guilt nipped right at its heels.
It was almost as if she’d let Ian replace Mac in her life. Almost? No. Had. She had let Ian replace Mac in many ways. And she knew she should feel much worse about it. Should feel like she was cheating on Mac.
Of course she wasn’t. Not in the literal sense. But, in the sense that she’d let Ian slip so easily into the supporter, protector and even daddy role, she was being unfaithful to Mac.
And why not, she asked herself rationally. Mac had rolled over and relinquished his claim by giving up. On himself. On her and Addie. A part of her hated him for that while another part understood that he thought he was protecting them from a life of loneliness and pain.
Divorce. She stared at the fire.
The word cut like glass. She couldn’t divorce Mac. She loved him. And somehow, someway, she had to prove his innocence.
“Out like a light,” Ian said softly and joined her on the sofa. “What a gift.”
“Thank you.” She touched a hand to his forearm. “You have grown to mean so much to her. And to me.”
He sipped his wine. “That’s what friends are for.”
She nodded. Smiled when he did.
“Friends are for helping,” he added, his expression serious suddenly. “For sorting out. For … sometimes saying the hard words.”
Her gaze cut to his. “What? What’s happened?”
“No. I’m sorry. Nothing’s happened. It’s just …” He turned, hiked a knee up on the sofa and faced her. “I want to talk to you about something. Something you’re not going to like to hear.”
“Par for the course, lately,” she said wearily. “What is it?”
He looked into his glass, breathed deeply, then met her eyes. “Have you ever considered that Mac might be rolling over on his defense because … well, because he actually killed that guy?”
Her heart stopped. Anger boiled to the surface, fast, furious. But she tempered it, made herself settle down when she realized how difficult it had been for Ian to suggest such a thing.
“I thought you believed him,” she said, looking away.
“I believe in him,” Ian clarified. “But I’m also starting to believe that something … I don’t know what … but something happened that night and Mac found himself in a pressure situation. I don’t know, Rachael. Maybe, maybe he was attacked first … but in the end, maybe he did it. Maybe he shot him. But he’s subconsciously blocking the memories because he can’t bear the thought that he killed someone.”
She stared at the fire. Silent. Not wanting to accept that explanation but reluctantly admitting to herself that she had sometimes wondered the same thing. Hated herself for entertaining the idea, but wondered just the same.
“Maybe that’s why he’s resistant to the idea of hypnosis.”
He let that thought settle between them.
“Because he’s secretly afraid the truth will come out? And he won’t be able to live with it?” she asked him as much as herself.
“Maybe,” he agreed after a long, thoughtful silence. “I can’t help but wonder, Red. This is all so … unlike Mac. To just give up. Throw his life away without defending himself. I mean, I know he’s concerned about the financial aspect for you but he knows I won’t let anything happen to you and Addie.”
“And maybe that’s a bitter pill for him to swallow.” She looked at him then away. “To know that his best friend has to take care of his wife and child. Maybe it’s too bitter.”
He was silent for a long while.
And she felt as though another shoe was about to fall. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
His eyes looked haunted when he met hers. “Yeah. He a … he asked me…” Ian stopped, dragged a hand over his jaw, clearly uncomfortable. “He asked me to make certain you filed for divorce.”
“Not fair,” she said, angry at Mac suddenly and hating herself for it. “Not fair to you.”
“That’s not all.”
She sat up straighter. “What?”
He stood, walked to the fire. Braced a hand on the mantel as he stared into the flames. “He asked me to … to take over in his place. He asked me to…”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear this.”
Another one of those silences that felt loud and unending fell over the room in a thick layer of dread.
“Okay. What?” she relented on a whisper.
He turned to her, his expression bleak. “He asked me to marry you. And to adopt Addie.”
Chapter Eleven
Drenched in sweat, yet shaking as though he were freezing, Mac clung to the prison cot like it was a lifeboat adrift in a hurricane sea.
The dreams had been flying at him like artillery fire. Night after night. Relentless and unwavering, they came to him. Part torment, part torture and all consuming, they attacked him in the dark. Wouldn’t leave him alone. Wouldn’t give him what he needed. Not rest. Not clarity.
He needed to forget about Rachael. He had to if he was going to survive this. But she always came to him in the night. Sometimes she brought Addie and his baby girl would reach out her hands and cry for a daddy she didn’t know and would never see again.
