Swanson let out a whoop and hoisted his rifle into the air.
Jubilation filled Nathan as well. We did it, Shea!
Nathan waited for the reassuring response from Shea but she was silent. Dread gripped him until finally he felt her stir and warmth traveled through his body again.
I knew you’d do it.
Her confidence imbued him with the strength to walk out from behind the tree. He staggered from cover just as Swanson started out as well. The two men helped each other as they went to meet the approaching soldiers.
As they drew closer, Nathan’s pulse ratcheted up and tears blurred his vision. Donovan? Sam? Ethan? Garrett? Holy shit. It was KGI, not the army.
“It’s my brothers,” Nathan croaked.
“I don’t give a f**k if they’re your sisters,” Swanson said as he hoisted Nathan’s sagging body. “I’ll kiss them just the same.”
Adrenaline left him. Even Shea’s unwavering support couldn’t hold him up any longer. Nathan sagged, going down to his knees.
It was like a breaking dam. Pain flooded him. Fire burned through his limbs, his muscles, even his veins.
He realized that Shea’s strength was gone. She could no longer shield him. She’d shielded him far too long already.
He glanced up to see horror written on his brothers’ faces as they ran toward him. Then he looked down, realizing what they saw. He was gaunt, completely nak*d, and blood ran in rivulets down his body from all the cuts. It streamed down his leg where he’d taken a bullet.
He looked like he’d been to hell and back. He could feel the fires of hell licking up his body until he was consumed in agony.
He pitched forward, bracing his palms against the cold earth as his brothers surrounded him.
You’re safe now, Nathan.
Shea’s weak voice reached him just as he sensed her withdrawal. Only it felt final this time. Not like the others when she’d always promised to come back.
Please, please don’t tell anyone about me. Please keep my secret safe. My safety depends on it.
And then she was gone, leaving a giant, yawning hole in the pit of his soul. His fingers curled into the dirt. “No! Don’t leave! Goddamn it, don’t leave!”
“Nathan, my God. It’s me, Donovan. You’re okay now, man. We’re here. We’re not going to leave you. We’re going to take you home.”
As his brothers tried to roll him over, Nathan went ballistic. Here, when he was surrounded by his brothers, he’d never felt so alone in his life.
“Don’t go! Oh God, don’t go. Please don’t leave me,” he whispered brokenly.
Garrett palmed Nathan’s face with both hands and lowered his face until they were mere inches apart. “Nathan, we’re here. We’re taking you home. Everything’s okay now. We’re going to get you out of here.”
“Swanny. Take care of Swanny,” he managed to gasp out.
“I’ve got him,” Ethan said. “Don’t worry. We’ve got him.”
Tears streamed down Nathan’s cheeks as he stared up at the sky, so brilliantly blue. It ought to be red for all the bloodshed and yet it was pristine and soft.
“Don’t go. Don’t leave me, Shea.”
The words broke painfully from his raw throat. He hadn’t realized he’d been screaming just a moment ago. He closed his eyes as pain engulfed him.
“Who the f**k is Shea?” Sam demanded.
“Mine,” Nathan murmured. “Mine.”
Donovan knelt to wrap Nathan’s leg to stop the bleeding. He didn’t even flinch. There was simply too much pain, too much loss.
Shea. Don’t go.
He caught a vague image of her curled into a tight ball, suffering alone. It was more than he could bear. And then his mind went blank. No Shea. It was as if she’d never existed.
“Get that f**king helo here!” Garrett yelled.
“Down! Down!” Sam hollered.
None of what they said made sense but suddenly Nathan found himself covered. Donovan pressed him to the ground.
“They’re American!” Ethan hollered. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
Donovan pushed himself off Nathan and then stared down at his brother. “Looks like Uncle Sam decided to come along after all.”
Nathan turned his head, squinting into the sun. The valley was swarming with soldiers. It was too much to take in. He’d been on the verge of giving up all hope of ever returning home.
Thanks to a faceless woman with the voice of an angel and the strength of a warrior, he’d survived.
CHAPTER 9
SIX MONTHS LATER
KELLY COMPOUND, STEWART COUNTY, TENNESSEE
NATHAN hammered a nail into the two-by-four and then leaned back and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His hands shook and it pissed him off. He was still weak. Not fully himself. But then it was doubtful he’d ever be one hundred percent again.
He’d gained some of the weight back, but he was still whipcord lean and a good twenty pounds lighter than his normal size.
His house was framed. It could already be built by now, but he’d shunned a contractor. He couldn’t explain his drive to build the house himself, but it had become all-important for him to drive every nail, to create the refuge exactly as he envisioned it.
These days, it was all that kept him sane.
The mere idea of small, closed-in spaces made him break out in a cold sweat.
Weeks in a hospital had in some way been as hellish as his captivity. He’d felt helpless and he fought a daily battle over whether or not he’d imagined Shea. And worrying about her if she did in fact exist.
After having her as a shadow in his mind for so long, his head was frighteningly quiet. No comforting presence. But at other times, while he slept, he could swear he felt her. Warm and soothing, easing his pain and anxiety. When he awakened, she was never there. Still, he couldn’t discount the fact that the agony that should have incapacitated him simply didn’t exist.
The medical staff marveled at his ability to withstand and block out pain. What could he tell them? That he’d imagined a savior with the ability to take his pain as her own? They would have carried him away in a straitjacket. He’d probably still be locked up in some damn institution for psychiatric evaluation.
So yeah, he’d kept his mouth shut. During debriefing he’d kept to the facts. He’d been captured, tortured, and he’d managed to escape when they intended to kill him. Swanny must have kept his mouth shut too, because the incident where Shea and her sister had helped Swanny had gone unmentioned. Maybe Swanny himself didn’t even remember what had happened. Or maybe, like Nathan, he thought he was crazy.
Not as easy was answering his brothers’ questions when he was well enough and lucid enough to face them. They’d all hovered in his hospital room. His parents had flown in. The whole damn Kelly clan had gathered and had stayed in shifts until he was finally discharged.
One night when his parents had gone to eat with Rachel, Sophie and Sarah, his brothers had remained behind in his hospital room and they’d asked about the person who’d emailed Donovan. They asked who Shea was and why Nathan had screamed her name.
It was against his nature to lie to his family. He hated lying. But neither was he going to delve into his experience with Shea. She had to be real. How else would Donovan have received the emails he’d gotten? Van had even showed them to him.
He merely told them there was a sympathetic guard who’d promised to contact Nathan’s brother on Nathan’s behalf. Nathan had seen the disbelief in his brothers’ eyes. Questions that burned on their tongues, but they didn’t press. It probably damn near killed them.
As for Shea, the moment they mentioned her name, he refused to respond. He had no ready explanation, no easy way to explain away why he’d screamed for her not to leave him. So he said nothing, and his stony silence became a source of frustration for his brothers.
Nathan sighed as he hammered another nail. He knew his brothers worried. Nathan had changed, but hell, how could he not? How could anyone go through what he’d endured and not be fundamentally a changed man?
It wasn’t like he wanted to be different. He’d love to have his old life back. The same confidence. His resolute belief in his abilities. He’d give anything not to go to bed at night in a cold sweat because he couldn’t bear to close his eyes in case he woke up and was back in that cave being cut into ribbons again.
He hated the panic attacks. The loss of control. His sudden, unexplained fears at the most inopportune times. He’d come a long way since being discharged, but he still battled his demons on a daily basis. There were times, even though he was only six months out from his rescue, when he wondered if he’d always battle them. They seemed as much a part of him as breathing.
As much as he’d feared never seeing his family again, now that he was home, he preferred to spend most of his time alone. They loved him and he loved them, but their worry and concern weighed heavily on him. He couldn’t pretend he was normal. He couldn’t pretend to be the man who’d left them all those months ago to go on another mission. He was changed, and he was still dealing with the effects of that change himself. How could he expect them to accept the change when he hadn’t accepted it?
He didn’t want to push them away—it wasn’t what he consciously did. But he found himself seeking solitude more and more and spending less time in the ranks of his noisy and boisterous family. He missed them and avoided them in equal measure.
He reached for another nail and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his arm, freezing for a moment as the crisscross pattern of still healing scars flashing in front of
him.
He looked and felt like a damn patchwork doll.
Raising the hammer, he started to drive another nail, when a sound behind him stopped him. He turned, expecting to see one of his brothers. They checked in on him daily, whether he wanted them to or not. But it wasn’t one of them standing a few feet away.
He dropped the hammer. “Swanny! What the hell are you doing here?”
Nathan strode over to his former teammate and gripped him in a tight hug. He pulled away, taking note of Swanny’s appearance.
Like Nathan, he hadn’t regained the weight he’d lost in captivity. He, also like Nathan, was heavily scarred. The wound on his face had been deep and long and it snaked over the entire left side of his face. Lines were grooved into his forehead and around his eyes. There was even a smattering of gray at his temples. Hell had aged him and he hadn’t recovered. Maybe he never would.
“I had to come see you, Nate. I had to thank you in person.”
“Come sit down. Want a beer?”
Nathan gestured toward two large boulders that overlooked sprawling Kentucky Lake. While Swanny went to take a seat, Nathan dug into his cooler for two beers. Then thinking better of it, he dragged the entire ice chest over to where Swanny sat.
“How the hell are you?” Nathan asked as he tossed a can in Swanny’s direction.
Swanny was quiet for a moment. “I’m good. Making it. I thought I was more than ready to get out when my tour was up, but now I have too much time to think. It sucks.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Nice place you have here. I wasn’t sure they were going to let me through the gates.”
Nathan’s lips quirked into a half smile. “My brothers are pretty serious about security.”
Swanny sipped at the beer and stared out over the shimmering surface of the lake in the distance. Then he turned his gaze on Nathan. His eyes were dark and haunted. Tired.
“What happened out there, Nate?”
Nathan looked away, his shoulders rigid.
“I’ve tried to rationalize it. I’ve tried to explain it away, say it didn’t happen, but I didn’t imagine it. I did not imagine you putting your hands on me. I didn’t make up how injured I was before and the immediate sensation of relief. The x-rays showed no internal damage, but I know I was bleeding. I know I was hurt. Hell, I was coughing up blood. I couldn’t breathe. So you explain it to me, Nate. Tell me what the hell you did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Nathan said honestly. “Swear to God, I didn’t. I have so many what-the-fuck moments about that entire ordeal. Some days I think I lost it back there and I’ll never get it back. Some part of my mind just broke during captivity and I imagined all sorts of things.”
“Yeah,” Swanny muttered.
Nathan picked up another beer and popped the tab. He took several long gulps and then directed his gaze toward the lake and let the blue swallow him.
“Someone or something helped us,” Nathan said. “It was like the most f**king beautiful thing I’ve ever encountered. I worried I was dead or dying because I was sure I felt the presence of an angel.”
If he closed his eyes and thought hard enough, he could still feel the brush of Shea’s fingers on his face, the warmth of her soul as it merged with his. It was inexplicable. He didn’t want to examine it too closely, because he wanted it to be real. He wanted her to be real.