“I wasn’t trying to hide,” she said. She took a step toward Macon.
He nearly tripped trying to get away from her. He couldn’t let her touch him. If she touched him, he would melt like butter. He wouldn’t give a damn that she’d lied. He’d tell himself anything so he could keep her. He’d already made a damn fool of himself. What would a gorgeous girl like Allyson want with his pathetic ass?
Sarah. Her name was Sarah.
She stepped back, her face pale. Her eyes wouldn’t quite meet his. “You wouldn’t answer me. After Ronnie died, my foster mom went a little crazy. She didn’t believe the reports on his death. She said Ronnie would never have taken off his helmet or his body armor. He wouldn’t have not been wearing it.”
No. They were right about that. Ronnie had religiously worn his body armor and his helmet when they were in the field. He’d been wearing it when the Humvee had exploded and the world had gone to shit. It was only after the firefight that they’d been left alone with the sun. Ronnie hadn’t been the only one who struggled to survive the intense heat. He could almost feel it now.
He could definitely feel the same hollowness he’d felt that day. He’d looked down and realized he couldn’t save himself. He’d been pinned down by the Humvee, his right leg caught. He’d known even if he’d managed to lift the heavy piece off of him, he’d bleed out. The medic had taken one look at him and put his hands up in defeat. The only thing stopping the bleed was the damn metal deep in his thigh.
The whole day was chaos. A few moments after proclaiming Macon would have to wait, the medic—an older man named Johnson—had been shot right through the forehead.
Macon had lain near Johnson’s dead body for nearly three days.
He looked at Allyson with new eyes. She’d done a lot for the truth. “I should have answered your calls.”
“Macon, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
He calmed. There would be time for anger later, but right now all he could manage was a cold resignation. She’d likely thought he’d left her no other recourse. “I wasn’t sure what to tell you.”
“I know you weren’t involved,” she said quickly. “At the time, we didn’t understand the reports and my mom was so sick. She was my foster mom, but I called her Mom. She and Ronnie were my family.”
And she was loyal to them. It was a good thing to be. He couldn’t compete with her family. “You’re wrong, unfortunately. I’m the reason he’s dead.”
“You are not, Macon,” his brother said fiercely.
Macon kind of wished his brother wasn’t here to witness this new humiliation, but he deserved it. He’d been a shit to his brother most of his life. He’d chosen the wrong people to believe in. He still did since he’d really believed he had a chance with Ally. Elise had only cared about his father’s money. No woman had ever loved him for who he was.
Who was he, anyway? The serious soldier or the pastry chef? The man who’d thrown his brother under the bus because his wife wanted him to or the man who would stand by his brother no matter what?
He wanted to be the man Ally had fallen for. The trouble was Ally didn’t exist. The very least he could give her was the truth. She would know what kind of man he was then and she could be satisfied.
“We were out on an assignment. I don’t even know everything we were supposed to do. We were going to be told when we got where we were going. We were soldiers. We followed orders. Even as an officer, I was trained to follow the orders of my superiors. They wanted it quiet, I would be quiet. We were meeting someone in a small village outside the desert but to get there we had to go through Taliban territory, hence the quiet. We were a small team. They thought smaller was better. I suspect we were picking up a CIA operative, but I can’t be sure.”
“Macon, you don’t have to,” Ally said.
He felt his eyes harden. She was still playing games with him. “Oh, I think I do. I don’t want you to have wasted your time.”
She shook her head, tears streaming. “Please, Macon.”
“Let him get it out, Ally.” Adam was quiet, as though he knew how close to the edge Macon was. “He needs to tell this story. You haven’t told it to anyone, right?”
“Not even Kai.”
“Then don’t,” Ally said through her tears.
He turned to her. “You came here for this story. You fucked me to get this story. Oh, sweetheart, you’re going to get the truth.”
“Macon, maybe we should call Kai. We could go to his place and talk about this as a family.” Adam seemed awfully reasonable now.
“She’s not my family.” And she never would be. “I’m going to give her the information she needs and then we can be done.”
“I don’t want that,” Ally said, pleading.
“I don’t want to have been lied to for weeks. I guess we can’t always get what we want. You want to know what happened to your brother? Shit happened. It happened to all of us. We were deep in the desert when we realized we had a low tire. Rowe and I got out and patched it. The driver liked to play pranks. Asshole kid. He pulled away when we tried to get back in. It was a joke. I believe I threatened to kill the little fucker if he did it again. Which he did. That was when he hit an IED. Blew the fuck out of us. I got caught under a heavy piece of the vehicle. I was pinned down. A couple of us were. That’s when they showed up. Taliban. They started to pick us off. The stupid piece that took my leg provided cover for me. Same for Rowe. He was pinned down next to me, but it was both his legs. At some point they decided to come and do some up-close fighting. There were only three of them. Two of them were kids. I killed a kid. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I shot him in the back before he could take out Kellison. Didn’t matter. The other kid got him. Rowe and I took out the other two despite the fact that we couldn’t walk, couldn’t move. We could still shoot.”
“Macon,” Ally began.
Adam held up a hand. “Don’t. He needs to do this.”
He ignored them both. He wanted to get it all over with. He wanted to walk away. His first instinct was to leave, but he was going to fight that. His brother hadn’t done anything wrong. He could at least still have his brother in his life. But no Ally.
“It got quiet after that. Really quiet. Rowe and I were the only ones left alive. We did what we were trained to do. We took stock of what we had. Neither one of us could move. I managed to get a tourniquet around my leg, but I couldn’t move the Humvee. We had a couple of energy bars and one bottle of water between us. We rationed it, but there wasn’t much left after a day and a half. We knew there was more. I could even see a bottle of it, but I couldn’t get to it. At one point I tried to use my knife. I tried to saw my own damn leg off so I could get to it, but I kept passing out.”
Ally was weeping freely now, but he was strangely numb. He didn’t even want to hold her. It was all bullshit. She was crying for her brother. He thought about all the times he’d left her alone in his house. Had she searched his computer, his phone, his paperwork? She wouldn’t have found anything. She hadn’t found anything or she likely would have hit the road by now.
“On the second day we realized we had no idea if anyone at all was coming. Our mission had been secretive.” His stomach rolled as he thought about some of the things he wasn’t saying. He didn’t mention that the vultures had shown up. They’d been smaller than American vultures, but no less hungry. He’d tried to get them off his teammates, but he’d been useless. He’d sat back and waited to die. “If the Agency was involved, we could have been written off. We had no idea. We were dumb and utterly at the mercy of the elements. Helpless. I’d never thought of myself that way before. I was completely helpless and I started to believe that dehydration would get us before anyone would think to look for us. If they looked for us.”
He’d wondered if anyone would even care that he was gone. Elise would take his insurance and buy a better husband. He didn’t have kids. He’d cut off ties with the one brother who might have given a shit.
“He talked about you.” If he was going to tell the truth, he was going to tell all of it. “He loved you. He said you saved him when he was a dumb kid getting the shit kicked out of him in high school. He never once mentioned you weren’t his blood. You were his sister and he loved you.”
“I loved him, too.”
That was obvious. “We knew the water wouldn’t keep us alive for long. I like to think that he thought he was in worse shape, that he thought he was doing the right thing.”
Her hand covered her mouth as she choked down a sob. She’d obviously figured out the secret he’d kept, but he had to say it.
“During the second night, Private First Class Rowe put his service pistol to his head and he pulled the trigger.” He could still hear that sound. He’d come to, his own gun in hand, thinking it was all over. Another group of Taliban had found them. He’d been surprised at how little it scared him. He was ready to fight because it was what he did, but he wasn’t sure he really cared. There was nothing in his life worth fighting for.