Emptiness hit her harder than a bullet.

Chapter Twenty-four

The CLU was empty when Max stumbled in. CC’s half of the unit was neat and tidy as usual. She’d made her bed as she always did, put away her laundry, and neatened up the objects on her storage shelves. Max’s portion looked just like she’d left it—her fatigues were in a pile in the corner, her sheets twisted, and the blankets half off on the floor. About as wrecked as her life.

Max stripped and fell face down on her rumpled bed. The pillow smelled like Rachel, the faintest hint of almonds and vanilla. Light and sweet. Some of the weight lifted from her heart. How was it that Rachel always brought peace, even in the throes of chaos? Rachel. Fuck. Rachel was gone. Out of habit, she reached over the side of the bed and felt around for the bottle of whiskey. Her fingers closed around the slick glass and her mind clamored for the cool burn and the dull edge of almost-forgetting. She rolled over and left the bottle where it was. She didn’t want to forget. She wanted to remember. She slid her hand under her T-shirt and over the surface of her midsection where Rachel had stroked her. Everywhere Rachel touched had come alive, and even now her skin, her muscles, her very bones tingled with the memory. She pressed her face closer to her pillow, immersing herself in the scent of Rachel, and closed her eyes.

When she woke, the hazy light filtering through the slatted window of her CLU told her it was morning, just after dawn. She sat up despite her body’s protest. She was stiff and sore everywhere, inside and out. Her stomach was queasy, her head pounding. She hadn’t dreamed, or if she had, she couldn’t remember. She felt drugged although she knew she wasn’t. She wondered what would be waiting for her at HQ. If she’d be facing another day with Carmody or maybe someone else, for some other kind of inquisition. Maybe Ollie and Dan and the others on the team were locked away in another windowless room going through the same thing. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and blaming the troops on the ground was always better than blaming the brass. The fuckups at the detention centers in Iraq had been proof plenty of that.

Grif ought to be awake by now. If he hadn’t been shipped out to the regional hospital, they might have questioned him. She wasn’t worried. Grif would always have her back. Her stomach twisted—she didn’t want him being browbeaten when he was in no position to defend himself. She checked her watch. Two hours before she needed to report. Time enough to fuel up and check on Grif. Pettit said she was confined to quarters, but unless a Master at Arms stood at her door, she was going to see Grif.

She pulled on clean BDUs, washed up with water from a bottle of drinking water, and broke out an MRE. She swallowed the ham and egg sandwich in three bites and washed it down with the rest of the water. She peered out through the slats and scanned the road in front of her CLU. No vehicles. No escort she could see. Just to be safe, she found a screwdriver and pried off the plywood square they’d nailed over a ventilation port to prevent light from escaping after dark, removed the screws holding the screen in place, and went out the back window.

No one paid any attention to her as she strode through the camp to the hospital. She stopped a hundred feet away and watched for a while. Just the usual stream of troops straggling in for morning sick call. At 0700 everyone in the place would be busy dealing with the walkins. At 0705 she skirted around the line, nodded briskly to the ensign handling sign-in, and slipped inside. Everyone knew her, and after the usual quick greeting from harried personnel, no one spared her a second glance. She bet Grif was in the step-down unit—semi critical care—and tried there first.

“Griffin?” she said to the corpsman at the desk.

“Third bay on the right,” she said without looking up from the morning report.

“Thanks.” Max checked the hall. No one on guard outside Grif’s cubicle. She hustled inside. Grif was propped up in bed with a steaming Styrofoam cup in the hand that that wasn’t attached to an IV.

He paused, the cup an inch from his mouth. His eyes glinted. “You look like shit, Deuce.”

“Then I’m looking twice as good as you.” She couldn’t stop a grin. “How’s the leg?”

“Hurts like a mother.”

She reached for the sheet across his lap.

“Hey—commando here,” he said quickly, covering his groin.

“Seen it before. Still reeling from amazement.”

He laughed and she pushed the sheet aside, keeping his most important parts covered with one corner. The dressings had been removed and the incision was covered with a clear plastic adhesive barrier. Looked nice and clean. No signs of infection. She checked the skin temp of his lower thigh. Color and circulation fine. The pulses in his foot were bounding. “How’s the sensation?”

“There’s a little numbness just above my knee. The foot’s good.”

“Cutaneous nerves.” She replaced the sheet. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I owe you,” he said softly. “The surgeon told me he found a major bleeder tied off in the hole in my leg. If you hadn’t gotten it I’d be dead.”

Max shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, you don’t owe me.” She met his gaze. “You probably saved Rachel Winslow. I owe you for that.”

His eyebrow twitched. “She’s…interesting.”

“Yeah.”

“And hot.”

Max narrowed her eyes. “Careful.”

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “Like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” He handed her the coffee cup and pushed himself up higher. “What the fuck is going on, then?”

Max set the cup on the table. “No fucking idea. Well, I have some idea, but no facts. Has a guy named Carmody been here?”

“Midday yesterday. I was still pretty groggy.”

Carmody must have come over here during one of the times he’d left her alone. Maybe hoping to get some information from Grif to contradict what she had to say. “Then you probably know as much as me.”

“Why do they think the mission was sabotaged?” Grif asked.

Max pulled over a chair and sat. “Nobody likes it when a mission objective fails and casualties are involved. You and I had front-row seats to what went on out there—or at least Rachel, Amina, and I did, so they’re focusing on us.”

“Seems like overkill,” Grif muttered.

“I think this is more than the usual assigning of blame—but I can’t quite figure out what.”

Grif gave her a look. “What about Rachel?”

Max’s jaw tightened. “What about her?”

“Down, boy—jeez.” Grif grinned. “Maybe she’s the unknown factor. What do you know about her?”

Max considered. If she said she knew everything she needed to know that mattered, would he understand? She thought of the photo he carried in his pocket of Laurie and his kids. Yeah, he’d understand.

“Enough to know she’s not to blame.”

“Don’t doubt it,” he said instantly. “But she’s in it.”

“Maybe not. She’s gone.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s out.”

*

Rachel stared into the mirror as she put the finishing touches to her makeup. Her face was a blur and she blinked to clear her vision. How fitting that her own face seemed that of a stranger. The Sheraton was a block from the embassy in Djibouti and a universe away from where she’d been just days before. Last night, she’d slept on clean, crisp, cool white sheets. She’d had clothes and shoes delivered by the hotel concierge from an order she’d phoned down. She’d had dinner and breakfast brought to her on a rolling cart with real dishes and silverware, served by deferential hotel staff. All the comforts of home and she’d never felt so displaced in her life. She felt like an imposter. This was not where she belonged. She should be back in the jungle camp or with Max.

She was very good at playing a part—she’d been doing it all her life. Dutiful daughter. Willing bed partner. Even selfless activist. She’d gone along with her father’s demands more often than not rather than propagate family unrest. She’d dated women she didn’t love because she knew she never would. And even her aid work was as much about her need for validation as it was to help others. She’d been pretty much a fraud until she’d come face-to-face with death and learned from Max what really mattered. Loyalty, honor, love.

Now here she was, playing a role again. But she didn’t have a choice, and she’d use whatever resources she had. The clock on her bedside table read a little after seven. She was supposed to meet Kennedy and Smith in the lobby in half an hour. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d slept on and off during the endless night out of sheer exhaustion, and awakened not feeling rested. Her dreams, what she could recall of them, had been fragmented and filled with clatter and the sour taste of danger. She’d kept the light on in the adjoining bathroom and the door partly ajar. She hadn’t wanted to go to sleep in the dark and couldn’t help but think if Max had been with her, she wouldn’t have cared what nightmares crept into her dreams.

Her hand trembled and she put down the sponge covered in pale pink powder. Max. More than twenty-four hours since she’d seen her. What had they done to her in the last twenty-four hours? Rachel wasn’t so innocent as to disbelieve the stories she’d heard of interrogation techniques, but surely not with a United States naval officer?

She couldn’t think about it. If she did, panic swelled and her head grew light. She’d felt safer in the jungle, trapped in an empty, decimated camp surrounded by the dead and faceless enemies than she did here in this supposedly civilized world. She’d felt safer because she’d been with Max and they’d stood together, waiting to face whatever was out there. And she’d known with absolute certainty that Max would be beside her, no matter what.

“I’m coming,” she said as she turned from the face in the mirror. “I hope you know that. I’m coming.”

The phone rang on the small table by the bed and she jumped, the sound so alien she almost couldn’t recognize it. She picked it up on the third ring. “Yes?”

“Rachel, it’s Amina.”

“Amina!” Rachel sank onto the side of the bed. The sound of a friendly voice made her eyes fill. “How are you? Where are you?”

“I am home, with my family. They drove me from the camp yesterday. You got the message I had left, yes?”

“Yes.” Kennedy had informed her that Amina was gone as they’d driven Rachel to the embassy. She’d been glad that Amina was safe, even though the loneliness was choking.

“Good. I did not want you to think I had left you.”

“I knew you wouldn’t.”

Amina said. “I also got yours—the one you left at aid headquarters. I called there this morning and they gave me this number.”

“I couldn’t think how else to reach you,” Rachel said. “I knew you’d call there sooner or later.”

“How are you?”

Rachel considered the security on her phone line. Anything was possible, but she rather doubted the hotel lines were being monitored. “I’ve been better. Something strange is happening.”

“Many questions,” Amina said tentatively.

“Someone talked to you, didn’t they?”

“Yes, after you left yesterday morning, Major Newton came back. I’m afraid I might have made a mistake.”

“No, whatever is going on, none of this is your fault.”

“She asked questions and I was very tired. And…remembering. I didn’t think what I was saying.”

Rachel’s breath grew cold in her chest. Making Amina relive the horror was torture by any name. Rachel wanted an enemy to face, not these nameless shadows. “I know. The remembering is hard.”

“I told them about the phone call. I didn’t realize it would matter.”

For a minute, Rachel couldn’t sort out what Amina was saying. Time had become so compressed at the camp—moments became hours and days felt like weeks. She felt as if she’d known Max all her life, maybe because during the time they’d been together her life had been distilled into a series of acute moments where every thought and action mattered. How could it be that a whole lifetime of moments could have less meaning than just those very few? She shuddered and closed her eyes. God, Max. Where are you?

“Rachel?”

Rachel opened he eyes. “Phone call? Oh, the night before—”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I thought I should tell you. I didn’t think then it mattered, but I’ve been remembering all those questions. Now that I am not so tired, I am worried I said too much.”

“It’s all right. Really.”

Amina’s sigh came through the line. “What about Max and Grif?”

“Grif is going to be all right.”

“I’m so glad. He was very brave.”