by Mandy Baggot
‘I’m… okay,’ he said. Forming the words took effort, but he continued on, dragging his aching body toward the wall.
‘You’ve been gone such a long time. I was worried. I thought they had… What did they do to you?’ she asked.
‘Just… give me a… minute,’ he croaked. He felt along the baseboard for the nail. Where the fuck was it? His finger found it at last, and he began furiously rubbing the rope against it.
‘Are you hurt? Nathan, where are you? Please come here.’
‘I’ll be there just… give me a second… to get this rope off.’
The anguish in her tone hurt him inside, and he moved the cord back and forth as fast as he could.
He was done with pretending now. He didn’t know what was going to happen. He had never felt so out of control before. He had made her promises, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep them. He knew the government didn’t care about his fate, but what about hers? Was she going to be collateral damage? Would her mother really let that happen?
His rope came loose, and he squeezed his hands out of the entrapment and threw the bindings to the floor. He tore the sack from his head, ran to her, and knelt by her side, then very gently began removing the hood from her head.
‘Close your eyes. I’m going to take this off,’ he told her.
She shivered as the sack inched away from her face. When the covering was finally off, he swallowed a ball of emotion as he saw the extent of her facial injury. Her cheek was red and swollen, and a large, dark bruise was already starting to form.
She blinked open her eyes and adjusted to the dim light.
*
She let out a gasp as Nathan untied her hands.
It wasn’t because he was hurting her. It was in response to how he looked. One of his eyes was bruised and almost swollen closed. He had abrasions all over his face, a cut to his head, and his shirt had been ripped open, revealing more wounds on his abdomen.
‘Nathan, they hurt you so badly,’ she whispered as he finally released her hands.
He moved his hands to examine her cheek. ‘Your face,’ he remarked.
‘It’s fine, a little sore, but… You need something on that eye,’ she told him, holding one wrist with her hand and smoothing over the skin.
He reached for the bottle behind him. ‘You need to drink some water. Here.’ He unscrewed the lid and held it out to her.
It was only then, on the very verge of being able to have fluids, that she realized how sore her lips were and how dry her throat had become. She took hold of the bottle and guzzled greedily.
‘Try to take slow sips. Not too much,’ he instructed.
She stopped drinking and held it out to him.
He shook his head and let out a sigh. ‘No, you save it.’
His grimace told her everything. He was hurting more than he was letting on. She picked up her hood and dampened it with some of the water.
She motioned to the spot next to her against the wall. ‘Sit here,’ she ordered.
‘I’m fine,’ he insisted.
She pulled his arm and he winced.
‘Take your shirt off and let me see what they did,’ she said, her voice cracking.
She could see that every movement he made was agony for him. His whole body was a mismatched mess of cuts and angry red bruises. He closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, and took a slow, steady breath inward.
She got close to him, lightly pressed the wet cloth to his swollen eye, and watched his reaction to the pain.
‘You need something more than this. We need antiseptic,’ she said. Tears welled in her eyes and sentiment coated her throat.
‘I’m fine, Autumn. It could be worse. They could have killed me.’
‘Look what they did to you.’
‘It isn’t as bad as it looks.’
She dabbed at his eye. ‘I don’t believe you.’
She didn’t know if she made it better or if touching it made it worse. It looked so puffy and enraged. She stopped dabbing and held the now lukewarm compress to the injury.
‘What did they say?’ she questioned. ‘Did they say anything? Have they heard anything?’
‘They asked me for information I didn’t have. I gave them what I did have. It’s old and out of date, they’ll find that out, but it bought us some time.’
‘How long? Just tonight? Tomorrow? Tomorrow until midnight? How long?’
She knew the tone of her voice had gone from controlled to desperate in a millisecond, but seeing firsthand what those men were capable of had brought it all home.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
She burst into tears, dropped the wet hood to the floor, and curled up into herself.
He lifted her chin with his finger. ‘Sshh, listen, don’t give up now. You’ve been so brave all this time. Don’t fall apart at the last moment.’
‘You just said it. You just said “the last moment”. Is this the last moment?’
‘No.’
‘But it could be, couldn’t it? These moments might be all we have.’
The silence that followed bit at her. Her whole body shook at the thought she might spend her last hours in a dark, damp, locked room. What had she done with her life? She’d written a few songs. So what? In a few months, after she had been forgotten, the songs would be history, gathering cyberdust on iTunes. She had done nothing in her life that counted. Nathan, he had saved lives, fought for what he believed in. She had moaned and whined, bought too many clothes, and ordered meals she never ate. She didn’t want that to be her legacy.
She wiped at her eyes then blurted, ‘I’ll never have children!’
*
He didn’t know how to console her. He couldn’t lie to her and promise everything would be all right. Their fate was in the hands of Rick O’Toole.
He took her hands in his and interlocked their fingers. He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.
‘Tell me about Marie. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’ she whispered.
He stilled and brought her hands down to his lap. He softly smoothed each finger in turn, concentrating on touching every millimeter of skin.
‘Yes… but… I can’t,’ he whispered.
‘Please, Nathan. I want to know. I want to know about you, about your life. Let me in.’
Just making his mind move back to that time made his chest swell with the loss. Time didn’t heal anything. The pain never disappeared. He had been left with a hole inside since that day, and there was nothing that would ever fill it.
‘I want to help you.’
‘You can’t. We’ve had this conversation before, Autumn. You can’t help me, and you shouldn’t want to. I’m no good for you.’ He raised his head to meet her eyes, watching her expression.
‘I’m capable of making my own mind up about things. I don’t have Stuttgart syndrome,’ she retorted.
‘Stockholm.’
‘What?’
‘It’s Stockholm syndrome, and that’s a captor/hostage thing, not a pop star/bodyguard thing.’
‘Is that really all I am to you? Still?’
He didn’t know what to say. What was the point of telling her how he felt now? When morning came, he didn’t know how long he would remain alive. What was better? To admit how he felt and worsen the loss for her? Or to play down his emotions and have her remember him as someone she simply slept with once?
‘I’m in love with you, Nathan. I love you.’
Thirty-Eight
The words came rushing out of her mouth because the feeling had built up inside her and she needed the release. The circumstances of their meeting, the position they were in right now, had nothing to do with the way she felt about him. It was more than a sexual attraction now. It was something else, something deeper, something almost indefinable.
She knew, whether they had a few hours left together or the rest of their lives, she wanted to spend that time with him. She had been too wrapped up in herself for t
oo long, in her fabricated career and all the back-patting and back-stabbing that went with it. She’d missed out on everything since her father had left because she’d locked herself away emotionally. She’d held onto the fake friends, and she’d done as she was told. She’d walked the walk, talked the talk, and done several guest spots on American Idol. She didn’t want to live that way anymore. She didn’t want to be that person. She wanted to be who she’d become with him. She ate more and counted less.
*
He held her hands in his, wanting to press their skin together, needing to feel that connection. She loved him. This beautiful, complicated, fragile yet strong woman loved him. Him. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet. There was an ache in his gut that wasn’t due to the injuries he’d received. It went further down than that, to the very essence of his being. Her words had touched his soul. The section of him he’d shut down, the piece he’d numbed and cauterized. The one part of him he thought he’d lost forever. He felt. He could feel again.
*
‘Listen,’ Autumn said, ‘I know this is the wrong time and place, but there will never be a right time, and there might not even be another place. I just want you to know how I feel. I mean, I know that you like me, a little, and I don’t expect you to… I just… I just wanted you to know.’
She felt stupid and awkward. He was a man, yet nothing like any previous boyfriend. He was older, and he’d lived life, seen things, done things. She was naive to everything he’d known. She didn’t expect him to respond to her. He didn’t show his emotions in the same way. He was guarded. He had to be for his job. She didn’t expect him to say anything, really. She just wanted him to know.
‘Nigel Farlow killed my wife and Marie, my daughter,’ Nathan started.
He took a breath, as if steeling himself for what was to come. He still held her hands, but his grip was tighter, like he needed reassurance.
‘He was a good soldier, a colleague… a friend. But he was turned. It happens,’ he continued.
‘What d’you mean?’ Autumn asked. She spoke quietly, not wanting to interrupt him.
‘In my line of work, you get offered all sorts of opportunities. Ways to boost your income, so to speak. Nigel took them. I found out he was passing intel to other sides, other countries, terrorist groups.’
‘What happened?’
‘I gave him a chance. At first, I didn’t believe it. He was a staunch member of the unit, dedicated, one of the best soldiers I knew. So, I tested him. I let him “find” something, information I’d made up, and he passed the intel on to a terrorist group. They had no reason not to believe him. They went looking for an operative on their wish list, and instead, they found a team from Section 7 ready to take them in.’
Autumn nodded, willing him to continue.
‘I confronted him, gave him a chance to explain. I wanted to hear that he was in some sort of trouble, financial, or maybe they were blackmailing him. I wanted to hear anything but what he told me.’
His hands shook in hers, and she held them, tried to stop the trembling.
‘He said I should try it. That he had made more money in a few months working for them than he had in his whole career in the army,’ Nathan said with a shake of his head.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I pretended I was interested, said I would think about it. Then I went straight to my senior officer and told him everything.’
Autumn brought his hand to her mouth and kissed the tips of his fingers.
Nathan sighed. ‘Once my claims were substantiated, he was court-martialed.’
‘So he should have been. He put peoples’ lives at risk, passed information to terrorists,’ Autumn stated.
‘Yeah, well, he was pissed. Not just from being kicked out of the army, but from losing his income from the terrorists he was in league with. He lost his connection to intel, so he had nothing to offer them.’
‘What happened?’ Autumn asked, sensing what was to come.
He shifted where he sat, trying to get comfortable, but also trying to prepare himself for what he was about to tell her. It was common knowledge what had happened, reported several times over. There had been documents written about it, but he had never spoken about it to anyone. Shrink after shrink had tried to get him to open up, tried to explain that letting go was moving on, but he couldn’t.
‘It was an ordinary morning, just an ordinary Tuesday morning. I was home. I’d been home for a week, and we were just getting back into the family routine. We’d had breakfast. I was going to put up a new swing we’d bought for Marie while Carolyn went to work. Carolyn was taking Marie to pre-school on the way. She kissed me goodbye, Marie put her arms around my leg and wouldn’t let go until I’d thrown her up in the air, and… then they left. I remember drinking a mouthful of coffee and picking up the paper, then…’
Tears spilled from his eyes and fell down his cheeks in torrents as he dragged his mind back there.
‘What happened?’ Autumn urged him on.
‘There was a huge explosion. The kitchen window blew in. I was knocked off the chair… but I got up and I ran outside. I ran to them, because I knew… I knew,’ he said, wiping his face with his forearm.
She tried to draw him into her arms, but he pulled back. He wasn’t ready. He had started this now, and he needed to finish it.
‘The car was on fire… what was left of it, and they were… gone, just… gone. There was nothing left. I opened the doors. I searched for them, but there was just… pieces, pieces of them… my wife, my daughter… my family,’ he wept.
‘Oh, Nathan,’ Autumn said, reaching up to stroke his hair.
‘I thought about throwing myself in there with them, because I knew. I knew this was because of me, because I’d done the right thing. This was Nigel’s revenge. And the worst thing about it all was, I couldn’t even say “it should have been me” because it wasn’t meant for me. It was always meant for them. He’d meant it for them because he knew that would kill me more.’
*
She watched him fall apart before her eyes, his guard down, his sorrow flooding out of him. His shoulders vibrated with the emotion, as all those years of hurt broke to the surface. He reached for her, took her hand and buried his head against her chest. She cradled his upper body, smoothed her hands over his hair, softly, letting him cry, and trying to hold her own tears back. She couldn’t imagine the pain, the loss, the memories he lived with.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, raising his head.
‘No, don’t be sorry. You’ve nothing to be sorry for. I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine…’ she started.
‘I think about it every day. I relive it every day, and I’ve closed myself off to everyone and everything since it happened. I take the jobs no one else wants. I do the stuff most people are too afraid to do, because I don’t care… I just don’t care.’
Autumn nodded.
‘Autumn, I don’t understand what’s happening here, with us. I really don’t,’ he said, shaking his head.
She met his eyes with hers.
‘All I know is that, you’ve changed something… You’ve changed me. I feel things when I’m with you that I haven’t felt since… I lost my family.’
‘You don’t have to say anything more,’ she told him.
‘Yeah, I do. I have to tell you that, whether or not we make it out of here, what I feel for you…’ he started then put his hand to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm, running his thumb over her lips. ‘I can’t describe it,’ he whispered.
She put her hands around his neck and clung to him, holding his body tight to hers. At that moment, she didn’t want to be anywhere else. Being with him, no matter where it was, had become paramount in her life. She needed him, his deep-rooted values, his strong heart and solid beliefs, not to mention his athletic body and slightly warped sense of humor. He was almost her opposite, but there was far more than just attraction.
‘I will do my best to get us out of this
,’ he said, close to her ear.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered, breathing in the scent of him.
He moved her away from his shoulder and looked at her. ‘It matters more than ever. I couldn’t save Carolyn or Marie. I had no chance. But we’ve still got a chance.’
She looked back at him, not seeing his injuries, but drinking in everything she could about him. His dark, choppy hair, the way his eyebrows arched above those gold-flecked eyes, his Roman nose, his full lips, the stubble on his cheeks and chin. She wanted to look at him forever, and if their forever wasn’t going to be so long, she wanted to remember every detail.
‘What’s your real name, Autumn?’ he asked, stroking a hand down her hair.
‘I thought you’d done your homework before this job and knew everything there was to know about me,’ she answered with a smile.
‘I might have skim-read the file.’
She smiled at him then straightened her expression. ‘It’s Claire, with an “i”,’ she informed him.
‘Claire,’ he said, running his hand along her arm and catching hold of her hand again.
‘Yes. Not really showbiz material, is it?’
‘I like it,’ he told her.
‘My dad chose it. It was his grandmother’s name.’
Her father. Was he going to come for her? Did he know she was here yet? It felt like they had been imprisoned for a week, but probably something less than twelve hours had gone by.
‘If he sees the plea, he’ll come,’ Nathan said, as if reading her mind.
‘But at what cost?’
‘He’s your father. You’re more important to him than anything.’
All at once, she felt so tired. A wave of exhaustion traveled up her body, and she clung to Nathan.
‘You should get some sleep,’ he told her.
‘I’m too scared to close my eyes,’ she admitted.
He stroked his hands down her hair. ‘I’ll be right here.’
Thirty-Nine
Despite her reservations that sleep wouldn’t come, Autumn fell asleep in his arms in minutes. He stroked her injured cheek and bit down on the inside of his mouth. Those bastards had hurt her. He was going to make them pay if it was the last thing he did.