“You’re letting out the heat.”
“Who knew the Senior Chief could cook?”
“That’s what happens when you’re a bachelor into your late thirties.” Ham untied the makeshift apron. “Aggie is in her room. I’ll get Signe.”
“Wait.” Jake closed the oven. “Actually, Orion and I were talking. Boss, we’re still trying to wrap our brains around Signe’s story. You have to admit, the entire thing sounds far-fetched. A senator selling state secrets to a Chechen warlord? Why?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not just Signe’s word anymore. York, Logan, and Ruby Jane corroborated it. That’s why Signe’s been working so hard—so she can prove it.”
Jake looked at the potatoes.
“What?”
“It’s just . . . she was in that camp for a very long time. Are you sure—”
“I’m sure.” Ham met Jake’s expression. “I know Signe. I know when she’s lying. She’s not.”
“Okay. I trust you, Ham. So I’ll trust her too. It’s just . . . isn’t it a little strange that you and she got invitations to the inaugural ball?”
“Why? White is a friend. Of course he’d invite me to the inauguration.”
“And an inaugural ball? Signe is supposed to be on a CIA burn list.”
“The invitation was written to me and my wife. Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Jones.”
“It just has the little hairs on my neck rising.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but he’d had the same reaction. Not because of Signe, but because for the first time, he’d realized . . .
He wasn’t in this alone.
He had a family at stake in this game.
And sure, Aggie had entered his life a few months before, but it hadn’t sunk into his bones that, just like that, he finally had the home he’d always longed for.
As if God knew the dreams unspoken in his heart.
The goodness of his sovereign God took his breath away.
“That’s what I have you guys for,” Ham said and clamped a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “I called the office of the president-elect and nabbed invites for you and Aria, Jenny and Orion, North and Selah, and even Scarlett and Ford. I was going to give them to you tonight, but, surprise.”
“Super. Now I suppose I need to rent a tux.”
“Buy, buddy. You never know when you’ll need one.”
Aggie came out of her room in a pair of leggings and an oversized shirt with a turkey decal. “Hey, Uncle Jake.”
“Wanna play some football with us?” Jake said and crouched to get a hug.
“Yeah!” She ran into his arms and let him lift her over his shoulder, fireman style. “What’s football?” she said, laughing as Jake slipped his shoes back on.
“I’ll get Signe,” Ham said.
He dropped the makeshift apron on his counter and headed across the great room to his office.
Signe sat with one leg up on his office chair, scrolling through what looked like bank records, the sweatshirt off, wearing a tank top.
“What’s this?”
His words startled her, and she turned, her eyes wide.
He froze at the fear in them. “Sig?”
She took a breath. Blew out. “Sorry. Reflex.”
He didn’t want to ask about what, because anytime she talked about her life with Tsarnaev, it turned him inside out, made him prowl the house at night, wanting to get his hands around the man’s dead neck.
Worse were the occasional nightmares she or Aggie had. When they woke from a sound sleep, screaming.
Yeah, he wanted to go back in time and follow Tsarnaev into that bunker. Even if the man had a sniper shot aimed at his head. He’d give his life if Signe didn’t have to suffer those ten years.
The coroner hadn’t been able to confirm DNA from Pavel, but reconstructed facial recognition had the man cold on a slab in the Catania morgue, and now in the ground, so . . . everyone could stand down to DEFCON 4. At least that’s what he told himself, standing on his cold hardwood floor, staring at the dark lake at 2:00 a.m.
No one was going to hurt her again if he could help it.
He leaned over her shoulder. “Whose records are these?”
“Pavel’s.”
He hated it when she called him by his first name, but bit that back. “How’d you get into his accounts? And . . . why?”
“I’m trying to find payments from Jackson. This is one of his Cayman accounts, but so far, nothing.” She scrubbed her hands down her face. “Although I’ve been looking at numbers for so long my brain is shutting down.”
“The guys want you to play football. Aggie is out there, and they need even teams.”
She looked up at him. She wore no makeup today—her blonde hair up. He leaned down and kissed her, and for a moment, he debated forgetting the game and taking advantage of the babysitting . . .
No. He and Signe hadn’t stepped into all the intimacies of marriage yet, although she’d moved right into his room when they returned from the cabin, and he didn’t want to rush it.
He wanted this restart to be perfect.
Still, he pressed a kiss to her neck, and because she’d taken off her sweatshirt, he kissed her shoulder too.
Only then did he notice the scar, right behind her shoulder, in the fleshy area, a bumpy, distorted patch of skin. He ran his thumb over it. “Where did you get this?”
She pressed her hand over it. “Oh. That was . . .” She made a face. “That was a tattoo.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was a symbol of Tsarnaev’s organization. Everyone had to get one.”
Ham froze. “What?”
She met his eyes, then grabbed her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head, hiding it. “It was a way to prove my loyalty. But after I left him, I had a friend burn it away with an iron.”
“Burn it.”
“I didn’t know how else to get rid of it.” She stood up. “Football?”
He had nothing as she walked away.
Tsarnaev had tattooed her. Ham pressed his hand to his gut, not sure if he was going to hurl, fighting the urge to put his fist into the wall.
She already had her Cons on—the ones Jenny had given her—and headed out the back door.
Breathe. Just . . . today was a new day.
Ham slipped on his tennis shoes and joined her. He still wore his cast, but maybe he could referee.
The sun hung halfway down the sky, the trees in his backyard a glorious bronze and burnt gold, autumn waxing into winter, the leaves a blanket beneath his feet. Jake and Jenny played Aria and Orion, who had nabbed Aggie for his side.
Signe joined Jake’s team.
Ham went over to the fire pit and grabbed an Adirondack chair, dragging it across the yard. “Goal line one.”
Jake was already dragging another the opposite direction. “Goal line two.”
“Toss me the ball,” Ham said to Orion. He caught it with one hand. “Okay, this is easy. Two-hand touch. I call it down. I’ll hike for each team. Don’t hit me.”
Orion rubbed his hands together. “We flipped. We get the ball first.” He called his team in, and they huddled up. He was explaining the rules to Aggie. “Just run out and I’ll throw one of you the football.” They clapped and headed up to the line.
Ham lined up at center. Looked over his shoulder at Orion.
“Ready? Hike!”
Ham handed him the ball, and Aria and Aggie ran out for passes.
Orion threw it over Aria’s head.
Jake ran to get it.
“Really?” Ham asked.
“I was a lineman,” Orion said.
“Ham was our starting quarterback for two years,” Signe said, a little twinkle in her eyes as she went into Jake’s huddle.
Sometimes, Ham could still hear her cheering for him. Still see her waiting for him outside the locker room after the game.
Still feel her arms around him as he drove them home on his bike.
Normal. He’d take it however
she wanted it.
Orion lined up again, and this time when Ham hiked it, he kept the ball and went through the center, just past Ham.
Jake met him and tackled him a few feet past the line.
“Hey, I thought this was two-hand touch.”
“I touched you all the way to the dirt,” Jake said, hopping up, grinning.
“I’m going to touch you a fat lip, buddy,” Orion said, but grinned as he tossed Ham the ball.
Apparently, his knee was back in working order. But Ham hadn’t missed the strange coldness between Jenny and Orion since he’d returned from the cabin.
Something still hadn’t shaken out between them. Jenny wouldn’t quite look at Orion, wasn’t her usual exuberant self.
Not like last time, when she’d tried to pretend all was well. She wasn’t selling any sort of hocus-pocus this time. The poor woman was nursing serious injury.
It was Orion who was dancing around the truth—he could see it in Orion’s driven mode, the way he drilled down to take on the world, avoiding hard whatever pain throbbed between them.
Which meant the man meant to win this innocent, friendly game of Thanksgiving football.
They went to the line again, and this time, Aria caught the hike. She dropped back as Jenny rushed her. Threw a lopsided pass to Orion. He caught the ball and stiff-armed Jake, who tried to tag him. Jake went sprawling and Orion shot across the yard, on his way to a touchdown.
Except for Signe. She came at Orion with a look on her face that made Ham chuckle.
Until it didn’t. Because as she headed for Orion, he stuck out his arm to block her.
She grabbed it, moved it away from her, turned behind him, and swept his leg so fast, Ham wished for an instant replay.
Orion sprawled into the grass, rolling, the ball bouncing away.
Signe snapped it up. “Fumble!”
Then she took off for the other goal line, unopposed.
She danced into the end zone.
No one moved, save for Orion, who rolled to his hands and knees, shaking the sense back into his head.
“Are you okay, Ry?” Jake said, running over.
He pushed Jake’s hand away. “This is supposed to be touch football! Sheesh—what is with your team? You’re a bunch of maniacs!”
He was muddy, his jeans stained, and he didn’t appear to be kidding.
In the end zone, Signe stopped jumping up and down.
“Okay, flag on the play,” Ham said, but he walked toward Signe.
She looked at him. “What?”
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Sig, did you train in Tsarnaev’s camp?”
Her eyes hardened. “No. I trained with the CIA. But yes, I sharpened a few skills in Chechnya. A person has to stay alive.” She shoved the ball at him. “Game time is over.”
She headed toward the house.
Jenny came up to him. “You okay?”
Ham stared after her. “I think so. I just . . .”
“What?”
He gave the ball to Jenny. “I need to check on the turkey.”
The smell of roasting bird could knock him over, but not as much as the sight of Signe, standing in front of the lit fire, just staring at the flames.
Her face was stoic, but tears glistened on her cheeks.
“Sig?”
She drew in a breath, as if coming back to herself. Wiped her cheeks and turned to him. “There’s a lot about me that you don’t know.”
He came over to her. “I know what I need to.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “I know that I love you. That we’re figuring this out. And that it’s time for joy, not mourning. What’s past is past.”
“It’s like I’m drowning, and every once in a while, I come up for air. And it’s sweet and fresh and then something drags me back under. And everything is hazy and dark and I haven’t a clue how I’m going to survive.”
He frowned. “I don’t—”
“Regret. It’s suffocating me.”
“You gotta forgive yourself, Sig.”
“How?”
“For one, you have to trust that God had a plan for all of it, so there can’t be any regrets with him.”
“Really, you don’t have regrets?”
“Of course I do. But the minute I start living in that regret is the moment I doubt God’s plan. God takes our twisted paths and makes something beautiful out of them, and no power of darkness or a terrorist’s evil agenda can stop that. God wins. In the end, God wins.”
She turned, stared up at him. “I want to believe that.”
“Believe it. Because when you do, everything changes. You’re no longer caught up in the pain of today or the fears about tomorrow. You just have to do what God asks of you today—and you can trust him for the rest.”
She touched his chest. “It’s always been so easy for you.”
“Easy? Hardly. I’d do everything—everything in my power—to be kind to my stepmother, and she would twist my words to my father, tell him I’d been disrespectful, or even violent to her. He was trapped between the two of us. He didn’t know what to do, so he’d let her lock me in the cellar. And I’d sit there and try to figure out what I did to get her to hate me. And for my own father to betray me.”
“I know, I remember.”
“Then you also remember me singing. Because that’s all I had—my mother’s hymns reminding me that everything would be okay. That I wasn’t alone. In fact, it was in those moments in that dark, smelly cellar that I knew God was with me. It gave me what I needed, later, when I went to war.” He cupped her face. “That’s what it means to say the joy of the Lord is my strength. Because when we have nothing, when we are nothing, then that’s when we see that God is already there, holding us up. Fighting the battle for us. He is enough, and more. He can heal our broken hearts, save us, give us peace. Eternity.”
She turned back to the fire. “I remember right after my grandfather died, I was devastated. He was the only one who . . .”
“Who loved you?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. I remember coming home after our volcano project—we won the blue ribbon—”
“Yeah we did.”
“I brought home that stupid volcano and he put it in his office, along with our silly blue ribbon.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “About a week after he died, my grandmother cleaned his office and threw out the volcano. I asked her why she threw it out, and she said it was garbage.”
Ham slid his hands over her shoulders again. “You aren’t garbage, Signe. Not to me. Not to Aggie. And not to God. You are his beautiful, perfect, amazing daughter and he loves you. Period. No qualifications necessary. Or even allowed.”
She said nothing, just stared at the fire.
For a moment, he had this terrible sense that no matter what he did, what he said, she couldn’t hear it. He would have turned her, met her eyes, put a little more oomph into his words, but the sliding glass door opened.
“You can smell that turkey into North Dakota,” Orion said. “Please, sir, may we have some food?”
Signe glanced at him. “Sorry, Orion. That tackle was a little extreme.”
“I can handle a takedown, Signe. But I choose you for my team next time.”
“If you want to win, you will,” Signe said.
Ham laughed and headed into the kitchen. “Call the team, Ry. It’s time to feast.”
See, everything was normal. Perfect, in fact. Signe wasn’t a terrorist, Pavel Tsarnaev wasn’t alive, Vice President–elect Jackson wasn’t a traitor, and he hadn’t burned the turkey.
They were all going to live happily ever after.
Then why did he feel like he was in the cellar, in need of a good hymn?
He was still alive.
Signe knew it.
Pavel Tsarnaev was alive and coming for her.
Signe stared at the ceiling of the bedroom, Ham asleep beside her, and tried to tell herself it was just he
r stupid fears talking. Her worst nightmares rising to destroy her suddenly, surprisingly perfect life.
Or, nearly perfect, if Ham’s team would stop eyeing her with suspicion. She knew that Orion and Jake still weren’t convinced that she wasn’t lying about something. Sure, they said they believed her—after her story was corroborated. But she couldn’t dismiss a niggle of suspicion, by the way they sometimes looked at her, the quiet tones of corner conversations, that they thought she was still lying.
Probably, because she was.
She should tell Ham, but maybe she was overreacting. After all, perhaps one of his men had stolen Tsarnaev’s banking information and started draining his account. And that accounted for his massive withdrawals, his current activity.
Really.
Besides, if Ham thought Tsarnaev was alive, he’d be on a plane, hunting down the terrorist.
And die doing it.
Ham lay on his back, and she watched him, traced the curve of his face, his lashes closed on his cheeks. The five o’clock shadow thickening on his chin.
Oh, he was a handsome man. And his solid good looks only deepened with age.
She so didn’t want to leave him.
But if Pavel was alive, he’d hunt her down . . .
Ham stirred next to her, and she froze, not wanting to wake him. After all, last night he’d prowled the house for the better part of two hours, unable to sleep.
Maybe he’d been putting together the dollhouse he’d purchased for Aggie and set it up under the tree, as if Santa had arrived.
He rolled over to face her, his eyes open.
“Hi,” she said.
“Merry Christmas.” He put his hand to her cheek. Ran his thumb along her jaw. Tiny eddies of warmth spilled through her entire body. “I never thought I’d wake up with you on a Christmas morning,” he said quietly.
Oh Ham. He could make her weep.
Then he leaned in and kissed her. Sweetly, gently, but with a hint of heat under his touch. She surrendered to his kiss, her arms moving around his shoulders.
“Aggie is still sleeping,” he said, moving away, his eyes darkening.
Oh.
Oh.
She nodded, her chest tightening.
Silly. She didn’t have to be afraid. This was Ham. Her husband, Ham.
The Price of Valor Page 26