Fighting For Valor

by Patricia D. Eddy

  I’m about as far from North Carolina as I can get without a legitimate passport, but that doesn’t mean someone from my former life won’t come to Seattle for a visit and recognize me. And if they do…and tell anyone from JSOC…I’m dead.

  “Need a Croque Madame and a Bacon Mac,” Joel says from the cashier’s window. “Last two orders of the night.”

  “Already?” Glancing up at the digital clock above the cook plates, I lose focus and tip the two slices of bacon off the spatula and onto the floor. “Dammit!”

  “You realize that’s coming out of your pay, right?” Joel scribbles on his little notepad as I retrieve two fresh slices from the fridge.

  “Bite me,” I mutter under my breath, but then turn to him and offer an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Joel. It’s been a long day. We were down a server at Hillside Diner for the second half of my shift.”

  He starts to close out the till and tally up the night’s receipts and tips, then crosses out the deduction for the bacon in his notebook. “Just don’t do it again.”

  Finally. Something going my way.

  It’s another hour before we finish wiping down the last surface, mopping the floor until it shines, and cleaning the vent hood. “You all right to get home, Cara?”

  “Yep. I’ll be fine. The bus stop’s just on the corner.” Seattle’s a safe city, overall, and tonight, we’re parked in the Ballard neighborhood—the safest of our ten regular haunts. “See you on Monday.”

  “Oh, hey. You want to pick up Nance’s shifts tomorrow and Saturday? She really wants two nights off to go see some concert down in San Francisco.”

  I try to contain my excitement as I sling my bag across my body. “That’d be great. Thanks. Five to nine again?”

  “Yep.” Joel climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the truck. “Menu’s already set though. Gazpacho and enchiladas tomorrow, lasagna on Saturday. I’ll email you the recipes when I get home tonight.”

  Lovely. The day everything in my life imploded, I made enchiladas. And now…the smell turns my stomach. But I force a smile. “You got it.”

  The bus ride back to the University District takes over an hour, and by then, my anxiety’s off the charts. “Twenty minutes,” I whisper as I adjust my bag and start walking. Twenty minutes and I can draw myself a hot bath, pour a glass of cheap wine, and let this day fade into the constant background noise in my head.

  This late, my thoughts ping a hundred miles an hour. A bird flies overhead, and I track it with my gaze until it lands in a tree on the University of Washington campus across the street. The cyclist speeding past me yells, “On your left,” and I jump.

  “Shit.” Now my heart rate won’t slow down, and I press my hand to my chest as I pass the Presbyterian Church. A man sleeps in the doorway, his arm flung over his face.

  He cries out, his entire body jerking inside his sleeping bag. “Don’t,” he slurs. “Not again… Stop!” Sitting bolt upright, he pushes the hood of his sweatshirt off his head and looks right at me.

  The intensity of those deep blue eyes boring into me combined with the anguish I heard in his voice make me take a step back. But my foot lands on an uneven seam in the sidewalk, and I go down, hard, right on my tailbone.

  I try to draw air into my lungs, but I can’t, the shock of the fall knocking the wind right out of me. Sitting there, clutching my chest, making hoarse choking sounds, I don’t even notice the guy moving until he’s right in front of me.

  “Give it a couple of seconds,” he says as he holds my gaze. “Focus on my voice. You’ll be fine. But maybe next time, watch where you put your foot.”

  Indignant now, I suck in a wheezing breath. “Maybe next time, you don’t stare down a woman in the dark late at night. Stalker.”

  He flinches, and his shoulders hunch as his voice drops, a little more with each word until it’s only a whisper. “It wasn’t…intentional. Needed to lock on to something…real. You were…real.”

  “Hey.” I reach out to touch his arm, but he jerks away. “I’m sorry. This late at night, my brain and my mouth don’t always operate on the same wavelength.”

  Rising, he offers me his hand to help me up, and even though I don’t know the guy and he’s quite obviously homeless, he did a damn good job keeping me calm, so I place my palm in his.

  Warm fingers with a firm grip pull me up, and I test out my ankle. Stalker Man watches me intently, focusing on my lower leg as I roll my foot around.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah. A little sore, but nothing serious.” Why am I still talking to him?

  Because you don’t talk to anyone but Lindsey, and he’s…safe. Who’s he going to tell about you? The homeless guy two doors down?

  “This isn’t the best street late at night,” he says as he heads back up the three stairs to his sleeping bag.

  “Which is totally why you sleep here? I’ve seen you before. A lot, I think, in the past month or so.” He’s full of contradictions. Gruff and sweet. Homeless, but with a clean, alluring scent. Like bergamot and sandalwood and soap.

  “No one bothers me here.” Pulling the sleeping bag around his body, he shoves his backpack under his head. “You should be carrying pepper spray or something.”

  I pull out my little kitty cat self-defense tool. With sharp, pointy ears, the metal tool looks like a cute—if not a bit large—keychain charm. But really, it’s a set of brass knuckles, with holes for my fingers where the cat’s eyes are, and ears that’ll cut, slice, or puncture skin. Totally illegal in this state—and a lot of others—but very effective.

  “Shit. Okay. You can take care of yourself. Ignore me, then.” He closes his eyes, a clear dismissal, and I huff out a breath.

  “Thank you,” I say, and he props his head up on his hand as he meets my gaze once more. “I would have panicked…and probably ended up wrecked for the whole night if you hadn’t helped me…?”

  “Ric—” He shakes his head, conflict furrowing his brow. Sitting up again, he scrubs his hands over his face. “Ripper. My name’s Ripper.”

  My laugh escapes before I can stop it, and I slap my hand over my mouth for a second. “You might want to pick another fake name to give the ladies, Ripper. Because that makes you sound like you’re an axe murderer.”

  Ripper’s strangled sound of frustration holds more of the anguish I heard when I first walked by, and he turns over, his back to me, and pulls his hood over his black hair.

  As I stare, mortified that I insulted him like that when I don’t even know him, his shoulders shake, and as a single sob escapes, muffled by the sleeping bag, I turn and rush for home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cara

  As the citrusy scent of my bubble bath washes away the cloying bacon grease and heavy cheese odors from the food truck’s tiny kitchen, I take a healthy sip of wine and sink lower into the steaming water.

  The apartment complex might be a dump—and the landlord an asshole—but there’s one redeeming quality about the place. A tub deep enough for me to relax in.

  My ass hurts, and my ankle’s a little sore, but the only other lingering effect from my fall is Ripper’s face etched on the inside of my eyelids.

  I can’t remember when I first saw him. A little over a month ago? But he sleeps in that church doorway every night. Seattle has a fair number of homeless. The nighttime temperatures are mild for a good part of the year. My walk to and from the bus takes me by a handful every day, but none of them have ever acted, looked, or smelled like Ripper.

  He’s well spoken, sober, and polite. So why is he sleeping on the streets? Another sip of wine, and I lean back and close my eyes. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll pack up an order of enchiladas after my shift and drop them off to him. I feel like I should do something to thank him for helping me, even if he did get all snippy at the end. Before he broke down completely.

  There’s something about him that calls to me. The sadness in his voice, the haunted look on his face…he knows loss, and wh
ile I can’t fill the hole in my own life from giving up the person I used to be, maybe a little kindness can help ease his pain.

  Before I crawl into bed, I grab the little notebook with all my secrets and the cheap tablet I got off of eBay. Searching for Cara Phillips seems ridiculous at this point. I’ve been safe for eighteen months in Seattle, but I still can’t relax. Not after how close I came to losing it all back in Tulsa.

  No current results, so I move on to the other names on my list. Francis Jessup, Bill Parr, and J.T. Richards. Still nothing. Just like every other time I’ve looked.

  My stomach won’t settle, my anxiety a vibrating knot deep inside, so I log in to the anonymous email account I created when I left Fort Bragg. Leland Parker—the only man in the world I trust with my life and my secrets—sends me an email message once a month, and he’s overdue by a week now.

  Nothing.

  Opening the notebook, I find the words I copied from his last message and read them again, hoping this time, I’ll find something in them to give me hope. I should know better.

  Our mutual friends came by again last week for a visit. They lost track of the international package they were looking for, and hoped I’d seen it. The weather’s turning unbearable here, and I’m going to escape the heat for a while. Stay safe.

  It’s a terrible code. But at least this time of year, the weather in North Carolina can melt asphalt, so if anyone did get a hold of the message, they wouldn’t know with any certainty he was talking about anything other than the ambient temperature.

  The international package has to be J.T. Richards. So, apparently he’s no longer in Afghanistan working for the guy Jessup and Parr knew. If the two JSOC operatives are looking for Richards, maybe they’ve decided to leave me alone for a while. Or…maybe I’m fooling myself.

  I look at the clock and groan. Tomorrow’s going to be just as long of a day as today, and it’s almost midnight.

  With a final check of the locks, I turn out the lights and burrow under the covers and my weighted blanket. It helps keep the anxiety at bay while I sleep, and makes me feel…almost like someone’s holding me. Yeah, right. Like that’ll ever happen again.

  Between my broken brain and the two men who want me dead…I’m bad relationship material. I can’t get comfortable, and an hour later, I’m still tossing and turning. Every time I close my eyes, I go back to the day everything changed and hear Jessup’s voice, the rage in his tone terrifying me.

  “It’s time to put the pressure on our foreign friend,” a man says as he jingles his keys in his pocket. The sound echoes off the walls of the parking garage, and I freeze, pressing myself to the back of a cement pillar. I know this guy. Jessup. Every time he comes into the JSOC cafeteria, he stares at me like he’s imagining me naked, and I hate it. But my chef’s whites hide most of my figure, and he’s only one man. Everyone else here, despite being secretive and scarily lethal, is great, so I try my best to ignore him.

  Another voice replies, “He hasn’t responded to us in three months. What makes you think he’ll start up again now?”

  “Because we won’t give him a choice. I’m tired of waiting for Richards to slip up again. That traitor does everything he’s ordered to, and his work is practically untraceable. All we have to do is threaten to leak the news that J.T. Richards is alive and well and working for the enemy. We do that, and our friend will move as many crates of weapons and opium as we want. And give us a bigger cut of the profits.”

  This conversation is getting way too serious and scary for me, and I clutch my purse tightly as I try to creep away in the opposite direction. But before I make it more than ten steps, my phone rings, the We Will Rock You tones deafening in the silence of the garage.

  “Fuck. Who’s there? Show your face right fucking now!” Jessup shouts.

  I don’t. Instead, I run.

  With a whimper, I roll over and pull the blanket tighter around me. “Breathe, Cara,” I say over and over again, and eventually, it’s not Jessup’s voice I hear, but Ripper’s. Not Parr’s face I see as he grabs my arm and drags me towards the balcony of the apartment in Tulsa, but Ripper’s kind eyes as he helps me calm down after I fell.

  It might not be the most normal fantasy in the world—being kissed by a homeless man—but it’s a hell of a lot better than the memories of screaming as I clutch the metal railing with both hands, staring down at the street fifty feet below, knowing I’m going to die. Of Jessup’s face as he pries one finger after another off the rail. Or of falling, almost in slow motion, trying desperately to contort my body, and landing on another balcony two floors below, breaking my right arm, but saving my life by inches.

  Ripper. Back to Ripper. Yes. Tomorrow, I’ll bring him dinner after my shift at the food truck. That’s a plan. And maybe…it’ll make those damn enchiladas palatable again.

  With my mind still racing, I punch the pillow and start to count backwards from a thousand. I hope I fall asleep before I reach one.

  Ripper

  Letting myself into my studio, I jab the button to open the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling windows. If I’m going to stay here for more than a few minutes, I need light. Lots of it. Bypassing the brand new, still-in-the-box laptop on the desk—courtesy of Ryker and Wren—I head for the bathroom.

  The new tattoo stings as the hot water pelts my forearm, and I relish the pain. The sensation reminds me I’m alive. Dax and Ry want to talk this morning. Breakfast at some joint in Greenwood. I’m not good in public. Fuck, I’m not good anywhere.

  Every day, I have to re-learn something new. Find a piece of myself I lost. It’s exhausting. The soap in my hands smells both right and wrong at the same time. The entire time we were in Hell, we were surrounded by dirt, shit, blood, sweat, and fear. Once Faruk had me, it was all incense and spices. Scents I can’t stand now.

  I wash off the grime from my night on the street, wrap a towel around my waist, and grab my razor. Standing at the sink, I stare at the stranger in the mirror. His hair looks like mine. So does his nose. His chin. His eyes don’t.

  Staring down at the shiny blade in my hand, I wonder, again, why I haven’t just ended it all. And then I see the tattoo, and I understand. I’m alive because Ry checks on me. Every fucking day since we got to Seattle. I can’t let him down. Not again. Not ever.

  My phone, charging next to the laptop, rings on the table, and the sudden noise makes me jump. The razor skids across my chin. Blood drips into the sink, bright red, and my vision tunnels.

  A woman screams, and I stop pacing my small room.

  “Please, stop!”

  I know it’s a mistake. I’ll be punished for interfering. But she sounds so young. So afraid. I pad down the hall, barefoot, until I reach the foyer. Fuck. She can’t be more than eighteen, and blood streams from a cut on her forehead. Zaman’s stripping off her abaya as she shakes in front of Amir Faruk.

  “Isaad! Leave us,” Faruk orders, and I pause for a moment too long. “Now.” He crosses the room, his hands clasped behind his back. He hates getting them dirty. “You dare disobey me? Perhaps a few days in the well—”

  “I am sorry, Amir Faruk,” I say as I bow my head and back away. “I will leave. I should not have disturbed you.”

  The phone rings again, and I’m back in my bathroom, shaking. Pressing a black towel to the cut, I stumble for the table. “What? I said I’d be there.”

  “Need a ride?” Ry asks.

  My refusal dies on my tongue as the room pitches. Dammit. Not today. I take a quick step to the side and bang into the table. “Fuck.” The pain helps me focus, as does Ryker yelling into the phone.

  “Answer me, Sergeant. Are. You. Okay?”

  Shit. Most times, the dizzy spells pass quickly. Too many traumatic brain injuries over the years. Not to mention a scorpion bite behind my left ear that left me with lingering equilibrium issues. This time…I must have been out of it for more than a few seconds. “Sorry. I’m fine. Wet floor. Skidded and hit the sink.” How I come up with tha
t lame ass excuse so fast, I have no idea, and I hold my breath.

  Leave it alone, Ry.

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour.” He doesn’t give me time to protest before he ends the call, and I slam the phone down on the table.

  Thirty minutes to pull myself together so I can convince Ry and Dax that I’m okay. If only I could convince myself.

  By the time Ryker knocks, I’ve managed to calm down. My hands are steady, and I’m dressed in a pair of new jeans, a black Henley, and a pair of boots. The clothes feel like they’re strangling me. My entire wardrobe as Faruk’s prisoner consisted of loose tunics, flowing pants, and light shoes that were barely more than slippers. Back before we were captured, we used to call those outfits “desert pajamas.” But once Faruk got a hold of me, they were all I was allowed. Even after two months back in the States, I still haven’t gotten used to “normal” clothing again.

  Tugging at the denim, I adjust myself, then enter the fourteen-digit code to unlock the door.

  Ryker’s multi-hued eyes narrow, scanning me from head to toe before he nods. “About damn time.”

  “Want to tell me what the hell you’re talking about?” I fidget with the shirt sleeve. The material’s soft—probably expensive—but it still feels rough on my skin.

  “Boots.”

  My eye roll triggers a sharp stab of pain at my temple, but I hide my wince. “And how long did it take you, asshole?”

  “Ten days.” He scrubs a hand over his bald head, the scars, jagged and deep, covering half his scalp. “Couldn’t go back for Dax without ‘em. I tried. Showed up with my ruck and weapons, wearing scrubs and hospital slippers.”

  The visual makes my lips twitch, almost like I want to smile, but I can’t.

  “With Sampson?”

  “Yeah.”