“Wow.” Marina chuffed out a sigh. “It’s pretty amazing to think that just by talking about my family I can summon their interest.”
“I don’t think it works quite like that.” Bones reached over and swiped the phone off the nightstand. He deposited it on the covers between them. “Will you answer?”
“I have to, or she’ll just keep trying.” Marina pursed her lips. “I’m sorry. I know I’m holding up your investigation. That was never my intention.”
“It’s all right,” he assured her. “I can’t pursue that lead until it’s dark again anyway.”
“Right.” She didn’t really sound mollified at all, although it could have been anxiety. He watched the pulse point in her neck flutter erratically as she picked up the phone and touched the screen to answer.
MARINA’S STOMACH WAS in knots. It was no secret as to her why her mother was calling. Her sister’s birthday was this weekend. Marina had been given the task of decorating the lodge hall for the big party. As her mother had said, if the decorations were purchased and Marina was given a list of directions, not even she could screw this up.
“Hello, Mama,” Marina said into the phone. She struggled to keep her voice modulated. She didn’t want to give her mother a reason to be suspicious.
“Did you know you were supposed to be here thirty minutes ago to pick up the decorations?” Mama asked, her voice frantic. “Do you know how worried I was when you never showed up? Don’t you scare your mama like that! After everything that has happened? Dios mio! I thought… Well, I don’t know what I thought, but it wasn’t good!”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to worry you,” Marina said quickly. “I slept in, that’s all.”
“Miha, you cannot spend your whole day in bed!” For Mama there was nothing worse than laziness. Spending the day in bed was the equivalent of dancing with the devil and sleeping with his minions. “Get up and do something useful! Have lunch with Annette, or with Laura. You have turned your back on your friends, but they have not forgotten you!”
That was true enough. Marina tried not to think such dark thoughts about her former best friends, but ever since the kidnapping the two young women had only been interested in rehashing the sordid details of what might have really happened to Tyra and Chessy. Marina didn’t want to think about it. She was afraid that she already knew, but she couldn’t make her friends understand any of it. They were too naive and too hungry for gossip.
“Mama, you know that Annette, Laura, and I have sort of grown apart.”
Mama made a noise on the other end of the line that could had meant anything as long as it was negative. “Miha, you have turned away from everyone! Even your family. I’m worried about my baby girl.”
“I know that, Mama.” Marina sighed, wishing this conversation could be over. “Listen. I was just a little overtired yesterday. That’s all. I’m up, and I’ll be there soon. All right?”
“You’d better be,” her mother admonished. “When I get done with it, your sister’s party is going to be the event of the year!”
“I’m sure it will be.”
Marina hung up the phone and sighed. Funny, but the conversation with her mother had left her feeling disheartened. Normally she would have been over the top with anxiety about the weight of her mother’s disappointment. Somehow being curled up next to Bones took the sting out of her mother’s well-meaning words.
BONES FELT HER relax against him. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Everything okay?”
“Are we pretending you didn’t hear the entire conversation?”
He laughed. Damn, but he loved her sassiness! “No. We’re not pretending, but I was trying to be polite.”
“I’d rather you just acknowledge what you heard so I’m saved the inconvenience of reliving it when I tell you,” Marina said with a moan. “I know she means well. I know she loves me. But sometimes I want to scream!”
“Families are tough,” he agreed, trying to keep his tone neutral.
Her expression turned curious. “What about yours? We’ve sat around and analyzed me. What about you?”
“I didn’t necessarily have a family.” He cleared his throat, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t like to talk about his early years. “You could say that I grew up in the system.”
“You were in foster care?”
“Actually, I never made it to a foster home. I was in a group home most of my life,” he told her. Why was he telling her any of this? He never told people this stuff. Most of his team had never been privy to what he was telling Marina.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “That must have been rough.”
He shrugged it off. “I never knew any different.”
“That’s not how that works,” she argued. “You may have never had a different situation, but you can’t tell me that a little boy couldn’t recognize that his life was not the same as his friends’. You knew. I bet you even wanted more. What kid wouldn’t?”
She was blunt and to the point. He would give her that. Struggling to stand up, he disentangled himself from her embrace and got to his feet. “Look. You’re right. But that doesn’t mean I spent my childhood pining away in some orphanage from a Dickens novel.”
“Dickens?” She actually laughed. “You’re hiding a real intellectual and sensitive guy under all those muscles, you know that?”
Bones grunted. Unfortunately, yes. He was perfectly aware that people thought of him as nothing more than a muscle-bound moron with the IQ of a traffic cone. He had worked like hell to get out of the system. He’d gotten scholarships, joined the Navy, and eventually he’d been allowed into the SEAL program. That didn’t mean his road had been easy. Too many times to count, he’d been knocked on his ass.
“I learned early never to take the word NO for a final answer when it came down to things that were really important to me and my future,” he told Marina. “That doesn’t mean I’m some tame beast from a Disney film. Got it?”
“Oh yeah.” She nodded her head up and down and got out of bed. “I’ve absolutely got your number.”
The worst part of what she said was that Bones was afraid she was right.
Chapter Eight
This had to be the worst idea that Marina had ever come up with. In fact there was no doubt in her mind that she was about to make some major waves in her family. She just couldn’t resist the opportunity to show her family that not everyone thought Marina Reyes had lost her way.
“Are you sure?” Bones stared out the window at the narrow old house.
Marina’s parents and grandparents had all lived in this place for years. The place had originally belonged to her paternal great-grandparents. It wasn’t unusual at all for multiple generations of Hispanic families to live together. Growing up, Marina had loved having her grandparents around. Along with her brother and sister, Marina had grown up in a house where there was an endless supply of love and concern to go around.
She took a deep breath and answered Bones with complete honesty. “I’m sure.”
“What are you hoping to accomplish here?”
She could tell from his tone that he wasn’t angry. It was more as if he were truly trying to establish what his purpose was in this scenario. His response made her feel strangely confident. This incredibly intelligent and capable man was following her lead. He wasn’t second guessing or trying to undermine her. He was letting her call the shots. Obviously the man was confident in his own abilities. Only cowards felt intimidated by a woman who liked to call the shots.
“I’m not sure what I’m hoping to accomplish,” she told him with total honesty. “They’re always nagging at me about this investigation. I just want them to see that I’m not the only one who thinks there’s actually something to investigate.”
He did not bat an eyelash. “Makes sense.”
“It does?”
Ugh! She sounded so shocked that he actually respected her answer. It was sort of pathetic. Marina
hated feeling so insecure all of the time. She hadn’t been that way before all of this. In fact, she had been the textbook popular girl in high school. She’d been a cheerleader, a straight A student, and a class favorite with both her peers and her teachers. Now she felt as though she couldn’t make a decision without someone giving her the thumbs up that she was choosing the right thing.
“Let’s go.” Bones opened the passenger door of her little sports car and unfolded himself from the tiny seat. “I’ll follow your lead.”
Marina saw the kitchen curtains flick and knew that her mother or her grandmother had just seen the giant-sized man get out of her vehicle. Marina didn’t know if she should be excited or scared out of her wits. She settled for anxious and left it at that. She had asked Bones to come along. It was time to trust her gut that bringing him had been the right choice to make.
Marina marched right up the steep front steps to the door. There was a ramp around the side of the house that led directly into the kitchen. Her grandparents often used that entrance, since they didn’t get around quite as well as they once had. The ramp was a reminder that this was Marina’s longtime family home. She should have felt at ease here, but that security had faded ever since her abduction.
Behind her she sensed Bones’s immovable presence. It was going to be okay. Everything would be all right.
BONES COULD PRACTICALLY smell the tension rolling off of Marina in waves. It triggered his own PTSD symptoms. It was centered on the fear, the worry, and the sheer terror that had dogged him ever since his return from the Middle East. But now he could recognize the sensation of the cortisol flooding his system. He knew what to do. He knew to slow his breathing and look around to ground himself in the here and now. This was not a war zone. It was suburban America, and he was going to be all right.
The door whipped open before Bones and Marina even made it to the top step. A woman in her early sixties stood there with an apron on. Her smooth brown skin and dark hair resembled Marina’s, but that was where the similarities ended. This woman was short and round. She resembled every stereotype of a mother that Bones had ever thought of. The woman wrapped Marina in a bear hug and practically dragged her into the house.
“Miha! Don’t you ever worry me like that again!” The woman continued in rapid Spanish, and Bones had little hope of following along. He knew a bit of conversational Spanish, just like he could get along in broken Arabic and Croatian. Beyond that he wasn’t at all fluent.
“Mama, don’t be rude to our guest.” Marina tossed a glance over her shoulder. “It’s not polite to speak in Spanish before those who don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Oh.” The woman took a step back and put both hands on her ample hips. She stared up at Bones as though she were challenging him somehow. “With that coloring, I thought he was Latino.”
“No, ma’am,” Bones said, keeping it simple.
“Black then?” Her lips flattened into a line.
Marina looked embarrassed. “Mama, that’s so rude!”
“Come in then, and bring your friend.” Her mother spoke in pretty heavily accented English.
“This is my mother,” Marina said in a voice laden with tension. “Maria Reyes. Mama, this is Bones.”
“Bones?” Maria Reyes gaped at him and began muttering in Spanish beneath her breath.
Bones couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s Marlon Jackson, ma’am. But my military nickname is Bones.”
“Oh.” Maria put her hand to her chest. “You are military?”
“Yes ma’am. Navy.”
Marina drew herself up as though this was a point of pride for her personally. “He’s a SEAL, Mama. He’s helping me with my investigation.”
Now Maria threw up her hand and went stalking back into the house. “Dios mio! The things my daughter does to me! How can she do this to her poor mama?”
Bones followed Marina into the house, watching Maria Reyes as though she were a live grenade and someone had pulled the pin. This was going to be an interesting morning. He was almost sure of it.
MARINA WANTED TO die of embarrassment. So much for her notion that Bones could lend credibility to her investigation. Her mother was acting as if Marina had made the entire thing up and then continued to worry about it with the express purpose of making her mother stressed out.
To make matters even worse, her brother Jose came walking out of the kitchen. Marina had not seen Jose since he had helped her move into her new place. They did not speak. He didn’t approve of how she was spending her time, and she didn’t intend to capitulate just because her big brother was a bossy jerk.
“Jose,” Maria squeaked, feeling as though her throat were closing up even as she tried to form words. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes.” He gave Bones a onceover and then looked dubiously back to Marina. “Care to introduce me to your friend?”
Bones held out his hand to the other man without hesitation. “Bones Jackson. Your sister and I are working different angles of the same case.”
“The abduction,” Jose said flatly. “We keep telling her to just let go and move on.”
Marina wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole. “Jose, please? Not now.”
“Why not?” Jose asked defiantly. “This man has a right to know how we feel.”
“That’s true.” Bones’s words were cool and precise. “Just as you have a right to know that my commanding officer’s sister was abducted from a club in Richmond, Virginia less than two weeks ago, and Marina has been gracious enough to help my team with our investigation. We’re hoping to find Rachel alive.” Bones’s gaze drifted toward Marina. “Your sister was incredibly brave. Some of our investigative team has had run-ins with these people, and they cannot imagine how Marina survived for as long as she did under those conditions.”
“Conditions which this ridiculous investigation just continues to prolong,” Jose retorted. “If Marina would leave the investigation to the professionals, she could move on with her life.”
Marina watched wide-eyed as Bones faced down her bossy, opinionated older brother. “Closure happens in different ways for different people. But if I had a sister that refused to let other women be taken and treated the way she had been, I would be proud of her.”
“Like I said,” Jose insisted. “There are authorities for that.”
“That’s the thing, Mr. Reyes.” Bones’s tone conveyed nothing but respect, though he was also firm. “There are things about the man that heads up this human trafficking ring that make it impossible for the authorities to get him.”
Marina cringed as she saw her father, her grandfather, and her grandmother enter the room. Her father pointed at Bones. “That makes no sense! That is what the government is for!”
“Not when the man at the top has diplomatic immunity,” Bones told them flatly. “My brothers and I have discovered a lot of things that are not known to everyone. Marina is now helping us pursue some of those leads, and we are grateful to have her help.”
Marina swallowed back her fear. Bones was paying her a lot of compliments, and it was time to take a stand for herself.
BONES WATCHED AS Marina tried to master her anxiety. She was struggling, but he willed her to be strong. She could do this. He knew that she could.
“I just came by to get the decorations for Annabella’s party,” Marina told her family. “I didn’t mean to start up this whole argument again.”
“We just want you to be safe and happy, miha,” her mother said tearfully. “This is not safe!”
“Maybe not, but it’s something I have to do,” Marina insisted. “Look. I want to be a part of this family. But you guys all keep trying to make me move on and pretend nothing happened. It happened. All right? I can’t just forget about it.” Her gaze drifted toward a photo of herself on the mantle. She gestured to the picture. “I will never be that girl again. I can’t be. And no matter how much insisting and arguing and whatever else you do, nothing will make me go ba
ck to that. It’s just not possible.”
“It’s this PTSD crap,” Jose said derisively.
Marina started to say something, but it was Bones who responded. “Crap? You think PTSD is crap, huh? So you’re saying that the trauma is just over and people move on. Right?”
Jose crossed his arms. He wasn’t a small man, but he looked tiny next to Bones’s bulk. Jose stood tall and managed to look down his nose at Bones. “Exactly. It’s a catch-all term for a bunch of generic symptoms that allows people to whine and moan about stuff that happened and wallow in their status as victims.”
Bones scoffed. He looked at Jose and shook his head. “You’re ignorant. And I’m willing to bet that you’ve never had anything truly bad happen to you.”
“What?” Jose sounded outraged, and Marina saw her parents and grandparents exchange looks of worry as her brother’s face grew stormy. “I have just as much stress and trauma as the next guy! I even got mugged once!”
“Mugged,” Bones said with a nod. “So you wake up sweating as you remember what it was like to have a gun shoved in your face as someone tells you that you’re going to die? Or maybe you have dreams about men being blown to bits after accidentally stepping on an IED. Or maybe you’ve seen things explode before your eyes, killing a dozen of your closest companions. Do you cringe every time you smell gunpowder, or shy away from loud noises?”
“No!” Jose snorted. “And I’m sorry you had to go to war. But you volunteered for that, and it’s your problem. My sister never went to war.”
“No. She was locked in a cage as she watched other women die around her. She listened to their cries and their screams as they were taken away and never seen again. She was starved and beaten and left in the dark without any knowledge of whether or not she would live to see the morning. And at the end of every day she thanked God that she was still alive, while simultaneously wishing that she could just die so that it would all end.”
Marina could not breathe. Her family was looking at her in horror. For a moment she felt so alone that she thought she might topple off the precipice of sanity and never come up for air again. Then Bones took her hand and anchored her in the real world.
SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series Page 36