The Return Home: The Aegis Network (the SARICH BROTHERS series Book 4)

by Jen Talty

  And that thought scared the hell out of him.

  “I don’t know about that. My brothers and I have some pretty weird real stories.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you this if you tell me the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done.”

  “Deal.” What the fuck? Why did he just agree to that?

  “I sometimes dream I’m a guy and I’m having sex, with a woman,” she said so fast he had to stick his finger in his ear.

  “Say what?”

  “It’s not that uncommon of a dream.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone else having that dream,” he said, patting his chest in beat with his erratically pounding heart. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand.

  Just hold it.

  That was weird.

  He wasn’t a ladies’ man. He wasn’t a womanizer. He just didn’t have time for relationships, so, he had a few women he knew that were friends with benefits. Though, most of them had since moved on to relationships, turning him down when he called.

  He respected that.

  “What does it mean?” he asked, hoping it didn’t mean she was secretly a lesbian. Not that he wouldn’t respect that either, but he wanted… nope, not going there.

  “It could mean a lot of things, but it generally has to do with needing to incorporate some qualities often associated with the opposite sex.”

  “What does it mean for you, exactly?” He took a large sip of courage.

  “I can be a bit of a pushover, so I believe it has to do with being more assertive and my own advocate.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I have the dream whenever my mother breaks up with her latest love.” She took a slow, but long sip. “Your turn.”

  “Well, since we’re talking sex. A girlfriend I had in high school, well, we sent…you know…naked selfies to each other and when we broke up, she hacked my Facebook account and posted the pictures I sent her.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Dylan enjoyed how Kinsley’s eyes went wide with amusement and the corners of her mouth tipped upward in a sweet smile.

  “Nope. And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, my mother saw them and believed I actually posted them.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said, covering her mouth. “I’d be mortified.”

  “I was for about five minutes.” He winked. “Your turn.”

  “Nuh-uh. I told you something embarrassing already.” She shook her head, sending her dark locks bouncing over her shoulders. He’d found most women to be attractive, but there was something so special about Kinsley.

  He didn’t know what it was, and it wasn’t tied up in her looks.

  “Fair enough,” he said, eyeing a pelican flying low over the waterway, while trying to take his thoughts of the sexy lady breathing the same air. “You hungry?”

  “I need to eat dinner at some point,” she said.

  “Want to walk across the street to Windsor’s?”

  “Can you handle walking?” she asked with an arched brow.

  “If you help hold me up.”

  Chapter 5

  Dylan clutched his side, wondering if he rebroke his rib. He gasped to fill his lungs with oxygen. Perspiration coated his skin. A light flicked on in Kinsley’s trailer, and he could hear his mother milling about. He’d told her that unless he called for her, he would appreciate being left alone with his thoughts.

  He flicked on the light and snagged the journal Kinsley had given him and stared at the blank page. If he did as she asked, he’d have to start with his thoughts before he fell asleep. Screw it, he started writing.

  I’m walking on the beach with Kinsley. Just enjoying the sunset. I want to feel peaceful before I drift off, hoping it will stop the nightmare.

  It never does, and tonight was no exception.

  I think I’m asleep when I watch Kinsley walk out into the ocean, waving, her feet gliding across the waves. She tells me she’s here if I need her. This is the second time she’s been in this part of the dream. I don’t know if that is significant, but I worry that I’ll start pulling her into the nightmare.

  This time, the sky goes dark, and I see my father walking toward me. We’re not in captivity, but on the beach. However, I can still hear my men screaming. I swear, I can smell their burning flesh. I know they are dying. I can hear them calling for their wives, children, mothers.

  I raise my hand and stab my father over and over again.

  What is weird, this time, is that my brothers are standing off in background, watching.

  I feel anger toward my brothers. They aren’t doing anything to stop me from hurting our dad. I feel sadness when I look at my dad, but he has this weird smile on his face.

  Right before I wake up, I realize I no longer hear the heartbeat of one of my men.

  He reread the words, but he didn’t edit, or add, like Kinsley had asked him. If he was going to get back to Delta Force, he had to trust someone with this shit, and Kinsley was it. He couldn’t tell all this to a shrink in the Army. That would be career suicide.

  His phone vibrated.

  Kinsley: Are you writing in your journal?

  Dylan: I take it I woke you up again.

  Kinsley: That’s what I get for sleeping with the window open. Answer my question.

  Dylan: I just finished.

  Kinsley: Try to go back to sleep but use a different feel good trigger.

  Dylan: It never works.

  Kinsley: But it helps you fall asleep, and no matter how bad the dreams are, your mind and body are never going to heal unless you get some shut-eye.

  Dylan: Night, Kinsley.

  He laughed, setting the phone on the table and clicked off the light. He glanced out the window and gasped, staring at Kinsley. She stood in front of her own window and waved before shutting off her light, making the moon in the sky the only light.

  For the next two hours, he tossed and turned. He knew he fell asleep a couple of times, but something always jerked him awake. It wasn’t the dream, but something dark tickled the back of his mind.

  No. If he was being honest, it was an overwhelming sense of fear that kept him from sleeping. He made note of it in his journal before heading into the shower and then to the kitchen.

  His mother sat at the table with the newspaper and a mug. “You’re up awfully early.”

  He pulled down the ointment from the cabinet and started rubbing it over his burns. He did his best to cover the discomfort, but by the scrunched-up look on his mother’s face, he didn’t mask his pain very well.

  “Let me do that,” his mother said softly.

  He sat at the table while his mother put the creamy lotion on the burns and cuts his captors had carved into his body. A constant reminder of how he’d failed his men.

  “I can drive you to physical therapy this morning, if you’d like.”

  “I can manage. I also want to go to the bookstore. Kinsley recommended a couple of books for me to read.”

  His mother stepped in front of him, standing between the kitchen and the family room. “I’m glad you feel comfortable talking with her.”

  “She has a way of making me think, though I haven’t decided if that is good or bad.” He snagged his T-shirt, pulling it carefully over his head. His ankle throbbed from overuse, even in the boot. But he had to push hard, both with his body.

  And his mind.

  “When you were a baby, your father used to call you the stinker thinker because you always sported this serious look.”

  “Guess I should be glad that Baby Dyl took and not that nickname.”

  “Baby Dyl is how we named you Dylan.” His mother let out a quiet laugh. “Logan may look the most like your father, but you,” she turned, clutching the picture to her chest, “are the most like him.”

  “Mom. We all have different traits from both you and Dad.” He feared if he talked too much about his dad, then the dreams would just intensify, and he couldn’t take much more of the torment of killing
his father in a nightmare.

  She held out her hand. “Yes. I can see a piece of Dad in all you boys. Even in the grandkids, I can see his legacy. But he died when you were so young, and sometimes I wonder if you never really got the chance to really feel how proud he was of you. How proud he’d be of the man you’ve become.”

  “I know he was and would be,” Dylan said, hobbling toward his mother. It was still difficult without his cane, but he managed well enough.

  “His death hit all of us hard. But I always worried the most about you.”

  “Mom, really. I had a great childhood and the best mom ever.”

  She smiled, setting the picture down. “I know I did the best I could, but you hold the pains of the world in your heart. Your father often did the same thing. I remember when he was called to his first domestic violence crime. He was so distraught over the poor woman who refused his help.”

  “She was murdered less than a year later by her husband.” Dylan remembered the story well. His father used to tell all his boys that a man who hits a woman is no man at all. “Dad had enormous empathy for everyone. He was the kind of man who would give his last dollar to a perfect stranger.”

  “So are you.”

  “So are all my brothers,” he said.

  “But none of them had nightmares like you or your dad,” she said, tilting her head with an arched brow. “He didn’t like to talk about it, but he struggled the first few years in the police department. He almost quit, had it not been for a therapist who helped him cope with all that he was feeling when he thought he let anyone down.”

  Dylan’s lungs expanded with oxygen, but he couldn’t exhale. He blinked, staring at his mother. There was no one better than his father. He and his brothers used to talk about it late at night, how lucky that they had it, even though they didn’t have things, they had great parents.

  “So, this is why you told Kinsley about my nightmares.”

  “The difference between you and your father is that he wore his emotions on his sleeve. When he felt something, we all felt it. You swallow them whole, letting them sit in your gut, never to be discussed. To most people in your path, they see a strong man who is constantly in control. They see an honorable, caring man.” She stepped closer, patting his chest. “But they also see an emptiness in you and that started long before this mission.”

  He stared into his mother’s soft-blue eyes. Anger tickled his brain. But like always, he kept that in check. It never paid to go off half-cocked. Logic trumped everything.

  He wasn’t void of emotions, and his only problem was that he’d been injured in such a way that it affected his thinking. Once he had a chance to heal, his mind, and his dreams, he would go back to normal.

  Only, he realized, his dreams had always been horrifying, even when they didn’t wake him up.

  “You know I’m right,” his mother said.

  “I’m working on it.” He swallowed, hard. The swirling of utter loneliness he’d felt when he watched his father take his last breath, squeezed his aching heart. Flashes of every man he’d ever served with that had perished pelleted his mind like rapid fire. Breathing in through his nose, and letting it out slowly, he did exactly what his mother accused him of.

  He ate every negative feeling he had, leaving him only with guilt.

  Kinsley sat on the stairs of her porch, trying not to turn her head to every car that turned the corner, hoping it would be the Jeep that Dylan had borrowed. Between patients, all she could think about was Dylan and his dreams. He’d yet to share the specifics of his latest dreams, but in their few text messages, he mentioned feeling as though he were off-kilter. He hadn’t elaborated, but he said he’d come over when he got back from the store.

  What the hell was he doing at the store? He could barely walk without assistance.

  She sipped her wine, wondering why she’d opened another bottle.

  Nerves.

  But why did Dylan make her so skittish?

  A black Jeep rolled to a stop under the Sarichs’ carport. Dylan hobbled out, waving. “I hate to ask, but can you give me a hand?”

  She started clapping. What a stupid fucking thing to do.

  But Dylan let out a belly laugh. “Not that kind of a hand.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Mind carrying in our dinner?” He leaned against his cane, carrying a bottle of white wine in his other hand.

  “I didn’t agree to dinner,” she said as she pulled open the back door of the vehicle and snagged a to-go bag from the Reef Bar and Restaurant.

  “But you have to eat, and my mom is helping Mrs. Vanderlin with a fundraiser, and I don’t want to eat alone.”

  She hip-checked the door. “Does this have something to do with feeling a bit off today?”

  “It might. Where shall we eat? My place or yours?”

  “Mine,” she said, jogging up the stairs to her porch. She set the bags on the outside table. “I’ll go get some plates and a wine glass for you.”

  “I see you already started on some.”

  “Yeah, well, I had a long day.” Of worry for him, but he didn’t need to know that. She collected the necessary items and took a moment to take in a calming breath. She’d be lying if she tried to tell herself she wasn’t attracted to Dylan intellectually and physically. Even though he wasn’t technically a patient, it would be wrong for her to pursue anything beyond friendship. Not to mention, he would be back at work, traveling the globe, putting his life at risk on a daily basis.

  A lifestyle she didn’t want.

  When she stepped back onto the porch, he sat at the table, rubbing his temples. Quietly, she set the plates and utensils down and poured him a glass of wine. “Want to talk about it?”

  “My mother said something to me today that has me confused.”

  Kinsley found it interesting that he used the word confused. By definition, that either meant bewilderment or not in possession of one’s faculties.

  She suspected he didn’t mean either, and he just used the term to cover up his real ones. Though he might not exactly know what those were since he stuffed them so far deep inside.

  “What was it?”

  “She mentioned my father had nightmares.”

  “We all have them,” she said, sitting down across from him, and began to serve up dinner which consisted of a couple pieces of crusted salmon, whipped potatoes, and mixed vegetables. It smelled like a little piece of heaven wrapped in a Cinnabon.

  “Yeah, but she made it seem like his were related to the things he saw on the job, but he somehow managed to put it in perspective or something or other.”

  She leaned back in the chair. “That’s not what you’re confused about. You know everyone has bad dreams, especially in your line of work, and your father’s. So, what is really bothering you?”

  “You’re pushy,” he muttered before taking a sip of his wine, followed by a large piece of salmon.

  “I’m just trying to help,” she said, picking at her food. While she knew she was being far from pushy, she’d give him his feelings. It was the first time she’d seen them outside of him discussing the mission, his men, or his nightmares.

  The night sounds filled the silence. She could be a patient woman and would wait until he was ready.

  She didn’t have to wait more than five minutes.

  “We always knew when my father was disappointed or proud. Happy or angry. Sad or scared. There wasn’t an emotion he was afraid of showing, and he always told us boys through thick and thin, family first, no matter what.”

  “You all have incredibly strong bonds. That’s a good thing, and you all have great honor and respect for your parents and each other. It’s unique.”

  He nodded, swirling the liquid in his glass as though he were a connoisseur of fine wines. Dylan was a bit of an oxymoron. Refined, yet rough around the edges. He came from humble beginnings, and stayed there, but what he did for a living was anything but a humble existence.

  “I’ve always
been there for my brothers, and they for me. But it usually comes in the form of adrenaline.”

  “I disagree.” She set her fork on the plate and caught his gaze. “Your mom told me how you’ve tried to come home shortly after each of your nieces and nephews have been born, and they were all here for you when you returned home.” She looked deep inside his blue orbs, but he gave up almost nothing. It wasn’t that he was emotionless, far from it, but he kept them so tight to his chest, he didn’t even know they were there, much less what they were. “I feel like you’re dancing around whatever it is that your mother said that has troubled you.”

  He let out a sarcastic laugh. “You really don’t pull any punches. Are you like this with all your clients?”

  “You’re not a patient, and I told you I’d always be honest, but I can’t help if you keep avoiding.”

  “My mother told me the main difference between me and my dad is the fact that I show almost no emotion, and I kind of have to agree with her. I didn’t realize it, but you asked me to write down my feelings in my dream, and God, it’s pathetic. I mean, I wrote, I feel angry. What the fuck is that?”

  “Let me answer that with a question.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin before tossing it on the empty plate. “Do you get angry?”

  “Sure.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “I don’t understand the question?”

  Of course he didn’t because she figured his idea of being angry was stuffing it while shooting up the sky with gunfire. “Do you yell? Slam the door? Actually, when your ex-girlfriend posted those naked pictures, were you angry and if so, what did you do?”

  “Of course it ticked me off, but what could I do? Yelling doesn’t solve the problem. Nor does tossing things across a room.”

  “So, you shrugged it off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And when others have angered you? Do you shrug it all off as if it doesn’t bother you? Or do you say something and deal with the emotion?”

  “I don’t hold grudges.”

  “Neither do I, but trust me when I say I get pissed off. If and when I’m ever ticked at you, you’ll know it.”