Unbelievable. The guy actually believed that? And yet, he had answered every charge with patience and resignation. Luke stood there with full knowledge of what lay ahead, but something rankled at the back of Taylor’s mind.
He gulped, his throat as dry as Afghanistan dirt. “You said your father cried for his little girls. I thought this was just about Mary. Who else are you talking about? My mother wasn’t raped.” Was she? That would answer a butt load of questions, would explain why the General can’t stand the sight of me, but please. Don’t let me be the product of—that.
Luke looked at Gracie, then the floor, and Taylor’s heart sank into his roiling stomach. When her gaze dropped, too, bile climbed up his throat. Suddenly, the head seemed damned far away. He’d never make it in time.
“Well? Was she?” he asked out loud, hating the weakness in his question.
“No, “Luke said. “Martha was already buried by then, but my father wept for her because your father deserted her. It was only after her death that Michael had the guts to come back for you.”
The nerve of this guy. There seemed no end to the lies.
“Bullshit. My mother died when I was four and my father raised me because he had a choice. When I get out of this nut house, I’m going to hunt your old man down and drag his sorry ass straight to prison. I don’t care if he’s my grandfather or not. I’ll put you both away.”
“Do you hear yourself? You’re ready to kill me, but you only know what you think you know. Don’t you want to understand what truly happened in your past?”
Taylor wrenched the bedrails as hard as he dared, but nothing budged. Thankfully, not even the clot in his shoulder, but enough was enough. He needed to be on his feet. Swinging or walking out the door.
“Please don’t struggle. You’ll hurt yourself again,” Gracie soothed. “You’ll bleed to death.”
“Back off! I don’t care if I—”
“Taylor!” For the first time, Luke raised his voice.
Gracie stepped back and Taylor stopped shaking the bed. Disgust shuddered over his shoulders for the impotent position he’d been forced into. Again. If it wasn’t the General lording his power over him, it was—
Damn! He couldn’t even face this liar on his feet. Man to man. He drew in a deliberate breath and planned for escape. They couldn’t hold him forever. Just wait. He’d get his chance.
Luke came to stand with Gracie. “You were raised by an angry man, Taylor.”
“I was raised by my father!”
“And this is all you learned from him? For years I’ve longed to see you again, to take you hunting, to teach you where the biggest salmon rest in the cold waters. I’ve wished to hear your mother’s voice whisper to me through your words, to have you safe within the family who truly loves you, the place where you should’ve been all along.”
“You call this family? Ha! You’re nothing but a bunch of murdering psychos! I don’t belong here.” Again his stomach pitched acid up his throat, betraying him. Just the word—family. God, what he wouldn’t give to have that elusive dream come true. Just once. To belong somewhere. Anywhere. To be truly wanted.
Luke pulled Gracie from the bedside. “Let’s eat. He needs to rest.”
She hesitated, her tongue wetting her bottom lip. “Taylor? Can I—”
“Go!” he snapped before she had the chance to finish her question. “Get the hell away from me. Go hang with your killer brother.”
She stood at the doorway. “He’s not my br—”
“I don’t care who he is. Leave me alone!”
The door shut, leaving him with too much new information slamming around in his head and no way to tell truth from fiction. No computer to Google. No library to research. Damn. Not even Mother to help investigate the crap his captors had just dumped on him.
What rankled most was the question he couldn’t answer: what was his nineteen-year-old father doing messing around with a sixteen-year-old girl? Had they been in love? God, he hoped.
Two young kids could’ve easily gotten carried away and went too far, especially if Michael Armstrong was doing the persuading, but why’d he leave Martha? Because she turned up pregnant? Did Michael care for her to begin with? Was she just another conquest? A notch on his bedpost?
Did the General ever want me?
Damn it to hell! Taylor flexed against the restraints, years worth of unexpended rage on his side. Wanting to reject every word he’d just heard. Every lie. And yet of all people, he knew the ferocity of General’s anger. Michael Armstrong did what Michael Armstrong set out to do, no matter who or what got in his way.
For the first time in his life, Taylor wanted more specific details about his mother and those early years. He wished he’d known his mother. His real mother. Maybe Martha would actually talk to him and answer his questions. The General never had.
As mad as he was at Luke, the man had revealed significant intel that changed everything. He’d loved his sisters. He wanted his nephew. The sonofabitchin’ murderer actually cared.
Taylor stilled, huffing the rage in his heart out through pursed lips and back to a manageable level. What was he supposed to do now? Accept this wild story from the same people who’d shot him?
He wanted to hate Gracie and Luke. They’d wounded him, held him against his will. He should’ve broken her fingers when he had the chance. He’d be long gone by now if he’d only followed through with his escape plan. He should’ve snapped those slender fingers like sticks, one by one, and let her—
Damn. No. I couldn’t.
Gracie was a sweet woman despite being caught up in this White Hawk mess. Even Luke didn’t seem so evil. Misguided as hell to think hunting someone down with a bow and arrow was helpful—no two ways about that. But evil?
Luke couldn’t have faked that depth of remorse. Taylor knew remorse. He lived with it. Every single day.
This three-fold nightmare made sense in an insane kind of a way. Peter lost his oldest daughter too young and too early. Then he lost the grandson he loved. Strike two. And the lowest blow of all—the assault and living death of his youngest daughter. The poor guy couldn’t win.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Taylor bowed his aching head, his mind spinning in ten different directions. The White Hawks had suffered an incredible injustice, with Mary not only been consigned to Hell on earth, but the wrong guys incarcerated and the guilty set free.
He stilled. The damnedest thing creeped up on him. Empathy.
His pulse settled down to normal. He knew what made his grandfather tick. Not being there when a friend needed him most. The soul-eating guilt at another’s death. Survivor’s guilt.
And along came an excuse, any excuse, to feel better, and a guy could convince himself it was honorable to hunt down the real murderers even though it wasn’t.
Revenge was as much a cure for that guilt as a compulsion. Maybe akin to bloodlust. Once let loose, it ravaged a man’s soul. Consigned him to hell. Only thing worse? The self-hatred that lingered because—you’d lived.
Unbidden, the ugly memories returned when he and his men stormed the houses where those despicable Taliban operatives cowered. The same bastards who’d murdered Darrell and desecrated his remains. The liars who declared Allah’s will while they hid behind their children and the skirts of their women.
His team inserted fast, hot and heavy, surprising the villagers. And the Taliban. After his guys dragged the women and children out of harm’s way, he called in the air strike that leveled the three shitholes to the ground. He did it for Darrell. For Maverick. For Gabe. And he’d do it again. In a heartbeat.
His fist clenched. He’d left wailing women behind him that day, screaming that Americans were murderers and pigs, and he didn’t care. The strike was pre-emptive. Righteous. It stopped the onslaught of Taliban attacks against Army and Marine boots on the ground. Some received awards. Commendations. Not that crap like that mattered. Taylor knew down to his USMC heart the killing amounted to nothing more than rev
enge.
If only it cleansed him of the grief or absolved him from the darkness in Maverick’s eyes. And therein lay the problem. Revenge might drive a man to the brink of insanity with the need to retaliate, but it didn’t help him feel better.
The wise old saying was dead on right. Dig two graves when you seek revenge. One for the man you hate. Another for yourself. Because as long as you hate that guy, he’s going to be a heavy damned millstone around your neck. Shit.
Taylor blew out a deep sigh from the weary depths of his soul. Like Maverick, a piece of his heart still remained on that scorched patch of stone in far off Helmand Valley. So yeah, he understood the grandfather he’d never met. If anyone had a good reason for revenge, Peter White Hawk sure as hell did. The crimes committed against Mary deserved swift and lethal retribution. Put a gun in his hand, and Taylor would hunt them down, too.
Heck. He’d only waited a week to waste the asshats who’d murdered Darrell and disrespected his body.
Peter waited fifteen long years.
The door cracked open. Great. Gracie. Her eyes red. Her cute little button nose, too. Shit. He’d done that to her. He’d made her cry.
That’s a first. Why cry over me? He stifled the tenderness he didn’t want to feel and settled for a grumpy, “Hey.”
She stayed at the door. “I, umm, have some pictures you should see. Maybe they’ll help you understand what happened to this part of your family, why they are so angry. So hurt.”
It was happening. Yeah. Crazy Gracie Fox was getting to him.
He waved her forward. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
A sad smile tweaked the corners of her mouth and in she came with a handful of old snapshots. The first one she placed in his fingers was a color photo of a dark-haired woman holding an infant. Taylor looked at his mother for the very first time in his memory. Martha Catherine White Hawk Armstrong smiled up at him again with nothing but pride and love in her eyes.
A hard knot filled his throat, making it hard to swallow. Moisture flooded his eyes. God Almighty, that’s my mom?
She was him all over again. Or he was her. His square jaw and angular build were his father’s, but everything else was hers from his light copper-colored skin to his deep coffee-brown eyes. Mom. Mama. My Mama. She loved me.
“Here. This one’s better.” Gracie put another old photo in his fingers.
He couldn’t speak. Nothing short of the Madonna and Child. It could’ve passed for the same masterpiece done by the same artist. The look in those two mother’s eyes identical.
No wonder he’d connected with the holy card his chaplain had given him, the one with a similar picture. He’d seen that look before, and he recognized it again. Pure. Utter. Love. A mother’s love for her child.
Martha didn’t leave him because she’d wanted to. She’d loved him with her whole heart. It was Death that stole her.
Gracie loosened the restraint at his left wrist, and, damn, it. She broke him. Just that fast. Him. A big tough Marine. He looked away, fighting a surge of overwhelming feelings from out of nowhere.
I loved my mom. Still do.
“Th-thanks.” Emotion distorted his voice, damn it. “She was pretty.”
Still there at his side, Gracie set a box of tissues on his bed. The girl just didn’t seem to give up. “My mother said Martha was the prettiest girl in the school. They went to Saint Joseph’s, you know.”
“Hmm. A Catholic school? I didn’t know that.” He practiced no religion, another thing the General insisted real men didn’t need. Maybe that’s where his parents had met? Taylor snagged a tissue.
“Yes. We all went to Saint Joseph’s.” She didn’t seem to mind that he’d turned to crap. The General sure would have. Regardless, something was happening inside Taylor, and he was helpless in its wake.
A tiny warmth unfurled, like the first leaf of spring pushed up through the crust of a hard winter’s snow reaching toward the golden light of the sun. A wall had been breached. A wall he’d built a long time ago.
An inkling of a son’s pride whispered, ‘My Mom. My real Mom.’
Gracie replaced the pictures with others. He noticed different things in each. Martha cradled him so carefully when he was an infant, like she was afraid to break him. Her confidence grew as he’d aged. In the final shot, she packed a messy-haired toddler on her hip. Damn. She looked small compared to that rowdy little guy in her arms. But strong. Full of life.
The boy on her hip looked like he adored his mother. Another shot caught him squeezing her cheeks between two grubby hands, his lips puckered and his eyes closed to give her a slobbery kiss. His baby hair hadn’t been cut yet. It glistened as dark as his mother’s, just as straight.
A strange new tenderness pinched Taylor’s heart. Yeah. It felt right. He sniffed and wiped his eyes with a soggy tissue. I loved my mom. I think I—miss her.
And Martha White Hawk Armstrong became a real person.
Luke appeared at the door, but didn’t enter. “I, umm, I found another you might want to show him.” He handed the picture to Gracie and she placed it in Taylor’s hand.
Taylor glanced at his uncle. Damned if Luke’s face wasn’t blotched and red like Gracie’s.
The photo he’d handed Gracie was a good shot of a smiling Grandfather Peter with toddler Taylor on his knee. They were seated at a picnic table with green pines behind them. Pride glowed on his grandfather’s face. This was Peter White Hawk of the proud Mattaponi tribe.
Taylor’s heart swelled with unexpected love. Yeah. He really wanted to meet this guy. My grandfather. Granpa. That’s what I called him. Granpa. My Granpa.
And Peter White Hawk became a real person, too.
“My father was a real jerk, huh?”
“Oh, no.” Gracie shook her head. “He loved your mother, at least that’s what my mom told me. Here. Look at this picture.”
She handed him another. He’d never seen pictures of this time in his life. The one in his hand was rare indeed. In it, Michael Armstrong stood behind Martha with his hands on her shoulders while she held baby Taylor. Michael looked like Peter in the previous picture. The bastard grinned like a fool, like he was proud of his baby boy.
Taylor stifled the knot climbing up his throat. Okay, so he loved me back then. That helped. It didn’t seem like it most days, but okay. Taylor was willing to accept the possibility that, once upon a time, the General had a heart. His son’s birth wasn’t just an unfortunate accident. It was nice to see proof instead of the puzzle that had been Taylor’s childhood.
“Wow. I was a cute kid.” He tried to joke. He had family. They’d sprung to life around him, like ghosts who’d been there all along, just waiting to be seen.
Gracie rested her hand on his bicep, like he belonged. Like these relatives weren’t bat-shit crazy murderers. Her fingers clenched. “You’re a very strong man.”
“Of course he is.” Pride echoed in Luke’s tone. “He pulled my arrow from his body, didn’t he?”
“Well, umm.” Taylor stalled. Remembering that these people hurt him had gotten more difficult. He flexed his shoulder to remind himself of the truth.
Gracie remained steadfast at his side. “May I please get you something to eat? You need to keep your strength up.”
Her eyes were full of tears, too. God Almighty, he wanted to bawl like a baby. It was a damned good thing the General wasn’t there.
“I’d very much like to eat by myself if you don’t mind.”
“I’ve waited so long,” Luke whispered, his voice quavering, “for this day.”
“Yeah well, just don’t shoot me again, umm, Uncle Luke.” It sounded odd to call this guy Uncle, but that’s all it took.
Luke rushed into the room and Taylor found himself in a gentle bear hug. “You look so much like her and you. I can hear her again in your voice. You don’t know how long I’ve ached to hear my sweet sister’s voice one more time. She still lives. Through you.”
Taylor shrugged off another unwelcome
display of emotions, not at all sure how he’d transitioned to nephew so quickly. But he had. “This is a strange way to meet my family. I mean, you could’ve sent me a birthday card instead of an arrow.”
Luke shuddered, still holding on tight. “As God is my witness, I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Somehow. I promise.”
Taylor lifted his gaze to finally look at this older guy. How had he not noticed the family resemblance when they’d chatted at the range? Had he built a protective wall so thick he’d missed the obvious?
“I have a lot of questions. You got a minute?”
Luke released him and took over Gracie’s chair. “Yes. Ask. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Did my father run out on my mom or did they fight about something? Why’d he leave her, umm, us?”
Luke sighed. “They didn’t plan to start a family so young. They were crazy for each other at first. I really don’t know what happened. One day they were inseparable and happy, making plans for their future with you. The next, Martha came home crying. She wouldn’t talk about it.”
“How’d she die? What happened? I never knew.”
“My father would tell you that she died of a broken heart. He was so angry. Michael never came back after he left her, not even to see you, but Martha actually died of meningitis. It came on suddenly. You had just turned four. We thought she had the flu, but by the end of the first day, she was in the hospital and dying.”
Taylor blew out a huge sigh. There was so much sadness in this family. “How old was I when he left her, umm, us?”
“One, I guess. You were just beginning to walk.” Luke’s voice dropped low and Taylor had to strain to hear. “Your father returned the day after Martha’s funeral with a lawyer and a police officer. He must have seen her obituary, and of course, he had every legal right to take you. It killed Peter to let you go. You were his pride and joy. He used to call you Baby Bear.” Luke’s voice caught. “He never forgave your father. When that happened to Mary, he lost his reason to live.”
“But why didn’t he go on this blood hunt fifteen years ago?”
“Because Mary was still alive. It takes a murder to initiate a blood hunt.”
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