Beautiful Disaster

by Laura Spinella

  “Goddamn it! This is what you get for loving me.”

  His fingers gripped around her waist; she could feel his muscular thighs press against her legs. Mia forced herself silent, no noise, no clues to what she was thinking or feeling. She felt him pull back. Her fingers grasped onto the table, the hard edge digging into her hips and stomach. She could feel his breath, a low growl hissing out—almost a cry. “Why . . . how could you trust me this much?” Then it stopped. The fury she felt from him exited in one tremulous breath. Flynn’s body came over hers, like a feather, his mouth softly kissing her shoulder. His cheek pressed against her back, and she could feel the dampness of a tear. Mia couldn’t suppress a cry of relief. His lips hadn’t touched her in hours. For all his violent posturing, Mia wanted him to kiss her again.

  He stood up, pulling her body along with his, turning her in his arms. “I . . . I can’t—I could never do this to you.” His voice was broken and defeated.

  Chapter 18

  He took his first look at what he had done. The beautiful girl was gone. Runny mascara mingled with streaks of tears, dripping down her colorless face. She looked as if she had just witnessed some unbelievable, heinous act. Christ, she had. Her hair was a mass of sweaty tangles and the silky skin that he loved to touch was cold and clammy. The blood on her mouth made his stomach lurch. He wanted to wipe it away, but as his fingers went up Mia’s head jerked back, repelling like she didn’t recognize him. Flynn realized how hard she was shaking, realized that he was holding her up. He tried to pull her closer, tighter. She wouldn’t relinquish the space. Every hateful thought he’d ever had about himself multiplied into some infinite number he couldn’t comprehend. Standing over that broken, lifeless body didn’t feel as horrid as this.

  “Let me go,” she said in a raspy whisper.

  “I can’t . . . You’ll fall down.”

  His sudden concern for her well-being had no impact. “No, no . . . I’m okay, really. Just let go. Please.” She wouldn’t look him in the eye as she pushed away from his hold, stumbling to her overnight bag. A satiny summer robe slid over her body and Mia quickly covered herself, tying a snug knot. She went into the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later with a washcloth pressed to her mouth.

  He’d grabbed his jeans in the meantime, thinking he should just leave. There aren’t too many ways I could have fucked this up worse. Yeah, there’s one, you stupid bastard. Tell her the rest—finish it. She said nothing, walking to a lamp and snapping it off. He guessed she could only face him in the dark. A stream of moonlight drew her out to the balcony. For one wild second he feared what she might do, the damage he had done, and he raced outside.

  “It’s cooler, feel that. There’s even a little wind,” she said, blotting her lip with the cloth.

  It was the opposite of what he had anticipated, her demeanor strangely serene. Flynn waited. He wanted to see if it was some sort of gathering calm before she went nuts on him.

  “So,” she began with a long sigh, “it wasn’t the most pleasant way to make a point, but I took you on. Hurting me isn’t in you. You’re not the mad, uncontrollable bastard you see in that mirror.” She basked in her reflective mood, capturing balmy breezes and moonlight as if everything were going to be just fine. She said, almost smiling, “Will you admit that much to me? I think I earned it.”

  He wished to God he could tell her she was right. “I think you’d better hear it all before you draw that conclusion.”

  “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Oh, so what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Is that your mind-set? Won’t work, Mia. I’ve been trying to keep my ugly secrets from you for months. Every day it gets a little harder. You now know the most basic facts of a story that takes place a mile beyond hell. I can’t let you think that’s all there is. You’re going to want to put it behind us and there are huge reasons you can’t. You need to understand them.”

  Mia shook her head hard. “You don’t have to bleed for me. I think I’ve proven how much I trust you.”

  “Hey, you just put yourself out there in a way I can’t begin to understand. I don’t think there’s anything else I could ask of you.” Flynn eased into a chair, turning the other toward her, hoping she would sit. He still didn’t like the look of her perched on the edge of the balcony. “You deserve to hear this. And afterward, if you want to go, I’ll hold the door, fuckin’ applaud you for making a smart decision. That naïve streak you have, sweetheart, the one that keeps getting you in trouble with me, with other men, the one that makes you think you can fix this by loving me unconditionally—it’s about to get blown to bits.”

  She sat down, responding boldly. “I get it, Flynn. There’s a part of your past that maybe a lot of people couldn’t accept. But without even hearing the details, I have no doubt there were circumstances, reasons . . .”

  “Some might say. But I think you need to have lived it to truly understand my culpability. Responsibility has a different meaning to everyone—particularly different in the world I was in. I took my responsibility seriously—you might say too far. To this day, I say not far enough.”

  “There had to have been extenuating circumstances. If you went to jail for killing someone, how come they let you out?”

  “Who said they let me out?” Her eyes did a double take. He nodded; she’d heard him right.

  “So what are you telling me? You escaped?”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. You’ve been sleeping with a fugitive and convicted murderer. Proud of yourself? Bet it’s not somethin’ the other girls get to brag about, huh?” Light laughter rumbled from his throat. “Roxanne’s starting to look right, isn’t she? And you thought I only disliked her because she’s a control freak.”

  “Anything Roxanne thinks is just . . . just the way she is. It has nothing to do with us,” Mia snapped. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  His brow furrowed. Why the hell was she suddenly so mad at Roxanne? “Anyway, there were a lot of reasons I escaped. The ones you’d figure, like the nightmares and, well, let’s just say things I had no control over.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  Flynn glanced at her, then into the distance. “Never mind, it’s not important right now. One day everything just snapped into place. I got a miracle and a one-way ticket out. After years in a seven-by-ten cell . . .”

  “The nightmares, God, you had them trapped in a cell. How . . . how could they do that to you?”

  He shook his head, choking back more misplaced laughter. “I don’t think my mental health was a big concern. The cell was bad, but solitary was worse. Bust up enough walls, can’t follow the rules, can’t keep quiet—that’s where you end up, thirty days a pop.” Any hint of humor evaporated. “There isn’t a word for what those nightmares turned into in that hole. Got to a point where insanity looked like salvation. Trouble was, I could still make the distinction. I think I spent more time trying to climb out of my own skin, staring at my own vomit, than I did breathing.” She’d been listening with her eyes forward, focusing on the dark. Flynn gently pulled her chin around so she would have to look at him. There was a second of comfort when she didn’t pull away and he allowed himself to feel it. “Are you ready to go home yet?”

  “Keep going. I’m still here.” But her voice had changed, even if she didn’t know it. The prospect of comfort vanished, the unconditional warmth gone.

  “My first year in the Corp was, I don’t know, average. But I did excel at certain things . . .”

  “Things like I saw last night?”

  He nodded. “That and a few more. About a year after basic, I was pulled out into what was described to me as advanced training, sent to Camp Lejuene. Recon Indoctrination Program. They spent eight weeks giving me all sorts of tests, mental and physical. It was tough stuff—made me want to fuckin’ quit and scream uncle more than once. I dove through all their hoops. Ran twenty miles in hundred-degree weather, learned to tie every knot in their freakin’ b
ook and how to hold my breath underwater while I cut somebody’s throat.” He paused, catching her shocked expression. “Real person, rubber knife—at least in practice. Anyway, not everybody masters that one.”

  “But you did?” she asked, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

  He hesitated; truth was truth. “Yeah, I did. I hung in there fairly well. Next thing I knew, I was in. Part of the very few. Elite Forces. I spent the next ten weeks in Little Creek, Virginia, with recon training. It’s where I learned to excel at what you saw last night, where it became a reflex, not a skill. It’s where I learned . . .” He stopped, looking away from her, toward nothing.

  “Learned what, Flynn?”

  “It’s where I learned that compromise is not an option—that the mission can be worth more than a life. And make no mistake, Mia—I bought into the company line one hundred percent. We . . . I was trained to achieve an objective within a certain code, using whatever means necessary. And I was very good at it.”

  “I see,” she said softly, making her own eye contact with the distance.

  “There isn’t anything after recon training, just the mission. First assignment went well. You would be amazed at what the United States government is responsible for containing, derailing, and destroying. We spent a month in the jungle in South America chasing down a band of drug smugglers. I couldn’t figure it out at first—we were a little overqualified for drug trafficking. Months later, I found out that the money was being filtered through the office of our ambassador to that country. It was in the administration’s best interest to make it go away quietly.”

  “In other words, you weren’t exactly making the front page of Stars and Stripes. No glory or recognition.” Flynn nodded in agreement. “Go on.”

  “Around that time things started to go a little sour in Northern Africa. We pulled a long-term assignment in a remote corner of Libya, bordering on the Sudan. It was the hottest, most desolate place—Christ, it was south of hell, that’s for sure. Bands of rogue guerrilla forces used it for training camps, central supply. Our government was concerned about an uprising—these groups banding together, overthrowing the existing regime. As much as they disliked the government that was in place, at least they could exert control over it. Its proximity to other countries, its lack of rules, made it a hot spot for pirating activity. The guerrilla groups, they spent most of their time fighting for territory. Recon, that happens mostly at night. Our objective was to gather information first and dismantle the worst of them. I mean, there’s no sense in taking the bastards down until you’ve bled them for every piece of usable intel. Understand, Mia, I used methods condoned by Special Forces—and ones you won’t find in any government-sanctioned report.” He paused, hoping the concept would sink in without the details. Flynn watched Mia’s face grow sober, her breaths deepen.

  “Elite Forces is a different team—very different from any other part of the military. We didn’t answer to anyone. And more important, they weren’t responsible for us. Some guys rotated in and out, but there was a core group, eight of us that worked together. We were tight, a band of brothers. It takes a certain kind of person to work that detail . . . not all of it good.” Flynn’s eyes evaded hers, staring into the night. “Five months in, I made sergeant and they put me in charge. I was responsible for every single one of them—everything from making sure they didn’t end up in front of a stray bullet to seeing that they didn’t go into town without a pocketful of condoms. They relied on me for everything, combat to latrine. I set the tone for down time, engagement, and whatever was between. Those men acted on my orders, and only my orders. When you’re put in that position, you’re their leader, their sole judge of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  “Wasn’t there somebody higher up, in case you needed help?”

  “That’s a nice theory, sweetheart. But it doesn’t work like that. As a unit we were very isolated. It’s part of the challenge, part of the privilege, part of the risk you assume.”

  “I can see you, doing that. How they all must have looked up to you.”

  “Careful, Mia, don’t wrap me in Old Glory just yet. When you fall from there, it’s a long way down.”

  She crinkled her brow, nodding. “You . . . you couldn’t have been much older than them.”

  “Actually, I was younger than some of them. It was a lot of responsibility for twenty-two—too much, in the end,” he admitted. “There were guys in the unit who were married, had babies at home, wives . . . families who were counting on them. I think it’s one reason I made sergeant so soon—I had nothing to lose. Anyway, sometimes we were assigned to run a security detail for a bureaucratic dog-and-pony show. Every so often politicians would feel the need to drop in on hell, just to make it look like the good guys were in control. It was our job to make sure guerrilla forces didn’t get in the way—in other words, blow anybody up.

  “Word came down from Central that a member of the British Parliament and a United States senator were planning that type of visit. I was particularly concerned about one of those guerrilla forces. It was run by a British National, Simon Goss. He was a Rhodes Scholar turned terrorist; thought he’d fight the system by engaging in guerrilla warfare and pirating. In the six months that I had been there, I’d made contacts, informants—one in particular who provided vital information. The word on the street was that Goss’s group was planning to use this particular political visit. He wanted a media circus; they had plans to kidnap the senator and the Brit, maybe parade them around blindfolded before blowing their heads off. It was Goss’s way of raising awareness, a telethon for the cause,” Flynn explained. “It certainly would have put his warring faction on the national map.”

  “It sounds like a difficult situation not everyone could handle. Maybe you’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “Just wait, Mia, the errors are coming. It was right around that time that I learned my informant, a Jordanian woman named Alena Wyle, was on both sides of the take—working for Goss and passing information to me. To say I was shocked would be an understatement.”

  “Why? Because she was a woman?”

  He laughed a little, a gesture that still felt as misplaced as his emotions. “No, Alena was smarter than just about anyone I knew. It mostly whacked me right over the head because . . .” He hesitated, trying to find words to make it sound less dubious than it was. “Because I was sleeping with her.” It was like August heat hitting air, the way the memory dragged through his throat. “We were lovers, Mia. We were involved for some time—we . . . we even had plans. Alena was going to come back to the States with me.”

  “With you,” she repeated, the surprise clear, her voice small and uneasy.

  “Listen, if you don’t want to hear it all . . . the details, I under—”

  “No, I want to hear every word. I want . . .” Mia’s stark gaze met his. “I want to know about this woman. Alena. What you feel . . . felt for her,” she corrected, allowing herself the assumption that it was all in the past.

  “You mean was I in love with her?”

  “Yes,” Mia whispered.

  “Back then,” he answered, “yes, I loved her very much.” He stopped there. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to Flynn how what he felt for Mia differed. He looked at her, unable to move a breath in or out.

  “Flynn?” she said, touching his arm.

  He pulled it away. “When, um, when I discovered that Alena was working for Goss, well, my reaction was about what you’d expect. I was betrayed, hurt, angry . . . amazed that I could be so goddamn gullible. She tried to explain. Alena was working for Goss long before she ever hooked up with me. In that part of the world employment opportunities were, let’s say, scarce for a woman like her—someone as smart as she was beautiful. Anyway, Alena insisted that things had changed, that she wanted out from Goss.”

  “Because you discovered her double cross or because she was in love with you?”

  Flynn took a breath, silently contemplating the res
t of the story. He’d never uttered it aloud. “At that point, I couldn’t be sure of anything she was telling me. The only thing I did buy was the danger she was in. She assured me that if Goss found out that she was providing me with information . . . and sleeping with me—he’d kill her in a heartbeat.”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  Flynn looked solidly at Mia. “I said that would be fucking fine with me—problem solved for both of us.”

  “And then?”

  “What makes you think I said anything else? What makes you think I didn’t send her back to Goss toe-tagged with a note telling that bastard exactly what she’d been up to?”

  There was no hesitation. “Because you just told me that you loved this woman. You’d never do anything to hurt her.”

  A hard swallow rolled through Flynn’s throat. He wished he shared Mia’s assuredness. “After I cooled off, I told Alena that I’d help her find a way out. If Goss did learn that she was my informant, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. That . . . that was unimaginable. The trouble was, I had to continue to trust her, believe that the information she was passing on to me was on the up-and-up. It was a huge risk that I had no business taking.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “She seemed to prove herself—passed a couple of tests. Information was certainly going my way. She managed to earn my trust again and I forgave her. Things, um, things between us, they picked up where we left off.” He paused as Mia offered an uncomfortable nod. “According to Alena, Goss’s group was moving ahead with their plan to kidnap the senator and the Brit. My only tactical choice was for our unit to take them out first. I devised a plan and put my men on the ground. My first mistake, I sent them in five to three.”

  “Five to three? I don’t . . .”

  “Oh, sorry, five men of ours to every three of theirs. It’s standard op, page one in the rulebook—it should be straight double coverage. But there was a last-minute change in plan, a security breach in town. I had to send Ruiz and Jensen to follow up. It left me a man short, but I didn’t have the time or resources to do anything different. The three of us, Ruiz, Jensen and me, we were going to follow as soon as they got back from town. The plan was to go in at night. Take out three guards and seize Goss’s headquarters. A basic tag ’em and bag ’em. Alena insisted that there would only be three guards, and I took her at her word. Even so, I only sent in five men—Bradshaw, Kroeger, Jackson, Lopez, and Gilly.”