She’d thought things couldn’t get any worse, and they’d already been worse than she’d known.
“It’s bad,” she said. Stating the obvious, and yet asking him to prepare her.
He nodded.
“I was sent on this particular mission during my second tour. Chosen specifically.”
“They wanted your opinion?” she asked, proud of him even as she was hating them, whoever they were. Hate wasn’t an emotion Eliza felt often.
Pierce had never had a strong male influence in his life. She’d trusted the army to take care of him. Not use him up.
“I scored at the top of my class for shot accuracy,” he said. Something else she hadn’t known. He was a good shot. Jamison had made mention of that, too. But...
“They wanted you for frontline battle.” She probably sounded like the complete ignoramus she was when it came to such matters.
“There were insurgents. Their leaders were meeting in a key village, all together for what we believed was the first time ever, to finalize plans to launch a war that would most certainly have changed the world. We’d been sent over to infiltrate in any way we could and take them down. Every one of them. If one was left standing, our mission failed.”
Didn’t seem like one man could do all that.
“Why not just take them prisoner?” She’d understood that to be the American way.
“Intel said that the group was armed with enough chemical warfare to take out a country. And that they had means to get it to the United States. The problem was, no one could figure out how. But they believed the threat was real. This group, they’d been around. They’d made other threats, seemingly impossible ones, and they’d carried them out successfully every single time.”
Her stomach ached. Every muscle in her body ached as she sat there, stiffly, listening. Afraid to move.
As though if she took too deep a breath, Pierce’s world would explode.
“It was believed that no one outside the key leaders at that meeting knew the details of the plan. If they died, the plan died with them. The thought was that they wielded their power by not making what they knew known to others. Information is power. As soon as it falls in another’s hands, even if the other is a friend, it weakens your power.”
She heard his words. Couldn’t really comprehend the scope of what he was telling her.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to believe that the world’s problems were really that critical.
That the power held by those she believed protected her was that fragile.
“We believed the group didn’t know we knew about the meeting. Or that anyone knew they’d all be together. I was sent in with three other guys. Supposedly on a peaceful mission to tend to some business in the village. I was to assess the situation and report back.”
She waited. Eager to hear about his success. There’d been no country wiped out by chemical warfare.
Pierce’s success was a foregone conclusion.
“Ten minutes after we got to the village, I knew that we’d been made. A young boy we’d befriended told us. His father was our real contact. He used the boy to talk to us. He said the leaders knew why we were there. They knew what we knew. And they knew my mission.”
Oh. God. No.
He’d been captured. Tortured. In ways that didn’t leave physical scars all over his body. She’d heard about some of the horrible things they did to prisoners over there. Unconscionable, unimaginable things that no human being could live through and come out of normal. And the more someone withheld information, the worse it got...
No one knew better than she that Pierce was one of the best there was at keeping his information to himself.
But wait...he’d said that they knew everything he knew...
“Pierce?”
His expression had gone vacant. He didn’t even seem to notice shoving Eliza aside as he lowered his head to his knees, burying it beneath his arms.
She had no business doing this.
Why had she thought she and Pierce could get through this alone, without professional help?
“Pierce?” She called to him because she didn’t have any other answer. Because her heart was calling to him.
“Pierce?” she said a second time. More firmly.
He lifted his head. Looked at her.
“We retreated,” he said. “Made ourselves scarce as quickly and quietly as we’d come in, telling the little boy to let his father know we’d send an army back.”
Good. Okay. This was good. Pierce was talking. He was going for help. The village, the warfare, were no longer his sole responsibility.
He looked at Eliza. For a long time. His lips started to tremble. “But I knew...” The words were a whisper.
“I knew how they knew about us. And I knew why we knew about them, too.”
Her heart pounded. It was Saturday, past nine in South Carolina. She had no idea whom to call. Either there or here.
She thought about calling the local hospital. Needed some kind of professional help on standby.
Not because she didn’t trust Pierce. But because she was afraid.
From the very beginning, the things she and Pierce had faced, an adult love so young, her father’s disapproval, a baby...it had all been too big for them to handle on their own.
They’d failed.
Every time.
“They were our intel, Eliza. The father. His eight-year-old son...” He broke off. Moisture in his eyes now, but no tears breaking free. Nothing close to such a cleansing.
“I’m not sure how much the boy knew, but his father was the group’s imam, so they trusted him.”
She was cold and wanted to go inside. To lock the doors. Shut the curtains.
To hide in the bathroom where there were no windows.
“How can you be so sure that they knew why you were there?”
“Because of a word the boy used. It was code for the leader of the group. I’m certain he hadn’t meant to say it. I suspect he didn’t know he did.”
Pierce whispered the word. It wasn’t anything she understood.
“He said it that day when he’d been referring to his father. The man we thought was their imam—their religious consultant. He was, instead, the insurgent leader.”
“So they weren’t really having the meeting?”
“They were, but they knew American intelligence had infiltrated a portion of the group’s hierarchy. They knew they didn’t have much time. And so they played us. The boy came to us on behalf of his father, whom he told us was the village imam. He had much to tell. Information that panned out. A smaller group of insurgents were taken as prisoners. This continued for over a month. Until they could trust that we trusted them. The boy and the father. They called us to the village that last day and when the boy uttered that one word, I knew we’d been had. His father wasn’t a religious man, he was a leader of bad men. When they sent us away, I knew we had to go back. Fast.”
“Didn’t they know you’d be back?”
“Yes, but they thought they’d have the time it would take us to go back and get our ‘army.’ When we returned, they’d be long gone and we’d be walking into a death trap. They didn’t just want the handful of us. They planned to use the chemical warfare on the entire unit—to show the world what they could do. That their threat was real. And that we couldn’t stop them.”
Pierce was still there. It hadn’t ended the way the insurgents had planned.
“Couldn’t they have just bombed your camp?”
“Not without risking authorities possibly knowing who they were. And bombing would have come with a high risk of failure—they’d have to get to us without getting caught. And be able to get enough gas out to do significant damage before they were stopped. They wanted to lure us to them. To sh
ow us that they’d infiltrated the highest rank of our intel without us knowing. And to massacre all of us on the spot. But only after they’d left. They had helicopters close by. And if my men and I had left, they’d have been on those helicopters. By the time we got back to camp, it would have been too late. Their ‘bombs’ would have been dropped, and we would have walked into torturous deaths.”
“Wait. You said you left.”
He nodded.
“I knew we didn’t stand a chance of getting them if we left that village. That we might never have another chance with all of the key figures together. I couldn’t risk another possible 9/11. Or any version of it. We circled back. We were all trained snipers, and the leaders were all in one place, gathering their things together to head in one caravan to the makeshift airfield. We took them out one by one.”
Okay. It was horrible.
But...good.
“There were two left, the father and the son. I faced them, head-on, with villagers all around us at that point, fearing for their lives. These weren’t men who could die for their cause. If they died, their cause went with him. The man pulled his son in front of him. The boy held a small black box. It had enough chemical in it to wipe out the village. His father said if I didn’t let them go, the one I didn’t kill first would detonate the bomb.
“The boy was crying. His eyes begged me not to hurt him...”
No. No more. She’d heard enough.
“I had one shot, one chance, to kill them both. I saw the shock in my little friend’s eyes and watched him die. Watched them both die...”
Tears poured down her face. She was sobbing and couldn’t stop.
Even then, Pierce sat before her, dry-eyed.
“You want to know the rest?”
There was more?
She didn’t nod consciously. It just happened.
“They didn’t really have a chemical weapon. They’d been ruling by fear. If we’d exposed them they’d have been prosecuted by their own people... When this became known, we knew we had to keep silent, or risk a furor of fallout. My men and I...we made a pact not to tell anyone what happened that day...”
He broke then. In his way. He didn’t sob. Or make any sound at all. He just sat there, tears streaming down his face.
Eliza went to him and held him. She cried for a while. And when she eventually calmed, she still held on.
He hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t moved. But a glance at his face showed her he was still grieving. She could see the glistening of wetness on his cheeks.
Eliza had no idea how long they sat there. Pierce moved eventually. Pulled her up onto his lap. Into her arms.
“There was no real threat. Just the power of possibility. Of fear. I didn’t have to do it, Liza,” he said to her in the darkness.
“You did what you believed you had to do,” she said, believing the words with all of her heart.
At some point, she shivered. He was concerned for her. She took the chance to convince him to climb into bed with her. She brought him a glass of water. Asked him where his sleeping pills were. He pulled a small vial out of his concealed carry holster.
She watched him put a pill in his mouth. Swallow.
And then she lay down beside him. Determined to hold him.
No matter what life brought them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PIERCE HAD EXPECTED his entire world to be different when he awoke. Eliza’s image of him had been forever changed. Their connection had ended.
Truth was, it had ended a long time ago. When she’d given up their baby and chosen to live as though he’d never existed. And when he’d looked in the face of a crying and frightened eight-year-old child and executed him.
Both acts, however justified, had changed them.
He and Liza had been living a lie all these years. She didn’t say much as they ordered room service before heading down to catch their ride to the airport. She didn’t eat much, either.
But she fussed over him like he was a bird with a broken wing.
He let her. Because it was easier than talking.
They would eventually. He was certain of that.
But not until they were home. Not until they’d both had time to rest. Process.
Not when the pain was so raw. Not many good decisions came out of reaction to pain. You chose the easiest way to rid yourself of the pain, which usually meant a quick fix that worked only in the moment.
Margie and the new check-ins were waiting for them when they got back to Rose Harbor. The hot water heater had gone out. Which sent Pierce to Charleston for a replacement. He had to rent a truck to get the hundred-gallon monster back to the island.
By the time he got home, the old one had drained. It was ten o’clock that night before the water was hot again.
He fell into bed, with Eliza beside him, and slept.
Without pills.
The rest of the week passed quietly. Busily, but quietly. Eliza was focused on her guests. Taking back the inn, she said once. He started to ask her what she meant by it but stopped. He didn’t want to go there.
Didn’t want to open a door that would force them to look at their future.
Or even to talk about having one.
Right now, he needed her. She seemed to need him.
And that was enough.
For the moment.
* * *
THE FINAL ROUND category was casserole. Eliza knew what she was going to make. She just wasn’t sure about her timing. It was a dish her grandmother had called the all-in-one. It was delicate and classy, yet down-to-earth enough for less cultured tastes. It was great for an occasional dinner meal served at an inn because it pleased most palates. It was her all-in-one.
And in her mind, the sure dish to please gourmet chefs and the child judge at the same time.
The only problem was, she had to shave half an hour off the cooking time. She used canned beans instead of soaking dried ones overnight. The dish called for two meats—one pork, one poultry or lamb. Normally she browned one meat, and then in those drippings, the other, then browned her onions, added the celery, garlic and wine and boiled it until the wine reduced before adding the chicken stock, tomato sauce and beans. Now she cut down part of the time by cooking both meats at once and then combining their drippings to do the vegetables. She sliced off another ten minutes by letting the wine reduce while already in the company of the broth and sauce.
She just wasn’t sure how it was all going to taste. But to be safe, on Thursday night, when she served Margie and Pierce with her finished product, she used twice the butter-rubbed croutons—big chunks made out of a day-old baguette—for the top of the casserole. She panicked for a second when she couldn’t remember if she’d ordered the day-old baguette for the show, but then remembered that she had.
It had been like that all week. She’d been fine. And then she’d panicked. Fine and then panic.
It was as though everything rested on the win. If she won, her life would be okay. If she lost, everything was going to fall apart. She was being irrational. She knew that. And yet it felt real. If she won, she’d have something to start with, to build upon. She’d be somebody good no matter what else fell apart in her life. She’d have something to hold on to if everything else disintegrated.
She’d have the sense of self-worth that she’d been lacking her entire life.
Her son hadn’t called. He hadn’t texted, emailed, contacted her on social media or shown up at her door. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even been back to the agency, asking for her. The one thing they’d been able to do for her was inform her if he was in possession of her current information.
She’d hadn’t heard from them.
“I heard from Ryan this afternoon,” Pierce told her while they were packing Thursday ni
ght. It was the first time they’d been alone together since they’d gotten up that morning. Pierce had gone back to the precinct the day before but wasn’t officially starting back to work until Monday.
He’d said there was no way he was sending her to California alone.
“What’d he say?” Hard to believe that she’d been so consumed by the pranks that had happened at the studio. By one warning to stay away.
“They couldn’t get an ID off the card prints.”
“With so much forensic stuff on TV, you’d have to be pretty dumb not to know to wear a pair of gloves if you’re going to threaten someone. We’re still probably just dealing with an amateur.” She was shocked to hear her world-weary tone. Had she grown that disillusioned in such a short period of time?
Pierce was quiet, so she glanced his way to find him grinning at her.
“There were prints on the card, Liza. Just no match in any database.”
“Oh.” Most of the contestants weren’t in police databases. Pierce had already told her that.
“Nothing turned up with Grace or Daniel,” he told her—the first hint of a real conversation between them. It was his treatment of Daniel that had prompted him finally to confide in her about his past.
A tragic, horrible, unfair past. Difficult choices that had irrevocably changed him...
“I knew they wouldn’t,” she said softly. She wanted to help him. But what could she do that professionals over ten years had been unable to do? She knew full well that there were just some things that changed you irrevocably.
“He’s hiding something.”
Pierce’s comment took away another vestige of what little hope she had left. Even knowing his issues, he couldn’t let go of the boy. She let go of the conversation.
Chose the red patent leather shoes she wanted to go with her dress. Went to her jewelry box for the big red enamel and gold-plated button earrings and matching necklace...
“At this point, they’re just going with the increased security measures for the final week. And the scanning of everyone entering and exiting the studio. Are you okay with that?”
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