“Wooooohoooo!” Danny bolted over the low wooden fence to the neighboring farm. “Hey, guys, can I catch tadpoles, too?”
The three very grubby McCluskey kids turned with friendly smiles. Jenny handed him a net, and Luke put a jar beside him.
“He’ll be cold,” Beth said softly, watching as Danny got his track pants wet wading into the waterhole.
“He can warm up later. Boys don’t notice the cold—or mud.” McCall’s voice was warm with affectionate laughter as he watched Danny wipe mud on his face like warrior’s paint, the way Matt and Luke had. “He’ll come back home coated in muck, happy and hungry, and will whine his way through a shower—that is, if he comes home at all. Knowing Mitch and Lissa, they’ll keep him until at least tonight if you’ll let Danny stay.”
He didn’t look at her as he spoke. No inflection resonated in that deep, smoky voice. Yet in its smallest corners she heard the lingering…the expected rejection of anything he suggested. He expected her to disrespect anything he said, to argue with anything he wanted. Why, why did she only seem to hurt the people she would give her life to protect from pain?
“I think that would do Danny the world of good, especially since he didn’t get to camp with Ethan for long.”
“I’ll call Lissa and let her know we’ll pick Danny up later, then.” He didn’t look at her; he nodded, watching the kids play. Keeping a distance from her greater than the few feet that separated them. As if they hadn’t shared laughter minutes before, or he hadn’t even seen the look on her face moments ago, or as though he couldn’t bring himself to trust it. Couldn’t trust her.
A deep breath for courage, then she said softly, “Why are we here? I can sense your tension, the secret you’re keeping. What is it you’re not telling me?”
He hunched into his long coat, then said it. “You want to be safe. Right? You want to be safe from Danny’s father for good.”
Not knowing what to say to that, she nodded.
He turned toward the sun, which was slowly falling behind the western hills. He lifted his face, as if needing the warmth, or maybe he didn’t want to look at her. “I can arrange it.” When she didn’t speak, surprise rendering her silent, he went on. “They’re not just idle words, Beth. It’s all arranged.”
“What is?” she whispered, aching to touch him, to take the frozen night inside of him and bring him to the sun he sought so desperately.
“Say the word, and your former life is wiped, yours and Danny’s both. I can give you both new birth dates, whole new lives. All you have to do is agree. I can fix it so that you’ve been my wife for the past seven years, with a birth certificate and Australian citizenship, and Danny, my legal son. In the eyes of the law, he’ll be my flesh and blood child.” He still didn’t turn to her, even when she gasped. “I have all the legal paperwork; the data’s ready to go into the register. Lissa and Mitch are waiting to enter the marriage in an old church register, and sign any documents as our witnesses. Another operative is at a Sydney hospital, ready to enter Danny’s name as having been born there, three months before his real birth. As far as the world would be concerned, Suzanne Elizabeth McCall is my wife, and Joshua Daniel McCall, our son.” He shoved his bunched fists inside his coat pockets. “All you have to do is agree.”
Oh, sweet heaven, and she’d mistrusted this man? Her eyes stung and burned. “You can do all that? You’d do that for me?” She couldn’t seem to talk above a whisper.
A single jerk of his averted head. “But it won’t hold up in court if anyone can verify your ID with fingerprints or DNA as another man’s wife, and there’s a full investigation. It’s legal so long as you’re a single woman, as you said you are.”
She gulped so hard it felt as if she’d dislodged a tendon there. “I told you the truth. I never married Danny’s father.”
Watching the kids as if his life depended on it, he muttered, “Then our marriage will be legal. If you want it. Your call.”
Implications and ramifications walloped around in her head like warriors in savage battle, but her heart grasped only two things: she and Danny could be safe permanently, and McCall was willing to mortgage his own life and future to make hers safe.
The terrified mother, the woman on the run too long, spoke first. “Do it.”
Without a word he turned and strode up to the house. For once, she was left chasing him. And suddenly, she knew she’d give everything she owned to be able to take back those terrible words of the other night. You can leave now. You got your reward…
She found him sitting over a laptop computer. The strange buzzing sounds of connection to the Internet filled the room. “It will only take ten minutes, so be sure you want this. It isn’t so easily reversible.”
“A lot of things are hard to erase, no matter how much you want them gone,” she agreed softly, her gaze drinking him in, taking his pain inside her heart. “But this is one thing in my life I won’t regret…Brendan.”
Nothing. He just kept watching the screen, and punched in numbers. “Panther. Team Commander One. Go ahead with the operation.” He disconnected, and dialed another number. “Lissa? Hi, it’s Brendan. Can you tell Mitch the op is a go? You’ve signed the register already, haven’t you? Yes—thanks. Oh, by the way, Danny’s at the waterhole with your kids. Do you think you can—yes, we discussed it.” He listened for a moment, then gave his rich, strong chuckle. “Is that so? I think tomorrow’s fine, but you’d better check with Beth. Hang on, I’ll put her on.” He handed her the phone. “Lissa wants to know if they can keep Danny overnight. She says his presence is stopping Jenny from smothering Natalie to death with love.” His eyes twinkled. “It appears he has a fan already.”
Despite her aching heart, she smiled as she took the phone. “Hi, Lissa. How are you?”
“Pretend to laugh, all right?” Lissa McCluskey said quickly. “I have something to say and I don’t want Brendan to know.”
Intrigued, Beth laughed, and waited for more.
“Beth, I like you,” Lissa said forthrightly. “I see a kindred spirit in you. And because I do, I want to stop you from making all the stupid mistakes with Brendan that I made with Mitch.”
“Oh, really?” Beth replied, chuckling through a throat that hurt. “What happened then?”
“If we’re kindred spirits, so are Mitch and Brendan,” Lissa went on. “Mitch was dumped on a church doorstep soon after he was born, rejected by his birth parents. And because of that, he never felt he was good enough for me. So when I started taking things out on Mitch—things that happened with my first husband that Mitch didn’t deserve—he took it as proof that I could never want him as a man, or ever truly love him. He was sure I was too good for him.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” Lissa’s voice was gentle, yet penetrating. “At least Mitch never really knew what he was missing. But Brendan…did you know he rarely sleeps more than fifteen minutes at a time, and it isn’t just because of his SEAL training?”
“Yes,” Beth replied quietly, as something small, cold and ominous snaked up her spine.
“You know we work with him—I saw it in your eyes this morning. Until we had the baby and semi-retired, offering the farm you’re on as a training facility, Brendan was our Team Commander. Mitch especially has worked with him, but we only got to know him well after he bought out the other half of our farm. We became friends, and he doesn’t have many because he won’t let them in.” Lissa sighed. “The reason he won’t sleep is because he talks when he goes into a deep sleep. He asks his mother to take him with her, that he’s sorry, he won’t be a bad boy if only she won’t leave him there with his dad. He also dreams of his father beating him up—he begs his dad to stop hurting him. We only heard him when we transported him home after a mission went bust last year—he was knifed almost in two. So he trained himself not to sleep. As Team Commander, he’s on call 24-7, and that suits him fine. He doesn’t have to dream of her then, doesn’t have to relive his mother walking out on him, and
whatever it was she said to damage him so badly.”
A slow, shaking hand came up to cover her mouth; she forgot to hide her emotions. “Dear God…”
“Yeah, exactly.” Lissa sighed. “Don’t destroy him, Beth. He’s already been abandoned one time too many.”
“Thank you, Lissa,” she whispered. “We’ll pick up Danny in the morning. I’ll call later to say good night, all right?”
“Sure, if I can pry Jenny away from him long enough. She seems to think she’s found the love of her life.” The cheerful mother-next-door came back. “Anything he can’t or won’t eat?”
The conversation turned prosaic after that…as ordinary as Beth’s shaking voice would allow. When she hung up, she stood lost in thought until McCall broke into her thoughts with a voice as cool and remote as New Zealand’s snowcapped peaks. “It’s all done. Here’s your marriage certificate. I have a ring, too.” He handed her a small box. “Get another one if you don’t like it. And we’d better train Danny to call me Daddy. It’s for his safety. People on the hunt may be less likely to look twice at a secure-looking family to find the boy…or you.” He spoke with a clinical, detached air, as if he had no emotional input in either the certificate or the ring, or in what Danny called him.
Having heard all Lissa McCluskey said—or left unsaid—Beth now knew better. “Thank you, Brendan,” she said quietly, as she opened the box with hands that trembled a little. “Oh,” she gasped. “Brendan…it’s—it’s so lovely…”
And it was. The soft tulip pattern engraved on the simple rose-gold wedding ring gave it an aura of commitment and caring, sweetness and sharing that choked her up. “Where did you get it?”
He shrugged. “My McCall grandmother left it to my sister Meg in her will, but she’d gone with Mom. I hid it from Dad—he’d have only sold it for booze or gambled it. Figured I could start a family tradition or something. But if you don’t like it—”
She couldn’t stand it any more—she’d do anything to give warmth and light to that chilled, dark soul. With two quick steps she was crouched beside him, her hand on his. “Don’t you ever say that again,” she uttered with all the ferocity she felt. “This ring is beautiful and special, and I love it, Brendan McCall. Now I want you to do something for me.”
He eyed her with all the wariness a man would give to a wild animal, or a vision he couldn’t believe in. “What?”
She held out both hands, the box in her right, and her left bare. She kept her gaze locked on his, knowing that her eyes shimmered with tears unshed. “Marry me for real, Brendan McCall. Make me your wife. Be my man…in more than just name.”
He looked at her fully then, his gaze hot and black as the smoke of hell burning. “Don’t, Beth. If you’re going to leave, walk out now. The marriage is still legal. You and Danny are still safe. And I won’t stop you, or chase you. But don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping. You haunt me too much now.”
It was now or never. A tear fell down her cheek as she told him the unvarnished truth. “I deserved that, for saying what I did. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I didn’t want to, but I had to save you,” she whispered. “Danny’s father killed a man before, just because he helped me get away. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, too.”
Looking deep in his eyes, she saw the flinching, an infinitesimal recoil that showed how little he believed her. “I said don’t. I don’t need a pretty send-off in bed to thank me for your freedom.” His words were gut-raw, as blunt as a knife sawing at his skin and as black as the smoke in his eyes. “And you didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. This marriage won’t be real. We both know you can do a lot better for yourself than me.”
Tears rushed to her eyes as she watched him force his attention back to the details on the laptop. “No, Brendan, it’s not true. You saved my life, saved Danny—”
“That’s what I do.” His mouth tightened, but he kept typing. “What I am is a snot-nosed punk who thought with his fists for too long. That’s why my mom walked out on me. She said I’d end up like my dad—a foul-mouthed, hard-ass drunk who beat the crap out of everyone he met. She only took my sister with her, and it didn’t matter if he took it all out on me.”
His unemotional recounting of Lissa’s painful tale of his life seemed more harrowing to Beth. She felt torn apart, raw and bleeding from internal wounds—his wounds. She ached to comfort him, but it wouldn’t help now—only truth and justice could neutralize the poison rotting his soul. Still crouched in front of him, she laid her hands on his thighs, gripping them hard. “Was she right? Are you just like him?” she asked fiercely.
His hands froze over the keyboard. “I just told you—”
“You told me your past. Tell me your present. Are you like him? Are you?”
“I’m a professional killer,” he said harshly. “You tell me, am I like him, or even better? Or should that be, even worse?”
“You’ve never taken one life without government sanction, and even then, I bet you hated it. I know you did.”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice was gravelly. “I remember the name of every person I’ve been assigned to kill.”
The stifled anguish in his voice pulsed into her like a living thing…and she knew this was another reason for his sleepless nights. “Doesn’t that make you a person of conscience?” she asked quietly. “Those people are—were—real to you.”
“Not Stephen. He was my cousin,” he said slowly. “I hated the little weasel. I beat him up twice. My mother called me a barbarian.”
“How old were you?” she demanded, hating a woman she’d never met with all her heart and soul, for the damage she’d done to an impressionable little boy.
“Five the first time.” He threw it at her like it was something awful. “Eight the second time. Mom left that night.”
In other words, he’d driven her to leave—or so little Brendan had thought. “What did that boy do to you?”
He shrugged. “He pinched me the first time. He didn’t touch me again after I hit him, though he smirked when Mom forced me to apologize. The second time he tried to play “show and tell” with my sister. Meg was a gentle kid who liked to draw and play with her dolls, and the little pervert lifted up her dress, even when Meg cried and said no. I got mad, like dear old Dad, and broke his collarbone. Mom couldn’t stand the shame of it. She said leaving me with Dad was my punishment for acting like a wild animal. She wouldn’t let me contaminate Meg with my bad ways.”
Beth’s heart bled for the child inside the man she loved. How could any mother be so cruel? Had that woman ever taught him how to behave, or shown a little faith in him so that he could have some in himself? Or had she found a convenient scapegoat for her own shortcomings as a mother…an eight-year-old scapegoat? “Did you keep doing that?” she asked, somehow sensing that, as shocking as it was that any mother could leave a little boy with a man she knew would abuse him, that this wasn’t the full crux of his self-hate. “Did you beat up everyone you met?”
He turned away, slamming the laptop closed. “For a while, yeah. Then, just before Dad died, I ran away. I joined a street gang in South Central L.A., and I did what it took to belong.”
As protected as she’d been, even she’d heard of the notorious activities of street gangs. She couldn’t hold back the shudder. “Did you—”
“Steal cars? Steal liquor and drink myself stupid? Attack other kids who invaded our turf? Break into stores to get TV’s and stereos to sell off for booze and drugs?” he asked brutally. “Well, that’s what you have to do to belong, right?”
“No!” she cried, shaking her head in vehement denial. “No, I don’t believe it. You wouldn’t have gotten into the SEALs with that kind of record. And you wouldn’t join the navy and hide your past, not with that on your conscience. I know you too well to believe it.”
McCall slanted her an odd, almost disbelieving look. “You can’t know that.”
“I do know! Don’t tell me you did any of that, because I won’t bel
ieve it! How long were you a part of the gang, and when did you get out?”
He shrugged, his mouth tight.
“How long before you left? How long?” she almost yelled.
He shrugged again. “A few months. My friend Casey came to see me. She was the only nice kid at school who’d ever liked me. She was a nurturer, I guess…one of those girls who’d pick up wild strays and nurse them. But when she came, it was my “jumping in” night, when all the kids would beat me up to see if I was tough enough to take it. I was—hell, Dad had probably broken just about every bone in my body already—but Casey wasn’t.”
This was it. She felt it, knew it. “What happened to her?”
“She got there just as it was about to start. She hugged me, and one of the girls—hell, some of them were worse than the boys—said hey, girlfriends get jumped, too. Casey was terrified. She begged me to get out, to leave with her then. She said I was better than this. But I was a guy, right? If Dad taught me anything, it was that I had to hang tough or lose respect. And where else would I go, home to Dad? I had to fight to keep my place, keep my respect. But I wasn’t letting Casey get hurt. So I stood in front of her and told them they’d have to go through me to touch her.” His fists clenched, and his face whitened, cold and hard.
“Tell me,” she said quietly.
“You don’t defy anyone in a gang. Twenty of them jumped me. I couldn’t fight them all; most of the kids were bigger than me. I told Casey to run, but the girls made her watch while the boys beat me unconscious, then they turned on her.” He squinted, staring out the west-facing window to the deep, peaceful indigo of the afternoon sky. He looked like a sculpted piece of marble, cold and uncaring, but his hard, flinty voice told her the truth. “They left her in a gutter near Santee Alley. Thank God someone found her in time to save her life, but she was in the hospital for six weeks.”
“How long were you in the hospital?” she asked softly.
“You don’t get your hurts seen to in a gang, Beth. You have to be tough and show them all you can take it. I couldn’t walk or eat for a couple of days. By the time I could, I was out of there. When I found Casey, she wouldn’t see me. Her family guarded the room and threatened to call the cops on me if I didn’t get out and stay away. So I headed back to the docks. Dad had been buried the week before. The house was rented. All his stuff was gone. So I walked around the city for a day or two. I woke up in an alley filled with the smell of vomit, and worse. I looked at myself and felt sick. Just as my mom predicted, I was turning into Dad. I was hungry and hurting, lost and sick at heart. So I handed myself in to a welfare office. When I got out of the hospital, I was put in foster care south of Long Beach, away from my old life. I took my foster parents’ advice and went back to school. For Casey’s sake, I wanted to make something of myself. Show her I could be somebody, even though the family moved away as soon as she was out of the hospital. She was the only person who’d ever shown faith in me.”
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