Breaking Free

by Teresa J. Reasor

  ****

  Hawk closed the car door and put the key in the ignition.

  “You guys can drop me back off at the apartment if you want,” Doc said from the back seat. “Now that Cutter’s awake, you’ll have people you’ll want to call, and stuff you’ll need to do.”

  Hawk looked over his shoulder at him. “We have to eat first. You can share a meal with us, then I’ll run you home.”

  Doc nodded.

  Hawk gave Zoe’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Her eyes and nose were red from crying and she still looked a little shaky, but she offered him a smile.

  On the way home, he kept a running dialogue with Doc about the best restaurants in San Francisco, and their locations. Marjorie’s suggestion of a romantic weekend trip had taken root. He wanted to have the whole thing planned before he sprang it on Zoe as a surprise. Now that Cutter was awake, they’d have no reason not to go.

  The house smelled like the spices and cooking tomatoes, Zoe had put in the crock-pot that morning for some kind of pasta dish. Her being here had made the house feel more like a home. Though he had been trying to build one by himself, it still retained a little of the aura of a crash pad for when he was in the states, or doing more training.

  “How’s the rec room coming?” Doc asked.

  “I’ve put primer on the walls, but I haven’t gotten them painted yet.”

  Zoe turned and grasped Doc’s arm, the unexpected movement catching Hawk’s attention.

  “Did you do something to hurt my brother, Doc?”

  The question dropped like a bomb from the blue had Hawk’s heart stuttering. She was standing too close if the man decided to go off. Hawk stepped forward and reached for her arm.

  Doc’s features went still with shock then paled. “No-no I didn’t.” He shook his head, but there was something resigned in the way he said it. And instead of the instant anger Hawk had expected, he slumped down on the couch and ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t hurt him, but I didn’t do all I could to save him either. Not like Hawk.”

  Zoe eased down in one of the chairs as though her legs had given out.

  Hawk shook his head. What the man said wasn’t exactly right. He was the team’s best medic. Though they all knew how to render first aid and give pain meds in a pinch, Doc knew his stuff. “You kept him going until we got to the extraction point, Doc. You bound my knee and kept me going until then, too.”

  “But I didn’t go into the building after him. I knew the damn thing was going to blow at any minute, and I couldn’t get my ass moving to go after him. I couldn’t even get my mouth to work long enough to tell you he’d gone back in.” Doc’s eyes were glassy with emotion as he looked up. “All I could think about was my girl and how much I wanted to be home with her. And I froze.”

  He grasped his head as though in pain. “I just froze.” All the guilt and shame the man was feeling was right there on his face. “It was like it was all happening in slow motion. Then suddenly you were going back in and we waited for it to go up with both of you inside. Each second seemed like an hour. Then you were out, running with Cutter thrown over your shoulders and you had barely made it clear when the charges went off.”

  “You were down and covered in rubble. I still couldn’t move. I thought you were both dead. Bowie dragged me over to where you were. When we uncovered you, you both looked like ghosts covered with gray dust. It wasn’t until then that I could really move again, I could really even breathe.”

  “On the way back in the chopper, you gave us both pain meds and started an IV on Cutter, Doc.” You did everything you were supposed to do,” Hawk said. And he could have killed Cutter then if he’d really wanted him dead. Had they been suspicious for nothing? Was Cutter’s injury an accident and no one’s fault? If he’d been on his way out, why the hell had he gone back into the building?

  “I could have gotten him out before the charges went off, long before you had to go back in for him. I just sat there and stared at my watch as the seconds ticked away. Thirty seconds--a minute--two. I don’t know how long.” He fisted his hands in his hair and pulled.

  Hawk dragged a large ottoman over to sit on in front of him. “How many times have you dragged an injured man to safety, Doc? How many times have you kept one of us up and going, even when we were injured or sick? We’re all called on to do extraordinary things.”

  Doc shook his head and made a chopping motion with his hand. “I’m a SEAL for God’s sake. I’m not supposed to freeze up when things get tough. We train so that doesn’t happen.”

  “But we’re all human, not supermen. And we all have our fears, the fears that make you hear a hollow ringing in your ears and feel as though you’re going to heave. Mine is jumping out of an airplane at three thousand feet. I bet I can guess what yours is.”

  Doc drew a deep breath, and his features began to relax by degrees.

  Hawk leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “What would have made Cutter go back into the building knowing the timers were running out?”

  Doc clenched his hands on the arms of the chair. “I don’t know. The crazy son-of-a-bitch.” There was anger and guilt and pain all mixed up in the exclamation, but it sounded as though some of the anguish had leached out of Doc’s voice now that he’d talked about it.

  “Did you tell Captain Addison when he interviewed you?”

  “Yeah, I told him Cutter went back into the building, but I didn’t know the reason. And I told him how you went in after him.”

  “What was Brett’s worst fear?” Zoe asked, her voice quiet. She had remained so still, so quiet, the entire time he had been talking to Doc, it drew both their attention.

  “I don’t know,” Doc said.

  “I just thought--I don’t think my brother had a death wish. And he had to have a strong motivation for going back into the building.”

  Hawk met her gaze. If Doc’s fear kept him out of the building, maybe Brett’s had had something to do with his going back in.

  Doc leaned back in his chair. He looked exhausted. “Since he doesn’t remember that day at all, I don’t know how we’ll ever know.”

  “How long’s it been since you slept, Doc?” Hawk asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “After we eat maybe you can crash in my room for a while, before I take you home.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  The fact that the man wasn’t arguing, pointed out how vulnerable he was right now.

  Zoe rose to her feet and offered him a hand. “If you feel up to it, I’d appreciate your taking over the grill. I don’t trust Hawk not to burn the beautiful steaks I’ve had marinating all day.”

  Doc looked up at her and for a moment Hawk saw his eyes grow glassy as though tears weren’t far off. With an effort he shook it off, took Zoe’s hand, and got to his feet. “I’ll make sure they don’t burn.”

  “Good.”

  After he had the grill lit, and the steaks on, Hawk put Doc in charge of watching while he came back into the kitchen for a moment of privacy with Zoe.

  “He would have no more hurt Brett than you,” she said softly as she tore lettuce up in a bowl.

  “No.” He helped himself to a beer from the fridge. “If he’d really wanted to, he had too good an opportunity to do it before we made it back to the hospital.”

  “All that guilt because he didn’t live up to his idea of what he was supposed to be. You guys carry a heavy weight with that SEAL code of honor.”

  He didn’t know whether to read criticism into the remark or not. “Yeah, I guess we do.”

  She rested her hands on the table and swallowed as though it were difficult. “Thank you for going into that building and saving my brother’s life.” Her voice dwindled away toward the end as she struggled to maintain her composure.

  Hawk rested an arm around her waist and brushed her temple with his lips. “He’d have done the same for me, Zoe.”

  She turned and slipped her arms around his waist and held on tight for sev
eral moments. She looked up at him. “Wonder if Brett will ever remember?”

  “I don’t know, baby. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Do you think we were suspicious and worried for nothing?”

  Hawk wished he could say yes. But that handprint on Brett’s cheek still bothered him. It bothered him a lot.

 

  CHAPTER 21