Broken Honor (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Baltimore, Maryland

Five months later

The late-spring wind was pleasantly warm, chasing away the last vestiges of a stubborn winter as Quinn led Mara through the cemetery. He’d needed the surgery to remove the scar tissue sooner than he’d thought, and this visit had been postponed longer than he’d have liked. But after spending far too many of the last few month
s in the hospital, he enjoyed the walk, the warmth of the sun on his face, and the comfort of Mara’s hand in his.

Life was pretty damn good right now.

At the far end of the first row of graves, he stopped and let go of Mara’s hand to brush some dry leaves off the familiar tombstone. “Remember the old man I told you about? The one who set me on the right track with his stories of the navy?”

She nodded. “Froggy. Is this him?”

“Yeah. William ‘Bill’ Thomas Beaty. I didn’t know his real name until after he died. He’s always been Froggy to me.” He rested his hand on the tombstone. “And he’s been keeping secrets for me. Haven’t you, Frogman?”

“What secrets?” Mara whispered.

“Hang on.” He squatted in front of the tombstone, then used his Swiss Army knife to pry up a plaque engraved with the same cartoon frog he had tattooed on his arm. “Froggy didn’t have any family left—or at least, none that cared to give him a proper burial, so I bought his tombstone. Had it custom-made with this cubby, wanted to make sure he always had his favorite drink. I used to come here once a year on the anniversary of my graduation from BUD/S to have a drink with him and thank him for steering me in the right direction, but I haven’t been back since before the car accident.”

Mara gasped. “The receipt in your book. It was for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“Yeah. And I’d been trying to read that damn book since before the accident even though reading gives me migraines now. Still, something told me I had to keep trying. I had to keep the book. And the receipt.”

Smiling, she crouched beside him. “Your subconscious at work.”

“Apparently.” He reached into the cubby and pulled out an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Inside, swaddled in a waterproof bag, sat a small bundle the size of a flash drive. He grinned and held the bottle out for her to see. “Because I left something other than alcohol last time I was here.”

The flash drive.

He dumped it out of the bottle and turned it over in his hands. “Hard to believe all this for something so small.”

“And so big. Think of how many lives they’ve probably destroyed over the years. Not to mention the pain they’ve caused you and Gabe. And all for nothing more than money.”

“The great evil.”

“I suppose so.” Mara propped her head on his shoulder. “Now what?”

“I’ll have to get this into the proper hands, but at this point it’s just extra ammunition for an already loaded gun. Hell, for all I know, the FBI has the original files in hand by now.”

The two of them crouched there in the mud, staring at Froggy’s grave for several long seconds. Finally Mara tried to stand, but she couldn’t quite make it up.

Laughing, he pocketed the drive, then grasped her around the waist and lifted her to her feet. “C’mon, roly-poly.”

Once she was steady, she punched his arm. “Jerk. You never call a pregnant woman roly-poly.”

“Aw.” He leaned down, kissed her nose. “You know I think you’re adorable.”

“I don’t feel adorable,” she groaned and rubbed her belly. “I feel fat. But I’m hungry. Again.”

He bit back another laugh. He was a warrior, trained to know when to pick his battles, and this was one he’d definitely lose. “All right. Let’s get some food.” He linked their fingers together and led her toward the path that would take them to their car, but she pulled him to a stop.

“Wait.” She let go of his hand and walked back to Froggy’s grave. For a moment, she just stood there in front of it, not moving. Then she pushed up the sleeve of her shirt and undid the clasp of her father’s watch. She laid it on the stone and rested her hand on top of it.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for pointing my warrior in the right direction. I wouldn’t have found him otherwise.”

With that, she left the watch and rejoined him on the path.

“Are you sure you want to leave it?” he asked, throat tight.

She nodded. “It’s time for us both to let go of the past.” Smiling, she took his hand. “Now didn’t you say something about food?”

Epilogue

Christmas Day

If Mara didn’t already love Travis Quinn, the scene before her in the kitchen would have sealed the deal. He cradled their daughter close as he fed her a bottle and softly sang the lullaby his adopted mother used to sing to him. “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, that’s an Irish lullaby.”

Uninterested in the bottle, Bianca babbled, kicked her stockinged feet, and reached up with one chubby little hand to hook her fingers in his mouth. He laughed softly and set her down in her bouncy seat on the kitchen table. “All right, bumblebee I can take a hint. No more singing.”

And he’d thought he wouldn’t make a good father.

Mara couldn’t stay silent any longer and, fighting back a smile, cleared her throat. “She likes it when you sing to her.”

He looked up and color rushed into his cheeks. “Uh, hey. Did we wake you up?”

“No, BJ did, actually.” The dog in question trotted after her as she crossed the kitchen to the pot of coffee he already had brewed. “How’d Bianca do with her cereal this morning?”

“Beautifully.” Travis wiped the baby’s hands and face with a cloth, then unbuckled her from the seat and picked her up again. “We were just getting ready for a bath.”

The doorbell rang. BJ barked, startling the baby. She didn’t cry but gazed up at Travis with wide eyes as if asking,
What was that?
He soothed a hand over her head even as his muscles tightened. Mara noticed his other hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach for a gun.

Poor guy.

Adjusting to civilian life hadn’t been easy on him. In fact, the whole past year had been tough, and at times, Mara had truly feared they wouldn’t make it. Although she never doubted for a moment that he loved her and their daughter with everything he had in him, she’d had to resign herself to the fact that living with Travis Quinn would never be easy. Her warrior would always triple-check the locks on the doors at night and sleep with a gun nearby, and he would always tense at the idea of unexpected visitors. But looking at him standing there with their daughter cradled in his arms like she was the most precious thing in the universe…

Well, who wanted easy, anyway? As he liked to say, the only easy day was yesterday. And after all these years, he deserved to be loved. He deserved the family they were building together.

Mara set down her coffee, took the baby from his arms, and gave him a lingering kiss as the doorbell rang again. “It’s probably Lanie. She said she was coming by with some presents for Bee.”

“Wait.” He caught her hand and drew her back for another, longer kiss that made her legs go a little Jell-O. Yes, living with him wasn’t easy. But loving him? That was the easiest thing she had ever done, and she wouldn’t have him any other way.

Travis eased away from the kiss, smiled, and rested his forehead against hers.

“I love you.” The words no longer sounded rusty on his lips. He’d made a point to say them every day, and every day it still made her heart flutter to hear it. She hoped she’d have the same reaction fifty years down the road.

“I love you, too.”

The bell rang again—
buzz, buzz, buzz, buzzzzzz
—and BJ scampered toward the front of the house, barking. Mara laughed at the disgruntled look Travis shot toward the living room. “Go get the door before Lanie kicks it in. I’ll dress and change Bee, then we’ll be out.”

…

Quinn watched Mara walk toward the bedroom. She sang his Irish lullaby to their little girl, making Bianca giggle, but even the beautiful sound of the baby’s laughter did nothing to calm his racing heart. He shut his eyes. Breathed out in a huff. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so nervous.

Oh. Yeah, he could. It was when he’d showed up at her duplex wearing the World’s Greatest Dad T-shirt. That seemed like another lifetime n
ow.

Cursing under his breath at the doorbell and whoever was now leaning incessantly on it, he dropped the silver-wrapped ring box back into the pocket of his sweatpants. So much for his plans. He’d wanted to have the baby fed and clean by the time Mara woke. He’d figured that was more romantic than something like breakfast in bed, which would have been an impossible task since he couldn’t cook worth a damn and she had banned him from touching all kitchen appliances save for the coffeepot and dishwasher. But after a long night of making love to her, he’d awakened late, and prying himself out of bed had turned out to take more effort than he possessed. He had lain there for a good hour with Mara in his arms, enjoying the quiet, intimate moment. When he’d finally rolled over to coax her awake with another round of lovemaking, followed by the ring box and the question that had been burning a hole in his gut, Bianca’s waking burbles over the monitor stopped him and he’d decided to stick to plan A.

Which was now fubar’d due to the unexpected visitor.

And he hadn’t come up with a plan C. Dammit. How many backup plans did a guy need for a marriage proposal, anyway?

Okay, regroup and strategize. He had to do this right.

“Travis, are you going to get that?” Mara called.

He stalked through the living room, past the brightly lit Christmas tree—the first one he’d had since he was sixteen—and yanked open the door.

Lanie lifted her thumb off the doorbell. “About time. It’s cold out here.”

“It’s Texas,” he muttered. “It’s never cold. Have you heard of a phone?”

Without answering, she dumped a towering handful of presents in his arms and breezed into the house, shrugging out of her coat as she greeted the now ecstatic BJ and her best buddy, Hawkeye.

“Christ. What is all this?” He juggled the gifts over to the tree. Setting the pile down, he checked the top tag.
To: Bianca. From: Aunt Lanie.
“You spoil her.”

“Aw, what’s up with all the bah-humbugging, Quinn? Did we interrupt something?”

“Yeah, you did.” He straightened away from the presents and asked, “We?”

Lanie tilted her head toward the still-open front door, and he walked over to look out. Several cars and a van had filed into his driveway behind Lanie’s vehicle. Audrey and Raffi climbed out of the first car, Seth and Phoebe from the second. Jesse, Jean-Luc, Marcus, Ian, and Harvard were working at unloading more gifts from the van while BJ and Tank sniffed circles around each other.

And there was Gabe, lifting himself out of the first car’s backseat with Audrey’s help. He looked good. Strong. Healthy.

Except for the wheelchair.

It still twisted Quinn’s guts into ropes of guilt to see him in it. The bullet had damaged his spine, but his doctors had assured the paralysis was only supposed to be temporary. Nearly a year of therapy later, Gabe was slowly learning to walk again, and for a man who had despised using a cane, he was surprisingly carefree about the wheelchair. Quinn had never asked about it, but he suspected the way-too-fucking-close brush with death had given Gabe a new outlook on life.

Gabe wheeled himself up the sidewalk. Audrey rushed to help him navigate the one concrete step to the patio, but he waved her away, popped up the front end of his chair so that he was balancing on the back two wheels, and surmounted the step himself.

“Hey,” he said when he reached the door.

Quinn told himself to breathe past the lump in his throat. “New wheels?” The chair, with a short leather seat and sleek fenders painted with green flames, brought to mind a motorcycle.

“Yup. Custom painted by the great Audrey Van Amee Bristow.” He popped another wheelie and rolled forward and backward a couple times.

Audrey opened her mouth, the look on her face saying he was about to get a tongue-lashing. But before she got a word out, he caught sight of her and muttered a curse. He dropped all four wheels back to the ground and gave her his most innocent expression. “Happy now?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. “See if I help when you face-plant one of these times.”

“You tell him like it is, Audrey,” Lanie said. “These guys are so bullheaded, none of them know what’s good for them.” She scowled as Jesse approached with an armful of gifts and blocked his path. “Some more so than others.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he groaned. “Let it go already.”

“He got us lost on the way here,” she explained.

“No, I didn’t. I knew where I was goin’.”

Lanie harrumphed.

Huh
, Quinn thought and glanced back and forth between the two of them. “I don’t know if I should invite you two in. Those sparks get any hotter and you’ll burn down the Christmas tree.”

Lanie scowled. “What sparks? There are no sparks.” She turned on her heel and marched back inside. “Now where is that beautiful niece of mine? I want to hold her.”

Jesse chased after her. “Wait a minute, she’s more my relation than yours. I get to hold her first.”

For several beats after they disappeared, there was no sound on the patio.

“
So,
” Audrey finally said and grabbed the handles of Gabe’s chair to wheel him inside. “Looks like somebody’s met his match.”

Gabe winced and tilted his head back to look up at his wife. “Was I that surly when we met?”

“Yes,” Audrey and Quinn said at the same time.

“Well, fuck.”

“Hey, watch the language, man,” Quinn said and followed them in. “The baby doesn’t need to hear that.”

Mara joined them with the baby a few minutes later, and Bianca became the instant center of attention. She loved it, too, showing off to a captivated room by demonstrating her newest skill of rolling from her back to her belly.

Quinn would have laughed at his former teammates’ enthrallment if he wasn’t just as taken with his daughter.

While Bianca entertained the room, he took the opportunity to slip away and put on something other than sweats. In the bedroom, he pulled on one of his newer pairs of jeans and a button-down shirt. But before he joined the party again, he dug the ring box out of the pocket of his sweatpants, unwrapped it, and slid the ring into his jeans pocket. Maybe an opportunity would present itself to ask his question, and he didn’t want to be without the ring if that happened.

Quinn returned to the living room to a burst of laughter. Mara was sitting on the floor with Bianca, helping her tear open some of the gifts, but the baby was far more interested in Tank, who lay calmly at Ian’s feet and endured the ear pulling with the dog equivalent of an amused expression on his face. He seemed just as fascinated by the baby as everyone else.

Presents were passed and opened, and Quinn watched it all with a weird sense of detachment. Between the baby’s birth and his own medical issues, he hadn’t seen the guys much over the past ten months, and he felt the rift of his leaving the team more strongly now than ever.

He didn’t want to lose them.

And although he’d had the surgery to remove the buildup of scar tissue on his brain, he still wasn’t fit for active duty and never would be again. He had the migraines—fewer of them, sure, now that he’d come clean with his doctors and was more consistent about taking the pills to help control them—but that meant he’d never again work as an operative behind enemy lines.

Admittedly, he was still trying to be okay with that.

After the last presents were unwrapped, the room got quiet. Quinn was sitting in his favorite recliner with Bianca on his lap and Mara on the floor in front of the chair. She glanced back at him. “What’s going on?”

“Not sure.” He studied the team, noticed Gabe and Jesse exchanging a glance before Jesse left the room. “Gabe, what’s up?”

“We have one more present for you from Tuc.”

“Tucker Quentin?” Mara gasped.

“Yeah, he was sorry he couldn’t make it today to give it to you himself.”

“Oh, wow,” Mara said. “Tucker Quentin was going to come here? That…kind of blows my mind.”

Jesse returned with a large black leather document case and opened it on the coffee table. Quinn passed the baby to Mara and got up to study the documents. Or, actually, blueprints.

“You mentioned our need for training center once,” Gabe said and nodded at the blueprints. “There it is. All we need is land and someone to whip the fuc—” He stopped, shot a look at the baby. “Er, I mean train the new guys. Tuc wants to expand our operations, and we’ll need someone to provide a steady stream of well-trained, reliable men. There’s no better man for the job than you, Q.”

Stunned, Quinn set the blueprints down. “Where would we get the land?”

“Well,” Jesse drawled, “that all depends on Mara.”

“Me?” she asked. Then her eyes widened. “Oh. You mean Dad’s land? Well, yeah, that would be the perfect spot. My dad left me and my brother some land in Wyoming when he died,” she explained before Quinn could ask. “Matt doesn’t really want it, and my uncle—Jesse’s dad—is using some of it for the ranch, but it’s mostly just sitting there, untouched.”

Quinn met her gaze across the table, not daring to let himself hope. “Would you want to move to Wyoming?”

“I’d love to be closer to my family there. I don’t see them nearly enough, and with Mom still under Ramon’s thumb…” She shrugged. “There’s no reason for us to stay in El Paso. If this is what you want—and I know you do—I say go for it.”

“What about your job?”