It was time to let Lainey hear what kind of life he’d led since he’d left St. Claire eleven years ago. His decision made, he took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and walked inside.
Chapter 14
Lainey could tell something had upset Ash the minute he walked back into her room. She’d never seen a grimace like the one he had now. and her first thought was of Max. She tried to push herself up in the bed. “Is something wrong? Has something happened to Max?”
Ash hurried to her and laid a restraining hand on her shoulder then eased her back down. “No. I just talked to Reese. Everything is fine at the center.”
She searched his face for a hint of what was wrong, but all she saw in his eyes was the hooded look she had once known so well, the one that meant he was keeping something from her. “Ash,” she said, “I’m going to imagine all sorts of things if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
After a few minutes he took a deep breath and slumped down in a chair beside her. “Lainey, I have something to tell you.”
The despair in his eyes frightened her. Whatever it was, it seemed to be tearing him to pieces. She nodded. “All right. I’ll listen.”
He leaned forward, spread his legs apart, and clasped his hands between his knees. “I’m not the man you knew eleven years ago. I thought I’d seen a lot of horrible things in combat, but with Firebrand I’ve seen and done things that nobody ought to have to experience. I’ve never talked to anybody about it except Reese and Colt, but now I have to tell you something that I wish I didn’t.”
She struggled to remain calm and nodded. “What is it?”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. “A few years ago we were assigned a mission in Mexico. The area that we went to had been overrun by a vicious drug cartel headed by a man named Eduardo Diaz. He’s better known as El Jefe which means The Boss, and the name strikes terror in everybody who’s ever heard it. At Lugar de la Vergüenza he had expanded his organization into a new location, and they were terrorizing everybody in that part of the country. Not only were they distributing drugs from there, but they were also involved in a human trafficking operation. I was in charge of the Firebrand team that was sent in to support the local police on a raid of the camp where they’d set up headquarters.”
He stopped talking and squeezed his eyes shut as if he was trying to block a terrible memory from his mind. She reached out and touched his arm. “Are you okay, Ash?”
He nodded and laced his fingers with hers. “There was a highway that ran through that area, and it was a major route for smugglers known as coyotes who brought bus loads of people up from the south and smuggled them into the United States. The cartel had started targeting these buses and other cars traveling that road. They’d attack them and take the people prisoner. Then they’d sell the healthy ones into slavery. The women were sold for prostitution, and the men were sent to work on large farms as slaves or to be male prostitutes.”
Lainey’s stomach roiled. “And the children?”
“The younger ones were killed, and the older ones sold into slavery as well.”
She felt like she was about to throw up, and she reached for a tissue on the bedside table. She pressed it to her mouth for a moment and then directed her attention back to Ash who was staring at her. “That’s horrible. How could anyone be so cruel?”
Ash shook his head. “I don’t know. Our assignment was to raid the camp, rescue the people who were being held there at the time, and put an end to the drug trade at that location.” He stared down at their hands for a few moments before he continued. “It was after dark when we got there, and we spread out in concealed positions around the camp. We could tell right away that they’d been tipped we were coming. There was a lot of activity going on with men bringing boxes out the front doors of a large building and loading them into trucks. They wanted to save as many of their drugs as they could. But we noticed something else right away that turned my stomach.”
“What?”
“It was a smell, a horrible stench that hung over the area. I’d been around enough dead bodies on the battlefield that I knew it was the smell of death. I just didn’t know where it was coming from. I took some of the police officers with me, and we worked our way around through the forest until we were at the back of their camp, and that’s when I saw the source of the odor.”
He stopped as if he couldn’t go on, and Lainey squeezed his hand. “What was it?”
His nostrils flared as if he was reliving the moment. His eyes blazed with anger, and he gritted his teeth. “There were stacks of rotting corpses all across the back of the camp. I could see arms and legs and heads all tangled together in one big mass of human decay. I thought I’d seen horrible things before, but it was nothing like what I saw that night. And there were tiny hands sticking out, and I knew they belonged to children.”
Lainey squeezed his hand tighter and blinked back her tears. “Oh, Ash, how horrible.”
“Yeah, but it got worse. The local police that were with me went berserk when they saw that. They charged through the back door of the building that the cartel had been emptying, and without waiting, they began to shoot everybody inside. I later counted twenty men they killed before I could calm things down. The bad thing was that those killed weren’t part of the cartel. They were men who’d been kidnapped from a bus and brought there. The cartel members had run out of the building when the police burst in, but they’d left their prisoners with guns taped to their hands, tape over their mouths, and ski masks over their faces.”
Lainey’s eyes grew wide. “They were decoys so the cartel members could make their escape?”
“Yes. Of course when the cartel members ran out of the building, our men on the front attacked. By the time I got the situation inside the building under control and joined our men outside, it was almost over. Several of the cartel members had escaped, and I saw one running for a car that sat at the edge of the camp. I took off after him and yelled for him to stop. Just as he got to the car, he turned and aimed his gun at me. I shot him, and he dropped to the ground. He raised his gun once more, and I shot again. Then he lay still. I had killed him.”
His shoulders drooped, and he looked at her as if he was asking for forgiveness. She frowned. “But Ash, he was trying to kill you.”
He nodded. “I know. But that raid has haunted me ever since. I let things get out of control. I should have done something to save those innocent men who died, and I should have gotten my men there earlier.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because we found out later that they had hijacked a bus that morning, and they left the camp with all the women and children they’d kidnapped that day right before we arrived. If I’d gotten there even fifteen minutes earlier, I could have saved them. We never found them.”
“Oh, Ash, I. . .”
He kept talking as if he hadn’t even heard her. “At night when I close my eyes, I still see those rotting corpses, and I remember what the faces of the men with tape over their mouths looked like when I pulled their ski masks off. I wonder where those lost women and children are and what their lives are like. And I remember how Eduardo Diaz’s son looked when I killed him.”
Lainey’s eyes grew large. “It was Eduardo Diaz’s son you killed?”
Ash swallowed. “Yes. Knowing the connections that man has, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he knows Max is my son and that he had me brought back here so I could see my son die just as his did.”
Lainey didn’t say anything for a moment as she digested all that Ash had just told her. After a moment she sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side so that they sat facing each other. “Do you blame yourself for what happened that night, Ash?”
He nodded. “I was the leader. Reese and Colt have told me over and over that it wasn’t my fault, but it was. I didn’t save the innocent ones, and now I’ve put you and Max in danger.”
He let his chin dip against his chest, and he stared down at the floor. She put her fingers under his chin and tilted his head up until he stared at her. “Do you remember right after you came home you told me that Firebrand had done a lot of good things that allowed Max and me to live in a free country in the lifestyle we chose?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think I was angry at you when I said it.”
She smiled. “We’ve had quite a few heated arguments since you’ve been back because neither one of us has been able to put past conflicts behind us. But you need to think of this mission in the same way that you’ve looked at others.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Well,” she said, “for starters think about the people in that area of Mexico. You helped close down the cartel there, and now they can be happy knowing that the danger that surrounded them is gone. And people traveling on the highways don’t have to be afraid of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Just think of all the people you did save. Not the tragic losses that occurred. You set out to stop evil, and you did.”
His eyes searched her face. “You don’t hate me because I’ve put you and Max in danger?”
She shook her head and cupped the side of his face with her hand. He closed his eyes and sighed as she caressed his cheek. “I don’t hate you, Ash.” They sat without speaking for a moment as she continued to stroke his cheek. “Do you remember when we first met I told you I didn’t think you could ever know someone until you saw what was hidden in the inner parts of their soul?”
He nodded. “Yes. It was that day in the trailside shelter when we met in the rain.”
“For the first time I think you finally let me see what’s inside that hardened shell you’ve kept around you for so long. Thank you for giving me a glimpse of how you really think and feel.”
“And thank you for not hating me.” He took a deep breath and stared into her eyes. “But there’s more.”
The tone of his voice sent fear racing through her, and she swallowed hard. “What is it?”
“Eduardo Diaz has been located in Mexico City, and there’s a Task Force getting ready to raid his safe house. I’m going to Mexico so I can be with the assault team when they go in.”
Her heart pounded as if it was going to burst through her chest, and she sat up straight in the bed. “No!” she said. “I don’t want you to do that. You’ve retired from that lifestyle. Let the authorities take care of it.”
He wrapped both his hands around hers and sighed as his thumb caressed her knuckles. “Lainey, I’m a soldier. I may not be in active service anymore, but I’ll always be a soldier. And this is what I do. I hunt down the bad guys and try to make the world a little safer for the people living in it. I have to go to Mexico, and I have to try to stop Diaz.”
She started to withdraw her hand, but the pleading look in his eyes pierced her heart. This was the root of the problem between her and Ash. He loved the adventure of the life he’d chosen, but she’d been afraid for his safety. While she had looked at his choices as a way of rejecting her, he had wanted her to see the driving force that made him want to rid the world of those who would threaten the safety and security of millions of people. He’d done that for years, completing missions for which he’d never receive recognition. But in his eyes his greatest reward had been knowing he’d done his job well.
She smiled and nodded. “Then go to Mexico. But I’m warning you, Ash DeHan, you’d better come back to me this time or I’ll come looking for you.”
He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Lainey,” he whispered, “I’ve missed you so much. All these years I never forgot you.”
“I didn’t forget you either, Ash.”
He stared at her for a moment before he reached for her and wrapped her in his arms. She closed her eyes as he drew her to him and cradled her against his body. She could feel the beat of his heart as she rested her cheek against his chest. “Lainey, I want to come home,” he whispered. “Really come home and be a father to Max and see if we can find our way back to each other. I want it more than anything, but if you don’t, tell me now.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she drew back and stared at him before she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Welcome home, Ash.”
He closed his eyes and pulled her to him until their foreheads touched. “I love you, Lainey,” he whispered.
“I never quit loving you, Ash.”
Then his lips met hers in a kiss that set her pulse to racing. For the first time in years she felt alive. There were problems to be faced, not the least of which was Eduardo Diaz. But for this moment in time, she wanted to bask in the glow of sweet reunion for a few minutes until Ash had to leave for a mission that was the most personal of all he’d ever undertaken.
She closed her eyes and mentally breathed a prayer to God. “Watch over him, and please bring him back to me.”
<><><>
Twenty-four hours later Ash sat in the back of a commercial van in a middle class neighborhood of Mexico City. Even though the temperature outside was in the low 80s, it felt twenty degrees higher inside the cramped quarters. Sweat ran down his face, and he blinked at the salty sting it produced in his eyes. Chris White of the DEA who sat facing him from the opposite bench along the van’s side wiped at his forehead and then slid his hand down the front of his combat vest.
Ash had no idea how many times through the years he had sat and waited just like this for a raid to begin. Patience was the name of the game at this point, and nothing could be rushed. He leaned back in his seat and tried to concentrate on the two reasons he was here—Lainey and Max.