They sat in breathless silence for another few minutes, then Garret slowly eased out a sigh.
“Traitorous bastards,” Zlatko mumbled. “The country dies for passion, and they kill for greed.” He changed position, and Garret could hear the sound of his sharply indrawn breath.
“How bad?” he whispered.
“Arm. Clean through, I think. Not bad.”
Garret nodded, automatically ripping off a strip from the bottom of his shirt. Zlatko presented his right arm, and Garret felt out the wound in the dark, tying the bandage accordingly.
“We still have a ways to go,” he said quietly.
“We’ll make it. We have to. We have the guns.”
Yes, the guns. Garret remembered the crate at his feet and felt the loathing once more. Moving his fingers around, he found one of the AK-47s and picked it up. Cold, solid weight. Effective.
They could wage a nice war with these. And suddenly, he could see the bodies all over the camp. The women and children, completely defenseless because he’d led their men away to save buildings. Buildings.
His hand tightened on the grip. He could train the men again, not to fight silly fires, but to seek, to destroy. One band of men, and they could win this bloody war, SEAL-style.
He knew how.
He could feel Zlatko’s eyes in the darkness, and the heavyset man laid a hand on his shoulder. “In time, my friend. In time. Together, we will avenge her, no? Together, we will make them pay.”
Yes, Garret’s mind agreed savagely, the raw, passionate need to act as pure as it had ever been. The Serbs had destroyed his friends, and he knew, he’d studied, he’d learned and he’d mastered the art of just how to make them pay.
He thought again of the crate of guns next to his feet, and the temptation was so strong it sent a shudder up his spine. To unleash the beast he’d been trained to be. To avenge his friends.
Except he couldn’t do it.
He wasn’t just a volunteer fighting fires. He was a SEAL on a covert mission, deep reconnaissance to trace the arms flow into Sarajevo. A SEAL who had to think of his country and his duty first.
And not the friends he’d made along the way.
He set down the gun and turned to Zlatko, his heart heavy, his shoulders slumped.
“Zlatko,” he whispered in the damp stillness of the pitchblack cave. “There’s something you should know.”
* * *
Garret’s eyes peeled open, and he looked at the smoke-filled sky for a full sixty seconds. He blinked twice, taking a mental inventory and discovering that he was indeed alive and back in Maddensfield.
He sat up slowly. His wrist hurt, and there was a dull throbbing at the side of his head. At this point, he either had an unusually thick skull, or his brains were simply so scrambled it didn’t matter anymore. He felt the growing lump and winced.
After another few minutes, he determined that no one was around anymore. Zlatko had left the area, but Garret would bet there was a note at the house. Moving slowly, he crept back through the grass.
The fire still burned, though not nearly as fiercely as before. His parents were sitting down now, a few neighbors in attendance. His mom had tears on her cheeks; he hadn’t seen her cry since Nick’s shooting four years ago.
He turned away and went looking for Cagney.
He found his brother behind the house, staring at the smoke-filled sky with his arms around a beautiful woman. She had long black hair with the most startling gray streak he’d ever seen. So this was Marina. He was about to step forward when a fireman came walking by.
He flattened himself against a tree, hearing the low murmurs of conversation. Then the fireman walked past again.
He slipped into the yard, and Cagney’s head immediately swiveled. Before Garret could say a word, Cagney’s eyes turned a dark, stormy gray. Even Marina carefully stepped back from her fiancé.
“So what did you do? Lock Suzanne in a closet?” Cagney growled.
“Not quite,” Garret replied evenly. The smoke stung his eyes, and looking at the burning remains of his childhood home, he didn’t feel up to a fight.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Cagney said flatly, “but that goes without saying.”
“He’s gone.”
“Who?”
“Zlatko. The one who set the fire.”
Cagney looked at his brother, then shook his head. “I gather your memory is returning.”
Garret nodded.
Cagney gestured at the house. “Too bad it wasn’t a little sooner, don’t you think?” The words were harsh, and gingerly, Marina placed a soothing hand on his shoulder. Garret saw the gesture, and it reminded him of Suzanne.
“I wish…” he began, searching for the words. “I wish…” He looked at the ruins again. “It was my home, too,” he said at last.
Cagney’s shoulders seemed to relax a fraction and he sighed. “So where do we go from here, brother? Is Suzanne’s house next?”
Garret shook his head. “I’m leaving. Zlatko wants me, and he’ll keep searching until he finds me. I think it would be easier if I found him first.”
“What did you do?” Cagney asked curiously.
“I betrayed him,” Garret admitted simply.
Cagney scoffed at that. “Hell, Garret, you’re the most loyal person I know.”
Garret nodded, a grim smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Precisely the problem.”
Cagney looked confused, but for some inexplicable reason, Garret didn’t feel like explaining. He didn’t want to talk to Cagney about it. He wanted Suzanne.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said shortly. “Sooner or later. I suppose there’s a note.”
Cage nodded, reaching into his shirt pocket. “Mom handed me this. She’s crying, Garret. Do you know the last time Mom cried?”
Garret nodded, wondering if he could feel any worse. He accepted the note and stuck it in his own pocket. “Was anything saved?”
“Couple of things. Your “friend” must’ve intended this only as a warning, because he woke Mom and Dad by throwing a stone tied with this note through the window. Of course, he’d already started the fire by then, but at least they were able to get out of the house. You know Mom—she made Dad grab Grandma’s rocker and she snatched her jewelry box. I pulled a lot of the living room stuff out.
“But I don’t think that’s what Mom’s worried about, Garret. She hasn’t seen you for nearly a year. And now she’s getting notes on her dining room table and someone sets her house on fire. They have insurance, so they can rebuild the house. What she really wants is her son.”
“Tell her I’m all right,” Garret said. “Tell her I get out of trouble now as well as I ever did and that I’ll see her in a week or two.”
“Garret, I don’t want to give her messages. I want to find this guy, Zlatko, so I can simply give her you.”
“No.”
“No? Garret, I’m your damn brother. And in case you haven’t noticed it yet, I have a star on my chest. I can do a thing or two, you know.”
“I know,” Garret said levelly. Then he grinned and pointed at his eye. “You’ve got a good right hook, too.” Then he sobered. “This is personal, Cagney. I need to take care of it myself.”
The sound of footsteps reached them, and Marina nodded toward an approaching fire fighter.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Garret,” she said softly, “but I think you’d better leave now. Don’t worry. Cagney and I will take care of things here.”
Garret looked at her, taking in her exotic beauty, and flashed his brother a knowing grin. He nodded to her, then crossed quickly back to the bordering field of grass, seeming to disappear before their very eyes.
Marina looked impressed, but Cagney simply shook his head and swore.
G
arret couldn’t find her in the house, though her car was still parked in the driveway. Her bedroom was empty, the living room, the kitchen. His room was empty.
He felt the first twinge of foreboding and began to search in earnest. Not the first floor, not the second floor. Maybe on the third? But the house only rang with the sound of her name, the rooms revealing no one.
He came downstairs in a flurry, wondering how he could have been so stupid. Zlatko had left the site of the fire, meaning he could have easily come here.
Garret felt the beginnings of panic and fumbled for the note he’d stuffed in his pocket. With trembling hands, he unfolded the thin paper.
Do you still remember the flames, the way they licked at your skin, before I pulled you from the building? I remember,
prijatelj.
I remember the flames and I remember the fury. Tonight, I fed the fire a snack. Tomorrow, it will be a meal.
He stared at the paper for a long time and felt the dread ripple like a snake down his spine. Suzanne. God, not her. He began tearing through the house with a vengeance.
But still there was no one.
He was about to put his fist through the wall in frustration when he suddenly noticed a thin beam of light in the backyard. Adrenaline pounding, he raced for the back door.
Suzanne.
She was on her knees in the garden, her white cotton gown now smeared with rich dirt as she worked the soil by the light of an upturned flashlight. She’d knotted her hair up, revealing the long, graceful column of her neck. As she bent down and tended her roses, she looked beautiful and ethereal.
His steps slowed and he swallowed hard. With the softness of a cat, he approached. She didn’t look up until he blocked her light.
“The fire?” she asked softly, her gaze falling back down to the mixture of ash and loam she was mixing into the soil around her roses. She continued kneading the ground with her pale fingers.
“The house is gone,” he said hoarsely. Her hands stilled, then dug back into the earth.
“Your parents?”
“They’re okay, I guess. For people who just watched all their belongings burn.”
She simply nodded and kept working. “Your parents are very strong.”
“They shouldn’t have to be this strong!”
She didn’t say anything at all, but moved on to the next bush. He remained standing, feeling the raw ache in his chest and wishing she would stop tending her damn flowers and really look at him.
“Suzanne, the fire was my fault, directed at me. And until I find Zlatko, things will only get worse. I remember, Suzanne. I know what happened.”
Abruptly, her hands stilled and then just as abruptly, dug deeply into the dark pungent earth with a harsh, compulsive motion. “So now you know everything?” she whispered, still not looking up.
“Yes, damn it.” He continued staring at the back of her head, but even with the full force of his glittering black gaze he could not make her stop. He squatted beside her, needing her to look at him, needing her to understand what he was about to tell her. “I was in Sarajevo,” he said hoarsely, his eyes intent upon her. “I went first on my leave just to volunteer as a fire fighter and maybe do some good. But then Intelligence approached me. Despite the embargo, weapons were still being smuggled into the country, fueling the war. They wanted to know how and by whom this was being accomplished. Then, if the UN or the U.S. became more involved, we would know where to start. So instead of going back to my team, I stayed, fighting fires during the day, making contacts and doing some probing at night.”
“I’m sure you did the right thing,” Suzanne said stiffly, her eyes still on her roses. They smelled sweet in the night air, soft and comforting. When all else failed, she still had her roses.
“Suzanne, I lived with these people for a year. I ate with them, I talked with them. I trained the men to fight fires. And they shared with me when they had so little to share. Food, medicine, laughter, it didn’t matter.” His voice was low and intense, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up.
“And then one day,” he whispered behind her, “one day, we came back from the city, and they were all dead, scattered like fallen leaves all over the camp. The women, the children…Zenaisa.”
His voice broke and she felt her eyes sting. Vehemently, she dug her fingers into the ground. It wasn’t her war and it wasn’t her story and she didn’t want to get any more involved. Garret would do his own thing anyway. He’d been taking care of himself for a long time, and now that his memory had returned…
“I’m trained to fight,” Garret said quietly behind her. “I’m trained to kill. But I didn’t protect anyone in that camp. Instead, I led the men away so the butchers’ job was that much easier to do.”
The raw self-condemnation in his voice tore at her. The first tear trickled down her cheek, but she didn’t, she wouldn’t, look up. She just bent over her roses, watering the ground with her tears as she had done so many years ago.
“Suzanne?”
She stared hard at the ground.
“I wanted to kill them, Suzanne,” he whispered hoarsely. She could feel his eyes burning into her neck, raw and needful. “So help me God, I wanted to find every last one of the men who’d destroyed the camp and kill them with my bare hands. And then Zlatko got up and said he knew how to get revenge. He knew how to get weapons if we could just get the cash.
“All of us chipped in, myself included, to buy the guns. Because we all wanted revenge, I, as much as the others. Except it wasn’t my war and it wasn’t my job. My job was to observe, not to participate. Even now, I’m not allowed to participate.”
He turned away, and she was grateful for the respite. Her cheeks burned with her tears; her stomach ached with her need. She wanted so badly to go to him and hold him against her. But he was leaving, and she’d already given him so much. She didn’t know how to hold him without loving him even more. And she didn’t know how to bear that kind of pain. God, she just wanted it to end.
She wiped her cheeks fiercely, smearing long smudges of soil across her face. “I’m sure you did the right thing,” she said at last. Ruthlessly, she picked up the pruning shears and attacked the first bush. Behind her, she heard his mirthless laugh and her hands trembled.