Page 52 of Never Always
They have to. He just admitted defeat. Now I have to build his offense back up, form a man from a shell. Maeve doesn’t think love is enough to save a marriage, but it has to be enough to save a man.
“I’ll move in with you,” I tell him.
Chapter Sixteen
Grange
THEY FOUND Aqueen on the latest body. The red-haired, eighteen-year-old had the S carved into her shoulder and inside the plastic wrap, clutched in her cold, dead hand, was the chess piece that was stolen from my truck weeks ago. They didn’t give that information on the news, I had to find out by inquiring with one of my friends in the FBI. At the time, I was merely asking because I was becoming suspicious. All of the women who are being abducted and killed are petite, redheads. Then, I told the FBI everything, and my suspicions that it was someone who knows Tennyson.
A coincidence? Maybe. The fire red hair that Tennyson has isn’t common, and that fact alone was enough to pique my interest. I love her. I love her with a passion so deep that the thought of anything harming her is enough to drive me crazy. Quite literally. The queen is the final straw. I know he’s after her. She isn’t safe, and I can’t do anything about that while I’m in Kentucky, far away from her. I haven’t told a soul, not even Rexy about the chess piece. If Fire knew, she would deem it an irony and go about her normal everyday life because she doesn’t entertain notions like personal safety. She’s never been in a threatening situation.
The problem being, that this fiend, this killer, has to be in her everyday life. Or in mine. Closing my eyes, I play the worst-case scenario over and over. Anytime I close my eyes, I see her in agony, a pair of hands around her neck. One word escapes before the life drains from her face. My name. I’m never in time to save her, only seeing the tail end of her murder. I want to tell Rexy so he can be a sounding board and tell me what to do, but I’m frozen, paralyzed by fear.
Inevitably, the nightmare transforms into watching my mom die, blood staining her blonde hair red, blue eyes unmoving, staring straight ahead. I’d like to think I’ve risen above my past, but the Cape Cod Carver has stirred things inside me that are indescribable. A hollow rage that has nowhere to escape.
“You have Maeve check up on Tennyson?” I ask Rexy as he passes in front of me in the mess hall.
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Yeah, man. Twice today. Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “I am. Leaving her makes me antsy. The news. The killer. They’re all redheads. What do you make of that? It’s not a common color.”
Rexy hears the panic in my voice and looks to the side before sitting down next to me on the floor, next to the door. “I think that yeah, it’s fucked up and ironic, but the first girl was a brunette. There could be zero correlation. Your worry doesn’t match the threat.” He reaches out and touches my arm. “What aren’t you saying, bro?”
I don’t even know how to say it, how to explain that I kept the queen as a token, and then the killer broke into my truck and stole it and left it as his token. How fucked up does that sound? We’re interrupted by our officer. “Ready guys? Kill house seven. Hostage situation. Rexy, you’re in group two, direct rescue, and Grange, you’re support group one.”
Telling Rexy would be a stupid idea, it wouldn’t accomplish anything. At least that’s what I tell myself. Rexy stands, and the safety of his comfort is gone. He grabs his kit and gun and heads out the door. I do the same, falling in with my group, Mercer is in my group. He’s telling everyone some joke, like he always does to break up the somber mood, that charismatic smile taking over.
“Moving out?” I ask, testing my comms button on my headset and checking my gear. I’ve done this CQC training many times in the past, I’ve even done kill house seven with the same rescue scenario before. It’s not something I’m worried about. This is where I can go on autopilot and let my skills take over. The problem with autopilot is that it leaves room for other thoughts to slip in. It doesn’t require my full attention.
Rexy wanders over and puts a hand on my arm. “We’ll talk after. Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be okay. Deep breaths.” He said the same thing when I wanted to quit during Hell Week. Literally the exact same phrase.
“Your memory is nothing to be fucked with, my friend.”
“Neither is your anxiety. Think about Thanksgiving and your under the table fable, you goddamn celebrity.” He winks, slaps my shoulder and takes off with his group.
I blow out a breath, because of course the motherfucker is right. A deep breath won’t solve the world’s problems, but it does help with perspective. I’m breathing. Living. We move out, and I push Fire to the back of my mind, put her safety into a box I will open later when it’s suitable to dwell on mercilessly.
It’s raining. Which makes most of us angry. Just because we went through training that requires us to be wet, cold, and sandy, means that in life, we try to avoid those things like the plague. It’s a rush to the oversized, way too powerful, golf carts that whisk us to number seven. It’s a short five-minute ride and when we get off of these vehicles, we will be in character, ready to fight. They’ve set the scenario up to be ultra-realistic. The hostage will be filthy and appear frightened, the terrorists will be in costume and appear angry and volatile.
Group two pulls up in four carts and goes in before us. Next, we exit and traipse to house seven and line up against the outside of the house, waiting for the signal to enter. All I can hear are the breaths of Mercer behind me, and my pulse which is skittering along, getting ready to fight calms me. They say this is why we’re so accurate. They strap heart rate monitors to us while we practice these stressful scenarios, and can’t figure out how we can control our heart rate while the stressors around us are infinitely stressing. Death is on the line and we’re cool and controlled. I mean, they’ve also discovered that SEALs are borderline psychopathsthis closefrom swinging into evil, inhumane territory.
That’s a debate for another day. Right now, I hear Rexy’s voice rasp into my headset. “Group one clear.” I grin, and reach behind me to pinch Mercer’s thigh, who will send the signal all the way back to man number six. Then I enter the house. The rain makes the scent of gunpowder more prevalent. It’s smoky—white wisps streaming from the space between where the ceiling doesn’t quite meet. Our nods, our night vision goggles, adjust accordingly, as we move into the first room, a vacant decoy room that has pop-up cutouts of bad guys. I shoot and take all three of them out in a quick succession. We’re shooting live rounds, because we’ve recently discovered that the rubber pellets we use aren’t accurate enough.
We need accuracy. We need realistic. It’s the only way we can have a one hundred percent accuracy rate when they throw us on the ground and ask impossible things of us. I clear the room, and move to the corner as my teammates move in, more pop-ups rise and according to process, the proper person shoots. It’s a well-oiled machine and the slightest fuck up means bad things.
I press into my comms to gain approval to move on, and we circle out of the room to head on to the next. Rexy comes through with a “target acquired” affirmative. I keep my gaze focused, my steps sure. Countless procedures are trickling through my mind. Every inch and angle of my gun is being analyzed by instructors and teachers perched in the rafters above us. They are judging our perfection, figuring out how they can teach this accuracy to others. This is our practice range. It is state of the art. The next room stinks of an odd rubber burning smell, but I cast that sense to the side to hone in on where the targets will appear from. The smoke is thicker in here than it was in the hallway and the other room. It’s not my job to analyze the scenarios, it’s my job to get the task done right the first time. I enter the room, weapon first, body second, sights trained on the corner that is the biggest threat. Nothing pops. No bad guy there. I scan left, and Mercer enters behind me, I sense his presence beside me. The target pops up, slower than usual, but I don’t think twice. Two bullets in the chest, one in the head. Check. Done.
There is a raucous noise from the other room. Where group two is. The buzzer, the one that signals the end of an exercise sounds and I look up to the rafters, confused. This is not normal, in fact, this disturbance is what sends my blood pressure sky rocketing. The disorder. The way their faces are twisting with confusion and horror. I press the comms button.
“What’s up?” I say, then releasing it when our line gets clogged up with chatter—everyone trying to figure out why we stopped.
I don’t get a response. I turn to Mercer, pulling up my nods. “Can anyone tell us what the fuck is going on?” My voice is far louder than the comms. Then comes a response. Not from Rexy, like I expect. Two words. One meaning. “Friendly fire.”
My stomach sinks. “What? Who? What happened?” I ask the questions, then realize how idiotic it is to be talking instead of doing shit myself. I rip off my helmet and jog from the room and down the hall. Mercer calls after me, I hear him, but I don’t stop like he tells me. My boots are heavy, making a loud noise, and the burnt rubber scent follows me into the room. Where group two is. My gaze flicks to my brothers one by one and then to our Team medic on the floor next to a limp body.
The medic, Legend, shakes his head. “He’s gone.” A body that was directly on the other side of the wall from where I was.
Where I just sent three kill shots.
