Rogenna Brewer - The SEAL's Special Mission

Mallory didn’t bother to correct her father even though the emptiness of it all squeezed at her chest. Meg was his pet name for her mother. “Of course I will.”

* * *

NASH WAITED INSIDE the house. In a working-class neighborhood, it was just as easy to break in during the day as at night under cover of darkness. He kept quiet upstairs while the young sitter and the boy moved around downstairs. The creaky, century-old house would have given him away if he was any less cautious and if the kids were more alert.

In the hall bathroom, he tended his torn sutures as best he could without running tap water. He could hear the babysitter moving around in the kitchen. The boy had settled into the front room with a video game. Something age-appropriate, he assumed, from the lack of bloodcurdling screams.

And because he was fairly certain Mal would curb the kid’s activities away from violence.

He didn’t know why he thought that. Maybe he was confusing what Cara would have done, and what he and Cara would have wanted, with how Mal was actually raising his son.

Truth be told, he didn’t have a clue how Ben was being raised. He wanted to believe the boy was growing up in a healthy and happy environment. One that wasn’t haunted by his mother’s murder and his father’s failures.

The smell of popcorn wafted up to him. Nash hadn’t eaten anything more substantial than a protein bar all day, and his stomach churned out a reminder. While he didn’t have much of an appetite, he did need to keep up his strength. Tugging his bloodstained T-shirt back in place, he zipped the equally dark hoodie over it as he left the bathroom.

On his way into the boy’s room, he knocked a photo frame off the dresser.

It hit the carpet with a soft thud.

Nash winced and waited for any indication the kids had been alerted to his presence. After several seconds, he uncoiled his tense muscles.

It wasn’t like him to be so careless.

Endless energy drinks were making him jittery.

For good reason.

Mallory should have been home from work by now. Even a quick stop at the grocery store or for a carry-out dinner shouldn’t have taken her this long.

He picked up the frame and found Cara smiling back at him from what was probably the last photograph he’d taken of her at Mission Beach. The digital photo frame changed from one picture to the next, flooding him with memories of happier times. It had been a lifetime since he’d seen the exact shade of his wife’s strawberry blond hair and green eyes. Images of her beauty had faded to soft-focus memory.

A look. A laugh.

The punch line of a joke she could never get right.

Not a day went by that he didn’t think about how much he’d loved her. How much he still loved her. How he’d failed to protect her as a husband.

And as a Navy SEAL.

The first rule to starting a new life was that you couldn’t take the old one with you even though the personal baggage always came along for the ride. This would be his second incarnation. Kenneth Nash was dead and buried along with his wife—if not literally, then figuratively. The man standing in their son’s bedroom was nothing more than a cold, empty shell.

Here to tie up loose ends. That’s all.

Having a picture of Cara wouldn’t bring her back.

Still he hesitated before setting her photo back on the dresser. There were others, none of them framed, tucked into holders and around the dresser mirror.

There were photos of Benjamin with each of his grandparents. The one with Margaret was taken when the boy was still a newborn. The one with Charles in a wheelchair looked recent, as did the one with Nash’s mother, which appeared to have been taken in New York City outside F.A.O. Schwarz around Thanksgiving. Last year if he had to guess. Had they visited the city for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? Done some Christmas shopping?

Spent Hanukkah with his mother?

Had the boy experienced both Hanukkah and Christmas last year for the first time? Or had he done so every year?

He and Cara had worked through those fundamental differences before marriage—or at least that’s what he’d thought.

Until Cara got pregnant and they found out differently.

He needed to believe they would have worked things out eventually.

They weren’t the first couple of different faiths to marry and have children. They would have found their Jewish/Catholic compromise, and their kids would have been just fine being raised with the diversity of two faiths. That’s what he believed.

But he hadn’t expected his wife’s side of the family to have anything to do with his side after his conviction. He’d asked his mother not to interfere with his unorthodox decision to allow his sister-in-law—his non-Jewish sister-in-law at that—to raise his son.

On a practical note, Mal was young. His mother was not.

He had other family, but he’d never even considered them when it came to raising Ben.

Mal would be on a constant lookout and was physically and mentally better equipped to handle trouble, which made her the best choice as Ben’s guardian.

But it had been more of an emotional decision. Mal was the closest thing he could give the boy to a mother, and she’d see to it that Ben grew up knowing Cara—even if that meant he would also grow up hating his father.

It was good to see Mal had kept in touch with his mother, but that relationship added another wrinkle to the current situation. He’d been operating under the assumption that Mal and Ben had no close ties to his family.

Yet oddly enough, there was even a picture of him in uniform in the photomontage, which included several more pictures of Ben with friends, his babysitter, his aunt Mal.

How old had she been the last time he saw her, twenty-three, twenty-four? Staring daggers at him from across that table in the interrogation room.

The clever and carefree girl from their youth—with flame-red corkscrew curls hanging down her back—was long gone. From the moment she’d stuck a gun in his face, lawyers had seen to it that they never got the chance to talk again before the trial. She wouldn’t even make eye contact with him while on the witness stand and wasn’t allowed to sit through the proceedings until after her testimony and the closing arguments.

But at one time they’d been more than family—they’d been friends.

Even after all these years, sadness still etched her smile and he bore the brunt of responsibility for putting it there. Beyond that sad smile, there were other changes to her physical appearance. For one, she’d straightened her hair, and she apparently wore dark designer suits these days, looking every bit the professional government agent.

A real G-man, government man. Or G-woman—person—as the case may be.

Kidnapping the kid would be difficult enough without dragging an armed and angry aunt along for the ride.

But he owed her that much at least.

No one else should have to die because of him. Humbled by the sacrifice Torri and Thompson had made, he knew he had to make his escape count. He had to save his family. And he had to honor the two marshals, and Cara, and countless others, by staying alive to testify.

He grabbed the boy’s backpack from the bed where Benjamin had dumped it after school. Nash stuffed a change of clothes inside, and then moved on to Mallory’s room, where he found her gym bag and then shoved some of her clothes into it.

It dawned on him that the gym bag’s presence was not a good sign. If it wasn’t a workout keeping her late, what was it?

He checked his watch again. It’d be fully dark soon. If she wasn’t here within the next twelve minutes, he’d have some tough choices to make.

Stepping into the adjoining bathroom, he grabbed her toothpaste and toothbrush. It struck him as odd that there was no sign of a man in her life. Not so much as an extra toothbrush to indicate a sleepover. But he didn’t have time to dwell on whether or not there was the complication of a boyfriend. Other than how unfortunate it would be for any guy who walked in the door with her tonight.