Marisa Carroll - Winter Soldier

There had been good times, too. After Brian was born he held his son in his arms and thought he might be able to put the past behind him. But when Brian was ten he’d crashed his bicycle head-on into a mailbox. Adam had been out in the yard watching and rushed to his side and cradled his bloodied face in his arms all the way to the hospital. From that day on the nightmares had come back and never gone away.

He looked down at his hand. He was shaking like a leaf. What was worse, he was shaking inside. He couldn’t operate in this condition. Hell, he didn’t even know if he could set foot inside the hospital again. He had to get out of this place or lose what little was left of his reason and his soul. Adam slid Leah’s arms from around his neck. Forced himself not to kiss her again. Pulled on his clothes and walked out into the night.

IT WAS DAYLIGHT when Leah awoke again. There were tears on her cheek, as though she’d been crying in her sleep, but she couldn’t remember any bad dreams. And then she realized she was alone. She dressed in haste and smoothed the rumpled sheets on her bed, drawing the blanket up just as Kaylene entered the room.

She looked a little surprised to see Leah up and around. “I thought I told you to sleep till noon.”

“I guess my internal clock had other ideas,” Leah fibbed. “I was just going to take a shower.” Adam’s scent, the scent of their lovemaking, clung to every inch of her.

Kaylene grimaced. “My internal clock can stuff itself. I’ve had my ice-cold shower, and I’m still going to sleep till noon.”

“I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” Leah wanted to ask Kaylene if she’d seen Adam. Perhaps he’d gone to the hospital to check on Ahn Lyn, but she didn’t think so. He’d probably left her bed just to spare her the embarrassment of Kaylene finding them together.

“Who’s sitting with Ahn Lyn?” She held her breath, waiting for Kaylene’s answer.

“B.J. He relieved me about half an hour ago. She’s had her pain meds and she’s sleeping soundly. Still moving all her extremities. So far, so good. Sister Grace’s vitals are stable, and the other kids are fine.”

B.J. was with Ahn Lyn, not Adam. She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Thanks for the report. Pleasant dreams.”

“Mmm.” Kaylene was already in bed.

Twenty minutes later, showered and with her hair back in its habitual French braid, Leah faced B. J. Walton across Ahn Lyn’s bed.

“You’re looking for Adam, aren’t you?” he asked her bluntly.

“Yes. I...I’m worried about him.”

“He’s gone, Leah,” B.J. said, his sympathetic gaze taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes. “I found a note when I woke up this morning. It was too late to stop him.”

“He’s left the compound?”

“He’s leaving Vietnam.” His hand fisted on the bed rail. “Damn. I should have never talked him into coming back.” Ahn Lyn stirred in her drugged sleep and BJ. lowered his voice. “He wasn’t ready.”

Leaving the mission? Leaving the country? She hadn’t expected that. Her aching heart jerked painfully in her chest Gone. Out of my life.

“What happened to him here, B.J.?” She had to know.

“He won’t tell me. I have my suspicions, but he refuses to talk about it. Maybe it wasn’t a bungeestakes-and-jungle-patrols kind of war here at the end. But it wasn’t pretty. Snipers, shellings, the refugees scrambling to get out. I’m sure it was hell being the last ones out of the only damned war we ever lost. I thought maybe you...”

“No,” she said. “He told me nothing. Not even that he was leaving.” But what had she expected? Adam was a stranger to her. He had taken what she’d freely offered and promised nothing in return. Once more she’d let her heart overrule her reason. She’d given a piece of herself unwisely. Now he was gone, and she was left alone to consider the consequences of her actions and, God help her, to want him back again.

CHAPTER SIX

“DOES YOUR MOTHER know you’re here in Chicago?”

Brian Sauder shifted his attention from the view outside the office window to his father’s face. “Not exactly,” he answered carefully. “She knows I’m spending the weekend out of town.” He’d driven seventeen hours straight to get to Chicago from Cambridge. His brain was nearly fried, but what he had to say to his dad was too important to wait until he got some sleep. That was why he’d come straight to St. Barnabas, instead of waiting for his dad at his condo.

“Out of town, but not out of state.” Adam stood up and walked around his desk. Brian stood up too. Jeez. I’m an inch taller than he is. When had that happened?

Adam waved him back to his seat. “Are you in trouble, son? Is that why you came to me?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

His dad picked up a big piece of quartz he used for a paperweight and held it in his hands. “You’re not having problems with your grades, are you?”

“Solid B’s.”

“Good.” One corner of Adam’s mouth curled up in an expression Brian couldn’t quite classify as a smile. “I doubt even Elliot’s connections would get you back into Harvard if you flunked out.” Elliot Carlton was his stepfather, an investment banker in Boston where he lived with Brian’s mom and his little half sister, Megan.

“Yeah, I know. He keeps reminding me what a generous donation he made to get me considered in the first place. That you and Mom made a big mistake sending me to public school all those years.” His dad had gone to a public high school in Pennsylvania, and then on to the University of Michigan after he got out of the Marines. Brian thought it would have been good enough for him, too.

“A fact your mother pointed out to me many times as you were growing up.” This time Adam did smile. His mom smiled like that, too, when she talked about his dad. They were still friends, sort of, and Brian was glad.

“She’d have a fit if she knew I was here.”

His dad was still holding the big piece of quartz—tightly. His knuckles were white. When he saw Brian look at his hands, Adam put the rock down, then walked behind the desk and gazed at the snow falling in huge, wet flakes outside the window. “Why didn’t you tell her you were coming to see me?” he asked.

“Christmas break doesn’t start till the end of the week. I...left early.”

“She won’t like that.” Adam turned and spread his hands flat on the teak surface of the desk.

“That’s why I didn’t tell her.”

Adam frowned at his reply, accentuating the harsh new lines around his mouth. Jeez, Dad’s looking old. He hadn’t looked like that when he saw him last at the end of the summer. Was he sick? Did he have cancer or something? Or had he caught some weird disease in Vietnam? Is that why he’d come home almost two weeks before he was supposed to? Brian hadn’t lived with his dad since he was eleven, but he loved him. He didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.

“Why did you come here, Brian?”

Worries about his dad’s health were forgotten for the moment. It was now or never. Adam had just asked the million-dollar question and he had to answer it. “I don’t want to be an investment banker. I don’t want to go to work for Elliot at Carlton, Lieberman and Carmichael. I don’t want to go back to Harvard.”

“Have you told your mother this?”

Brian snorted. “Are you kidding? She’d have a stroke. She’d have me committed.”

“A lot of other mothers would feel the same way.”

Brian stood up again and started pacing the width of the office. “I’ve given it a year and a half, almost. It’s not for me.”

“Math has always been your strongest subject.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to be a banker or, God help me, an economist.”