Rachel Lee - The Final Mission

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe I should explain. I’m from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. No, Mary didn’t do anything wrong. But I didn’t want anyone to know I was coming.”

“Why not?”

“Can we talk?”

Lead settled into his stomach, sickening him. He wanted to say no, to send her on her way, forbid her any chance to reopen the most painful chapter of his life. He’d mostly made peace with it, except for an occasional errant stir of anger or grief, and he wanted to keep it that way.

But curiosity had already set its hook, and he was a neighborly man by nature. You didn’t send a friend of your wife’s off into a dark, cold night without at least offering coffee, hearing her out. She’d come a long way, evidently, all because she wanted to talk to him.

He hesitated a moment longer, sensing his life was about to change inalterably once again, and that he wasn’t going to like it much more this time.

“Come on in,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound grudging. “Just be quiet. The boys are sleeping.”

“Kyle and Todd?”

So she knew their names. Maybe that made him feel a smidgeon better, maybe not. “Yeah.”

He rounded the porch until he reached the steps, then led the way into his house. A woman’s light step sounded alien now, and made him wince a bit, reminding him of the sound of Mary’s high-heeled dress boots, the ones he’d teased her about, swearing she was going to break an ankle. She’d always retorted that they made her feel feminine, which she needed after time in cammies and desert boots, or after wearing Wellingtons to muck out a stall.

He would give damn near anything to tease her like that again.

In the kitchen, he waved Courtney Tyson to a seat at the round oak table that was covered in some oilcloth and started a pot of coffee.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I want to check on the boys.”

“Sure.”

Her voice was soft, quiet, maybe filled with as much dread as he was. The sound, while it was appealing at one level, made his scalp prickle. Something bad was coming. He knew it in his gut.

Upstairs he found the boys racked out. They were seldom quiet sleepers, so he had to tuck legs and arms back onto the mattresses of the bunk bed, adjust the covers against the chill of night.

And he noticed, as always, how sweet they smelled after their bath, how they radiated warmth like little heaters. His heart squeezed as he tucked them back in, listening to their murmurs as he gently moved them.

He stood for a moment, looking at them, feeling the almost unbearable pang of a love so deep he couldn’t find words for it. His sons. His gift from Mary. Her legacy.

Then, reluctantly, he headed back downstairs to deal with his unexpected visitor. Or maybe to be dealt with himself, depending.

The coffee was just finishing up, and he pulled out two mismatched mugs. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Black is fine,” she answered.

After filling the mugs, he once again had to face her. Pretty enough, although she looked thin, and somewhat austere. Blond hair had been pulled severely back as if it were a nuisance she just wanted out of her way. She’d unbuttoned her coat, revealing jeans and a blue sweater that nearly matched her smoky blue eyes.

He placed the mugs on the table, one in front of her, then sat, facing her across the expanse of aging oilcloth. The pattern was bright, ripe cherries with stems on a white background. Chosen by Mary and in sad need of replacement as it had begun to crack. Somehow he couldn’t let go of it.

Then he waited, because he was damned if he was going to open the can of worms himself.

After a moment, she sighed. He watched her stuff her hand into a pocket in her coat and she opened a thin badge case, laying out her ID on the table for him to see.

“Like I said, NCIS. I’m not supposed to be here, but I’ve got questions, I need answers and the worst you can do is tell me to go to hell. I’ve survived worse.”

He sat back a little, studying the badge and the identification card, then looking at her. “Why don’t you just get to the point?”

“Good idea.” Her tone grew brisk, professional. “I knew Mary fairly well. She worked for us.”

At that Dom’s heart slammed. “Now, wait. She was a nurse. ”

“True. She was a nurse. A damn fine nurse. Part of her ostensible mission was what we call ‘winning hearts and minds.’ She told you about that, I’m sure.”

He nodded. He’d been so proud of her for that.

“So twice a week, every week, she’d go into this Iraqi town and work with the women and their daughters on health issues. I’m not sure how much you know about sharia, which is Islamic law, but these women couldn’t be tended by male doctors.”

“I know.”

Courtney nodded. “So okay. Mary was a nurse practitioner. She could deal with most of the day-to-day stuff, and she even developed a network of female physicians she could call on for advice or to take cases she couldn’t handle herself. The women grew really fond of her.”

“She took a lot of pride in that.”

“I know she did. And because of that, when we discovered there was a problem, she agreed to work with us.”

“Work with you how?”

“We got wind that some of our guys were raping and intimidating these women into silence. We couldn’t prove it. The women wouldn’t talk. So we asked Mary to keep her ear to the ground.”

That certainly sounded like Mary. “She’d have gotten all steamed up about that.”

“To put it mildly.” A faint smile lifted one corner of Courtney’s mouth. “She really believed that line from that song she was always humming. You know the one.” She hummed a few bars.

Indeed he did. He closed his eyes against a sudden spear of grief, then quickly opened them again. Any doubt he might have harbored that this woman knew Mary vanished. In spite of himself, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Did she find out something?”

“I think she may have, but I don’t know for certain. She called me and we agreed to meet for coffee at this little local place we both liked. I thought our meetings looked innocent enough. But just the day before …”

When she trailed off, he filled in the blank. And he forced himself to say the words. “She was killed in an ambush.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know if she knew anything. She never mentioned any of this to me.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“Then why—” He broke off as it clicked. Icy shock poured through him, leaving him feeling almost light-headed. “You think she was murdered? ”

Her mouth tightened, her gaze lowered. He read her answer in her reluctance.

The simmering rage that he almost rid himself of had begun to heat again with her arrival, and now it began to glow hotter. But initial shock kept it from becoming a conflagration. He had to be sure. “You’re not saying she was killed by the enemy.”

At last she lifted her gaze and looked him straight in the eye. “The area was pacified. She usually traveled in a small convoy to town, but that day there was only the truck she was in. And she was the only person killed or wounded in that ambush.”

He jumped up from the table, knocking his chair over. The crash made him wince. The boys…. But even thoughts of them couldn’t still him now. He began pacing, his hands flexing with a need to break something. Anything. Anger rose like a force of nature, an anger he hadn’t felt since the VA had initially refused to give Mary a Purple Heart because she was officially a noncombatant.

He needed to pound something, smash something. He whirled on the woman who had brought this new horror into his life. “Are you sure?” He practically hissed the words.