Honor Reclaimed

Part 4

Seth stared after him.

Damn fence was too easily breached. Why hadn’t he considered that before?

Motion sensors, he decided. He’d top the fence with motion sensors at his first opportunity.

The coffeemaker beeped as it finished brewing, reminding him he’d started a pot. He fixed himself a mug heavy on the sugar for that extra jolt of stay-awake. Hell, might as well pour a 5-hour Energy shot in there, too. He sipped, testing the concoction. It kind of tasted like super-sweet grape-flavored day-old coffee sludge, but it worked. He’d rather be a jittery mess than risk closing his eyes.

Yeah, he’d called Greer out on not sleeping. Didn’t mean he had to take his own advice.

He grabbed his laptop from where he’d left it plugged in on the kitchen counter, and carried it and his cup to the patio because he sure as fuck wasn’t going to feel safe inside the house when he knew the backyard was open to attack. In the moonless night, the water in his pool was as dark and uninviting as the swamp had been. Somewhere nearby, a guitar strummed out a lively song.

He chose one of the poolside loungers and fired up his laptop, settling in for his nightly routine of taking other insomniacs to the cleaners playing poker. Countless sleepless nights had morphed the man who’d never gambled in his life into a poker shark, and he fell easily into the rhythms of the game. Time passed. He lost himself in the cards on the screen until his cell phone rang, startling him into knocking his mug over. The cold dregs of coffee spilled across the table and he swore as he mopped it up with a towel left from his last swim, the closest thing handy.

But hey, he had to give himself credit for not jumping out of his skin at the unexpected sound.

Progress.

Another ring. He tossed the now-wet towel in the outdoor hamper on his way inside, then eyed the phone as it jittered across the kitchen counter. His father used to say nothing good ever came from a phone call after midnight, which was why his curfew growing up had been 11:55 p.m. and not a second later. His father never wanted to get an after-midnight call.

Dad had gotten one, though. An after-midnight call that happened to come in the middle of the day, in the form of a visit by uniformed Marines, telling him his only son was a prisoner of war.

Nope. Seth shut down that thought almost before it completely formed. Not going there. Not thinking of the fear and pain he’d caused. Not thinking of the fear and pain he’d endured. Nope. Nope. Nope. He was past all that now. Progress, remember? 

Because of the whole after-midnight thing, he considered ignoring the phone. But he wasn’t his father with children to worry about, and he wasn’t a coward who hid from bad news. A neurotic, traumatized mess? All right, he’d cop to that. Coward? No fucking way.

Gabe’s name showed on the caller ID. He thumbed the answer button.

“Hello?” Shit, he really needed to start talking more often, even if it was just to himself. His voice sounded like he’d swallowed a box of nails and washed it down with a glass of sand.

                “Harlan,” Gabe said—no, more like demanded. The tone reminded Seth of a drill sergeant, took him back to the good old days in basic training. Jesus, he’d been such an idealistic, arrogant sucker back then, with no inkling of how fucked up his life was about to become.

How he wished he could go back. He sucked in a breath. “Yeah, I’m here.” So this was it, the ax falling on his fledgling career as a private military contractor. Except…why did Gabe wait until almost 3:00 a.m. to call? Didn’t make sense unless he was about to get chewed out for giving away Gabe’s private cell phone number.

“I’m sending a helo to you. Get on it and get your ass back to Miami a-sap.”

Wait. What? This didn’t sound like a firing. “Sir?”

“We have an op.”

Holy shit. They weren’t sending his ass packing? “Uh, thank you, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” Gabe said for what had to be the thousandth time during their short acquaintance. “And if you thank anyone, it should be Quinn. He went to bat for you—again. You’re still on probation as far as I’m concerned and I still have doubts about your ability to function in combat, especially now.”

While that wasn’t a ringing endorsement, it was better than he’d expected, and he swallowed the urge to thank Gabe again. “Does this have something to do with Greer Wilde?”

“Yeah.” He paused and in that heavy moment of silence, it seemed the world held its breath. Seth sure as hell did. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was coming next. Gabe wasn’t usually the hesitating type, and when he spoke again, his tone was as gentle as Seth had ever heard it. “We’re going to Afghanistan.”

 Oh, fuck no.

The words plowed into him like a high-speed train and the phone nearly fell from his numb fingers. He shook his head even though Gabe couldn’t see him. Probably a good thing Gabe couldn’t see him, because he wasn’t holding it together. A lump the size of a tank swelled in his throat, solid and choking, as a tremble worked down his back, the icy claws of real fear digging into his spine. You can’t fucking ask this of me, he wanted to scream.

Instead, the only sound that came from his throat was a croaked, “Afghanistan?” It was the first time he’d spoken the country’s name aloud in two years, and it scraped across his vocal cords.

“I know the enormity of what I’m asking you,” Gabe said softly, all but reading his mind. “And under any other circumstances, I’d be the first to say hell no. But these aren’t normal circumstances and this isn’t a mission I’m willing to refuse. So are you up for this?” he asked after a long stretch of silence. “Tell me right now if you’re not.”

Seth swallowed. He was not broken. He could do this. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be ready.”