I put my head through the neck of my shirt, then nod. “Sometimes doing nothing is the best route. Reassurance given that there’s nothing seriously amiss.”
“While still charging an arm and a leg for that advice.” He chuckles, softening his words. He picks up the used condoms and takes them into the bathroom. Shortly after, I hear the toilet flushing and water running into the sink.
By the time he returns, I’m fully dressed. “You protected me,” I observe, walking down the stairs. “Are your biker friends violent?”
“No.” He sounds shocked. “But, babe. One of our members was the person kidnapped. She now has a finger missing. Weston chopped it off. She didn’t get away unscathed. They’d have wanted answers about your involvement.”
“A female biker? You have women members?” I didn’t expect that. It makes me more sympathetic to them. Why, I’m not sure. Are females less likely to be criminals? Probably not.
He snorts. “Just the one, and there’s no other like Swift, babe. She’s one in a million. Not that I’d ever tell her this, but I admire the fuck out of her.”
20
Stormy…
Why did I never tell Swift I admired her? Why was I always such an ass? Another influence lingering on from my father—that women had a place in this world and being part of a man’s wasn’t it. Did I resent her?
Would I have resented any of my brothers who’d got into Delta Force? Hell no. I’d be fucking impressed, and she’d done the British equivalent of that.
Instead, I’d sniped at her. I don’t credit myself with making her life miserable, she’s far too strong. I’d been more like an annoying fly buzzing around her.
Maybe it’s Cat’s influence on me, really talking to a woman for probably the first time ever that’s making me look at things differently.
As she starts pulling stuff out of the fridge to make a salad, I put my head into my hands, rubbing at my temples.
“I disobeyed an order I should never have been given, I’ve told you that. The outcome being a SEAL’s life was lost, but civilians were saved.”
She stops what she’s doing and stares down at the lettuce as though inspecting it for bugs. “No one can win them all, Finn. That’s what being a nurse taught me.” Lines appear around her eyes. “Are you saying that the loss of a SEAL is worse than the loss of innocent lives?”
Probably to Uncle Sam considering the money spent training them, but in the scheme of things, the children saved were human beings. Until Nazia wasn’t anymore.
“I’m fuckin’ glad we got them out of there. Pooh shouldn’t have died, there was no reason.” Or no good one, except for Smythe panicking. “I lost my job, but at least I knew two girls were able to live their lives.” Of course, there’s only a slim chance of one of them being still alive. Marjan, too, could be dead.
“That didn’t count for anything?”
“Only to me. They were right to throw the book at me. A man who can’t obey commands can’t be trusted.”
She looks puzzled now. “But if it was the wrong command, surely there would have been mitigating circumstances?”
“I wasn’t going to point fingers, Cat.”
Another of those hard glances, followed by a shake of her head.
I continue my story. “I’d gotten back to a semi-good place. The club gave me something to live for. Until I got word something was up.”
“What?” she prompts when I go quiet.
I slam my fist on the counter. “I think the whole thing was a setup. Something was wrong, bad, about the whole mission. What or why, I don’t fuckin’ know. Four years back, I found out the older girl became a suicide bomber. They managed to take her down and disarm her before she blew up herself and a lot of US service personnel. She was killed while she was held by the military police.”
“Oh my God!” she cries out. “Why?”
“Again, I don’t fuckin’ know. The younger kid, she’d disappeared. It makes no fuckin’ sense, Cat.” She puts down her knife and comes to me. Automatically, I put my arm around her waist, holding her tight. Dropping my head, I breathe in her scent, using it to ground me. “The US troops were withdrawing, it was what the hostiles should have wanted. The area had become peaceful, so why stir it all up?”
Her head moves side by side, but not surprisingly, she has no answers for me.
“There’s more. When I was on my way home, I found my old team had been killed. All six men, Cat. Four of them I would have counted as my best friends.”
“Jer… Finn,” she gasps, looking up into my face. “Finn…” As if realising words are inadequate, her hands cup my face. “I’m so sorry.” She nibbles her lip. “Did you tell your club? Could they help you find some answers?”
I breathe out. “No. It happened in Afghanistan. The club only operates in the US. It’s down to me, babe. I’ve looked, I’ve studied everything I could find. There are no answers to the questions I can’t get out of my head. If I could go back and change things, would I choose to have Pooh alive and leave those kids to their death? Maybe, if I’d had a crystal ball, the answer would have been yes. Pooh and I might have prevented the rest of the team dying, if we’d been there.”
She takes a step back and folds her arms across her chest. “It went wrong from the beginning with the man who gave the order. Have you looked into him? Why would he have wanted those girls dead?”
“He was a coward,” I tell her. I’ve had time to think about this. “He panicked, Cat, which is the last thing someone running that kind of operation should do. The Navy must have agreed though I hadn’t said a word. He was given a desk job back in the States.” And a promotion that feels like a kick in my teeth.
“You’ve got girls rescued which lost your friend’s life, that shouldn’t have happened. A girl who tried to blow our troops up, and a kid missing. On top of that, your whole team died. Presumably they were witnesses to the girls’ rescue…”
“Say that again,” I growl.
She looks puzzled. “Except for you and the man who panicked, all who knew what happened that day are dead. If the terrorist activity was decreasing, who else would have wanted the story to have no chance of re-examination?”
“I don’t have a fuckin’ clue,” I roar with more than a touch of anger. “Who? The other men in my unit? No fuckin’ way. I’d have given my life for them all. The men on other teams? Fuck no. They’re SEALs.”
She presses her lips together. “So you returned leaving the girl missing?”
“What more could I have fuckin’ done?” Her stubborn look intensifies. “What more, Cat? I’m one man. All the SEALs I was close to were gone. I searched for Marjan, it was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“Why?”
I frown and repeat, “Why?”
She rolls her eyes as though there’s something I’m missing. “Seven years is a long time in a kid’s life. What if she remembered something? This asshole who gave the command, he didn’t want them rescued. Why?”