He saw it because he felt them in himself with every passing second.
Wire nodded. “He owes them a cool two point five mil,” he said, his keyboard tapping.
Heath wondered if he’d be able to hear that previously asinine sound without attaching it to this moment. This fucking nightmare.
Maybe he’d be able to handle it when he’d touched Polly. When he cataloged every inch of her body to make sure it was unmarred. Then he cataloged every inch of her soul to make sure it wasn’t broken or bruised in any way.
Maybe then.
But maybe fucking not.
Because horrors did not get erased. They became memories. Visceral and dangerous and they were always stark and fresh. Heath knew that better than anyone. If he let himself, he could smell the charring flesh of his commander. He could feel the warm stream of blood coming from a suspected insurgent he’d gunned down.
Suspected.
There was no nobility in war. And there sure as fuck weren’t confirmed enemies. He didn’t know how many of the people he’d killed deserved to die. It didn’t matter. Orders were orders. There was no place for moral reflection in a war zone.
That was for when you got home.
When you stared at a handgun and a half-empty bottle of whisky and wondered how many families were torn apart because of you. Wondered if you’d ever stop feeling the blood or smelling the death. Wondered if it would be better if you pulled a trigger one last time, ending it all.
For some reason, the tapping of that fucking keyboard seemed worse than all of that shit right now.
“Probably thinks that she’s still got it,” Wire was saying.
Heath straightened. “What do you mean thinks she’s still got it?” he demanded.
Wire glanced up from where he’d been staring off-screen.
“She got all of his money in the divorce,” Heath said. He knew it all because he’d tortured himself with every fucking minute detail of it. “She hasn’t bought shit, she went on her trip and volunteered most of the time. The fanciest place she stayed was an AirBnb. Money doesn’t mean shit to her.”
Everyone was looking at him and he didn’t give a fuck.
“No, money doesn’t mean shit to her,” Wire agreed after a beat.
Heath hated that he knew that about her. It was fucked up and selfish. She gave herself to everyone freely and without expectation. He fucking loved that about her. But he wanted to own those things. That knowledge. He didn’t want anyone else knowing shit.
“Which is why she doesn’t have it anymore,” Wire continued.
“What the fuck do you mean?” he gritted out.
Wire glanced to Rosie and then back to him. “Dude, she donated almost all of it to charity pretty much as soon as she got back Stateside. Used a shitload of it to help home people from her shelter. She kept enough to fund her training. Live humbly on. It’s never been about the money for her.”
There was silence.
Well, until Heath threw his coffee cup at the wall and it smashed.
No one reacted.
Because everyone else was digesting what the fuck this meant.
It meant the chances of Polly coming out of this shit unharmed just when from abysmal to impossible.
“How in the fuck could you be so stupid?” Heath shot at Rosie, pushing free of his chair, laying his palms on the table and leaning forward. He’d missed a piece of glass and it was pressing into the flesh of his skin.
Luke stood immediately. “Watch yourself,” he clipped, face darkening.
Heath paid him no mind. “You bled him dry, knowing that the money didn’t mean shit to Polly.”
Rosie put her hand on her husband’s arm, presumably to stop him from attacking Heath like he was poised to. Heath didn’t give a fuck. He was out for blood. Luke was his friend, but at that point, it didn’t matter. He’d give him a decent fight, something to distract him from the cold and visceral dread that clawed at his throat.
“Money didn’t mean shit to Polly,” Rosie agreed, glancing from Luke to Heath once she was assured her husband wasn’t moving. “But it meant shit to Craig.” She made a face as she said his name. “And he took something from her. Something she could never get back, something that should not have been taken from someone like Polly.”
Heath’s heart clenched now he had the knowledge of how much he took from her. How he put his fucking hands on her. That knowledge would be taken to his fucking grave. Along with the guilt of how he’d treated her in his ignorance.
Rosie wasn’t done. Because when that woman was on a roll, she was on a roll. Every one of her words were bullets.
“And she because she is who she is, I couldn’t take anything more valuable, like say, his dick so his money was the next best thing. And I knew Polly wasn’t going to keep it. Because she’s Polly,” her voice wavered slightly. “I knew that she’d likely hand it all over to the old man that she walks to the bus stop every day or the young kid she’d been helping with his college payments ever since she met in a Starbucks one time. I knew that because that’s who Polly is. She’d literally carve out her heart and hand it to someone just so they could have two more heartbeats than they needed.”
She gave him an accusing look.
“Than they deserved. So don’t you try and lay the blame for Polly’s asshole ex snatching her out of the comfort of her own home on me, because I won’t let that fly. You want to look for someone to blame? How about you go find a fucking mirror then ask it why she was sitting at home, alone unprotected, most likely thinking about the man who broke her heart. And I’m not talking about the one who is currently holding her captive right now.”
She was yelling at this point.
“You think about that while you go all manly and smash perfectly good mugs and perfectly good, kind and giving fucking hearts.”
She stood up quickly, flipped him the bird and then stormed out of the room.
Heath was staring at his bloodied hand, wondering if he was wearing more or less than Polly was wearing. If she was in more or less pain than him. Wondering how many marks she was wearing on her perfect body. The body he’d had in his arms this morning.
Was it only this morning?
And he’d gotten out of bed with the intention of a fresh start. With the intention of never letting her go again.
He wondered if his bloody and torn hands would ever hold her again.
His door opened and closed and his head snapped up, instantly alert, instantly bracing.
“No news,” Lucy said quietly, knowing that’s what Heath was surviving on. Scraps of information that might lead him to her.
He flinched at the growing bruise on Lucy’s face. On the pain in every part of her.
Keltan followed behind her, hand on her lower back. Of course the fucker wasn’t gonna let her walk the short distance from the bed to Heath’s office.
Heath didn’t blame him.
If—no, when he got Polly back, she wouldn’t be walking from the bed to the kitchen alone.
“You okay?” Heath forced himself to show concern for Lucy. Because Polly would want him to do that. Because Polly showed concern for everyone, no matter how much pain she was in.
Lucy raised her brow in response.
“Yeah,” Heath agreed.
Lucy sat down across from him.