“Stay here!” he shouted, then sprinted from the room, mounting the stairs toward the bedroom belonging to Adam Peterson. The door was open, and Hunter ran inside, weapon lifted, only to freeze as the situation became horrifyingly clear.
A large, masked man had picked up Adam Peterson, holding the five-year-old around the waist with one arm. In his other hand was a gun, which he pressed against Adam’s head.
Hunter went rigid, unable to move, as he watched the intruder circled toward the door.
“That’s it. Stay right there, and I won’t splatter the little guy’s brains all over the room,” the intruder shouted.
All Hunter could do was watch in agony. He was a good enough shot to take the intruder out with a single round to the head, but he couldn’t make his fingers move. He stared at Adam Peterson, who had stopped screaming and was looking at Hunter with wide, imploring eyes. The boy knew Hunter was supposed to save him, but Hunter saw another boy, one with darker hair and brown eyes who had watched Hunter the same way as Hunter and Stack had worked to remove the explosive vest the boy wore. In his mind, Hunter was screaming, wanting to do something, but his body was paralyzed, unable to act, waiting for the blast of the gun the way he’d heard the sound of the explosives which had ended Stack’s life.
The intruder stepped backwards out into the hall, and through his mask, Hunter could see the way the man grinned, teeth bared fiercely in victory. Then time slowed, or at least it did for Hunter, and he watched what followed almost as though it had been a movie.
As the intruder moved into the hall, he didn’t bother to look behind himself, but even if he had looked, he wouldn’t have seen Payne, who had crouched low against the wall, hidden in the shadows. Payne stepped up behind the intruder, grabbing the man’s right arm near the elbow in a vise-like grip. The move caused the gun to fall from the man’s now nerveless hand, but before the weapon hit the carpet, Payne was in motion, adding a second hand to the man’s arm and wrenching it violently backwards. Hunter heard the snap of breaking bone, and the shriek of pain the intruder gave as he dropped young Adam and instinctively turned toward his attacker.
Payne seemed to anticipate this move, and he stepped in to meet it, releasing the intruder’s broken arm and grabbing him around the head. Payne yanked down on the intruder’s head, raising his knee at the same time, and there was another snap as the intruder’s jaw broke. Then Payne stepped back, and the intruder fell to the floor.
Payne knelt and picked up the little boy. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Does it hurt anywhere?”
The boy shook his head, then threw his arms around Payne’s neck, clinging to him for dear life. Hunter still hadn’t moved, and he stared at Payne, ice-cold fingers of dread running down his spine.
Holding Adam close, Payne approached Hunter slowly. “It’s over, Hunter. All clear,” he said, his voice quiet and steady.
Hunter blinked, coming back to himself and realizing he was still holding his gun out. He lowered it slowly, then holstered it, not meeting Payne’s eyes. With an effort he made himself report. “I disabled an intruder in the master bedroom. I’ll go turn off the alarm.”
“Good work,” Payne said. “Our backup should be here soon, but I’d like to get the intruders secured. Can you take care of it while I check in with the family?”
“Sure.” Hunter made himself move. He was carrying plastic zip ties in one pocket of his cargo pants, and it took him only a moment to bind the feet and hands of the intruder in the hall. He continued on to the master bedroom, binding the intruder he’d knocked unconscious, before continuing back toward the kitchen. He disarmed the house alarm at the security panel, then headed outside, finding and restraining the intruder Payne had knocked out in the yard.
By the time he’d returned to the house, the cops had arrived, and he and Payne had to show their licenses and give statements as to what had occurred. The cops took the three intruders into custody, and Hunter nodded politely as the Petersons thanked both him and Payne for reacting so quickly and saving their lives. They didn’t know Hunter had frozen in the middle of the confrontation, but Payne did, and Hunter had no doubt there would be a reckoning soon.
He sat numbly in the car while Payne drove them back to headquarters. They’d been relieved by the backup crew, but they had to make their reports before they’d be finished. Once at headquarters, Hunter gathered up the forms he needed to fill out, then made his way to one of the small conference rooms. Feeling disconnected, he described the events as best as he could.
“I’m not going to mention you froze,” Payne said, glancing sidelong at Hunter from where they sat at an unadorned table. “I don’t want you to mention it either. I don’t think Herc needs to know about it right now, but we do need to talk about it.”
“What?”
Unable to believe what Payne was saying, Hunter stared at him in shock. After a moment, he dropped his head into his hands, feeling defeated, knowing even Payne’s upbeat philosophy wasn’t going to do him a damned bit of good. “You can’t mean that. Youknowwhat it means. I’m washed up. I froze in combat, so I’m no good to anyone anymore.”
“No.” Payne’s voice held a hard edge Hunter hadn’t heard before. “It means you were triggered by seeing a child in danger just like the situation with Stack. It means you need to get off your ass and face your shit. But it does not mean you’re washed up.”
Hunter knew a command tone when he heard it, and he looked at Payne again. “I face my shit every fucking day,” he growled, suddenly angry — with himself, with Payne, with Stack, with theworld. “Of course I’m washed up! Don’t tell me you didn’t know that from the minute you took me down in front of everyone. That’s what all of this was about, right? Everyone knew I was finished. Everyone but me.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, I finally faced it. I guess I should thank Herc and Matthew for making sure I didn’t get a bunch of my comrades killed.”
Payne stood up and kicked back his chair, and he rounded on Hunter, his boyish face growing hard with anger. “You’re only washed up if you want to be. You haven’t been facing your shit. You’ve been wallowing in it and avoiding any kind of serious effort to heal. Do you think washing out is going to change anything or make you feel better? Is it what Stack would want for you?”
Hunter couldn’t believe what Payne was saying. “Nothing is going to make me feel better,” he said, slumping back in his seat. “You know what Stack would say? He’d tell me to suck it up and deal with it. But he’s dead, he’s nothere, and he wouldn’t know that being the one to live sometimes isn’t all that great.”
“No, it isn’t,” Payne said, folding his arms across his chest. “But you’re still here, whether you like it or not, and you’ve got a choice. You can tell yourself and everyone else you’re done and give up the job you love, or you can admit you need help — andacceptit.”
Hunter didn’t answer. He looked at Payne, seeing the way Payne was so certain, so confident, and he wished he could believe Payne was right. “You mean talk to the shrinks, let them tell me everything’s okay?” He gave a humorless chuckle. “I’ve read all those psych books, and I know what they all say, and you know what? It’s all bullshit. Maybe it works for some people, but not for me. Maybe I do need help, but there isn’t anything that will help me.”
“If you’re convinced conventional methods won’t help, then no, they probably won’t.” Payne studied Hunter, his expression shuttered. “But unconventional methods might.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes, looking at Payne intently. Payne’s open and friendly gaze was gone, and against his will, Hunter shivered. “Unconventional? Like what? Some new age stuff about past life regression? Or maybe balancing my chakras?”
One corner of Payne’s mouth quirked up. “No, nothing like that. What I have in mind is unusual, but it’s helped other trauma victims. It might help you too.”
Hunter shrugged. Hope wasn’t a word in his vocabulary any longer. He scrubbed at his face, suddenly as exhausted as if he had run a marathon. “So you want to help me? Why? Why not let me wash out? I’m no danger to anyone anymore, if that’s what you were worried about.” The thought of never going back into the field was painful, and he had no idea what he would do if he couldn’t be a merc.
“Because I like you,” Payne said, spreading his hands. “Because I don’t believe you’re washed up. Because I have the biggest caretaker streak of anyone you’ll ever meet in your life.”
