She emails me once a day and tells me everything. Some days she’ll attach photos of us. Other days it’s photos of her and her friends at the beach. It’s strange to feel homesick for a place that was never truly my home. I have learned that home is a person. Home is Malena. Home isn’t where I’m at. I try to email her back, but my schedule and the time difference make everything that much harder. She’ll stay up late some nights so we can video chat, and I’ll wake up early other days when I don’t have meetings or obligations, but it doesn’t happen very often.
I have a secure phone line and safe internet access that blocks out everyone who isn’t on an approved list. My inboxhas a few new emails. Two brand new from Malena, one from Garden Breeze, and one from Eva. I don’t have time to check them right now because I’m due in the office for a meeting and then a workout. My body has already transformed back into the peak machine it was before my life slowed down. My nutrition is monitored, and my daily workouts are tailored for my body. There are cryo tanks that soak our bodies to help our muscles recover faster, and hundreds of highly trained support staff on hand for any desire or concern. A lot of distractions on top of the main facets of tracking killers.
“You ready?” Aidan pops his head into my room without knocking. We have nice quarters on base—a house we share. Our schedules are so busy we rarely see each other at home except for early mornings before the full day begins.
With the mouse hovering over Malena’s email, I close the laptop and ask him if he wants a banana instead. I toss him one, and we head out, locking the door behind us.
“You have your workout first today?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Meeting, then workout. Then I have to go take a piss test,” I tell him.
He laughs. “I’m taking my piss test first. I’ll be happy when this is over,” he says, breathing out.
It’s surprising. “You want to go back to Bronze Bay?” I say, my tone mocking. “Too rough now that you’re an old geezer?”
“Fuck you,” Aidan says. “It was supposed to be a permanent switch. It’s a big change. Admit it. I see you limping,” he tosses his words over his shoulder.
Sighing, I look left and right as I step into the street. “I’m fucking perfect,” I exclaim. “Ready for it to be done as much as you, but I have something to go back to.”
“Maybe I do too,” he quips.
He’s such a liar. He has everyone else’s chicks to try and steal. That’s what Aidan has. “Did you see the last intel briefthat came through? They’re on this coast. It may happen sooner rather than later. I wish I could go right now and blow the motherfucker into outer space.”
Aidan nods. “It’s never that easy. Come on, bro. You know better.”
I do, but wishful thinking never hurt anyone. “See you at home, honey. Better have my bourbon waiting when I walk through the door and crotchless lace panties under your dress,” Aidan rasps, splitting away from me as he heads to another building.
Shaking my head, I grin. No one else is around to hear him, which only makes it that much more disturbing. The base is usually bustling at this time of day, but since the mission planning began, they’ve closed it down to everyone except SEALs and required support staff. I haven’t left the gates since I arrived, and I’m itching to go beyond, back into the real world. I decide right now that I’m going to put in a request to leave base and go out to eat at a damn restaurant in town. I won’t talk to anyone, and I’ll find something that follows my diet, but I need to feel the buzz of life to level my head.
The Navy isn’t granting leave to any of us. We’re trapped here until it’s go time, unable to visit friends or family. It’s supposed to be for our loved ones’ safety, but this is the first time in history there’s been this kind of a full-scale hunt in the States, so all of the rules have changed, and I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what to expect.
I scan my ID card and press my thumb into the reader to open the heavy metal door, making sure to close the door all the way behind me.
Inside the building there is life. Lots of it. People in military uniforms litter the hallway from every branch imaginable, even foreign service members who are here to watch us operate for their own training regimes—taking our tactics and applyingthem to their own countries and problems. Nothing brings a world together quite like one common thread: the same enemy. I nod at a few men I recognize and bang a hard right into our wing and scan my ID again to get inside. It’s a little more lax in here, some SEALs are wearing uniforms, and others are in PT clothing— black running shorts and a brown tee, depending on what they have on their own schedules. We have relaxed grooming standards among dozens of other privileges that aren’t granted to big Navy, and it is most evident in the hairstyles we are allowed.
“You ready? We’ve been waiting for you. Twiddling your diddly again?” a SEAL in my group rasps, nodding his head toward my empty seat.
I chuckle, taking my place at the conference table and grabbing the tablet in front of me. “I’m only late because your mom likes to watch,” I hiss back, glaring at him with a smirk.
“Mom jokes are out, Leif. You’d know that if you weren’t so busy tanning your ass cheeks in Florida instead of back here with therealTeams working like a man.”
The screen turns on and lights dim, and he has the last word…for now. The commander’s red, irritated face flashes on the screen, and the meeting begins. We get the notes on our tablet screens as someone gathers the important points during the exchange. My heart starts hammering as the facts trickle into my awareness. We’re getting closer. I’m not thinking about zings, mom jokes, or anything other than what’s in front of me. The familiar hatred creeps into my awareness, the power that thrums through my body to destroy.
I won’t miss this time. I don’t care what it costs me.
FOURTEEN
Malena
My mom has pneumonia.The doctors are in and out of her room regularly. They say she has the same care at Garden Breeze as she would have at a hospital. There are monitors beeping and saline bags dripping into her frail body. It came on quickly, a common cold morphing into this threatening monster overnight. Her coughing and wheezing make it seem she’s on her deathbed. They reassure me she’ll pull through, but there’s this nagging feeling in my chest that tells me otherwise.
This, a mere hour after a doctor’s appointment where I discovered that not only am I pregnant, but I am three months pregnant—a basically all-the-way-formed baby in my still-flat stomach. My shock and stymie are still there, but now I’m contending with my mother’s life. I feel like in a matter of a few hours I’ve lost everything, including my grip on reality.
With my head resting on the edge of her bed, I clutch Mom’s hand, the one not drowning in tubes and needles, and sob. I pray. I ask God to let her remember everything. For her to wake up and remember I am her daughter, that she loves me, becauseI need her right now more than I’ve ever needed her in my life. I need the warm hug that tells me everything is going to be okay. The one she would give when I skinned my knee or had a fight with my best friend at school. My mom is the only person I have.
With my hand on my stomach, I acknowledge the life that will steal Leif away from me. The irony that this relationship will fail because of a baby, when another relationship ended when a baby didn’t arrive, is too freaking much. Her door is closed, so her room is shrouded in a morbid darkness. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I walk over and throw open the door. A nurse comes in and checks her vitals and does her best to ignore me, but I see her gaze wander to the crazy woman clutching her stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I say, manners dictating I should be presentable at any given time while in public. That’s the Southern way, and I am breaking that custom all to pieces in this moment of weakness. “I need a second or two. It’s a lot. She looks so bad. That’s all.” My explanation must work because the nurse closes the door after she writes down notes on a thick file.
