“I’m so fucking sorry, Dax.” Ry’s voice thickens, and it’s so like the night he escaped, I’m back there in a heartbeat.
Three taps rouse me from my pain-induced haze. I struggle to open my eyes—not that it does me any good. It’s pitch black inside my cell. The canvas our captors tack over the bars keeps us in the dark. Except when they bring us our infrequent meals or come to drag one of us away to be beaten or interrogated. Another series of taps, and I try to concentrate enough to piece together the words.
“We have to go.”
Mustering what little strength I have left, I respond with five taps of my own. Our code for no.
I can’t walk. Can barely focus. This is our only chance. Ry’s only chance. Mine disappeared as soon as they broke my leg.
Another series of taps. He’s not going—won’t leave me.
“You have to. If not, we both die.” A combination of morse code and our own special language developed over fifteen months spent in this fucking place, the taps let us communicate without our captors knowing what we’re saying. At least…we hope. We change things up every couple of weeks.
“I will come back for you.”
I want to laugh, but I don’t have the strength. “Go, brother.”
Brother. I can’t tell Ry how much he means to me. Can’t thank him for protecting me. For keeping me sane. For keeping me alive all the times I wanted to die.
Clawing my way towards the cell door, I dig my fingers around the edge of the canvas, forcing one corner up so I can stick my hand through the bars. The dim lights from the tunnel almost blind me, but I wait until I hear a metallic click—Ry picking the lock on his cell with a shard of metal he shoved under the skin of his forearm weeks ago. How he didn’t end up with sepsis, I have no idea. My leg won’t last much longer. I can smell the infection, and the fever hasn’t let up in days.
As a shadow heads for me, I snake my arm out and grab his ankle. His skin is cool. He’s barefoot—we lost our boots months ago. Hell, Ry doesn’t even have a shirt anymore. The last strip of it is tied around his left arm and the knife wound Kahlid gave him the last time they took him.
He reaches down and covers my fingers with his. “Stay alive, brother,” he whispers. “Please. I’ll come back for you.”
“Hooah.”
And then, he’s gone. The tears I haven’t let fall in fifteen months burn my eyes, but before they escape, I pass out.
“Dax? Say something. Yell. Tell me what a piece of shit I am. Tell me you never want to hear from me again.”
“No.” I clench my fist around the bottle until my knuckles crack, and I’m back in that cell. Sobbing as I listen to the only family I have leaving me to die. “I can’t. I don’t know how to do this. What to say. But…don’t disappear again.”
The hoarse sounds carrying over the line send me sliding off the couch and onto the floor, my head between my knees, beer in one hand, phone in the other. Ry’s never broken down. Not once in all the years I’ve known him. Not even when they carved up his face.
“Never…fuck.” He pauses, clears his throat, and then almost growls, “Never. I…I almost lost Wren in Russia, Dax. When they took her—it was like they took a part of me. The best part. The only part that mattered. If we hadn’t been able to get her out, I was going to go into that fucker’s fortress with enough C4 to blow a hole in the world.”
Images of Ry—what he used to look like anyway—with packs of explosives strapped to his chest, back, arms, and legs flicker in my mind, and a rough laugh escapes as I swipe the back of my hand over my cheeks. “Sounds like something you’d do.”
“Then Sampson and Inara show up spouting all this shit about family. I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t…” His voice cracks, and when he continues, his words take on a quiet, reverent tone. “You’re family. And…family doesn’t disappear. I understand that now. I want to fix this, brother. Let me try.”
The lump in my throat is now so large, I’m scared to even try to talk, but I have to. Because he’s right. We’re family. “Tell me,” I rasp, “about Hidden Agenda.”
“Started it not long after I left the army. Didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t go back to teaching. Not looking…the way I do. Wish I’d had you with me. Your instincts. You were the best. Pretty sure you still are.”
“You ever think about…Ripper? About what happened to him?” After our Communications Sergeant disappeared from Hell, Kahlid stopped limiting our torture to arms, legs, and torso—body parts that could be covered in any propaganda video. And he started in on Ry’s face.
“One of Kahlid’s men killed him,” Ry says quietly. “Sampson’s team captured three of ‘em when we came back for you. Ahmed copped to it. Said he tossed Ripper in the hole and broke his neck.”
We let a moment of silence pass for our fallen comrade. “Crazy son of a bitch,” I mutter. “Probably jumped, yelling ‘Geronimo’ the whole way down.”
“Damn straight.” He chuckles, clears his throat, and sighs. “Got three people on my team. Sampson, Inara, and a new guy—Graham. But… I fucked up, Dax. Big time. Had another guy for a while. Coop. Never took orders, went rogue in Colombia, and Sampson almost bled out. And we thought Coop had died. But the People’s Army tortured him. And when he finally escaped, he came after Inara. Almost killed her guy.”
“Shit. And…that’s why you came back to Boston?” The realization that I never gave him a chance to tell me why he showed up after six years hits me hard.
“Yeah. Didn’t know where else to go. You were the only person in the world I thought would understand.”
“And I kicked you out.” Draining the last of my beer, I let my head fall back against the couch cushions. “Tell me what happened.”
