Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Marking Mariah (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)

It took her a while to clean up, since she’d packed away the vacuum somewhere and didn’t feel like rooting around to find it. But it got done and she bagged up the garbage, setting it by the door so she could run it to the dumpster before bed. She flopped onto the couch and looked around, appraising her looming major life change. She’d rented this place while married to Cole’s father and could recall their first nights here, screwing their way through every room.

She shivered, recalling him, reluctantly—his lips and hands and body, the way he’d made her feel loved and treasured in his arms. Until she’d discovered he liked doing that for plenty of other women as well, even while she’d been recovering from Cole’s delivery.

Closing her eyes, she let herself have the good parts of those memories—the sweet kisses, the urgent groping, and the never-ending urge to get at him, to have him on her, inside her, all over her. Her skin tingled as she shifted on the couch, legit horny for the first time in what felt like years. Her nipples hardened painfully under the ragged sports bra she’d had on for two straight days of packing. The familiar, melty sensation in her lower belly made her sigh and drop back, too tired to try to alleviate it herself.

She must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, Cole was beside her, already in the PJs they’d left out for him, clutching a book and poking her arm to wake her. She smiled and stretched then pulled him close, burying her face in his damp hair a few seconds before opening the book and reciting one of his favorite stories from memory as he turned the pages for her.

Terry let his bike idle at a large intersection he didn’t recall, studying the traffic to-ing and fro-ing between two large strip malls, one anchored by a Target store, the other by a Best Buy.

Lord what he wouldn’t have given for this kind of shopping when he’d been growing up in this two-bit town, he mused, noting the many expensive SUVs and minivans, and the almost as many attractive young women, most of them hauling little kids around.

A light beep of a horn behind him made him startle. He waved an apology before roaring on through the light, headed for the heart of downtown Lucasville. His hometown, where his father managed the hometown bank and his mother had died of hometown cancer thanks to her addiction to cigs. Where he and his brother had grown up—happy, well-funded, oblivious to the tragedy that was lying in wait.

No. Terry, drop it. Don’t go there.

He gritted his teeth, and his heart sped up ever so slightly as he rounded the big curve and drove down the hill onto Main Street. The familiar sight of the downtown grid gave him a surprising jolt of happiness. He took comfort in the contours of the old streets even though over half of the stores and businesses he recalled were gone, replaced with—he squinted as he drove slowly past—a wine and quiche joint? A kombucha bar?  Seriously?

Seriously.

He spotted trendy-looking bookstores, coffee shops, expensive-looking clothing stores. There were a few familiars—his father’s bank hadn’t changed a lick. The Love Pub, the original brewery location where he’d hung out with two or three of the Love brothers growing up, stealing beer and generally raising hell like only those boys could. Sug’s, the ice cream parlor looked to be as sticky and perfect as ever.

When he spotted half a block allocated to a place called “Renee’s,” he grinned. He’d read about Renee Reese opening up her own place which, thanks to the massive influx of rich suburbanites with nothing better to do with their money than blow it on facials, massages, pussy waxing and hair coloring, had made her regionally famous.

He had to acknowledge a thrill of teenaged erotic memory with regard to Renee. She’d been in the class behind his, and before she’d gotten tangled up with first one, then another of the annoyingly attentive Love brothers, he’d popped her cherry, while alleviating himself of his own, pretty early in the game, he realized.

It had been messy and embarrassing until they got the hang of it. And they’d engaged in a lot of practice, getting better at it, mostly in her mother’s basement, sometimes at the Love’s pool parties.

Renee Reese
.

He chuckled and zoomed past, figuring he’d have to look her up, rekindle a little fun. He hoped she hadn’t married one of the new money rich guys and now presided over a passel of kids in a McMansion built on one of the many former horse farms around the town. Or maybe she had, and that wouldn’t matter to her once she saw him again.

The sidewalks were busy, busier than he’d imagined they would be on a random late summer Tuesday mid-day. When he was growing up, most families who could manage it decamped to the lake for the summer. God knows they had, at least until it became clear that his and Quentin’s love for soccer and their abilities at the game would dominate the summer months between camps and training and travel, trying to get seen by the right college coaches.

As he puttered along, taking in all the memories that bombarded him at the sight of his many old haunts, he had to acknowledge that he was glad to be back. A shocking admission considering how he’d left—halfway through his college degree, starting on the Akron Zips top-ranked team—furious, confused, miserable and vowing never to return.

He waved at a couple of the hotter suburban ladies waiting to cross at the light, relishing their double-take at the sight of him on his Harley, complete with leather jacket, dark Ray bans, and stubbly jaw. Then he kept going, figuring he shouldn’t have the big father-son reconciliation moment at the bank, hoping there hadn’t been a lock change at his childhood house, all the while wondering if he could stand going back into the place.

Wondering if the man even still lived there, rattling around in its too-large interior all alone.

He found himself experiencing a pinch of actual nostalgia as he turned onto the dark asphalt drive in front of the large, Georgian-style house. He should have stayed in touch. Let his father know more about his whereabouts and general condition. They were all each of them had left, after all.

He parked the Harley around the side of the house so as to perpetuate the surprise. When he put the kickstand down and hauled his duffel out of the storage compartment, he fought the urge to bolt again. Something about this place tugged at him, yet repelled him at the same time. So many memories, split fifty-fifty good and bad, although the “bad” were more like “God awful,” despite the fact of his family’s ultra-secure financial and social position.

Something he couldn’t really say for over half his friends, including his best buddy, Kieran Love. The two of them had been thick as thieves from first grade forward. But Kieran’s parents’ fortunes were dependent on the whims of the drinking and eating public, which could hardly ever be relied upon.

He’d lost touch with Kieran completely, the year his life fell apart and he’d run as fast as he could away from this place. He’d stayed that way—out of touch—which had made him a near perfect fit for Delta Force on some levels. Even though the Army preferred their Operators to be anchored by wives, kids, and stable home lives, he figured his father had made him sound good when he’d been interviewed by the assessment committee. He had minimal connections—a lone ranger, a rock, an island.

Squaring his shoulders and mentally tugging up his big boy pants even though the very sight of this house made him regress into his teenager mind on reflex, he headed up the short flight of steps. As always, the ever-present, huge concrete planters flanked the double-doored entrance. He stuck his finger down into the dirt of the one on the right, under the mailbox, smiling when he touched metal. The spare key spot, invented by his mother. Some things never change, he mused as he shook the dirt off it and replaced the tasteful summer flower arrangement he’d dislodged.

The sun came out from behind threatening gray clouds, hitting the back of his neck, making him gasp and sway, the memory of sun and heat, sand and pain, slamming into him almost as hard. He closed his eyes and put a shaking hand on the dark wood door, praying he could skip the daily migraine punishment. The world shimmered in front of him, morphing from the green of his boyhood lawn to the dull beige, the dusty browns and yellows of his years spent as a trained killer.

He’d literally left everything behind when he bolted after the funeral, heading blindly south, ending up in Georgia, crashing with an old friend, then getting up one morning and enlisting without a thought in his head as to the consequences.

“See a therapist,” Ghost had commanded him as he threw his kit into a duffel, realizing that everything he owned in the entire universe would fit into it now.

“Fuck that,” he’d quipped, tossing the bag over one shoulder, ignoring the clanging pain in his brain pan, the ache in his chest over leaving the one family he’d come to love and value—the family that had loved and valued him back.

Ghost had grabbed his arm, digging his fingertips in deep, making his point clear. Terry had ignored him. He could do that now. Ghost was no longer the boss of him.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat, and moved slowly as if to evade the twin monsters of migraine and memory, when he slid the key into the lock. After a few seconds, he realized that the thing wouldn’t turn. That the key he’d found still buried in his mother’s hidey hole, all these years after her ugly death from lung cancer, no longer fit the door of this house.

He pulled the key out, glared at it a second, then hurled it across the front yard with a curse. Dropping to his butt on the top step, he gave in to the onrushing fury, which never failed to drag the crushing head pain along for the party. Terry groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, his mouth watering at the thought of his recently favored remedy for this—the warm comfort of a fifth of whiskey.

“Excuse me,” a female voice said from behind him yet from very, very far away. “Can I help…oh my God. Terry.”

Moving at glacial speed, as if his entire body was mired in quicksand, he rose, turned, and felt the muscles and tendons in his legs, hips, shoulders, and neck creak and flex even as his vision narrowed to a pinprick in self-defense against the horrific, gut churning pain in his brain.

A woman stood in the open door. A stranger, to him. But yet, familiar.

“Renee,” he grunted. “What the fuck are you…move,” he barked, shoving her aside and thundering into the cool tile foyer, past the dining room through the kitchen and to the back hall half-bath. He made it right before his stomach surrendered its contents.

When he came to, it took him a few seconds to sort out what he was staring at. But once he did, he scrambled back, wiping his dry lips and trying to wrap his aching head around how he’d managed to end up in the downstairs bathroom of his house in Kentucky.

The vivid dreams of sand, and sweat and Operator camaraderie; of heat and familiar, rough, loud voices had been so realistic he’d honestly figured on waking up back in that damn tent. His last assignment.

Delta Force didn’t live on a base. They scattered when they weren’t drilling, training, working out, surveilling bad asses, or freeing hostages in some far-flung hellhole. It was a wholly different life than the one he’d imagined for himself as a boy. Even the one he’d envisioned as a young man, in the throes of early success as a soccer stud. But he’d grown used to it in the years he’d spent as an Operator.

He missed it, badly.

He wanted it back even worse. It had a proscribed rhythm, a regimen, a set of tasks to be done every day, regardless. Not too far off his life as a star athlete being looked at by teams in Europe—real teams, plus all those hopped up nobodies in the MLS. The life he had turned away from, left voluntarily, in a fit of horrified agony.

But here he was, back home now. The last place on the planet he’d imagined for himself, a thirty-two-year-old grown-ass man, with a few thousand bucks in his pocket, an overpriced Harley in the driveway, the entire contents of his life zipped into an olive green duffle bag. Sitting on the floor of the bathroom of his house in fucking Lucasville.

He groaned, but the pain had retreated into its cage, growling and grumbling, promising a re-appearance if he didn’t keep his temper and blood pressure steady. Focusing on the toilet seat, then up to the sink, he noted that the place had been divested of his mother’s somewhat overwrought decorating style.

Gone were the lace curtains at the small window overlooking the backyard. Same for the little chair that had held goofy “Bathroom Reading” books, copies of Road and Track, and Sports Illustrated. The line of smelly candles on the windowsill was missing, as was the tall floor vase that had held a varying array of eucalyptus stalks and other dried or fake flowers. He blinked fast, clearing his vision further, taking in the cool, gray-green paint with bright white trim—sans the floral wallpaper border.

Where in the
hell
was he, really? He slumped against the wall, refocusing his attention on keeping his head from lurching into pain mode again. A light knock on the door forced his eyes open.

“Terry? You all right?”

Holy step-mama,
he thought.
That’s right. That’s what had torn it
, he realized. A quick glance at his phone’s cracked screen revealed he’d been in here almost an hour.

“No,” he said, his voice croaky and dry. “I’m absolutely not. Please tell me you’re here to drop off food, or do someone’s hair, Renee. Please?”

There was no answer for a few minutes. He closed his eyes again, letting himself drift, appreciating every second of the central air conditioning hissing in through the vents.

Finally, the door opened, revealing her again. Terry stared at her feet, clad in flat, utilitarian sandals, her toenails a bright candy pink, her smooth tanned thighs uncovered up to what looked like a tennis skirt, her flat stomach, trim waist, and her full, high tits.

He rolled over to his hands and knees, attempting not to hyperventilate. By the time he’d made it to his feet, she still stood there, chewing on her lower lip, her eyes snapping with worry and a dash of disbelief.
Those lips,
he thought, hauling himself up and putting a hand on the door frame. He touched her cheek. She flinched away, rubbing one bare arm.

“What are you
doing
here,” she whispered, putting what he saw as a purely proprietary hand on the counter—no longer dark, generic granite anymore, but a bright white manufactured-looking substance that glinted in the sunlight streaming through the large window.

“I’d ask you the same thing,” he said, shoving past her. Rude, he knew but at that moment he didn’t care. “If I didn’t know what a horny old bastard my father is.” He jerked open the door of a massive stainless steel fridge, found an expensive bottle of water lined up with a bunch of others in the aggressively tidy interior and grabbed it. He knocked back over half of it, letting some of the liquid trickle down the side of his mouth, relaxing as the hydration eased the pounding between his ears one gulp at a time.

“Terry,” she said, her elegant looking hand on her long, tanned throat. “Listen, we were going to tell—”

“No, no need. You’re grown-ups. Free to do whatever you want.” He set the bottle on the island and glanced around. “You really spruced up the old homestead. Nice work.” He grabbed her left hand and glared at the obnoxious double rings on her finger. “Landed the big one, didn’t you?”

Terry hated himself then, despised the words dropping out of his stupid mouth. But he couldn’t stop them. “Guess all those blow jobs you gave me, Dominic and Aiden Love were great practice.” He winked at her. She frowned. They stood, glaring at each other a solid minute.

“Does Mike…does your father know you’re back?”

“Nope. Thought I’d surprise the old fucker. But he won the surprise contest, no doubt about it.” He turned and started rummaging in the humongous fridge again, pulling out lunch meat, cheese, lettuce, and a bottle of mustard. After dumping everything on the island, he turned to where his mother used to store the bread, stopping when he realized that space was now occupied by a set of wall ovens. “Bread?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

“There.” She pointed over his shoulder. “Pantry.”

He yanked open the light ash-wood cabinet door and grabbed what he sought then went about assembling a sandwich, mainly for something to do with his hands since he had zero appetite.

Renee Reese was in his kitchen, wearing a bigger diamond than his mother had ever owned, looking younger than ever, and sleeping in his father’s bed.

He dropped the head of lettuce and watched it roll to the edge of the counter before falling to the floor. She picked it up without a word and put it in the sink. “What the actual fuck, Renee,” he asked her, his eyes hot in a way that did not bode well in the daily headache department.

She straightened, tugged her shirt down over the short skirt thing that barely covered her firm thighs. “Stop staring at me like that, Terrance,” she said.

He barked out a laugh, unable to stop himself. “Oh, that’s rich. You’re using your step-mama voice on me now? How cute.”

“Listen,” she said, slumping against the counter across the kitchen from him. “Terry, I told Mike…um…your father, that he should tell you. Somehow, even if he just sent an email. But he’s stubborn, as you know, and I, well…I…” She wrung her hands together and looked everywhere but at him.

A tickle of amusement hit his brain then, easing the fury he was desperately trying to keep at bay. He called on the training he’d endured as a Delta that had forced him to coral his temper, to channel it into a deep well of patience, because waiting around was something he did a fair bit, in between bursts of violent, dangerous activity. One training exercise in particular hit him then as he stared at the woman who, as a teenager, had explored sex with him with an enthusiasm that matched his own and who, apparently, was now married to his asshole, banker father.

It had been less training, and more initiation, but he’d never forget it. Snatched from his bunk in the dead of night, blindfolded and made to sit on a cold chair for at least an hour in total silence until lights flooded his eyes when the cover was ripped from his face and he realized he was sitting in a room full of targets. The fake bad guys who would never pass muster in any racial sensitivity training back in corporate America were all around him, made of thick wire, fabric and plaster, coded so the hits they took could be recorded to determine a kill shot versus an injury.

By that time, he’d learned how to keep his breathing calm and his pulse steady in the face of the kind of adversity that would send a normal man into screaming fits. He sat, impassive, watching the closed door. Sure enough, it burst open, revealing his superior officer and the men who’d spent the last six weeks pushing him to the ends of his endurance, hoping to break him. They came in shooting. Shooting live rounds—as in bullets—taking out every single target that surrounded him. Some of them as close as a few inches.

He got it. He was the hostage. And Deltas never killed hostages.

In later years when participating in that particular initiation rite for others, he recalled how, afterward, he had stuffed his ruined underwear deep down in a garbage bag, then tied it up and tossed it into a dumpster, hoping no one saw him.

“It’s been a damn long time,” he said. He felt deflated, exhausted, drained and wished for nothing more than eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, if his fucked up brain would allow that.

“It has been,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “I love him, Terry. He loves me. It’s not what you think.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” he said, feeling even worse as he surveyed the mess he’d made on the kitchen island. “Is my room, I mean, uh…” He cleared his throat and tried to summon his inner grown man, the one who’d survived not only that terrifying initiation, but several real life instances of it. The same man felled by a fucking piece of shrapnel hitting his head so hard he’d been in a medically induced coma for two weeks to keep his brain from swelling up and oozing out his ears.

“Your room’s been updated, but your, um, bed’s still in it.” She had the good taste to blush, he noted. “Terry, I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Mike…your father and I, we dated for three years. I didn’t want…I mean I wouldn’t marry him even though he kept asking me. I’m not a gold digger. I made more money than—I mean, shit. I didn’t even sleep with him for a year and half,” she ended, her voice raised in squeaky self-defense. “I never meant to fall so hard, Terry. So help me.”

“Spare me, please,” he said, holding up a hand. “Just don’t tell me I’m getting a baby brother or sister, all right,
Mom
?”

Her lips twitched, then she giggled. Which proved contagious. They laughed, and that eased a small bit of the tension. She took the mustard bottle from his clenched hand and put it away without a word. “Why don’t you go lie down,” she said, softly, as she tidied up his chaos of uneaten sandwich fixings.

“This is too weird,” he said, watching her, but no longer angry. He didn’t have the energy for that at the moment. “How’s Kieran?”

She smiled and wiped down the front of the stainless fridge, ever the compulsive cleaner. “He’s principal over at the high school you know. He and Cara got back together. I’ll swan, those two…they have two little boys, just as fire-hydrant red-headed as both their parents, and Cara’s expecting again.”

She poured two glasses of iced tea and handed him one, then perched herself on a tall stool at a raised counter next to the surface mounted cook top. “The Loves provide us all with serious drama, as usual.” They clinked their tea glasses together and sipped. “He’s missed you,” she said, setting her glass down. “Why didn’t you at least contact him? I get why you and Mike…your father…fell out but Kieran was really hurt by your silence.”

Terry snorted and drank of half the minty, lemon-flavored beverage. “Sounds like he’s been busy.” He drained the tea. “I’m gonna go see him at the school. I’m hoping he needs a soccer coach, or a janitor, or something over there.”

“You never finished your degree, did you?” she asked.

“Nope,” he said, standing up and stretching, not willing to go down that conversational path now. “I’m a trained killer though, in case you were wondering.”

“That’s nice,” she said, glancing at the Rolex on her wrist. Terry tried not to take that sort of inventory but something in him wouldn’t stop. “Why don’t you go on upstairs a while? I’m gonna finish here then we…um I have a tee time in an hour.”

“A tee time? La-ti-dah, Miss Renee,” he taunted, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. “You’re even taking up the old man’s old man hobbies now?”

“If you must know, we met for the first time at a charity golf scramble. One I organized for cancer research and his bank sponsored. I’ve been playing golf for something like ten years now. Don’t make assumptions. My handicap is better than his, and I don’t use the ladies’ tees, either.”

He held up both hands. “All right, all right. Sorry.”

She looked at her watch again, then glanced over his shoulder. “Go on, now. Rest. We’ll…I’ll…we’ll be home for dinner. God, this is weird. I never meant for it to happen like this.”

He shrugged, so tired he wondered if he should crash on the couch in the family room. She’d updated it too, bringing in a light, airiness in direct opposition to the dark paneling and leather furniture style his mother favored.

He missed his mother then, with the sort of bright, sharp urgency he’d never felt. His mother—with her ever-present cigarette, sharing a drink with his father at the end of every day, putting out dinners that were utilitarian, unimaginative, but nourishing. A great prep for Army food that he’d acknowledged more than once in the past few years.

Geraldine Francis O’Leary’s dark hair was always perfect, even when she was doing her non-stop gardening work—secured with a wide, colorful band, many times emblazoned with the University of Kentucky Wildcats emblem. She’d graduated Magna Cum Laude, president of the Chi Omega sorority, and with a shiny future banker husband on one arm.