Lethal Deception (21 page)

Little feet pattered down the hall.

“Alexis is awake.” Cassidy smiled. “I can call Amy to keep her if you want me to.”

“No, let me see her.”

Alexis toddled into the den and spotted Gabe. She screeched to a halt and her jaw dropped. Her blue eyes lightened and she clasped her pudgy hands in front of her chest.

“Gabe!” she shrieked. Sheer joy propelled her little body torpedo style into Gabe’s lap. Little arms wrapped themselves around his neck and squeezed.

Cassidy spotted the tears swimming in his eyes right before Gabe buried his face in the child’s sleep-mussed curls. “Hey, munchkin. I’ve missed you.”

“Yep.” She nodded. “Missed you. Now, kiss!”

Laughter shook his shoulders as he bent down to plant a smacking kiss on her rosy cheek.

Cassidy choked back her own tears. Even if things didn’t work out between Gabe and her, there was no way she could keep Alexis from him if he wanted to see her. They had developed a special bond.

Gabe lifted his eyes and the love she saw there threatened to undo her. He’d torn down all the walls and exposed his soul for her to see. She swallowed hard.
Help me, Lord.

Gabe set Alexis on the floor after giving her another kiss on the top of her head. “Go play, okay?”

“You play with me?” She batted her baby blues and he couldn’t stop the love that surged.

“Sure, I’ll play with you after I talk to Cassidy, okay?”

“Nope. Now.”

Cassidy gave a choking sound and Gabe grinned. “Gee, you’re already taking after your new mama, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, munchkin, go get a toy and we’ll play.”

“Yippee!” She scooted down the hall and Gabe turned to Cassidy. His heart constricted at the look on her face. A mixture of fear, hurt, anticipation and resignation.

“Cass, come here.”

Cassidy shook her head. “I can’t, Gabe.”

“We don’t have a lot of time. Alexis’ll be back in a second and I need to tell you some things.”

“Micah,” she breathed.

Gabe ran a hand over the back of his neck and nodded. “Yeah, he’s one of them.”

Confusion and hope ran across her features. “But I thought…No. I mean, you can’t.” This time she scooted closer to Gabe and placed her hand over his. “And I think I understand. I mean, I don’t like it, that’s for sure. But I’ve come to understand why you can’t say anything.”

“Cass…” he started to say. When she placed warm fingers over his lips and shushed him, he gulped. “Gabe, I’ve grown up a lot in the last several years, God has been so faithful and taught me some incredible things.” She grimaced. “And not all of those things have been fun to learn. But one thing about God is that if you listen with an open heart, even to the things that you might not want to hear, then you’ll come to realize that God’s way is best after all. I can choose to accept that—or not.”

Her slender fingers squeezed around his. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s okay. It’s all right that you can’t tell me about Micah. I understand that you took an oath, you made a promise that you would keep certain information confidential.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his forehead. “And I have to respect that. I can’t ask you to compromise your integrity.”

“Ah, Cass.” He sighed. “You take my breath away, you know that?”

“Well—” she brushed a tear off her cheek “—that’s what I wanted to say. I guess it’s your turn.”

Gabe stood, paced. He shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “I can tell you the rest of the story about Micah now.”

Cassidy blinked. “How?” she breathed.

“During those four weeks that you didn’t hear from me, I was busy. I knew I couldn’t approach you again until I could tell you everything. It wasn’t easy, but I got clearance from the powers that be.”

Hope and fear flickered through her eyes. She jumped up. “I’ve got to check on Alexis.”

“Cass…” he called, but she kept going toward the back of the house.

Cassidy moved to the back room, where she found Alexis playing in her closet. Apparently the child had gotten distracted when she came to pick out a toy. Now the toys surrounded her and she made barking noises as she ran the stuffed animals around in circles.

Alexis was fine. And content. For the moment. Cassidy had no excuse to avoid Gabe; she had to go back out there and listen to him tell his story. The one that she’d wanted to know for the last two years but now wasn’t sure she could handle hearing about. The one he’d gotten clearance from his superiors to tell her.

He’d actually done it. All this time she’d fretted because he hadn’t called, he’d been clearing the way to tell her about Micah.
Oh, God, please give me strength.

Cassidy put a Christian DVD in the TV/DVD combo on the dresser and pressed play. Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and walked back down the hall to find Gabe building a fire.

“Uh, Gabe, it’s eighty degrees outside.”

Startled, he jumped and turned to offer her a sheepish grin. “I know. I’ll help you pay your next power bill. I turned the air-conditioning down a few notches.”

Cassidy laughed. “I’m not worried about the power bill, but Alexis will freeze. This is a familiar scenario. You like fires, don’t you?”

Cassidy walked over and sat back down on the couch. Gabe placed the poker back in the stand and joined her. She said, “Okay, I’m ready to hear it. Or at least I think I am.” She looked over at him. “Am I?”

A slight smile curved his lips but quickly faded. “Probably about as ready as I am to tell it.”

Cassidy watched him shift into a more comfortable position then pat the cushion next to him. She scooted over and he curled his arm around her shoulders. After a brief hesitation, she folded into his side and waited.

“Micah was a great guy, Cass. The best. When we both joined the SEALs, we ended up on different teams. So, I hadn’t seen him in forever then ran into him about five years ago during a practice mission. He told me he was working on something major but couldn’t tell me what. He was worried though, I could see it.”

Cassidy silently prayed while Gabe told the story.

“A lot of things happened during that year. Sometimes a mission is quick and dirty. Other times it takes a long time to go down. Micah was working on a lengthy undercover project.” Cassidy heard Alexis laughing. The video had caught her attention.

“Anyway,” Gabe went on, “we had this one mission two years ago. It had to do with a drug lord. We were supposed to do our job, get the kid out and be on our way.”

She shivered. She remembered Amy’s comment from the hospital. “That’s the child Amy mentioned. The one who died.”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I…pulled Micah away from the job he was on by threatening to pull rank.”

“What? Why?”

“I needed him. He was the best, and that little boy there needed the best. I had to—” he broke off, his Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively.

“Oh, Gabe…”

“So we got there, our plan established. Twelve men. I’m number thirteen. The man in charge of the mission and the team. The plan was clicking along, things going exactly as they were supposed to, then all of a sudden I hear Micah in my earpiece telling me something felt wrong. I trusted his intuition and ordered the men out immediately.”

Cassidy squeezed his hand harder. She wanted to tell him to stop, she couldn’t bear it, but she couldn’t force the words past the lump in her throat.

“Then the explosion happened. The place just…” He coughed, emotion choking him up. “Sorry, this is…I’ve only told this story once. Right after it happened.”

“It’s okay, Gabe. You don’t—” She stopped. Could she tell him he didn’t have to go on?

“Shh.” He stilled the words on her lips. “Let me finish it. After the explosion, they were gone. Good men. Family men who wanted to serve their country the best way they could. Gone.”

Cassidy couldn’t help the sob that escaped. “I’m sorry.” She used the edge of the blanket to mop up the tears and struggled to get herself under control. “I knew he was on the mission with you and that he was killed in that explosion. But why all the secrecy?”

“Cass.”

She settled back. “I’m sorry. It’s just so unfair.”

“That’s not the end of it, Cass.”

She stilled.

“What I’m about to tell you can go no further. I have permission to tell you the next part, but with orders to inform you that if you repeat it, which I know you won’t, but if you do, you could put other SEALs in danger. You see, the mission’s still not over. And if you say anything or do anything with this information, you and I, both of us, will be arrested for treason. I know you won’t say a word,” he reemphasized his trust in her, “but I have to be able to say that I informed you of this.”

Cassidy gasped. “Then don’t tell me.”

He pulled her in front of him and looked her straight in the eye. “Can you live with not knowing? Can you look at me every day of our lives and not long to ask me?”

She held herself rigid then slumped and whispered, “Probably not.”

He squeezed her fingers gently. “I couldn’t live with you without you knowing the whole truth. It would eat me alive, day after day.”

“Okay,” she whispered, “go ahead.”

“When I couldn’t raise anyone on the radio, I started to move down the hill to go after the men. But before I could turn to grab my pack, a gun barrel jabbed me in the ear.”

Cassidy gasped.

Gabe shuddered. “I knew I was a dead man. But before he was going to shoot me, he was going to get as much information as he could from me. When I wouldn’t talk, he counted down from three. When he got to one, he pulled the trigger.”

Cassidy couldn’t breathe. “But…you…you’re…”

“I had just finished a plea to God when that man pulled the trigger. It clicked on an empty chamber. We fought and unfortunately I got careless and he managed to stab me. Then a bullet came out of nowhere and killed him.”

“God spared your life,” she whispered in awe. In the background she could still hear Alexis’s TV and the little girl singing along with one of the silly songs. But Cassidy’s attention was focused solely on the man beside her.

“Yes, He did. And He used Micah to do it.”

She bolted upright. “Micah didn’t die in that explosion?”

“No, he died after saving my hide. Some of his last words were orders for me to take care of you.”

“But, how? What…”

“And he gave me orders that no one was to know that he was there. There was a traitor, who we now know to be Cecelia Graham, in our midst, and for some reason if anyone knew he was there, it would endanger other SEALs even though they weren’t on that particular mission.”

Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose. The memories still hurt, but for Cassidy he would face them. “After I gave him an oxygen mask and a whopping dose of antibiotics, I went to wait for rescue. But I passed out from my injuries and the next time I opened my eyes I was in the chopper. I tried to tell them Micah was still down there. But no one believed me. They thought I was delirious. By the time I could get anyone to listen to me, I’d already been in and out of surgery. And I was told the mission never happened. Micah McKnight was dead along with the others and I was never to speak of it again. And I haven’t. Until now.”

Cassidy sobbed, the pain of losing her brother fresh all over again. “Oh, Gabe.”

“I pushed him to be there. He was the best for that kind of situation and I pulled rank to get him there. Then I let him die. I feel like I failed him, Cass. He saved my life and I just left him there to die.” Gabe choked back tears of his own. “I was so afraid if you found out about this, you’d hate me forever, despise me for being the one to put Micah on the mission that got him killed.”

Cassidy just cried harder.

Gabe hugged her, rocked her and let her cry. Did she hate him? Were his worst fears about to materialize?

She couldn’t quit crying. But she had to. Finally, she was able to speak. “It wasn’t your fault.” Cassidy found she really did believe the words. It wasn’t fair that her brother had died, but it wasn’t Gabe’s fault. He’d been wounded himself and by the time anyone would have listened to him, most likely Micah would have already been dead.

“Ah, Cass, thanks for saying that, but I’ll always feel like I should have done more.”

Cassidy said thoughtfully, “So you don’t think Micah could possibly be alive?”

Gabe sighed and shut his eyes. “I just don’t know. I don’t see how and yet after an intense search, his body was never found. I just don’t know.”

Tears welled up in her eyes and she nodded, finally able to say goodbye to the brother she’d loved so much. “Okay, Gabe, okay.”

“So, now you know.”

Cassidy raised a hand and cupped his cheek. “Yes, now I know. And I don’t hate you. I don’t understand God all the time. If I did, I wouldn’t need faith. So, I’m going to exercise my faith and trust that God had something good come from all of the horror. I may never know what it is, but I’m trusting He’ll let me in on it one day in heaven. Of course, you and I wouldn’t be together if you hadn’t had to rescue me from the jungle, so…I guess I can actually see something good, right? I mean, I don’t know why He couldn’t have just had you call me up and ask me out, but…like I said, God works in ways we find strange but make complete sense to him. I guess I won’t complain, since he sent you back into my life.”