Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room) (32 page)

He grinned. “Stroking my ego?”

“Just telling you the standards I expect you to maintain,” she said loftily.

From his expression, she could tell he understood the significance of her agreement. Not only was she seeing him three times in the same week, she was agreeing to meet people he considered his family—both blood and chosen. And speaking of
quid pro quo
, in that same week he would be submitting to her, in a formal club environment.

It was an exchange of worlds, to see how they did in both. Maybe it was a little much all at once, but to be honest, Matt was right. She was falling in love, and like any woman in love, in the first throes of that breathless passion and fascination, she wanted to be with him every minute. The possessive grasp of his hands, the look in his eyes, the demand of the lips he put back on hers now, told her he had the same overwhelming desire.

So fuck it. Go big or go home. And she didn’t want to go home unless Max was with her.

* * * * *

Amanda Ackerman was a permanent resident at a private, top-of-the-line psychiatric home. Located on the outskirts of New Orleans, the main building of the property was an old plantation with graceful pillars and a verandah. The grounds had extensive gardens, a pond and peaceful nature trails. Brick annex buildings housed the medical facilities, so that such ugly necessities didn’t intrude on the living quarters. In the main house, the thirty permanent residents had their own rooms and were watched over by an ample full-time staff. There were several solariums, an indoor and outdoor pool, a recreation area and more.

Another annex was being built. As they passed it, Janet read the construction sign.
Future Site of the Clinical Neurological Studies Center
. Beneath that, she noticed the building would be dedicated to Angelica Kensington. It confirmed a couple things for her. One, Matt and Savannah Kensington deserved every blessing they received in their lives, precisely because they never forgot how blessed they were. Two, Matt had probably used his not-insignificant negotiating skills to convince Max to let him help get his sister into the facility. While military benefits could be good, she suspected they were not this good.

Max was not the type to accept charity, but she already knew he’d swallow an ocean of pride to give his sister the best of all things. Just as she knew Matt would never hold it over his head to influence Max in any way. The people who were loyal to Matt were loyal because of the man himself, not because of what they owed him. She knew that firsthand, didn’t she?

When they arrived in the lobby, the nurse told Max his sister was in the west garden. As they moved in that direction, Max squeezed Janet’s hand. “If you want to have a seat on a bench when we get out there, I’ll bring her over to introduce you, if she seems in the right state for it. If she’s not, I’ll give you a signal, and you can go do whatever you’d like while we visit. I hate to do that to you, but—”

“You already explained this to me three times, Max,” Janet said with gentle reproof. “I completely understand. If things aren’t right, I’ll just be another person sitting in the garden, one she doesn’t have to meet. I doubt I’ll get restless watching you two together, but if I do, there are plenty of walking trails. Plus I have my tablet, so I can catch up on my email. Don’t you dare think of rushing your visit on my account.”

He nodded, leaned down and brushed her lips with his. “It’s stupid that I’m nervous about this. I want her to like you, even knowing that’s nothing that I can control, and it doesn’t have any significance if she doesn’t, because of how she is. Mother Teresa could walk in there and Amanda might react to her like Jeffrey Dahmer, because her eyes are the wrong color, or she has an age spot on her hands.”

“No matter how she reacts to me, it will be okay.” Janet reached up, touched his face. “I will love her.”
Because I’m pretty sure I love you.

He held her gaze as if she’d said the words out loud. Lifting her hands, he pressed his mouth to them. Then he gave them one more squeeze and stepped out the door.

After he was about ten paces down the garden path, Janet slipped out as well. She picked a bench set on a concrete pad encircled by a lovely rainbow of flowers and sculpted dwarf shrubs. As she settled, she watched him move toward a young woman in a blue dress, her dark hair cut to her shoulders. When she turned, Janet saw the curious vacancy in the gray eyes turn to a different kind of light. The way she walked toward Max, jerky and somewhat unbalanced when she got too fast, the listlessness of her left arm, showed the evidence of the brain damage, but the enthusiasm in her face was like a lit candle in darkness.

“Max,” she said. “Max Max Max.”

The tightening in her throat was unexpected, the sting of tears in her eyes. He’d said he saw her twice a week, and Amanda acted as if she hadn’t seen Max in months. Janet wondered if she always reacted that way. But it wasn’t that alone which caused the emotional reaction. Three men had held this beautiful child down, brutalized her, beat her. Janet remembered what it was like, being down on the ground, Jorge whaling on her with the bat, blow after blow. If he’d hit her head just the right way, she could have been this. Only she wouldn’t have been in this beautiful facility. She’d have been tossed in a hole somewhere, left to die.

She closed her eyes, fighting the surge of unbalancing emotions. She couldn’t do this here and now. Not if Amanda wanted to meet her. She had to pull herself together. Damn it, she should have predicted his reaction.

“Sad girl. Sad girl. Max.”

Janet snapped back to the present. She always lost time when this happened, and a quick glance at her watch told her about ten minutes had passed. Amanda was standing right in front of her, those gray eyes so much like Max’s fastened on her face. Amanda was handing her something. A tissue.

“Sad girl.” No, she wasn’t handing Janet the tissue. Amanda was bent forward, wiping her eyes for her, dabbing at the tears. She sat down next to Janet, pressed the tissue into her hand and put an arm around her. Then she rocked the two of them back and forth, making a crooning noise. “It’s okay. Max is here. Max makes everything okay.”

Janet looked up to see Max watching them. The concern on his face pierced her heart even more deeply, particularly when he dropped to his haunches before them, laying a hand on Janet’s knee as well as his sister’s. As he looked up at them both, her with her reconstructed face, his sister with her obvious neurological issues, Janet saw regret in his expression, his realization of the connection.

She firmed her chin. She wouldn’t let this visit take that turn. Covering his hand with her own in reassurance, she put her other one lightly on Amanda’s, hoping it wasn’t the wrong move. Amanda’s head popped up, her gaze locking with Janet’s.

“Thank you, Amanda. I feel better now. Thanks to you and Max.”

“Amanda, this is my friend Janet. She wanted to meet you.”

Amanda gave her a perusal that was the equivalent of a visual strip search. She touched Janet’s hair, then began to pluck out the bobby pins. Max made a move to stop her, but Janet shook her head, a slight movement telling him it was okay.

“Ooh. Pretty. Doll hair.” As it unraveled down her back, over her shoulders, Amanda stroked it, touched Janet’s face. “Okay. You’ll take care of Max. Max needs someone to take care of him.” She made an expression so remarkably like a smug little sister Janet smiled. “He’s a big dummy.”

“Better a big dummy than a priss pot,” Max returned. He pinched Amanda’s knee and she swatted at him. Then she settled against Janet’s shoulder, tracing the patterns on her skirt. Max sat down on the other side of his sister, and the young woman took both their hands and began to hum. As Max cupped the back of her head, stroking, Janet saw the strain on his face.

She couldn’t imagine how hard it was to do this, to see his sister forever caught in the state of a young child. Amanda was in her late twenties, perhaps even thirty. She overlapped their hands, so that they were holding each other as well as Amanda.

“Do you play checkers?” she asked Janet.

“Yes, I do.”

“Will you play with me? And then maybe read me a story with Max? He got me the Nancy Drew set, and he’s reading them to me. Then it will be time to eat. I’ll share my snack with you.”

“Thank you. I’d love that.”

It all went well until the snack. In almost every room and even out in the gardens, signs clearly and emphatically indicated all cell phones were to be turned off, but one visitor had ignored the signs. The cell tone that blared forth was a rap song. Before it reached its first stanza, Amanda transformed from a playful child into a ferocious banshee who screamed at invisible attackers to stop, stop,
stop
. Max refused the orderly’s help, holding his sister against him, arms banded across her upper torso, until the nurse injected her with a sedative strong enough to make her mercifully insensible in a matter of minutes. As she faded away, she was repeating it over and over. “Stop hurting me. Stop…hurting…me.”

Max lifted and carried her to her room with the nurse in the lead. Janet trailed after him. When he laid her down in her bed, as tenderly as if he held an infant, he excused the nurse, telling her he’d care for her. Apparently the sedative would keep her out for hours. Janet joined him, helping him undress Amanda and put her in a cotton nightgown. She wondered if he’d picked it out for her. It was warm and rabbit fur soft, with pretty embroidery on the hem and neckline. After they tucked her in, he sat at her bedside, stroking her head and murmuring to her. When the nurse returned a half hour later, he brushed a kiss on Amanda’s forehead and nodded to Janet, indicating it was time to leave.

As they walked out the front door, he seemed to be setting a straight course for the parking lot, but Janet took his hand, tugged him toward a bench surrounded by the flowers and foliage of the front landscaping. When she pressed him to a seated position, she sat on his lap, wrapping her arms around him. He said nothing for a moment, stiff and rigid, but she said nothing either, simply putting her head on top of his. He sighed, his head sinking down to her breast. As his shoulders began to shake, her heart broke.

Letting a new person bear witness to a wound that could never possibly heal could bring forth such emotions. Hadn’t she reacted in a volatile way of her own when she had told Max her story? She held him, letting those bitter, silent tears mark her shirt. He banded his arms around her, rocking them both.

“It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.” She ached for him, and also understood fully why he wanted every single person responsible for this dead. In his shoes, she’d hunt and exterminate them like the vermin they were.

“When I don’t come every few days, she lapses into that state,” he said at last, lifting his head. He would have wiped at his eyes with typical male self-consciousness, but just like Amanda, she did it instead, taking the tracks away on her fingers, caressing his jaw. “It’s like she uses me as a touchstone, cycling around it. When I’m gone, the cycle breaks, and she gets pulled into the center, back into the nightmare. Once, we tried having me stay away for a month. Though they warned me she might forget who I was, they thought it might alter the nucleus of the memories, make things better. Instead, it got so bad she almost died. Wasted away to nothing. I had to stay here for a couple weeks, hand-feeding her, and if I left the room at all, she had to be sedated. We eventually got her back to this.”

Thinking about the toll of doing this, she could comprehend why Max was so quiet, so steady. Or perhaps it was a chicken or egg thing. The calling that had put him overseas when this happened must be the same one that gave him the strength to deal with this week after week.

He turned his head, looked at her, and she saw the stark desolation in his gaze. “I know it would be better if she had died. Why was I in the right time and right place for Savannah and her baby, for so many missions, and not for my mother and sister? What kind of God fucks with you like that? You can make yourself crazy with the questions. Even if He couldn’t stop it, why would He let only a part of her mind survive it? Why not be merciful, take her life?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it works like that. I never have. I don’t think God, whatever It is, is like some kind of movie director, on top of every action and reaction. I think it’s much more high level than that.”

“As a SEAL, you learned it was all up to you and your team, and you don’t quit until the mission is accomplished, no matter what goes wrong. That’s the way life is. You don’t give up, you don’t quit.” He sighed. “Superman. That’s what Amanda called me, because of the jaw.” He gestured to it wryly, the square cut that defined his strong face. “But it didn’t matter. I was trained to be the best of the best, but it means nothing if I’m not there at the critical moment I’m needed. I wasn’t there. That’s nothing you can predict, change or help. Completely out of my control. It makes no sense. I felt like God was fucking laughing at me.”

Janet stroked his hair, touched the handsome jaw. “I’ve done that too. Thought about the moment Jorge said the right combination of words, the things that made me decide to stay with him instead of going home with my dance company. I think of a hundred ways I might have noticed this or that, chosen differently. But I didn’t. Maybe in some alternative universe I did, and as a result, I became a different person. Maybe a less strong, less certain person than I am now. But when this happens to an innocent, one who was given no choices at all in her Fate, there seems to be no clear answer.”