I swallow over the lump in my throat, hating him for not being there to protect her once again, because if she was his partner, that was his job, and at the same time knowing that this is my anger speaking, because there’s no way to protect someone from a bomb blast you didn’t know was coming.
“I’m so confused,” I confess, using the wall for support because it’s taking everything I have to concentrate on his words and not on the pressure in my chest.
“Beaux wasn’t just a photographer. She was an agent sent to gather intel for the agency on the high-level meet. Her job was to document figures in the game, watch their comings and goings, where they met up, who they spoke to. Cause some confusion amongst some of the local contacts so that we could make sure to take the targets out without them knowing.”
“Omid.” His name falls from my lips as I recall the look on his face the first time he got a good look at Beaux.
“Yes, Omid,” Dane says. “He was sharing info with both sides. Beaux called me one night, afraid that he had recognized her when they came face-to-face in enemy territory when she was out gathering intel. She wasn’t sure if he had or not, but —”
Dots connect for me. Her phone call in the hallway that night and how upset she was. Was that all about Omid? “He sent me a text about not trusting her that made no sense at the time. I just thought it was because she was a woman.” All I can do is shake my head at all of this.
“She wasn’t sure.”
“The photos with odd time stamps, the late nights out by herself, the —”
“All missions to gather information and meet with sources,” he says as pieces start clicking into place. Now things make so much sense, and yet I feel so stupid for not putting them together sooner, but how could I? This is like a Tom Clancy novel. Who would think this shit exists even though I live in its world on a daily basis? “We cleared her room out of all of her info while you were on your way to Germany,” he explains as I just sit there and shake my head in disbelief.
“So her cover was blown?” I ask him, trying to draw connections that still aren’t clicking solidly into place.
“In more ways than one,” Dane says, and stares sternly at me in a way I can’t read. “She called me one night while you were filing your report and told me she broke her cover with you. I was so pissed at her, told her she was risking everything, including her life. It was so hard having her there with you when I couldn’t be there to protect her,” he says, and for a moment I sympathize with him because I know that exact feeling, have failed twice in fact in doing just that. “She said you guys were talking and she forgot for a moment where she was, what she was supposed to be doing, but that she told you about her parents, her past… Fuck man, that’s like rule number one, know your backstory like the back of your hand, and she completely disregarded it.”
I blow out a breath as a small part of me grabs onto his comment because that means that I have something more of Beaux to hold on to, that regardless of the reason she was there, she still showed me the real her. I fell in love with the real person on the inside, not something she wasn’t.
“It was right then I knew something was going on between you two. She denied it fiercely, but I knew her well enough to know she was lying. I got her to admit in a roundabout way that there was something between you, but she told me that you guys weren’t telling anyone, that you’d honor the promise because the integrity of your work was so important to you and so if push came to shove, her cover would hold…” His voice fades off, allowing me to absorb what he’s said to this point, and while I still feel like I’m drinking the information from a firehose, at least I have information to drown in. And heartache. There’s definitely no escaping the weariness that assails me from finding this all out too late. Everything is just too late.
“The IED,” Dane says, pulling me from the riot in my head and heart. “Both Rosco’s and Sarge’s reports stated that they thought they heard someone call Beaux’s name. We intercepted radio chatter congratulating over a takeout. We couldn’t be positive they meant Beaux, so we immediately went into protective mode, because if someone called her name, that meant she might have had eyes on her, a bounty on her head for playing both sides.”
“So if her caring husband shows up at Landstuhl, makes a scene —”
“And she goes home with him and has a domesticated life in a house that they suddenly moved into and a fake background to reinforce it, then there’s no way she could be a spy. Eyes and ears everywhere, making sure that —”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I say to no one as something dawns on me. “You guys were fucking listening to us that day?” The look on his face tells me what I don’t want to know, and now it’s my turn to pace the floor. The one last memory I have of her, the bittersweet and intimate moments between us were documented by who knows what kind of devices and the perverted fucks on the other end of them.
“They were turned off when we realized what was happening,” he murmurs, but the admission does nothing to stop the anger that eats at me. “She wanted to run after you, you know…”
“No, I don’t know!” I yell, at him, at her, at everyone because I feel so fucking in the dark right now, and while I don’t want to know another thing, I need to know everything. Then I can leave here and try to comprehend so that I can mourn the loss of her even though I still can’t believe she’s gone.
“She wanted to run after you,” he repeats, but this time with more compassion, “but we couldn’t let her. We were afraid for your safety too. Afraid that if your source was the one who ratted her out, they’d think you were spying too. So we had eyes on your house from the moment you got home.”
“William’s black Suburban blocking my view…” I say more to myself than to him. The believability factor of this whole situation has become almost too far-fetched, cloak and daggerish for my own liking. So much so that if I weren’t living it, I’d say it was a bogus story.
He murmurs in agreement. “You left the house in Kansas, and she was beside herself because she knew how much she was hurting you. I made her promise just a few more weeks to make sure everything was kosher before she could come to you, that the intercepts still weren’t clean of chatter yet. If you two had seen each other again, then she’d have been putting you in danger. She said you were going to come back, that you don’t give up without a fight,” he says, followed by an audible sigh, my own heart swelling despite the pain to hear this and know she was as tormented as I was. A misery loves company sort of thing.
And then I remember she’s dead. And now it was all for nothing.
“She filed a restraining order, called Rafe to warn you so you wouldn’t come back and be at risk… She just wanted you safe because she loved you. In all the years we worked together, I’d never seen her like this, Tanner. You have to know that. She really did love you.” He rests his shoulders against the wall and leans his head to look up at the ceiling. “She was going on a quick mission to the embassy to deliver some information and confirm a few things for a source we have there. She told me her return flight was going to be to San Diego so that she could tell you everything, beg for your forgiveness, and have a real life for the first time…”
I wince at the words, cringe at the realization of what will never be. He walks up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it momentarily while my eyes look down at my shoes. I know I should apologize for punching him, since he lost his partner and probably feels much like I did when I lost Stella, but I can’t bring myself to say anything at all. Absolutely nothing because every single thing ricochets around in the numbed void inside me. I just can’t believe it all yet.
“I’m so sorry, Tanner. For everything… I couldn’t let you leave without your knowing the truth.”
I just nod my head ever so subtly, my eyes still focused on the floor. And I stay like this long after Dane leaves the room, reality slipping through my fingers like sand as I try to hold on to it.
At some point the wa
lls feel like they are closing in on me, suffocating me with the memories I have to hold on to but don’t deserve, the love I feel that can no longer be returned, and a connection with a woman I’ll never be able to touch again. I have to orient myself in the fog of disbelief, and once I do, I grab my bag and soon I’m all but clawing my way out of the private room followed by the meeting room in search of fresh air.
I shove through the exterior doors to an empty courtyard. I must make it only a few yards away from the exit before I drop my bags without thought and fall to my knees as the emotion catches up to me and hits me like a sledgehammer to the heart.
My huge gulps for air turn into body-racking sobs as the tears that I thought had dried up come out in a temper tantrum of visible emotion. Shoulders heaving, head falling forward, and mind accepting that my reality has just changed forever and I didn’t get to have a fucking goddamn say in it.
I was so worried about protecting her that it never once crossed my mind that she was protecting me. And the idea that I could have suspected any of it is ludicrous at best, but it doesn’t make the notion sting any less. Through blurred vision, I look at my hands and know that even though she’s gone, her hands will always hold my heart.
“I’m sorry, Beaux,” I sob out loud because I am so sorry, sorry I didn’t go back to her house that day. Maybe if I had, she would have confessed, never gone on this ill-fated mission, and would still be alive. And then of course the idea of the mission takes hold, and the images of the press briefing flash through my mind. The notion becomes a reality that somewhere in that twisting metal and demolished building was my once-in-a-lifetime.
I’m a man falling apart amid the hustle and bustle of life around me – the click of high heels, the ring of a cell phone, someone’s laughter – but time stopped for me in the devastating blink of an eye.
Chapter 30
S
omehow I make it back to the airport.
Make it to the one place I’ve always relied on to escape everything. To the one place that I knew would take me away after Stella died, back into the thrill of the pursuit, the adrenaline rush of being first to report a story. But right now as I stand before the departure board, how I got here is all a blur I don’t even recall because I was too busy keeping my shit together. I can’t remember ever feeling so lost in my life.
I just need to get on the plane, do my job, and then get back home and figure out the life that eight hours ago seemed crystal clear but now is a fucking shattered mess of glass.
And then it dawns on me that I can’t get on the plane because deplaning means that I’m going to be rushing to and reporting on the story that took Beaux’s life. If I feel paralyzed now, seeing the devastation in person, knowing her blood has been spilled somewhere in the rubble, would make it more real than I can fathom.
Even if I could gather myself to do the report, use the numbness to get the story out before the journalistic fourth wall crumbles, I don’t want to. I can’t face it.
I’m done.
The buzz I’ve lived my life by is gone. I don’t feel a single zap of it, and the last time I did was telling Rylee that I was going to fight for what was mine. For Beaux. The inexplicable draw to the hard beat has died for me. I stare at the electronic boards, a man who finally found what was missing in his life only to lose it before he could fully recognize it. The destinations blur before my eyes, running together, and I have no idea where I’m going, what I’m doing, but there is one thing that is crystal clear.
It takes me a second to realize my cell is still turned off, that I was so fixated on getting to the meeting and then with the aftermath that I never turned it on. When I do, texts from Rafe come in a flurry, and I know that he’s found out somehow about Beaux’s death. As much as I don’t want to talk to him, don’t want to share my misery, I dial and wait for him to pick up.
“Jesus Christ, Tanner. I had no idea,” he answers. But his words aren’t enough for me. What did he have no idea about? That she was killed in the embassy bombing or that she was a spy?
“Did you know?” I grit the question out, needing to know more than ever if he knew about the setup, was in on it. When silence hangs on the line, my instinct tells me that he doesn’t. He’s not a good enough liar to play me that well, and if he was, he’s not going to tell me anyway. He remains silent for a moment. “Put Pauly on the story.”
“What… what’s going —”
“Pauly deserves it. Give him a shot to make the headline.”
“Talk to me, Tanner. What are you —”
“Thank you,” I say, cutting him off again, my eyes still trying to focus on the digitized cities on the screen in front of me. I don’t know where I’m going, but the only caveat is that there won’t be a desert. “This time it’s for real.”
“What is? What are you talking about?”
“I quit.”
Chapter 31
One week later
S
he’s so beautiful, it hurts sometimes to look at her.
I glance up from the bed to see Beaux standing at the edge of it, hair down, eyes on me, a soft smile on her face.
“Tanner,” she whispers as she sits down beside me. The mattress springs squeak, and we both laugh at the memory. She leans over, her hair tickles my face as it falls down to my chest, but I forget all about it the minute her lips brush mine. Her kiss tastes like her, like everything I’ve ever wanted, like forever.
I startle awake from the dream. Just like I do every morning, every night. Every time I close my eyes. And the vivid imagery of it and the way it leaves me feeling is so real, so tangible, that it takes me a minute to remember she’s gone.
And then the ache comes roaring back with a vengeance. The pain still radiates in my chest, the grief still weighs down my soul, the loss still runs my life.
This is my good morning. Has been every day since she’s been gone.
I walk down Main Street through the two-bit town I’m playing recluse in. The plane touched down in Billings, Montana, and I drove until I couldn’t see from exhaustion and found myself in this tiny little town of Freeman, population one thousand.
The bartender at Ginger’s greets me by name as I walk in, and my beer is pulled from the tap and slid alongside the shot of whiskey that she’s had waiting here every day since I’ve been in town. It’s easier to numb yourself with alcohol. While the drunken haze makes the memories that much sweeter, it also makes your heart that much more hardened.
“Hey, handsome,” Ginger says.
“Hi.” I nod my head and then lower it, keep to myself, like I have since day one. My mind’s still a mess, and I need this solitude and the noise in my head simultaneously to come to grips with everything.
“So let me guess, you’re nursing a heartbreak?” I cringe when she starts to pry, because I keep coming here because no one has asked me shit besides the general curiosity questions. And now she just went and ruined it.
“Something like that,” I murmur into my beer, my eyes looking up to catch the baseball game on the television on the opposite wall. My lack of interest in any conversation should be more than apparent.
“I have a few ideas how we can cure that for you,” she says, and I can hear the smile on her face even though I’m not looking at her.
“Whatever you’re looking for, I assure you I’m not him,” I tell her, and immediately startle as my mind shifts back to the first time I met Beaux and said something similar. I lift the beer, my eyes focusing on the bottom of the glass as I drain it before sliding some cash across the bar top, scooting my chair out, and walking from the bar.
“You okay?”
“Yes, Rylee. I’m getting there.”
“I just wish there was something I could do or say to —”
“There’s nothing to say, Bubs,” I tell her as I sit on the steps of the back porch of the little cabin I’ve rented on the edge of the woods and lift a beer to my lips. It’s amazing how cash can get you anything, includi
ng anonymity and seclusion. “I just need some time to sort my shit out, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. I’m worried about you. I’ve been through this before,” she says, referring to her fiancé who died years ago, “so I understand this more than most people do, but I didn’t take off to the edge of nowhere and disappear. I needed people, Tanner. Needed to be around people to cope.”
“And I don’t. I need to reevaluate my life. The things that I thought were priorities just might not be anymore, and that’s a tough thing for a man to come to terms with,” I say, not trying to be a martyr but at the same time finding it hard to focus on the outside world when the one around me has crashed down. “Who knows, maybe I’ll write that book I always wanted to write. You never know what might happen.”
“Knowing you, you’ll write it and win the Pulitzer,” she says with a laugh, having no idea what that term does to my insides. It’s the first time I’ve heard it in forever, and it stuns me momentarily, silence filling the line as sweet memories collide with sadness. “Well, I love you, and I hope you come home soon.”
“I love you too.” The words come out barely audible as I hang up and close my eyes. It’s always much easier to sleep than to be awake.
Sleep means I can hide from the grief for just a little bit longer.
Sleep means Beaux.
Chapter 32
Two weeks later
S
he’s so beautiful it hurts sometimes to look at her.
I glance up from the bed to see Beaux standing at the edge of it, hair down, eyes on me, a soft smile on her face.
“Tanner,” she whispers as she sits down beside me. The mattress springs squeak, and we both laugh at the memory. She leans over, her hair tickles my face as it falls down to my chest, but I forget all about it the minute her lips brush mine. Her kiss tastes like her, like everything I’ve ever wanted, like forever.