Luscious (Topped #1)(48)

“Macon,” Ally began.

Adam held up a hand. “Don’t. He needs to do this.”

He ignored them both. He wanted to get it all over with. He wanted to walk away. His first instinct was to leave, but he was going to fight that. His brother hadn’t done anything wrong. He could at least still have his brother in his life. But no Ally.

“It got quiet after that. Really quiet. Rowe and I were the only ones left alive. We did what we were trained to do. We took stock of what we had. Neither one of us could move. I managed to get a tourniquet around my leg, but I couldn’t move the Humvee. We had a couple of energy bars and one bottle of water between us. We rationed it, but there wasn’t much left after a day and a half. We knew there was more. I could even see a bottle of it, but I couldn’t get to it. At one point I tried to use my knife. I tried to saw my own damn leg off so I could get to it, but I kept passing out.”

Ally was weeping freely now, but he was strangely numb. He didn’t even want to hold her. It was all bullshit. She was crying for her brother. He thought about all the times he’d left her alone in his house. Had she searched his computer, his phone, his paperwork? She wouldn’t have found anything. She hadn’t found anything or she likely would have hit the road by now.

“On the second day we realized we had no idea if anyone at all was coming. Our mission had been secretive.” His stomach rolled as he thought about some of the things he wasn’t saying. He didn’t mention that the vultures had shown up. They’d been smaller than American vultures, but no less hungry. He’d tried to get them off his teammates, but he’d been useless. He’d sat back and waited to die. “If the Agency was involved, we could have been written off. We had no idea. We were dumb and utterly at the mercy of the elements. Helpless. I’d never thought of myself that way before. I was completely helpless and I started to believe that dehydration would get us before anyone would think to look for us. If they looked for us.”

He’d wondered if anyone would even care that he was gone. Elise would take his insurance and buy a better husband. He didn’t have kids. He’d cut off ties with the one brother who might have given a shit.

“He talked about you.” If he was going to tell the truth, he was going to tell all of it. “He loved you. He said you saved him when he was a dumb kid getting the shit kicked out of him in high school. He never once mentioned you weren’t his blood. You were his sister and he loved you.”

“I loved him, too.”

That was obvious. “We knew the water wouldn’t keep us alive for long. I like to think that he thought he was in worse shape, that he thought he was doing the right thing.”

Her hand covered her mouth as she choked down a sob. She’d obviously figured out the secret he’d kept, but he had to say it.

“During the second night, Private First Class Rowe put his service pistol to his head and he pulled the trigger.” He could still hear that sound. He’d come to, his own gun in hand, thinking it was all over. Another group of Taliban had found them. He’d been surprised at how little it scared him. He was ready to fight because it was what he did, but he wasn’t sure he really cared. There was nothing in his life worth fighting for.

And then he’d realized what had happened.

“I ran out of water the next day. The chopper came for me that night. I don’t know if we could have survived or not, but I think he made a triage choice. I think he decided I had a better shot without him.”

“Or the pain got to be too much for him,” Adam said.

Macon shook his head. “We were numb by then. At least I was. He’d said something about making the right choices at the right times. We were talking about religion. It’s funny what you talk about when you’re two men dying in a desert. That was what religion meant to him. The right choices. I sometimes think I should have done it. I should have pulled that trigger and given him the shot at living. He had more to live for.”

He was numb now, as oddly unfeeling as he’d been back then. Somehow Ally’s tears couldn’t seem to reach him. It was like discovering her lies had pulled the soft part of him out and left him gutted, hollow and only animated by the survival instinct.

Had he recently stood in the middle of Top and toasted his engagement to Ronnie’s sister? How long would she have played it out? She certainly couldn’t have meant to go through with the wedding. Did she want revenge? If she did, she’d gotten a good one because he was broken and wasn’t sure he would be fixed again. He’d thought Elise’s betrayal had hurt? It was nothing like this. He couldn’t even muster real anger.

“Why didn’t you tell the Army?” Ally’s back was against the wall as though she needed it or she’d fall. “None of that was in the report. That was why Mom was so upset. She knew something was off with that report. She went a little crazy after Ronnie died. She was sick and so lost. She grabbed on to that report. If she’d known…”

“She wouldn’t have received death benefits,” Adam finished for her. “Private First Class Rowe received the regular hundred thousand for dying in the line of duty, but he’d maxed out his SGLI.”

“We all do,” Macon said. This conversation was coming to a close and it couldn’t be soon enough for him. “It doesn’t pay in the case of suicide—not for as short a time as he’d been in. I often wonder if he knew that. He’d only had that policy for eighteen months. He sacrificed himself, but they would have seen it as suicide. When the extraction unit came for me, they covered it up. They knew why he’d done it. It was easy to see. No one wanted his family to suffer. You deserved the money and we weren’t going to allow some paper pusher to make that decision. Not that it helped. How did you end up living in your car? You should have had half a million.”