Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(103)

He laughed and kissed my cheek.

I carried my sandals in my hand and strolled barefoot through the grass, enjoying the quiet breeze and the soft shift of light from gold to purple.

I had one more person to see before I flew home.



He was standing near the park’s lake. I didn’t see him until he stepped out from beneath the trees.

When I drew near, he held out his hands and took mine. We stood that way for a few moments, my fingers soft in his calloused palms. I studied the back of his hands, the life written there in overlapping scars.

Then he released me and stepped back. We started walking.

“Clyde’s doing good?” he asked.

“He’s doing great. He misses you.”

“He had my back for a long time.”

“Dougie—”

“It’s okay, Rosie. You two are partners now. Much as I miss him, I’d never break that up. Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to him. Like I said, I go into some rough places. And he’s not getting younger.”

“Don’t say that. Clyde has a lot of good years left in him.”

I stopped, then Dougie did, and we gazed across the lake. A flock of geese was coming in for the night, their great wings sweeping inches above the water, their white bodies reflected like puffs of cloud in the deep green of the lake.

I nudged his shoulder. “So what’s next for you? Still dark ops?”

“A few days on a beach. Then, yeah, back to work.” His gaze went soft, focused on something I couldn’t see. “It’s what I know.”

I tried to make my voice light. Failed. “I probably shouldn’t ask where you’re going.”

“I probably wouldn’t tell you.”

“I half expected Laura to have committed suicide.” It was a question. As close as I would come to asking him about extrajudicial execution.

“Unless I’m very wrong about the afterlife, Laura will be far more miserable alive than dead.”

I had to agree. As she had predicted, she’d lost everything. Career, reputation, the family business, her brother. Her freedom. I didn’t know Miriam’s fate, but I had to assume that with her stepfather dead, she was free to continue with her own life on her own path. I wished her luck.

On the far side of the lake, the geese settled on the shore, their quiet honks drifting over the water like sleepy goodnights.

I glanced at Dougie. His face was carefully carved into an expression that gave away absolutely nothing.

I said, “Are you haunted?”

“By the people I’ve loved? Or by the people I’ve hated?”

“Both.”

His gaze stayed on the lake. “I see my brothers from Iraq every night. The men who lost their lives in that ambush. Men like Rick Dalton.”

“In your dreams, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“What about the people you’ve killed? Do you see them?”

“Never.” He looked at me. “You?”

“I see those I processed in MA. And those whose lives I’ve taken. But not—” I stopped, wondering how much of my madness to share. “I don’t see them just at night.”

“Ghosts.” He nodded. “The fallout of war.”

“My therapist says they’re manifestations of my anger and fear.”

“I think the poets would say something different.” He turned to me, and his face softened. “If I’m lucky, someday I will see ghosts as well. You took what happened to you and used it to become a better person. But me . . . I survive by walling off everything. I’m not haunted. But maybe I should be.”

There was something tight in Dougie, a part of him that withheld things he might never be able to let go of. A man of violence both suffered and meted out. He seemed meant for solitude now.

But I said, “The Dougie I knew is still in there.”

“Maybe. Like Han Solo, frozen in carbonite.”

I toed a stone and kicked it toward the water.

Dougie asked, “Have you told your detective much?”

“Some. What happened. But not how it felt.”

“It’s hard with civilians. Even cops.” He found his own stone and scooped it up, putting all of his arm into the throw. Across the lake, the geese rustled when the rock hit the water. “When I was in that village in Iraq, close to death, one of the things that kept me going was what I needed to say to people. The things I hadn’t said yet. Things that seemed important.”

I turned to him. His eyes were far away. As blue as ever, but with a distance in them that told me he would never fully be back.

My throat tightened. “What did you want to tell them?”

“In some ways, I wanted them to understand. But that wasn’t reasonable. Mostly I just wanted to tell them I loved them.” He turned to me finally, his gaze—for the moment—very present. He raised his fingers to my face. “It’s not too late, Rosie.”

I sucked in a ragged breath.

“With him, I mean.”

I exhaled. “I know.”

I turned, and we began walking back in the other direction. I said, “When will I see you again?”

“Maybe soon.” A shrug. “Maybe never. We had . . .” He looked past me, seeing something I couldn’t share.