Any Way You Want It (Brand Clan #2)(65)

He tipped back the beer and drank deep.

“Something is obviously troubling you.” Her voice was gentle and soothing, as if she were trying to calm a wounded but feral animal. “It’s about what happened three years ago, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer her.

“If it’s confidentiality you’re worried about—”

“No.” His voice was flat. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

He remained silent, brushing past her to walk into the living room.

Undeterred, Zandra turned and followed him. He sat in a chair, and she knew it had been deliberate. He didn’t want her sitting close to him.

Her throat tightened at the sting of his rejection.

Ignoring the plush sofa and other chairs, she lowered herself to the floor at his feet, tucking her legs under her. She was determined to get through to him once and for all, even if it took all night.

“Talk to me, Remy,” she said softly.

He sat with his back at an angle to the kitchen. The light cast shadows over his face, making it so impenetrable he might as well have been covered with the camouflage paint he’d once worn.

“I feel like you’re keeping an important part of yourself from me,” Zandra whispered. “And it hurts.”

Something like guilt flickered in the dark eyes that met hers. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.” She swallowed tightly and moistened her dry lips. “You were there for me after my mother died. You took leave so you could look after me, and those two weeks you were home meant everything to me. You brought me food and made me eat when no one else could. You comforted me, held me when I needed you to. You kept me from falling completely apart, Remy.”

He leaned his head back against the chair. “Zandra—”

“Ever since you came back I’ve wanted to return the favor, but you haven’t let me.” She shook her head. “It’s not fair.”

He clenched his jaw, his grip tightening on the beer bottle until she thought it might shatter, slicing his hand.

She waited tensely, breath suspended in her lungs. She was surprised at just how badly she wanted him to confide in her, bare his soul.

They were quiet for several moments before he finally spoke, his voice low and remote. “The commander of my SEAL platoon was a guy named Dustin Shaughnessy. He came from a long line of naval officers dating back to his great-grandfather, who’d served in World War One and earned the Medal of Honor. Shaughnessy’s grandfather and father were also decorated war heroes. If ever there was such a thing as navy royalty, Shaughnessy was it. He graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, reported for duty as an ensign and was promoted to lieutenant within a year. But he never acted entitled, never lorded his family pedigree over anyone. He was a good teammate and a damn good SEAL. A frogman’s frogman.”

“Sounds like you had a lot of respect for him,” Zandra observed quietly.

“I did. We all did. Out in the field, rank rarely ever matters. Officers and platoon leaders never have a problem taking advice from their men. We’re a team, working together to achieve the same goal. I was second in charge to Shaughnessy. I was an LTJG—lieutenant junior grade. But even though he outranked me, Shaughnessy never tried to pull rank.” Remy paused, his expression hardening. “Until that night in Fallujah.”

He stared into the distance for several moments, lost in memories that were beyond Zandra’s reach.

She waited.

He took a deep swig of his beer, as if he needed to shore up the courage to proceed with his narrative.

“Three years ago my platoon was tasked to conduct a body snatch, which is an operation to kidnap high-value enemy personnel. Our target was a Muslim cleric I’ll call Jaffar. He had ties to a terrorist cell that was plotting to attack several U.S. embassies and navy warships. But Jaffar wanted no parts of the plan. He’d had some sort of spiritual reawakening, and he wanted to defect from the group. But by doing so, he would have signed his own death warrant and endangered his family. So my team was sent to Fallujah to extract him. We weren’t supposed to kill him. He was wanted alive. Like I said, he was a high-value target, and we needed the intel he could provide about the terror plot.”

As Remy paused to down the rest of his beer, Zandra could sense his growing tension. She braced herself for what he would reveal next.

He set the empty bottle on the floor, leaned back against the chair and started bouncing one leg up and down, an agitated gesture he probably wasn’t even aware of doing. “That night we were inserted by helicopter into Jaffar’s residential compound. We’d executed these kinds of operations so many times before, we could do them in our sleep. But not that night. After we dropped in from the roof of Jaffar’s house, all hell broke loose.”

Zandra stared at Remy’s grim face, every muscle stretched taut. “What happened?”

His eyes hardened. “Shaughnessy went way off course. After we secured the target, we should have gotten the hell out. But Shaughnessy insisted on rounding up Jaffar’s family members and putting them in one room. Jaffar had a pregnant wife, five children and an elderly mother. None of them were armed. By this time some of my other teammates were engaged in a gunfight with Jaffar’s guards outside.”

Remy shook his head. “Everything happened so damn fast. One moment I was in another room guarding Jaffar. He was rambling in Arabic, talking about Allah and the gift of redemption and second chances. He was scared, but not because I was holding a machine gun to his head. He was worried for his family, and I assured him that they wouldn’t be harmed. No sooner had the words left my mouth than I heard gunshots down the hall. I put a man on Jaffar and ran to the room—” Remy broke off, rubbing his face with trembling hands.