Nobody's Lost (Rescue Me Saga #5)(60)

He met her gaze. “Grant, trust me on this. Top’s going to be pissed as hell that you put his sister in the middle of this crazy-ass scheme. What the hell were you thinking?”

Grant sat back and squared her shoulders, but remained silent.

Ryder didn’t want to discuss this any further and stood. “I’m going to bed. You’re welcome to stay. Or go. I don’t care. But you’d better call Top and come clean before I go to see his sister tomorrow to take back her computer.”

This wasn’t the way he’d envisioned his first meeting with Megan after his many epiphanies. Already his resolve to leave negativity behind had been cast by the wayside. Before he went down to the city, he’d spend a little time on his mountaintop and refocus himself in where he wanted his head and heart to be before he went anywhere near Megan.

*

Ryder’s cell phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. Oh-six-thirty. Adam Montague. Fuck. Why was the man calling him now? Had Grant made the call. Or maybe Top had found out what Ryder had been doing while watching over his sister?

In typical fashion, Top skipped the chit-chat and cut to the chase when Ryder answered. “Listen, Wilson, Grant just called and spilled her guts.”

Making sure she’d told him the entire truth, he asked, “About what?”

“About Operation Rescue Megan. Or maybe Operation Rescue Wilson is more accurate.”

Sounded like he knew. “Yeah. She told me last night. I have Megan’s computer and will get it back to her today.”

“Have you spoken with Megan yet?”

“No, I’m just coming off a four-day fast and ritual and haven’t even been able to process that, much less everything Grant told me last night.”

“I’m not condoning what she did—and I’m sure you feel as strongly as I do that something needs to be done to make up for this huge breach of trust. I’ll deal with Grant later. I don’t know how much you know about her, but I’ve gotten to know her as a civilian even more so than we did during that brief time in Fallujah. She’s impulsive, vindictive, and her moral compass is more than a little twisted. Hell, the woman joined Black Ops after Fallujah to go after the insurgents who killed Sergeant Miller.”

And Ryder had been worried about her wellbeing on that rooftop? Shit, she’d shown the recon unit even then she didn’t crack under pressure.

“Did she find them?”

“She got satisfaction.” Top paused a moment. “But one thing remains, if not for Grant, I still wouldn’t know you were having trouble. You know the drill. Why the f*ck didn’t you contact me?”

His chest burned, reminding him to take a deep breath. Whenever any of the Marines who served under Top were discharged, even the ones like Ryder who left after Top retired, they were given his number and told to call him for anything, day or night.

“I’ve let you down too many times, Top.”

“What the f*ck are you talking about, Marine?”

“First in Kosovo.”

“You were green then. You were always going to f*ck up there. That’s part of the training process. At least we weren’t involved in any combat situations. Everyone came home. It was an excellent opportunity for you and a lot of others to learn how to be better Marines. Hell, we had no clue what was ahead of us back before 9/11.”

“True, but I’d been in the Corps for seven years when I screwed up in Fallujah. I should have called for the preplanned strikes and—”

“You also had been given orders—by me—to protect Grant. She never should have been put in the middle of shit like that.”

Is that why Ryder had been up there on that rooftop? How could he have forgotten that?

“Together with Doc, you all worked as a team to save Damián’s life. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

Ryder’s throat tightened up. “But I got Doc injured.”

“I’m not sure anything we could have done would have prevented that clusterf*ck or could have tried any harder.”

Ryder cleared his throat. “Maybe not.” He couldn’t say any more. He needed to let it go. Move on.

Forgive yourself. It’s time to heal.

Apparently, Top could hear volumes through the silence. “Something else twisting your gut?”

He couldn’t tell him what Gino had said during the vision quest. The man would think he’d really lost it if he was hallucinating about dead Marines.

“I’ve had some issues coming to terms with Gino D’Alessio’s death. If not for me, he wouldn’t have been deployed as a replacement—” Less than a day after his quest and he already wasn’t sure how much he’d forgiven himself.

“Not you, too.” Ryder didn’t know who else he referred to or what he meant. “Listen, Wilson, Gino might have replaced you after your accident—”

“A stupid sports injury. I got sent home for a f*cking football game injury.”

“Shit happens. Deal with it. But he wasn’t there to serve as our FIST. He was half of a scout/sniper team at the time he was killed. The Marine serving as FIST did everything you would have. We just couldn’t get any helos in the air until it was too f*cking late. There was nothing you could have done to change that fact. The fault lies further up the chain of command, if anywhere.”