True Honor

  “You need to get home.”

  “I don’t want to drag this stuff back there, you know? Amy will take one look at me and read me like an open book.”

  “She can do that?” Sam asked. “I’m going to have to meet her and ask her secret. Are you at least going to be able to get home later this year for the holidays?” The sound of a car door slamming caught his attention. “Hold that thought. That sounds like Joe and Kelly.” Sam got up to open the door.

  * * *

  Darcy liked Sam’s apartment. It was definitely a bachelor pad with only a few soft touches in the decor. It didn’t look like he had lived here all that much, but it was quite interesting to see what he had collected. Not many guys had a kayak in the hallway. There were more family photos on the tables and hanging on the walls than she had expected. His two brothers were easy to pick out and his parents. “How big is your family?”

  “With cousins?” He paused to count. “Thirty-two, but I may have missed a couple.” He handed her the soda she’d requested. “Give me twenty minutes to shower, shave, and change. Make yourself at home.”

  “Do you mind if I use your phone?”

  “Feel free.”

  Sam went to change for dinner. Darcy wandered for several more minutes, absorbing the images. Sam was a family man down to the guts of who he was. And his home vibrated South Dakota from the art on the wall to the rugs on his floor. He might love the sea, but he was also still deeply attached to the place he had grown up and where his family called home.

  The family ranch must be huge. There were photos of guys on horseback moving cattle, bringing in hay; there was timber, a lake, and pictures of elk. She smiled at the photo of Sam with his arm draped around his mom. It was good to see his roots. He’d grown up in an area where the sheer scale of the land and the effort it took to live there led a man to have big dreams.

  She picked up the cordless phone in the living room and walked outside to the patio to call Gabriel and let him know she had arrived.

  * * *

  Sam nudged open the patio door with his foot. He’d been dreaming about a steak and lobster dinner for a long time, and sharing it with Darcy would make this evening perfect. “Okay, what are you thinking about so hard?”

  She looked back at him and smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Just thinking.”

  The phone was off but still in her hand. He studied her face for a moment and motioned her over. “Well think harder this way.”

  She rose to join him. He settled her wrap more firmly around her shoulders. It was windy out tonight and a bit cool as it threatened to rain. She didn’t need someone taking care of her. She could handle herself briefing soldiers aboard an aircraft carrier and could probably sneak in and out of enemy country undetected if needed, but Sam rather enjoyed the fact that she was letting him take care of her anyway. “Let me guess, you checked your messages.”

  “A compulsive bad habit.” The smile reached her eyes this time.

  He leaned down and kissed her, smiling as her hands entwined with his holding the wrap and she leaned forward against him. He eased back and let them both breathe. “Trouble?”

  She had to think a moment. “The call?”

  He smiled, enjoying her confusion. “Yes, the call.” He kept the question light as he sought the information he needed, for he knew better than she probably realized just how much she had to balance in her life. Darcy coped in a world of flash traffic and classified versions of twenty-four-hour news television and live satellite feeds. She dealt with real-time horrors and heard threats that would destroy thousands should they be carried out. She might leave the office but the job stayed with her. It was a unique pressure, and one he prayed about daily that she’d have the strength to cope.

  “Then yes, it may be trouble,” she whispered, taking a small step back. “There’s a package coming in. Gabriel needs me back on Friday.”

  Sam brushed back her hair. Her disappointment wasn’t far beneath the surface of her calm words. “Here six hours and you’ve already lost three days,” he remarked lightly, determined to take it in stride. He knew she was probably making a tough decision for his sake to stay until Friday rather than head back in the morning. It must be sensitive information since the package was being hand delivered rather than transmitted electronically. His hands slid down to take hers. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll just plan things hour by hour.” He tugged her toward the door. “Come on, Dar. Let’s go to dinner.”

  He had made reservations for them at a local restaurant, a quiet place near the beach where the food was good and it would be comfortable to linger over the meal.

  “You could have spent tonight celebrating your homecoming with fellow teammates and their families,” she said as they walked into the restaurant.

  “Trust me, Dar, we’ve been living on top of each other for months. We’ve seen plenty of each other. It’s tradition to scatter far and wide during the first days of leave. In about two weeks when we come back on duty, the platoon will gather their families together for a big picnic to catch up on everyone’s news.”

  Sam was welcomed back to town by the owner, and they were led to a quiet table at the side of the restaurant. Darcy looked around the room, paying special attention to those at tables near theirs. Sam knew without being told that she was still living carefully. The rumor of her death had been greatly exaggerated, but there was always a day where the personal threat could return. The number of agents killed during the last month had to weigh on her and at least make her movements more cautious.

  While he knew exactly what he wanted for dinner, he took his time to enjoy the breadth of the choices. They ordered and he settled back in his chair to study her. “Back to the question I asked a couple hours ago, will you be able to get home over the holidays later this year?”

  She shook her head as she broke a hot roll to butter. “I’ll be working. The holidays are inevitably a high threat time.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  She looked up and forced a smile. “Even if I could get away, there’s no way Amy could. She’s one of six officers for a huge territory. She doesn’t have a day off now, and the holidays and bad weather will just increase the demands on her time. It won’t be the first time we’ve shared the holidays at a distance.”

  The expression that shadowed her eyes was beginning to have a name. Darcy was still grieving. She’d been part of the opening salvo of this war and had been focused on the fight every day since then, accepting a separation from her family as one of those costs. When the subject was her family, it was safe to show her emotions.

  “I am sorry,” he said gently, relieved to have stumbled onto her safety valve. Work was her professional mode; her home on the East Coast more of a CIA cover than a place to be herself. The one thing Darcy had that was just hers was her family. “Tell me about your sister. She sounds like a wonderful person.”

  Darcy laughed. “Sam, you have to meet her. Think town sheriff meets Grace Kelly.”

  * * *

  “Why do you love the sea?” Darcy asked.

  Sam settled his arm around Darcy’s waist and kept her upright as the sand dune shifted and threatened to take her feet out from under her. “You know, we could walk the beach in the daylight. It would be safer.”

  She laughed and kept going. “The moonlight is supposed to be beautiful on the water.”

  “The cloud cover is threatening rain,” he replied, amused with her. Whatever had touched her funny bone had lingered for the last hour. “I love the sea because it’s incredibly huge and the exploration never ends. There are all kinds of creatures in it, and the seabed is still a vast mystery.”

  “It’s also a graveyard for ships.” She stopped at the water’s edge.

  He watched her for a few minutes, his hands pushed in the pockets of his slacks. She walked close to the water only to scramble back when the waves rolled in. “Darcy, you want to tell me why you got so nervous at the restaurant that we left in a
bit of a rush rather than linger over dessert?”

  “It was getting crowded and a bit noisy.”

  “Uh-huh.” He walked after her. “Who’d you recognize?”

  She stiffened but didn’t look at him, didn’t even acknowledge the question. He was annoyed that she ducked the question but also impressed. A nonreaction in place of a denial—now that took skill.

  “You remember months ago, a Carol Burnett show at 2 a.m.?”

  “Sure. You looked a lot like a hibernating bear who didn’t want to go to sleep.”

  “Thanks a lot.” She skipped a rock into the water. “I still flashback to being under the water occasionally, and sometimes . . .” she shrugged—“an older man in a tux is a bit too much of a reminder.”

  He frowned. “It’s been months, Darcy.”

  “I’ve been quietly looking into what happened to Sergey’s family, trying to figure out who killed them. It revived the memories.”

  “They’ll fade again.”

  “Yes . . . eventually.”

  Her energy ran out and she walked over and took a seat on the steps between the boardwalk and the beach. Sam sat down beside her. He’d watched Darcy swing from lighthearted moments when her attention was focused on memories of family or Bethany to moments like this when the animation in her died. The haunted look was back.

  “What’s going on, Dar?” he asked gently. A heavy conversation was not the way he wanted to end this evening, but the war and the toll it had taken had been a subject skirted many times tonight by both of them. They had to talk about it at some point. It hurt to see how much this fight had cost her.

  “That conversation you recorded in Lebanon?” she said. “I was the one who cracked what the reference to Thatcher meant. It gave us that rare find in intelligence and future knowledge of where the enemy is going to be. I made it possible for Morocco to happen.”

  “You have to be full of mixed emotions.” He reached over, took her hand, and wrapped it in his.

  “I watched Dansky die and those other men. It was cold justice, merciless, but it was a relief to know they were gone. They earned that fate; I know that. We recovered a shipment of high explosives capable of punching a hole in a nuclear submarine. Now . . . I’m just so tired, Sam. I want this to go away.”

  “This is war, declared by them and fought on their terms. A fight to the death. Don’t feel guilty over the fact we’re good enough to be winning.”

  “I know it’s simplistic, but I just want to shake them and say, ‘Wake up and come to your senses. You declared war and you are losing. Give it up.’” She twisted the ring on her right hand. “It’s hard, Sam. My emotions know that every day I go to work, I’m dealing with life and death for a lot of people. If I’m good at my job, bad guys die. If I’m not, civilians die.”

  He understood her pain, for he’d seen both friend and foe die on the battlefield. “You’ve got a tender heart, Dar.” In the past she had dealt with the threat of war, but this was her first experience with the reality of it. He couldn’t protect her from it, even though that was the one reason he had entered the military—to keep war away from those at home.

  He squeezed her hand. “Wishing these men would go away won’t make it happen. They started a war, and now everyone has to live with the consequences of that. Let yourself grieve over what you lost, Darcy. Your peaceful retirement, time with your sister, the right to live without fear of an attack, the right not to have to deal with those life-and-death decisions. There is a lot to grieve. Peace was taken away from us, and it’s one of the most treasured possessions we had.”

  He had no wisdom to offer her, no way to make it easier. War was brutal even on those who were winning. He tried to explain how he lived with it. “It’s hard, because there are very few choices. You can deny terrorists’ intentions and decide they really won’t do what they threaten, and you’ll spend your life hoping they won’t prove you wrong. You can retreat and say, ‘I can’t handle it’ and let others step in to try and do your job. Or you can accept the weight of it and do the best job you can. What you can’t do is abdicate responsibility. You live in a time of war. You didn’t choose it, but you must deal with it.”

  “How long is this war going to last, Sam? Another year, two?”

  “It won’t go on forever. Don’t give up hope. Peace will return.” He tightened his hand on hers. “Think about God. He’s holy and perfectly good. He has to deal with people who have chosen to wage war against Him. He didn’t choose it, didn’t want it, but look at how He handles it. He doesn’t say it’s My fault they made the choice they did. He says to mankind, ‘Stand up and take responsibility for your actions. Turn from your sins and I’ll forgive you. Keep resisting and I’ll let you experience the consequences of your actions.’ He’s blunt about it: ‘The wages of sin is death.’

  “Dar, you would do well to let go of a stress you were never designed to carry. Men choose war and they die. Pity them, pray for them, but don’t make their decisions your responsibility. Even God doesn’t do that. He says, ‘Here it is: life and death. Choose.’ And He lets people make that choice. It’s false guilt to feel responsible for someone else’s wrong choices.”

  “How do I put together those facts I know with the emotions I feel? I don’t want to be in this fight. I pray for strength and courage and wisdom, but inside what I’m really crying for is simply relief. I just wish God would make this war go away,” she whispered.

  Sam wrapped his arm around her and hugged her. “Endurance is part of this fight, Dar, a vital part of who will win in the end. God is strong enough to get you through this.” He rested his chin on her head and simply held her. She could have walked away. After the attempt on her life, she could have packed her bags and left to hide out somewhere in anonymity. Even her partner would have understood why she did so. Sam found it revealing that it hadn’t been considered. She stayed.

  “I wish I was comfortable putting this experience into words like you are. I loved getting your letters.”

  “I don’t need many words to figure out your emotions, honey. You’re pretty transparent and your actions are words enough. I’ve enjoyed writing the letters.”

  “Would you do something for me, Sam?”

  “Anything.”

  “Tell me I’m okay.”

  He rubbed her back, smiling at her request. “You’re perfect.”

  “No, perfect is too much pressure. Okay will do.”

  He tipped up her chin. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. You are perfectly okay.”

  She blinked and her smile grew. “You’re good for me.”

  “I know.”

  “Seriously. I know I’m pretty quiet most of the time about what I believe, but I just wanted to say your words really mean a lot. God has never failed me. I know that, have lived it. I’ve been blessed to get out of several tight situations when I was working overseas. But this is the first crisis where it’s so obvious that part of God’s plan to help me out was through a person—you. I’m really grateful.” She leaned back. “Did I just embarrass you?” Her hand tweaked his shirt collar. “I did.”

  He smiled at her laughter. “Maybe a little.”

  She grinned and turned her attention back to the water. “You know how I’m doing. How are you handling this war?”

  “I don’t have your questions. The men we fight are committed to destroying us. My only regret is that we still haven’t flushed them all from the shadows. I just wish I could make this end tomorrow. I can’t. But I promise you this: There is no better friend than the American military and no worse enemy. Our adversaries forgot that. We’ll remind them. My goddaughter will live in peace, Darcy. I’ll stake my life on that promise. It’s one of those big, worth-the-price purposes in life.”

  She reached for a handful of the sand to run through her hand. “I already had my big purpose in life—to win the cold war. We won that. And the peace we fought for slipped out of our hands like this sand and was suddenly gone again.”


  Sam got to his feet and held out his hand. It was time to shake up this conversation. It was enough for him to know evil existed and ultimately the good guys were guaranteed to win in the end. “Come on, Dar. Let’s walk. I want to hear about the last movie you saw, the last book you read, the last sports event score you heard.”

  “Boring.”

  “We’ll see which of us can be the most dull.” He tugged off his tie and slid it in his pocket. “I read an old Western while cruising the Atlantic. Didn’t finish it yet, but I at least creased the spine.”

  “Why do you wear the tie if you pull it off the first chance you get?”

  He looked at it. “Mom drummed it into me as the polite thing to do. It’s habit.”

  “I think it’s a nice habit. Maybe I’ll buy you a tie.” She led the way down to the beach. “I read my friend’s comic book while I shared a macaroni and cheese dinner with him. He thinks it’s cool that I’m dead.”

  “Does he?”

  “It’s not that cool. I still have to pay taxes.”

  The laughter felt good. “Tell me about this house you’re remodeling.”

  “You could bomb it and it would probably look better. Think eighty-some years old, pounded by wind and weather, with plumbing and electric that has to come out. I think it was my security plan, something huge I had to do so it would be easier to accept that I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I left the Agency.”

  “You weren’t planning to leave until someone put a price on your head?” Sam asked.

  “I thought I’d be in for years. I had tentative plans to work my way up to the Chief of Disguise job.”

  “You’re kidding. You have to be making up that job title.”

  She laughed. “Nope. It’s a very high-tech job these days, straight out of Hollywood. If I wanted to walk up to you and not be recognized, I could do it easily.”

  He could hear the teasing, and he was absolutely confident he would recognize her, if only her eyes. “Maybe after a day of makeup work.”