Battle Scars

  “Okay . . .”

  “There’s nothing going on, Maggie, I promise. Her mama and mine are kissing cousins.”

  I gave him a reassuring smile.

  “I’m not worried, Jack,” I said honestly. “I’m jealous as hell that she’s with you and I’m over here, that’s all.”

  “Really?”

  “Truly.”

  He rubbed his face and I couldn’t help wishing that it was my fingers trailing over that lightly stubbled jaw.

  “God, Maggie—you’re amazing.”

  “Not so bad yourself.”

  He smiled and winked, his tight expression relaxing.

  “Tell me something no one knows about you.”

  He gave me an amused smile.

  “Feel free to ask the easy questions!”

  “I’m serious. Things you don’t tell anyone. It doesn’t have to be big—just silly stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything!”

  “Give me an example . . .”

  “Like . . . whenever I finish a bag of chips, I lick the salt off my fingers then tie the packet in a knot. I don’t know why I do that, I just do. Silly, right?”

  I could hear his deep laugh over the miles and miles of fathomless air.

  “Uh, okay. I love to walk on the beach in the rain.”

  I couldn’t help the sigh that fell from my lips.

  “I know it sounds weird,” he said defensively, “but the sea goes slate gray, and it’s wild and rough, and I’m usually the only person there. It’s . . . cleansing, peaceful. I just really like it.”

  It told me so much about him. And that he was a romantic at heart.

  “We should do that when I . . .”

  Suddenly, there was a massive explosion and all the lights in the camp went out. I dropped my phone, grabbed my helmet and flung myself under the cot as missiles sang overhead.

  Six thousand miles away, Jackson reached for a weapon that wasn’t there, his heart hammering in his chest. He stared at the blank screen of his phone.

  “Oh, Christ! Maggie.”

  A Road Divides

  JACKSON STARED AT his phone, his heart thundering as if he’d just sprinted a mile with his M16 and an eighty pound pack.

  He’d recognized the sound he heard just before Maggie’s call was dropped. He knew all too well the tell-tale whine of a rocket-propelled grenade flying through the air before exploding. And he’d seen the terror in her eyes before the screen went black.

  Cold sweat covered his body, and only a decade and more of training stopped him from freaking out. His hands didn’t shake as he redialed her number three times, but his mouth was dry and his muscles were tensed, trained and ready to spring into action.

  He felt so fucking futile.

  He forced his fear for Maggie’s safety into a tiny space in the back of his mind and locked it away. Going crazy with worry was not an option, but he needed to do something or he might just find that small, dark space wasn’t sealed as tight as he wanted it to be.

  He rang her number two more times, but all he got was her voicemail:

  You’ve reached MJ Buckman.

  Please leave a message and a contact number.

  Alternatively, you can leave a message with my office.

  212 221 9595 extension 703.

  Hearing her recorded voice tightened the vise around Jackson’s chest.

  “Goddammit, Maggie,” he growled, standing suddenly, needing to do something with the adrenaline surging through his body.

  He dialed her office number, but got another machine, this time MJ’s assistant, Allison. He snapped out a short message, then hung up, slamming his phone onto the table. He swore again when he saw that he’d cracked the screen.

  Cursing up a storm, he stomped toward his mother’s house, dodging the bevy of her friends with unmarried daughters who had been circling him all day like vultures over roadkill. Not that his mama was immune from wishing him married—she’d been dangling ‘suitable’ girls at him since before he’d graduated from high school.

  He was used to his mother’s attempts to get him hitched, but he was also a US Marine, skilled in stealth and evasion, and he had no plans to marry some female who only thought about where her next manicure was coming from.

  Okay, so that was a massive generalization. Even in his present state of heightened anxiety he knew that he was being unfair. But he was not in the mood for pleasantries. So he ducked around the side of the house and slipped in through the open kitchen door.

  He ran upstairs, taking the steps two at a time, then skidded to a halt, wondering what to do next. His pent-up energy needed direction, needed a release. Think, dammit! Think!

  He barely noticed his surroundings because the last look of fear that he’d seen on Maggie’s face tortured him, playing relentlessly like a horror movie in his mind.

  Slamming his bedroom door, he gripped his hair and swore for half a minute without stopping. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t feel any better.

  His bedroom hadn’t changed much in the last decade. Football trophies and pennants still decorated the room, and his high school yearbooks lined the bookshelves alongside photographs of his graduation from Boot Camp.

  He didn’t feel much connection with the place he still called home.

  When he was on leave, he usually found excuses not to go back, preferring to stay with friends. When possible, his mother and sister flew out to see him, wherever he was. He told himself that they liked making the trips, amazing him with their ability to shop, wherever they were. But something about spending time with Gray, listening to him talk about Jules and the kids, listening to Maggie talk about her father, it made him nostalgic. So he’d made the trip home.

  He stared around his childhood bedroom.

  He’d probably only slept there a half-a-dozen times in the last ten years. Not that he thought about it much—not when he’d slept in places that even rats avoided. And with the things he’d seen—and done—closing his eyes wasn’t always restful. In fact, the best sleep he’d had in recent years was when he’d been tucked around MJ as she muttered softly and snuggled against his chest.

  Christ, he’d never been a snuggler.

  He wasn’t sure it had been a good idea going home. For one thing, Mama hadn’t been impressed that he was seeing a Yankee.

  “And there are so many lovely Southern girls who’d suit you so much better, Jackson Connor.”

  His mother had no idea what kind of girl suited him, and up until recently, Jack hadn’t known either.

  But he knew now.

  He’d finally found someone he could imagine a future with, and he’d let her go to Hell on Earth, where he couldn’t protect her.

  God dammit!

  She could be hurt, she could be in some crappy medevac hospital injured, and there was nothing he could do.

  And in all the years he’d been a Marine, he’d never felt more helpless.

  He took a deep breath, then sank into the hard chair by his desk. Steadying his breathing, he flipped open the lid of his laptop and searched online until he found the number for the New York Times editorial offices, then he dialed from the house’s landline.

  It took a teeth-grinding 17 minutes to work his way through the ranks: from the woman answering the phone, to the foreign affairs desk, until he finally hit a brick wall. No one knew anything and if they did, they wouldn’t tell him as he wasn’t related to Ms. Buckman. That was a direct quote from some butt-shining asswipe.

  He slammed down the phone with another curse.

  “Think, dammit!” he fumed, pacing his room, his broken cell phone clamped in his hand.

  Forcing himself to calm the fuck down, he sat at his desk again, his callused hands hovering over the keys.

  He searched all the news sites he could find, scanning them for any scrap of information. And then he came across a ‘breaking news’ bulletin that nearly stopped his heart.

  BOMB ATTACK ON REFUG
EE CAMP AT SYRIAN BORDER—DOZENS KILLED

  As the minutes ticked by, each one feeling like an hour, more details came in. ISIS or DAESH or whatever the evil fuckers called themselves, were claiming responsibility for the attack.

  Jackson’s stomach turned as the reports increased in detail. The majority of the dead and injured were women and children, most of the men having been recruited for one army or another. Since when was war made on the innocent?

  Since always, thought Jackson, rubbing his forehead.

  He hated feeling so fucking useless. Marines were trained to think, to fight smart, but now the enemy was thousands of miles away and Jackson was unarmed, unprepared, and out of the loop.

  Why hadn’t he gotten Maggie’s emergency contact details before she left? Why hadn’t they talked about this possibility? Even though everything had happened between them so quickly, they should have discussed it. For fuck’s sake! He, of all people, knew how dangerous it was in the Middle East.

  But he also knew the answer as he fumed silently: they hadn’t wanted to spoil their final hours together. The irony spread a bitter smile on Jack’s face.

  He stood up and paced around his room again feeling caged and impotent, but forcing himself to think. THINK!

  And then, at last, a fresh thought came to him. Someone was passing information of the attack to news teams, the story spinning out across the world’s airwaves. Some unnamed journalist knew what was happening.

  He returned to his online search, spitting out curses when the reports seemed to stall or peter out, anonymous reporting considered more important than putting a journalist’s life at risk by giving their name or byline.

  “Is it you, Maggie?” he whispered. “Please let it be you.”

  It occurred to him belatedly that what he was going through was the fate of every man, woman and child, every mother, father, wife, son, husband and daughter who had a member of the family, a loved one, in the military. They suffered this, day after day for months on end, years even.

  He was aware of it, of course he was. His mama had reminded him enough times of what he put her through, and he’d acknowledged it, taken it as part of the cost of his service. But he’d never experienced it like this before. Never. And it sucked giant hairy monkey balls.

  It was Saturday afternoon and he couldn’t face the thought of waiting until Monday morning to phone the main offices at the New York Times to find out what was happening to the woman he . . .

  Jackson paused, his eyes widening with shock.

  Maggie had been in his life for just a few days, although she’d been in his thoughts a lot longer—from the very moment that they’d met.

  He wasn’t a stupid man, and even though he’d been a Marine for all his adult life, he wasn’t totally alienated from his feelings. During the days he’d spent with Maggie, respect had turned to friendship, and lust had turned to love. Maybe. Possibly. Dammit, definitely! If love meant that the thought of her not being in his life was intolerable, then he fucking loved Maggie-MJ-busting-his-balls Buckman.

  He remembered her dark eyes, wide and fearful the first time they’d met, then flashing with anger and righteous indignation as he’d stomped all over her idealism in his size 12 boots. But she’d come back swinging, not giving an inch, and forcing him to see how important her job was, however much he hated that.

  She was a woman in a million.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, treasuring the memory of her body soft and pliant beneath his large hands, her lips pink and her gaze fierce as her body heated with arousal. She’d given and taken and sent him over the edge.

  Jackson’s eyes shot open. While he’d been getting hot and bothered thinking about being in the sack with his woman, his subconscious had solved the problem. Maybe.

  Michael R. Gordon, the NYT Chief Military Correspondent, and a man that Jack had once met.

  He sat down at his laptop, newly focused, and typed in Gordon’s name.

  He already knew that Gordon had been the only reporter embedded with the allied command in Iraq back in 2001 when Jack was still in high school, and Gordon was the first to report on Saddam’s alleged nuclear weapons program the following year.

  The guy wasn’t a vet, but he would help. Jackson was sure of it.

  Finding Gordon’s email wasn’t too hard, but Jackson wasn’t going to rely on that. He needed to speak to him—to find out what he knew and who he knew to get the inside info. But his internet searches brought up exactly jack shit.

  Time for Plan B, which had been hatched about two seconds after Plan A bit the dust.

  He dialed a number he knew by heart: Marine HQ press liaison.

  His forehead creased slightly as he waited for the phone to be answered. He’d looked at this number enough times when he’d tried to stop Maggie from being embedded with his unit in Afghanistan. Well, he’d called once and his CO had found out, ripped him a new one, told him to obey orders and suck it up.

  He gripped the cordless phone as he continued to pace the room. Surely the Marine Corps didn’t close on weekends? Where the fuck was everyone?

  Finally, the phone was answered, but the first person he spoke to was next to useless.

  No, they couldn’t confirm or deny that there’d been an RPG attack on the Zaatari refugee camp. No, they couldn’t confirm that there had been deaths. No, they couldn’t confirm that a US military escort had been with journalists who may or may not have been in the camp. And no, they definitely couldn’t confirm that Jordan was a country in the Middle East or that the sun rose in the east and set in the west or a bear shits in the woods.

  But when Jackson had politely insisted that the call go up the dickwad’s chain of command, he’d finally gotten a result.

  Well, it was polite for a seriously stressed out Sergeant Jackson Connor.

  “Listen, you fucking desk jockey, my girlfriend is out there reporting on the refugee crisis and I know for a goddamn fact that there’s been a fucking ‘incident’ in Zaatari, so stop jerking off to the Marine Corps Manual, put your pencil dick back in your pants and then go walk your sorry shitstain of a self over to someone who knows their ass from their elbow. Thank you.”

  The line went silent and Jackson held his breath.

  “Yes, sir! Right away, sir!” came the worried reply.

  Several minutes ticked by where Jackson felt sure he was growing gray hairs, until a new voice spoke.

  “Sergeant Connor, this is Captain Walter Hicks, Office of the US Marine Corps Communication, Community Relations. Do you mind telling me why you’ve got my Corporal pissing his Alpha Charlies?”

  Jackson explained for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon, trying to rub away a burgeoning headache.

  Captain Hicks listened to the story, took Jackson’s details and promised to call him back. He didn’t promise to find the intel Jack needed, but it was something.

  He paced his room, rubbing his fingers over his breastbone and intermittently massaging his temples. Waiting sucked. On deployment, he was known for his patience and stoicism, but Jackson knew this was different, and he felt frustrated and powerless.

  Water and ibuprofen would help the headache, but nothing was going to ease the growing hollow ache in his chest until he knew that Maggie was safe.

  And when he got her back stateside, he was going to goddamn tie her to his bed and never let her go again.

  Sticking his head out of the bedroom door, he snuck downstairs into the kitchen and snagged some painkillers and a glass of iced water. He also liberated his mama’s cell phone from her purse, and swapped SIM cards, leaving her an IOU note and a promise to upgrade her phone as soon as he could get to a store. Dirty tactics, but he wasn’t going to apologize for them.

  “Jack, honey, what are you doing in the kitchen? Hidin’ out again?”

  Emmy raised an eyebrow and smiled at him as she pulled a pitcher of iced tea from the refrigerator.

  “Waiting for a call,” he said shortly, pointing vaguely at his borr
owed cell phone.

  “Is it that girl you were talking to earlier?” she asked.

  Jackson shook his head.

  “Not exactly, but it’s about her.”

  Emmy’s mouth turned down and she looked away.

  “Well, I hope she knows how lucky she is. I hope it works out for you, Jack.”

  He watched Emmy’s retreating back, poised and elegant as ever. Beautiful, too, if you liked that sort of thing. And once Jackson had liked that sort of thing a lot. Enough to put a ring on her finger, but not enough to give up the Corps when she asked him to.

  For the first time, he understood what it must have been like for her every time he was deployed. Each of his deployments since he joined the Corps had begun and ended with her tears. At the time, he’d been half irritated, but Fate was sure laughing at him now. It didn’t feel good. Worse still, he felt like he owed Emmy an apology. But he didn’t want to go down that rocky road right now.

  So instead, he headed back to his room and started doing crunches to get rid of the build-up of adrenaline which was making him jittery.

  He’d got to 93 when his phone finally rang.

  “Connor, this is Hicks. I have some info, but it’s not much. In addition to your friend, Ms. Buckman, there was a journalist from the Washington Post, Murray Sanders. He’s the one who’s been posting online reports. Don’t read anything into that . . .”

  Too late. Jackson’s heartrate had shot up.

  “There are no reports of American casualties, and we tend to get that intel PDQ. I’ve also put a call in to Michael Gordon. We have a pretty good working relationship with him in this office, so if he knows anything, he’ll call back. I’m sorry I can’t give you more at this point in time.”

  After asking a few more questions but not really learning anything new, Jackson thanked the officer and hung up, even more frustrated than before.

  Jesus, much more waiting and he’d be booking the next flight out to Jordan and go find Maggie himself.

  Not that he’d be able get a visa.

  Not that the US Marines would let him go.

  Jackson shook his head. He didn’t believe in lying to himself, so he knew that his reaction to Maggie’s disappearance meant that his feelings for her were deeper than he’d first thought.