A whimper in the darkness woke Lana, and she shot up in bed. One time, in the darkened underpass back home, she’d heard a plaintive wail and had found a dog starved and emaciated. The animal whined no matter what position he rested in, his protruding bones pressing his thin layer of skin into the gravel. Lana rested with him until Animal Control got there, and she knew he wouldn’t survive the night. She’d offered to pay for his rehabilitation, not wanting to see the beautiful brindle dog lose his fight for life, but he didn’t even make it to the vet. The only kindness he’d experienced had been those minutes she’d waited with him, rubbing his head as his tail thumped weakly. Lana had cried for days after seeing that. The sound she heard reminded her of that animal. She padded barefoot toward the door, where the muffled sounds filtered through, and pressed her ear to the wood.

“I’m sorry,” Hawk cried.

Her heart broke. Pain throbbed in his voice, and she swore if he’d been awake he would have been sobbing. Her heart ached for the warrior. She’d known he had PTSD but had never been close enough to him while he slept to see evidence of it. The door rattled and she jumped back, but Hawk’s voice came through.

“I shouldn’t have called the strike. No. God, no.”

Agony ripped through the air, and Lana could sense his desperation. The door shook harder, a frantic movement as if Hawk had jerked against it in his sleep.

“Don’t. Don’t fucking tell me I couldn’t have known. He’s a child.”

Lana clamped her hands across her mouth to keep from crying out. What had he done? To a child no less. As a Navy SEAL, Hawk had been on missions that ended in death, but she never would have imagined he carried that sort of pain with him. Her heart went out to him as he continued to mumble and sob incoherently. She raced back to the door, stopping just as her hand gripped the knob. He’d warned her not to wake him up from his nightmares and to call Welsh. As much as she wanted to be there for him, she knew he might need more help than she could give him. She spun around and searched for her phone. He’d given her Welsh’s number just in case, and she was grateful for that now.

“Hello?” Welsh answered.

“Welsh, it’s Hawk. He’s trapped in a nightmare, and he warned me about waking him up.”

“Fuck. I’ll be right there. Stay in your room and back from the door, okay?”

“Of course.”

She hung up and sat on the bed, listening for Welsh’s steps to come up the stairs. He moved quietly through the house, much like Hawk, but this time he stomped his way through the house.

“Hey, Hawk!” he called. The volume of his words surprised her. Wouldn’t that scare Hawk? But Hawk didn’t wake, he kept mumbling.

“Petty Officer Eric ‘Hawk’ Standing, report,” Welsh said, his brogue thick in the night.

She heard a chair scrape across the floor.

“Tell them we made a mistake.”

A sigh throbbed in the silence after Hawk spoke. “Heim, get up here. He’s locked again.”

“Tell them we made a fucking mistake!” Hawk roared.

More pounding footsteps came up the stairs, too many for just one person. “Hawk, we got the coordinates, hostiles were in the area. We reacted as such,” Heim said tiredly.

“We should have looked harder,” Hawk argued.

Was he still asleep? She’d never known anyone to have such coherent thoughts in their sleep.

“There wasn’t time. We were tasked with getting in, confirming the coordinates for the cell, and calling in the strike. We had no way of knowing—”

“There were kids there!” Hawk roared, cutting Snake off.

 “Yes, there were,” Snake finished.

“Hawk, come on, bro, you’re stuck in it. We aren’t there. We’re here, in Montana, on a ranch in Eagle Rock. You are out of the service, after medical review, and you’ve joined Brotherhood Protection,” Welsh explained.

“Maybe us being here helped trigger?” Tiffany asked.

“It could have, but we can’t leave him. We are his team,” Welsh returned.

“I never said we’d leave, just that we may have brought it back,” Tiffany agreed.

“He didn’t mean anything by it, T,” Cry Baby said.

“I know,” she answered quietly.

“Hawk, look at me,” Welsh said. “You’ve got a scared client on the other side of that door, and she needs you. Lana is just steps away.”

“Lana?” Hawk asked. His voice was wobbly, and he sounded confused.

“Yes, Lana. Your pretty girl, the one you like so much,” Welsh said.

“Probably loves the girl. You know how our team falls fast and hard,” Heim joked.

Lana felt her pulse quicken. Love? He hadn’t touched her since that one night. Was it possible, in today’s day and age, to fall in love so quickly? She wasn’t so sure. What she felt for Hawk was a jumble of confused emotions and nerves. She didn’t hope to think they shared anything beyond the sexual attraction whipping between them.

“Lana,” Hawk whispered, and then a loud thump sounded.

“Get that door open,” Heim ordered.

Lana screeched as Welsh and Cry Baby carried a pale, sweating Hawk into her room, followed by Heim, Snake, Glitz, and Tiffany. They looked at her with varying shades of worry and assessment in their gazes, and paused. Right now, she could feel them testing her, seeing what she’d do. She called Welsh, as directed, to help Hawk, but what would she do now? She opened her arms and gestured for them to bring Hawk to her. She wouldn’t leave him to go through this alone, and if there were a way she could help him, she would.

“Tell me what to do,” she told them.

Welsh sighed in relief, and they lugged Hawk to her, placing him in bed beside her.

“You soothe him, and your name helped him come out of it. He only has one dream a night like this, and he won’t go back to sleep. He’s in a sort of trance, just locked in the fear, trying to find his way back to the present,” Welsh explained.

“What happened to him?” she asked.

Heim shook his head. “That’s his story to tell. Will you care for him tonight?”

“In any way I can,” she answered.

“Call us if you need to. We’ve removed his weapons, but he’s still a risk. Are you sure?” Heim asked.

Lana wouldn’t turn her back on him, just like he wouldn’t do that to her. She nodded and wrapped her arms around him. “I’ve got him.”

The SEALs and Tiffany left the room, closing the door softly behind them. She traced her finger over Hawk’s sweaty eyebrow. He trembled in the bed, his eyes wide and unfocused, but he leaned into her touch.

“One day, when I was just twelve years old, I ran away from home. Mum always seemed to be working, and I was angry. My father never really came around. When he did, all he said was how sorry he was for not coming sooner, or he’d apologize for missing my birthday. I loved my mother, but I hated our life. We lived on crime-ridden streets, and there weren’t that many chances to get out of there. Most of the kids around me already knew about drugs and stuff and ran for crews. I thought maybe a crew would be a better family for me. I was plump, you know, in the way young girls can be, but pretty already. Guys my age didn’t like me, but the older ones, they saw something in me. Maybe what I’d grow to be.”

Lana sighed and curled into his side. After she rested her cheek on his chest, she continued. “The crew had want for new blood and thought I might be a good fit, I just had to do a few things. Do you know why I never had sex?” she whispered.

Hawk turned her way, his gaze focusing but still a bit lost. She traced his lips with a delicate hand. He was so beautiful, this broken man who dreamed of death and the sins he’d committed fighting for his country. She’d never know the pain he went through, or completely understand what he held inside, but she wanted to help him. As he shook in her arms, his terror palpable, she thought that maybe as much as he was here to save her, she could save him, too. She slid up his body and tilted her head so her lips could hover over his. Holding his gaze, Lana kept her touch light and soothing on his skin.

“Do you know why, Hawk? Because they wanted it to be cheap. They held me down, pulled at my clothes, and laughed when I screamed. If a copper hadn’t come by when he did, I don’t think I’d have made it out of there. When I went back to my mum, she cried forever, clutching me tight to her chest, and I promised to get us out of there. She died of cancer a few years ago, but at least she got to live a life of luxury in the end. I gave that to her, and I never looked at myself as cheap after that day. I wanted to be worth more, my weight in gold. I wanted someone to look at me the way you do, with desire and need racing through their veins, but I needed them to respect me enough to see past the idea of sex I sell.”

“Lana,” Hawk breathed, his body going limp.

She pulled him closer to her and pressed her lips against his. “You can’t stay in that dark place, Hawk. I need you, here, with me. I need you to keep me safe. I’ll be your copper today, love. Let me save you.”

Hawk groaned and closed his eyes, and a tear leaked out before it slid down his cheek. “I don’t know how to stop seeing his face. I can’t stop seeing the blood, his blood, on my hands. On my command,” he sobbed.

“Leave it where it happened. I may have run away, but would you tell me my attempted rape was my fault?”

“No,” he said.

“I don’t know the details, but did you lift your weapon and fire?”

“No, never.”

“Did you know he was there?”

“I never saw, not until we were exfiltrating.”

“You were on a mission, you carried out orders. It doesn’t take back what happened, and the guilt you feel means you are a good man.”

“I don’t know if I am.”

“Let me show you how I know you are,” she whispered against his lips.

Lana sealed their mouths together, unsure how to seduce him but unable to watch his pain without doing something. Maybe this gift, as small as it may seem, would give Hawk a way to climb out of the abyss.