CHAPTER
FIFTY-THREE

Savage River
Dr. Samantha Owens

Sam watched Maggie’s subtle retreat to the bedroom. Xander got up from the table and cleaned the kitchen in silence. He was a big man, naturally lean and muscled from outdoor work. He took up a lot of real estate in the small kitchen space.

She considered him for a few moments. When nothing was forthcoming, she said, “Um, hey. Are you planning to share? Because I’d really like to know what’s going on. You know who killed them now?”

“Yeah,” Xander said. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head, but he didn’t say anything more. She sighed and nudged him again.

“Are you going to tell me who did this, or are you going to keep me in the dark, like you have everyone else?”

He shut the refrigerator door.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

More walking. Her legs were like rubber already. He must have realized the reason for her hesitation, because he smiled and said, “Just outside. It’s a pretty night. Here.” He took a thick flannel jacket off the peg by the door and tossed it to her. “Put this on. You really shouldn’t be out in the woods without a coat.”

She glared at him and put the coat on. She swam inside it, but the warmth curled around her and she relaxed. She’d been cold all night. He was the reason she was devoid of suitable outerwear. If he hadn’t kidnapped her … God, that smile of his was like turning on a light switch in a dark attic. It illuminated everything around him.

“Come on.”

Sam was getting awfully good at following orders. She stepped out the front door, waited while he shut it behind them. The darkness surrounded them, pushing in, and she suddenly felt afraid. Now that she’d heard some details, was he going to get rid of her?

“Dr. Owens. You can relax. On my honor, I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

God, he could read her like an open book.

“You can call me Sam, you know.”

“I’d like that.” He took her hand and led her from the porch, surefooted as a mountain lion in the pitch-dark. The moon had set already, but it would have been blocked by the chimney on this side of the house, she realized.

“We can sit here.”

Xander helped Sam find a seat. She swung above the ground for a sickening moment, then settled, her feet barely touching. She felt a breeze on her butt. She realized it must be a rope hammock. She heard a sharp flick, then saw flames dancing in Xander’s hands. He dropped the two matches onto the ground, and a nice fire sparked. Now that there was some light, Sam could see the fire pit clearly. Simple and clean, prepped and waiting, just like the rest of his things.

“A hammock by the fire? Is the ambiance appropriate now?”

“I like to lay out here and think sometimes.”

“It’s … nice,” she said. She expected her teeth to start chattering, but the jacket held its warmth. And his smell. Evergreen and the tiniest hint of sweat.

Jesus, Sam. Get it together.

He worked the fire a bit, then settled on his haunches on the ground next to her. No, he wasn’t on the ground. She realized he was perched on a tree stump, looking like it was the most comfortable place in the world. He set the gun against his leg.

The creaking of the night settled around them like a blanket. Insects chirped, birds rustled. She could hear her own breath, and his. It was time.

“You know what’s on the pages Donovan tore out of his journal, don’t you.”

“I think so,” Xander said. “Are you sure you want to hear the story? It’s not sanitized.”

“Of course I do. My God, isn’t that why I’m here? To hear the truth?”

“You’re here so I can keep you safe.”

Around and around the mulberry bush. This man was going to drive her crazy.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why do you feel the need to keep me safe?”

“Because you need looking after.”

Way to state the obvious. Sam wasn’t a warrior. She was just a girl. That had been emphasized all the more back in the cabin when she was sitting side by side with Maggie, who was also of the female persuasion but could hardly be called girlie. Hell, even the way she strutted around with the weapons was graceful and contained. She reminded Sam of Taylor. That was funny.

“I don’t disagree with that. I do need looking after. But why does it have to be you? The cops can take care of me. They’ve done a decent job of it so far.”

“Ha. They sent you, a civilian, into an ambush, nearly got you killed, then lost you on a mountaintop. I’d hardly call that taking good care.”

Xander poked at the fire, and the blanket of silence settled over them. She gave it a few minutes before she acquiesced. Maybe agreeing with him would draw him out more.

“Granted. But the way you say it, it’s like you have an obligation to me or something. You don’t. You don’t even know me.”

“I know you better than you think.”

He got quiet again. She felt like she was pulling teeth, long, slow, arduous teeth that were cemented in a fossilized mandible. She let her breath out slowly, hoping some of the exasperation she was feeling would bleed away. It didn’t.

“Eddie loved you a lot, you know,” Xander said.

That she wasn’t expecting. It was obvious that Eddie had mentioned her to Xander, or else he wouldn’t feel the need to keep her tucked away, but she never imagined his feelings had been this deep. Not after such a long time.

“We hadn’t talked in almost fifteen years,” she said quietly.

“Doesn’t matter. A man never forgets his first love. And you were his.”

She laughed, a harsh, unforgiving sound that surprised her. “No, I wasn’t. I was his second. The Army was always his first love.”

“Hoo-rah,” Xander said automatically.

“Exactly my point.”

“Point taken. But you can’t think it didn’t break his heart to leave you, too. Because it did. I knew him before he met Susan. She was the best thing that could have happened to him. Because until he met her … that man was lost without you.”

Sam didn’t want to hear that. Didn’t want to be reminded of what might have been. There was no going back in this life, no do-overs. She’d walked away, across the bridge, and closed the door on Eddie Donovan forever. Or so she thought.

The night air drew in around them, and she used the chirping crickets as cover for her shaky breath.

“It wasn’t supposed to be him. We both knew that. Him leaving was for the best.”

Xander tossed the stick to the ground. “He knew that. God, Sam, don’t you see? He left because of the obligation he felt to you. He knew he’d put you in an untenable situation. Making you choose between the man you’d loved for years and the man you’d practically just met? He couldn’t handle the thought that, one day, you’d wake up and realize you’d chosen the wrong man. He didn’t want to put you through that. So he pushed you as far away as he could. He sacrificed his own happiness to assure yours.”

Sam couldn’t hold the tears back anymore.

Donovan, you bastard. Still making me cry. You weren’t supposed to love me like that.

Xander waited patiently while she pulled it together. Finally, she took a deep breath and wiped at her eyes.

“I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me. It helps. I’m glad he was able to find happiness again. But he found you, obviously. You were his very good friend. I can tell.”

“Yes, we were. We met in Ranger school. An experience like that bonds men. Of course, that’s part of its intent. Then we were both assigned to the 75th, though we started in different units. By our third rotation, though, he was my commanding officer. Man could have risen through the ranks like he was on fire, been a colonel, even a general, easily. He was a great leader. He cared about his men. He didn’t just keep them safe out on missions, he helped them with their money troubles, girlfriend troubles, whore troubles. He called and wrote letters to each parent as soon as their son or daughter joined the unit, letting them know he was watching their backs. He fought for better facilities, more rack time, safer gear, real counseling after bad missions. When we lost someone, he cried with us. He inspired loyalty. That can’t be taught. It has to come from within.”

She could see him tense, the line of his shoulders taut under his jacket.

“You were in charge of men, too. You must have embodied some of that.”

He didn’t respond right away. Sam turned away from him, listened to the fire crackle. Xander nudged a log with the toe of his boot. It shifted and settled deeper into the flames, sending sparks into the clear night sky.

When he spoke again, his voice was gruff. “You’re kind to say that, but everything I learned about being a leader was through his example. He was the real deal. And he had medical training, so we were always doubly covered out on missions. He’d drop his weapon and bind up a wound while shouting orders … He was something to behold, let me tell you.”

His voice trailed off. She let him sit in silence, not wanting to push him, realizing he was telling her the whole story, just in his own way.

“Have you ever heard of literal obedience?” he asked, finally.

“No, but I can divine its meaning.”

“It’s an important concept in the military, one that’s drilled into every new recruit and officer candidate the moment they get their high and tights and become one of the masses. When your commanding officer says, ‘Come stand on this line,’ he means stand on the line. Not an inch in front of it, or behind it, or to the side, or with your knees bent or your toes sticking out. But on it. We were taught to be literal because when we’re out in the field, and your commander gives an instruction, that inch left or right or forward or backward might mean our leg, or our arm, our life or the life of the man standing next to us. Orders have a reason. That’s why they’re orders. A good commander won’t ever have to ask twice. Obedience and loyalty go hand in hand if there’s respect, too. That’s the kind of soldier Eddie was. He never had to give an order twice.”

He sighed, and Sam felt like he’d made some sort of decision.

“I trust that you’ll keep this to yourself.”

“Of course. I don’t want Eddie dragged through the mud any more than you do.”

“It’s not Eddie’s reputation I’m worried about. You may not know this, but it’s illegal to have relations within the unit. Fraternization can get you court-martialed. It could have gotten all of us in trouble. Because we knew. Shakes, Jackal and I. We knew about King and Maggie. They were trying to keep it quiet, but King needed to talk to someone about it. We were his closest friends. He was conflicted—he didn’t love Karen anymore, felt she was unstable. He wanted custody of the kids. He was head over heels for Maggie. They clicked, like two magnets. I know Karen, know she’s not a piece of cake to live with. So I supported him, because that’s what friends do.”

“So you covered up the affair for them?”

“And covered our asses, as well. Yes. We did.”

Sam pushed off the ground with her foot. It was so quiet up here. No one was around. Xander could tell her this story, then toss her off the mountain, and no one would be the wiser. But Eddie had trusted this man. She wanted to trust him, too.

Xander put another log on the dwindling fire, then sat back and spoke again.

“We’d been on a week’s leave at the Kaf when something happened. All was well and then boom, at the end of the week, Maggie suddenly wouldn’t talk to King. Wouldn’t see him. Shut him off completely. Wouldn’t give a reason. He was devastated. Wrote her letters, begged, pleaded … She cut him off cold, and he had no idea why. Before he could fix things, we got sent back out, and within three days he was dead.”

Xander was tense; Sam could feel him next to her, rock still. She spoke softly, not wanting to interrupt but realizing he needed some space, that he’d slipped back in time to the moment of his friend’s death.

“Taranto had a video. I saw it, but I couldn’t understand what exactly happened.”

His voice was like a metronome, flat and emotionless.

“Mission went south. We were all back at the base, in our racks. Got called out to provide support. Echo Company was taking heavy fire, they’d been ambushed on a ridge. We scrambled out there, everyone, all hands on deck. We got to the fight, saw things were out of hand. Doc and Orange devised a plan, sent us around the back of the firefight to flank the Taliban who’d holed up in the hills. They were taking potshots, just picking our men off as they drove up the wadi—that’s the dry riverbed. Some of the most dangerous spots we had to ride through. King and I took the lead, on foot, got around the backside, running along the top of a ridge. I stopped and he went ahead of me, over the edge, into the wadi. We’d flanked them perfectly, and Doc ordered us to open fire.

“It was a seamless operation. We neutralized the threat, our guys were able to get out of harm’s way. Except, somehow, King went down. He had gotten in front of us. We didn’t realize it for a few minutes. He was KIA instantly. When Donovan found him he tried to resuscitate him, but it was obvious he was gone. We had to pull him off to get him to stop. We got King back to base. Once the wound was lit up, we could see it clearly. There were two shots to the back of his head. Below his helmet. He was shot from behind. It was one of us.”

Sam heard the pain in his voice and, without thinking, reached her hand out and touched his shoulder. He didn’t move, and didn’t shove her hand away, but kept talking in a soft monotone.

“There are always eyes on every battle. The video you saw, hell, it could have been us, I have no idea. Powers that be hushed it all up, didn’t want King’s wife to know. Covering up friendly fire happens more than you could ever imagine. If Karen suspected a cover-up, decided to start making a stink, filed a lawsuit to get the records and videos, hell, it could go all the way to a wrongful-death suit, and the Army couldn’t have another case make the evening news. Plus the mission was a sensitive one, and if word got out—well, sometimes they don’t think these things through. Too many variables, too many repercussions. We all got asked to shut up about it. And we all agreed.”

“I see,” Sam said.

“No, you don’t see. When we debriefed, it didn’t make sense. How King could have gotten so far off track. It was almost like someone contacted him and told him to go in a different direction, to charge east instead of west, effectively cutting back in front of us. But I was the last person who talked to him, and I certainly didn’t give that order.

“Once they triangulated everything, wrapped up the story, it was pretty clear Doc was the one who’d shot him. They did an autopsy and pulled the slugs from his head, saw they were from an M249. That’s a light machine gun—it’s what Doc favored so he could have a medical kit with him, too. He was the only one of us carrying that weapon. Brass said it was pretty damn straightforward. They confirmed that he’d shot King.”

Sam realized she was wringing her hands. One Mississippi, Two Mississippi. Three … This time, it was Donovan’s pain she was trying to wash away. Donovan’s, and Xander’s.

“Donovan must have been crushed.”

“Yeah. Doc was torn up. Ripped. He shut down harder than I’ve ever seen, wouldn’t talk to anyone. They sent him to Germany, got him talked to. He came back, but he’d changed. He wanted out as soon as possible. When our rotation was up, he made it clear he wasn’t going to stick around. Without him, none of us really wanted to stay, either.

“But the sequence from that night, it didn’t feel right to me. I couldn’t get it out of my head. So a few weeks ago, I went to Orange and requested the video. I wanted to see for myself, see how we messed up. He told me to let it go. Doc was the shooter, it wasn’t my fault, or my responsibility. But that’s not how we work. We were a team. A good one. We didn’t fuck up. And getting King killed, that was as big a fuckup as can happen.”

Sam was sitting forward now, completely caught up in Xander’s story.

“But you thought that wasn’t the case?”

He shook his head.

“I started digging around the files, the briefings, to see what I could see. I still have friends in the Pentagon. What I found was damning, at best. The video they’d shown us wasn’t our video. It was date and time stamped on the disc, like they all are, but it had been altered. It was from the year before. Some other friendly fire incident.

“I went straight to Doc. We sat down and had a long talk. Mapped everything out, I’m talking down to the fraction of an inch. As best we could figure, the shots that killed King came twenty degrees from my left. Doc was on my right. So someone else was up there, either trying to engage the Tallies, or …”

“Trying to kill King.”

“Yeah. I was convinced Doc didn’t do this, and it wasn’t right for him to have to carry that burden. I went to Taranto, started some quiet inquiries. And then everything went to hell. Doc, Jackal and Shakes were dead. Maggie showed up here and finally told me the whole truth about what happened back when we left Kaf. She’d given me most of the story, but not all.”

Xander got quiet again. Sam waited him out. A frog started up, singing in the rushes down toward the river. Finally, Xander cleared his throat and told her the rest of it.

“The night it all started, back at the Kaf, Maggie and King were supposed to hook up, their usual spot, but he didn’t show. He’d gotten sent out on patrol, didn’t have time to warn her. She didn’t know that, though. She was really upset. But someone else made an appearance. Turns out the five of us weren’t the only ones who knew about their affair. This guy told her he’d get her tossed out if she didn’t have sex with him. She turned him down flat, so he raped her.”

Sam sucked in a breath. Oh, my God.

“Rape isn’t the most uncommon thing in the military, unfortunately. You look at the studies, four out of every ten women in the service say they’ve been raped or assaulted. Forty percent. It’s one of the reasons we fight against having them side by side on a combat mission—there’s serious naked aggression that goes into what we do. We have to temper ourselves, or else we tip over the edge, and that’s when massacres occur. Some men get a release from forcing women, even though we’re over there telling them it’s not right to rape their own women ….

“Anyway, she wouldn’t tell me who raped her. Didn’t tell me who it was until she showed up three days ago. But she did tell King. They had a huge fight about it, and she broke it off with him. Said she couldn’t face being with an honorable man after what had happened. He blamed himself, of course. If he hadn’t been sent off to the line, if he’d made their date.

“Please tell me it wasn’t—?”

“It was Orange,” he said bitterly. “We fucking trusted him, and this is what kind of man he was all along. He assigned King that tour. He wanted to get at Maggie himself.”

“Xander, who is Orange?”

It hit her then. Orange. She suddenly knew exactly who it was. He was so named because there was a city near Orange, Virginia, called …

“Culpepper.”