Chapter 2
For the rest of that afternoon, Kat found herself staring off into space, caught on the enigma that was Badger. He cared about her but couldn’t let himself follow up. He might even be deliberately blocking his feelings.
He couldn’t afford to let anything interfere with his revenge plan.
She didn’t know all the details of the originating event, but this anger had been evident every time she’d seen him. She had also seen several of his navy friends from the same unit. She’d picked up little bits and pieces from each of them. The accident had been bad—not one of the eight-man team had escaped unscathed. She’d understood it was an accident. However, they had been in a war-torn country, driving in military vehicles while on active duty. Were there such things as accidents then?
She dropped the folder she’d been working on to the stack at her side. Jim would come and retrieve them and refile at the end of the day. She was overwhelmed with work right now and would once again be taking her designs home to work on there as well. Most of her patients were simple cases, but a few, like Badger, required specialized designs. He’d lost his leg at midthigh and needed more muscle built up at the end for padding against the prosthetic cup. But he didn’t want more surgery.
In the back of her mind she worried he didn’t figure to be around long enough to make it worthwhile.
He didn’t give a damn about that either.
And that hurt. She wanted to be enough for him to change his mind. To care enough to come back to her. She didn’t have any idealistic views of what a relationship with this man would entail. He’d never been an easy patient. The good news was, she’d already seen him at his worst. Nothing like a disgruntled patient to show her the man’s dark side. But that was only a prelude to the volcanic force being held back inside.
Jim’s head popped around the corner. “The next patient just called. He’s had a breakdown and is stuck on the side of the road. He wants to reschedule for next week.”
She nodded. “That’s fine. Any other patients this afternoon?” She flipped through her daily paper calendar atop her desk. A canceled appointment in many ways was a gift.
“No, you’re done now.” He gave her a wide grin and a thumbs-up. “But don’t appear too happy. You’re several prototypes behind.”
She groaned. “I know. Sadly. Close my door. No disturbances for the rest of the afternoon.”
He closed the door quietly. She returned to the stacks of files on her desk. Where to start? For the next two hours she buried her head in Stacking’s file. He needed a better connection for his forearm. The car accident took off his arm at an angle, and the surgeon at the time had closed up the arm with the intent of keeping the man alive. The subsequent reconstructive surgery had taken a couple years, and she still didn’t have much to work with.
When she lifted her head and looked around later, she found complete silence. No noise even came from the main office. She stood and stretched. Had Jim left?
Moving slowly and breathing deeply, she walked to her office door and opened it. The lights and computer were off in the main office. She glanced at the wall clock. It was after five.
She rotated her neck to loosen the kinks. She had a habit of getting so involved that she lost track of everything else. Like today. She walked to the window, still adjusting to pull her out of her intense work mode. The late-afternoon sun was starting to fall, but it would be light for hours yet. Her gaze landed on a man leaning against a tree on the far side of the street. He was on his cell phone.
Just like so many, he appeared to be unaware of what was going on around him. The digital world dominated every corner of society. It was a constant surprise to her, but still she was no better, having just now spent hours on the computer, researching. The world had changed.
As she moved to the side of the window she caught a shift in the man’s head movement.
Suspicious, but not knowing why, she deliberately stepped back out of sight.
The stranger glanced around, then looked up to study her window. Unnerved, she watched until he walked toward the street corner, pocketing his phone. Feeling better, she returned to her computer. She had a few things to finish up; then she’d head home.
As she set her security alarm, she once again had a weird feeling, setting the hairs on the back of her neck upright. She had no idea why she felt so unnerved.
Except it was Tuesday.
And that meant another letter would arrive tomorrow.
They always came on a Wednesday.
That night was one of the worst. Badger tossed and turned, woke up in a cold sweat, dropped back into sleep again, only to be blown up time and time again as his mind relived the horror of what he’d been through. Only now was the added element of somebody making a phone call. He tried to cast his mind back to that time, but he’d been riding shotgun in the front of the vehicle. He couldn’t tell who might have been sending a text or making a phone call behind him. They’d been in good spirits; the day was hot, sunny, with everyone in a good mood and good health.
There was no sense of betrayal or gut warning about what was ahead of them. Shit happened. But they had no idea they were about to become part of the manure pile themselves. Nothing indicated they were being hunted or under attack in any way. They’d been driving for two hours. They’d stopped once for water and just to take a look around the area. They’d found nothing.
It was a simple recon trip to a village a few miles farther past the accident site.
After all this time, Badger couldn’t even remember the conversations they’d been engaged in beforehand. But he knew they’d been laughing and joking—yet keeping steady eyes on all things around them as they drove forward. Nothing came to mind as out of the ordinary. It made him sick to his stomach to think the call came from somebody inside the truck. It was horrible to look at your friends suspiciously and wonder if they’d betrayed you. He shook his head. “No way in hell.”
Badger rose from the bed, grabbed his crutches and headed to the glass door to the small balcony, opened the curtains and stared out at the New Mexico desert beyond his street. There was nobody to look back. They would have gotten an eyeful if they had. He opened the glass door and stepped out, waiting for the slightly cooler night air to waft over his heated body.
His current life barely resembled his previous world. Not his family, not his home, not his body, not his lifestyle, not his employment. None of it. He used to have a career with the navy. He used to have a long-term girlfriend. He’d expected to get married and to settle down. Even had the house for them all planned out in the back of his head. But, like his physical body, everything else had blown up. And he’d lost it all. His girlfriend hadn’t wanted to be part of his recovery process. And when she had realized he’d lost a leg, torn the muscles in his back and would never be quite the same big strong strapping healthy male she had spent two years with—pre-accident—she’d walked.
And he’d moved home, needing his mother’s care.
At the time he’d been so angry and so deep in depression. His girlfriend leaving was just one more door slammed in his face. One more dart in his heart. For a long time, he wanted to commit suicide, contemplated it, worked out in his mind what would be a good way to do it. But in the VA hospital, he saw so many other men worse off than him that he’d been ashamed of himself.
And then Stone had walked in, taken one look at him and grinned. Just something about that vibrant healthy fully recovered man in front of him—standing on a pretty incredible prosthetic—made Badger realize that, although he was broken and down at the time, he didn’t have to stay that way. That life offered so much more.
Back then Stone had reached out a hand and had helped, and Badger realized the best thing he’d ever done was reach back.
Stone had wanted Badger to come and work for Levi, but that hadn’t been Badger’s thing.
In many ways Badger was afraid he didn’t have anything left to give. Part of the drive pushing his recovery had been his need for answers. He was still so tied up in knots over what had happened, so driven by the need to find out if something … wrong had gone on, that he was useless to anybody else until he addressed that issue.
He pivoted on his crutches, turned his back to the cool outside breeze, waiting for the sweat to dry on his skin. He stared at the tumbled bed, seeing the bedcovers twisted up, as if he’d been in the middle of a fight, and realized it would be hard to catch any more sleep tonight.
He wondered how Stone had reacted to the newest information Badger had gotten.
He checked his clock on the bedside table and saw it was only three in the morning. He grabbed his boxers and a pair of shorts, threw on a muscle shirt, his prosthetic, only wincing slightly, and walked out the front door, heading for his sneakers. Dotty met him at the door. When his foot hit the top step, he took off, the dog running happily at his side.
Being a coonhound, she could run like the wind. Aged, she might be, but she wasn’t done for. And he wasn’t done for either.
He headed for the open area beside his place, his feet pounding the flat terrain, avoiding the worst of the rocks in the half-light, every once in a while coming down unsteadily and having to correct his balance and posture before he was sent flying. If nothing else, he would give the new prosthetic a workout.
And likely sore his leg up further. But some demons couldn’t be exorcised any other way.
That thought sent his mind back to Kat. He hadn’t told her what he was up to, but she’d known. Somehow she’d known. She was also very intuitive and experienced with trauma patients. It had been Kat who suggested he just stop doing too much—as if she understood the devil that rode him. And, instead of looking for a nice peaceful ride, the devil sought a wild bucking bronco moment.
Unfortunately the devil seemed to have found that with Badger.
Maybe his obsession wasn’t any surprise, given what he’d been through. He was lucky he was only missing a leg. Yet he wasn’t done with his rehab. He needed another surgery. The circulation was impaired and needed to be improved. But he’d balked at it. The doctors had said he’d end up with permanent damage if he didn’t have this next surgery. Plus it would give him more tissue in his stump. He’d lost the leg pretty damn high up. He didn’t have much of a stump, like Stone. And, no, Badger hadn’t adjusted as well as Stone had. Badger wasn’t sure he ever would. His mind was consumed with the latest doctor’s words as Badger ran and ran and ran. The nervous system at the stump wasn’t doing as well as it should. The circulatory system was compromised, and Badger was in danger of losing more of his leg, which meant no prosthetic. And that meant crutches and possibly a wheelchair.
The sweat rolled down his back as he looped his way around, finally heading home again. He looked down at Dotty. She was loping in a steady pace at his side. Happy to go where he went. Happy to just be.
He wondered why he couldn’t find that same sense of satisfaction.
When he finally walked back the last hundred yards to his place, he could feel his heart calming down. Yet, instead of relaxing, his muscles were tensing. A hot shower would help. Or a swim but the heat would be better. And he was too tired to swim. The land mine had damaged the muscles in his back. The scar tissue was thick and rigid, and he’d spent hours in the gym, trying to build up some of the missing muscle. But the whole left side of his upper and lower back was pretty ugly looking. He didn’t give a damn what it looked like, but he needed to know the muscle was there when he reached for it. That he had the power he needed when he had to pull on them. And, at the moment, it still wasn’t that good. But then some things would just never be perfect. Humpty Dumpty might be put back together again, but nobody ever said he was put back together again well.
Badger walked inside, shed his clothes and his prosthetic, and hopped in the shower once the water got hot enough. When he finally stepped from the shower, he slipped on his prosthetic and walked over to the kitchen to put some heat under his coffee maker. It was five o’clock now.
He opened and turned on his laptop. Instantly it pinged with an email. He sat down to see another one from Stone. We’re here for you. Make the right call. Badger snorted and stood, headed to the cupboard, grabbed a clean coffee cup and poured himself some of the brew, even though it was still dripping. He ignored the splash as the drops of coffee hit the burner beneath.
Stone might want Badger to make the right call on this new info, but, at the moment, he couldn’t make any call. He didn’t know what the next step was. The thought of researching and investigating any of the men in that vehicle that day—his friends—made him sick to his stomach and turned the inside of his mouth bitter. How could he find out the truth? Two other trucks had been out with his unit. In his mind he wanted it to be somebody from one of those vehicles. He did have a list of the men in the other vehicles and knew some of them personally but not all of them.
It was possible one of those men had put in the call. Had they done it deliberately, knowing what the outcome would be? Or had that been a case of they’d received bad intel too?
It was hard to wait for the coffee to cool enough to drink.
He was physically tired, but his mind was alive, alert, moving at a rapid speed, only it was going in circles. Finally he returned to the laptop, sat down and emailed Stone an update. Badger hadn’t had time to finish his cup of coffee when the phone rang.
“What will you do about it?”
Badger smiled. “I don’t know yet. We were meeting up at a village. There were three vehicles involved. Two were aging Humvees carrying four men each. My unit was in a light tactical vehicle—four men inside and four men riding in the back. We were the only vehicle blown up.”
“You think the directive came from one of the other two trucks?”
“It’s much easier to think that than to consider it came from one of my own men.”
Stone whistled. “That wouldn’t make any sense if it came from one of your guys. That would be a suicide mission.”
“Mouse is the only one who died. And he’s the last one who wanted to commit suicide.”
Stone hesitated, then asked, “Are you sure about the other six?”
“As sure as I can be. I worked with those men for years. Mouse was the only newbie.”
“Any idea on the financial situation of any of them? Anybody truly suicidal? Anybody recently broken up? Anything that would suggest a land mine was a possible end?”
“Hell no.” Badger got up to refill his coffee cup. “All of us are broken. Not one of us walked out without severe injuries.”
“In suicide attempts that often happens. People jump off a bridge. But they don’t quite kill themselves. They just break their neck instead, and they get to spend the rest of their life, lying on a bed, being spoon-fed, with a catheter up their ass.”
“Sounds horrible. And I still don’t think it’s any one of my guys.”
“You know you need to talk to them about it.” Stone’s voice was low, confident.
“I spent the last two years contemplating this. It never occurred to me the phone call came from one of us.”
“You guys were always close. And I know what that’s like because that’s how we were too.”
“I know. I want an answer, and I want an easy answer. I don’t want all the shit that just keeps getting in the way.”
“But the problem is, you want to find an answer—even if there isn’t one.”
“That still sucks.”
“But you have to talk to your unit. That’s where you start. Tell them what bit of intel has popped up to see if anyone knows the other men. As you and I both know, a shitty order starts with shitty intel.”
Badger hung up, walked back to his French doors and stared outside. It was too early to call anyone else. He sat down, wincing at the sore on his leg. He pulled off the prosthetic and stared at the bloody swelling. “Shit.”
He grabbed the crutches that were always close by and hobbled over to the medicine cabinet. There he pulled out disinfectant and dabbed the side of his stump. It was pretty easy to have a small problem morph into a big one. He put several more bandages on.
Back at the table he picked up the prosthetic and took a careful look. Kat had built up the inside with extra padding. But it wasn’t enough. His skin was so sore and raw still. He needed time to build it up, but of course he hadn’t thought about that when he took off for a flat-out run—nor had he cared as he was so caught up with his demons.
Then he wasn’t in a position to get picky. He was mobile, and that was more than he thought to ever be.
It just wasn’t quite enough.