Grace Under Fire (Buchanan-Renard 14)

“What else did you hear?”

“That’s all. I know you can’t and won’t talk about your time as a Navy SEAL. There’s a code, isn’t there? You only talk to your other team members about your missions, but no one outside the SEALs?”

“That’s right.”

“Were your injuries the reason you didn’t stay with the SEALs?”

“No, the mission was my last. My tour was over and I didn’t re-up.”

“You could have died,” she whispered, a tinge of fear in her voice.

He nodded. “I was lucky.”

Michael could see that Isabel wanted more from him, but he couldn’t give it. The details of the mission were in a classified file, and that’s where they would stay for the time being, or at least until the Navy released them, but the memories from that day would be with him as long as he lived.

The team had been sent into a village that was nothing more than a tiny dot on the map of Afghanistan. A band of insurgents had swarmed into the area and set up camp. By the time the SEALs arrived, almost half of the inhabitants had been slaughtered, including women and children. Michael would never forget the horrific scene when they arrived. Carnage and bloodshed everywhere. Innocents gunned down where they stood.

The town was eerily quiet as the team went from house to house, searching for the men who had done this. In some, they found nothing, and in others they found terrorized victims too frightened to speak. Finally, a young boy, no more than nine or ten, whom they discovered huddled with his mother in the corner of a bedroom, timidly stepped forward and told them he saw the insurgents going into the house of one of the village elders. With some coaxing and despite the pleas of his mother, he agreed to show them the way. He then led them toward the edge of the village and pointed to the house, a traditional mud-and-timber structure surrounded by a low wall.

Reconnaissance and surveillance equipment revealed there were eight insurgents holding a man, a woman, and a young girl inside. The SEALs waited for the right moment, and then they stormed the house. The enemy put up a fight but were no match. Leading the way, Michael found the man and woman cowering by the door, but he didn’t see the child. He rushed the couple outside and ran back in. With gunfire all around him, he searched, finally spotting the top of the little girl’s head behind a stack of pillows on the floor. He snatched her up in his arms and raced out. Protecting the child with his body wrapped protectively around her, he sprinted to get her away from the house and the flying bullets. He almost made it to safety, but one of the insurgents, in a final blaze of glory before collapsing from his own wounds, took aim and fired at Michael’s back, hitting him three times.

The next thing Michael remembered was waking up in a field hospital with his SEAL brothers around him. The first words he uttered were, “Is she okay?”

“Thanks to you, yes,” his commander assured. “She’s with her family.”

Now every time images of his last mission returned to haunt him, Michael saw the devastation, the death, and the terror in that little girl’s eyes. He had seen enough brutality and its aftermath to last a lifetime. There was no way he could put an end to all the evil he had witnessed, but maybe the solution—at least for him—was to stop the terrorists before they could execute their plans. After weighing his options, he decided the Counterterrorism Division of the FBI would be the best place for him. He realized it would be naive to think he could save the world, but at least he could try to save a small part of it.

Isabel pulled him from his thoughts when she said, “Please answer one more question. Did that mission make a difference in anyone’s life?”

Michael remembered the family he’d helped escape. At least they were safe now. “Yes,” he answered. “The mission made a difference.”

He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Okay, it’s your turn, Isabel. Tell me about the land you’re going to inherit.”

“I’m going to sell it. I’m getting it from my great-uncle, Compton MacKenna, who amassed quite a fortune. Kate and Kiera and I never met the man. Compton was mean-spirited. He disowned my father when he married my mother. He made a video outlining the changes to his will. Like I said, he had amassed a fortune and his brother’s grandsons thought they were going to get it all. Kate and Dylan went to the attorney’s office and watched the video Compton made to go with his will. In it he defamed our mother. He said horrible things about her. He also said he believed his great-nephews were all useless and they didn’t deserve to get much of his money. He liked us three girls, he said, because in spite of our mother, who he said was no better than a street beggar, we had all made something of ourselves. Kate and Kiera received the bulk of his estate, close to one hundred million dollars.”

Michael smiled. “They didn’t keep it, did they?”

“No, they didn’t. All the money went to build a new cancer center at the university hospital complex. It’s called the Leah MacKenna Cancer Center. That ought to make that mean old man roll over in his grave.”

“And he gave you Glen MacKenna.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know why. Perhaps the letter he wrote to me will explain his reasons. Compton MacKenna was given to drama. Kate brought the DVD home of Compton spelling out the terms of his will. It was difficult to watch and listen to him slander my mother. He looked down on her because she wasn’t born with a title or high social status. Her family didn’t have money, and they weren’t blue bloods, so Compton deemed her unworthy to join his family.”

“Did Compton have a title? Was he a blue blood?” he asked.

“No. He was a hypocrite.”

“Sounds like it,” he agreed. “Your mother raised all three of you without any help, didn’t she?”

“No, she had help. She went to work at a private school, and when Kiera and Kate became students there, the tuition was free. My aunt Nora moved in to take care of me.” She laughed and added, “She had quite an influence on me. Sometimes I sound just like her.”

Michael tilted Isabel’s chin up and looked at her with a concerned expression. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

Was he going to bring up her inexperience in bed? Wouldn’t that be great? She wouldn’t be feeling so insecure if she hadn’t bragged about being such a sex goddess. He’d known she was teasing, hadn’t he? Of course he had, but her mind still raced to come up with an explanation if he brought it up.

“Yes?”

“You said you never want to go onstage again.”