Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sully
It was the perfect damn day.
Even if Chris didn’t actually have anything I thought was actionable.
Getting to wake up with Bonnie, spend the morning reading together, having sex, watching her overcome her fears and have fun on the playground, seeing her come out of her shell around the Hailstorm crew.
It had been fucking great.
Until she finally said it.
Her last name.
And it all fucking… fell into place.
It had been so jarring that I’d snapped at Bonnie, whose fucking gorgeous face fell, not used to me speaking to her that way.
I mean, Christ, it was enough of a bark that Fischer stepped between us.
But Clewski?
Fucking Clewski?
“Baby,” I said, exhaling hard. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a brother?”
“I guess because I don’t anymore,” she said. “And I don’t really like talking about my past at all.”
That was fair.
Aside from knowing her old man was a nasty drunk and she’d gone no-contact with them, I honestly didn’t know anything. That little tidbit about the chickens was the most she’d said about her childhood in days.
“But you had a brother. David. Who joined the military when he was—”
“Seventeen,” she said. “My mom signed off on it. I think she knew that he was going to kill my father if he didn’t get out of there.”
“There must have been a big age gap.”
“Yeah. I was a later-in-life oopsie. Believe me, I was well aware of how unwanted I was. ‘Coulda been living the high life by now if she didn’t get her dumb ass knocked up’ was one of my father’s favorite things to say to me.”
“Asshole,” Fischer grumbled under his breath.
“Yeah,” Bonnie agreed. “I don’t really remember a lot about David. He was so much older and wanted nothing to do with a little sister. Then he left. I used to hope he might make some money, come back, and rescue me,” Bonnie said, her eyes going a little glassy before she blinked the tears away. “But then… he died.”
“I’m sorry,” Fischer said, his head tipped to the side.
I’d never been a jealous kind of guy. Especially when a man was just showing human concern for another person and their lived experience. But I was getting close to wanting to physically move that fucker from Bonnie’s side.
“Wait,” Chris, ever the pragmatist and much better at compartmentalizing things, given her horrific past, spoke. “So, you knew her brother? There is a connection between you.”
“Yes,” I said, answering Bonnie, because there was a question in her eyes.
“He was on my last operation,” I said. “Green as grass still,” I recalled. “We used to tease him,” I added. “‘Come on, get a Clewski,’ was a common refrain those days.”
To that, Bonnie gave me a small smile.
“He was a good kid. Just too inexperienced for what we were doing then.”
“So, wait,” Chris said, trying to get all the facts straight. “He was on your last operation? The one that ended with…”
“Everyone dead but me,” I said, nodding.
“Oh, shit…” Fischer said, the pieces falling together for him too.
“But… I don’t understand,” Bonnie said. “Like, I get that you were the only survivor. So, I guess maybe someone might target you because of that. But why me? I mean… I don’t mean for that to sound—“
“It’s okay. I get what you mean,” I cut her off. “That, I think, goes back to how that op ended.”
“With everyone dying,” Bonnie said.
“Yeah. But…” I sighed, not liking this part. Even if she wasn’t close with him, it was still her brother. I didn’t want to ruin whatever memories she did have of him.
“I’m not that fragile,” Bonnie reminded me. “I can take the truth.”
And, even when it sucked, I had to always give her that.
“David is the reason everyone is dead,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “How?”
“We were in this abandoned town, looking for this group of terrorists that our intel said was hiding out there.”
Suddenly, I was back there.
The sweat soaking through the bandana I had on under my helmet, dripping down into my eyes, feeling disoriented by the harsh, sunbaked terrain that went on endlessly, so thirsty that my tongue felt like sandpaper.
All I could think about was getting back to the patrol base, getting a halfway decent meal, and washing the sandy soil that seemed to stick to every inch of skin, even under my clothing.
We just had one more building to check out.
Then it would be over.
“Hold up,” I’d called to everyone, all of them looking just as fed up as I felt.
Something just felt… off.
If someone asked, I wouldn’t be able to explain it. It was just a gut instinct you got from being in risky-ass situations for years, from always knowing your life was one bad move away from being over.
I moved away from the wall of the building, standing in the middle of the empty street.
I just needed a minute to figure out what the feeling was, decide if there was any merit to it, then make a decision.
But then I heard David call out, voice high and a mix of fearful and excited.
“I just saw someone. We gotta go in!”
“Wait!” I called, but it was too late. He was too young, too bull-headed, too eager.
He ran forward, heading into the building.
The other guys, this group of men who’d been strangers to me once but had become good friends, had no choice but to follow.
“Goddamnit, Clewski,” I’d grumbled, hand going to my gun as I started to run toward the building.
Until the bomb detonated, sending me flying through the air, landing hard enough on my back to make me gasp for air.
Rubble shot out everywhere, heavy stones sourced from the nearby mountains flying and landing all around and over me.
“One landed on my head and I was out,” I told Bonnie, Chris, and Fischer. “When I woke up, I was still mostly buried. Had to dig myself out.”
I was playing it down for Bonnie’s sake. I had a nasty, gaping head wound. Was bleeding so bad I was blacking in and out, was disoriented and dizzy.
But in situations like that, even bleeding from the head, adrenaline could get you a long way.
It got me out from under those rocks.
I’d walked, stumbled, crawled the rest of the way across that road, finding a giant mass of rubble that had once been a building.
A building where my men had just entered.
I’d known.
Of course I did, in the back of my mind, that no one could have survived that kind of explosion.
It didn’t matter though.
Those were my brothers.
I couldn’t just walk away if there was even a chance that one of them made it.
I’d like to claim that you got used to seeing gnarly shit. And maybe, in some ways, you did. But when it was the limbs of your own men, familiar tattoos etched in their skin, little bracelets on their wrists from their babies back home, yeah, there was no getting through that discovery with your mental health intact.
I barely remember getting back to the Humvee. And I must have blacked out from the blood loss at some point because I had no fucking idea how I’d gotten from the Humvee and back to a hospital.
All I knew was I was in that hospital without any of my men. None of them had made it.
I had. Just because I was further away. Because I hadn’t been leading them into that building like I should have.
I’d spent weeks in that hospital, recovering from the head wound that had done some weird shit to my ability to communicate, lying flat on my back because of a compound fracture to my leg. I’d seen the pants sometime later that I’d been wearing, a big bloody hole in them from where my leg bone had been poking out.
There’d been the subsequent infection, then a shit ton of physical therapy to learn to walk again.
And, yeah, the mental shit.
The mental shit that meant I was never going back into the field again. The kind that had some higher-ups somewhere going ‘Yeah, let’s let that one go.’
Then that’s what they did. I left the only life I’d known for my adulthood, left to flounder in an unfamiliar world with a mind going dark places.
That was why I’d worked so hard to seek the light, to find the good, to have fun. Because I never wanted my mind going back there, wondering why I’d been the one to make it. I, who didn’t have a wife and kids at home, who didn’t have parents who would sob over my casket, who didn’t have anyone who would really give a fuck.
I shouldn’t have been the one to make it.
And there were times when… I didn’t want to keep making it. When I wanted to clock out, to right a wrong the universe made.
“Sully,” Bonnie said, reaching out for my hand, giving it a squeeze, pulling me back out of my memories. “I know a lot of people who are really glad you didn’t ‘clock out,’” she said, blinking back the wetness in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I agreed, squeezing her hand back. “Know that now. Things were different back then, though.”
“Well, this really narrows it down,” Chris said, turning to look at one of the women sitting at a desk. “Friends and family of the guys who died in that explosion. Most likely family. Brothers.”
“On it,” the woman said.
“Why?” Bonnie asked.
“Because Sully survived when their loved one didn’t. That can fuck with the head. And, I’m assuming, somewhere along the way, they concluded that your brother was, for lack of a better way to put it, at fault. So they want you both to suffer. Maybe they would have gone after your parents, but it sounds like they make their own lives miserable enough.”
It was fucking psycho behavior to target someone as innocent as Bonnie. But, if someone lost a son or sibling they were close to, there’s no telling what they’re capable of.
At least it was a direction.
Somewhere to look.
Even though I didn’t exactly feel great about offing someone who was acting out of grief for something I had a lot of my own survivor’s guilt about, even all these years later.
But then Bonnie was moving closer, wrapping her arms around me gently. “I’m sorry you went through that,” she whispered to my chest, so only the two of us could hear. “And I’m really glad you’re still here.”
My arms went around her, feeling that same spreading sensation in my heart, knowing it for what it was, even if I hadn’t said the words yet.
She was why I could do whatever I had to do to the man who’d strapped a bomb to her chest, whose actions still gave her nightmares I had to shake her awake from, who would likely always panic at the sound of any type of explosions.
She deserved the peace of knowing no one would ever come for her again.
“How about you two go take a walk?” Fischer suggested as some of the men and women started talking to each other, tossing out names and ages, relations to the men who I’d served with.
“Yeah,” I agreed, reaching for Bonnie’s hand, lacing my fingers through, and leading her out of their war room.
I had no fucking idea where I was going. But I figured it didn’t really matter. No matter where we were, this place was safe. And there would be someone, somewhere to lead us back to the war room when we were needed. Everyone around the place carried around comms, so the communication thing wasn’t an issue.
We walked in silence, both of us not wanting to stop anywhere in the strange, barren hallways full of creepy corners.
“What’s through there?” Bonnie asked when we reached a strange door. Compared to all the thick, reinforced metal doors everywhere else, this was a wide, arched wooden door.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But it’s open,” I added when the door handle turned in my hand. “Shall we?” I asked, shooting her a little smirk.
“You already are,” she shot back as I pulled her through the door and into…
An indoor garden.
No, that wasn’t quite right. It was a whole-ass botanical conservatory.
Except, of course, it was in the center of the building. There were no windows. But the roof was made of what seemed like the same thick glass as the room on the roof of the clubhouse, letting in light. But to make up for the lack of windows, full-spectrum lighting lined the walls.
“Wow,” Bonnie exhaled, turning in a circle to try to take in all the plants. “I’m not even a huge plant person, but I could sit here for hours. Wait… is that water?” she asked.
Sure enough, we heard and followed the trickle toward the far wall where, half-hidden by a bunch of tropical trees, was a sunken pond surrounded by a raised wall, giving the koi fish within enough room to swim.
“This is incredible,” Bonnie said, sitting on the pond wall and looking out. “Why would they have something like this here?”
“Best guess, it’s a two-fold thing,” I said, joining her.
“What do you mean?”
“On the one hand, it probably got here because someone around here loves plants or maybe has bad enough agoraphobia that they can’t go out, so they wanted to create an outside… inside.”
“It’s sweet that Chris would let someone build this for a reason like that, even if it’s sad that someone might feel like they can’t even walk outside.”
“This place is mostly made up of former military members. Some who went through some really rough shit. Got both emotional and physical scars. When Lo, Chris’s mom, started this place, it gave all those men and women who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to function in society, a way to cope, use their skills, make a living. And to be around others who would understand them.”
“What kind of jobs do they do?” Bonnie asked.
“Honestly, I’m not even sure. But I do know they make bank. They have experts of every sort here: hackers, weapons experts or builders, sharpshooters, engineers, you name it. So, you can imagine what those skills could be used to do.”
“Yeah. What’s the other thing?”
“Hmm?”
“You said this place could be a pet project, or therapy, for someone. But you said there could be another reason.”
“Right. Well, this place is paramilitary, but it’s also, in case you didn’t notice, a survivalist project. They have solar panels, hand-pump wells, air filtration, gardens, food storage, chickens for eggs, and a whole load of other stuff like that. I think this might also serve, in Chris’s mind, as a taste of the outside world if something ever happened to force them all to lock down in here long-term.”
“That’s both sad and really lovely at the same time. I think most people who prep kind of go about it very practically: food, water, weapons, that sort of thing. But what good is all that if life is nothing but a barren hellscape? This would remind people about the beauty in the world.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “Hey,” I said, reaching to pull her legs over my lap. “I’m sorry I barked at you earlier.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I was just… not prepared for that. Still not an excuse. But I won’t speak to you like that again.”
“It’s fine, really. We all have moments where we aren’t careful about our tone. I have a feeling in about… four or five days, you are going to get snapped at if you breathe on me the wrong way.”
“Baby, I don’t think you’re capable of snapping. Not even when you’re chasing the cotton mouse,” I said, getting a choked laugh out of her.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said, but leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Which might be what you like best about me,” I agreed, resting my head on the side of hers. “Next to my Hawaiian shirt collection, of course.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “What happens now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “That’s gonna be a discussion with Fallon once we have a name. But it’s nothing you have to worry about,” I assured her, running my hand up and down her thigh.
“And after that?” she asked, voice smaller. It always was when she was talking about something that really mattered, but she felt unsure about.
“We sleep at your place for a change.”
“Zima,” she reminded me.
“Right,” I agreed. “Then we leave Zima in the capable hands of my brothers, then we go to your place, fuck on every surface, then come home to our dog.”
“I like that plan.”
“Me too. Then, who knows, maybe we can find a place where we can sleep and have Zima with us too.”
“With a fenced yard?”
“And our very own fat squirrel,” I agreed.
She was about to say something when we heard a soft humming followed by a woman’s voice calling out, “Cassandra! Where are you?”
“We should let her know we’re here,” Bonnie whispered.
“Marco,” I called.
There was a pause, then, “Polo?” she called, her tone guarded.
“Marco,” I called again.
Then there she was, appearing before us. She was tall and almost painfully slight with a cascade of copper hair around her delicate face.
“Who are you?” she asked, stiffening.
“We just had a meeting with Chris,” I told her, tone soft. “I’m one of the Henchmen,” I told her.
Her gaze slid to my cut. “Right,” she agreed, nodding.
“Is this your garden?” Bonnie asked.
“Yes. Why?” she asked, guarded.
“It’s so beautiful. I can’t believe how much it feels like being in a jungle.”
“Oh, thanks,” the woman said, shifting her feet. “Oh, there you are!” she cooed, face brightening the same way Bonnie’s did when she saw a dog.
Only Cassandra wasn’t a dog.
She was a really fucking adorable tan lop rabbit, her little ears nearly dragging on the floor as she hopped over to the woman.
“Of course I brought you a goodie,” she told the rabbit who reared up on her hind legs, little nose twitching as she sniffed.
The woman handed the rabbit a baby carrot from her pocket. “Where’s your sister?” she asked, but the other bunny was nowhere to be seen. Catching us watching her, the woman stiffened again. “Rabbits produce an endless supply of cold manure.”
“Cold manure?” I asked.
“Most animal waste has to compost down for a long time before you can use it. But you can just use fresh rabbit droppings for garden fertilizer. It’s a backup plan here in case…” she said, waving a hand out. In case shit hit the fan, which they were always planning for.
“That’s really interesting,” Bonnie said, using the coaxing tone with the strange woman as I found myself using on her when she was nervous about something. “Did you—“
“Jewel, you in here?” Fischer’s voice called. I expected the woman, Jewel, to stiffen. But she almost seemed to relax a little.
“Over here,” she called. “I found our… guests.”
“That’s who I was looking for. Your beast tried to eat my shoe again,” Fischer said, appearing next to Jewel with a massive rabbit in his arms. Easily the size of a damn dog.
“There you are,” Jewel said, lifting the rabbit’s mass from Fischer’s arms. “Let’s go check if you have enough hay, okay?” she asked, walking away with the rabbit.
“Damn thing is heavier than she is,” Fischer said.
“Did you feed it steroids?” I asked, making Bonnie giggle.
“It’s a Flemish Giant. They’re enormous. So, Sully, Chris wants to have a word with you. Bonnie, want to come with me for a bit?”
“No, she doesn’t,” I said, surprised at my sharp tone.
“Sully!” Bonnie whisper-yelled at me, brows pinched.
Fischer, to his credit, flattened out a smile as he rocked back on his heels. “I thought I would show her to where the princesses have been hanging out,” he said. “Gracie was excited when she heard y’all were coming up.”
“Oh, okay,” Bonnie said, hopping up, smile bright. “I’ll see you after your meeting?” she asked, looking at me.
“Yep,” I agreed as Fischer held out a hand to let her start off ahead of him.
“Don’t worry. I’m not making moves on your girl,” he said before following her out.
I got lost no less than five times before someone finally took pity on me and led me back to the war room.
“You figure it out?”
“It was easy once we had direction,” Chris said. “His name is Andy Antone. His brother was—“
“Will Antone,” I said, his face popping back into my head. Grinning ear-to-ear as he tossed his cards on the table, all-too-happy to steal everyone’s meager snack stash. Or sitting on his bunk, staring at a picture he carried in his pocket of the girl he said was going to wait for him back home. Looking back at me for a split second before following the others into that building.
“Yes. Andy has all the markers for a revenge killer. Bad family life, social isolation, access to weapons from a young age, obsessive and narcissistic tendencies. Looks like he came to Navesink Bank about two years ago.”
“You’re sure? Two years?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because that’s how long Bonnie has been here.”
To that, Chris nodded.
“Best guess,” one of her women said, swiveling toward us in her chair. “That was his trigger. He’d likely been fantasizing about revenge for years, but when the two of you ended up in the same place, he probably saw it as a sign. Then he got here and started plotting.”
“And from what we can tell about Bonnie, she’s not easy to get to,” Chris said. “So it took him a while to get his hands on her.”
I nodded to that.
“And what now? Is there a way for me not to have to kill him?” I asked. “Kinda feel like it might be too much, considering why he’s doing what he does.”
“I mean, sure,” Chris said. “We could tip off the authorities. There’s no way his place isn’t full of explosives and other illegal items. He’d get sent away on charges.”
“For how long?”
“Ten years on the lowest end,” Chris explained. “Twenty to life if they can prove he had the intention to use it against someone.”
“But you run into a lot of other issues if he is brought in,” the other woman said.
“Such as?”
“Him talking. About the kidnapping, the suicide vest, the other shit he’s done. That you guys haven’t reported. They’d haul you both in for questioning. You might even need to testify. And I don’t get the feeling your girl would be up for that.”
No.
No, she wouldn’t.
“If you need permission,” Chris said, looking at me, eyes deep, “I give you permission to do whatever you need to do to protect yourself and the people you love.”
“And if it makes you feel better,” someone else piped in, not turning around from their chair, “picked up some chatter on a message board where he was looking to get his hands on some armor-piercing weaponry. He can’t afford that shit,” he went on. “But he’s looking. He’s not gonna stop.”
“I agree,” the woman, likely one of Hailstorm’s profilers, said. “Even if he went away for a decade or more, he would use that time to plot. Then he would get free and come for you again. Likely when you have a lot more to lose. Kids…”
Yeah, fuck that.
I needed to be able to assure Bonnie that she was safe. For good.
“Any chance Bonnie can stay here tonight?” I asked. “And maybe Zima?”
“That’s the dog you got her, right?”
“Right,” I agreed.
“Yeah, that’s fine. Just have someone bring the dog up. She can hang with the girls. They want to get drunk and spar,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Damn.
I wouldn’t mind being involved in all that.
But, I reminded myself, it would be good for Bonnie to know she could have that kind of fun without me around. And she was as safe as a human being could be at Hailstorm. And in good hands with the girls’ club.
“You want a team?” Chris asked.
“I got a team,” I said, thinking of my brothers.
Chris nodded.
“Someone can give you a ride back to town to get things in order.”
I hated leaving Bonnie without saying goodbye. But she was honestly not going to even notice I was missing for hours.
“Sully,” Chris called as I walked away.
“Yeah?”
“Come back to her.”
“That’s the plan,” I agreed.
Only this time, we’d never have to worry about this guy again.