Chapter 39
Sam
Stepping inside Sage’s home is like stepping into the past. The wide foyer with wood plank flooring and an open view to the back of the house with a cushioned window seat beneath a panoramic window over the mountains is exactly what I remember. The furniture has changed, the walls are a slightly darker blue than before, and the rooms along the hallway aren’t as cluttered.
I’d been in Saudi Arabia when I received the news that hired assassins burned her home. In the same phone call, Jack Sullivan assured me she was safe, and he’d be certain she was taken care of. Based on the layout of the home, which features a wide hallway with rooms on each side and an open living area in the back with a stairwell on the left side, she rebuilt using the same house plans. Photos line the section of the angled wall on the side of the stairs, and I’m drawn to the captured memories.
The photo of our family is tinged brown along the edges, and the way the brown and black hues alternate from light to drenched, it must be from fire, not age. The photo is of me, Sage, Sloane, and our parents. My father’s hand rests on my shoulder, my mom is at his side, and Sloane and Sage stand before us. We’re dressed in our best clothes on Easter Sunday. The photo was taken the year before I met Knox.
Another photo is of my father and me fishing beside a small pond. It’s a candid photo, and you can’t see my father’s face, but he looms beside me, about three times taller than I am, and I’m grinning with a small perch on the hook.
Sage in a wedding dress catches my eye, and I step forward to get a better look at her simple white silk gown and the rosy glow on her cheeks. Knox stands beside her in a tux. The background is blurred, but based on the green hues, they must be outside. They’re looking at each other, and Sage holds a bouquet. I should’ve been there. I should’ve been the best man, and I should’ve walked her down the aisle. My eyes burn unexpectedly. Unexpected because none of this is new to me. I know what I missed out on. The hurt and regret churned for years. I guess I didn’t expect the hurt would intensify upon my return.
I step back from the photo, breathing through the tightness in my chest, and peruse the remaining dozen photos. There’s Sloane and Max, some people I don’t recognize, one of Jimmy, Sage’s friend, on an inner tube holding a beer, and a recent one of Sage and Sloane in front of a Christmas tree. There are no photos of Sage in the hospital, but those were some of my favorite family photos. We had so many printed photos of us playing games, doing crafts, using the end of her bed as a table. It’s not that I miss her being sick, but I miss how connected we were as a family. They weren’t simple times, but looking back, we were all together, and…
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. This isn’t the time to go overboard with sentimental thoughts.
“You okay?” Sage lightly touches my arm, and I snap to it, scanning the hallway.
It’s just me and Sage out here.
“Knox is getting Lily some water.”
Hearing the name Lily is going to take some getting used to. Saying it is still strange. Perhaps we should have kept her first name.
“Do you want anything?”
“No, I’m good.” I pull Sage up to my side. “You were a beautiful bride.” I saw photos of her, but that fact dies on my tongue.
“I have a wedding album if you want to see it.”
“I’d love to.” My younger self probably wouldn’t have wanted to sift through wedding photos, but I want to experience what I can, and I want to hear everything I missed. “Do you still have our family albums?”
“We saved some photos. Like this one,” she says, pointing out our family photo. “But a lot of the photos were destroyed in the fire. If the fire didn’t get them, the water did.”
“I’m so sorry, Sage.” Of all of us, Sage treasured memories the most. She might not have wanted to hang photos of when she was sick, but she’d want to keep the photographs and mementos.
“That wasn’t your fault,” she says brightly. “The people responsible were caught, you know?”
“I know. I wasn’t here, but I kept up with things.” Everyone who attempted to harm my sisters is either dead or received lifetime prison sentences. It’s ironic. I’d been terrified the retribution if I was discovered would put my family in danger, yet my nerdy sister nearly got them killed. “How has Sloane been doing?”
“She’s been really good. Max is good for her. She’s happy.” Sage’s expression fills with love. She’s the best of the three of us. “Sloane will come around. You know how she is. Seeing you was a shock.”
“It would be for anyone. I thought about the best way to do it. I could’ve had someone from the Navy tell you. Played it out like they found me, and I’d be coming home after a bout of amnesia, but…” I didn’t want more lies. I’m done with the lying.
“You chose the right way.” I side-eye my sister, amused by how much she sounds like Mom. “Knox never would’ve believed any story you concocted. Is he right? Is there a story we need to learn?”
“There is. There’s a lot I can’t tell you.” Technically, I’ve told her too much as it is.
“But yet you got married.” She beams up at me. “She’s beautiful. Stunning. I bet it was her dark hair and blue eyes that caught your attention. Love at first sight.”
I choke on a laugh. It had hardly been love at first sight, but I won’t be the one to destroy Sage’s fantasy. It hadn’t been love at first sight, but mostly because she was too damn young, and I didn’t have an open mind. But it is definitely love now.
There hasn’t been a morning since the first one aboard The Honey Pot that I haven’t been grateful she’s by my side. I would’ve left her with her family. I wouldn’t have taken her, but losing the best thing to happen to me in my adult life would’ve hurt worse than anything I’ve ever endured.
“You want a beer?” Knox asks from the threshold to the living area. Across the room, my wife sits on the sofa with a big dog pawing at her. She glances up, catching my eye, and shoots me a reassuring smile. She’s good.
“Sure.” Knox looks at Sage with concern etched in the lines around his eyes. “Why don’t you sit? We’ll come into the den once we get beers.”
“I’m okay,” she says with exasperation.
“I know that,” he says. “But don’t you want to get to know your sister-in-law?”
The way she smiles at him, I’m pretty sure she knows he’s playing to her weakness to get what he wants. He palms her distended belly lovingly, and my chest tightens again.
“Why don’t we go down to the basement? We’ll grab a beer from the fridge downstairs and maybe sit outside for a bit?”
I cast a sidelong glance at my wife and sister. “Sage will take care of her,” Knox says gruffly.
“Lead the way.”
We pass through the living area and into a kitchen, and he opens a white-painted door. The narrow staircase descends into a cozy downstairs area that’s a walkout basement. Large windows bring in light, and, looking around, it’s clear this is Knox’s space. There’s a pool table, worn leather sofas, and a mini kitchen on one wall. On the far side is a desk with multiple monitors and a couple of whiteboards.
“I mostly work from home,” he says.
“You claimed the basement?”
“Most of it. There’s walk-in storage and a couple of rooms we could finish out if we ever need more room.”
“You guys seem really happy.”
“We are,” he says, leaning into the refrigerator. “So, how old is your wife?”
I snort. I’d wondered how long it would take for Knox to comment.
“She’s younger,” I say with an irrepressible smirk.
Her age isn’t funny to me, and neither is our age difference, but there’s something about being with one of the guys that paints the humor.
“I’d ask you how that happened, but…is she at least legal?” I blink. “Over eighteen?” he clarifies.
“Yes, you fuck,” I say, still grinning.
“Can I offer her a beer without getting a ticket for giving alcohol to the underaged?”
“She’s over twenty-one,” I say, suppressing a laugh. “And I love her. She’s the best thing that’s happened to me. She’s probably the reason I finally got off that assignment. So watch it.” The warning is coated with a grin, but Knox reads me. He always has.
He snaps the tops off the glass beer bottles using an opener screwed to the wall, and the tops fall neatly into the garbage can below. He hands me a beer and says, “Let’s sit outside.”
“You trust your neighbors?” I ask as we step out into the unseasonably warm fall evening.
His back yard is bigger than I would’ve expected. He’s got a brick patio with chairs around a firepit and there’s a deck that extends from the main floor. A hammock hangs on two posts from the overhead deck. And from there, the wooded area slopes downward quickly.
“Yep,” he says as he takes one of the Adirondack chairs and sits, gesturing for me to take another one. “If it gets too buggy, we’ll go inside. The neighbor to the side is out of town this week. Newly divorced, and he travels a lot. Neighbors to the other side are in their eighties and never come down into the back yard. Even if they did, they couldn’t hear us.”
A squirrel scampers through the leaves, pausing to observe us, then scurries deeper into the woods.
“This is nice back here,” I say. “Feels like your house backs up to the Appalachian Trail.”
“No, but it’s close and accessible,” he says. “House sits on two acres. It’s just a deep lot. They won’t develop past here because of the incline.”
“Nice. It’s like bordering a park.”
He chugs his beer and sets it on the rim of the fire table. “What can you tell me?”
I look him directly in the eye. “First, I hate it went down the way it did. I hate what you must’ve gone through. I won’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive,” he says. That’s, of course, bullshit, and we both know it. With another sigh, he leans back and rests his elbows on the chair’s arms. “Wasn’t your call. I’m a big boy. I get that. And I’m also family now. Officially. I’ll stand by you until the day I die. But, while the girls aren’t here, what can you tell me? Foremost, is whatever operation you were on over?”
“My role is,” I answer one hundred percent truthfully. “I’ll give you the official spiel when we’re all together, so I only have to repeat it once.”
“How’d you convince them to let you come home?”
“That was always the deal. It was supposed to be a short gig.”
“Extended to five years. Is that about right?”
“Yep.”
“Let me guess. You had to save the world?”
“I did some good,” I say, thinking more of the funds I diverted to charities and people in need I met along the way from time to time. When you live among thieves, and especially when you don’t want those thieves to trust each other too much, a little theft here and there is good for humankind.
He puts his hand to his mouth thoughtfully. “You still with the Navy?”
“No. We stopped by Coronado. Paperwork’s being processed. Medical discharge. No fanfare.” That’s another way of saying on the down-low.
“What’re your plans?”
“I’m on extended leave at the moment.”
“From the CIA?”
“From everything.”
He narrows his eyes. “Did you work for Arrow?”
“Officially, the operation never happened. A shell company paid me.”
“Ah, one of those.”
“There are people pretty high up in the US government who can’t know, so yeah, one of those.”
Too many politicians are bought. If some of the corrupt members on the intelligence committee got wind, I would’ve been eliminated years ago.
“You know what the craziest part of this is…your sister. She knew you were alive. I thought she couldn’t accept the truth, but she knew. In her gut.”
“She’s a wise one. I’d hoped both Sage and Sloane would think about the duffels I created for them and, at the very least, hope I’d made myself disappear.”
“And that woman in the bar? She was a plant.”
“Not a good one. Clearly. You left her.”
“I hated myself for that. For years. Thought if I’d gone with you…” He angles his head and looks away like it’s too painful to look at me while he remembers.
“I’ll never make that up to you,” I say, knowing it’s the god’s honest truth. I could’ve trusted him. Could’ve broken protocol and read him in, but it felt too risky, too wrong. His reaction, everyone’s reaction, needed to be believable. My allegiance had been to my country above all else.
Crunching leaves and twigs alert us of someone approaching in the woods. Knox sits up, looking down the slope, but he doesn’t appear nervous. He’s simply alert.
Sloane comes into view first, followed by Max. Sloane stops when she sees us, then charges forward. I stand to greet her, and brace myself. Sloane shoots straight. I deserve whatever she throws at me.
When she reaches me, her gaze falls to my feet. It’s the pink around her eyes and tear-splotched skin that guts me. “You hurt us,” she says. “Why?”
Agitation practically vibrates off her. She’s controlling her emotions, but it’s hard. I brought this on her.
“I was on a project with some people who believe in retribution. You and Sage are my only family. I didn’t want them coming after you to get back at me.” She says nothing, and that makes me feel like I need to say more. “I was deep undercover.”
Max approaches behind her, and his fingers touch her hip.
“Do you have any idea what you did to Sage? How much you hurt her?”
“I do.” Defense is on the tip of my tongue, to tell her it wasn’t supposed to last so long, that what I was doing was important, that the information I gathered was critical, but I swallow it all down. “I love you, Sloaney.” Her lips press into a flat line, and tears cascade down her cheeks. “I love both of you. It would’ve killed me if you got wrapped up in my shit. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but you need to know the only reason we took that approach is because of your safety, and Sage’s safety. That’s the most important thing to me. Always will be.”
She sniffs, and I’m not sure she’s aware, but her foot taps the ground. “You were doing your job, and I understand doing your job. But we needed you, and you weren’t here.”
And that’s the hell of it. She’s absolutely right. I couldn’t be in two places at once. While I was off playing secret agent, I wasn’t where I should be, helping my sisters when they needed me.
She shuffles up against me, head down. I hold her as she sobs. Max stands near the Adirondack chair, appearing as helpless as I feel.
A hard punch into my side has me curving against pain. “Ow.”
But she doesn’t stop. She pummels my ribs. Batting me, gaze focused on my chest. Mom would shout, tell her not to hit. But she needs this. I can take it. I deserve it.
Max says, “Sloane. Babe.”
His words are soft, and she lowers her fists. The recognition that he’s her person now smacks a raw spot in my chest.
“I love you too.” With her lower lip protruding and gaze down, it’s like she’s a reprimanded kid and been told to apologize. Maybe she hears Mom’s voice, too.
She steps past the fire pit, away from me, but she stops at the sliding door. “I’m glad you’re alive. Are you home for good, or are you going away again?”
Knox’s gaze snaps up from the paver he’d been studying, and it’s clear he’s got the same questions. Max stands back, hands shoved in his pockets, observing.
“I’m home for good. We’re home for good.”
“Don’t do this again.” Her voice cracks.
“You have my word. Scout’s honor.”
Sloane frowns. “You were never a Scout.”
I half-chuckle. “I promise.”