Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
“Excuse me?” Julie and Sara asked at the same time.
“I have nothing to say. Everything I’ve said over the years has been the absolute truth.”
“Is that the story you’re going to stick with?” Sara asked coldly, and laid her hand on Julie’s and felt the hard plastic being slipped into it.
“Yes, your family are thieves, and I stick by my story.”
“Got it, then you leave me no choice.” Julie looked around and called out, “Nelson.”
“Yeah,” the reporter from the local paper said as he lowered his camera.
“Here.” Julie held out her hand and Nelson took the flash drive and looked between that and Julie.
“What’s this?”
“Documented proof of how Mrs. Garrison lost her family home to my family. Do with it as you wish.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and what is on that drive can be easily found and substantiated, since most of it is in the public records.”
“Aren’t you worried about the fallout?”
“Nope, I didn’t do anything wrong. All this went down when my parents were dating. As I said, do with it as you wish. Research, write a story, splash it all over the front page, throw it in the trash, I don’t care. We gave Mrs. Garrison ample opportunity to come clean, but since she refuses, then have a go at the information there.”
The entire crowd turned as one to look at Mrs. Garrison, but she had her nose so far in the air that it didn’t seem like she could see anyone. Her lips were so pinched she looked like a fish out of water, but she refused to say anything. Julie shuddered at the hatred in the other woman’s eyes, but she knew she had the truth on her side.
“Okay, folks, looks like we’re done here,” Mr. Wolfe said.
“Not so fast,” Scott said from his position behind Julie.
“What’s wrong?”
“I feel that Jimmy John has something to say to Julie.”
“What? What do I have to say?” Jimmy John asked with this hand holding the bloody rag to his face where Boom-Boom had broken his nose when he punched him.
“An apology for saying what you did when we went into the dealership to purchase a truck. The incident that caused you and your buddies to get fired.”
The entire group of people turned to look at him, and he reacted the same way Mrs. Garrison had. He lifted his head, looked down his nose and said coldly, “I have nothing to apologize for.”
Julie turned to Scott and placed her hand on his cheek. “Let it go, I don’t need an apology from a closed-minded asshole like him.”
“What did he say?” Boom-Boom asked. His expression showed confusion, like all the other people there.
Julie turned around with a frown. She had never seen Boom-Boom act remotely like a normal human being since she had known him. The change was quite shocking. “It’s not important.”
“It is if his words caused all this,” Boom-Boom said as he swept his arm out to indicate what had transpired that day.
“I really don’t want to repeat his exact words, but let’s say that when I went to Darcy’s to purchase a vehicle, Scott was with me. Jimmy John here homed in on him, and when Scott said to talk to me, he called me an unflattering name, referring to my prosthetic and ignored me. That was why he was called into the office by Darcy and fired. When your buddies backed him up, after he physically attacked Darcy, Scott stepped in to restrain him. That’s when all this shit happened, because Jimmy John couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut. Oh, and in case you didn’t know this, Jimmy and his goons kept throwing your name around like you were the king around here. I hate to burst your bubble, Alex, but you’re not any more special than anyone else here. The same goes for your mother.” Julie knew she’d said too much, so she turned on her good heel and stalked away, she didn’t have to wonder if anyone followed her because before she took five steps, Sara was on one side of her, Scott on the other. She looked over her shoulder and she couldn’t see the crowd because the others from Colorado formed a wall behind her as she walked away. She knew right then and there that she would learn to love these people like brothers and sisters in the upcoming weeks. She looked over at Scott and took his hand in hers.
“Thank you.”
“No need to thank me, but you’re welcome. As Erin said, you’re one of ours, and we have your six.” He grinned as he leaned in, and whispered, “And you’re mine.”
“Understood, and right back at you. You’re mine.”
They stopped and Scott took her face in her hands and laid a kiss on her. When they broke apart they were surrounded by the others, but they had their backs to them, giving them privacy. They broke apart and continued to their vehicles.
“Can I come over?” Darcy asked, and they all agreed that it was fine.
Thirty minutes later, the guys took over the bathrooms, and the hose outside to wash the grease paint off their faces, and when they joined the women, they took the beers and tapped them all together before they took a healthy sip.
“Can I ask something?” Sara asked from her position at the kitchen counter.
“What’s up?” Ryan asked.
“What was the comment about a camel?” Everyone froze and as one, they turned to look at Reid, who had the beer bottle poised halfway to his mouth to take a drink. No one said a word until he spoke.
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” No one laughed, and no one contradicted what he said.
Julie took pity on her sister. “Sara,” she said gently. “You want to be a therapist to help people with PTSD and past trauma, correct?”
“Yes, and I want to specialize in working with former military people. Both men and women.”
“I understand that, however, when we joined the military, we sign NDA agreements. There are certain things, certain missions, certain jobs that we can never ever disclose or we run the risk of being arrested. Just because we are out of the service, that doesn’t mean that our NDAs went out the window. They are still in effect and we can’t talk about it. I’m not exactly sure, and I’m assuming here, but I think something happened on a mission with the men and there was a camel involved. That’s all I know, and all I can say.”
“She’s right.” Reid said, and his tone was gentle as he spoke to Sara. “I didn’t say what I did to be an asshole. I said it because if I talked, and it got back to brass, I could be in trouble.” He looked at Clark and when he received a nod he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“One thing you’re going to have to learn if you do therapy for military personnel. We can’t tell you everything, but we can tell you some things, and most of it would be generalities.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It means that six of us here, the original Delta team were asked to volunteer for a mission. As I said, it was strictly voluntary. We were giving most of the information, just enough to discuss what we wanted to do, and based on what we were given, we took the mission.” Reid looked over at Clark and he stepped up beside him.
“I was the leader of that team. When we left the military base, we were on our own. We were what people considered dark.”
“What’s that?” Sara asked. “Sorry, I know what that means, both Julie and Scott explained it to me.”
“We were on our own. It was literally the six of us against the world. If we ran into trouble, no one was coming to bail us out.”
Sara whipped her head around to Scott. “But help came to get you when you were captured.”
“Correct, because my mission wasn’t dark. My mission was sanctioned by the upper Brass. They sent us in, they knew what we had to do, it was all legit. We had their permission to do it.”
“But not yours?” Sara looked back at the others.
“No, because of the nature of that mission, if it was successful, then no one needed to know about it. It could be chalked up as a fluke. However, if we hadn’t been successful, then let’s just say that all hell would have broken loose, and the shit would have hit the fan.”
“I take it was successful?”
“Yes, however, when we were on our way back to base, again, we had absolutely no help, and no one to call, we had to use our wits to get back. Every mode of transportation was taken away from us.” Clark looked at Reid with a smirk.
“That’s where the fucking camel came in. We traded some dirt bikes with a local for some camels. Bad people were after us, and when the shots rang out, they shot my camel out from under me,” Reid said as he lifted his pant leg and pointed to his fake leg.
“The bullet went through my leg and into the camel. We were able to get away, then decided the best way to make it home was with our own two feet. It took us weeks to make it back, and by the time we arrived, we had to wait until the person in charge of the base was notified. It was hell, and the entire mission took two years, but we were successful.”
Sara looked at the women, and then asked Erin, “Doesn’t it bother you that he can’t talk about it?”
“Nope. All I know is that I love Reid and respect him for being him. What he did in the military made him into the man he is today, and I love that man with all my heart.” Erin smiled when Reid walked over and kissed the side of her head as he wrapped his arms around her. “Don’t think of it as us keeping secrets from our partners. Think of it as us doing a job to keep the entire country safe.”
“I imagine,” Pru said for the first time. “You will get more respect from your patients if you focus on whatever problems they have now because of what they went through, not the actual event they had to endure.” At Sara’s frown she sighed heavily. “Take me for example. I have TBI, and when you get established I believe I’ll be talking with you. I can’t speak for others, but for myself, I don’t want to dwell on what happened, I do that enough in my dreams at night. If I go to therapy, I want to focus on how I can get better now, how can I function today. How I can get through the spaz days I get. I can’t fix the past, and I don’t want to live there if I don’t have to. I want to talk to someone that would respect me enough to know I went through hell, but I came out the other side alive. Not as whole and hearty as I went in, but I still came out the other side. I just need help adjusting to my new normal.”
“Besides,” Ryan said as he walked up to Pru and put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “As Julie said, we might not be able to talk about the trauma that happened, but we can work with you to get comfortable in our new normal.”
“I like that,” Sara said quietly. “The new normal.”
“Think about this,” Julie said to her sister. “We lost Mom and Dad and things were different afterward. Sure, we had Aunt Lydia and Uncle Darren, but did we really talk to them about what we went through as much as we talked with each other. We were one way before the accident, then we changed. We had our own new normal in order to adapt to life without our parents.”
“I never thought of it that way. You’re right. I don’t need to know the actual event in order to treat the results.”
“Exactly,” everyone said, and they stood around for a few minutes before Erin spoke up,
“How far away is The Grand Canyon from here?”
“Two hours, give or take, why?”
“Because Reid and I are going there when we leave here. I’m sorry, but we won’t be pulling any trailers back to Colorado.”
“We are?” Reid asked in shock.”
“We are. Hey, it might be another decade or two before I get off the ranch, and I’ve always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, it’s on my bucket list. I thought we could take this opportunity to spend a couple of days together. Alone.” She waggled her eyebrows at him and he laughed while the others groaned.
They broke apart and while the women talked with Julie about what needed to be done to finish packing up the house, and painting it, the men went outside and decided to go get trailers to start loading up to haul things back to Colorado. They spent that day, and the next three days finishing up everything that needed to be done, and on the fourth day a caravan of vehicles left hauling trailers full of household goods, garden equipment, and even the shed. Julie stood in the driveway with Scott and watched as they left. She had an appointment with the realtor in an hour, and after putting it up for sale, she was heading to her new home. Sara had left with the rest of them and thought it would be better to be closer to Denver when she got the call to go back after their water problem was fixed. She also wanted to discuss her ideas for an office with Clark once they returned home.