Chapter 18
Chapter 18
S tanding in our shooting range, where Bones and I had together put thousands of rounds downrange, I stared down at my feet where over two hundred spent shell casings lay. Bones had chosen well. The gun simply worked. I could trust it.
Returning to my safe room, I returned to the case and only then noticed the single key lying loose on the bottom. A nondescript key, tarnished by age and including no explanation. It didn’t need one. I knew the key. I used it once and it had opened the door to my life. How could I forget?
I sat back. Staring. Bones was right. Shattered dreams, carnage, and heartbreak, mixed with something few ever came to know. The dichotomy of my life. If one thing represented all the emotions in my life, all the experiences I could not define in words, it would be the locker key staring back at me.
I shook my head, feeling the weight of it. Wanting to lift it but not wanting to. Finally, I unclasped the chain now hanging around my neck and threaded the chain through the hole, letting the key rest alongside the medallion, then let it fall, dangle, and rest over my heart. When finished, I policed my gear and turned for the door, where I bumped into Camp.
“You good?” he asked.
Uniformity was one of the first principles of a team. Written in stone. Bones and I had always carried the same weapons platforms in the event one of us ran empty. We could lean on our partner to get us what we needed and get us back in the fight—that is, a loaded magazine that fit the weapon in our hand. As a SEAL team member and later commander, Camp had carried primarily Glocks, although he’d trained with most everything. Including Sigs. But Glocks were what he’d trained with and learned, through experience, to trust with his life. Which he had done. He did not take the choice lightly. But personal choice always took a back seat to the needs of the team. Right now, I was his team lead. He knew as well as anyone that CZ magazines did not fit Glocks. I hefted Bones’s CZ and asked, “You familiar with this?”
Camp nodded, feeling no need to explain.
I offered it along with Bones’s holster.
He received both, dropped the magazine, and cycled the slide, eyeing the inscription. “You don’t mind?”
I shook my head. “And I don’t think he would either.”
He studied it. “Seems like we should put this one up somewhere. Safekeeping.”
“He was never one to just hang something shiny on a wall. He’d want it to be used. Not collect dust as a safe queen.”
Camp nodded as he turned it in his hand. “Took one off a guy in Germany one time. Always wanted to carry it.”
I pointed to the range. “Function-test it first.”
“Check.” Camp returned twenty minutes later having done so. He tapped his phone. “They’re headed to Kahului.”
I considered this. “R&R in Maui?”
“Maybe. Eddie’s in his phone. It’s a burner. Limited call log. Few contacts. He’s looking into calls received but nothing so far. I imagine he’ll ditch it once he lands.”
We loaded up and were attempting to leave my safe room when Clay filled the doorway. Which he did by default. His voice was four octaves lower than that of any other man on earth. “Got something in there for me?”
I handed him the Benelli. He sized it up. “I was hoping for the wine.”
I handed him the bottle and spoke to them both. “I’ll meet you at the plane.”
I exited the house with Gunner on my heels and pulled my hood over my head against the cold. The temperatures were in the teens and snow dusted the air. We set off down Main Street while Freetown stretched out before me. Sunset on the free. A sight I never tired of. Shops were closing. Restaurants were bustling. A local singer/songwriter named John T played live music on a stage to my left. Girls and their families were gathered on blankets or huddled around firepits while the young crooner wooed them with his vocals and a mesmerizing hand on what appeared to be an old Martin guitar. Some song about a cowboy’s last ride. I liked it.
I stayed in the shadows. Back in the trees. Observing. Listening to the laughter. It was where this town got its name. The universal sound of freedom. I found myself in the Planetarium. Sitting in the corner. Leaning against the wall. Staring at the slideshow. Given the facial recognition installed by Eddie and requested by Bones, my face populated most of the pictures. Bones had asked Eddie to program the software to “read” the faces of the girls who walked in and then project a higher percentage of photos of them on the wall. He did that for several reasons, but maybe the biggest was this: The beauty of each one of us is matchless, and each one of us is worth celebrating. Most girls, boys, anyone who had been trafficked, got to a place where they no longer believed that. Where they doubted their own worth. Their value. This slideshow in the Planetarium reversed that. It put their fifteen-foot image on a pedestal and told all the world, “I am worth rescue.”
Because each one was.
I sat along the wall, staring at the ceiling. Watching pictures of me. Holding hands with Summer. Running to the Eagle’s Nest. Sitting in the beauty salon while Ellie and Angel laughed through my pedicure. Bones and me eating a sub at the deli. And then the town favorite, Gunner. Licking my face.
I’d known pain in this place and I’d known great joy. The real kind. Bones had been the spark. The reason this place existed. His absence was akin to a black hole in my universe. I honestly did not know how to walk out of here and go be the guy who kicked down doors without him. My internal voice of self-doubt was screaming at the top of its lungs. Gunner lay next to me. Whining. He hadn’t been right since the burial. Since he tried to claw Bones’s body back out of the dirt. I rubbed his ears. He opened his eyes and looked at me but didn’t lift his head. He was hurting too. I knew nothing I could say would help, so I pulled him into my arms and just held him.
“Hey, pal.”
He opened one eye.
“We got to go to work.”
He stood up, then sat.
“But I need to ask you to do something.”
Gunner tilted his head sideways.
I held out my hand, palm up, and he placed his paw in it. “I need you to be careful.”
He half moaned and tilted his head the other way.
“No superhero stuff. We play this by the book. I don’t want you getting hurt.” A pause. “Not sure I could handle that.”
He lay on his stomach, paws stretched forward, head high.
“No kidding. No funny stuff. I’m not in the best place right now, so I need you looking over my shoulder. I need your A-game. I’m not firing on all cylinders, not too sure about my ability to make good decisions, so if you see me doing something...” I scratched his ears. “I just don’t want to get either you or Camp hurt.”
He licked my face. Then he sat and barked once.
After takeoff, I thought of the single key now hanging around my neck and stared out across the sunset, wrestling with the memory of Bones’s initial letter to me. Knowing what I knew now, would I have chosen what I chose then? Would I walk through door number two with the same idealistic naivete? Because now I stood on the other side of it. And on this side, I’d watched Bones die. Door number two led to the sound of a single gunshot followed by a splash as Bones’s lifeless body slammed into the water a hundred feet below.
If I could go back to graduation day, what door would I step through? I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest. I had chosen door number two for reasons I couldn’t even now qualify. I just had. I couldn’t not. But now, three decades later, having watched Bones disappear, having inked the record of rescue on my back as the slaves had once done in the coquina of the chapel on my island, would I choose the same? Would I choose door number two?
For some reason, I glanced at the floor below Clay’s seat where a stuffed tiger lay on its side. Left there by Shep after our trip to DC. I knew he’d be missing it about now. I placed it on the seat next to me, closed my eyes, and knew there had never really been two doors. There were not then and there were not now. No matter my pain. No matter my heartbreak. My life had one door. The question was not which door I would walk through, but would I walk through the single door staring at me now? I had a feeling the question would present itself about the time we found whoever was in possession of the phone producing the flashing beacon.
And my problem was not the question.