Chapter 15
Chapter 15
A s a general rule of thumb, Bones was looked down upon by most everyone else at the academy. People thought of him as a token spiritual advisor who’d been given some plush, no-responsibility assignment because he knew somebody somewhere—although no one could say just who. Seldom seen without a Nikon camera around his neck, he wore nerdy glasses and occasionally taught a class when it didn’t interfere with his schedule of torturing me.
Given the mystery, rumors swirled about his backstory. The most popular suggested that twenty-five years earlier he’d been a cadet who dropped out after his first love shunned him for another. Adding insult to injury, she accepted a career on the Vegas strip, which now explained his self-imposed life of celibacy. The second theory bubbled up from the “Coexist” bumper sticker on his Prius and centered on the idea that an undisclosed experience in the summer of his junior year caused him to dig into his soul. When he did, finally getting in touch with his real self, he discovered—to no one’s surprise save his own—that he didn’t believe in war and violence. Of any kind. True to his conviction, he quit wearing leather, refused to fire a weapon, and went completely vegan. The academy didn’t know what to do with him, so they politely showed him the door.
Whatever the case, and however it had happened, he was dishonorably excused from the academy, whereupon he backpacked to Italy or Spain or some such place to study something other than war. Following his foreign education in all things pertaining to God, he responded to a “calling” and returned here by invitation to sway other misguided souls like his own from a wayward life of war-mongering because someone somewhere thought it a good idea that the cadets have a well-rounded academic education free from bias and bigotry. If nothing else, he would serve as the voice of the opposition.
In other words, the general consensus was that Bones was completely useless.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
Yet during my time in the academy, I knew of twenty-seven high-profile abductions and subsequent rescues that took place in more than sixteen countries—about which Bones never spoke a word, and yet for which I knew he was singularly responsible. Somehow he did all that with astounding secrecy. Everyone around me thought him the court jester while I knew him to be viceroy for the king.
Thanksgiving break of my senior year, I’d been granted a ninety-six-hour pass, and my only desire was to get home to Marie. Waiting at the gate for my plane to board, Bones sat down next to me and handed me a picture of a little girl. Pigtails. Not yet ten. “We have forty-eight hours before they transfer her across the border and she disappears.”
I tried not to look at the picture. “Bones, not now...”
He waved the picture in front of me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Bring her back.”
“I’m...,” I stammered, “not you. I’m not qualified. I don’t know anything about how to—”
“Experience is not transferrable.”
Another riddle. The flight attendants were calling my seat. “What’s that mean?”
“Some things I can’t teach you in a classroom. Some things you have to learn on your own.” He pointed through the huge glass windows of the terminal. “Out there.”
“Why don’t you go?”
He showed me a second picture. “Can’t be in two places at once.”
I held her picture in my hand.
Three days later, as I sat exhausted in the driver’s seat of a cattle truck departing from a Mexico border town in Texas, having never seen Florida or Marie, I found I had learned a good deal. First, this line of work—if you could call it that—required not only the ability but also the willingness to pivot on a dime without thought. To change plans at the drop of a hat. No matter the emotional connection or damage. Second, this line of work cost far more than it paid.
But when I pulled into Dallas and the mother of that little girl who slept on the bench beside me lifted her off the seat and sobbed as she held her to her chest, I knew I’d pay that cost.
Ten thousand times over.
Bones was right. Experience was not transferrable.
Staring out the passenger side window as the overcast shadows of DC faded, I questioned, maybe for the first time, whether I would pay that cost now. Whether I wanted to. Then the girls’ faces flashed across the back of my eyelids. I shook my head. Caught in a tension I didn’t want and a war I was tired of fighting. If I’m honest, I was mad. Mad at Bones for leaving.
We pulled into the private airport where we were met by an Uber blocking access to the plane. Summer stood against it, arms crossed, hair blown across her face. Gunner leaning against one leg. Camp cut me off before I had a chance to ask. “Wasn’t me.”
That meant she was tracking my phone. I exited the SUV, and she walked toward me. Her body told me she was bracing for impact. It reminded me of the night I watched her steal a boat and head south down the Intracoastal when she didn’t know where she was going and couldn’t swim. Indomitable. Proving that in many ways, she was just tougher than me.
She placed her palms on my face. Her hands were warm, tender. As was the look in her tear-filled eyes. Trying to laugh, she said, “Gunner was tracking your phone.”
“He’s like that.”
Her head tilted sideways. “I don’t know why you’ve got to go; I just know you do.”
I nodded as a tear trickled down my face. She swiped it with her thumb and kissed my cheek.
She paused and lay one hand flat across my heart. “I know you’re hurting. Cracking down the middle. You feel as though part of you is dying and half the world is sitting on your chest. Every breath is an effort. Sailing on a ship with no captain. You don’t know who you are or how to be who you once were or whoever you’re supposed to be tomorrow.” She nodded. “I get it. I do. But...” She pounded gently on my chest. “Let me tell you what’s true.” She inched closer, then motioned toward the plane. “At the end of that flight is someone. Or someones. And they’re praying somebody will kick down the door and rescue them. Praying somebody will lift them out of the hell they’re living in.” She poked me gently in the chest. “You’re the answer. So go do what you do and...” When she spoke, her lip trembled, revealing her inability to hide her own pain. “Remember Bones is always with you.”
Oh, how I love this woman.
“Oh, and one more thing.” She stood on her toes and made sure she had my eyes. This time when she spoke, she couldn’t control the tears. “Murphy Shepherd...” She patted my chest with her palm. “I need you to bring David Bishop home. ’Cause I can’t live without him.”
I kissed her. Then kissed her again. Gunner and I boarded, where we found Camp madly typing on a laptop. Seated next to him was Clay, reading a newspaper. He glanced over the top of both his readers and his paper. “Murph.”
I nodded.
He set the paper down. “I got the arthritis. Eyes ain’t what they used to be. And I shuffle a little. But”—he held up his cane—“I’m pretty good with this, and”—he made a fist with the other hand—“I ain’t afraid to use this.” I smiled, cracked open a bottle of soda water, handed it to him, and motioned to the pilot, who began taxiing. Clay sat back and leaned his head against the rest. “Thought for sure you were going to tell me I couldn’t go.”
“Would it do any good?”
He shook his head. “No.”
The pilot pushed the stick forward, and we shot heavenward. Turning to Camp, I eyed the flashing beacon. “Heading?”
“Generally? West. Eddie’s tracking the plane. No destination yet. Want to follow it?”
“Yes, but we need to make a stop.”
Camp spoke without looking up from his screen. “Check.”