a breath and said, ‘Nothin’ you can do about it now, son. Let’s get your life back on track.’” Ryker rubbed his eyes as he finished speaking.
Ajax swallowed the lump in his throat. He’d been spared that conversation.
“You’ve been at your sister’s all this time then?”
“Yeah. She offered me a place to stay, didn’t nag me for answers, and let me grieve. She doesn’t have much. Her trailer’s a shithole. I’ve been helping fix her roof and trying to help her out as much as I can.
“At least when I was doing physical labor, I wasn’t thinking as hard. Every time I slowed down, ghosts would haunt me. I drowned myself in beer and whiskey most nights. Tried to hide it from her kid. Jock’s only eight. He didn’t need to see his uncle having a drunken meltdown on the fucking couch. He’s had it rough so far.”
“Damn. That sucks.”
Ajax pulled in a long breath. “Yeah, but Kelly’s clean, ya know. She’s never done drugs, never smoked, doesn’t even drink. She’s got a job at the diner. She’s a good mom. I wish I could do more for her. Her dad’s a piece of work. Man fucked with her head. Almost feel sorry for the devil when that asshole shows up at the gates of hell. At least he’s in prison now and unable to wreak havoc on her life from behind bars.”
Ryker smirked. “Kelly did get a raw deal, but you’ve always done right by her, man. You’re a good guy.”
Ajax wandered over to the window and stared down at the parking lot, seeing nothing. Kelly was his stepsister. Ajax’s mom had married her dad when Ajax had been six and Kelly had been four. Man had been an asshole, and Ajax had spent the next six years protecting Kelly from her own dad.
It was possible he might have even been able to save her from a lot more heartache in the long run, but his own mom had died when Ajax was twelve. His stepfather hadn’t wanted to raise the bastard child who’d been living in his home, so he turned him over to the state.
Ajax rubbed a hand down his face.
Ryker spoke from behind him. “When you gonna stop beating yourself up over Kelly? You were twelve, man. You couldn’t have done a damn thing differently. On top of that, you’ve always gone above and beyond keeping tabs on her. Sending her money even. She wouldn’t be the woman she turned out to be if you hadn’t been there for her.”
“Yeah, I know. I just wish I could have done more.” Ajax turned around and leaned his ass against the window sill. He shook off thoughts of Kelly and centered himself. “What a clusterfuck. I wish I had a clue what happened that day we got ambushed.”
“I don’t remember a damn thing either. Woke up in Germany, got sent home, discharged. It all happened so fucking fast.”
“Same here. I don’t even remember the day. Nothing. I’m not even sure I remember the previous day. They all run together. Fucking psychiatrist said it’s normal, but it’s bothered me all this time, and now I want to kill someone.”
“You and me both, but we gotta pull it together. Get our shit straightened out. Get our asses back in Ethiopia and find our Goddamn teammates.”
“You think this Charley woman is legit?” Ajax shuddered. “Half of me thinks we’re walking into a trap and we’re going to be dead less than two hours after setting foot in Africa. I mean, we’re a liability to someone. They gotta know eventually I would’ve gone home. We would’ve found each other. Reconnected. Known we’d been lied to.”
“Yeah, but what good would that have done us? You know exactly what we would have done next.”
“Yep. Hunted down the families of the rest of our squad. Learned they were all supposedly dead.”
“Exactly.” Ryker sighed. “And who the fuck were we going to contact about it? I doubt our commander knows anything. I refuse to believe he had a thing to do with this. We were set up. And the coverup goes deep.”
“You suppose we were all meant to die and we fucked that plan up by arriving too late or too early?”
“Don’t know, man. It’s hard to imagine why someone in the government would want to kill off eight Navy SEALs. Maybe we were all meant to be captured instead and you and I fucked that up by getting knocked out. They had to have been