Hawks Mountain - Mobi (27 page)

Finally, she summoned enough courage to pick it up. The unsealed flap opened easily. One folded piece of ivory note paper had been tucked inside. Dropping into the nearest chair, she unfolded it and read the words scrawled across the paper several times. With each reading, the ache inside her became more painful.

Becky,

Please understand. I had to do this.

Nick

Just
Nick
.
Such a cold signature.
Not
love Nick
.
Just
Nick
.
As if there had been nothing between them. As if they’d never shared all that time working on
Lydia
’s house, searched for Davy together, strolled along the lake and shared their first kiss, made love in this very cabin.

And what was
the
this
he had to do? Renew a relationship with an old love? Find somewhere to move to that didn’t include a nosy woman?

Tears scalded her eyes and blurred her vision. One by one, the tears dropped to the paper with a soft
plunk
, leaving darkened blotches and smearing the ink. Soon, they became heart-wrenching sobs. As the tears rained down on the note, the entire message became unreadable, as if it had never existed, never been more than smears of ink, no more substantial than what she thought that she and Nick had had together.

The house Lieutenant
Chuck
Nevers
Ret. owned in a small development outside
Racine
,
Wisconsin
occupied a decent size piece of land on the shores of
Lake Michigan
. Nick’s cabin would easily fit inside the sprawling one story ranch style home. A long dock protruded into the lake with a large sailboat tied up at the end. A silver BMW and a black SUV shared the double driveway.

From the look of it and despite Chuck’s description of his radio station as being small, Nick’s old military buddy had done quite well for himself.

Nick parked the rental car behind the BMW and climbed out. He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to know what he’d come here for. Then he thought of Becky and how their relationship could never grow if he didn’t settle the questions from his past that haunted him. After closing the car door, he made his way up the stone path to the front of the house.

As he neared the house, he could hear voices coming from the backyard. The odor of burning charcoal filled the air.

Making a detour, he skirted the building and emerged onto a broad fieldstone patio. An attractive, middle-aged, blond woman dressed in white shorts and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt, was setting a table with silverware. On the far side of the patio, Chuck
Nevers
stood in front of a large stainless steel grill opening a package of what looked like steaks.

As if sensing Nick’s presence, Chuck looked up. For a moment he stared at Nick, and then a broad smile spread across his face.

“Well, I’ll be—” He dropped the package on the shelf at the side of the grill and then quickly covered the distance between them. With a hearty laugh, he enveloped Nick in a bear hug that nearly fractured his ribs. Stepping back, Chuck held Nick at arm’s length. “What on earth brings you here?”

Nick glanced at the woman who was now studying them. “I need to talk to you, but I’m intruding. It can wait.”

“Nonsense.
If it brought you all the way here
from .
 . . Where is it you came from anyway? When you called the other night about that radio job for your friend, you never told me where you were.”

“
West Virginia
.”

“Well, if it brought you here from
West Virginia
, then it must be important.” He turned to the woman. “Marylyn, this is Nick Hart, my buddy from
Iraq
that I told you about.”

“Nice to meet you, Nick.”
She extended her hand, and Nick took it briefly. “Chuck’s told me a lot about you.”

“Hi, Marylyn.”
He glanced at his former
CO.
“I hope he only told you the good stuff.”

She laughed, then looked from one to the other of the men, fidgeted with the napkins in her hand, and then backed away. “Listen, I still have to throw together a salad and get the fries cooked, so if you two want to reminisce for a while, there’s plenty of time.” She checked her watch. “The hungry hooligans aren’t due home for another fifteen minutes or so.”

Still Nick hesitated. If he’d bothered to check his own watch before showing up on their doorstep, he’d have realized he’d be interrupting their dinner time. “Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt your meal.”

“No. It’s just family, and we’d be happy to have you join us.” She smiled at her husband. “Don’t take no for an answer, Chuck.” Then she disappeared inside the sliding glass doors.

Chuck laughed. “You heard her. If I were you, I wouldn’t disobey that order. In this house, she wears the bars and stars.”

“I’ve never disobeyed an order in my life, so I guess I’m having dinner with you.”

“Good.” He took Nick’s arm and led him to two chaise lounges facing the lake. “Take a load off and tell me what’s up. Is this about your friend and the radio station job?”

Nick shook his head. “No, it’s not. That all worked out just fine. She got the job and is very happy with it and has retained custody of her son. Thanks.”

“Terrific! I’m really glad to hear that.” Chuck grinned. “So if this visit is not about that, then what is it about?”

“
Iraq
.”

Chuck sobered. “What about
Iraq
?”

“Tell me about that last day. The day the IED went off and blew me into the
Landstuhl
military hospital.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I recall most of it, but there are pieces that I’m not sure I’ve dreamed or if they really happened.”

Chuck scrubbed a hand over his face, and then stared out over the lake, obviously as reluctant to talk about this as Nick was to hear it. But he had to. “Please, Chuck. It’s important.”

For another long moment Chuck continued to gaze intently out at the lake. Finally, he turned to Nick. The ghosts of their time in
Iraq
reflected from his expression. The muscle in his jaw ticked. His hands balled into fists on his thighs. “I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you. Marylyn doesn’t even know what went on over there.”

Nick nodded in understanding. Chuck would probably be more willing to swim across
Lake Michigan
than to talk about
Iraq
. Nick knew from experience, personal and otherwise, that talking about the horrors they’d seen and been a part of was not something anyone who’d been there did willingly. They didn’t need or want to relive it, and those who’d stayed at home didn’t need to know. Maybe that was good and maybe not, but it was just the way of things.

Silence fell between them again. Nick waited, assuming Chuck needed to gather his thoughts. Then he started talking.

“We were on a morning patrol outside Fallujah. It was supposed to be routine, but what we didn’t know was that a bunch of insurgents had been out there the night before and left us a present, some IEDs planted along the road. I should have suspected, but I got careless.” He paused and closed his eyes, a look of pain clouding his face.

“You were never careless. That route had been safe for weeks,” Nick said, hotly defending his friend. “I remember rounding the bend and seeing Ahmed come running toward us from the direction of town. He was grinning and carrying some fruit he’d gotten for us from the market.” Nick swallowed hard, what happened next was painted on his brain like a horrible mural on a cathedral wall. “Just as he’d reached the road, the explosion went off, and I remember
seeing .
 . . I remember flying backwards, but just before that I saw him—” He couldn’t finish. The pain of resurrecting the moment when Ahmed’s limp body flew past him like a rag doll was too hideous to put in to words. “That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in
Landstuhl
with my head wrapped in bandages and a headache to end all headaches.”

Chuck looked at him. “At first, we thought you were dead, but you were far enough away from the IED that all you got was a concussion from the blast. They flew you out to
Germany
with the other injured that afternoon. I heard later that you were unconscious for three days and when you came to, they shipped you off state side.”

Nick nodded. “My enlistment was up two months later.”

“So, where did you go? I tried to find you at your address in
Manhattan
, but they said you’d moved and left no forwarding address. Then when you called out of the clear blue sky, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Problem was, before I could talk to you, you’d hung up and when I tried to call back, I found out you’d called from a pay phone.”

“I didn’t want you to find me. I didn’t want anyone to find me.” Nick leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. This time, he was the one gazing blindly out at the lake. “I found myself a mountain in
West Virginia
and built a cabin there. No phones, no connections to anyone.”

Until Becky Hawks came along and turned my safe little hideaway upside down.

Thoughts of Becky reminded him that he still didn’t know what he’d come here to find out. “What happened to Ahmed? Did you ever find his body and give him a decent burial? I wanted to go back to
Iraq
to find him after I came to, but my orders said I was to be shipped home.”

“We found him and took him to the medics. He was a mess, and it wasn’t good.” Chuck bowed his head and went silent again.

A sick feeling crawled into Nick’s stomach. At first, Ahmed had adopted their unit and would steal fruit and smokes in the market and bring them to the guys. Since they were afraid of him getting caught, they started giving him money to purchase the items. In the end, it was the unit that adopted Ahmed. He became a son to all of them and talked incessantly of coming to
America
. Not being there when the boy was injured and needed him had sliced holes in Nick’s gut like a well-honed butcher knife, holes that hadn’t healed after all this time.

“Dad!”

Nick and Chuck looked up in unison as a boy of about twelve, the spitting image of his lovely mother, barreled across the lawn toward them.

“Hey, Mickey.
Where’s Sammy?”

“Aw, he’s coming. I ran ahead. I made the little league team.”

Chuck did a high-five with the boy. “Way to go!” Then he turned to Nick. “This is Nick, one of my buddies from
Iraq
.”

The boy flashed him a big smile. “Hey, Nick.”

“Hey, Mickey.
Nice to meet you, and congratulations.”

A flush reddened Mickey’s cheeks. “Thanks.” Then he turned back to his father. “Sammy made the team, too. He’s
gonna
play catcher.”

“Well, that’s great, but shouldn’t you have let him tell me his good news.”

Mickey scuffed the ground with the toe of his well-worn sneaker. “I guess.”

Chuck pointed over Nick’s shoulder. “Here comes Sammy now.”

Nick turned to look for the boy and gasped.

Limping toward him across the lawn was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, deeply tanned boy of about twelve. Slowly, Nick stood, still unable to believe his eyes.

“Ahmed.”

When the young boy spotted Nick, he paused, then a broad grin split his face, and he ran at an uneven gate and launched himself into Nick’s arms.