Rivalry
He'd been captured before, beaten, tortured, interrogated by men taught to inflict the most pain for optimal effect.
And he hadn't talked then.
The accents had been different. The conditions worse. The circumstances. . . hell, he'd gone into each mission knowing he could be captured, tortured, killed. Left to die slowly. Painfully.
But here, they were pumping in fluids and medicines, his right arm strapped down with tubes and his right index finger clamped to a monitor.
And his wrist chained to the bed.
They would move him this afternoon to another ward, a locked hallway, a metal door, a buzzer to admit all visitors.
There wouldn't be visitors.
A doctor to oversee his recovery. Nurses to check vitals, feed him, wash him, change his gown. An orderly with an armed guard to take him to the bathroom.
A lawyer.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine a different life, but the medications made him groggy and he just wanted to slip away into oblivion.
He couldn't even close his eyes and see her face.
Closing his eyes only brought back the battle in the house, the smell of gunpowder and cordite, blood pounding in his ears and running down his leg, the shredded walls, the broken glass.
But no her.
She had saved him. She had pulled a trigger and beaten back an invader and had put herself between life and death for him.
But he couldn't quite close his eyes and see her.
And he needed to see her. To touch her. To remind himself she was real and all this—the pulse of the monitor, the sting of the needle in his arm whenever he moved, the ache of a body given over to serve others in sometimes deadly pursuits—all this was some horrible, unbelievable nightmare.
To wake up—to have any hope of waking from this nightmare—he had to see her.
He stretched his legs again, tried to stretch his arms, but the cuff chaffed, reminding him he wasn't free to move.
He'd told his story, made it clear that he had acted alone in killing the three men.
"One was shot in the back, Agent Booth."
The words had branded him a coward, sneaking up behind the man and shooting him, but he had claimed he was saving his wife, keeping her from being killed from another man hunting her in their own home.
Whatever rivalry truth had with lies had played out in his statement. He hadn't left anything out except the names of the others. He had intercepted a phone call from the senator, he had prepared his home for an assault. He had killed three men who were trying to kill him.
He had prepared for war and won the battle, but lost the war and he had to take responsibility.
Again he tried to stretch, felt the skin around his wounds ache in warning, felt his muscles scream in protest. And he didn't care.
He'd take the bullets again, tell more lies, face the devil himself if he could just see her again.