Chapter 13

My body feels frozen as if I'd been dumped into the Potomac in the middle of a torrid Washington winter. Out of all of the words I could have ever heard Mac tell me… out of everything she could have ever called me in the middle of the night for...Not this. It can't be this.

"Harm...I've been arrested."

I thought it was a joke at first or my sleep laden mind making things up after two days of crap sleep. She asks me to hurry and there's a fear in her voice I'd never, ever heard not even when a poacher was stalking us in the woods. Honestly? I never want to hear her speak that way again. "I'm sorry I...I don't have anyone else to call...Please. Please hurry."

Rushing out like a madman, I throw on a pair of jeans, an old t-shirt and my bomber jacket. I didn't dare ask what happened and my mind is filling in a zillion reasons why anyone would take her into custody.

I must have run at least eight red lights and questionaly sped through two yellows, all in effort to rescue Mac….Mac and John Farrow.

Yeah him….

My face must have fallen as they are brought out of an unpleasant hellhole that is the tiny jail's holding cells. Mac looks absolutely beaten down, fragile even and all if my knight in shining armor fantasies die when I see him touching her. His hand cups her face, a tender gesture that nearly had me forgetting who I was.

Fire ran through my veins and I saw pure, blind rage. My mind fills with scenarios I'd rather not entertain. I'm pissed, reasonably so because the woman that I've been seeing (and has been avoiding me for two days!) is in the arms of someone else. Farrow is hugging her and although it's a brief interaction, my heart shatters. We hadn't broken up had we? If we did, I was the last to know.

During the drive to her place I can't help but stare at Mac as we stop at each red light, the hundred or so between the precinct and her apartment. She hasn't said a word past a sad 'thank you' and I don't expect much until a sad voice gives me an order: "Please Harm, don't look at me."

Christ, why does it hurt so much to hear her say that? It's likely the reason why I can't give myself fully to her, the knowledge that even a simple sentence makes me feel like she uprooted my soul. "Chris is dead isn't he?" Mac doesn't answer, just stares out of the passenger with unseeing eyes. She nods then sighs heavily.

"Who pulled the trigger, Mac?" I expect more silence. I expect she won't put Farrow's name through the mud. When she does speak it's only when I get moving again concentrating on the road so that I can't look at her.

"I shot my husband."

"I don't believe that." I don't realize I've said those words out loud and when we hit the next light, I find Mac staring back at me. Her eyes are red, brimming with tears and I know that it's true and I don't know what to say.

We walked down the hall to her apartment after insisting I wouldn't leave her alone, not in her condition. The door to her place is boarded up, splintered in some areas and the hinges aren't holding on very well. She doesn't mention what happened and I don't question only knowing it had to be a surprise visit from that prick that she claimed to be married to. Speaking ill of the dead is a sin but I can't bring myself to feel any remorse, only rage. Absolute blind rage and I hope the bastard burns in Hell. If he wasn't dead, I would have killed him myself.

Mac disappears into her room and at the very least she leaves the door open, that's something isn't it? A sign of some sort of trust? I hear the shower running and am grateful she can wash the blood off her hands and maybe relax. I'm a little nervous and pass the time I busying myself in the kitchen, grabbing items out of her meager groceries to make a sandwich and also putting on the tea kettle.

I don't hear her walking up behind me because my mind is busy running through so many scenarios I can't think straight. "I slept with him."

Her voice makes me jump, something she doesn't notice because Mac's too busy fiddling with the sash of her robe. She's freshly showered, hair slicked back and I can't help but think of how attractive she really is. It's a wonder he hadn't come for her sooner. I likely would have moved heaven and Earth to find her and...what did she just say? "I slept with him. But I think you know that."

She says and then disappears into the living room deflating into the sofa. I find I need a moment because I don't want her to say it, to admit the one thing I had deduced from the second I met him. She's not talking about her husband but the other man that suddenly joined the equation. "John. I slept with John."

I place the sandwich on the coffee table alongside the mug of chamomile that she takes immediately. I suspect the warmth gives her comfort while I feel bereft. John. She slept with John. Fuck.

Why him? I like the guy, I do. He's one of those true war heroes that takes acceptance of the mistakes he made. Farrow is an officer on the ground with his troops not cowering away at Angels 30 going Mach 3. He's the man I'm not and every jealous intuition I've had about him and Mac slaps me in the face at that very moment.

Farrow and Mac...John and Mac.

John. She calls him John. Not by his rank, not by his last name and it does click. Weeks earlier, in a conversation between them I may have overheard, he called her Sarah. It made my stomach burn in its depths because the use of her real name meant intimacy and that makes me feel like shit.

John... Fuck John...I hate him.

"Say something." She pleads and I'm at a bit of a loss.

I take a breath or two, hold it until my lungs burn and all I can do is wonder if she's been with him recently. "When? When did you two...?" A voice that doesn't sound like my own croaks out. Was it in the last few days? I don't think I could forgive her if it was.

"Okinawa. Forever ago."

Her voice is low and for some reason I wonder if it was all one sided. Women have had issues in the military with senior officers, it's the price some females have paid to move up in rank. I take a breath and hold it, my hand shakes as I run it through my hair. "Did he...force himself on you?"

"No! Of course not!" She snaps but I should have known Mac would defend him. "John's not that kind of man. And he didn't use his command over me. It was consensual."

"Oh."

Consensual. As in she agreed to be with him. My stomach knots over that tiny fact and I am not spared from her tryst although I want to be "We worked closely together, I anticipated his moments, what he wanted, kind of like you and me when we work the same case. He was one of the few senior officers that gave a damn about women, that wanted us to do better."

"By sleeping with a subordinate?" I say and don't hide my anger. It's bitter and spewed out at her as well.

"It's not what you think. I had my rotation orders when it happened."

"That doesn't make it right."

"No it doesn't." She agrees and picks at the sandwich eating a few bites from one end. "I was on my own, really on my own for the first time in my life...Months of working closely together, of laughing, of finding levity in tough situations. We had a kinship."

Mac smiles at the memory which does nothing to abate the jealousy that is eating at me. "John hated his desk job, he's a man of action, the kind that needs to be in the field with his men. Bureaucracy chained him to a desk and so he was trying to make the best of what he was allowed to do."

She takes a sip of the tea wincing because it is likely now cold and bitter. I want to head into the kitchen and make her more if anything to avoid this conversation. I don't want to know. I don't want to know why she slept with him or how it happened. She tells me anyway and I stare in shock to find that it was Mac who initiated it.

"I kissed him one night. Yeah, Harm it was me who started it...guess my father was right to call me his tramp daughter." She holds my gaze for a moment and then looks away. "I guess I never changed."

"Don't say that."

"Why not? It's what you're thinking. I was with you and married to someone else. You're thinking about it. Don't lie to me and tell me you're not."

"I'm not!" I attempt to defend but then, part of her was right. It felt odd to know I was seeing a married woman, one that hid that fact from me. It hurt that it was Mac of all people who would hold that detail back. Not that I'm a priest. I've done some stupid things in my youth. Even pursued a woman I knew was married while having lustful thoughts about my best friend's wife. But it's Mac...my Mac who I thought was better than me and could do no wrong. "If you instigated it then he should have stopped you."

"I loved him." I didn't expect to have another bombshell dropped on me and I feel like my heart's been ripped out of my chest. She loved him, maybe still does. "I loved him and it wasn't infatuation or a crush. He treated me like an equal, never underminded me. And John did try to stop it. I kept pushing, it was the first time I'd ever been that way with a man….He was the second man I'd ever….you know."

She actually blushes. "It was a few nights and then I was gone. He kept in touch, phone calls, letters until we both decided this would never work out between us. Not then. Maybe not ever." She says the last part wistfully or maybe it was my own delusion that makes it seem so.

"Do you want to be with him?" I sound insecure, I know but I can't help myself. Farrow makes me feel inferior and I'm not sure how to fix that.

"No. Maybe in another life but no. I'm not in love with him." That makes the air woosh audibly out of my lungs. She's not in love with him. She's not but her affinity for Farrow still ramps up my apprehension.

"But…"

"But?"

"You still care for him?"

She nods. "Yes. I always will. He saw something in me I didn't see in myself. He pushed me to do better, forced me to join law school. I'm indebted to him for that."

Indebted. That makes sense to me now as to why she looks at him with such admiration. He was one of the persons responsible for putting her on this path although some of his actions were questionable. "I think I understand."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I do." I move off the chair and come to sit next to her grateful that she doesn't move away. I want to take her in my arms, kiss her, make her forget about Chris and Farrow. "I'm going to take your case, Mac. I'll defend you and even John if it comes to that."

"I'm not asking you to."

I hate seeing her like this so fragile when I know Mac's anything but. Of course I'd defend her, I have to. "You wouldn't have to ask, Mac. I'm on your side, always."

"Thank you." Her hand slips into mine, squeezing when our fingers thread together. "Stay. Stay tonight. I hate admitting this but, I don't want to be alone."

I'm still angry. At her, at me, at Farrow and even her ex. I am pissed but I put my anger on hold. She needs me. She wants me there and I don't want to stay away. "I'll get my seabag."