1992
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It was 1992, and Jack was stationed in Vicenza. He hadn't even told Teri where he was. It would have been too painful, stirring up memories of their darkest days in 1988, when they had once planned to move to Italy. He couldn't bear to remind her about the time when he had applied to be deployed to Vicenza, only for that hope to be dashed by his injury. It could have saved their marriage. His whole life could have turned out differently. Maybe, he'd have never joined Special Forces. Now, even seeing the word Vicenza reminded him of everything that had unraveled back then—Teri's rage, his first mission at Slide Mountain, the searing pain in his right thigh, the memory of her leaving for her job in Florence, and the fights that had nearly broken them apart as a couple.
He had managed to bury those memories for years. Their relationship had been saved by the bell—literally saved by the Christmas bell.
So when he was stationed in Vicenza in 1992, he simply told Teri that he was in Europe. She had learned not to ask for details, knowing that most of what he did was classified. Their relationship had adapted to this silence, built on focusing on the things they could talk about.
His current assignment in Vicenza had brought him closer to the unraveling chaos in the Balkans. Everything was falling apart in Yugoslavia, and the Special Forces teams were sent in and out, conducting reconnaissance, pulling out U.S. citizens stranded in the crumbling Yugoslavian states, and even carrying out assassinations of certain antagonists deemed targets by the U.S. government. Jack had stopped questioning the missions, stopped wondering why. It was easier that way.
He tried to call Teri every afternoon, especially after shorter missions, when he would return to Vicenza. Most of the operations had them crossing over the Adriatic by boat, slipping into Yugoslavia and slipping out again before anyone noticed they had even been there.
He checked his wristwatch. 4:30 p.m. She had to be up by now. There was a small window of time, each day, on his afternoons and their mornings in LA, when he could call her.
He dialed the number and waited. On the third ring, Teri picked up, her voice thick with tiredness. "Bauer," she mumbled, stifling a yawn.
"It's me," he said silently, leaning back against the wall next to the row of phones, one of ten men lined up along the wall, each one making their one phone call they had per day. "How are you? How's Kim?"
Teri's voice perked up a little, the familiar warmth creeping into her tone. "She's excited for Kindergarten. We were just about to get going."
Jack glanced at his watch again. It was too late already—probably not the best time to call. He could hear the shuffle of movement on the other end of the line, the sounds of a hurried morning routine in the background.
"Do you want to talk to her?" Teri asked, and Jack could already hear Kim's little feet racing toward the phone, her mother calling her name in the background.
Jack closed his eyes, leaning harder against the wall, bracing himself for the bittersweet moment of hearing his daughter's voice. These were the only five minutes each day when he wasn't Captain Bauer. In this brief, precious window, he felt almost normal—a father, a husband, a man, not a soldier.
"Daddy! When are you coming home?" Kim asked, her small voice filled with hope. She asked him this every day.
"Soon, sweetie," he replied, the familiar lie catching in his throat. The truth was, he didn't know when he'd be home. Maybe he'd be able to ask for a few days off eventually, but with the situation in Yugoslavia escalating, even that felt like a distant hope.
Kim began to chatter excitedly, telling him all about her first days at Kindergarten and her new friends. Jack let her words wash over him, smiling as she talked about Lindsay and Janet and the things they had done together. For a few precious moments, his mind wasn't filled with the images of war, of shootouts in small towns in Bosnia. Instead, it was filled with his daughter's innocent stories, and for that, he was grateful. A memory he could revisit at night, before falling asleep.
Teri gently ended Kim's stream of stories, and just as they were about to say their goodbyes, she mentioned something offhandedly, "Oh, and there's a letter waiting for you. Looks like an invitation."
Jack tensed, unsure what it could be. "Can you open it up?," he said, the unspoken message clear: I'm not going to be home anytime soon.
Teri sighed, moving to fetch the letter. He heard the rustling of paper as she tore it open, and he braced himself for some formal Army event invitation, something to do with promotions or an official gathering. Something neither of them would attend.
"Oh," Teri said, her tone shifting with surprise.
"What?" Jack asked, curiosity piqued.
"It's a wedding invitation," she laughed lightly, as if the idea of it was amusing.
Jack smirked. "Well then that's surely for you, not for me," he replied, knowing that he had no friends left back in LA, no connections that would lead to a wedding invitation. Most of their shared friends were from their UCLA days, and Jack hadn't seen or spoken to them in years. He couldn't think of anyone who would invite him to a wedding.
"No, that one's for you," Teri corrected him, her voice laced with amusement. She began reading aloud, "Marilyn Anne Williams and Graem Bauer joyfully invite you to celebrate their marriage as they exchange vows of love and commitment. Join us on September 7th at the Huntington Gardens."
With each word, Jack's breath seemed to catch in his throat. Marilyn? Graem? His mind scrambled to process it.
"It's your brother's," Teri concluded, still surprised, her tone bright. "Are you going?"
The invitation had been addressed to him, of course. Graem probably didn't even know that Jack had a family of his own, let alone a daughter. There was no way he'd care enough to include Teri or Kim in the invitation.
"No, I won't be around," Jack replied, the words coming out flat, though he had no idea where he would be on September 7th, eight weeks from now. All he knew was that he didn't want to be in Los Angeles that day.
His mind raced, wondering how Graem had even found his address. What else had Graem found out? Jack wouldn't put it past him to dig into his records, maybe pay someone at the DMV to track him down. Graem was always sneaky like that.
They said their hurried goodbyes. Teri needed to take Kim to Kindergarten, and Jack felt the next soldier in line hovering behind him, waiting for his turn to call home. Jack stepped away from the phone, but he wasn't sure where he was going.
He stumbled slightly as he walked, his mind swirling with thoughts he hadn't had in years. Marilyn Anne Williams.
That couldn't be a coincidence. He hadn't thought about Marilyn in ages. Or Graem, for that matter. But now, their names filled his head, memories of their faces flickering in his mind like an old reel of film.
He tried to shake it off, but it was no use.
That evening, Jack spent hours thinking, but not about the innocent children's stories Kim had told him earlier. His thoughts were much darker. By 8 p.m., he received notice of an unplanned night mission—a welcome distraction from the swirling chaos in his head. Grateful for the focus it demanded, he prepared his gear, checked his weapons, and pulled on the all-black uniform and bulletproof vest that had become second nature. Later, he was on the speedboat again, just as he had been so many times before. But during the whole ride, his mind refused to settle.
Two hours across the water, heading to the Croatian coastline, and he had nothing to do but think. He knew he should be going over the mission brief, recalling the schematics of the house they were supposed to raid. Every detail could mean the difference between success and failure. But Jack's thoughts were elsewhere. No matter how hard he tried to focus, his mind drifted back to Graem and Marilyn. How had they ended up together?
He kept turning the idea over, his hands gripping the edge of the boat as the cold wind whipped against his face. Marilyn. The woman who had once meant so much to him. How had she remained connected to the Bauer family after everything? After the way things had ended between them, he couldn't imagine why she would even want to keep in touch with anyone named Bauer.
For the first time in years, Jack's mind wandered back to Marilyn's father, Ron Williams. He could still recall how his own father, Philip, had nearly succeeded in a hostile takeover of Ron's company. It had been a brutal battle, one that must have left deep scars in Ron. Jack couldn't imagine how the two families had ever reconciled after that. But evidently, they had. He wondered briefly if Ron's company had folded after all—if they were now producing the very fracturing equipment Ron had been so adamantly against.
It had to be business, Jack concluded, almost certain that Graem had met Marilyn through some corporate connections of their parents. That was the only explanation. They had no other reason to cross paths. They went to different schools, and Marilyn was two years older. Their interests couldn't have been further apart. Graem had always hated anything to do with planes, getting sick after ten minutes in a small aircraft, while Ron Williams had been obsessed with aviation and Marilyn loved flying as well.
So why had they fallen in love? The thought was revolting to Jack, picturing them together—Marilyn, that beautiful, kind woman, and Graem, his slick and calculating brother. The idea made his stomach churn.
He could almost see them now, living in that mansion on Glenn Canyon Drive, where he and Graem had grown up. It was a house large enough to hold Philip, Graem, and now Marilyn, who would be walking into that world, completely unaware of the life she was about to enter.
Jack's mind drifted to darker places. The memories of his childhood, buried for years, now clawed their way back to the surface. Glenn Canyon Drive. That house had been the scene of so much pain, so much violence. He hadn't thought about it in years, hadn't allowed himself to. But now, in the darkness of the night, crossing the sea, it all came back. His father's uncontrollable rages, the beatings, the fights. The times he had been thrown outside, naked, onto the freezing cold terrace, enduring the cruelty and humiliation.
For once, Jack didn't push the memories away. He let them linger, let them fester in his mind, and he channeled the anger into something useful. When they landed, he used that anger on the battlefield, firing magazine after magazine, taking out targets until the memories dulled and all he could focus on was the adrenaline coursing through him.
On the way back, exhaustion overtook him. He fell asleep on the boat. By the time they returned to Vicenza, it was 7 a.m., and Jack stumbled into bed, even missing the window between 5 and 5:30 a.m. when he usually called Teri. He collapsed into a deep sleep, his body drained, but his mind still unwillingly caught up in thoughts of Marilyn, Graem, and everything that had happened at Glenn Canyon Drive.
When he awoke, the memories returned, sharper and even more persistent. The things that had happened in that house were too painful to relive, but now they consumed him. He couldn't picture Marilyn there. He couldn't—she deserved better than this.
He had left her, eight years ago, precisely to protect her from that life. To ensure that she and Ron wouldn't be caught up in Philip Bauer's games, his endless thirst for power, money, shares, and control over everything and everyone. Jack had sworn to himself—he had sworn it to the portrait of his dead mother—that he would never marry, would never bring any woman or even child into that house at Glenn Canyon Drive, that was home to so much cruelty and pain. He wouldn't go down the same path that had turned his mother into a hostage in her own home, suffering under Philip's reign.
And now Marilyn was about to step into that same world.
Jack had never told her about his childhood. About the abuse. About the family she was about to marry into. Even in the time they had been together, he had tried to keep her away from the house in Glenn Canyon Drive, away from his family. And ever since hearing about the wedding, one decision had been growing inside him: had to warn her. He had to guide her away from the fate he had tried so hard to escape himself.
For a moment, he considered calling her. But he didn't have her number, and what would he say? The idea of Graem picking up the phone crossed his mind, and the thought was unbearable. What would happen if he did?
The next day, Jack made a decision. As much as he hated the idea of leaving his comrades during such a critical phase of the war in Yugoslavia, he requested three days of leave. He planned to head over to Ramstein, catch a flight from Frankfurt, back to Los Angeles, talk to Marilyn in person. And, if time allowed, see Teri and Kim before heading back. It was a crazy plan, spending two days travelling just to have a few hours back home, but he was determined to follow through with it.
Half a day later, Jack found himself on a plane back to LA. As the hours passed and he drew closer to home, the more it dawned on him how insane this whole idea was. He hadn't seen Marilyn in years. What was he going to say to her? What could he possibly tell her that would make sense?
He had eleven long hours to figure it out.
The plane touched down in Los Angeles and Jack still hadn't come up with the words he'd say to Marilyn. He'd had eleven hours on that flight to consider his plan, to think about his past, to run through every possible approach. And after all that time, all he'd come up with was a short list of places to look for Marilyn. Each location represented fragments of a life he'd abandoned in 1984—a life he'd hoped to never confront again. Now, after all the delays in Frankfurt, and with only six hours in LA, it felt more like an operation, just another mission. His instincts told him this was a mission, and he needed to approach it like one.
He took a rental car and hurried away from the airport. The first stop was Ron and Sharon Williams's home. Maybe he'd find Marilyn there. This was an easy place to start – maybe he could meet her there to get the conversation started without even getting close to the Bauer world at Glenn Canyon Drive. Anywhere but there. The streets were as familiar as the back of his hand, yet foreign after so much time away. When he pulled up a hundred yards from the Williams' house, he caught sight of the red Chrysler in the driveway. Her mother's car. He remembered it. But whether it still belonged to Marilyn's mother or had been passed down to her was a mystery—one of the many reminders that he didn't belong here anymore, that so much of what he'd known could had changed, and had changed.
There was no time to linger, to second-guess, or to hesitate. After the delays in Frankfurt on the way of getting here, he was already on borrowed time, and he couldn't waste the precious time on surveillance. He drove forward, parked the rental in front of the house, and got out. With each step toward the door, he felt the edges of his past closing in, the memories he'd fought to bury over the years clawing their way back to the surface. The echoes of his father's voice, the condescension, the threats, the manipulation. The scorn disguised as advice. He could almost feel Philip's presence behind him, his disapproving gaze bearing down as if to ask, What's your plan now, Jack?
He straightened, took a breath, and rang the bell.
The seconds stretched until someone opened the door. It was Sharon. Marilyn's mother. She looked older, more worn, and as she recognized him, Jack thought he detected a flicker of surprise, perhaps even the hint of a smile. But it was brief. Her gaze shifted, lingering on his uniform, the army greens marking him unmistakably as a soldier, someone who'd made a very different life choice than the one Philip Bauer had mapped out for him.
"Jack," she finally said, voice even, with a hint of that underlying worry.
"Sharon," he replied, searching her face, hoping for some kind of sign, though he couldn't say what kind. He cleared his throat, his voice coming out stiffer than he'd intended. "Is she here?"
She paused, a brow raised, but something in her gaze softened with realization. "You've come for Marilyn?" The way she said it made it clear she'd already pieced together a story in her mind: Jack had returned not for the sake of saying hello, not for the past, but for her, eight weeks before she was due to marry another man.
"Yes," he replied. "I need to talk to her."
"To tell her what?" Sharon's voice sharpened. "That you're back?"
The look in her eyes made it clear—she thought Jack had returned to interfere, to upend Marilyn's new life on a whim. His gut twisted as he saw her eyes narrow, as if she were daring him to admit it.
"I need to talk to her. It's important." He held Sharon's gaze, steady, without elaborating.
But Sharon shook her head, disbelief flashing across her face.
Jack stood at the doorstep, feeling the weight of Sharon's glare settle over him. Her voice was sharp, each word layered with years of unspoken resentment.
"You have no right to talk to her," Sharon snapped, bitterness cutting through her tone. "Not after how you left."
Jack braced himself, but even after all these years, the accusation hurt more than he'd expected. He'd left to protect the whole Williams family, to spare them from the twisted games his father played. But Sharon's look made it clear that whatever he'd hoped to achieve by leaving, it hadn't translated to the life they'd lived without him.
"Sharon, I need to talk to her. It's important," he managed, but his words sounded weaker than he'd intended, hollow against the raw emotion in her face.
She scoffed, eyes narrowing. "To tell her what? That you're coming back?"
Jack held her gaze, hoping she'd sense the weight behind his words, the unspoken reasons that had drawn him back after all these years. But Sharon wasn't done. "When you left, it shattered her," she said, voice laced with a kind of restrained fury. "And a week later, she lost her father. You could have at least come back and been there for her."
The words hung in the air, heavier than he could bear. Ron. Dead? "I didn't know," he said quietly, struggling to process this new blow. His mind raced, the shock of Ron's death mingling with the realization that he hadn't been there when Marilyn needed him most. He'd already been with Teri, spending carefree weeks at Indian Springs. He hadn't looked back once.
Sharon's voice continued, sharp as a blade. "You just ran off and left everything. Your family was worried sick." Her words dripped with disdain, and he could feel her judgment, her view of him as a heartless deserter who had vanished without a trace.
"My family?" he thought bitterly, feeling a surge of anger twist within him. To Sharon, the Bauers must have seemed like the grieving family he'd wronged, the ones left behind. Suddenly it got clear to Jack—his father had spun his absence into a story of betrayal, casting himself as the victim, adding another layer of manipulation to his endless schemes.
"They were there for us," Sharon pressed on, her words hardening as she spoke. "For her. Everything was a mess when Ron died. And you were off to see the world."
Jack's hands clenched involuntarily. He'd left Marilyn and her family to keep them away from the Bauers' influence, to free her from their schemes, and yet it was exactly them who had stepped in to fill the void. Everything he'd done to protect them now felt like a cruel irony.
But something didn't sit right. Ron had been strong, determined, unwilling to let anyone—especially Philip Bauer—control him. Jack's mind spun with questions he hadn't dared voice until now.
"How did Ron die?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. The question tightened in his throat, the fear of her answer gnawing at him.
Sharon's face turned cold, her eyes steeling over. For a moment, she seemed to hesitate, as though debating whether he even deserved to know. But the truth was something she couldn't deny, no matter how she felt about him.
"He killed himself," she said flatly, each word like a hammer blow. Her voice was devoid of emotion, yet it felt like a door slamming shut.
The shock of her answer hit him like a punch to the gut. Ron—dead by his own hand? Jack had left hoping Ron would find a way to protect his family and his business. He hadn't imagined that his departure might have contributed to such a desperate end.
Sharon's voice broke through his thoughts, layered with a resentment that cut through the fog of his guilt. "Graem was there for her, Jack. Instead of you. So don't you dare mess up her life again."
The words left him stunned, feeling the weight of his past actions pressing down on him. He'd come here to make things right, to give Marilyn a warning about the Bauers, but the reality was even worse than he'd anticipated. Maybe he'd been wrong to return at all.
He took a steadying breath, meeting Sharon's fierce gaze. "I don't want to mess up her life," he said quietly, lifting a hand in a small gesture of surrender. "I just need to talk to her, one last time." And right now, he wasn't even sure if he still wanted that or what he should say, if he did talk to her.
After a long silence, Sharon's gaze dropped to Jack's hand, and her eyes lingered on the wedding ring on his finger. She hadn't expected that. The Jack she'd painted in her mind during the past eight years was the kind of man who would run before things became real, before they grew honest, or complicated, or exhausting. In her mind, he'd been someone who couldn't be tied down, who would surely leave any woman the moment commitment demanded something beyond his comfort. She'd pictured him off in faraway places, chasing the next thrill, leaving broken hearts behind him—like Marilyn.
But here he was, a ring on his finger and worry etched across his face. Her gaze shifted to the uniform he wore, the lines of his face hardened by years she hadn't witnessed. He promised that he wasn't here to ruin things for Marilyn, at least that's what he said. Maybe he wasn't here because of some whimsical impulse to reclaim a lost love. He was married, committed to someone else.
For a moment, a rare memory flickered in her mind, one that she hadn't allowed herself to remember in eight years—Jack from those early days, when he was still a quiet, serious young man, always standing a step behind, watchful and protective. She remembered how he'd helped around the house without being asked, how he'd been so gentle with Marilyn. He'd been a good person then, or at least, she had thought he was. But even back then, she'd had the feeling she never fully knew him. Jack was secretive, holding something back, like he was never telling the whole truth. There was always a part of him she felt she'd never understand, some part of his life or his past he kept hidden.
She still didn't like it—the idea of Marilyn facing him again, of old wounds being torn open. But right now, she felt Jack's presence wasn't that of a reckless man looking to disrupt her daughter's life. For reasons she didn't fully understand, this was important to him.
With a sigh of reluctant acceptance, Sharon met his gaze. "She's over at Linda's," she said, her voice soft but still edged with the unease she couldn't entirely dismiss. And the moment she said it, Sharon already regretted it.
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