He needed them to go. To leave him alone so he could survive this endless succession of days without purpose, nights without end, life without a cause.

  But, no. No matter that he screamed in his sleep so loudly in the dark that he woke himself and the cell block, no matter that he begged her to stay away, she came to him in the night. She came to remind him how much he still loved her. To ensure that he understood he would never have her or hold her in his arms again.

  Ian was also there. Making Mac hate him for being the man his wife and daughter needed. A free man. An honorable man who was doing exactly what Mac had asked him to do. Taking care of his girls.

  So he’d wait it out in the dark. Wait for them to come and to go and for morning to come then he’d relive the entire night that had resulted in his being in prison and his life taken away.

  And every night, in every dream something new would sneak out of the shadows. A scent. An object or flash of light that would add another layer of mystique, uncover a minute particle of understanding, or convolute the event even more.

  Just when he thought an answer might be within his grasp, it was plucked out of his reach by smoke or fire or a flash bang or a shot. And he’d awaken again, as he’d awakened just now.

  Drenched in sweat.

  Shaking as though he were freezing.

  Adrift in that hurricane sea.

  Rachael was determined to put the uncomfortable conversation about divorce and marriage and adoption behind her. Still, she was grateful when Ian had flown to Tennessee three days ago to meet with Cal Reynolds. Those few days alone gave her some time and space and some much-needed perspective. And it gave them both a reset button of sorts where they could back away, regroup, then carry on without the additional pressure of divorce and Mac’s idea that they should get married.

  It was ridiculous. Of course she loved Ian. But as a friend. First. Last. Always. And he felt the same way about her. Placed in a situation, however, where they were constantly confronted by each other and the stress of Mac’s upcoming trial, emotions could become as confused as life. Something she’d never consider under normal circumstances actually seemed to have a modicum of merit when faced with a future that might very well see Mac in prison for a very long time.

  Lonely, heartbroken, it was a natural reaction to see at least a somewhat palatable fix for all the pain. Marriage. Adoption.

  But that thought and her consideration of it had been fleeting and in concert with her raw emotions. Those three days Ian was gone had given her back her perspective. You didn’t fix something broken with something that had ‘sounded good’ at the time.

  Relieved to have sorted it all out in her mind, she was more than eager to see Ian when he returned to Manhattan. It was after 11:00 pm when he called from the airport.

  “Are you sure it’s not too late to come over?”

  “No. It’s fine. I’ll leave the light on. See you soon.”

  Less than an hour later he sat on her sofa. Looking tired and a little mussed and thankful for the beer she’d started stocking in her fridge once she’d figured out that he liked a bottle occasionally instead of wine or scotch.

  “Exactly what the doctor ordered,” he said after downing a long cold pull.

  “Long trip.”

  He shrugged. “Not that bad. Just a lot of connections to get there. Small town and all that.”

  She waited while he took another drink and felt that he was deliberately stalling.

  “So …” she said. “Anything?”

  He reached out, touched his fingers to her jaw. “I’m sorry. No. Nothing to pin anything on.”

  In her heart, she’d known this might happen. It didn’t make it any easier to take though.

  “He’s a talker, I’ll give him that,” Ian said with a half grin. “And he has a memory, just like he promised. But according to Reynolds there wasn’t a single person you hadn’t already cleared or that was out of the usual who came in or out of Mac’s office or hung around out of place.”

  She felt herself wilt and sort of melt in a boneless heap. Cal Reynolds hadn’t been her drop dead last hope, but he had been her best one.

  “Rachael, he did have one thing to say that I wasn’t expecting.”

  She met his eyes. Read the dread there. “I’m not going to like this am I?”

  “Reynolds said that he’d been worried about Mac.”

  “Worried? Worried how?”

  “He couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. Just that, he sensed a change in him. A tension that he didn’t have when he first started working for him.”

  “Tension?”

  Ian shrugged. “He was vague. He just said something changed and he couldn’t really put his finger on it. He said Mac seemed edgy. Tense. He thought it all started the day the Afghan man – the one who was killed – came to visit Mac on base.”

  “What, wait?” She blinked, sat up straight. “What did you say? The man – the man Mac is accused of killing came to see him on base?”

  “Apparently. According to Reynolds.”

  She dragged a hand through her hair, her mind reeling. “Why haven’t we heard about this before?”

  “I don’t know. Mac never mentioned it to me. Apparently he never mentioned it to you either?”

  “No. He never said a word about him coming on base. Maybe … Oh my God, Ian …maybe he’s the one who planted the heroin.”

  “And Mac killed him for it?” Ian suggested carefully.

  “No. No, I’ll never believe that. But … suppose this guy was active in the heroin trade? He’d gotten to know Mac from the patrols. Maybe … maybe he was a player and wanted to recruit Mac. And Mac wouldn’t play.”

  She felt herself warming more and more to the idea. “What better way to get Mac on board than to plant the drugs? Make certain that Mac knew he’d planted them. That he could get to him any time and make him look guilty even if he wasn’t?

  “Ian,” she faced him, excited. “This is the first deviation from the same hole-filled story. This is important.”

  “Or,” Ian said carefully, “it supports the idea that Mac was involved in some kind of drug deal with the Afghan. Instead of exonerating him, it could further implicate him.”

  She didn’t want to accept that but had to agree that Ian could be right. This information may be new, but it could work either way concerning Mac’s guilt or innocence.

  She sighed heavily. Felt all the hope disintegrate into despair again.

  “It has to be significant,” she insisted but felt the weight of the unknown and the concern push her further and further from a positive spin. “But maybe not the way we’d hoped for.”

  “Come ‘ere.” Ian hooked his arm around her shoulders and drew her toward him where she settled, weary and defeated and needing a shoulder to rest her head.

  He didn’t say anything. He just held her. Which was exactly what she needed. With her husband about to go on trial, with her life in ruins, Ian Hughes was everything she needed in this exact moment in time.

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead and drew her into an enveloping hug.

  “What else can I do?” she whispered against his chest. “What can I do to help him?”

  But she already knew the answer. So did Ian.

  “Just rest for now,” he murmured. “Let it go until morning.”

  But when morning came, Rachael wasn’t exactly sure if things could be any worse.

  Ian was stretched out on his back on the sofa, sound asleep. Rachael was stretched out full length on top of him, her knee wedged between his thighs, her head on his chest. His hand felt heavy and lax, settled low on her hip. Against her belly, she felt the length and the breadth and the heat of what Mac had affectionately referred to as his morning salute.

  For an instant, she let herself forget this wasn’t her husband who held her. And she forgave herself for the indulgence because she’d been missing him and missing their physical relationship and because she’d been afraid she’d never experience this amazing, human connection again.

  Married. Adoption.

  But then Ian stirred. And the hand on her hip slid lower, his fingers splayed wide and he pressed her against him with a deep, longing groan.

  Her heart went wild. Warning bells rang like sirens. Because this was Ian. Her friend.

  “Ian,” she whispered, frozen in a time and a place where she shouldn’t be but couldn’t find the strength to move away from.

  “Ian,” she whispered again, almost frantic.

  He opened his eyes groggily, took stock and swore under his breath.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly and with his help, she managed to push herself up and off of him.

  “I’ll … I’ll make coffee.” After clumsily smoothing a hand over her hair and pulling down her shirt, she headed on stocking feet toward the kitchen.

  Where she stood, arms stiff, palms braced on the counter by the sink, head lowered between them. Lord, oh Lord, what just happened?

  Fourteen miles away at 3:00 that same morning, Mac woke up in his cell with a jolt. His constant morning companions – pounding heart, drenching sweat, remnants of dreams – broke through unconsciousness with him.

  Same song. Same verse. A little bit louder. A little bit worse.

  Only…wait.

  Sitting up abruptly, he swung his feet over the side of the cot. He dragged his hands over his head, then cradled it, as if he could keep it from pounding off his body. And he realized that he’d carried something new with him from the dark. Something more than a wisp of memory and smoke.

  A face. Behind him. Shadowy. Dark. Reflected in the wavy mirror in the dimly lit room.

  Unclear. Not in focus but … but it was the face of a person walking up behind him. Mac wasn’t supposed to see him as he wrenched away his weapon, then slammed the rifle butt down on his head. In an explosion of pain, he heard a burst of gunfire as he dropped to the floor.

  Then darkness again. Deep, throbbing pain.

  And that face. Wavering. Fading in and out. Nearly focused, then fuzzy and distorted again. Outdistancing it all, was a sense of foreboding. A dread that overwhelmed him with urgency, warning him that this wasn’t over. That he needed to remember. He needed to remember soon or something terrible, even more unbearable than facing life in prison, was going to happen.

  He needed to see the face in the mirror.

  Groaning, he covered his face with his hands and reached with everything in him to pull the face into focus. Pain seared through his head, stealing his breath, doubling him up, and dragged him under again.

  Alarms screamed in his head.

  An earthquake. No. Someone shook him by the shoulder.

  “McKenzie!”

  More shaking. More pain.

  “McKenzie, can you hear me?”

  He squinted against the light. Against the knifelike stabbing in his head. Through it all he finally recognized the guard, Eagan’s voice.

  “Yeah,” he said weakly. “I … I hear you.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eagan asked, standing back when Mac rolled to his side facing him, then sucked in a breath when the pain gripped him again with a blinding white-hot light.

  “My head,” he managed to utter before he passed out.

  familysecrets.life

  The belief you have in others – loved ones, family, friends – is rooted in trust. When that trust is betrayed, love becomes the first casualty.

  familysecrets.life

  Chapter Twelve

  “How long have these headaches been going on?”

  Mac sat on an examination table in the prison infirmary. His eyelids and head felt almost too heavy to hold up from lack of restful sleep and the lingering effects of the hammer that had been pounding in his head since dawn.

  “McKenzie?” the doctor prompted. “How long have you been having the headaches?”

  Mac opened his eyes slowly. “On and off for a month or so I guess.”

  “Only at night?”

  Mac shrugged. “Mostly. Yeah.”

  The doctor shined a light in each eye, asked him to follow the beam, checked his throat and the scar on his head where he’d been hit.

  “What happened here?”

  “Rifle butt. The blow knocked me cold for a while.”

  “How long a while?” the doctor asked, looking in his ears, then pressing a stethoscope to his neck.

  “Best guess, two or three minutes.”

  “You come to on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m told you have a memory loss.”

  He expelled a deep breath. Nodded.

  “Just since that incident?”

  Again Mac nodded. “It’s a blank from the time I walked into the house until I woke up.”

  “A physical trauma can trigger temporary amnesia,” the doctor said as much to himself as to Mac. “So can an emotional trauma.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Unusual that the headaches are just now starting, however. Seems a blow hard enough to render you unconscious would have resulted in immediate headaches. But you’re saying that’s not the case.”

  “Right.”

  The headaches started with the dreams. The dreams had started when he’d asked Rachael to file for divorce.

  “Can you think of any specific incident, other than the blow, that might have initiated a psychological trauma?”

  “Other than being accused of murder and facing life in prison?” Mac grunted. “Other than that, no. Can’t think of a thing.”

  The doctor sighed heavily. “Look, son. I’m not your judge here. I’m your doctor. The only thing that concerns me is your health.”

  Mac nodded. “Sorry.”

  “Have you had any tests? CT scans? MRI’s? Head x-rays?”

  Nelson had wanted to order tests, but Mac hadn’t let him. Maybe he should have. “No.”

  “Well, I think x-rays at the very least and possibly an MRI are called for. I’ll get the orders set up and we’ll get you checked out. As soon as I get the results, we’ll talk again.”

  “Where does this happen?”

  “We don’t have the technology here for more than routine tests,” he added, “so I’ll send you to Manhattan Surgical Hospital.”

  “When?”

  The doctor scratched his head and made a note on his chart. “I’d like to get you over there today. Tomorrow at the latest. We’ll see. They’ll have to find free time for the machines at the hospital, and the prison will have to arrange a secure transport.” He glanced up at Mac, frowned. “If the headaches get worse or you experience other symptoms before the tests are scheduled, make sure I’m told. We’ll rush the order.”

  “I’ve got nothing but time, Doc,” Mac said and eased off the table.

  “In the meantime, you’re off any work detail until we figure this out.”

  Right. More time to kill with nothing to do but think about endless days and nights existing behind these prison walls. And the ever-increasing tension wrapping tightly in his chest, warning him that something just out of his reach could make a difference of life or death.

  Couldn’t be his life. It was pretty much out of his hands any way he sliced it. The only other lives that mattered were Rachael’s and Addie’s.

  The doctor hadn’t kept Mac in the infirmary but had sent him back to his cell with a dose of Tylenol and orders to the guard that he was to stay confined to his quarters until at least after the tests were run.

  Since the headaches had wiped him out, he lay down on his cot, closed his eyes and waited … for what, he didn’t know. The pain to let up. Sleep to come. The sense of danger to ease. Whichever came first was fine with him even though he knew that sleeping would most likely bring on the dream and the dream would most likely make his headache worse.

  When he felt himself drifting off, he rode with it like a seeker, searching for whatever it was that gave him this gut deep feeling of danger and filled him with an anxiety that warned him he had to do something. And he had to do it soon or he was going to lose everything.

  Everything. How, he wondered as sleep sucked him under, could he lose what he no longer had?

  Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. His subconscious mind raged at him.

  Hurry and what? If only he knew. But he didn’t. He didn’t know where or how the danger affected him. Here? Afghanistan?

  A shot rang out in the vacuum that was his dream field.

  A burst of a semi-automatic weapon fire.

  His weapon.

  Someone had wrenched it out of his hands.

  The same someone who had walked up behind him. Someone he knew. Someone whose face suddenly became clear in the smoky mirror just before the rifle smashed down on his head.

  “Nooooo!”

  His own yell woke him. His heart slammed in his chest. In his throat. In his head.

  He sat up. Swung his feet to the floor. Buried his head in his hands.

  And wondered what it meant.

  Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

  The urgency wouldn’t let up. He felt frantic, suddenly. Did he believe the dream? Could he believe it? The dream where he’d finally recognized the face in the mirror? The face that should not have been there?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  And yet it was as clear in his mind as a footprint in the snow.

  As wrong as a scream in church.

  Could he trust it? Could he trust the face in his dreams? Could he trust that he actually remembered what had happened? That he wasn’t manufacturing the image?

  Or, did he chalk it up to a brain injury? Stress?

  He didn’t know. He only knew that pressing, almost manic sensation of urgency.

  This crushing fear that something bad was going to happen to someone he loved.

  Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!