"I can tell. What's the best way to get this up?"

"Clorox wipes work great. Just be thankful you don't have carpets. Stuff will never come out properly."

"I'm going to need a gallon of them. Can I get you something to drink?" Susan asked.

"Water would be nice, Susan. Thanks."

"The refrigerator water is filtered."

"That's great. Tap is fine, too. Good old Potomac never messes me up."

Susan got the water from the refrigerator, anyway, then handed it to Sam. "It's colder this way."

Sam took a sip, fortifying herself, then set the gla.s.s on the counter. Now or never.

"Why don't we take a look at his office, Susan."

Susan was delaying, Sam knew that. It was one thing to invite a stranger into your home, but when that stranger used to sleep with your husband, it became a whole different matter. Sam was about to go someplace Susan hadn't been allowed, into the very private mind of her spouse.

Sam would be stalling, too.

Susan took a deep breath.

"Just promise me one thing, Sam."

"Anything within reason, Susan, of course."

"If he didn't love me, but couldn't tell me, I don't want to know."

Chapter Twenty-Four.

McLean, Virginia

Dr. Samantha Owens

Sam's first impression of Donovan's office was dark wood, very unlike the surrounding rooms in the rest of the house. It screamed Man. The doors to the office were gla.s.s, so the owner could keep an eye on things while still having the privacy of a closed door. There were floor-to-ceiling bookcases to the right stuffed with books of all shapes, sizes and colors, and two windows to the left. The large desk sat in the middle of the room, perpendicular to the bookcases, with a cla.s.sic leather nailed desk chair behind it.

Empty.

So empty. This wasn't good. Old emotions paraded around her, laughing at her hesitation. Sam could picture Donovan sitting there as clearly as if he'd appeared before her.

Sam entered his office with trepidation. It didn't feel right being here. This was Donovan's world, even more so than the rest of his house. To walk in his footsteps, to see how he'd arranged his life just so-that was profane. She wasn't meant to be a part of Donovan's life. She'd known that for years. h.e.l.l, he'd known it when he broke things off that night, giving her that d.a.m.n mix tape with all the songs they'd identified with. On the insert, he'd written a line from a Dire Straits song, "Romeo and Juliet."

I love you, Sam. It was just that the time was wrong.

She'd taken one look at that and allowed her heart to run back to Nashville, back to her previously meted-out life. Followed the path that was expected of her.

That f.u.c.king voice was niggling in the back of her mind again. The voice she'd drowned out all those years ago.

You could have fought back, Sam. You could have won him over. He wanted you to stay. To accept his decision, support him, wait for him. If you could have just forgiven him, allowed him to do what his honor told him was right. But you let your pride get in the way.

If she hadn't listened to him, had fought for him to stay, to love her, then what? Would he still be dead? Would Simon? And what would have happened to Matthew and Madeline? If they'd never been born, how could they die?

She couldn't undo any of it now. They were all dead because of the choices she'd made.

She struggled against the rising tide, but the stress of the past few days finally overwhelmed her. A sob wrenched free from her chest. Here she stood, in the middle of Donovan's office, his wife a few feet away, crying like a d.a.m.n schoolgirl over an old lost love. Over all her lost loves.

Silently, Susan appeared at her elbow. She handed Sam a tissue and looked at her curiously. Sam wiped her eyes and tried for a smile.

"I'm sorry, Susan. I am a fool. A first-cla.s.s fool."

"I don't know if I agree with that statement. You loved him, didn't you?"

"Once," Sam whispered. "Yes, once I did. But it wasn't meant to be. He was meant to find you, and have those two beautiful girls. As they say, everything happens for a reason."

"Too bad neither one of us believes that. And now he's dead. I can't help but wonder, if he'd stayed with you, would this have happened?"

Sam shook her head. Those thoughts were meant to be hers alone. Susan wasn't supposed to be digging into that mora.s.s, not when she hadn't been responsible for her husband's death.

The tears stopped, as suddenly as they had started. She felt empty.

"You can't do that to yourself, Susan. Trust me, I've tried that path, and it's one better not taken. Besides, Eddie would have never stayed. He was too married to the idea of going back into the military. It was just something he had to do. I hated him for it. I hated him for leaving me. And now I'm never going to have a chance to say I'm sorry."

Susan put her hand on Sam's shoulder. "He knew. It was his way. That was Eddie for you. He always found a way to understand. That's why I married him in the first place. He never once looked at me as a daughter of a general, but instead, he looked at me as me. I fell for that in the first five seconds."

They shared a moment of companionable silence, not friends, but acquaintances on a journey neither one could face alone.

Sam pulled herself together, and moved around the room, seeking. She was able to look at the details now. It was a good office, full of light, even this late in the day, with the windows overlooking the gardens out back by the conservatory. The desk was a wide plank of polished wood, hand-carved by the look of it, with a smaller, thinner credenza behind it. The way it was situated in the room, with his back to the wall, he could see out both the windows and the doors, and have a good view of his books. Typical of the b.l.o.o.d.y man, wanting to see all the angles.

On closer examination, Sam could see the appeal of the setup. Squirrels ran up and down the branches outside the window, and a feeder covered in cardinals hung from the nearby tree. There would be hummingbirds in the summer, flowers in full bud. It was quite the bucolic little scene.

There were a few framed pictures on the wall: Donovan with his army buddies, a recent family portrait-the girls didn't look too much younger than when Sam had seen them for the first time-and a picture of Donovan with four other men in fatigues, arms around one another, cigarettes dangling from lips, wild-eyed and grinning, under which was a plaque that read The Ranger Creed.

Sam digested the words, and gained a tiny bit of understanding for the man she'd lost. As she read, she could hear Donovan reciting the pledge, spine straight, shoulders back, forefinger crisply to forehead, believing every single word. More than believing. Becoming.

Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my Ranger Regiment.

Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier, who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger, my country expects me to move farther, faster and fight harder than any other soldier.

Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one hundred percent and then some.

Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.

Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circ.u.mstances will I ever embarra.s.s my country.

Readily will I display the intestinal fort.i.tude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor.

RANGERS LEAD THE WAY!.

Hoo-rah, Sam thought. d.a.m.n hero. No wonder this appealed to him. He'd never given anything less than one hundred percent, be it school, the military or his heart. And when he knew he couldn't give everything to Sam, he'd walked away rather than shortchange her. Donovan was a Ranger to a T, always had been.

"That's Hal Croswell there." Susan pointed at the picture above the plaque. "And Xander. I think the other is Billy Shakes. That's not his real name. It's William Everett. No one went by their given names, always nicknames. Hal was Jackal-Eddie always said he was crazy. Xander was Mutant, because of the X-Men thing, and Billy Shakes was a Shakespeare fanatic."

"What did they call Eddie?" Sam asked.

"Doc, mostly. Since he'd been to med school, even though he dropped out. Or MH. For Mother Hen."

Oh, how that fit.

"Since he'd been to med school, was he a medic?"

"No. Eddie was an infantry officer who happened to have medical knowledge. Medics are usually enlisted men who are recruited and go through specialized education for combat medicine. He went through a bunch of the training, but he was a special case. If one of the guys got hurt, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for him to work on them himself if the medic was otherwise engaged.

"That crew went out on nearly every mission together. They spent weeks marching through the mountains looking for Bin Laden, trying to keep the Taliban from killing everyone-Eddie found them particularly brutal. They didn't seem to care if the enemy died, or their own people. So long as things went boom."

Sam couldn't help herself; a small laugh escaped her lips. Susan arched an eyebrow.

"Honestly, I didn't sleep while he was gone. Iraq I could wrap my head around. That was just sheer h.e.l.l, knowing every time the phone rang, it might be the call that he'd been blown up. He used to tell me stories about the IEDs they discovered. Every day the roads would be swept, and every night, the Iraqis would find ways to lay the bombs down again. But Afghanistan-I didn't know anything about their mission, and that was harder to deal with. His silence. It was all very hush-hush. I still don't know. He never told me. But he came back different afterward. Got out and never looked back."

"Bin Laden?"

"Perhaps."

"Glad we finally got him, at least," Sam said.

"Eddie was ecstatic. Not riot-in-the-street happy, but he truly thought that might be the real beginning of the end. Al-Qaeda may be a hydra, but Bin Laden's face was on all of the heads."

Sam stared at the picture. She'd never noticed that Donovan and Simon had the same smile, half-crooked, devilish and devastatingly cute.

"Who was the fifth man? The blond over on the right, kneeling?"

Susan's face changed. "Oh. That's Perry Fisher. King, they called him. He's...pa.s.sed."

"Killed?"

"Yeah." Susan reached to the picture, straightened it, though Sam hadn't noticed it was crooked. "King was larger than life. Handsome, funny, the jokester of the crew. His wife, Karen, and I had our babies the same week. This was Vicky. Eddie and King came home together for the births. Those two were inseparable, crowing about the kids, smoking cigars in the hospital, getting in all sorts of trouble. Lord, that was a fun week. Then they went back over, and King was killed a month later. Eddie wouldn't talk about it. Every time I brought it up, he got tears in his eyes and walked off. They were so close, it just about killed him."

"Three dead," Sam murmured. "What a shame."

"Yeah. What a shame."

"You said Eddie came back from his last tour different. Different how?"

Susan shrugged. "Angry. That's really the only way to put it. He used to tell me things-nothing compromising, but the little details, the intimacies that he had with his men. He missed them. He was a good leader, well, you would have seen that, even back then. He missed having them around, the camaraderie, the responsibility. The adrenaline, too-being a Ranger was one thing, but being an officer in a war zone is pretty intense. Constant concern and worry for your men. But after King died in the field, it all changed. Eddie was angry with the government. He was sick of 'nation building.' He felt like they were treading water, and losing good men and women for no good reason. He almost seemed relieved to be away from them."

"So something might have happened?"

"I'm sure a lot of things happened."

"You know what I mean. Something was different on the last tour."

Susan tapped her fingers against her closed lips, a nervous tick Sam had noticed her doing before.

"I just always a.s.sumed it was about the mission when they lost King. That he disapproved of what they were doing and lost his best friend at the same time. But Eddie would never say that. h.e.l.l, I may just be making it up. Looking back, I can read a thousand different things into a single gesture."

"Looking back is dangerous, I know. But we're going to have to. Two members of the same unit being murdered isn't a coincidence. Did Fletcher ask about any of this?"

"All of it. I even printed him out a copy of the picture from our computer. He's trying to find the rest of the guys, make sure they're aware of what's going on. Though Xander is going to be hard to find. That man's been off the grid for a while now."

"I'm glad Fletcher's on top of this. He seems like a decent guy. All right. Where's Donovan's journal?"

Susan looked sheepish. "In the locked drawer. I put it back after I looked at it this morning. I'd never gone in there before now. It was his private place, and I respected that. But I knew the journal was there. He'd lock it up every time he wrote in it. The key was on the key chain found with his car. They gave it to me, after... Here." Susan pulled the keys from her front pocket, went around the desk and unlocked the drawer on the left side.

"He has several more of these in his boot locker up in the attic. I just didn't bother going through them. I figured if there was anything relevant, it would be in this year's journal."

The book Susan handed over was red leather, bound with a thin cord. Sam accepted the weight in her hands almost reverentially. She felt wrong about this, delving into the private world of her ex-lover. This was the kind of stuff her friend Taylor Jackson, a lieutenant with the Nashville homicide unit, did for the force. Sam didn't investigate crimes, didn't go digging in people's private worlds. She wasn't used to it, to seeing the most cherished personal moments laid bare for the scrutiny of strangers.

Well, how different can it be than seeing their heart? Or their brain? That's where it all comes from, anyway. Stop dillydallying.

"You may be right. Let's look through this, see if it tells us anything. We might want to get the ones from his last deployment, too, when King died. But I can start here."

She opened the journal. Donovan's distinct scrawl leaped out at her, the edges of the words dotted with ink. She choked out a laugh. "He still uses that leaky fountain pen?"

"Yeah. He's had it for years. I can't get him to give it up."

Sam met Susan's eyes. "I gave it to him."

Susan bit her lip. "Oh."

The tension crowded back into the room. Sam shouldn't have said that, d.a.m.n it. What was she doing?

She distracted herself with the opening page of the journal. It was dated I.I.MMXII. The first of January, 2012. All in the elegant scrawl, all in Latin. Sam sighed.

"Do you have a pad of paper I could use? And maybe something stronger than water? It's going to be a long night."