“You say you met him?”

“Yeah, I did. Jade’s mom was in a car accident, and he was the driver. He walked away unscathed, but Jade’s mother’s airbag didn’t deploy, and she was badly injured.”

“My goodness, will she be okay?”

“They think so. She’s unconscious most of the time now, but the prognosis is good.”

“Well, that’s good at least. Let me ask you, Talon. Did you feel any hint of recognition when you met this man?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t recognize any of them if I saw them on the street. They were always masked. The only thing I remember about the worst one is that he had that tattoo on his left forearm and he had brown eyes.”

“And this Nico, did he have brown eyes?”

I closed my eyes. “I wasn’t looking that closely. But I think he did. And Jade thinks he has brown eyes. He has a Mediterranean look, you know, olive skin and black hair. So they were most likely brown.”

“Perhaps you should pursue this, Talon,” Dr. Carmichael said. “It could be a shot in the dark, but at least it’s a shot.”

“I have every intention of pursuing it. But the guy seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.” And so had Jade’s boss. Could there possibly be any relationship between the two?

“I wonder…”

“What?”

“You met him. You told him your name, right?”

“Either I did or Jade did. I can’t remember.”

“Hmm, I don’t know, Talon. It could be a coincidence that he disappeared after meeting you, or it could be that meeting you sent him into hiding.”

God. This was all too much for me right now. Was it truly possible that I had found one of my abductors? Only to have him disappear? My mind wasn’t ready to deal with this, so I did the only thing I could at the moment. I changed the subject.

“Jade asked me to stay the night with her last night.” I gripped those damned hunter-green chair arms.

“And?” Dr. Carmichael said.

“And I couldn’t. You know why.”

“Did you want to?”

“Of course. More than anything.” And that was definitely the truth. I wanted to be with her more than anything. I never wanted to let her out of my sight. I wanted to protect her with everything that I was. But I knew I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Before I could protect her, I had to heal myself.

“When do you think you’ll be able to spend the night with her?”

“I don’t know. What if I never can?”

Dr. Carmichael smiled. “Talon, you will be able to. We will work and get you through this, and one day, you will be able to spend the night with the woman you love.”

I hoped with all my heart she was right.

“I’d like to suggest something to talk about for today,” she said.

That was fine with me. It saved me from having to figure out something to talk about. “Sure, what do you want to talk about?”

She handed me a piece of paper. “This.”

It was a photocopy of a news article from the Snow Creek Daily. “Local Hero Comes Home.” Damn. But I figured we’d have to talk about this sooner or later. I scanned through the article, my nerves on edge.

 

Local resident and Award of Honor recipient Talon Steel returned home to Snow Creek this past week. Talon entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant and quickly gained the rank of first lieutenant and then captain due to his hard work and heroism. He was deployed first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. He received the Award of Honor from the governor of Colorado for making six death-defying forays into a killing zone to save six American troops. Captain Steel was thirty-two years old at the time of his return. He was granted an honorable discharge.

“Captain Steel is a hero to us all and a great example of a model citizen of Colorado,” said the lieutenant governor. “We are proud to have him home to our great state.”

 

I stopped reading but glanced at the last line.

Captain Steel made only one comment: “I didn’t do it to be a hero.”

I let out a sigh. “All right. I figured you’d find this eventually.”

“This is amazing. You truly were a hero.”

Hero. There was that word again. People loved to throw it in my face, most notably my little brother. I wasn’t a hero. I sure as hell didn’t feel like one.

“How does this article make you feel, Talon?”

Why not admit the truth? “It makes me feel like a fake, a fraud. I’m no hero.”

“I beg to differ. You saved six soldiers. That equals a hero in my eyes. In most other people’s eyes as well.”

“Let me tell you just how much of a hero I was that day.” I clenched the armchair. “I went back in and saved all of those people because I was hoping to get my ass shot off myself.”

She didn’t bat an eye. “Really? Let’s talk about that a little bit. Why were you trying to get killed?”

“Because I couldn’t deal with my life. Is that any surprise?”

“No, it’s not a surprise, but if you wanted to die so badly, why didn’t you just take your life?”

A question I’d pondered more than once. “I don’t know. I thought about it, but something stopped me.”

“Your will to survive. The human instinct for survival is strong.”

I closed my eyes and thought about things, things that happened back during that horrible time. How I’d said those awful words they’d forced me to say just so they wouldn’t kill me. My will to survive…

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I never thought I truly wanted to live until recently. The fact that I was held captive, and they threatened to kill me if I didn’t do something—something horrible. I always did it. And I hated myself for it.”

“But you did it to survive.”

I grasped my jawline, my stubble scraping my fingers. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I spent most of that time wishing I were dead. So why did I want to survive? Why did I do what they made me do in order to survive?”

“What kind of things did they make you do?”

Admitting this would be torture. But I had determined to get through this. “A lot of times, they made me tell them that I…” I gulped, swallowing back the nausea that threatened. “I liked what they were doing to me.” My knuckles were white with tension as I gripped the armchair.