Griff
Sitting at my desk at Langley, I rub my left shoulder. The prosthetic, despite being one of the lightest in the world, weighs me down in ways I can’t explain. My identity shouldn’t be tied to a hunk of metal and silicone, but when I look in the mirror without it, I don’t recognize myself.
Quit lying. You don’t recognize yourself with the damn thing either.
Recovery and rehab stole a solid thirty pounds from me, only ten of which supposedly came from my arm. Every day, I push myself harder in the gym, and every night, I fall into bed exhausted, sore, and frustrated as hell.
In my periphery, three other information officers enter the room, their voices nothing but unintelligible, soft background noise. I only spare them a quick glance. Last time I did a stint behind a desk, I considered them friends. Now?
Mason: “Thank God we don’t have to waste our time scanning all those intel reports from Moldova anymore. Never thought I’d be happy to have a grunt in our midst.”
Terry: “I can’t believe Hargrove hasn’t quit already. This is shit work.”
Oliver: “Cut the guy some slack. He lost everything.”
The text scrolling across the lenses is a blessing most days. Dax Holloway and the developers at his company, Second Sight, gave me the glasses without asking for anything in return. The software recognizes different voices, and my phone lets me assign each one a name. I can even tell the program to ignore certain voices completely.
Unfortunately, now I know exactly what the other officers think of me. I’d chuck the frames across the room, but Dax and his team have done so much for me, the guilt would eat me alive. Not to mention, Dax would kick my ass.
Tapping on the right temple, I send the text scrolling off the lenses so I can focus on the intel reports my senior SSO sent over this morning. I’m lucky. Unbelievably so. Most guys with my injuries would be out on their asses. But someone vouched for me—not that I know who—and Ollie gave me a six-month probationary assignment analyzing field reports. It’s shit work, and he knows it, but putting a guy out in the field who can’t hear anything but the deepest, loudest sounds and isn’t weapons certifiable?
No one at the CIA’s that dumb.
Except maybe Terry.
My phone flashes next to my keyboard, and I glance at the screen.
SMS: Pritchard
Son of a bitch. Austin remembered how to type.
I enter my unlock code to read the full message.
I’ll be in McClean tonight. Dinner?
That’s it? Dinner? After almost six fucking months?
Go to hell. Clearly, you’re busy with your new life. I’m doing just fine without you.
My finger hovers over the Send button. If I never hear from him again, it’ll be too soon. Even if he did convince Dax to set me up with these sweet glasses and got me approved for the best damn prosthetic that isn’t even on the market yet.
Fuck. How much of an asshole am I?
Answer? The biggest. Worse than Terry if I keep acting this way. So I delete the message and start over.
Fine. Be at my apartment at 6 pm. You bring the takeout. I have beer and tequila.
He responds with nothing more than a thumbs up emoji, and I swear under my breath. Tonight is going to be a disaster.
My arm aches by the time I make it home. It usually does, even though the docs say I healed perfectly. A textbook case. Hell, they took enough photos and videos of me—and my arm—to fill a dozen textbooks.
The myoelectric prosthesis, liner, and sleeve I wear over what’s left of my upper arm aren’t uncomfortable. But after five months, even though I can use my left hand to operate my computer and mouse—slowly—lift weights, and carry a bag of groceries, there are days I still can’t stand the damn thing.
Austin’s leaning against the wall next to my door with a pizza box in his hands when I get off the elevator. Tapping the right side of my glasses, I clear my throat. Most days, I don’t talk to a lot of people. My idiot coworkers seem to think since I can’t hear, I can’t speak either.
“Austin.” His hazel eyes hold an odd mix of pain and…peace. “Well, come on in. That pizza better not be cold.”
Unknown: “I’m not that much of an asshole.”
Guess I should program Austin’s voice into the speech-to-text software. Assuming this dinner doesn’t go south in a hurry.
“Dax told you about the glasses?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder. “Since, in your words, you’re ‘not that much of an asshole.’”
“Mick and I went to Boston last weekend. He filled me in.”
Dropping my keys onto the counter, I turn and stare at the man I almost died for. “Mick? Dax said you’d met someone in Mexico. He didn’t say it was a dude.”
Austin rolls his eyes, sets the pizza down, and pulls a pen from the inside pocket of his leather jacket to scribble on the box top. M-i-k-a-y-l-a. Mik.
Oh. With a sigh, I reach for my phone. “Get the beers out of the fridge. I need a minute to program this damn software. And you better have a picture of Mik.”
The corners of Austin’s lips twitch into a half smile as he heads to the kitchen. The man’s gone and fallen in love. Wasn’t sure he had it in him. This should be good. I need some good. Or…at least some normal.
Thank God for the invention of text messaging and swipe keyboards. Programming Austin’s voiceprint and the proper spelling of Mik’s name would be a lot harder if I weren’t already an expert at typing one-handed.
A beer bottle thunks down on the table, the sound faint, but enough that I look up when Austin takes his seat across from me.
What the hell do I say to him now?
He looks as uncertain as I feel, and we pull slices from the box, stare at them, and start in on the beer. I can’t—or won’t—do this conversation watching Austin’s words scroll across my lenses, so I take the glasses off, fold them carefully next to me, and lift my gaze.
“You disappeared on me, man. For five fucking months.”
“I know.” He doesn’t look me in the eyes when he continues, “I thought I was helping. Keeping all of my bullshit far away from anyone it could hurt.”
“Did you ever think maybe the rest of us had bullshit we were dealing with too?” The pizza tastes like cardboard, but I haven’t eaten much today—or any day since the attack, so I down half a piece in two bites while I wait for Austin to get his head out of his ass and say something.
“I wasn’t going to be any help to anyone. Not as low as I was.”
My right hand curls into a fist, and I slam it down on the table before I realize what I’m doing. “As low as you were? I lost my goddamn arm, asshole. Most of my hearing. Want to know how I spend my days now? Chained to a desk while the other officers talk behind my back about how helpless I am.”
Focusing on the bottle of beer, I raise my left arm and close the fingers around the neck. Austin watches, his shoulders relaxing when I manage a long swig.
“I’m not fucking helpless.”
“Never said you were.” He runs a hand through his hair, wincing slightly. “I screwed up. Epically. And I’m sorry.”
Nodding, I kill the rest of the slice of pizza, then look up to find him staring at me.
“Well?”
“What? If you said something while I wasn’t watching you…I missed it. And that’s a shitty thing to do.” This whole dinner was a mistake. Apology or not, there’s too much distance between us.
“It’s your turn,” he says.
I almost choke on my sip of beer. “My turn?”
“To apologize.”
He’s serious. Staring right at me with an I’m the boss and don’t you forget it look.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
Austin pulls out his phone, scrolls for a moment, and slides the device across the table. My last email to him glows on the screen.
I owe you an apology.
Son of a bitch.
“You’re seriously going to hassle me about that?” Sending the phone back to him with a little more force than necessary, I shake my head. “Fine. I’m sorry I went off on you after you left me to deal with all this shit on my own. Happy now?”
Sadness lingers in his eyes. “I made a fuck-ton of mistakes this past year. Ignored Trevor, Dani, everyone at Second Sight and Hidden Agenda—”
I’m not sure I hear him correctly and hold up my hand while I steal a quick glance at my phone to check the transcript. “Hidden Agenda?”
“Dax has a brother. Well, no. They’re not related. But the two of them…they’re family. Ryker runs Hidden Agenda, a Kandahar firm out in Seattle,” Austin explains.
Kandahar? What the hell? I’m tired of lipreading—it’s like trying to make sense of a textbook you’re staring at through a window screen—so I don the glasses and realize he’s talking about a K&R—kidnap and ransom—firm. Dax’s team really did program this software with everything I needed to know.
“Do I rate a spot on that list?” I ask.
“Fuck. Of course you do.” Austin pushes to his feet and heads for the sliding glass door leading out to my balcony. “Those glasses have a hell of a range, right?”
“I can still see what you’re saying. Go on.” If the man needs his space, I’ll give it to him. Even though I want to grab him and shake free whatever he’s struggling to admit.
“When I came back from Mexico with Mik, I needed help. She almost died down there, Griff.” His hands are clenched into fists at his sides, and though I can’t hear the anguish in his voice, it’s in his body language. The jerky movement of his back as he struggles to keep his breathing measured. “I love her.” Turning, he meets my gaze. “She’s my everything, and a group of asshole poachers threw her off a mountain.”
“Fuck. Austin, I didn’t know…” Carefully gathering up both beers, I meet him at the door, and he accepts his bottle, then downs the whole thing in three gulps. The man’s in pain, and right now, it doesn’t matter that I am too.
“Because I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone until I had no choice. Until they blew up her trailer in Mexico, almost killed her grad students, and tried to murder both of us. I called Trev, and he told Dax, and when we got back to Edgewater, Dax gave me one of his guys on 24x7 surveillance. And they still came after Mik at the Smithsonian. If she wasn’t the smartest woman I’ve ever met—she would have died with me twenty feet away from her.”
His eyes shimmer, like he’s barely keeping it together, and I sling my good arm around his shoulders. “We’re going to need more beer. And I hope you told Mik you weren’t driving home tonight.”
The gratitude in his eyes makes me think perhaps, I’m not a total fuck-up. Even if I can’t hear, can’t shoot, can’t do my job the way I used to, I’m alive, and maybe I matter to someone.
A little after 10:00 p.m., I remove my prosthetic arm and sink into the recliner with Austin across from me. He tries not to stare at the end of my stump poking out from the sleeve of my Polo shirt, but after a few minutes, I lean forward. “My eyes are up here, asshole.”
“I didn’t mean…fuck.”
Holding a straight face for even thirty seconds is damn near impossible, and I burst out laughing. A moment later, Austin joins in, though his expression is strained.
“You can look, man.” Tugging my sleeve higher, I flex the remaining muscles. “Cutting edge shit you hooked me up with. I can even feel what I’m touching. Kind of. Hot, cold, hard, soft. That sort of thing.”
“The Army, Navy, and Air Force all had an…uh…hand in the development of that tech,” Austin says. “Made sense you should get the first commercially available model.”
It takes me a minute to process his words. “The first…? Austin—”
He shrugs. “I couldn’t help you through whatever shit you were dealing with. Turning you into the bionic man seemed like the next best thing.”
His grin eases the lines of strain around his eyes. This might be the first time I’ve ever seen the guy truly relaxed.
Who am I kidding? Even relaxed, he hasn’t taken off his shoes or loosened the top button on his Henley. “You do realize you’re a civilian now, right?” I ask. “Has your back even touched the couch?”
“Once.” Austin chuckles and drapes his arm over the rear cushion. “Twice, now. I’m not…good at relaxing.”
“No shit. I thought I was bad.”
“You were.” His gaze shifts, focusing on his boots, and I sit up a little straighter. “I heard a little about it.”
“From who?” I’m doing my best to sound as angry as I feel, but I have no fucking clue if I’m pulling it off. “You mean to tell me you checked up on me but couldn’t be bothered to actually contact me?”
My bicep aches from the long day, and I head to the kitchen for an ice pack. Fuck. I wish I could drink myself into oblivion, but all that’ll get me is a killer hangover and even more problems.
When I turn around, Austin’s only inches away, his arm outstretched like he was about to clap me on the shoulder. I don’t think. Instinct has me sweeping my leg out to catch him behind the ankles as I jab my right fist into his gut.
He goes down—hard enough I can hear the thud—before I realize what I’ve done. “For fuck’s sake, Austin. Don’t sneak up on a guy who can’t hear you coming.”
“Learned…that lesson. Thanks.” He coughs a couple of times, and apparently, I can still throw a punch under the right circumstances. “You should have Dax train you how to fight,” he says as he grasps my offered hand and lets me pull him to his feet. “That jab has some serious promise.”
Any normal person would laugh at the idea of a blind man teaching a one-armed mostly deaf man how to fight. But given what I’ve seen Dax do? He’s probably got a couple MMA titles no one knows about.
Beeping.
The software programmed into my glasses doesn’t just translate voices. It also alerts me to ambient sounds around me. Like the beeping of Austin’s phone. He pulls it out of his pocket, and almost immediately, smiles and taps the screen. “Hey, sweetheart.” There’s a pause, and then he continues, “Yeah. I’ll call a car. You go to bed. I’ll be there before midnight. I love you.”
“A car?” I ask.
“I was pretty sure this night was going to require alcohol. I have a car service on standby. Mik…she still has nightmares, and…”
“Call ‘em. Go home to her. I get it.”
All too well. I can go a week or two between my bad nights now, but when they hit? They’re not pretty.
“Not yet.” He leans against the kitchen wall across from me while I lay the ice pack over the scarred end of my arm. “Of course I checked up on you.” At my raised brows, he blows out a breath. “Seriously, man. You had to know when the Johns Hopkins folks reached out.”
“I knew you’d arranged things. Didn’t know you kept tabs.” Is this new bit of information supposed to make me feel better? Or worse?
“You got hurt because of me, Griff. Because of my fuckup with Clarke. Because I didn’t overrule the Ambassador and insist we find another route. Because I didn’t see that fucking wall about to collapse. So yeah. I checked up on you. Anything that I could do to help I was going to do.”
“Except talk to me.” The words sting my throat and eyes, and I’m so fucking done with feeling this way. Like I’m a broken tin soldier no one wants around anymore. Rusted and dented and missing some of its parts, but with enough battery life to run for years.
Austin’s shoulders heave, and he stares down at me. He’s got three inches on me, which wouldn’t be much if I didn’t feel about a foot tall at the moment. “That’s why I came tonight. To try to atone for my mistakes. To let you know I’m back. Not just physically, but truly back. And…to offer you a job.”