“Janine, it’s me,” Ben called softly as he let himself into the house.
His sister appeared in the doorway of her office. “I see you’re finally home.” A faint smile lurked around her lips.
“Are you laughing at me?” He could tell she was at least mildly amused.
“Perhaps,” she answered and he appreciated her serenity.
“How’s the former Michael Lamont?”
Janine’s face was in shadow, but he saw her stir slightly. “Where did you get that name?”
“We worked with him a few months ago. I was pretty sure he’s the operative who “died” last week.”
She stared at him for a few moments. “When I left on Thursday, he was rallying just as one would expect from a secret operative.” She shrugged.
“You left him in critical condition?”
“Yes. He’s in the care of a very revered and trusted doctor. I’d trust that doctor with my care.”
Ben nodded. “I hope he pulls through.”
“Did you and your team find the traitor?” Her voice was mild, but since she trusted him with classified information, he decided to offer her some peace of mind.
“What makes you think we went after the traitor?” That didn’t stop him from teasing her though.
She laughed softly. “Remember, I know Admiral O’Riley. He wouldn’t leave a stone as huge as a traitor in his midst unturned. Especially if that traitor was a threat to one of his SEAL teams. And who ‘killed’ one of his best agents.”
“How well do you know Admiral O’Riley?” Ben kept his own voice soft, but he expected she would hedge.
“I served a tour with him in Kuwait.” Her shrug was casual. He had to admit she was very good. Nothing in her body language gave away her unease, but he felt sure it was there, he could feel the emotion undulating between them.
“But you knew him long before then, Janine.” He didn’t even form a question, because he knew O’Riley and Janine’s relationship predated her first tour of Kuwait.
“Why do you want to know this information?”
“You’re my sister,” he said and his heart grew at that news. “I want to know everything there is to know about you. I know O’Riley pretty well myself. But I also know his enemies. And he’s an admiral, so he’s made more than a few. I’d like to know how you figure into that.”
“What do his enemies have to do with me?”
He let the silence lengthen before he answered. She didn’t rush to fill it, and his respect for her grew again. “His enemies are also his teams’ enemies.”
“Why do you suspect I’m on some team?” Janine danced around the question as adeptly as he expected her to. There was some interest in her voice, but no real alarm.
“You recognized one of his top secret operatives in the field. I have enough knowledge to know he didn’t tell you who he was. But you figured it out. Only someone trained could recognize him.”
She sighed and indicated he follow her. Janine moved into her office and sank gracefully into the chair she had probably vacated when he entered the house.
“You don’t have to tell me military secrets. You know I wouldn’t ask that. Nor could I. I have my own secrets.”
“Technically I am retired. So, your knowing that I was a part of a Special Operations team isn’t likely to get you killed. Although, Ben, it might.” Her gentle emphasis on the might should have alarmed him, but it didn’t. Like he told her, he had secrets too. Danger was a part of their business. Knowing Janine shared in that only deepened his connection to her.
“I know a lot of things that could get me killed. I’ve had a few other run-ins with the men responsible for Lamont’s injuries.” He didn’t elaborate, but then he didn’t need to. She could fill in the blanks.
“Lamont was responsible for his own injuries. Yes, he was after those men, but he set that bomb. He simply didn’t get out of the way in time.”
His eyes widened. “Lamont set that bomb?” He still couldn’t believe it when she confirmed the statement with a brisk nod. “He killed all those terrorists? Single-handedly?”
She nodded again. His new knowledge was reflected in her eyes.
He couldn’t stay seated, so he rose to his feet and paced as he thought of the information she had supplied. “Janine, for a man to do that...”
“Yes, I know. He set the bomb up so it’d look like they had done so, hoping to make the organization collapse.” She stared hard at him. She deserved any new information, so he nodded, telling her without words that Lamont had accomplished what he set out to do. “However, when the bomb went off, he wasn’t out of the building yet. He’s not certain why the bomb went off when it did, because he calculated that he should have had at least five more minutes.”
“Bombs are tricky, and even the best laid ones can surprise you.” All SEALs understood that while fun, explosives were to be treated with respect.
“That’s what must have happened to Lamont. He was surprised by that bomb detonating. I wonder if the traitor had something to do with him getting caught in the backlash.”
“Maybe. Was the traitor there that night?”
Janine shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if Lamont even remembers everything that happened before the bomb exploded. Most likely he won’t recover that part of his memory.”
“He took an injury to the head?”
She shook her head. “Mainly his chest, but the shrapnel managed to hit nearly every other part of him. He was pretty beat up when he came in. That he survived even long enough to tell me about the traitor and that you were in danger was impressive.”
He heard the intensity in her voice and swung around to watch her. Did Janine have feelings for Michael Lamont? That was a weird thought. “And?”
“I’m fairly certain he’ll live. He’ll walk and talk just fine. No problem. But I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to be an operative again.”
“I’d heard rumors that this was his last assignment anyway.”
She turned to stare at him now. Her amber eyes glowed with a ferocious light. He could now feel the same intensity he had heard earlier. “His last?”
“I’d heard from reliable sources he was tired of the operative work. Told his superiors this was his last job.”
“But you never verified that information?”
He shrugged. “How could I?”
She smiled. “True. You’d have had to ask him or his superiors, and that could prove difficult. But you do seem to know a lot about a man who’s supposed to be a big secret.”
“Sure, but so is my team. We know a little about him, he probably knows a little about us. If you worked on his team why wouldn’t you have heard those same rumors?”
She sighed. “I worked on his team, but I didn’t know his name or anything about him, other than some of his skills and weaknesses. I didn’t know the identities of anyone else on the team. And still don’t.”
That sounded like an odd way to be a team member. “Why?”
“Because in the event of capture, they couldn’t beat information out of me I didn’t have.”
She said it so mildly, so calmly, as though she participated in a tea party, rather than a discussion about being beaten or tortured for government secrets. He must have blocked out the danger of her assignment. He shouldn’t have, because of his own skills. But this information shocked him.
He couldn’t help but gape at her. “Why would you agree to something like that?” He heard his voice rise with that question. He sounded like an over-bearing big brother – pretty much how he felt at the moment.
“I was qualified.” She was so matter of fact it made his back teeth grind together.
“You’re a woman.” Why he felt compelled to point that out he wasn’t sure. One of her eyebrows rose in a superior manner. He could have kicked himself. He knew she was a woman, she certainly knew she was a woman. But she was also his little sister, and he couldn’t handle the thought of her in danger.
“So?” She shrugged. “I’ve been beaten before.”
His mouth dropped open. He could feel it. But how to close his mouth escaped him at the moment. The commander in him was yelling questions too fast for him to comprehend, while the big brother in him was appalled.
“What?” His jaw clenched several times before he managed even that word.
She nodded, and he saw she didn’t meet his eyes. “When our mother died, there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go but to an uncle. The whole village knew he was a drunkard, but he was family. I had to go there. That was the law.”
“You were raised by a drunken uncle?”
She nodded.
“How old were you?”
“I was five when I went to live with him.”
“How soon before he began beating you?” He couldn’t believe he was carrying on this conversation with Janine in such a reserved, civil manner. The urge to yell at the injustice proved strong. He’d been adopted into a loving, caring, and safe home. She’d been abused.
“I think within the week.”
“Within the week? You were five?” His voice rose again. Slow down, he ordered himself.
“Yes.” He noticed her island cadence thicken into full lilting softness.
“There was nothing anyone could do to help you?”
“Some of the neighbor ladies helped me when they could, but their homes weren’t much safer. Most of the men had lost their jobs, so they turned to drink. Many of them were violent. I wasn’t the only one who was beaten. It was a way of life, Ben.”
“A way of life? To be hit?” He couldn’t believe the differences in their childhoods. Guilt would have wracked him if he wasn’t so numb.
Her shrug was casual. “I didn’t know any differently. And I learned to give him no satisfaction.”
“What does that mean?” He thought he’d ask now, while he had little to no feeling.
“I refused to cry out. I refused to beg for mercy. He seemed to like when I reacted, so I didn’t. By not saying or doing anything, sometimes it made him angrier, but it made me feel better.” She still wouldn’t meet his eyes. But the island intonation was very strong. A sure sign she was distressed. Yet he couldn’t seem to break their conversation off. He needed to know the entire story.
“How did you do it?”
“I don’t know.” Another casual shrug. “He came to hate me, I think. Even when he wasn’t drunk, I think he hated me, because I wouldn’t react to any of his hits or jibes. But he did provide for me. I can’t fault him for that.”
“You can’t fault him for providing for you? After he beat you?” Disbelief and denial shot like a lighting strike through him.
“He didn’t sell me into prostitution as some of the girls’ own fathers did.”
He closed his eyes, wondering if he would have grown as strong as his sister seemed to have done if their mother hadn’t put him up for adoption. Janine had seen and known unbearable atrocities as a child and teenager, but she grew into the strong and confident woman seated before him. It was a wonder she hadn’t turned to alcohol or drugs.
“How did you escape?”
“I studied hard. I was determined to catch the eye of some of the missionaries who came to Tolaliel. One of the women helped me gain a scholarship in Atlanta.”
“What happened?”
“I left the island at age seventeen and never looked back.”
“What happened to the uncle?” He couldn’t call the man their uncle, since none of the men who bore that name during his childhood had been anything but loving and protective.
“I received word that he contracted a disease and passed.”
“I’m sorry.” But the apology didn’t appease his guilt.
She glanced sharply at him. “For what?”
“For your childhood.”
“Why should you apologize?”
“Because mine was perfect. I couldn’t have had a better one if I’d asked.”
“That’s not your fault. It’s not your doing, either. I’m glad you could escape. My mother tried to live so she could raise me, and I know she loved me very much. Sometimes I could remember her arms around me in love, and I’d go to sleep after being scared or beaten with that image.”
He took some comfort in that. If Janine remembered her mother’s love, then she had something to comfort her. He rarely wondered why his mother had given him up through the years – because he was a Morrison, he was meant to be Ian and Heather Morrison’s son. Still, sometimes in the dark of the night, he wondered.
“Yes. I knew that, and her love helped me to live the next day.”
How could he make up for the difference in their childhoods?
“You can’t make up for our childhoods, nor should you, Ben. I’m not upset about what I’ve been through.” She gave an honest smile that still wrenched his heart. “Think about it. When you conquer something in childhood, you don’t fear it in adulthood.”
And what she was trying to say finally clicked. “So you offered to be a part of this special team because you knew you could handle being beaten?” He thought he sounded incredulous, but then, that’s exactly how he felt. This amazing woman had volunteered for a difficult, horrific assignment, because she knew she could handle it. How many men had he encountered who had flunked that part of their jobs? More than he could count. Yet his own sister...
“I was approached about participating. I applied, passed the tests, and was given a slot.”
She might have been discussing the weather, so casual was her statement, but being a SEAL, he had a good idea what she had endured to obtain her “slot”. She’d “passed” being beaten. With what she just told him, she probably blew their socks off. Here was a woman, a female they could beat, who wouldn’t utter a sound. Very few people could claim such skills.
Yet, staring into those amber depths, he could see she held no bitterness. Her eyes were topaz pools with amazing facets, but her serenity wasn’t manufactured. Janine had earned that peace within herself.
Here was a woman who had probably been to the depths of despair and pain, yet she had triumphed through those experiences. And was likely a better person for her childhood. When most would have become bitter or angry, Janine showed the signs of tranquility associated with monks.
“How long have you been on Lamont’s team?”
“Who said I was on his team?” She looked genuinely confused, but he figured that was a ploy. Apparently revealing such information would prove dangerous, so she played dumb.
“Sorry. How long were you on one of these teams?”
“Five years.”
He nodded. Five years was a long time, but not unheard of.
“Remember, I’m retired now. I’m just a surgeon in the Hershey Medical Center emergency room. Of which I’m quite happy about.”
“You like your new job?”
“Very much. The hospital is a top one in the nation, and there are a lot of interesting and dynamic things happening there. I love the town, too.”
“And your new family?”
She smiled, and he saw tears well in her eyes. “Especially my new family.”
He held his arms open and his sister entered them with a soft hiccup. How he’d been so lucky as to share a parent or two with this woman, he didn’t know. But he was very grateful for the amazing women in his life.
Someone was looking out for him. He needed to remember his luck might not hold out.
He went to sleep that night with Janine’s revelations weighing heavily on his mind. She had suffered. He still didn’t want to believe the vast differences in their childhoods, but he could look forward to their future.
A future that included his sister and Treeny. Hopefully Treeny planned to share her future with him.
Thinking of Treeny and their relationship made his heart squeeze. A union he had waited a long time for. Both women were important to him. When he leaned back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, he was glad for Janine’s revelations and his new relationship with Treeny. But he did wonder. With both Treeny and Janine here did he owe them a lot more of his time? Shouldn’t they be more important to him than his job?