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R ebecca flew to New York with her parents.

Their personal plane was getting serviced, so they flew commercial.

It was a horrible flight. Even though they flew first class, which offered her a suite area on Delta One, it wasn’t like traveling on the family plane.

When she was given permission to do so, she closed the little door that defined her suite, lay her head on her pillow, and cried for the duration of the flight.

Her mother had once said that life was filled with good, bad, and so-so, but she’d never had to navigate anything like this.

Rebecca thought that when Mitch might marry someone else, her life was over.

This was so much worse than she had ever thought possible.

There was no chance he would come to his senses and find her.

No, he no longer existed on this planet.

It was a loneliness like nothing she had ever felt.

Was she only supposed to get a brief taste of happiness, and that was it? She had been married only a few weeks, and now she was officially a widow. How did that happen?

Several times during the flight, when she was supposed to be asleep, she saw her mother looking over the partition to see if she was awake.

Each time, she smiled up at her mother, who blew her a kiss.

Rebecca’s life, which had been so ravishingly happy up in the last few weeks, had become a scattered trailer park after a destructive twister.

And nothing short of Mitch could restore it to its prior happiness. How was she going to go on?

She had come up with a plan, but no one liked it.

“Why on Earth would you want to do that? I could see New York. You have girlfriends in New York, and we could easily put your old apartment back together there, but I think in your condition, you should stay close,” her mother said when Rebecca shared the plans she had decided on the night after they had arrived home in Portland. Her parents just stared at her.

Her mother had paid someone to pack up her New York apartment.

The boxes and furniture had been driven across the country to Portland while she had been in London.

All the possessions had been unloaded and set up in another suite on the same floor her parents occupied at the Stark International Hotel in Portland.

She had asked her mother to do it, but now she realized she no longer had a home unless she wanted to move into the suite. Instead, another idea had formed.

“What is wrong with my plans?” she asked.

“Your family is in Portland,” her father said as he joined the conversation, “And yet you want to move three hours from here. Are you running away from home?”

“I’m running to the family beach house. A place I’ve been going for years. Is that really running away? I’m just asking to borrow your house.”

“It is in the middle of nowhere,” her father said.

“It is in the middle of a small community,” Rebecca argued.

“We are just very worried about you, Rebecca. If you are three hours away, who will you call if there is an emergency? Don’t you see you are putting yourself in danger?” her mother asked. “And you have the baby to think about.”

“I’m well aware of my baby, Mother. I need this baby like I’ve never needed anything.

I’m putting myself in time out,” Rebecca said, and when they said nothing, she continued.

“Look, if you don’t want me to use the family beach house, I’ll buy one.

Thanks to your hard work in starting a very large hotel chain, I can buy a little place at the beach this afternoon if I want to.

It is what I’m going to do. Living in a big city, well, that is a problem for me.

Too many people, too many questions. I just want to hide for a bit.

Surely you can understand that? I want to go where there isn’t news, where no one knows me.

I want to disappear and come to grips with what I’ve lost. Do either of you understand that?

I loved Mitch for ten years. I don’t know what it is to be an adult and not be in love with Mitch.

I’m beside myself with grief, and I don’t know who I am without him in my world. ”

“I guess we just didn’t know how long you and Mitch were involved,” her father said, giving a glance to her mother.

“I’ve had a crush on him since I was fourteen.

We didn’t get involved until I was eighteen, and he was scared of your reaction.

He said I was too young, but I convinced him to be my first lover.

I kind of put him in a no-win position. I told him if he wouldn’t have sex with me, I’d get drunk at a frat party and sleep with someone I met that night.

I didn’t even care if I knew their last name.

” Why was she telling them this? She wanted them to know that they had loved each other for a very long time.

“Oh my God, Rebecca. I can’t listen to this,” her father said. “I thought we raised a lady. How could you put him in that position? My god, what else are we to learn about our daughter?”

She ignored his reaction. She didn’t have time for his drama when she had so much of her own to deal with.

“What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t a casual thing.

We were deeply in love with each other for a very long time.

If he hadn’t been so worried about what you thought, we might have had six years together.

Instead, I had a few weeks of happiness.

I regret I didn’t stand up for myself and for Mitch. ”

“So, this is our fault that our twenty-four-year-old daughter is pregnant and a widow?” her father said, his jaw setting in an ugly line.

“Okay, let’s all take it down a notch. We don’t need to be doing this to each other. Let’s stay in the present. We all loved Mitch, but I understand your need to get away from everything for a bit,” her mother said, trying to calm them all down. “This is a terrible time.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Rebecca said.

“And for the record, Gary, I would feel the same way if you were taken from me,” Victoria said to her husband as she put a hand on his arm and gently rubbed it. He soon warmed up and gave his wife a tentative smile.

Then he said, “I love you, Vicki.”

“Sometimes, I wonder,” she teased.

Rebecca was always happy her parents were so in love, but seeing it today hurt. She and Mitch would not have any of those intimate moments in the future.

Victoria wrapped an arm around Rebecca.

“Darling,” she said, addressing Rebecca. “I’ll get you the keys and the alarm code to the beach house. Would you like me to send someone down to Yachats and stock the fridge, maybe clean up the place a bit?”

“No thanks, Mom. I can do it all myself. I just need to buy a car, and I’ll be on my way tomorrow morning.”

“You could take a hotel car,” Victoria offered.

“A black Mercedes with a Stark something license plate? In Yachats? No thanks. I’ll buy one. I want something of my own that is a little less recognizable.”

Victoria turned her attention to her husband. “If either one of us had lost the other, we’d feel the same way.”

“I’m sorry, Rebecca,” her father said. “It is just that you are so young. You are still my little girl.”

“I’m sorry too, Dad,” Rebecca said.

“You know, I feel I need to say this to reassure you. In time, you’ll meet someone else,” he said. “Women like you do not spend their lives alone. And your baby deserves a father.”

Rebecca shook her head and turned away from her father.

“Dad, not exactly the time or the place. Mom, I think I want to go to the guest room and not talk to Dad for a few days or weeks. Maybe you can find his sensitivity gene. He obviously lost his.” The thought of going to the suite that held her things wasn’t anything she could bear at the moment.

“Forgive him. He says stupid things when he doesn’t know what to say,” Victoria said as she looked pointedly at her husband.

He rolled his eyes, and Victoria punched him in the arm, hard.

“Ouch, Vicki,” he said.

“Be glad I didn’t show you how angry I really am,” she replied.

Rebecca knew her parents were trying to help, but nothing anyone could say would really help her at this time. The only thing that consoled her was the thought of the baby. She had thought of not telling Mitch until he returned from Iraq. Thank goodness she hadn’t waited.

***Mitch***

He opened his eyes for the soft-spoken doctor who touched his hand gently.

“Welcome back, Mr. Wilder.”

The man was small and bald, and reminded him of his orthodontist from childhood, Dr. Klein, except that he was wearing fatigues and looked like he might like to kill people for the heck of it.

“Hello, sir,” Mitch said, thinking that paying the man a little respect wasn’t a bad idea.

“You have a broken leg, a concussion, and potentially a lung injury,” the man said in perfect, if not heavily accented, English. Where was he? Was he still in Iraq?

“Thank you for taking care of me.” He was confused and foggy. It was like the worst bender he’d ever had with Alex times ten and add pain.

“When you can walk, when I’ve determined you won’t die, they will move you to different accommodations,” the doctor said. Mitch thought this guy needed to work on his bedside manner. He might die?

“Where am I?”

“That is not your concern, Mr. Wilder. We just want to make sure you will live. Then we will parade you in front of those capitalists who will pay for your safe return. Then, if they do what they are supposed to and you stay alive, our business will be done.”

Done? Was that going to end well for him? He didn’t think so. He’d been kidnapped and was being held for ransom? Well, he might not be in Iraq, but he was still in the Middle East. Did anyone know he was there? What happened? Rebecca? How long ago had he seen her?

The man that Mitch came to think of as Dr. Klein turned his back and walked away.

He was alone in a tent, on a cot. It was stiflingly hot, and he was sweating, but thankfully, his fever had broken.

It probably made him more alert, but he was far from thinking clearly.

Glancing down at his leg, he was first of all happy to see it was still there.

He saw the crude splint meant to keep it straight.

Great. One blood clot from the break just needed to break free and run to his heart or his lungs, and he was a goner.

The other leg was concerning for a different reason. It had a shackle on it. Did they really think he’d try to escape? He was in no condition to try something like that today.

He heard the wind start up, and it blew through the tent with ferocity. No wonder he felt grit everywhere. It was sand. He was definitely in the desert. Where the hell were they?

The rest of his body was a roadmap of bruises. Heck, he had stitches on his arm and on his shoulder. He remembered getting none of them, but they weren’t fresh. They were at least five or six days old.

He was alone in the space and was indeed on a cot. He still wore part of the black shirt from Donovan and part of the matching pants. He figured parts had been ripped away to render aid. Did that mean that his left side was basically uninjured? It didn’t feel like it.

The ground was covered with battered canvas, sand and unknown debris that was partly dried mud, partly dead branch that had probably blown in and dirty dressings that had no doubt come from him.

He tried not to think of what kind of infection might be settling into his body, just waiting to attack and finish him off.

A battered bottle of water was sitting on a little table next to him.

With stiff fingers, he grabbed for it, although it felt heavier than it should.

The action showed just how weak he was. He broke the seal and drank several long sips from the bottle and tried not to swallow the whole thing at once.

It hit his stomach like a sledgehammer, and he had to close his eyes and concentrate on keeping it in his body.

A glint caught his eye. His wedding ring was still on his left hand where Rebecca had placed it when they got married. It no longer looked new. The platinum was scratched and battered. He knew what it would take to damage platinum, and it gave him pause.

“I love you, Bex. You were so right,” he said aloud, wondering if he’d ever see her again. Did she know he had been captured? Did she know he was alive? If they killed him, would they return his body to her? What about the baby they had conceived? He had loved her for as long as he could remember.