Page 103 of Keeping Guard
Eight months later...
“I do.”
The minister turned from Jack to Nichole. “Do you, Nichole Masters, take this man to be your lawfully wedded...”
Noah tuned out as his eyes locked on Peyton standing on the other side of Nichole, and he smiled at the woman now wearing his engagement ring. In the near future it would be them exchanging vows. He shifted his gaze back to Jack and Nichole, and when the minister nodded at him, he handed his best friend Nichole’s wedding band.
His attention returned to Peyton. How had he gotten so lucky? She was everything he hadn’t known to wish for. Things were going unbelievably well. Their relationship was stronger than ever. A big part of that was thanks to his head doc. Dr. Meadows had helped him learn how to forgive himself, and for that, she would always have his gratitude.
As for the other things that were good, Peyton’s father was in remission, her ex was out of her life for good, having been found guilty to the charges against him, and he and Jack had started construction on Operation Warrior Center. Jack had accepted Noah’s offer to invest in the center, so he was now a partner instead of an employee.
The wedding was taking place on the land he and Jack had bought for their new venture. A white trellis with pink roses woven through the slats had been erected next to the river that flowed through the sixty acres.
The guest list had been kept small, only family and close friends. Rachel, Nichole’s friend, had flown in for the ceremony, serving as the maid of honor. And, of course, the dogs were here, obediently sitting where Jack had commanded them to park their butts. Dakota, Rambo, Maggie May, and Lucky formed a semicircle in front of the bride and groom, their gazes fixed on the minister as if soaking in his every word. How Jack got these dogs—any dogs—to obey the way they did still amazed him.
Jack’s only disappointment was that their former SEAL team was on deployment and unable to attend his wedding. The team had pooled their money and sent Noah a thousand bucks to cover the cost of Jack’s bachelor party with the instructions to get him good and drunk and then send them pictures. Jack had refused to get wasted and Noah wasn’t about to push him. However, Jack had faked being drunk and Noah had emailed the team some pretty funny photos.
As it had all during the ceremony, his gaze returned to Peyton. She was Nichole’s only bridesmaid. He smiled again, thinking about how excited Peyton had been when Nichole had asked. She and Rachel had bonded over their duties as maid of honor and bridesmaid. His girl had been like a kid in a candy store, and he’d been thoroughly amused by her excitement and determination to help make Nichole’s wedding perfect. He was more than ready for his own wedding, though.
Life was good.
Afghanistan
As he had each time he’d been interrogated by his Taliban captors, Dallas Manning answered their questions as required by the military’s Code of Conduct and the Geneva Conventions: name, rank, service number, and date of birth. Nothing more, nothing less.
For his insolence, his captors broke another finger. That made three now. On the positive side, he still had seven that worked. Back in his cell, he tore another strip from his tattered and filthy navy-issued T-shirt and wrapped the finger as tightly as possible.
The burns worried him more than the broken fingers. Plus, they hurt like a son of a bitch. He used a little of his precious water—he was only given a cup a day—and dirt from the floor to make mud. He couldn’t reach some of the burns on his back, but on the ones he could and on the ones on his arms and legs, he covered with a layer of the mud to keep the sand flies out of the open wounds.
When he finished his doctoring, he slid his index finger along the dirt floor, then lifted the paper-thin pallet and marked another day. He stared at the dirt lines. Nine days of hell on earth. When he’d first been thrown into the cell, he’d marked the days on the wall with a line of smudged dirt. The bad guys hadn’t liked that and had punished him. They wanted him to lose track of the days, to lose hope that his team would find him.
Well, to hell with them. He would never lose hope that his team was not only looking for him, but that they would find him. They would. It was just a question of how long. What his mental state would be, that was the question. The assholes were getting entirely too creative in devising ways to torture him.
He was the Ghost. He sure wished he was literally his call sign so he could float through the walls, right out of this hell hole. As he did at the end of each day, he dropped to the floor and did one-arm push-ups while repeating his name, rank, service number, and birthdate over and over until his trembling arms couldn’t take any more. It was worrisome that the number was fewer each day.
Lack of sufficient food and water, the tortures, and the interrupted sleep each night—the bastards loved waking him up every twenty to thirty minutes—were taking a serious toll on both his body and mind. There wasn’t much he could do about that other than to try to stay strong with the exercises, but he absolutely had to keep his mind sharp. He couldn’t allow himself to go to that dark place his brain seemed to want to travel to the last few days.
As he did each night, he closed his eyes and imagined that he was at his family’s Montana ranch, riding his favorite horse over the hills until sleep took him. He was awoken by a guard banging on the cell bars with a metal pipe.
“Fucking asshole.”
The man laughed.
The one thing he knew and held fast was they weren’t going to be laughing when his team got here.
Until then, life sucked.