As she talked, I kind of tuned out, keeping just enough attention on her to remember to respond when she needed me to. She seemed happy just rattling thoughts off without much input anyway, so I didn’t feel so bad. I was going to need more beer though.
My thoughts turned to Deacon and how our lives had led us there—to Ashford, Tennessee. Since boot camp, Deacon and I had been friends, both of us bonding over sports and weird families back home. My uncle being an investor was a subject we talked about a lot, wondering if maybe when we got out, we could start a business together. Something practical, something we could do with our hands and make an honest living at.
When the attack happened, we had been sitting in the same Humvee, side by side in the backseat, chatting about what we would do. He had just come across the fact that our friend Carter, who was in the vehicle behind us by himself, grew up in a logging family. As soon as he had said it, I knew that was it. We would go into business, the three of us.
Then the missile hit, and all I saw was fire. I was unconscious for a long time, and when I came to, it was brief, and all I saw was the back of Carter’s uniform as he dragged me away, carrying me over his shoulder as best he could with a gaping wound in his leg. I was lucky. Others weren’t.
The driver and passenger of our vehicle died instantly. Somehow, Deacon and I were barely injured. I had a broken collarbone, several broken fingers, a cracked skull, and was knocked unconscious for a while. Deacon got out of there with a broken leg, a broken jaw, and a broken orbital bone. For taking a direct hit, we were incredibly lucky.
Carter risked his life to drag us out of there and we repaid him for it by helping him whenever we could. He took shrapnel to his leg, and it made him limp. We never acknowledged it unless he did, and even then, it was usually a joke at his own expense. I grinned at the thought of one of them when I realized Rebecca had said something I needed to pay attention to. Something rather important.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said you need to go get Deacon,” she said, her eyes wide as quarters and her body clenched in position. I looked down and saw the puddle on the ground, leaking through the chair and onto the deck.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “Deacon!”
“What?” he called from down by the fire.
“Deacon, you’re going to want to get up here,” I yelled. “It’s happening!”
“What’s happening?” he said, then paused. “Shit!”
“Go,” Carter yelled. “I’ll knock out the fire. Just go!”
“Everett, go inside and get the bags! We’ve got to move!” he yelled, heading toward the deck steps.
Following orders was easy, especially when they were this important. I ran inside to the bedroom and grabbed the black duffel bag by the door. It was go time. The biggest mission of Deacon’s life.
4
HELEN
It had only been a couple of weeks that I’d been in Ashford again, but in that time, I had settled into a routine. By one in the morning, I was in bed, asleep, regardless of what time I was going to get up the next morning. My routine in Chicago had been wildly different, keeping me up until all hours of the night and not waking until the sun was well on its way toward setting again.
After showering, I usually threw on some on pajamas, jumped into bed, and watched real-life detective documentaries until I fell asleep. And every night just around one, I shut the TV off and went off to dreamland. It worked surprisingly well, even on the days my alarm was set for five to go in for breakfast. It just meant I’d come home and nap in the middle of the day.
The long days at the diner weren’t something new, either. I had done plenty of all-day shifts, working doubles regularly right out of culinary school. I did my time on the line and sharpened my knives with blurry eyes and a hangover many times. Now, I was just heading into a diner that was desperate to get its business back. I just needed to figure out what I needed to do to make that happen.
Even still, getting a call before the sun was up on a day where I planned on not going in until the lunch shift or even later if I could help it, was a surprise I didn’t plan on. My heart was racing when I heard the ringtone, and my mind jumped to fears of the diner being on fire or being broken into to.