Page 13 of Renegade

Miguel smiled, glancing up from the bowl. He’d been distracted ever since seeing the man he’d called John back at the Sagebrush. Burning the garlic toast he’d popped in the oven had been as telltale a sign as any, as if the way he’d been acting ever since our afternoon meeting hadn’t been enough. I’d never seen him like this before. I reached for his hand, and he briefly squeezed my fingers before letting go. “Come on. Let’s save the dishes for after.”

I frowned slightly. “After what?” I looked up at him as he stood and reached for my bowl, sliding it into his.

“Just come with me, Raven. I need to show you something.”

I was anxious to see whatever it was he wanted to show me, but I could tell Miguel wasn’t exactly certain about sharing it with me. I had a feeling that the man we’d chased had been important to him…either that, or there was bad blood between them, maybe both. I couldn’t help but feel the sting of jealousy in my heart, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. There was just something in the way Miguel was behaving that made me feel like I was standing on rapidly shifting sand.

I followed him to the kitchen as he put our bowls and spoons in the sink, then he took my hand to lead me out to the garage. As the florescent lights blinked on, I followed him directly to hisfootlocker and watched as he pulled a key from his pocket. He bent and unlocked the padlock, before looking up at me.

“The man we chased at the Sagebrush Cantina today is John Sutter. He was my best friend in the Corps. He was our team leader.” He dragged his gaze away from me and lifted the lid. On the very top of the footlocker lay an American flag folded in a triangle and preserved under glass.

I nervously wrapped my arms around my middle and stared down at it as Miguel reached in and gently lifted it out of the box.

He held it out to me, straightening as he stood up. “This was John’s.”

“John’s?” I stared down at the flag, absently watching my own hands as I reached out and took the frame from him. I looked at it for a second and then glanced up at his frown. “But I thought they only gave out these flags when someone died. If you recognized the man at the Sagebrush Cantina as John, then that means—”

Miguel slowly nodded. “He’s not dead after all.” He traced his finger on the glass before looking up at me. His expression was stoic. “Sutter didn’t have any family, so, as his second-in-command and his best friend, I was given the flag at his funeral.”

My mouth dropped open as I clutched the frame. “They had a funeral for him? But that means they had his remains if they brought him home and buried him.”

Miguel shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. There’s a coffin buried at Arlington. Obviously, John Sutter isn’t in it. We chased him today.”

“You’re sure…I mean, you’re absolutely certain the man we saw in Calabasas today was John Sutter?” I felt my hands trembling as I held this sacred memento to a warrior’s service.

He nodded, holding my gaze with a frighteningly intense stare. He finally blew out a long breath and turned away, bending again to pull out a khaki, beige do-rag. I watched as he unwrapped it, revealing a stack of photos. I couldn’t get a good look at them in the funky florescent lighting, and he must have realized that. When he reached out, I handed him the frame and he bent to lay it gently into the footlocker, still holding the pictures. “Come on, Sunshine. Let’s go back inside with these.”

I nodded before he circled my waist and with a gentle squeeze, led me back inside. He didn’t stop in the dining room but instead, headed for our bedroom. I flicked on the lights as he sat on the bed with the photos in hand. I sat down close to him, and he handed me the first one. The colored photo showed a group of six Marines dressed in sand-colored camouflage fatigues. All of them held automatic rifles as they looked at the camera. I recognized Vonne immediately. He was the shortest man of the bunch and the only black man. His wide, white grin was familiar, and I couldn’t help but smile as I brushed my finger over the younger version of the man who’d taken care of my gunshot wound. In the middle of the group stood two tall men, one of whom I also recognized. Miguel was absolutely breathtaking in his Marine Corps uniform. He was younger in the photo, as striking a man as I’d ever seen.

I glanced up at Miguel who watched me with dark eyes. “This is your Recon unit?”

He nodded, pointing to the photo. “My brothers. You know Vonne,” he said, pointing him out. His finger moved to another man with sandy brown hair. He wore a thin-lipped expression as if he was refusing to smile at whomever was taking the picture. He looked tough which was probably planned on his part. “This is Cliff Mayhew,” Miguel said. He pointed to another man. “This is Alex Grant.” Grant also wore a serious expression but therewas a hint of a sly smile on his lips. He tapped the photo, and I looked up.

“Grant and Mayhew were like twins. They always did everything together.” I nodded as he concentrated on the picture I held. “That’s Pete Morrison,” he said, pointing to the tall, blond man standing beside him in the middle of the group. “We called him Peety. He’s an Iowa farm boy.” I looked up and caught the smile he wore, hearing the fondness in his voice. “He was the clown of the group…always making us laugh with a stupid joke, even in the worst of circumstances.”

I nodded and focused on the only man he’d yet to identify. He stood on the opposite side of Miguel. I brought the picture closer to my face, looking at the features of the man, trying to make them out under the shade cast by the floppy, khaki hat he was wearing in the photo. Sure enough, Miguel had been right. I’d barely caught a glimpse of this man’s face, but he was definitely the man we’d chased. “And that’s John Sutter, our team leader.”

But he wasmorethan a team leader to Miguel. Instinctively, I’d known what he’d meant to the man I loved, but until he said his name as he identified all his brothers, I wasn’t sure. Now I was.

“You loved him.”

When Miguel said nothing, I looked up at him. His face was expressionless as he finally nodded. “I loved him, Raven.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat, frowning. “We lost him one day.”

I sucked in a breath, holding it as he continued.

“We had orders which required a convoy of several vehicles to move from our base camp to another location. It was critical that they got where they were going within forty-eight hours. Our Recon unit was tasked to find an alternate route through thedesert since sandstorms in the area were constantly knocking out our communications and even with satellite coverage, we were having a problem on the ground. There’s not much more I can say about that except the route we mapped out was way off the beaten path.” Miguel sighed as he went on. “Even so, we ended up being caught in one…a big one.”

“A sandstorm?”

He nodded. “It raged around our Humvee for more than twenty minutes. By the time there was a break in the wind and pummeling we were taking, John—like always—was the first man out of our Humvee. He ordered us to stay inside while he checked the vehicle. Sand had partially buried us, and he wanted to make sure we could drive out of it. Plus, the area where we were stranded, was extremely hostile, so sitting still, even for a sandstorm, would have been dangerous.” Miguel swallowed hard. “I think he thought if he could dig some of the sand away from our tires, we could make our way back to camp. Then, without warning the wind suddenly started up again.”

“And John was outside,” I said.

Miguel’s expression looked haunted as he gave a slow nod. “The sand blinded us and we assume it blinded him too. We tried to get outside to find him, but none of us had been prepared for something that bad. We’d miscalculated. None of us had seen anything like it before. As Sutter’s second-in-command, I ordered my men to stay inside the vehicle, waiting for it to die down. We all figured John had taken shelter underneath the Humvee, so we waited it out, praying we were right. The five of us were trapped inside for almost fifteen minutes…the longest fifteen minutes of our lives.”

He sounded devastated as he replayed the scene in his head and I took his hand, holding it as he threaded our fingers together. “What happened?” I asked quietly.

“By the time we were finally able to get out of the Humvee to look for Sutter, there was no trace of him.” He sighed. “We just couldn’t believe it. We dug away the sand heaped around the undercarriage, but it was just sand. When we realized he wasn’t there, we frantically searched the desert surroundings for more than an hour until our base commander finally ordered us to go back to camp.”

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