Page 1 of Reclaiming his Honor
CHAPTER1
Mac O’Brady dipped his razor in the sink, swirling it in circles through the water so the shaving cream dissolved. His mind was sharply focused on the day ahead, his pulse jumping with anticipation as he raised his eyes to his reflection in the lighted mirror of his Mobile, Alabama hotel room.
He’d been fixated on what it would be like to see his wife after so much time apart, but now he wondered about the opposite. What would his Ellie see when she looked at him?
His stomach clenched as he cataloged the changes in his appearance. The bulging biceps of youth had been replaced by the wiry strength of a middle-aged man, his muscles defined and substantial, but more articulated than they’d once been. His chest was relatively unchanged, his pectorals kept hardened by heavy weights, sweat, and the dogged determination of the military elite.
Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.
But it was his face that showed the price he’d paid for her absence, the years etched in fine lines over his dark skin, accentuating his mouth and eyes. He dragged the razor through the shaving cream down his cheek, the hollow beneath his cheekbone more pronounced than it had been in his youth. He was the same man, but he was changed—and not just by the ravages of time.
For years on end, he’d drank his life away in France, wishing Ellie and the kids would return to the ancestral home they’d once shared and walk right back into his life. Instead, he’d fallen deeper into a pit of despair than he’d known it was possible for a man to succumb.
By the time his old teammate from the SEALs crossed his path, Mac was barely alive and no longer certain he wanted to live at all. When Trevor Hawkins offered him a job in New York City commanding his own team of men for HERO Force, Mac knew damn well he wasn’t up to the task.
At first.
But it was an opportunity to find Ellie. He’d have access to computers and government officials, databases he could only dream about from his alcohol-induced haze in that echoing old house an ocean away from his homeland. He lowered the razor back into the water, his eyes never leaving his reflection. “And now you’ve found her.”
His emotions were an ambivalent, hectic stew of fear, excitement, desperation, and dread. He’d climbed a mountain he wasn’t sure he could surmount, and stood on the edge of the steepest precipice. His wife was within sight, within arm’s reach, within his soul. It was a lifetime since he’d locked eyes with her, shared a room with her, gotten to touch the radiant woman he’d once been blessed to call his wife.
They were divorced now. That was his second revelation. Her lawyer hadn’t been able to find Mac in France, so they’d announced her desire to divorce in several regional publications. Apparently, that was all it took if your spouse was out of your life long enough. And while he was afraid she had sought the divorce in order to remarry, she was still his wife in his mind.
His eyes shut, memories of her beauty drifting through his consciousness. Her golden brown skin reflecting the light, its surface dusted with tiny freckles. He could see her naked, her abdomen heavy with his child, the fullness of her dark-tipped breasts drawing the attention of his hands and mouth, and making his body stir with desire.
He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes, unwilling to dwell on remembered intimacies right now. Today was a day for reality, but before he could see his Ellie, he had some serious business to do. His eyes shot to his watch. He couldn’t be late for the execution, and the absurdity of the thought struck him at once. Over the course of his life, he’d had the misfortune of seeing several people die, but this would be the first to occur on a schedule.
His mind flashed back to a stately house with a yard torn up by heavy equipment. Uniformed police milled around an open grave, two human skulls and a rib cage clearly visible in the dirt, and Mac’s stomach clenched with remembered fear that one of the bodies might be all that remained of his wife. For seventeen families, that was all that remained of their loved ones, and while none of them was his Ellie, it had been revealed that one of them was her cousin, Ursula.
Lethal injection was too good for Arnold Godak. At least his death would provide some closure for the families of the murdered women, an exclamation point at the end of the wordJustice. It would never bring them back, never make up for everything those families had lost, just as it never would have been enough for him if Ellie had been among the dead.
But it was something, better than nothing, and Mac was a big part of the reason the victims had been identified. His search for his wife had turned cold in Mobile, Alabama, at a time when young black women were being targeted by the serial killer. He’d had little choice but to pursue that lead until he was certain Ellie hadn’t been one of Godak’s victims.
He hastily finished shaving, then showered and got dressed, pulling on cargo pants and a snug-fitting black T-shirt. He grabbed a cup of coffee he’d set to brew before shaving, taking a long sip of the hot liquid before heading out the door.
Less than an hour later, he arrived at the state penitentiary, checked his handgun, and was led to a small room packed full of people in chairs on stepped risers like auditorium seats. He saw Ursula’s husband, Roger, and nodded.
These were the families of Godak’s victims. Several of the women wept. A curtain took up the wall they were facing, the fabric drawn closed in a wide arc.
Mac took his seat. He wondered if Godak was already on the other side. As if by his command, the curtain opened, revealing Godak strapped to a hospital gurney, alone. An IV ran into his arm, the tubing disappearing in the ceiling above his head.
Theater of the macabre.
Mac swallowed hard. He’d seen men die for less, yet the reality of the nameless, faceless state extracting an eye for an eye was difficult for him to comprehend. If any man deserved the death penalty, it was Arnold Godak. What he’d done to those women in Mobile, sexually assaulting them, torturing them for painstaking hours before strangling them, the terror he’d inflicted on an entire community, deserved no less. There’d been a time when Mac believed Ellie had been one of his victims, and the torment had been incomprehensible.
But at the same time, killing Godak didn’t bring them back, so what was the point?
The PA system clicked on the wall. “The sedative will now be administered.”
Mac’s stare was fixed on Godak’s face, the other man’s features revealing no fear, no contrition, no emotion whatsoever. Mac longed to be on the other side of the glass so he could shake Godak’s shoulders and demand the answers that had never been forthcoming.Who helped you? You couldn’t have done this alone. It was too much for one man.
They could bargain for his life, give him one last chance to come clean, but ironically, that would be considered torture in and of itself, and far too inhumane. Godak was taking the identity of his accomplice to his grave.
Ten minutes later, it was over. The physician checked Godak for a pulse and declared him dead. The prison warden came out to sign the certification that the execution had taken place, then he entered the viewing room and thanked everyone for coming, as if they’d been sharing a social event instead of witnessing an execution. The warden asked for the reporter in the room, and handed the other man an envelope.
Godak’s last words.
Mac knew the drill. The condemned person was permitted to write a final letter, but it was a matter of public record and must be shared with the press. Mac watched the reporter read the letter, saw him jump from his seat and exit the room, and longed to follow him—but he did not.
