Page 21 of A Man On A Mission

18

Frank

There was no time to think things through. Tony wanted to come to me. We were going to do this together, save Amber and take down whoever had done this to our unit. I was down with that line of thinking. I was done with all of this, so if that meant that we were going to figure this out and get Amber back quicker together, I was down with about anything. Tony was very different than me, saw everything vastly different and those differences had caused problems in the past, but I was working on it.

When he arrived, I was happy to see him, and his blond hair was still cut short, and he looked like he was just as buff as he was ten years ago. That’s how long it had been since we’d been on a unit together. It felt like a lifetime ago and seeing him didn’t change anything. I would do anything that could help me get Amber back and if Tony could help, so be it.

Tony was just as high-strung as I remembered. I rode with him for a ways to a place where we could sit and talk. We had something to eat, it was past breakfast time, and we talked about who we thought it could be. We did a lot of missions and though a lot of us went on to do different things, there were still a lot of options of why someone would want to kill us. We’d likely made a lot of enemies while we were together on that unit.

“Who do you think it is, Tony?

He shrugged and dug into his pocket for a crumpled and folded piece of paper. I asked him what it was, and he said that it was a list of potentials. I asked him again if that was all of them and he said that it was all he could think of. I was shocked at how detailed he was and how well he remembered the missions.

“You remember all of that?” I asked incredulously.

Tony said that he did remember it all, and he wrote it down. I didn’t know how I felt about the latter, but I was happy for the information that his memory provided. However, it happened, I didn’t think that I could have remembered it as well.

I went through the list and a lot of the options for revenge were places and situations where it could have been more than one person.

“They were military, so we need to go through and see how many of them were military themselves or would be able to hire mercenaries that used to be in the military.”

Tony nodded his head and said that it was a good idea. I didn’t need his praise, but it was good to hear that it wasn’t just me who thought it was a good idea. I was going to be sure that it was one of the groups on the very detailed list, but which one? Any one of them could have had Amber, and I worried about her, more than I could handle.

“So, tell me about this woman that you are trying to find, the one they took and didn’t kill?” Tony asked with a strange tone to his voice. I could see that he was bothered with the fact that Amber hadn’t been killed, but I wasn’t. I was glad, so glad that he hadn’t done such a thing, but it could happen.

“She was with me at the cabin. I woke up and she was gone. I went to go look for her, realized that the cabin was surrounded and ended up shooting five of them and burning them all up in a fire. Got rid of mine and her DNA, as well as the bodies. I don’t know who they were, but they felt like the military, but they didn’t have anything in common except tattoos. I don’t know who they were, but they were professionals that had been in training.”

“What about her, how did you meet Amber?”

I didn’t like Tony even saying her name, but I needed to find her, so I was going to have to suck it up. It was just the way it was.

“I got this letter out of the blue and it was Amber. It was about a woman that wanted to make soldiers feel better, so she was writing these soldiers and telling them how she was proud of what we did. I don’t know why, but I started writing her back and we did that for several years. We finally talked about meeting up for the first time, and we did.”

Tony was quiet for a minute and then said some of Amber’s letter that was written verbatim and the hairs on the back of my neck went up. How did he know what the words were that she sent to me? It didn’t make any sense and I asked him how he knew about the letter.

He said that he had gotten one as well, many years ago and he just ignored it. “I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one that got one.”

I didn’t understand what he was saying. What did that mean? What did any of this mean? I was not ready to go to the same conclusion that he was. He was under the impression that it wasn’t a coincidence, that Amber had something to do with it, but I didn’t think there was any way that it was true. Amber would never do anything to hurt anyone. If she had wanted to be a part of this, she wouldn’t have almost been run over. I tried to tell Tony the same reasons why it couldn’t be her, but he really didn’t want to hear it. Tony thought that my mind was muddled from Amber. I am not going to say that it wasn’t partially true, I did have some issues with perspective when it came to her, but I knew Amber well. She would never do anything like this.

“I don’t know how she wouldn’t know to contact the rest of the unit, but she did tell me that she contacted many in the beginning, but no one else wrote back to her.”

I could hear the way that it sounded to my own ears, but I knew that Amber didn’t know and do this. She would never hurt anyone, never stand to the side and let someone get hurt if she knew about it. I was convinced that this was all on someone else. Amber writing the unit was a coincidence. I had never asked why she contacted all the soldiers that she did, but when she had explained it to me, it had made sense. She had written a reason and then meeting her parents, it was easy to see why she wanted to help. Her dad was amazing, and she had wanted to help someone like him. I had answered the messages, but, of course, now I had to wonder. I hated Tony even more for making me second-guess the best thing that had happened in my life.

“She really does have you all twisted up, doesn’t she?” Tony said with a smug grin, like he would never be so stupid to do the same thing. He could be right, I could be an idiot, but until I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I couldn’t believe that Amber would do something against me. I just didn’t want to believe anything like that.

“You don’t know her. I don’t know what happened, but there has to be an explanation. You’ll see.” Why did my voice sound so desperate?

“It will be good to get some intel from her. She might know the who and the what. I have been on so many missions, there really is no wonder which one pissed someone off. We made too many enemies and now we have lost our identity, Baron.”

I agreed and though I hadn’t heard that name in a very long time, it didn’t mean that I knew what to do with it.

“I am telling you Tony, she had nothing to do with it. We are not going to get intel from her. She is the woman I am going to marry!” My voice raised as I talked, and I couldn’t believe what I’d said. Did I just say marry? I hadn’t really thought that through yet, but subconsciously I already wanted to marry her. That was saying something. That was saying a lot of something.

Tony scoffed, he had no idea what I was talking about, and he thought that I was joking. I wasn’t. I loved Amber and there was nothing that I could do to change that. I think that I would always love her, even if… I couldn’t even think about it.

* * *

While Tony wasasleep at a hotel we passed when neither one of us could think or drive anymore, I didn’t go to sleep. Instead, I left him there and went to go find her myself. The problem was that Tony thought that he knew what was going on. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew that there was no way that Amber had set me and my unit up to all die at the hands of some nameless enemy that we didn’t even know about. I couldn’t see that.

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