Betrayal

"Glad to hear it, but let's close that window, what do you say? And, Evan, you shouldn't be walking around too much without the walker, right?" He softened his tone, spoke to both of them. "Falling would not be a good thing right now."

"No. I hear you. My fault," Nolan said. "Sorry."

The door was still open to the hallway, and now another man came in with his therapist and the two started to get the patient arranged on his bed.

The moment had passed.

***

PLAN B WASN'T GOING to be nearly as satisfying, final, or effective. In fact, it might not do any kind of a job at all, but at least it would give Nolan time. And keep Evan and Tara apart. But he had to work his way into it-besides, it was about the only possibility left, with the other witnesses remaining doing their therapy on the other side of the room. And with Nolan identified for who he really was. "Your nurse seemed a little upset," he said when Stephan had left them.

"He's not a nurse. He's a…" The word therapist suddenly wasn't there. Evan searched the corners of the ceiling for an instant and couldn't find it up there either. So he regrouped, came out with, "He's a…helper. He's here to help me. And sometimes I get upset. TBI will do that to you."

"TBI?"

"Traumatic brain injury. That's what I've got. Or had. They tell me I'm getting better. I'm not sure I believe them." Evan picked up the sheet that covered him, he wiped some sweat off his brow. It was, if anything, still cold on his bed, but something about this man Nolan's presence stoked him up, made him sweat with nerves. "What are you really doing here, Ron?"

"I told you. I had some business in D.C. and thought I'd drop by and see how they're treating you."

"They're treating me fine." The snow out the window held his attention for a beat, then he came back to Nolan. "And you're not here from Baghdad?"

"No. I left about a week after you did."

"What for? Were you hurt?"

Nolan's cheek ticked. "No. Me and Onofrio, we picked you up, then made a run for it and got out clean. It was a lucky thing."

"You got me out?"

"Yeah."

"I don't remember any of that."

"No, I don't suppose you would. I didn't expect you to live. Nobody did."

"I should thank you."

Nolan shrugged. "Line of duty, dude. We couldn't have left you behind."

"What about the other guys? What happened to them?"

Nolan took a breath. "They were all killed, Evan."

"No, I know that. But what happened to them, their bodies? If we didn't get them out? Nobody will tell me anything about that."

"You don't want to know, dude. Really." He paused. "And that ought to tell you everything you need."

His jaw set, Evan looked over again at the snow, then came back to Nolan. "So why'd you leave? If you weren't hurt…?"

"Politics. They were going to offer me up, maybe to the CPA, maybe to the locals. Either way, I lose. So I'm out of there, for a while, at least. Until it blows over or all the other shit that happens every day over there covers it up."

"What do you mean, exactly? What are they accusing you of?"

"Some lying witnesses over in Masbah said I fired too soon. That the car we hit had already stopped. Which is bullshit, since it kept coming and slammed into us way after I blew out the whole front windshield. But they were going to lay it all off on me. I didn't see any point in sticking around."

The nebulous memory in Evan's gut began to coalesce around Nolan's words, the all-but-forgotten moments just preceding the attack coming back to him with a sickening urgency. It wasn't some lying witnesses in Iraq -it was people who had seen what had happened and were coming forth with the truth. And the truth was that this trigger-happy son of a bitch was responsible for everything that had happened in Masbah, for all of Evan's men's deaths, for all of his own suffering.

Nolan, oblivious to Evan's growing awareness, continued. "Anyhow, this way, I'm home for Christmas, doing business development over here for Jack Allstrong. You wouldn't believe how many soldiers like me want back in on the private side. The contractors' market is going through the roof over there and we get the pick of the litter."

Evan's blood pounded in his brain. Pinpricks of bright light danced in the periphery of his vision. The pain forced him to close his eyes, to bring his hands up to cover them.

"But you know," Nolan went on, his voice suddenly taking on a confiding familiarity, "what I'm really here for is to talk about Tara."

Evan opened his eyes. The throbbing inside his head squeezed itself down to a tiny pulsing silent ball of focus. Bringing his hands down slowly to avoid drawing attention to the internal violence of his reaction, he forced a curious expression to gather in his facial muscles. " Tara? What about her? Is she all right?"

"She's fine. She's terrific, in fact." Nolan cleared his throat. "The thing is, though, the main reason I wanted to see you in person, I thought I owed it to you…"

"What?"