Point Blank Seal

Her blue eyes widened as she stared at the black spec settling at the bottom of the water glass. She parted her lips, but he shook his head and placed two fingers against them.

This might not be the only bug in the place. He continued his search by sweeping the kitchen, but beyond a few false reads from the microwave, he found nothing there.

Swallowing hard, he moved toward the hallway. He turned into the first room on the right and turned on the bathroom light. He gestured toward the sink, and Jennifer cranked on the water.

His throat tightened when he saw the yellow rubber duck on the edge of the tub and the cartoon fish on the shower curtain. He’d missed so damn much.

A familiar sharp pain lanced the back of his head and he dragged in a long breath. He had to stay focused if he didn’t want to miss even more of his son’s life.

With the bathroom clear, Miguel turned back into the hallway, holding his breath. He stepped into his son’s room, a gentle glow from a night-light illuminating a path to his bed.

Miguel followed the light and crouched next to his son’s bed. Pride and joy overwhelmed his senses, and he reached out and traced Mikey’s chubby cheek with the tip of his finger. He wanted to gather the boy in his arms and never let go, but he had unfinished business.

Jen had come up behind him and squeezed his shoulder.

He covered her hand with his own and squeezed back, hoping to convey all his regret and sorrow at not being here with her during her pregnancy and the first year and a half of Mikey’s life.

His nose stung, but he knew there would be no tears. He’d lost the ability to cry, but crouching here next to his son, inhaling the smell of his hair and skin, he knew he hadn’t lost the ability to feel.

That thought had been the one thing that terrified him during his months of captivity.

Miguel pushed to his feet and scanned this room with even more vigor than the others. The guys who’d planted that bug obviously hadn’t wanted to listen to the crying and fussing of a toddler.

Miguel shook his head at Jennifer and she straightened Mikey’s covers before leading him out of the room.

When he walked into Jen’s bedroom, the scent of her signature perfume hit him like a wave. Some nights he’d wake up in his cell smelling that fragrance. He knew it was a dream or hallucination at the time, but he’d wallowed in it anyway.

His gaze tripped over the king-size bed, and he momentarily squeezed his eyes shut. Had she shared that bed with anyone else since his...disappearance? He couldn’t hold that against her if she did. She had every right to move on with her life.

But the way she’d kissed him and clung to him outside gave him a selfish hope that she hadn’t.

He swept the room and got a hit. The blood boiled in his veins as he removed the device from a picture frame above her bed. He dropped that bug in the same glass of water and then finished his search of the rest of the house.

He tossed the bug detector on the kitchen counter and enfolded Jen in his arms again. “I’m just glad they didn’t plant a camera, or all of that would’ve been for nothing.”

She squirmed from his grasp and pressed her palms against his chest. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on, where you’ve been and why someone is bugging my house.” Her fingers curled into the material of his shirt. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re back and safe, even if I am still pinching myself.”

He took both of her hands and kissed one wrist and then the other. “Let’s sit down.”

“Do you want something to drink? To eat?” She skimmed her hands down his sides. “You’ve lost weight.”

“I’ll just get some water.” He pushed aside the glass with the two bugs. “Not this glass.”

She filled a glass with water from a dispenser in the fridge and handed it to him. “Let’s talk.”

As he followed her to the sofa in the living room, his mind whirled with images from the past two years of his life. What could he tell her? What would she want to hear?

The truth? Nobody could bear that. He’d barely survived it.

Jennifer sat on the sofa, curling one leg beneath her. “Can you start at the beginning?”

He settled beside her and draped an arm around her shoulders. “God, it’s amazing to see you. Unbelievable.”

“How do you think I feel? At least you knew I was alive. You even knew about Mikey...somehow.” She threaded her fingers through his. “I thought—They told me you were dead.”

“I’m sorry.” He kissed the side of her head. “If I could take it all back, all those months, everything.”

“The beginning, Miguel.” She pursed her lips together in that schoolteacher way she had.

“We received some intel on Vlad. You remember I told you about him, right?”

“He was the sniper for the other side you guys kept coming up against until he disappeared from the field.”

“He seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. We thought he might be dead, but we heard chatter and then received specific intelligence that he was regrouping in the caves of Afghanistan, which seemed totally likely.”

“The last I heard from you was that you were going off on some assignment as a lone sniper, apart from your team.”

“That assignment was tracking Vlad to his hideaway. I was pulled off a mission with my own team to help this one.” He might be revealing classified information to Jen, but he didn’t give a damn. The navy, his brothers, had never turned their backs on him, but he couldn’t say the same for the shadowy intelligence agencies that called the shots.

“And it all went horribly wrong. The navy wouldn’t tell me much, but I knew others had died with you.” She bumped her knee against his. “Are they alive, too?”

“No. They’re all dead.”

She covered her eyes with one hand and sniffed. “So I’m the only one who gets the homecoming.”

Miguel closed his eyes and clearly saw the ambush of the other SEALs at the cave, the pop of the guns, the flash of the gunpowder.

“What happened to you, Miguel?”

His lips twisted. “Do you have a few days?”

She snuggled closer to him and rested her head on his chest. “I have all the time you need, mi amor.”

Smiling, he ruffled her soft hair. He’d been teaching her Spanish and she’d picked it up quickly, despite her atrocious accent.

“The mission went to hell. Someone set a trap. The SEAL team on the ground was ambushed and killed, and I was captured.”

Her back rose and fell with quick, panting breaths. “H-how long? How long were you a prisoner?”

“Just over eighteen months.”

She must’ve been doing the calculation in her head because her shoulders stiffened. She mumbled into his shirt. “Where have you been the past four to five months? Why didn’t you contact me?”

“Various hospitals, starting with the one in Germany, debriefing sessions, intelligence meetings.” He didn’t mention the psychiatric units. He didn’t want her pity.

She finally raised her head from his chest and met his gaze. “I’m sure you needed...treatment. I’m sure the navy and the CIA wanted to pick your brain. But those places didn’t have telephones?”

“No. Literally, no. None for me anyway.”