Inside the clumsily wrapped package was thin wrapping paper balled up around a dirty Velcro wallet. Through the clear plastic cover she could plainly see her photo from several years ago. She was surprised by her reaction. She didn’t cringe at the fact that she had no makeup on or that her hair was not highlighted. The angle of the camera had not even captured her good side. She didn’t care.
This was clearly her father’s wallet. She opened it and saw the Saint Michael’s medal, silver and worn. She removed it from the pocket and held it between her fingers.
“Protect us,” she whispered, and looked up into the sky. “Please?”
She saw a small note inside the wallet. Opening it, she read:
Amanda, This is your dad’s. Never lose hope.
I’ll be in touch.
Love, Uncle Matt.
She began crying uncontrollably. Hope? How can I lose something I don’t have, she wanted to scream. She shook and bent over her knees, screaming voicelessly into the garden. For the first time she felt entirely alone. Fear was an invisible finger tracing up her spine to her neck, which began to constrict. Her breaths became rapid and shallow, the onset of panic. Guilt was a tightening noose around her throat.
Forgive me. Please.
CHAPTER 54
Colonel Garrett’s mind drifted into and out of consciousness as if he were looking through a dusty Coke bottle from the inside. Distorted shapes and sounds formed around him. He registered a shadow bending over him, then pulling away. Something was touching him; he wasn’t sure what. Voices were sometimes loud, other times soft, and frequently absent altogether.
His hands and legs did not appear to be bound, but it was a passing thought. He was uncertain of his status. Dead or alive? Captured or free? The energy it required simply to think about it drained him. His mind began to swoon again. It occurred to him that he may have been drugged. Lightheaded and peaceful, he succumbed to the welcoming respite.
His mind played on themes from his youth, with Matt and Karen on the farm, and the happy times with Melanie and Amanda and Riley. They were a welcome distraction from the pain and fatigue his body was suffering on the cold, hard ground.
He awoke to the sound of metal sliding along the dusty floor.
“Eat.”
Having no motor control over his limbs, he couldn’t move his body to perform the simple task of nourishing himself. His body was aching for energy, yet he was unable to translate the urge into action.
Soon he found his mouth being stuffed with something. It was some type of meat, which he readily devoured. He gnawed at the rubbery substance and swallowed. His mind registered that it might be lamb. At least he hoped that was the case. More of the meat came and was followed by a tin cup to his lips. He drank the water like a man with a mouthful of anesthesia after a day of dental work, the liquid spilling across his face.
The apparition vanished as soon as its feeding chore was done. He found a soft spot on the blanket for his head and rested again, his mind swimming and taking him back to an even less pleasant time.
Zach was about to deploy to the Philippines; 9-11 was still a fresh wound, and he had rapidly signed up for any mission that would get him into the fight. Like many soldiers, he knew combat and its difficulties, but he also knew that the country and its soldiers needed the best leadership it could muster to win this war against the nation’s enemies.
Amanda had been ten at the time, and he had called Melanie to orchestrate a visit prior to his departure overseas. Having driven the five hours from Fort Bragg to pick up his daughter, he had an uneasy feeling that something was amiss.
He had learned to expect the unexpected in almost all facets of life, but the one realm that continued to catch him off guard was the new tack that had begun with Amanda. It was part disbelief and part debilitating love. His mind could perceive, yet never understand, some of the actions that had taken place at the hands of Amanda’s mother and grandmother. Yet, his heart refused to believe that anyone could be so cruel, especially to their own flesh and blood. Which was why he was continually surprised.
At the exit off I-85, he pulled into a RaceTrac gas station to get his wits about him. Normally he would call Amanda and chat the remaining fifteen minutes to the house. She had been distant on the first call and then had not answered his two subsequent attempts.
Driving always gave him time to think. Sometimes he would listen to a book on tape. Other times he would drone along, staring at the white passing stripes, and try to understand where it had all gone wrong.
His discussions with Riley had given him enough insight into the idea that a child who was once close with her father, if sufficiently manipulated by the mother, could develop a split personality, of sorts. Nothing clinical, she had told him, but the child would develop an outward ability to ‘handle’ the noncustodial parent — the father typically — while remaining loyal to the custodial parent, the mother in most cases. Further, Riley had pointed out, in a case like Amanda’s, her pre-existing love for her father, though muted, was expressed in the form of not wanting to hurt him.
As he pulled up to the guard shack at the gated community on the outer reaches of Spartanburg, the guard stepped forward.
He rolled down his truck window and said, “Hi, I’m here to pick up Amanda Garrett, please.”
The guard was a hefty female wearing a white shirt with a sewn-in patch that said “RONCO Security.” She was a block of a woman, no shape or pattern to her. Her face was oval, and she looked mad at the world.
“Just a second,” she muttered. Walking to the far side of the shack, she waved at someone. A uniformed police officer for the city of Spartanburg appeared while Zach was idling in his truck at the shack. The gate was a standard wooden arm with a cantilever that lifted the barrier when block woman pressed a button. He was trapped.
“Sorry to do this, Mr. Garrett, but I have a summons to issue you to appear in court next week.”
This couldn’t be happening. Then it occurred to him, of course, that this was the famous baited ambush. Amanda was the bait, and he was the target. The attack could not have been performed better by Sun Tzu himself. Naturally, he had to deploy in three days and could not appear in court the following week. He had no attorney and was only hoping to spend a couple of days, perhaps his last days ever, with his daughter before heading off to combat.
“Well, I’m heading overseas Monday, can’t this wait?”
“I’m sorry, it can’t. My orders are that I have to issue this to you if I can find you. And here you are.”
Zach took the document and signed the police officer’s paper on the wooden clipboard. He opened the document and began to read it, but block woman raised her voice. “Come on, buster, you’re holding up traffic.”
The arm lifted and his spirits sank, but he pushed forward anyway. He heard the woman mutter, “Deadbeat,” as he was moving past the gate.
He pulled into the parking lot of the country club and did what not many Airborne Ranger captains would readily admit to — he cried. He processed the last three years of pain through his system, weeping at his own ignorance. But he grieved mostly for Amanda. He had failed her.
His overriding thought was that if Amanda’s mother was capable of doing this to him at this time, what on earth had she been doing to Amanda?
He was horrified at the thought.
He rolled on the dusty floor again, still inside the Coke bottle, but somehow less so. Pain was coursing through his body as if along fiber-optic lines, unimpeded. He surmised he had been given some kind of painkiller earlier because presently he was awake and fully aware that he had some broken bones and serious lacerations.