Rocco and Mandy: A Red Team Wedding Novella (Book #6.5) (3 page)

“I think it’ll be cathartic. Zavi will have a place to tell his mom when something important happens in his life. It’ll give Rocco a way of telling Kadisha what was really in his heart when they were together. It’ll honor her.”

“Right, and that’s fucked up. She blew herself up, Em. Decimated her village. You don’t honor that.”

Mandy sighed. “What happened was part of the war, Kit. It was the result of hatred, and anger, and fear. And a broken heart. I’m not saying she was a hero, but things don’t happen in a vacuum. Rocco had a hand in that. He needs to forgive himself. He needs to let it go. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll never move forward and build a life full of joy. He’ll always be stuck in that black place, and it will eat more and more of him.” Mandy put her hand against her belly. “I want my baby to know his dad, not the shell of the man his madness leaves behind.”

Kit set his hands on his hips. They’d stopped walking. He bent his head.
 

Mandy’s heart beat hard. She clarified her position before he could shoot her idea down: “I’m not asking permission to put a garden at my place. I’m giving you fair warning that I will be working with some special contractors. I know I can’t do that without Max and Greer clearing them. That’s why I’ve brought this up.”

“Can it wait, Em? Let the shrink work with him first?”

“No. Winter will be here before you know it. When the ground freezes, we won’t be able to plant the trees.”

“What are you going to tell Rocco?”

“That I’m putting in a little garden.”

Kit frowned. “All right. Give the guys the info they need to clear the company. And give me some heads-up when the work’s going to start.”

 
Mandy nodded. “Thank you.”

“And take Selena with you if you have to go around to landscapers.”

“I will.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, sis.”

“I hope so, too.”

Dr. Kimble’s suite was not extravagant, Rocco discovered at 0900 Monday morning. Besides the small waiting area and front desk, there was a records room, a conference room, and two counseling offices, one of which doubled as his office. That was where Rocco sat, awaiting the doctor. The whole suite was badly in need of a facelift, though he supposed the Scandinavian teak furniture and shag carpets had been out of fashion long enough to be in again.

A barrel-chested man wearing tan khakis, a white turtleneck, and a brown cardigan came in. His thick white hair stood out at odd angles all over his head.
 

“Good morning,” he greeted Rocco.

Rocco nodded, but didn’t stand and didn’t offer to shake his hand. He didn’t trust counselors; he didn’t like getting his head shrunk, but then he didn’t particularly like it exploding either, which was why he was there.
 

Dr. Kimble removed his cardigan and draped it over the chair at his desk. He picked up a clipboard with some papers in it, and a notepad and pen, then came over to sit on the chair facing the sofa where Rocco sat.

“I hope you were offered coffee or tea or water,” Dr. Kimble said.

“I was.”

“So, Rocco, what can I do for you?”

Rocco kept all the warmth from his face as he said, “Not much, I imagine.”

“Why are you here?”

“I was told to come.”

Dr. Kimble nodded. “Your boss, Kit Bolanger, phoned me last week, filled me in on some of your background.”

Good. Hopefully that obviated the need for Rocco to start yakking.
 

“How long have you been back from Afghanistan?”

Counting the time he’d spent at the hospital in Germany, his extended stay in the care of the shrinks at Walter Reed, and the time before he’d joined Tremaine Industries, it had been longer than he realized. “More than a year.”

The doc nodded again and made a note. He looked over at Rocco. A minute passed. Then another. “I can spend our time together asking questions, but I don’t think that will help either of us get to the heart of what’s ailing you. How about you tell me what’s going on?”

Yeah, that would be sweet. Sum up his whole existential nightmare in one fucking sentence. If he could do that, he sure didn’t need a shrink. He got up and started pacing. “They said you were a veteran,” he said, deflecting the focus of their convo from himself.

Dr. Kimble nodded. “The Persian Gulf War.”

“What did you do there?”

“Anything I was told. Is that what you did in Afghanistan?”

Was it? He’d been ordered to get close to Ghalib Halim, Kadisha’s dad, by any means possible. Did that mean he’d been ordered to marry Kadisha? Or had he thought up that special hell all by himself?

“Did you follow orders in Afghanistan, Rocco?” the doc asked, breaking into his musings.

Rocco paused mid-stride and looked at him. “Yes.”

“How is your sleeping?”

Had the doc been told he couldn’t get in bed with Mandy anymore? “Fine.”

“Why did you go riding a few days ago instead of having dinner with your friends?”

Fucking Kit. “I felt like it.”

“Why?”

“Did Kit tell you I don’t like having my head shrunk?”

“Do you like being held hostage by your mind?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“He said you were a sherpa and could lead me out of my head. Are you?”

“Maybe. Once I figure out what’s going on. But I think you already know what that is, else you wouldn’t be so protective of it. What were you like as a child?”

Again Rocco stopped pacing and stared at him. “Odd.”

“How so?”

“I was the only kid on the ranch where my mom worked.”

“Lots of kids are only children. What made you different?”

Rocco shrugged.

“Was your dad at the ranch?”

“No. Mom said he was dead.”

“Was he?”

“I dunno.”

“Did you miss having a dad?”

“The vaqueros were my dads. I never lacked for male role models.”

They talked for a while longer about random shit. Rocco didn’t know what the point was. Maybe the doc was trying to establish rapport with him, put him at ease so they could slowly open the gates of his hell and let all his demons out. When an hour had just about passed, the doc stood up.
 

“Shall we meet again in a week?”

“No.”

That answer didn’t seem to faze him. He went over to his desk and picked up a stationery box. He handed it to Rocco. Opening it, he saw a slim leather journal inside.

“I don’t journal.” He handed it back, but the doc didn’t take it.

“Do you want to get better?”

Did he? All fucking aside,
did he want to get better
?

“It’s not for journaling anyway,” the doc said. “I want you to write yourself a letter between now and our visit next week.”

“What kind of letter?”

The doc shrugged. “Anything you want to tell yourself. If you think of more than one letter to write, write more than one. It can be a letter from your present self to your younger self, or from your future self to the man you are now. There’s no wrong way to communicate with yourself. Bring the journal with you.”

“You gonna read it?”

“Only if you ask me to.”
 

* * *

Rocco walked up the broken stairs to his hideaway in Mandy’s old barn. He felt raw from his visit with Dr. Kimble. He tossed the journal box onto his chair then walked over to the window. The cool air from the September morning poured into the barn from the dormer window’s broken panels.

He considered his convo with the doc, wondering if the guy was going to be able to sift through his madness and find the real him. His training in the Red Team had included extensive psychological rewiring, so much so that he could play a role better than a method actor. He could become his false identity so completely that it felt more real than his original self. Even now, he was both Rocco and Khalid, the identity he used to interact with some of the team’s informants.
 

He felt like a tuning fork that couldn’t stop vibrating, couldn’t become a single tone.
 

He’d played the shrinks’ game to get out of Walter Reed. If Kimble couldn’t grasp the reality of him, he’d do the same. He could act any role; maybe the biggest role he had to act was that of being normal.
 

He went over to his trunk and unlocked it. He dropped the journal inside next to the box with his six-shooter. The question was, would acting be a life sentence? Was he always going to have to run every convo, every sight, sound, and scent through the fake him until the end of his days? Could he never be one person again, confident in himself—and in the reality surrounding him?

He opened the little lockbox and palmed the revolver. It was cool and heavy in his hand. He slid the cylinder open and confirmed it wasn’t loaded. Yep—the single bullet, the one with his name on it, was still in the steel box. Rocco pulled the trigger. The snap it made wasn’t even as loud as a cap gun. It was empty and useless. Like him.

Mandy came to a sharp stop in the lower level of the barn. She’d heard a mechanical snap. Just once. She’d heard it plenty of times before, when her grandfather was cleaning his guns. He often would do a dry firing when he finished.

“Rocco?” she called out, hurrying toward the stairs. “Rocco?” She heard what sounded like his trunk slam shut. As soon as she could see into the hayloft, she scanned the space. Rocco was standing next to the closed trunk, his hands at his sides. She couldn’t see a gun anywhere. Was he hiding it? She knew what she’d heard.

His face looked calm though his eyes were screaming at her. She fought tears. Now was not the time for hysteria. She walked over to him and took hold of his face. He looked down, masking his expression as a current rippled through him at her touch.
 

“What are you doing up here?”

“Nothing.”

She lowered her hands. “I heard a gun, Rocco.” He didn’t answer, didn’t blink or shrug or make excuses. “What’s in the trunk?”

“Nothing.”

“Open it.”
 

“Why?”

“Why are you keeping secrets from me?”

“What makes you think I am?”

“Because you won’t open the trunk.”

His nostrils flared, and he thrust his chin forward as if thoroughly insulted at her insinuations. He bent over and opened the lid. Inside were a square steel box and a stationery box.
 

“The shrink asked me to do some writing.” He lifted out the smaller box and opened it, showing her the leather journal inside.

“That’s a good idea. What about the other box?”

“Leave it, Em.”

“I can’t.”

Rocco lifted that lid, too. A single bullet rolled around the empty box. She picked it up and held it between them as she asked, “Where’s the gun?”

“There’s no gun.”

“Why a bullet without a gun?”

“Safer that way.”

Mandy’s mouth opened in a gasp. She pressed her hands to her face as she walked over to the window, trying to stave off the panic that comment shot through her.

“You said life was a choice,” Rocco reminded her.

She looked back at him. His eyes were dark and desperate. “No. No, I said how you react to life is a choice, not life itself. Rocco, is this what you do up here? Think about ending your life?”

He tore his eyes from her and looked away.
 

Tears spilled down her face. She glanced out the window. Trucks were pulling up her driveway. She’d come here to tell Rocco about the garden—and to ask about his visit with Dr. Kimble. Never had she expected this. She was in such shock, she didn’t know what to do, what to think. She sucked in a harsh breath, then covered her mouth so that he wouldn’t hear that involuntary sound.

The garden contractors were starting to mill about her front yard. She needed to get over there. She turned and looked at him, standing frozen by his trunk. “I just came to tell you that I’m having a small garden put in over the next few days. Greer cleared the contractors. They shouldn’t disturb you much.”

Rocco’s gaze met hers. She went to the stairs, leaving because she was a coward. She hadn’t seen a gun, so perhaps what she thought she’d heard had been something different.
   

She was halfway to the new garden site when she realized she still had Rocco’s bullet in her pocket.

Mandy wiped her tears away before she stepped out of the barn. The project foreman waved to her. She waved back. It hadn’t taken long to find a garden center that could begin work quickly, now that the busy part of the season had passed.
 

When she reached her front yard, the foreman showed her the plans. The whole garden would be done in a circle about forty feet across. Pavers would encircle a large, three-tier stone fountain. On the outer edge, there would be three benches with stone seats and colorful Mediterranean tiles on the base and seat backs. Between each bench would be a large cottonwood, with room for seasonal flowers in wide beds. Enclosing the whole thing would be some dense evergreen shrubs. The foreman pointed to them on the plan.

“They’ll grow about eight feet high and wide. You’ll need to trim them every year. But once they’re mature, which will take six years or so, they’ll form a nice privacy border and windbreak, so you can enjoy this space even in winter.”

“Sounds lovely. Just what I wanted,” Mandy said.

“We’ll start this morning. We should be out of here in a few days.”

“Terrific. I’m going to set out some iced tea for your crew. Please tell them to help themselves.”

Mandy started toward her house. One of the team’s SUVs was parked out front. Angel was standing next to it. She nodded at him as she went past, hoping he didn’t catch anything off about her. Unfortunately, he fell into step beside her.

“What’s up, Em?”

“I’m just going to make iced tea for the workers. Want to help me?” She knew Rocco was still in the barn and didn’t want him to see her having a deep conversation out here with Angel. Probably wasn’t any better that he could see them go into the house together.