hurt for her son. She knew that gossip followed everyone in the military like a curse. Sooner or later, Dazen would find out about Jason’s shameful history. Gripping the phone a little more tightly, she whispered, “Well, maybe Ms. Dazen isn’t going to hold it against you.”
Sighing, Jason said, “I’ll find out, that’s for sure.”
“Do you need anything, honey?”
“No, just to hear your voice. It reminds me of home.”
Laura closed her eyes. Jason loved being home. He loved living in Montana. He loved working with plants and animals. In high school, he’d excelled in biology. But Morgan had wanted him to go to a military academy to carry on the proud, two-hundred-year-plus tradition of the Trayhern family. Since Jason was the oldest male he was expected to go into the military. Laura knew he really hadn’t wanted to. Instead, he had wanted to become an ecologist and work outdoors, somewhere in nature. But that wasn’t to be.
“Well, you can come home on leave, son. Your bedroom is unchanged from the day you left it.” Laura knew Jason would never come home, not until he healed the rift with Morgan. Jason always spent his thirty days of leave overseas, instead. It had been nearly three years since Laura had even seen her son—not since the Five Days of Christmas party right after his first year in Annapolis.
“Yeah, I know, Mom. I should come home…but, well, you know how it is.”
“I know…”
“Listen, I gotta run. I’ll be in touch next week. Love you. Say hi to Pete and Kelly, and give little Kamaria a hug from me?”
Tears burned in Laura’s eyes. She cleared her throat and whispered, “I always do, honey.”
“And how’s Katy? What have you heard from her?”
Laura knew it hurt Jason that his younger sister, two years behind him in age, had taken up the family honor and volunteered to go to the Academy to represent them. Before Jason left, he’d been very close to Katy.
“She’s doing fine, honey. She’s flying Seahawk down in Columbia for the Black Ops stuff.”
“Just like Dad….”
Laura heard the grimness in Jason’s tone. Morgan had been a Marine. Jason was supposed to have taken the same route, but hadn’t, due to the scandal. “Yes, she’s following him into the Corps.”
“I see…. Well, I gotta go, Mom….”
“Take care of yourself? We love you….”
Just as Laura hung up, the front door opened and then quietly closed. That would be her husband, Morgan, coming home for lunch. She tucked the notecard with Jason’s office number on it into her apron pocket. Morgan came through the entryway, wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt and tan chinos, and still looking every inch a Marine with his military-short black hair, which had gone gray at the temples. Her husband was one of the most powerful men in the world when it came to espionage. His company worked beneath the auspices of the CIA, and Laura was proud of Morgan’s ability to help people around the world get out of trouble.
Today, though, she saw he was worried. His square face and gray eyes looked tight with tension. She walked up to him and placed a kiss on his cheek. “You look awful, darling. What’s wrong? Is a mission going bad?”
Morgan bussed his wife’s velvet cheek, inhaling the faint jasmine fragrance she wore. Placing his hand on her waist, he pressed her against him for a moment.
“No, not a mercenary mission,” he answered. Releasing her, he made his way to the table where Kamaria sat. The little girl twisted toward him, a smile of unabashed welcome on her face. Leaning over, Morgan placed a kiss on his daughter’s pink cheek.
“How’s our little musician doing?” he asked, turning to Laura as he rested his hand upon Kamaria’s tiny shoulders.
Laura pulled a turkey-and-cheese casserole out of the oven and placed it on a pot holder in the middle of the maple table. Immediately a delicious smell filled the air. “Beating along in rhythm with whatever comes on the radio. Her hair is long enough to braid now. With the temperature so warm today, I thought she might like to have it up off her neck. Do you like it? Come and sit down. Everything’s ready to eat.”
Morgan sat at the end of the table next to Kamaria. “Yeah, she looks cute in braids. Umm, that smells good. Turkey casserole?” He enjoyed being with his wife and daughter for lunch every day. Eyeing Laura, who was wearing jeans and a pink tank top, he admired her figure. His wife had carried four of their children. She was in her forties, and looked more beautiful to him than ever. Her waist was not as small as it used to be, but then, she was a mother. To him, she was still the special woman he’d met so many years earlier at an airport near Washington, D.C.
Kamaria thumped his arm with the spoon. He grinned and wiped her mouth and chin with his napkin, mopping up the drool that was soaking her T-shirt at the collar.
Laura placed the Waldorf salad in front of him, then put a portion of casserole on a plastic plate in front of their daughter.
When Laura sat down, Morgan gently placed the fork in the toddler’s small hand to show her how to hold it properly. The daily lessons were slowly having an impact. Kamaria waved the fork around before plunging it like an airplane into the casserole in front of her.
Laura finished serving and said, “Why are you looking so upset? I can see it in your eyes.”
Grimacing, Morgan said, “I can’t hide a thing from you anymore, can I?”
“Not after all these years of marriage, darling.”
“I’ll tell you after lunch. Let’s enjoy the time we have now.”
Nodding, Laura acquiesced, filling him with relief. Since the terror his family had suffered during a kidnapping by drug lords years ago, Morgan knew he couldn’t protect them from everything, and that ate at him. The kidnapping had been the druggies’ way of paying back Morgan for disrupting their cocaine trafficking out of the Caribbean and South America. He shuddered as he remembered how he, Laura and Jason had been taken to different parts of the world and held without ransom.
Morgan had felt so powerless. Once they’d been rescued and brought back together, Morgan had moved his family out of Washington, D.C., to the protective mountains of Montana.
Since then, he’d done everything in his power to keep his family safe. He had taken Perseus deep underground. To this day, no one except high-echelon members of the CIA and top-ranking military personnel knew the whereabouts of his supersecret organization. And since that time, Morgan valued and cherished moments with his family as never before. But whenever he was faced with a new trial, he couldn’t help but think of the emotional impact of the kidnapping on his family. Especially Jason, who had been six years old at the time. Jason didn’t trust anyone anymore, least of all his father, who had been unable to keep him safe in a world gone bad. And Morgan, no matter how he tried, could not repair that terrible rift that lay like the Grand Canyon between them. Over the years, it had driven them further and further apart, until Jason refused to talk to his father, even though Morgan tried often to reestablish connection with him.
As she ate her salad, Laura watched Morgan guide a spoonful of casserole into Kamaria’s bow-shaped mouth. Laura’s heart swelled with joy. Little Kamaria had been found in the rubble of a Southern California earthquake she herself had been caught in. While Laura was recovering in the hospital at Camp Reed, she had helped take care of Kamaria. When she’d discovered that the little girl had been orphaned by the quake, Morgan had agreed with her request to adopt her. Morgan liked the name of his sister and mother for the baby. Laura liked Kamaria. She ended up with a huge name of Rachel Alyssa Kamaria Trayhern.
Laura knew having a baby in the house again had been very healing, especially to Morgan, who had never had this kind of relationship with his two eldest children, Jason and Katy. Now he was devoting quality time to Pete and Kelly, their fraternal twins, and Kamaria. Laura knew he took parenting very seriously and was