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Authors: K. T. Bryan
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couldn’t. This ‘being assigned to temporary desk duty’ gig didn’t sit well. Not only was he itching to find Sanchez, but he’d take a third-world jungle or a hostile desert any day of the week if it meant being where the action was. Not that there wasn’t plenty of action on the SEAL training base in Coronado, it was just that the action here compared to the real world was like listening to an old man telling war stories – often interesting, but mostly repetitive. Maybe if he’d been assigned to weapons training or demolition … but no, he’d gotten assigned to teach psychological warfare from inside a SEAL classroom. Which was kind of like teaching the Third Reich meets Hannibal Lecter. Pass the Chianti.
But, Dillon knew, this was the admiral’s way of keeping him safe. Tying him up on base, out of reach of all the scum who’d love to have his head. Since his team had missed Sanchez six months ago, John was keeping a big-ass safety net around Dillon.
While he appreciated the thought, the reality was smothering. If he didn’t get out of here, and soon, he was going to lose his friggin’ mind. His reasoning was simple--Sanchez was out there, free to do as he pleased. Dillon wasn’t. And the longer Sanchez was free, the longer Dillon wouldn’t be. Even if someone other than Sanchez had put that bounty on his head, which Dillon doubted, the end result was the same. Sanchez had gone dark and the admiral had nixed all ops to do with the SBC until he sorted things out. And all that sorting had been going on for six freakin’ months now.
Everyone has a story--it makes them who they are--but so far Dillon’s was nowhere near what he’d expected. Some people identified with music. Some with books. They hear the lyrics or read the story and think, huh, that could be my life. Music especially tended to trigger memories and most people could almost always link a song to certain events in their lives.
Dillon, however, had gone the movie route. Not that he’d planned on it, or even wanted to, but life had handed him a hell of a script over the last few years.
Dillon was the dedicated government operative. Sanchez, the world’s most notorious drug lord who had murdered Dillon’s family.
No face transplants, no bomb in L.A. or New York, no remote cement prisons or any other Hollywood coolness. But the hate, the need for vengeance, ran parallel to pretty much every good-guy-bad-guy movie ever made.
Dillon’s twist -- somewhere along the way the lines had blurred and he’d become the bad guy. The really, really bad guy.
He’d let his job, his obsession with Sanchez, spin out of control. What had started as a one-year assignment had dragged into three, and he’d crossed over that professional line and let things get personal.
And his beautiful, lovely wife had died.
He stared hard at the framed wedding photo taken seven years ago, the picture he kept on his desk and refused to remove despite the gentle coaxing of well-meaning friends and coworkers. He traced his index finger over the image of Sara before he set the picture down and poured another two fingers of Crown.
Getting shit-faced drunk wasn’t going to bring Sara back, but by God, it sure as hell helped him live through the pain. Problem was, he was stone-cold sober and the pain in his chest was still as tight and bitter as ever. He’d never actually had a drink on the job before, but today he’d cancelled his classes and said fuck you to the world in general. Then he’d borrowed a bottle from the admiral’s guests-only reserve.
Today was the one-year marker of Sara’s death, their seventh wedding anniversary, and whoever said time heals was not only full of shit, but obviously had never lost a wife. Time didn’t heal, it just gave him too many empty days, too many empty hours, to remember and ache for what he no longer had.
What he’d lost because he’d failed. As
But, Dillon knew, this was the admiral’s way of keeping him safe. Tying him up on base, out of reach of all the scum who’d love to have his head. Since his team had missed Sanchez six months ago, John was keeping a big-ass safety net around Dillon.
While he appreciated the thought, the reality was smothering. If he didn’t get out of here, and soon, he was going to lose his friggin’ mind. His reasoning was simple--Sanchez was out there, free to do as he pleased. Dillon wasn’t. And the longer Sanchez was free, the longer Dillon wouldn’t be. Even if someone other than Sanchez had put that bounty on his head, which Dillon doubted, the end result was the same. Sanchez had gone dark and the admiral had nixed all ops to do with the SBC until he sorted things out. And all that sorting had been going on for six freakin’ months now.
Everyone has a story--it makes them who they are--but so far Dillon’s was nowhere near what he’d expected. Some people identified with music. Some with books. They hear the lyrics or read the story and think, huh, that could be my life. Music especially tended to trigger memories and most people could almost always link a song to certain events in their lives.
Dillon, however, had gone the movie route. Not that he’d planned on it, or even wanted to, but life had handed him a hell of a script over the last few years.
Dillon was the dedicated government operative. Sanchez, the world’s most notorious drug lord who had murdered Dillon’s family.
No face transplants, no bomb in L.A. or New York, no remote cement prisons or any other Hollywood coolness. But the hate, the need for vengeance, ran parallel to pretty much every good-guy-bad-guy movie ever made.
Dillon’s twist -- somewhere along the way the lines had blurred and he’d become the bad guy. The really, really bad guy.
He’d let his job, his obsession with Sanchez, spin out of control. What had started as a one-year assignment had dragged into three, and he’d crossed over that professional line and let things get personal.
And his beautiful, lovely wife had died.
He stared hard at the framed wedding photo taken seven years ago, the picture he kept on his desk and refused to remove despite the gentle coaxing of well-meaning friends and coworkers. He traced his index finger over the image of Sara before he set the picture down and poured another two fingers of Crown.
Getting shit-faced drunk wasn’t going to bring Sara back, but by God, it sure as hell helped him live through the pain. Problem was, he was stone-cold sober and the pain in his chest was still as tight and bitter as ever. He’d never actually had a drink on the job before, but today he’d cancelled his classes and said fuck you to the world in general. Then he’d borrowed a bottle from the admiral’s guests-only reserve.
Today was the one-year marker of Sara’s death, their seventh wedding anniversary, and whoever said time heals was not only full of shit, but obviously had never lost a wife. Time didn’t heal, it just gave him too many empty days, too many empty hours, to remember and ache for what he no longer had.
What he’d lost because he’d failed. As
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