Guarding Clara: Brotherhood Protectors World (Texas Guardians Book 2)

the orders to proceed anyway. That a high-valued target hid inside. We were told to destroy the asset. We tried to argue but it did no good. We were toy soldiers to the government, being played on a board we had no control over. And because we went against our beliefs and followed orders we decimated a village of mostly innocent people to take down one bad guy. Children died. The situation got hot fast and we realized too late that we’d been sent into a trap. We’d been deployed too quickly by a government that had stopped caring about causalities, about innocent people, about us. Their sole focus became taking out one man and not one politician thought about the good men who wouldn’t return to their families as a result. About kids who would grow up never knowing their fathers. About wives who would watch their husbands, children be lowered into the ground and vice versa. Meanwhile their lives were about to change forever. I was discharged not long after. I had nowhere to go so when Jaden asked if I wanted to work for ManTech I had no reason to turn down the job.” Daniel had to stop. The memories engulfed him, like a flash flood after a deadly storm. “ManTech went down in a blaze and our information was out for anyone to see. I’m not saying that I didn’t deserve to be punished. But they didn’t. They were innocent.”

“Bad things happen to good people, Daniel. I see it all too often in my line of work,” Clara said.

“You’d think the experience would make me come home to be the best husband and father I could, but did it?” The tide was rising inside him, threatening to take him under again. The distant beat of the drum sounded. “No. I pushed my wife away. I walked around feeling lost and alone.”

“You had survivor’s guilt,” she said quietly. “You needed time.”

“That’s not what Naomi believed,” he said. “She wanted me to reconnect with the world. Do something for others. And I believed that, too. Believed her. I believed that she wanted to work on our marriage and make it better for our daughter. Then her phone started going off the night before I left for the mission trip she’d devised for me. She was in the shower, so I picked it up, figuring something big was going on. Hell, a selfish part of me wished those messages were the head of Haiti Now! calling the whole trip off. Nothing in me wanted to go on that mission and I almost pulled out at the last minute.”

Daniel paused a few beats. He hadn’t spoken these next words aloud to anyone but they needed to be said.

“There were urgent messages all right.” A bitter laugh rattled around in his chest. “From a friend of hers trying to talk her into following through with leaving me. From what I gathered Naomi couldn’t walk out because I’d come home too broken and she couldn’t walk away. Not yet. Not until she knew I’d be okay.”

“I’m sorry.” Those two words spoke by Clara brought in so much light to the dark places inside Daniel. For once, he felt like he could breathe, really breathe and not have his chest cave in.

“I’d had a bad feeling about that trip but I went against my instincts because I got too inside my head. If I’d stayed back—”

“You don’t know if it would’ve made a difference,” she soothed.

Daniel wasn’t ready to forgive himself but he didn’t patently reject the idea.

“Blaming yourself won’t change what happened. Punishing yourself for the rest of your life won’t make it better. You’re a good man, Daniel. You deserve to find peace.” Clara said more words that managed to pierce his armor.

Helping someone else had an odd effect on his demons, keeping them at bay while chipping away at his anger and replacing it with a spark of something he hadn’t felt in a long time…hope.

He stood up and Clara followed suit. He kissed her right there, under the bright moon for longer than he cared to keep track. She brought her arms up and looped them around his neck. He wrapped his around her midsection, splaying his right hand on the small of her back. Body-to-body, swaying in the breeze, a life that had been tipped on its axis far too long righted itself.

Early the next morning, Daniel got in a forty-five minute workout before showering and heading out for a walk while Clara slept. Her sleep had been fitful. She’d tossed and turned throughout the night, woke up crying at one point, and he’d pulled her tighter against his chest and held her until she stopped. He kissed her and they’d made love again.

Daniel was in trouble. He’d known it from the minute he first met Clara. The first kiss had cemented it.

He glanced around as he wound down one of the paths toward the beach like he’d done dozens of times since their arrival. He’d varied his times and took the less-traveled paths, listening.

At this hour, workers wearing maroon jackets were the only ones awake and on the move. He’d walked for fifteen minutes and passed four maroon jackets when his gaze landed hard on a kitchen worker.

The crown of the man’s head bobbed up and down from behind a tall cart that he was wheeling out the back door, humming.

There was something familiar about him.

Daniel crouched low and followed Maroon Jacket.

At the trash bins that were surrounded by a wooden structure, the man stepped into the construction leaving the cart to block the entrance.

Still on his heels, Daniel moved stealthily along the Cannas until he was positioned close enough to hear voices.

The men spoke in whispers.

“I’ve seen her before,” one of the men said. “I need you to know that I won’t keep lying.”

Maroon Jacket had a conscious. Daniel could work with that.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” the other man said. “We’re looking out for