Chapter 10

Ace

Dinner was done. The Ryders that were going into town with us headed up to their rooms, except for Talis and Melody. They went into our kitchen and cleaned up the dishes. Mom wanted to fuss about them doing it, but Melody stopped her. “You have a dishwasher and instant hot water. Trust me when I say this will be fun for us. Remember, our ranch is an Old West Theme Park. We wash by hand and heat water the way they did it in the 1800s. Plus, your son needs you. I don’t know what he has to tell you tonight, but I know he needs your strength and love in that room when he starts talking.”

I blushed at these Ryders and their special gifts. I couldn’t wait for Dad to get a demonstration from Sam. That would be eye opening for him and maybe help cool him off. I’d have to arrange that for tomorrow at some point. But now was the time to quit procrastinating and just do it.

One last bit of business first. I looked at my family, all of them watching me. “I need a quick word with Parker, then we can start. Skylar, Amber, while I do that, can you two Facetime in the other two Wilders and introduce them to Jaelyn? That way we can get to it when I get back.”

Dad grunted and grumbled just loud enough that I could hear him. “Still my house, I’m still head of this family. Ungrateful...”

Mom put her hand on his arm. But looked at me. “Go do what you need to. Then come tell us what you need to.”

I quickly gave Jaelyn a kiss and then hurried to the door of the Spider’s Web. That was what the team was calling the room Peter was staying in. I knocked on the door and stuck my head in. “Hey, couple of quick things. These comm units, you said they are satellite linked?”

“Yeah why?”

“Does that mean you’ll be able to hear and talk to me if I was, say, in Missoula later tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Any way to patch just you, me, and Sam in without everyone else?”

“Sure, I can do that remotely. What you thinking?”

I shook my head. “Later. For now, can you find out everything about where the congressman is staying tonight. I mean everything. Building plans, room number, how much security he has, their location, everything. As much detail as you can before now and midnight.”

“Piece of cake.”

“Good. Gotta meet with the family then we can talk for a minute, just you, me, and Sam.”

“Can do.”

With that, it was like I wasn’t even there. He was back on his web, spinning his lines of code. I turned and walked into the dining room and sat beside my girl. My famous brother and sister were on the phone screens, pointed at me. “Thanks Vince and Violet. I appreciate your time. All the rest of you, too. I need your help, all of you, not for protecting Jaelyn, but for something else. I can’t ask for that help without telling you something that could get me thrown into the deepest, darkest hole in a black site prison, so family only. If you are where someone can overhear, you go into the bathroom and turn the water on.”

The light in the kitchen clicked off, and Talis and Melody step into the room. “With that announcement, we are going to turn in until time to go to the Hole in the Wall. I don’t want to know this kind of stuff. I understand sharing it with family and why it’s necessary sometimes. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll explain how I know.”

I can see dad’s getting ready to take over and demand answers. “Dad, I know you want to know what I think I’m doing taking over the family. This is hard enough for me as it is. Please, just listen, don’t ask questions, and let me get the whole thing out. Please.”

Dad turned red with anger, and I knew he was going to spew. “Now look here, this is going too far.”

Mom slammed her hand on the table. “Buckley Wilder, shut your damn mouth and listen to your son! Or so help me God for the first time in our marriage you will only get frozen TV dinners for a month!”

We were all shocked. When a ranch wife feeds her husband a frozen TV dinner, that’s one step before separation. The only thing worse was being told to go sleep in the barn!

My dad patted her hand. “Okay, Lanna, Okay. I didn’t know it was that important to you.”

She growled. “You stubborn old coot. It’s that important to your firstborn! The man who gave up his own career to help you when you needed it. That should have been enough. Look at him, Buck, this isn’t easy for him. Just sit there and listen for once in your life.”

I sighed. Yep, she knew. “Umm okay, well. I’ve been keeping something from all of you. I know you won’t believe me, but I thought it was for your own good. But things have changed now, and I need you all to know and help me recover from something.

“Twenty-one months before I left Delta Force, I was called in and given a mission. Just me, not the team. It was beyond dangerous and considered nearly impossible. The powers that be didn’t really give it to me. They asked me if I thought it could be done. There was this very evil man, a terrorist, but not the Taliban. He was known for taking hostages and torturing them on camera for months until they broke, and then he’d put them on the internet as they cursed America while he tortured them, and he would then decapitate them.”

“They called in me because he had a group of American citizens, one of which was a very high-ranking individual. His name was MacMillan. He knew things that were beyond the highest classification and when the terrorist would eventually break him, the things he could tell the evil man would allow him to attack America worse than ever, like make September 11th look like a picnic.

“The powers that be wanted to know if it was possible to rescue that man. If not, was it possible to kill him before he gave out everything he knew, or should they just bomb the hell out of the terrorist camp and hope for the best?

“I volunteered to get him out. I was sure I could do it. But it had to be just me, and I wouldn’t be able to use any American gear, which was what went wrong. My parachute malfunctioned, and I ended up in a tree wrapped in the chute. Allowing me to be captured.

“And that’s when the hell began. I was dragged into the very compound I was supposed to rescue my target from. There I was tortured, worse than Jaelyn was when she showed up here.”

“The torture happened every day. The evil man in charge of the compound was the one who tortured me. Every day, he did terrible things, unspeakable things, and every day he only asked one question because I refused to answer it. ‘Who are you?’

“I made up stuff and the more outlandish the things I told him, the more he hurt me. But I had a plan. It wasn’t my original plan, but it was a plan. I just needed to wait him out. Eventually, he would get careless and when he did, then I would enact my new plan.

“It took six months. Six months of torture. Six months of seeing and hearing others tortured. Until the day came. I honestly think he was going to kill me that day. But he had gotten sloppy, he’d gotten comfortable, and when he locked away anything that could be used as a weapon against him, he missed a deadly weapon. A single number two pencil.

“Maybe he left it out for me to sign a confession. I don’t know, but I saw it and knew this was my freedom. He asked his question and for the first time in six months, l let him think he broke me.”

“I begged him not to hurt me. I told him I would tell him who I was. I’d tell him everything.

“He came close and put his hand on my shoulder like a kindness and he said, ‘That’s good. I won’t have to hurt you anymore. Just tell me who you are and why you came here.’

“I looked up at him and said quietly, so he had to get close. ‘You want to know who I am’ I looked him in the eye. ‘I’m justice.’

“He wasn’t good at English, I don’t think. Because he said, ‘That’s good Justin. Justin who?’ I leaned into him like I couldn’t sit up and clutched at his shirt, snagging the pencil. ‘I am the darkness of the night.’ He looked at me with the first inkling of concern. ‘What? What are you saying?’

“I smiled at him. ‘I’m the bastard who killed you, asshole.’ And then I drove that pencil right through his voice box so he couldn’t call for help. I wrapped my arm around his neck and spun him so I was behind him, and grabbed his chin with my other hand and leaned right in his ear. ‘My name is Commander ACE WILDER and you are dead.’ Then I snapped his neck.”

I was soaked in sweat and shaking as I finished that part of my tale. I wasn’t in my dining room anymore. No, I was lost in the past. Lost to that room where I had experienced things no one should ever experience. I heard but didn’t understand when my mother said to Jaelyn.

“Help him Jaelyn honey, only you can. Kiss him. With all that love and passion in your heart for my son, kiss him and bring him back to me!”

And she did. Jaelyn wrapped her arms around me and locked her lips to mine. She poured her love, her passion and need into me. She poured her very soul into our connection and my heart calmed and my mind cleared, and I kissed her back.

When she couldn’t breathe, I gentled the kiss and put her back in her chair, my hand on her cheek. and I looked at the faces of my family. Shocked to see tears running down each of their faces.

My sisters were sobbing. My brothers were wiping hard and fast. Mom sat there saying, “my son, my brave, noble son.”

And dad. Dad had his face in his hands as he wept openly and unashamedly. It was the first time in all my twenty-nine years that I’d ever seen my father cry. Before I realized what he was doing, he was out of his chair and coming around the table. He wrapped his hands around me and held me.

“I knew they had captured you, boy. Those two friends of yours came here and told me. Wildcat and Boomer. They told me you were missing and probably in the hands of the enemy. I asked them. ‘Be honest, is my son dead?’

“Your friend Boomer. He shook his head and looked me in the eye. ‘Officially, sir, your son is missing. He may never be declared dead because they can’t. This mission officially never happened. So they can’t say he’s even missing.

“However, let me tell you what I know, Mister Wilder. Ace doesn’t know how to fail. He never gives up. Many times, we will do what they’ve asked us to do. Many times, we get to a point where our whole team knows it’s impossible. That’s when your son tells us to ‘Cowboy up and get’r’done’.

“Then he pushes us until we have mission accomplished, and he brings us home. So I don’t know when and I can’t tell you how, but there will come a moment in the future when your phone will ring and it will be Ace. He won’t tell you what he’s done or what happened. He won’t be able to. But he will come home. Because he’s Ace Wilder, and he never quits until the last of the cattle are where they belong.’

“And dang if he wasn’t right. Wasn’t but a few weeks later, you called me just to talk. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. I knew you didn’t want me to know.”

To say it shocked me is an understatement. All this time wasted. I could have had his support and help, but my foolish pride kept me from it. “I wish I hadn’t had to tell you now, but I did. Because after I got back, I spent two months in the hospital healing from the things done to me. Then a month getting back up to fighting shape. I’d only been back to running missions for a few months when Mom called about you.

“We all know what I did then, and I’d do it again. But I know I hurt all of you because I refused to move back in here. But I did that because I’m not the Ace you all remember. I’m broken.”