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  In the Name Of.

  In the Name Of

  A Kate Holland Suspense: Book 2 in the Hidden Valor Military Veterans Suspense Series

  Candace Irving

  Prologue

  He woke to screaming.

  Azizah.

  He flung the quilt from his body as he jumped off the bed, only to trip over the skateboard sticking out from beneath and crash into the wooden chair at his desk. Confusion overrode the sleep still fogging his brain as he gained his balance—for another piercing scream had rent the air. His sister was definitely in danger.

  He could hear his uncle shouting in Persian as he stumbled out of his bedroom and down the hall toward the main part of the house.

  The garage. The bellows and screams—and now his sister's violent sobbing—they were all coming from out there.

  Whore?

  Why would his uncle—

  He reached the door to the garage. Through the embedded square of glass, he saw his uncle's thick fist swing up, then down, smashing into his sister's cheek, the heavy ring on Amoo's middle finger splitting the flesh wide as she fell to her knees.

  "Azizah!" He wrenched the door open and vaulted out onto the icy cement, sliding to a halt as the soles of his feet landed amid a slick of old oil.

  Before he could right himself, his uncle's fist had bashed into his sister's bruised and bloodied face again.

  "Amoo, no!" He lunged at his uncle, only to come to a jarring halt as another determined hand gripped his arm from behind and jerked him around.

  "Baba?"

  Like his uncle, his father's face was nearly purple with rage as he spat onto the concrete near the chest freezer beside them. "Azizah has brought dishonor upon the family. She must suffer the consequences."

  Dishonor? His sweet, gentle, always subservient sister? What could she have possibly done to invite this horror upon herself?

  Reza.

  Oh, no. He grabbed at his father's shirt. "Baba, no! Reza wishes to marry—"

  His father's knuckles cracked into his jaw, knocking the rest of his words back down his throat before they could escape. "You knew she was shaming us with that boy? And you told me nothing?"

  Another crack to his jaw. This blow carried such force, it spun him around and sent him stumbling into the echoing garage. He lurched into his sister's kneeling body. Her arms lashed about his waist, her frantic fingers digging into his back, her face pressed into his front as she buried her sobs in the gray sweats she'd given him from her new college.

  His uncle closed in on them. The man raised his thickened fist yet again—only this time, the ivory handle of his grandfather's cherished dagger was clenched within, the curved blade slicing ominously down.

  He gripped Azizah tighter, turning them both to shield her more fully as he flung himself over the top of her hijab, the pale blue silk of the headscarf already stained with the splatter of her blood. Amoo had struck her, yes. But surely he would not—

  He grunted in stunned agony as the dagger plunged into his upper back.

  A moment later, the dagger was slicing out, grinding against shrieking nerves and violated bone until it was free.

  He was still clinging to Azizah, gasping for air as his father's fingers clamped about his arms to haul him off his sister. His father flipped him onto his spine and held him there as the blade sliced down once more, this time piercing his exposed belly.

  "Baba!"

  His father ignored his scream, those hot, stunted breaths beating into his eyes and cheeks as the man pinned him to that ancient slick of oil amid the concrete.

  Terror, pain and disbelief battered together, somehow enhancing his vision as time itself seemed to slow. He could see each curl and flourish carved into the curved steel of the blade that his uncle had smuggled out of Iran as it came down to slice into his flesh—again and again.

  Eventually, the dagger that both Amoo and Baba treasured ceased those excruciating arcs. But he still couldn't move, or even look away from the satisfaction hardening his father's face, as he felt the warmth of his blood spilling out from his abdomen. The fabric of Azizah's final Eid al-Fitr gift to him was soaked with it.

  He grew cold. More confused.

  Why?

  Why stab him? And why had his uncle stopped?

  He caught his sister's shallow gasp and found the strength to turn his head.

  Azizah's split and swollen lips moved ever so slightly as she whispered his name. Their grandfather's blade. He knew why it wasn't slicing into him anymore. It was buried to its now tainted ivory hilt—in Azizah's chest. Her lashes fluttered once, then stilled. Those beautiful dark eyes he adored were now sightless and glassy.

  The only person who had ever truly loved him was dead.

  1

  In the past week, how much were you bothered by: repeated, disturbing and unwanted memories of the stressful experience?

  Kate Holland shifted her focus to the columns at the right of the post-traumatic stress assessment attached to the clipboard on her lap. The numerical ratings on the PTSD symptoms checklist spanned from 0 to 4, with the corresponding qualifiers at the top ranging from Not at all; to A little bit; Moderately; Quite a bit; and Extremely.

  So...getting sucked so deeply into the memory of Max losing his head that she could see, hear and smell the bastard wielding that gleaming sword four years later and seven thousand miles away? And remaining trapped within the horror for so long that all three of her remaining fellow Braxton PD deputies—and the sheriff—had not only noticed, but had crowded in around her desk at the police station before she'd found the strength and presence of mind to snap out of it?

  Yeah, that definitely fell under Extremely.

  She circled the 4 in the column beneath and moved on to the second question on the sheet. Was she bothered by: repeated, disturbing dreams of the stressful experience?

  Let's see...being woken from a sweat-soaked nightmare at least twice a night this past week by an increasingly worried and seriously stressed-out German Shepherd jabbing his nose into her neck so frantically that he'd begun to leave bruises?

  Yet another shoo-in for the Extremely column.

  Kate circled her second 4 out of a possible 4 and moved on to the third question. By the time she'd pushed through all twenty queries—including Feeling distant or cut off from other people? and the ever-incriminating Feeling jumpy or easily startled?—she was contemplating dumping the clipboard on the waiting room's deserted check-in counter and escaping this emotional sinkhole of a dilapidated VA hospital tasked with juggling the state's surfeit of screwed-up veterans. Permanently.

  The temptation to bolt intensified as Kate noted the succession of fours she'd circled down the front and back of the questionnaire.

  When she'd signed the contract agreeing to attend no less than twelve weekly, soul-shredding sessions of cognitive processing therapy, Dr. Manning had informed her that a baseline total of thirty-three on this very assessment pointed to a probable PTSD diagnosis in all its raging glory. She didn't need a calculator to know she'd blown past that sum with the first ten questions alone; she could feel the reality of her deepening deficiencies ricocheting along every jagged line of her seriously cracked psyche.

  It was barely noon on a lazy Saturday in early December. The parking lot outside the main doors to Fort Leaves had been all but deserted upon her arrival, leaving her to commandeer the first slot. If she bailed now, she could be back inside her Durango with the engine fired up and the bulk of Little Rock in her rea
rview mirror within two to three minutes. Less than thirty later, she'd be back in Braxton, pulling into the drive of the split-log home she'd inherited from her father, returning one of Ruger's humblingly ecstatic greetings and a slew of his more sedate, balming hugs as she and the Shepherd escaped to the couch for the remainder of the weekend.

  Even better, she wouldn't have to explain the skyrocketing scores on her weekly questionnaire, let alone the reason behind them.

  And what she planned to do about it.

  Heck, she wouldn't even have to explain her decision to Liz. As a newly baptized shrink herself, not to mention her best friend from high school, Liz would definitely have had something to say about it, too. But Liz was out of town for training and wouldn't be back for two more weeks. Long enough for Kate to strengthen herself against the coming disappointment.

  That decided it.

  Kate stood...only to hear the soft snick of the inner door across the waiting room as it opened.

  Dr. Manning's deceptively placid blue stare eased into the waiting room, pinning her in place as the remainder of the shrink's lanky, sixty-something form followed. "Good afternoon, Deputy Holland. I see you found the PTSD assessment I left for you. Excellent." He opened the door wider and waved her into his lair. "Please, come in."

  Trapped, Kate tightened her grip on the clipboard and abandoned the row of rust-colored chairs, taking care to keep her sights locked on the shrink's shoulder-length strands of silver—and not the collection of cobalt blue pottery looming along the floating shelf to her right as she moved deeper into the waiting room.

  It took thirteen steps to clear her first landmine of the afternoon. Five more had her safely through the doorway, but flush with the second.

  Unfortunately, short of closing her eyes, there was no escaping the three-by-five-foot, tattered Islamic flag on the wall above the faux leather couch as she paused between the matching armchairs located on her side of the coffee table.

  Manning had offered to have the flag and pottery removed. At least until she'd gotten through her first few sessions. While she appreciated the gesture, she'd passed. What was the point? It wasn't as though she needed the sight of those bowls and jugs—or even that singed scrap of white on green—to trigger her own private hell anymore.

  It was there. Twenty-four hours a day now.

  Whether she closed her eyes or not.

  "May I take your coat?"

  "Thank you." Kate set the clipboard on the seat of her usual chair and slipped off her Braxton PD jacket. The jacket she'd deliberately donned before leaving her house, along with the long-sleeved department polo beneath, and her police utility belt and trousers—despite the fact that she didn't have duty until Monday.

  What better way to obscure the real reason for her shoulder holster and the loaded 9mm inside? The 9mm she still couldn't leave the house without.

  Where her clawing need to remain armed twenty-four/seven would leave her once her boss figured out the rest, she had no idea. But it would help now with the exceptionally sharp VA psychiatrist turning away from the brass coat tree beside his desk to approach the pair of wingback chairs.

  Or not.

  That sharp blue stare hadn't zeroed in on her Glock. Or the clipboard she'd retrieved with her right hand. The stare was fused to her left—or, rather, her wrist.

  Max's dive watch.

  Crap.

  She'd meant to remove it before she bailed out of her SUV. If only because she and the shrink had agreed that she wouldn't wear it for the duration of her therapy.

  Correction—Manning had pressed his position with that quiet, insidious logic of his. Something about how he'd noticed that she tended to use the watch she'd yanked off the wrist of the terrorist who'd beheaded Max as an instinctive grounding technique. And that, while grounding techniques were generally a good thing—and that he did encourage keeping the watch near so that she had something to touch when stressed—he'd also noticed that she tended to carry the twisting and scraping of the oversized band around her wrist to the point of self-harm and avoidance.

  So she'd removed it.

  She'd made it twelve days with the watch in her pocket—until the sheriff had stopped her on her way out of the station late Thursday afternoon. The moment Lou had dropped the governor's bombshell on her, her wrist had begun to itch worse than it had since she'd stumbled across Joe's betrayal four weeks earlier.

  Hell, worse than it had itched since she'd woken up in that quiet room at the Craig Joint Theatre Hospital at Bagram, Afghanistan, four years ago.

  Like it was itching now.

  Somehow, she managed to ignore the sensation as she dumped the clipboard onto the chair next to the shrink. She turned her wrist, popped the stainless-steel clasp and slipped the oversized, orange-faced Doxa into the pocket of her uniform trousers—and sat.

  The comforting bulk and weight at her upper right thigh should have helped to calm the itch as Manning retrieved the clipboard from the opposite armchair and settled himself within—but it didn't.

  If anything, the itching increased.

  He finished reading the assessment she'd filled out in the waiting room, then moved on to the homework he'd assigned the previous week. Flipping through the worksheets, he studied her comments. Even if she hadn't placed the sheets beneath the assessment in the order in which she'd completed them, she'd have known when he'd reached the one he was looking for.

  Shrinks weren't the only ones adept at reading expressions. Cops could too.

  Even shitty ones, like her.

  Manning finished the final worksheet and looked up.

  She nearly squirmed in her chair. That laser focus of his she could deal with. But the insidious compassion that replaced it?

  It was so much worse.

  The itching had become so intense, her forearm shook with the force of resisting it—until she couldn't. Against her will, the fingers of her right hand slipped across her lap to rub at the bracelet of scratches and older, fine white scars that she'd been adding to since Thursday afternoon.

  The uppermost layer of skin had darkened from an irritated pink to livid scarlet a mere hour earlier, shortly before she'd left the house.

  Right around the time she'd screwed up the courage to fill out the trio of blocks on that final worksheet.

  But instead of addressing the content of those blocks, the shrink shifted his attention to her wrist. She was still rubbing it. He didn't need to repeat his earlier, clinical assessment. It was thrumming through the air between them.

  Avoidance. She was practicing it again. Without the watch this time.

  Lovely.

  She tugged her fingers from her wrist—and anchored them beneath her right thigh. "Sorry."

  Manning's soft sigh filled the room. "Kate?"

  "Yes?"

  "You were in a relatively good place when you left this office last Saturday. You had accepted that PTSD is normal after a severe trauma. We spoke about natural emotions like anger and fear, and manufactured emotions like guilt. We also talked about the importance of allowing yourself to experience the natural emotions connected to the trauma you experienced in Afghanistan, and the importance of not—" That insidious compassion shifted to the band of raw flesh. "—avoiding them. We even discussed the likelihood that your scores, and the symptoms behind them, would increase over the next few weeks—because you now remember your trauma in its entirety. But that embracing these connected emotions is what will allow their intensity to lessen and burn out, much like a fire that's lost its source of fuel."

  He waited for her guilty nod, then flipped through the stack of papers on the clipboard to remove that final, damning worksheet and set it on top. "Last week, you also composed a statement on why you believe your trauma occurred and how it has affected your life. In it, you admitted that you hated the Silver Star that was awarded as a result of your POW experience and the eleven terrorists you were forced to kill during your escape—and that you felt responsible for the beheading of you
r friend, Max."

  She had. But since he'd begun last week's session with a similar review of their initial one, she bit her tongue and waited for the rest.

  Not to mention an actual question for her to respond to.

  The shrink glanced at the sheaf of papers. "Last Saturday, we discussed the concept of stuck points as well. That is—problem areas in thinking that interfere with the recovery process, thereby keeping a person 'stuck' in PTSD. We found several of yours and began with the one regarding the beheading: I should have protected Max. We worked through this stuck point together with your first ABC worksheet and discussed it at length. You agreed that the crime scene investigation conducted by your former Army CID colleagues proved there was nothing you could have done to save Max. You told me you were going to reread the reports and review the video recording that the terrorists made of the beheading this past week. Were you able to do that?"

  Though it had damned near killed her to read and watch and listen to it all again, "Yes."

  "And do you still agree that, given the circumstances that day, there was nothing you could have done to save Max's life?"

  That she could have done? "Yes."

  He must have been satisfied with the honesty behind that silently split hair, because he nodded. "Then perhaps we should discuss this." Manning tapped his index finger over the initial block of the worksheet she'd forced herself to fill out that morning. The one that spelled out the first—and final—task that she'd be performing as Deputy Holland when she reached the police station come Monday morning.

  "What happened?"

  Kate shrugged. "It's right there." She tipped her head toward the label above that first block, the one that read: Something happens. "I'm turning in my badge."

  "Why?"

  Well, hell, that answer was right there on the worksheet too. Scratched out in the next square over, directly beneath: I tell myself something. She pushed forth another shrug as she gave voice to the supposed stuck point she'd written in the block—though, admittedly, this shrug was stiffer than her first. "My judgment can't be trusted."