Free Guardian by Erik Williams

care right now. He’d clean later. He’d do a lot of things later. Right now he wanted to eat and shower and sleep the rest of the day away.
    He dropped his bag on the beat-­up green sofa and walked into the kitchen. The fridge had a half-­empty bottle of ketchup and a stick of butter. The freezer held a full ice cube tray and a cold pack. Mike opened the pantry and found pasta and granola bars.
    He grabbed a granola bar, and walked over to the bed, where he sat down and ate it. When he was done, he opened the drawer to the nightstand and slid his Beretta and holster in. Before he closed it, he reached in past his wrist and ran his hand along the bottom of the nightstand tabletop. His fingers latched onto a leather pouch attached by Velcro strips. He freed it and pulled it out.
    Unzipping the pouch, Mike found the two thousand dollars in small bills he always kept stashed. There were also three passports with different aliases. He thumbed through them and the cash, found a laminated index card, removed it and set the pouch on the nightstand.
    He flipped the personal switch in his head. This was the only place he allowed it. In the field it was off at all times. But here, in private, he indulged. He reminisced. He missed.
    The card was a plain three-­by-­five type, lined on one side and blank on the other. Taped to the blank side, under the lamination, was a small heart. It was crudely drawn in black crayon and colored in with red.
    Mike stared at the drawing, hands trembling. Tears blurred his vision, his chest heavy and constricted.
    How long has it been? Too long. Too fucking long.
    He blinked and wiped the tears away and slid the heart back into the leather pouch. Then he fastened the pouch back to the underside of the nightstand and closed the drawer. Taking a deep breath, he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes and thought about her.
    Why do you do it to yourself? You can never see her again. You don’t even know where she is.
    Like I couldn’t find her.
    Let it go. You’d only put her in danger.
    He flipped the switch off.
    For a moment the image of a bottle of whiskey flashed in his mind. Mike opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling fan rotating slowly above. He’d replaced one haunted memory with another.
    Shit. He sat up. No way would he sleep right now. Mike stood and walked into the kitchen. He opened a cabinet, hoping he’d left a bottle of Gatorade or soda behind. Instead, he found a half-­empty fifth of Johnnie Walker and two full ones.
    My situation has not improved.
    The bottles also had a fine layer of dust on them. Sad, lonely, unwanted bottles. All they wanted was to be polished off, in more ways than one . . .
    Licking his lips, he closed the cabinet door and backed away. He knew he had to distract himself ASAP, before he started having conversation with whiskey bottles.
    Mike headed to his dresser and opened the top drawer, looking for workout clothes. Time to burn some nervous energy on the treadmill.
    P lease hurry up, Mayyat thought. There is much to do and you are late.
    He sat in his rental car, gazing into the driver’s side mirror. Reflected in it was a sidewalk outside the entrance of a brick town house. A few pedestrians strolled by but none were the man he was waiting for.
    He glanced away from the mirror long enough to turn the air-­conditioning up to high. Even at ten o’clock at night, the humidity of northern Virginia kept the atmosphere moist like a sodden sponge. Mayyat was used to the extreme temperatures of the Iraqi desert. But that was dry heat, and it seemed this August humidity would kill him if he spent more than a few days here.
    Capture Caldwell and you get to return home.
    Yes, Caldwell. The man Kharija so desperately wanted. The man he had lost.
    Mayyat thought about the thick file Kharija had provided. So much detailed information covering deep covert operations the last few months. All off book, above Top