Into the Storm, page 29
For the first time since she’d learned she was pregnant, she knew she’d be able to enjoy sharing each milestone with not just her friends and family, but with Xavier’s as well.
There was so very much joy and excitement ahead of them.
She reached Xavier’s room, and the door was closed. Knowing the doctor would have finished at least twenty minutes ago, she knocked. The door was opened by the Navy captain she’d met last night. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’ll go to the waiting room.”
The man pulled the door wide. “Please, join us, Dr. Kendrick. This involves you too.”
She stepped into the room and saw the solemn expression on the admiral’s and Xavier’s faces. She braced herself for whatever they had to say.
The captain cleared his throat. “Petty Officer Third Class Collins had surgery yesterday afternoon. It went well and his prognosis is good, in spite of the delays. Medic Smith is to be commended for managing to keep infection at bay under difficult conditions.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said, seeing the same relief in Xavier’s eyes.
The captain nodded. “Collins woke for the first time late last night. By early this morning, he was coherent enough to answer questions. He was able to share what happened to him and the three missing SEALs. We haven’t yet been able to confirm his account, but Lieutenant Flyte is leading the search, now that we know where to begin looking.”
“That’s as far as they got before you arrived,” Xavier said. He nodded toward the visitor’s chair. “I have a feeling you’ll want to sit for this.”
She nodded and skirted the bed and dropped into the chair. She felt flushed and had cold chills at the same time. Her body was going into overtime stress reaction after a brief respite from the nightmare.
She met the admiral’s gaze. It wasn’t lost on her that two high-ranking Naval officers were delivering this news personally to the man who bore the weight of the entire disastrous training.
It was a kindness. A show of support. But it also meant the news was very, very bad.
The admiral picked up the story. “Collins said his team extracted from the lake in the location they’d selected during the planning session on Whidbey. Less than fifteen minutes after they entered the forest, they were engaged by an enemy combatant. Thinking it was part of the training, they took cover and returned fire. They had direct hits on their target and expected the man to lay down his arms and play dead, as expected given the shots landed in areas not protected by body armor. He should at least have presented as injured when the Simunition round hit an extremity. But the trainer—as that is who they believed they were engaging—didn’t surrender. Instead, he approached Commander Odent and shot him point blank in the face.”
Audrey covered her mouth with her hand and gasped, imagining the horror of the moment.
“Master Chief Petty Officer Mueller was shot next. Also point blank to the head. Seaman Hobbs and Petty Officer Collins both took cover and tried to escape. Knowing their weapons were useless, they had no other option. Collins was shot in the shoulder. He was left to bleed out while the shooter chased Hobbs. Collins isn’t sure of the exact timeline, but he knows he lay in the forest for some time, possibly hours, before the initial shooter returned. Finding him alive, the shooter decided to take him to the lodge as another hostage. Collins lost consciousness while being dragged through the woods. He doesn’t remember being in the lodge at all. Waking up in the hospital was quite a shock.
Audrey couldn’t even begin to imagine how disorienting that would be.
“He said he has no idea what happened to Hobbs. He has provided their location in the woods as best he could estimate. We have a dozen men including Army Rangers, Special Forces, SEALs, and federal officers searching that area of the forest and expect to receive news soon.”
She swiped at her eyes, fully able to imagine the horror of the night. She could see the trees, feel the rain, hear the shots, smell the gunpowder and blood.
The captain resumed. “Communication continues to be a problem, but we’ve restored cable and landlines and located three signal blockers so far and suspect there are only one or two more. The signal blockers are highly advanced. Technology we’ve never seen before.” He cleared his throat, and his gaze flicked to Audrey, but he addressed Xavier. “We believe the mercenaries were hired by Grigory Laskin.”
Xavier gave a slow nod. “I was going to suggest the same thing. I’ve been thinking along those lines since we knew the mercenary leader—Mikhail—was after both Chris and me. The merc who died in the mudslide mentioned Belarus and a woman.”
Audrey had been the one to share what they’d learned from the mercenary on the hillside, as Xavier had been out of commission, first as he was being examined, then he’d been asleep, which was probably the only reason she was still in the room right now, because she had a feeling they were wading into the ultra-top-secret realm.
The admiral gave a sharp nod. Not surprisingly, he turned to her and said, “I’m sorry, but we’re now in territory that we cannot share with you.”
She nodded. “I understand.” She even knew Xavier wouldn’t spill the details later and had to respect that. There would be no blowback from what he’d revealed to her and George, but the military wouldn’t offer more information than absolutely necessary.
To Xavier, the admiral said, “We’ll discuss this further during your official debriefing.”
“Have any of the mercenaries been detained?” he asked.
“Yes. Three were captured by the SEAL team not long after the mudslide. Jonas and Phelps had set out to attempt the same hike you and Audrey had made in case you both had died in the slide. They came across three mercenaries who were trying to flee—much as the mercenary you met on the hillside said he was doing. It appears Mikhail was no longer rational. He killed one of his own men in anger after losing the lodge and hostages.”
“Do any of the mercs have a wound to the neck or shoulder—above the collarbone?”
“I’m not sure,” the captain responded. “Why?”
“I shot one with one of Corporal Shaw’s match guns—hit him with a nail—during the raid on the lodge. He got away when I went after Audrey.”
She hadn’t known about that, but then, in the aftermath of the fight behind the post office, she’d been too obsessed with getting the dead man’s blood off her face to really remember anything else. It had all been a blur.
“The merc I shot… He was masked,” Xavier said.
Audrey jolted as his words sank in. “But…Cohen said the mercenary leader, Mikhail, was the only one who was masked.”
He nodded. “I figured you should check, in case Mikhail is trying to pass himself off as a minion.”
The blood drained from her face. Xavier had been on the verge of taking down the mercenary leader, but he’d abandoned him in order to save her.
“We’ll check on that,” the captain said. “We’re still trying to get an accurate count of the number of mercenaries. To that end, we’d like you both to come to headquarters for a full debriefing as soon as you’re released from the hospital, Mr. Rivera.”
“The doctor said I’m clear to leave this morning. Keeping me overnight for observation was just a precaution.”
“Good. We’ll give you time alone first—I know this morning’s news is a blow, as it is to all of us. When you’re ready, tell the nurse, and we’ll have a car pick you up.”
The men left, and they were alone again. The silence was a heavy weight as Audrey thought about the three SEALs. Two known to be dead and the third unlikely to have survived.
Audrey rose from her seat and moved to his bedside. She took his hand. “I’m so sorry, Xavier.”
She remembered those first minutes after they found the empty pit, and his desperate need to stop the training. She’d wanted to check on George and he’d wanted to go to the yurt. They both knew now that even if they’d gone to the yurt, it was too late. Jeb was dead and all wired communication destroyed. They couldn’t have stopped it.
But even so, this had been Xavier’s fear at that time, that the team would engage with tangos and assume they were actors. They’d expect the enemy to shoot paint pellets. His greatest fear had happened within the first fifteen minutes of the op.
He tugged at her hand, and she climbed onto the bed. She wrapped her arms around him as he let out a gut-wrenching sob.
She did the only thing she could and cried with him, deeply grieving three men she would never get to know.
Chapter Forty-One
They received word midmorning that two bodies—those of Odent and Mueller—had been recovered. The search for Hobbs remained ongoing.
Hours after that, the final update confirmed Xavier’s greatest fear. Hobbs had been found in the lake.
With all three men accounted for, the focus on the search for Mikhail and any remaining mercenaries continued. The estimates for the number of mercenaries ranged from George’s count that first night when he identified a dozen, up to eighteen, as claimed by one of the men captured, while the other two men said there had been only ten or eleven. Given that George had been accurate in everything else, it was clear the mercenaries gave unreliable information.
The number of dead mercenaries was easier to calculate. The body of the man Xavier had encountered on the cliffside trail had turned up in the lake. That had been the first kill. Then there was the one he’d killed by snapping his neck, two. George had shot one with a match gun and taken out two with the explosive on the fishing boat, three, four, five. Add to that the one who died in the mudslide—six—and the one who’d attacked Audrey—seven—and the two killed in the lodge firefight—eight and nine. They’d also recovered the body of the man the captured mercs had claimed Mikhail killed, for an even ten dead.
Three captured.
Mikhail was the only one they were certain had escaped, as none of the three detained mercenaries had a wound to the shoulder. A balaclava had been found in a puddle next to Lake Olympus Road near Jeb’s cabin. The mask would be tested for DNA, but after being soaked in mud, it was unlikely to yield actionable evidence.
The forest was searched by law enforcement from every walk of life—federal, state, city, military, park, and tribal—on the assumption that up to five mercenaries could remain, but no other trace was found of anyone in the days immediately following.
Audrey was sent home after a full day of debriefing, but Xavier had to stay on the base to go over again and again every detail of the planning for the training, as they searched for the pieces that would reveal the mole who’d compromised the exercise.
Chris was pulled from the forest to join the debriefing, and the more they compared notes, the more they were both certain that the entire plot had been executed as revenge for the failed mission in Belarus.
The days were long and emotionally grueling. He and Chris were put up in a house on the base, and he ended each night with a long FaceTime call with Audrey.
She was back in her house in Port Angeles. Her SUV had been transported to a body shop to repair the damage from the bullets. She had a rental car in the interim, but preferred to stay home as much as possible. Jae and Undine took turns sleeping in her guest bedroom because she didn’t want to be alone.
Mikhail was still out there, and she’d been named as one of his targets.
The unruly campers Jae had dealt with the first night were long gone from Forks by the time investigators showed up, but that didn’t mean they’d left the country. The police had her house on their regular drive-by schedule, she was the proud owner of a high-end alarm system, and she sported a new smartwatch, so she would never be without a phone.
Xavier ached to be with her, but the work he was doing was important, and they both knew it.
The nightly calls drew them closer together even as they were apart. They spent entire conversations talking about nothing related to the lodge events, just sharing their history and dreams for the future, and that, more than anything, healed pieces of Xavier’s shattered heart.
He knew he faced a long road to finding a way to forgive himself. Right now, it didn’t feel possible to take that leap as guilt weighed on him. But he also knew on an external, logical level, that it wasn’t his fault.
Someday, he’d get his heart to believe it.
Fig had grown to the size of a peapod—he found it a little odd that fruits and vegetables appeared to be the standard base measurement for fetus size—when Xavier was finally cut loose for two days’ leave.
A quick online search gave him the name of a peapod flower that could be found year-round, but he was disappointed when none of the florists nearby had bouquets on hand. Instead, he got Audrey two dozen roses and went to the grocery store and made a second bouquet of peapods.
He showed up on her doorstep with a bouquet in each hand, and the look on her face when she opened the door might have been the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.
Inside, she’d squealed when he set down the flowers and peas on the nearest flat surface and scooped her up, draping her over his right shoulder. “Where’s the bedroom?”
“Xavier, you’re injured! Put me down.”
“It’s been a week. I’m fine.”
“Hey, Xave,” Jae said from the archway to what he assumed was the living room.
“Hey, Jae. Tell me where the bedroom is, then you can leave. Set the alarm behind you.”
Jae laughed and pointed to a hallway, then headed for the front door. “Let me know when you need me, Aud.”
They were halfway down the hall when Xavier heard the door close and the ping of the alarm. Audrey’s bedroom was small, like the rest of her house. Her bed was queen-sized, filling two-thirds of the room.
He set her on the mattress and said, “When we move in together, we’re going to need a bigger bed.”
She laughed. “And a bigger house. This one is only a two-bedroom. What if we have guests, or want more children?”
The idea that she’d just agreed to move in with him and was pondering more than their one accidental baby made his heart leap.
Audrey studied his face as she waited for his response, and her belly did a small somersault at the spark that lit him up.
“You want more than one child?”
“If I can. I’m already in the advanced maternal age category, so we’ll have to see. But as an only child who always wanted siblings, I would be happy if we had more than one little peapod.”
“Do you want to learn the baby’s sex before they’re born?”
“No. I want the mystery. I don’t care if we have a boy or a girl—I just want them healthy, and they may end up being a different gender than what they’re assigned at birth anyway.”
He nodded. “Works for me. Mystery it is.”
She rose from the bed and reached for the top button of his shirt. “Okay, I need to see the damage for myself.” He’d refused to show her his bruises during their video chats this week, leaving her to assume they were gruesome.
She opened his collar and gently pressed her lips to his healing clavicle. “I can’t believe you picked me up and carried me.”
“There weren’t stairs involved, and it was a short distance. Worth the pain.”
She gave him a stern look. “No more hurting yourself for me.”
“I’m fine, Aud. I wore the sling until the doctor said I should start using my arm. It’s even possible I might not need another surgery.”
She knew that was because the doctors weren’t confident another surgery would help and not because he was in better condition than they’d estimated a week ago. But she’d let him take it as good news. Either way, the surgery wouldn’t happen for a few months, and he’d been relieved by that.
She slowly unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his muscular chest and the tight white wrapping around his rib cage.
Above and below the wrapping, his usually golden-brown skin was a mottled yellowish brown. Many of the contusions had probably been purple a day or two ago, as the bruises on his face had been.
His right eye had been swollen for days, and the skin around it had been a deep dark purple—so dark it was almost black on his cheekbone.
Now his cheek was yellow with pale purple in the center, and his left jaw showed a similar impact point. She could only imagine how his scalp must have looked, as they believed the concussion had been caused by a blow to the back of his head, behind his left ear.
A week later and the bruises were impressive, but past their peak. She pressed her lips to each mark, placing at least a dozen gentle kisses on his face, shoulders, chest, and arms before circling him to inspect his back and seeing the same patchwork of marks marring his muscular perfection.
As she had with his front, she kissed each healing contusion, tracing a particularly long—and still purple—slash mark on his lower back below the tight wrapping that supported his ribs.
She returned to his front and reached for his fly, quickly popping open the top button on his dark slacks. She moved to the zipper, and his hand covered hers. “You unzip me and start kissing below the waist, and I’m not going to have a lot of patience for you to finish your inspection. I’ve missed you and am hard as a rock.”
She grinned. “I’m counting on that.”
She’d been wanting this moment for the last week, when she could give him pleasure that would make him forget his sorrow, if only for a few moments.
He’d made love to her in the lodge. Now it was her turn to make love to him. To transport him from his aches and pains and heartache.
She lowered the zipper and dropped to her knees before him, pulling down his pants. She frowned at his shoes, seeing her miscalculation.
She quickly untied them so he could toe them off. He then stepped out of his pants. She pulled off his socks, then looked up at the gloriously naked and very erect man who stood before her.
