Finding Carly, page 29
“Carly? Carly Stewart?” the man asked as he gently gripped her arm.
She nodded. “Please! I need to call Jag!”
“We’ll get a hold of whoever you want once we get you onboard. Can you walk?”
“Yes,” Carly said, but when she tried to take a step, her body refused to cooperate. Her knees buckled and she would’ve gone down hard if the Coastie hadn’t caught her.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
The man and two of his boatmates got her off Bird Shit Island and onto their boat. She was placed on a bench and given a warm blanket. Then someone placed a bottle of water in one of her hands and a phone in the other.
Carly was more relieved than she could say that Jag had made her memorize his number. He’d said there might come a time when she needed to dial it rather than just click on his contact. And he was right. Of course.
With her fingers shaking, she pushed the buttons to his number.
“Jag. Who is this?”
She closed her eyes. She’d never heard a better sound in her life than Jag’s voice.
“It’s me,” she eventually croaked. Her voice was shot from screaming to try to get the Coast Guard boat’s attention.
“Carly? Holy shit! Is it really you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?! Are you okay? What happened?”
She wanted to answer all his questions, but her throat closed up and she was too overcome with emotion.
“Carly? Talk to me!” Jag shouted.
All Carly could do was hold the phone out to the young man who’d come onto the island to get her. She heard him talking to Jag, but she suddenly couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She was done. Emotionally. Physically. Mentally. All of it. But she’d made sure that Jag knew she was alive, so he wouldn’t continue to worry.
Apparently, that was all she needed to do before her body finally gave out and she gave in to the unconsciousness slowly overtaking her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jag sat next to Carly on his couch but couldn’t manage to make himself let go of her. From the second he’d heard her voice, he’d been desperate to get to her. To see for himself that she was all right. He’d arrived at the hospital even before the Coast Guard helicopter had landed with Carly.
Mustang had told the nurses that Jag was Carly’s fiancé, and they’d let him go into her room after the ER doctors examined her.
She’d been exhausted. She had a bandage on her hand, a bruise on her face, and scrapes on her arms and knees. Jag had never seen anything as beautiful as Carly in that moment.
It had taken a few hours before they’d been allowed to leave. The doctors wanted to keep her at least one night, but Carly insisted on signing herself out.
Mustang had driven them home, and after a short and emotional visit with all their friends, they were finally alone. He loved their concern and happiness over Carly’s return, but he needed to have her to himself for a while.
Jag stood, then leaned over and gently picked her up. She didn’t protest, simply snuggled into him as he carried her into their bedroom. He lay her on the bed and sat next to her, taking a deep breath.
“I’m okay,” Carly said softly.
Jag swallowed hard. “I need to see for myself. May I?” he asked, reaching for the buttons at the front of the shirt she was wearing. She’d changed out of the scrubs she’d been given at the hospital as soon as she got home.
Carly nodded, and Jag quickly and efficiently stripped her out of his oversized button-down. He felt no physical desire at the moment; his fear was still too raw. He just needed to check her over from head to toe.
She lay quietly as he examined her. There were bruises on her torso and her arms were scraped, most likely from the lava rock on the island she swam to. He couldn’t see the wound on her palm, since it was bandaged, but he’d seen it at the hospital. It looked fairly gnarly, but was a clean cut and would heal fine. His eyes continued down her body, noting the scrapes on her knees, cringing at her swollen feet and the gouges on the tender soles, again from walking on the sharp lava rocks.
His gaze went back up her body and finally rested on her face. The doctor had to shave a bit of hair at the back of her head, so he could clean and put in a few stitches from where Sparks had struck her. She also had a bruise on her cheekbone, from where she’d said Gideon punched her to knock her out.
She was truly lucky to be alive after being bashed over the head with the expensive, heavy flashlight that had been found in Sparks’s car, being grazed by a tranquilizer dart made for lions, almost sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and then spending the night out in the elements.
But she was alive.
Jag could see the emotion in her eyes, and it made him want to cry. He’d come way too close to losing her. But his Carly was tough. She hadn’t survived because of anything he’d done. No, she’d done it all on her own. She’d saved her own damn self—and he couldn’t be prouder.
“Come here,” Carly said, holding out her arms.
Jag took off his shirt before he lay down next to her. He pulled her into his arms and reached down and eased the comforter up and over them. After a moment, he realized that he was shaking…and Carly was smoothing a hand over his chest and murmuring gently.
“It’s okay. I’m here,” she said.
God. This woman.
“You’re amazing,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No, I think I’m just stubborn.”
Jag barked a quiet laugh. “I’m sorry—” he started, but Carly shook her head and went up on one elbow.
“No, don’t do that.”
“I have to,” he said. “You were taken right out from under my nose. We had no idea where you were. Detective Lee was the one who contacted the Coast Guard and asked them to be on alert, just in case. We were going to make Sparks tell us where you were, but he killed himself. We had nothing to go on. You could’ve been anywhere.”
“You would’ve found me,” Carly said.
Jag couldn’t believe she still had just as much confidence in him as she had before getting snatched. All he could do was press his lips together and shake his head.
“Jag, seriously, the only reason I survived was because of you. First of all, I knew you’d never rest until you found me. Second, I thought about what you went through as a child, and how strong you were, and knew if I could have a fraction of your strength, I’d be okay. Third, everything you ever taught me about personal safety ran through my head. If I just sat there and let Gideon carry out his plans, I would’ve been dead for sure. So, I ran through my options and decided I’d rather take my chances with the sea.
“Fourth, I remembered all the stories you told me about Hell Week and how the only thing that kept you going was a positive attitude. Fourth…wait…fifth? I lost count. Anyway, I had that knife in my pocket that you insisted I carry with me. I have to admit, I thought it was overkill at first, but I’ll never doubt you again. It saved me. I would’ve run out of air if I couldn’t cut off the weight Gideon tied to me.
“I also fucked up in a lot of ways. I never should’ve let Gideon get close to me in that parking garage. I let down my guard because he seemed so…unassuming. He was being nice, and saying the right things, and I trusted him when I shouldn’t have. I took my eyes off him for a split second and that was all the chance he needed.
“Please…I can’t deal with you feeling guilty because you didn’t physically show up to get me off that island. Or because you couldn’t make Gideon tell you where I was. You might not have been there in person, but every minute of the time I was with Gideon—well, when I was conscious, that is—you were with me. Without you, I would’ve been a basket case in the bottom of that boat, and he would’ve succeeded in finishing Shawn’s plan. You gave me the strength to fight back. To not give up.”
Jag closed his eyes and did his best to get a handle on his emotions. He shouldn’t be surprised how well she was taking what had happened. That she didn’t blame him, the detective, or his SEAL team. They’d all let her down, and yet by some miracle, she still didn’t blame them.
His eyes opened, and he pulled her against him once more. She went willingly and snuggled close.
“Marry me,” he whispered.
“Of course,” she whispered back.
Jag wanted to laugh. She didn’t sound surprised, didn’t get all giddy and excited. She accepted his proposal calmly, as if it was a foregone conclusion that he’d ask and she’d say yes.
“I don’t have a ring, but I’ll get one,” he told her.
“Don’t care,” was her response.
“We can have any kind of wedding you want.”
“Duke’s,” she said without lifting her head from his shoulder. “I want to get married on the beach at Duke’s. Anyone who’s there for a meal can attend. Hell, anyone on the beach can come too. I want hula pie for our cake, and I want Paulo to officiate. He’s already got the license and everything, I heard him talking about it once. He’ll be hilarious…and that’s what I want. For everyone to laugh and have a good time.”
“Done,” Jag said.
“I want to wipe out any lingering bad energy from that beach after what Shawn did. I want to rub it in his face, wherever he is, that he didn’t win. In fact, that he lost spectacularly. He didn’t break me. Didn’t break Kenna. Instead, because of what he did, he brought me to you, and now I’m happier than I can ever imagine being.”
God, Jag loved this woman.
“Can I ask something?”
“Of course. Anything,” Jag said.
“Will you tell me about Gideon? I know you must’ve talked to Detective Lee. Will you tell me what you found out about everything he did? How he managed to trick everyone?”
Jag didn’t want to. He wanted to lie there and never think of that fucking asshole ever again, but Carly deserved to have her questions answered.
“The cops haven’t found a suicide note or anything yet. I’m guessing he didn’t leave one. Based on the security footage, he provoked the lions, teasing them with their morning meal, not giving it to them. They were extremely agitated when he walked into that enclosure. It didn’t help that he was holding the raw meat they received in the mornings. He didn’t die fast.” Jag was extremely happy when he heard that last bit from the police.
“I have to admit that I feel a little bitter, knowing I won’t get to face him. Don’t get to show him that he didn’t break me. But he got what he deserved.”
Jag wasn’t so sure about that, but he let it go. “Apparently he borrowed the boat from one of his coworkers at the zoo. The man thought Sparks was into fishing, never thought twice about letting him take the boat out whenever he wanted. It wasn’t moored at a marina or anything, which was why Baker couldn’t find security video of him at any marinas. It was simply tied up in a private inlet near the man’s house, and Sparks could come and go without anyone seeing him or being suspicious.
“A woman came forward after she saw the news about what happened. She was the one who got the restraining order against him. She was very young at the time, on the verge of losing her apartment and flat broke. Sparks played on that, most likely with Keyes’s encouragement. He helped her out, she let down her guard. Then he changed, began to manipulate her. Belittle her.”
“Like Shawn did to me,” Carly said quietly.
“Yeah. We think Shawn got some kind of sick thrill out of teaching a socially awkward loner like Gideon how to fuck with women’s heads. We can only speculate at this point, but I assume Gideon was more than willing to help with the plan, to thank Keyes for his mentoring. Especially after you took out the restraining order, just like the girl he’d dated. And when Shawn died…he probably just cracked. Couldn’t handle it. All his dreams of having a woman of his own had gone down the drain because he needed Shawn to help him manipulate others. You were the only person he could blame.”
Jag stopped speaking and held his breath as he waited for Carly’s reaction.
“That’s…so sad,” she said after a moment.
It was sad. Pathetic, tragic, and fucked-up, but sad.
“And the island I managed to wash up on really is called Bird Shit Island?” she asked.
“Apparently. Its real name is Mōkōlea Rock. But locals call it Bird Shit Island because, well…you know.”
Carly snorted. “I know.” Then she tentatively asked, “So…it’s really over?”
Jag’s arms tightened, and he had to force himself to relax. “It’s over,” he reassured her.
He felt her sigh in relief against him, her warm breath caressing his neck.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Jag asked, wanting to make sure she wasn’t just humoring him.
“Yeah. I want to put Shawn, and Gideon, and everything about that damn relationship behind me. I want to move on. To marry you, to get back to the person I was before all this happened. I made some mistakes, but I didn’t deserve what happened to me.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jag agreed.
She tilted her head back. “Are you and the others going to be headed out on a mission soon?”
Jag frowned in confusion. “No, why?”
“Because you were in all those meetings. Something major was happening, and I just figured you’d be leaving soon. You told me that’s how it works, that sometimes you guys spend hours and hours going over intel, then you’d be deployed.”
Jag nodded. It was hard to believe that forty-eight hours previously, the only thing on his mind was the kidnapped boys in Nigeria. That seemed like a lifetime ago. “I can never guarantee we won’t be sent out at a moment’s notice, but the thing we were researching was resolved without us having to lend our assistance.”
Carly sagged against him. Jag hadn’t realized how worried she was about him leaving until right that moment.
“Good.”
Jag brought a hand up and smoothed it gently over her head. “I love you,” he said softly. “I swear I lost ten years off my life when I realized you hadn’t texted to let me know you got home safely.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No,” Jag told her with a shake of his head. “Don’t be sorry. What happened wasn’t your fault. It was that asshole’s.”
“We need to watch that movie. Soon,” Carly said.
Jag chuckled lightly and nodded. “Okay.”
“Is Baker okay?” she asked after a minute.
Jag sighed. “I don’t know.”
“He didn’t do anything wrong. I know for a fact he worked his ass off to find me.”
“He did,” Jag agreed. “But he doesn’t like to fail.”
“Oh, good Lord, he didn’t fail,” Carly protested. “He was the one who found that footage of Gideon hitting me and stuffing me in his trunk!”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
“I’m gonna talk to him,” she said firmly. Then her voice softened, and she added, “But not right now. I’m comfortable.”
Jag nodded against her. He’d been afraid he’d never have this again. Never be able to hold her. Sparks could have terrorized her much more than he had. Could’ve assaulted her. The last thing he ever wanted was for her to go through what he did. The helplessness, the degradation, the pain. What had happened to Carly was bad enough. If Sparks had touched her, Jag knew neither of them would be dealing with what happened as calmly as they were right now.
“I’m looking forward to the barbeque at Kenna and Aleck’s place this weekend.”
Jag smiled. That was such a…normal topic of conversation. Carly had just gotten out of the hospital, she was probably still in a good deal of pain, and yet she was putting what happened behind her. She was fucking amazing.
“Me too.”
“Elodie said she was going to go all out,” Carly said.
Jag could feel her smile against him. “Which means we’re all gonna eat extremely well.”
“I can’t wait to taste those burgers the guys are always talking about.”
“She’s got a magic touch. I think I’m envious of Mustang.”
“Hey,” Carly protested, poking him in the stomach. “I can cook.”
“Of course you can,” Jag said immediately, knowing better than to contradict his woman…not if he wanted her to ever cook again in the future.
“But not like she can,” Carly added. “Jag?”
“Yeah, angel?”
“I love you. So much. And I’m not scared of it. I thought I’d be wary of falling in love for a long time, after everything that happened, but I know without a doubt that this is where I’m meant to be. I had to experience everything I did with Shawn, and even with Gideon, so I could end up right here. I’d go through it all over again if it meant being with you.”
Jag was nearly overwhelmed with emotion. But he understood what she meant. He wouldn’t change anything about his own life if it meant being with Carly. It was a startling thought. For so much of his adulthood, he’d been so bitter about what he’d gone through. But now? He understood that he’d had the experiences he did in order to be the man Carly needed. “I love you,” he managed to whisper.
Carly nodded against him and let out a long breath. “I think I could sleep for days,” she murmured.
“Me too.” Jag felt exhaustion pulling at him. He’d been awake for more than thirty-five hours. The adrenaline spiking through his veins had helped him stay on his feet, but now with his woman safe and sound in his arms, Sparks dead, and knowing Carly would marry him, he felt himself crashing.
The last thing Jag remembered was inhaling deeply and smelling Carly’s sweet cherry blossom scent. She was finally free of her past, and all that lie ahead of them was a beautiful future.
Carly didn’t know what woke her up later, but when she looked at the clock, she saw that it was only three in the morning. She’d slept deep and hard, safe in her man’s arms, but now her conscience nagged at her. She knew she could close her eyes and go back to sleep easily, but there was something she needed to do.
Surprised when she was able to slip out of Jag’s arms without waking him, Carly tiptoed to the door and headed into the living room. It was obvious Jag had suffered while she was missing, and she vowed to do whatever she could in the future to help him get over what had happened.
