CHAPTER EIGHT

OH, WHAT WAS SHE DOING?

Because she was clearly in over her head.

Signe sat shoulder to shoulder with Ham, his leg against hers, his body warm as they finished off the cold pizza.

She could still taste him on her lips, the familiarity, the spark, the way he made her feel at once out of control and safe.

So much for her ability to walk away.

“Now that I found you, I am bringing you home.”

She’d nodded. As if she’d agreed with him. As if she wasn’t going to break his beautiful heart and flee.

Oh, she shouldn’t have kissed him. But they were here, and it might be the last time they were together. She’d simply surrendered to the terrible impulse to let herself be in his arms.

Even if it couldn’t last.

He reached out and nudged her hand, and she let him weave his fingers with hers.

Oh Ham. Heat poured up her arm and through her entire body.

“Why did you leave the SEALs?” she asked quietly. “I know you started a chain of athletic clubs around the nation.”

“You do?” He glanced down at her. “Of course you do. Best research partner ever.”

She laughed. “Only because you were busy playing football.”

“I was busy because I hated doing homework.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “But we were a good team. Hamburglar and Shorty.”

The old nicknames found their way to her heart. “Yeah, until your evil stepmother shipped you off to military school.”

“Just for my last semester. I came home in time to take you to prom.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Now, that was some fun.”

Oh, how was she going to walk away from this man?

“Tell me why you’re so scared, Sig,” Ham said quietly.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why did you leave the SEALs?”

Ham drew in a breath. “An op-gone-south. Teammates were taken. I broke a few rules going after them.”

Her breath hitched. And then he said it—

“I wasn’t going to sit around and let the enemy take the people I cared about. Not again.”

Right. Because watching her disappear was enough.

“Were you court-martialed?”

“No. The Navy let me go with an honorable discharge. But it wasn’t optional.”

“Oh Ham, you worked so hard—”

“It’s okay, Sig.” He squeezed her hand. “If I were still on the Teams, I couldn’t take care of Aggie.”

He always did that—found the positive spin. “You were a great operator. I am sure you’re missed.”

“I convinced a few of my former teammates to join me—I started a small private security and SAR outfit. That’s what Orion and Jenny do—they are part of Jones, Inc.”

“You don’t miss being an operator?”

“We can’t live in the what-ifs, Sig. We have to live in the now. The fact that we have a second chance.” He met her eyes, held them. “Right?”

And again, she found herself nodding.

He had the skills of an interrogator to make her say what he wanted to hear.

What she wanted to say.

“Your turn. What has you so rattled that you can’t tell me who you saw, Sig?”

Oh. And this was where she listened to her brains, and not her heart. Where her training kicked in.

Because Ham was a patriot, right down to every cell in his body, and if he knew what she knew, he’d have to risk being a traitor to the country he loved.

The country he swore to protect.

No. She was about to shake her head, when—

“Do you smell that?” Ham took his hand away, started to get to his feet. “Smoke—”

Boom! The explosion rocked the air, shook the building.

Ham tackled her, pushing her to the ground, covering her body with his.

She didn’t scream but grabbed his shirt and hid her face in his shoulder.

Like a long-buried reflex.

He smelled of dust and old water and sweat, and she just wanted to curl into his strength and never leave.

The building shook, but no fireball rolled over them. He jumped up. “We gotta get out of here!” He reached for her and pulled her up. But when he took a step, he nearly collapsed.

“Ham!”

“I’m okay.” But he’d grimaced, holding his leg. “Just a little rush of blood flow. C’mon.”

Tough guy that he was, he practically ran from the building, hardly a limp.

The sky had turned eerily orange, and not from the distant volcano—impossible to see from the smoke clouding the sky—but from the inferno of a nearby restaurant.

Flames shot from the windows of the building next to it.

“The gas line has been damaged. It’s only a matter of time before this entire block explodes.” Fire reflected in his face, his eyes. Already the street burned with smoke. She coughed.

“The pipes run under the road,” Ham said. “We need to get back to the water.”

“What—but—”

“C’mon!” He tugged her down the street, back toward their kayak beached at the end of the street.

He found it in the night despite the dark sky and lack of stars, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. “Get in!”

She sat down in front of him, like before, and he climbed in the back, pushing them off.

They had just cleared the pavement, floating free, when the voice lifted in the distance.

“Aiuto!” Help. Again. “Aiuto!”

“Where are you?” Ham shouted back.

He didn’t say it in Italian, so she translated. “Dove sei?”

Screams, then, “Qui! Qui!”

“There, Ham.” Signe pointed to a building, half submerged in the water, and the dark outline of someone waving their hands.

She turned on her phone’s flashlight as Ham paddled them toward the woman.

The woman wore a grimy leopard-print shirt, a dirty rag wrapped around her arm, her hair gray with soot. She knelt on the first-floor landing of an apartment complex, nearly hysterical as she reached out and took the hand of someone below.

“Oh no,” Signe said quietly.

“I see it,” Ham said. She recognized his SEAL voice—cool, detached, the one that got business done. He used the same one in Ukraine, when she told him she would be returning to Chechnya.

“Is that a kid?” Her heart froze at the face pressed to the open window. Only a kid’s arm could weave through the metal security bars. They were old, decorative, and lethal for trapping someone inside the building.

The woman ran to them. “Grazie—grazie—” She erupted into Italian, but Signe got the gist.

“Her daughter is caught in the house, and the water level is rising,” Signe said. She shined her flashlight onto the window.

The bars protruded at the bottom of the window maybe a foot, mostly to allow the window to open. It was hinged at the top.

“That’s not the only problem,” Ham said. “Look.” He pointed to flames burning against the first-story windows.

Burn or drown. No wonder the mother was screaming. Ham pulled up to the landing, but Signe was already out of the kayak and over to the window. She landed in the well in front of the window, the water chest deep, grabbed the bars, and put her foot against the wall.

They didn’t budge.

Ham joined her. “Again!”

They strained together, but nothing budged.

Inside, the little girl, maybe twelve years old, was banging on the half-opened window.

“Hang on,” Ham said to her. “We’re going to get you out!”

Signe wanted to believe him. But the fire had broken an upper window and the water seemed to be rising.

Ham ran up the steps. Put his hand to the door. Yanked it away. “We can’t go in that way.”

“This stone is old. Maybe we can break it free,” Signe said.

He sat down on the landing. “Stand back.” The bars shuddered with his kick. He gave another devastating kick, and the bars shook. But they moved.

“Again, Ham!”

He kicked again, and the bar began to wiggle, slightly.

“If I had a grinder—” he said. The heat of the home began to radiate out into the street. The girl began to cough.

“How about a lever?” Signe said and pointed to a street sign up the road, still out of the water.

A car had plowed into it—maybe a casualty of the earthquake—and bent the pole over the end, severing it.

He ran, no hint of injury, toward the sign. Picked up the pole and carried it back. It looked heavy, especially as he moved it into the space at the bottom of the window between the grate and the stone wall of the house.

He leveraged his leg against the house and began to pull on the bars with his good arm, working them free.

The stonework crumbled around the edges where the bolts fixed to the stone.

“You need help.” Signe pushed next to him. “On two.”

They heaved together, and probably she didn’t add much to his strength, but the bars began to shift.

“Kick it at the base as I pull,” Ham said, even as the girl disappeared from the window.

Ham heaved. “God—please!”

Signe braced her back on the edge of the landing, took a breath, submerged herself, and put her feet against the base of the bars.

Then, she kicked. And kicked. Surfaced to the mother screaming, grabbed a breath, went back down.

Kicked. The bars shuddered. She surfaced, gasping.

“Almost,” Ham said, his eyes wide. “You okay?”

She ignored him and went under again, heard Ham’s voice in her head. “God—please!”

Kicked again, and again, and again.

Her breath slipped to a tiny wisp.

Kicked again.

And just like that, the grate broke free at the bottom.

She surfaced, gulping air.

Ham broke the metal free from the bottom of the window like he might be Hercules, raising the bars as far as he could. It was enough for her to squeeze in. Then, he put the metal bar through the glass, swept it around the frame.

Signe took a breath and dove up through the opening.

No way Ham could have fit. As it were, the metal tugged at her as she pulled herself through.

The little girl had crawled onto a table, curled into a ball, her hands over her mouth. But her eyes were open as Signe surfaced. Signe coughed, the air smoky.

“Take a breath,” she said.

The girl nodded, and Signe grabbed a gulp of bitter air and pulled the girl under.

She pushed her out of the window, and into Ham’s waiting hands.

Pushed herself out the window.

The metal bars grabbed her.

Ham surfaced, climbing out of the water.

Signe tugged on the bars, wrestling to work herself free. The metal locked onto the hem of her pants, trapping her.

She was running out of air. And Ham had left the water.

Ham!

She thrashed, fighting, then reached for her waistband to wiggle free.

Her brain had turned foggy, to dots and blotches, and even as she unzipped her pants, began to dim.

Hurry!

Don’t breathe. Don’t—but her body wanted it.

Oh, she was going to die right here, in a dirty basement apartment—

Hands closed around her arms, reached down her leg, and suddenly, she was free.

Her head broke the surface and the air turned to fire as she gulped it into her lungs, coughing.

Ham held her above the water, his hands gripping her arms as she writhed out the smoke from her lungs, tried to come back to herself.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, still coughing. Spittle had formed at the edges of her mouth. Oh, that was pretty.

No, what was pretty was the mother holding her daughter, shaking with her weeping.

Signe wanted to weep, to shake.

To hold her daughter and never let her go.

She looked at Ham, who was searching her face, and saw the same sentiment in his eyes. She swallowed, her throat burning.

Ham helped her out of the courtyard and onto the steps. He ran his hands over her arms, then turned to the woman. “Are you okay?”

Maybe she knew some English because she nodded, still holding her daughter.

“What’s your name?” Signe said to the woman.

“Federica, and this is Rosa.” She looked at Ham, then back to Signe. “Are you Americans?”

Oh. Um . . .

“Yes,” Ham said.

“I met one today. In the coffee shop,” she said.

“Where?”

Federica shook her head to Signe’s question, but added, “He might have gone to the school.”

“Where is it?” Ham asked.

Federica got up. Took Rosa’s hand. “I will show you.”

Signe’s stupid legs almost refused to move, but she pushed to her feet.

“Babe. You’re a little . . . undone, there.”

She looked at her pants.

Ham raised an eyebrow.

“I was trying to free myself.”

“Good idea. Glad we didn’t have to go that route.”

Her pants were ripped at the bottom, but she refixed her zipper and buttoned them.

Then Ham took her hand, his firm and solid in hers.

Hamburglar and Shorty.

The murky smell of old water, sewer, smoke, gas, and even the rancid odor of fish followed them through the cobblestone streets.

“Now that I found you, I am bringing you home.”

Her eyes burned, and for the first time in hours, she thought of the jump drive, still secured in the zippered pocket of her cargo pants, along with her various passports, thankfully, all in plastic, waterproof cases.

Help me trust you. Tell me who you saw.”

They came to a courtyard that edged what looked like a church, the roof imploded. Federica opened a gate and let them into the yard.

Soggy, sooty, and ash-gray survivors sat in groups in the yard, some of them under blankets, a number of them holding sleeping children. A giant bell sat in the middle of the yard.

A church, attached to a school. People slept in the hallways, but the smell of coffee lured Signe down the hallway.

They came into a lunchroom, with tables and chairs and people eating. Bread, bowls of noodles and sauce, and every person looking as if they’d been through war.

Maybe they had.

And survived.

And come together to find each other. To regroup.

To eat with families.

“Ham!”

The voice turned her, even as Ham jerked.

“Orion!”

The man had brown hair and with him was a blonde woman who broke into a run as she dodged tables. Ham caught her up. “Jenny!”

Huh. Signe refused the spurt of jealousy. Because he wasn’t hers anymore.

Or maybe he was. Because he hadn’t annulled their marriage.

Except, she’d married someone else, so there was that.

Ham set her down. He met Orion’s hand, then pulled him in for a quick slap.

Orion scrubbed a hand down his face.

Ham swallowed, looked away.

Men, for Pete’s sake. But she got it.

Spies didn’t cry either.

“You okay?” Ham said then.

“Yeah,” Orion said. “I found Jenny on a roof. Where were you?”

Ham looked at Signe and smiled. “We went out for pizza.”

“We can’t live in the what-ifs, Sig. We have to live in the now. The fact that we have a second chance.

She smiled back. “And a little late-night swim.”

He put his arm around her, pulled her against him. “Ry, Jenny. This is Signe. My wife.”

Yes, yes she was. Right now, she was his wife. So she held out her hand to his team. “Nice to meet you.”

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Orion just had to stay focused on the current problem. On examining Ham’s wrist, on splinting it so that whatever damage he’d done to it didn’t become worse.

Then, on checking on the patients lined up in the hallway, most of them already attended to over the past four hours. Lacerations, butterflied with the meager supplies in the health center of the school, hematomas, and a few broken bones that he’d splinted to the best of his ability.

Jenny was helping too, as were a few local doctors and nurses, but one look at the survivors told him that they needed help.

Yet all he could think about were Jenny’s words. “Yes, I will marry you—we just have to talk.”

“Go easy there, bro,” Ham said, his voice thin as Orion turned his wrist to gauge movement. Ham sat on the grimy floor and looked fresh off a mission. Scrapes marred his face and chin, filth embedded his hair, and he smelled of smoke and body odor.

Maybe Orion looked the same.

Darkness enfolded the corridor, and the rank smell of old water, stone, dust, and the hint of gas still layered the air. The electricity and phone lines had died with the earthquake, and the occasional crying or moaning filtered down the hallways, bouncing against the hard surfaces.

Daylight couldn’t come soon enough.

Daylight, and The Talk.

“Sorry,” Orion said. He held his cell phone light over the wound. “Without an X-ray I can’t be sure, but it definitely seems broken.” He reached for a piece of cardboard he’d found in one of the classrooms. Folded over, it would keep Ham’s wrist protected until he got to help. He bent it into a U-shape and tucked it against Ham’s arm.

“How’d this happen?”

“I was jumping between buildings,” Ham said without a hitch. “Missed the edge, fell, caught a balcony.”

“Of course you did.” Orion shook his head. “Were you still on that roof when the volcano blew?”

“Yep. Took cover in an elevator—”

Orion lifted his gaze, raised an eyebrow.

Ham held up his hand. “I know. But I kept thinking about all those toxic fumes and that outweighed the fear of getting crushed. Besides, it was an old elevator, the sturdy kind.”

“So you hid out in an elevator.”

“Until the tsunami hit. Then we climbed out—”

“And you pulled a Superman.”

“Hardly. Broken wrist, remember?”

Orion had cushioned Ham’s arm with a piece of cloth. Now he wrapped it with packing tape, pulling it snug against his arm. “Did you get the information from Signe?”

Ham was watching his ministrations. “Not yet. But I will.”

Orion broke the tape off. “I have to admit, I was worried we’d lost you.”

Ham was nodding as if he got it. “How’d you find Jenny?”

“A miracle. I went back to the hotel—which isn’t there anymore—”

“I know. We watched it go down. I was praying you and Jenny weren’t inside. Or anyone else.”

“Yeah,” Orion said. “I found our waitress, Nori, and the concierge on a nearby roof, and they’d seen Jenny. Like I said, miracle.”

“And?” Ham said.

Orion frowned.

“Did you two talk? Are you okay?”

Orion was looking at the laceration on Ham’s leg.

“Ry?”

“We’re . . . I don’t know.” Orion ripped open Ham’s pants leg. “You need stitches.”

“You don’t know if you two are okay?”

The wound ran down Ham’s calf, maybe six inches, and knuckle deep. Orion recognized the subcutaneous layer. “I need to close this up, at least temporarily.”

“Dude.”

He leaned back. “Okay, yes, we . . . I think we’re okay. She said she’d marry me—”

Ham raised an eyebrow.

“But that we needed to talk first.”

“So, you talk.”

“We will. As soon as things calm down, but . . .”

Ham frowned.

“I can’t get it out of my head that it’s something bad. Something I can’t fix.”

Ham fell silent across from him.

Orion reached for the first aid kit. “What?”

“Nothing. I’m just wondering what it was that made her so scared to talk to you.”

Orion considered him, and the way that Ham glanced down the hall toward Signe, who was also helping people. Orion could barely make her out in the glow of a cell phone light beam as she examined a wound on a little girl.

Clearly her years surviving in a terrorist camp had taught her survival skills, as well as first aid.

“Do you think I somehow frightened her?” Orion found the first aid kit and pulled out some white medical tape and iodine. The thought ran a fist into his chest.

“I don’t know. But she had a pretty visceral reaction to your proposal.”

“I gotta clean the wound,” Orion said. “This is going to hurt.”

“Right,” Ham said. “Sorry I said anything.”

Orion grinned. “It’s not personal.”

Ham laughed. But he stopped when Orion poured iodine onto a cotton swab and then bathed the wound.

He blew out a breath in a long stream.

“I’ll give you a lollipop when I’m finished.”

“Just hurry up.”

Orion broke off the tape to close the wound.

“Let me help,” Ham said and grabbed the tape.

Orion held the edges of the wound closed. Ham made a sound deep in his chest, but his hands were steady enough to put the tape over the wound.

“It felt like the same gut response as in Afghanistan, after she found out you were hurt,” Ham said. “She blamed herself and ended up having a nervous breakdown.”

Orion held the next section closed. “She was upset, not suffering from a psychotic break.”

“Right. Maybe it’s something she did that put her on the run. Is there anything she did that would make her believe you wouldn’t want her?”

“Like what?”

Ham shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, like, she’s married to someone else?”

Orion’s eyes widened. “No, dude. I don’t think . . . she’s not . . . are we still talking about Jenny?”

Ham’s mouth tightened.

“You okay, boss?”

“Yep. Let’s get this over with.”

Ho-kay.

“Nothing she’s done would keep me from loving her,” Orion said. “Or wanting to marry her.”

“Does she know that?” Ham said quietly, now looking up at him.

“I thought so. But . . . maybe she doesn’t. It feels like she doesn’t trust me.” He held together the edges of the wound for the next strip of tape. “Go.”

Ham grunted but placed the tape over it. “What if it’s not about trust, but shame?”

“You’re saying it’s something so terrible that she’s afraid to tell me? That she would run from me rather than talk to me?”

Ham ripped off more tape. “Some wounds run so deep, you think they’re healed until . . .” He glanced again down the hall. “Until something reopens them. And you discover that they’re not healed at all.” He put the last strip on the wound.

So, they were talking about Ham and Signe. Orion gave a slow nod.

“Maybe it’s just too fast, you know? You only found each other a few months ago. Maybe she needs more time.”

Orion frowned. “What do you mean?”

“In lieu of finding Roy, you decide to get married?”

Orion reached for the gauze. “I can admit that finding Roy is a burr inside me, but no. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Ham leaned back as Orion wrapped the gauze around the wound. “I just know how you hate loose ends.”

“I hate regret. I hate failure. And I hate being angry all the time. But that’s over. It’s time to move on, right? I learned that on Denali.” He looked up at Ham.

But Ham was watching Signe. She was walking down the hallway, into the darkness, on a mission to find more wounded.

“What if Roy doesn’t want to be found,” Ham said softly. “What if he isn’t the same person we knew?”

Orion ripped the gauze at the end, then tied it around Ham’s leg. “Do you think Signe has been brainwashed?”

Ham looked at him.

“You said she was in a terrorist camp for the past ten years—”

“No.”

Orion held up a hand in defense and Ham closed his eyes. Reopened his eyes. “Okay, fine. Signe is still hiding something. She’s convinced there’s a traitor in the CIA, and she knows who, but she’s not saying.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. White said the same thing.”

“Do you think this traitor is behind the assassination attempt in Alaska?”

“Maybe. And maybe also the one in Seattle a month ago. On Senator Jackson.”

“I saw that on the news. A shooter, at the pier?”

“Yeah. I don’t think they caught him.”

“So, someone, maybe even inside our government, is trying to derail the election? That’s a Vince Flynn novel.”

“And Signe knows about it.”

Orion closed up the kit. “And you’re not sure if you trust her.”

Ham’s mouth made a tight line.

Bingo, but Ham wouldn’t admit it.

“Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. And although my heart wants to believe that Signe is going home with us, my gut says . . .”

“That she’s going to run.”

Orion’s gaze tracked to Jenny. She sat against the wall now, her knees drawn up, her arms propped on them, her eyes closed.

“I know Signe. She’s smart. Always thinking, always looking at everything from all the angles. She agreed to come home with me, but it feels . . . I don’t know. Maybe she’s telling the truth, but I can’t pry it out of my head that there’s something else going on.”

“You need to get that list from her. That’s the mission.”

“I know.”

“Before she runs.”

“I know.

Orion considered him. “It’s Afghanistan all over again. We were betrayed by someone we knew, someone we trusted, and guys we cared about didn’t come home. I know you love her, Ham, but what if she’s—”

“She’s not a terrorist, Ry.” But Ham’s voice was soft, almost a declaration to himself.

Orion said nothing.

Ham shook his head. “Would you do it? Choose your country over Jenny?”

Orion looked away.

“Listen. She’s afraid, and I need to figure out why. Then maybe I don’t have to choose.”

“Yeah,” Orion said quietly. “Maybe. Try to get some rest. No one is going anywhere tonight.”

And, to confirm his words, Signe came back toward them. Exhaustion lined her grimy face, her clothing soiled and torn. “We need to get medical help to these people,” she said as she sat down next to Ham. “Some of them are significantly wounded.”

“I know,” Orion said, and noticed how Ham wove his fingers through Signe’s. “I was thinking about the Sigonella Naval Air Station. There’s a clinic and a hospital there. But I’m not sure how we get there.”

“I have an idea,” Signe said and looked at Ham, something soft in her eyes. “And I think you’re going to like it.”

Maybe Signe didn’t notice the hunger on Ham’s face, the desperate hope that he could trust this woman he loved, but it made Orion’s gut tighten and he had to look away. “I’m going to get some winks. Let’s regroup in a couple hours.”

He walked over to Jenny.

Sat down next to her.

“I’m exhausted,” she said and put her head on his shoulder.

He put his arm around her.

“You okay?” she asked.

At the moment? If he ignored the hole inside him, the buzz under his skin, the frustration of knowing that something still lingered between them. Maybe now—

“Jenny?”

But her deep breaths said she was already asleep.

Nothing she’s done would keep me from loving her. Or wanting to marry her.”

Please, God, let his words be true.

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Of course Signe was going back to Minnesota with him. She’d practically said as much.

Ham was simply letting the past taint his future.

Because, in his mind, he was standing in front of her tiny apartment in Berkeley, flowers in hand, his life slowly shredding as Signe’s roommate told him she’d left.

Him.

And he was hearing her voice in the elevator . . . “I’m just trying to keep ahead of my bad decisions. And just trying to make the next right one.”

Please, let the next right one be to return home, with him.

Because he also couldn’t forget, “You’re the love of my life. Don’t you think I want to be with you?”

That sat in his chest like a hot ember, spreading through him.

The love of her life.

If only she hadn’t left him already—twice.

His conversation with Orion hadn’t helped either, one he kept turning over in his head.

“Do you think Signe has been brainwashed? You said she was in a terrorist camp for the past ten years—”

Shoot, it too closely mirrored his own thoughts, and . . . “Would you do it? Choose your country over Jenny?”

He couldn’t go there.

Please, God, don’t make him choose.

Better to just keep holding on to Signe, to try to sleep despite the throb in his arm, his leg.

His heart.

So really, so much for sleeping. He lay down beside Signe and apparently finally dozed off, because when he woke, Signe was up and nudging him. “I found some coffee.”

Sunlight drizzled in through the windows. The hallways had filled up—people moving in from the courtyard, or perhaps just finding the school as a place of refuge. Families, dirty and injured, huddled under blankets, their faces betraying the stripping of their lives.

A woman nursed her infant under a jacket, her husband standing over her, his arms crossed, as if a sentry. An elderly man lay with what looked like his school-aged grandson next to him.

“Can you sit up?” Signe crouched next to him.

She had washed her face, put her hair back in a messy bun, and now she held the coffee out to him. “The stoves are working, so the gas hasn’t been shut off.”

“We need to get out of here and get some medical help to these people,” Ham said as he sat up, trying to bite back a groan. He took the coffee.

“I told you I had an idea.”

“I’m all ears.” The coffee fed his bones, strong and bracing.

“Is the ability to hot-wire a scooter still in your bag of tricks?”

He glanced at her. “You remember that?”

“Mmmhmm. Did you ever find the keys to your bike?”

“Nope.” He took another sip. Yes, they just might survive this.

Jenny came down the hallway, carrying a glass of water. She stopped next to the elderly man and helped him take a drink. He grabbed her hand and said something to her. The boy translated, and Jenny nodded.

“Jenny,” Ham said quietly, but his voice echoed down the hallway.

She came over to him. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to the kid. “Who is that?”

“His name’s Gio. I rescued him off the pier. I promised his grandfather we’d take him to his mother. Apparently, she lives near the base.”

“Where’s Orion?”

“A group of survivors came in. He’s out in the yard checking on them.”

“Did he get any sleep?”

“I don’t know. When I woke up, he was gone.”

Always a PJ. “Okay,” Ham said. “Tell him we need to get going.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the base. We’ll drop Gio on the way. And then . . . we’re going home.”

Jenny flashed a look at Signe, then back to Ham. “Roger.”

Signe had said nothing.

He looked at her. “Right?”

“Of course.”

Of course.

Huh.

Signe got up and held out her hand. “Ready, tough guy?”

He let her help him off the floor. “Signe, give me the jump drive.”

She stilled. Swallowed.

He expected a fight. Not for her to lean down and unzip a pocket in her pants leg. She pulled out a jump drive and put it in his palm.

Smiled. “Let’s go home.”

He had no idea why he felt punched in the stomach as he followed her out of the building.

Signe had hidden a couple Vespas under a piece of plywood in an alleyway.

“When did you find these?” He knelt beside the bike.

“Last night, when you and Orion were catching up.”

He didn’t want to ask her why she’d been on the street.

If she’d been thinking about leaving him.

Because she hadn’t, had she? She was still here. Going home with him.

Of course.”

See, he could stop panicking.

He made to move the scooter away from the wall but winced, so she helped wheel it free.

Orion arrived with Jenny and Gio. “Vespas? Cool.”

“You’ll have to hot-wire it. Take off the front panel, find the steering lock, and break it off. Then cut the starter wires. You’ll need to turn on the kill switch, but then you can kick-start it,” Ham said.

“As long as the battery isn’t dead,” Orion said, but he was already maneuvering his Vespa away from its hiding place. “Just like a snowmobile.”

Ham pulled off the front panel, but Signe reached in and broke off the steering lock. Then she produced a folding knife from her pocket—really?—and cut all the wires attached to the starter.

“I suppose you want to drive too.”

She grinned at him. “Always.”

Orion’s scooter revved as he kick-started it, and he got on, Jenny behind him. Gio sat in front of him. “Okay, kid, get us out of here.”

Signe jumped on the starter once, twice. The third time their scooter started. “Hop on, number three.”

Three. His jersey number.

His conversation with Isaac White in the restaurant returned to him. The mysterious contact, known only by a number.

His.

She was grinning at him.

He threw his leg over the back and wrapped his good arm around her waist. “Try not to kill us.”

“Payback.” She eased them away from the church and up the road.

The cobblestones had broken, the path jagged as they drove away from the shoreline, between buildings. Smoke still blurred the sky, but the morning sun simmered an eerie blood red through the clouds, and in the distance, just barely, he could make out the volcano, still exhaling flame and smoke, streams of lava cutting down its side.

“Wait until Aggie hears about this,” Ham said into Signe’s ear. “We should call her when we get to base. She’s really missed you.”

She might have tensed, but maybe it was her navigating around a cluster of cars stopped on the street. “Yeah, good idea.”

Good idea.

Orion’s navigator led them out to an abandoned highway, with cars in the ditches or on the side of the road. They wove in and out of the stopped traffic as they traveled southwest.

“What are you going to do with it?” Signe asked the question over her shoulder.

“With what?” He liked the feel of her close to him, her body stronger, although leaner than it had been a decade ago.

It also stirred up memories that probably he shouldn’t revisit. Not quite yet.

But yes, someday.

“The NOC list.”

“I’m giving it to Isaac White.” Funny, she’d asked him that before.

She continued driving. Said nothing more about it as they hit the highway.

This part of the city hadn’t suffered as much damage, although he spied collapsed stone walls, houses with broken roofs, torn pavement and debris clogging the streets. Signe kept pace with Orion, who slowed often to avoid cracks in the road.

They were skirting the city of Catania. He could barely make it out in the distance but knew from the map that it sat about forty miles from the base.

“How are we on gas?”

“We’ll make it.”

The wind seemed to have blown the smoke north, and over the next two hours, he made out fields of olive trees and vineyards to the west, probably cultivated in old lava fields.

In front of them, Gio pointed to a small suburban area, and Orion turned off the highway, east toward a tiny community with red-roofed homes, small apartment buildings, and gated gardens. Signe followed, and they drove through the relatively undamaged streets until they came to a two-story white building.

A dog barked at them through the railing on the second floor. Orion stopped and Gio got off and shouted at the dog. He whined. A woman came out onto the porch. “Gio!”

Ham didn’t catch the rest.

Gio opened the gate and ran into the yard. Jenny got off the bike and followed him.

“I guess we’re going in,” Ham said as Signe stopped.

Orion parked the bike but left it running as he went in.

Signe did the same. Ham took her hand as they walked inside, he wasn’t sure why. Maybe just because . . .

Well, because they were almost home. And seeing a family reunited stirred the image of Aggie’s smile when Signe walked off the airplane.

He squeezed her hand and smiled down at her as Gio introduced them to his mother. “I speak English,” she said. “My name is Luna.”

She appeared to be in her midthirties, pretty, with dark olive skin, dark hair that hung down her back, and dark eyes that swept over the team with such gratitude Ham nearly agreed to let her make them tea.

“We gotta go,” he said.

Signe had let go of his hand and asked to use the bathroom. Luna motioned to a room down the hall.

“You’re headed to the base?”

“Yes,” Ham said, not sure what else to tell her.

“I used to live there,” Orion said, filling in a gap.

“I’m dating a corpsman,” she said as she went to the kitchen. “Please sit.”

Ham glanced at Orion and shook his head, but Orion frowned. And Jenny sat.

“I can call him and tell him that you’re here. He can get you in the front gate,” Luna said. She returned with a couple sandwiches in plastic wrap. “These were for our dinner, but Gio didn’t return last night.” She handed one to Ham, whose stomach suddenly roared to life. He took a look—salami, ham, tomato, lettuce, and mozzarella cheese. He might weep.

“I’ll make you one,” Luna said to Jenny.

Orion looked at his sandwich, then at Ham, waggled his eyebrows.

Fine. Ham sank down onto a straight-back chair, about to open his sandwich when . . .

Wait.

“Where’s Signe?” Orion said, voicing Ham’s thought.

Jenny went down the hall. “The bathroom is empty,” she said, coming out. “And the window is open.”

Orion went to the balcony. “Ham!”

No, oh—

He limped over to the window.

Orion’s bike lay on its side, the engine off.

Signe’s bike was gone.