CHAPTER 4
DON’T LET GO, ARIA! Don’t let go!”
Jake’s own voice thundered through him as he lay on the snow, peering over the edge of the crevasse.
Aria hung from her belay line, her feet fixed into the snow, horizontal to the sky.
Below her, the crevasse fell thousands of feet into blackness.
His head swam as he reached out for her. “Grab my hand!”
She dove for him and missed. Again. “I can’t!”
“You can, just reach for me!”
Her dark brown eyes fixed on his. “You reach for me!”
He dug his ice axe into the snow and leaned down, straining.
At his waist, snow began to fall. He started to slide.
Aria’s eyes widened. “No, Jake, go back, go back!”
Around him the icy ridge cracked, broke free.
Suddenly, he was falling, past Aria, his screams lifting—
“Jake!”
His door banged open, and in a second, Jake sat up, blinking into the darkness.
His sister Ellie stood outlined in the frame of the door. “Are you okay?”
So no, he wasn’t falling into a crevasse on the back side of Denali to freeze to death. He was in his bedroom, the rain pinging against the window, wind blowing, a chill invading the dark room.
Still, sweat drenched his body, and his covers fell to his waist. He was trembling, the dream felt so—well, even his bones were frozen.
At least, however, this nightmare wasn’t a memory.
In this nightmare, no one died.
He ran his hand through his hair, blowing out a breath.
“You were shouting,” she said, pulling her sweater around her. She wore a pair of flannel Minnesota Vikings pajama pants and a T-shirt. “I was afraid I’d find you on the floor or something, hunkered down with your M16.”
“I don’t have an M16. It was just a dream.”
She raised an eyebrow and tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Right. Well, I’m going to make myself some hot cocoa, so . . .”
He swung his legs off the bed, his feet finding the cold of the wooden floor as she closed the door behind her.
His body still shook, Aria’s screams in his ears.
He hadn’t fallen into a crevasse, although when he and his team had found Aria and her friends on the mountain, she had been dangling above a jagged slash in the ice that was three thousand feet deep.
Seeing her like that had scared the skin off him. He had fixed himself into the snow, dug in with his crampons, attached the ascender to the line, and hauled Aria up to safety.
And right into his life.
He could still see her, sitting down beside him, looking over at him, her dark hair frozen as it fell from her cap, those brown eyes wide, trying to hide her fear. “Thanks.”
That was all she said until later, when he’d seen her grimacing, hiding bruised ribs and a horribly sprained ankle.
“First, you drag me up a mountain to rescue you, and now you’re coming up with reasons not to dance with me.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d said that, but somehow, he knew she had just enough competitive spirit in her that he wasn’t taking a look at that ankle without a dare.
So he referenced how they’d met—him asking her to dance during a country music jam back in the little Alaskan town of Copper Mountain.
“I’m fine. And I don’t want to dance with you again.”
“Sure you do. You’ve been thinking about me since you left the dance floor. Now stop your crybabying and lean back and let me look at your ankle.”
She’d fought him. Accused him of wanting to look up her shirt.
He wasn’t exactly sure she was kidding.
It ignited feelings inside him he hadn’t known how to manage. Then, she’d started calling him Hawkeye, from the TV show M*A*S*H.
It only made sense that he followed up with Houlihan. And later . . . Hot Lips.
Yeah, they’d been playing some crazy game up there on the mountain. But Ellie’s words spoken last night pinged back to him . . . “Like it or not, the great and awesome Jake Silver has been dumped. Feel free to cry, tough guy.”
Her words had dug into his chest and irked him.
Aria hadn’t even given them a chance, in real life. And sure, they had that hiccup in the hotel room, a misstep that could have taken out any chance at something longlasting, but the fact was, they hadn’t danced outside the lines.
He deserved a chance to try again.
He got up and reached for his jeans and a T-shirt and found himself nearly tripping over his backpack. Although he’d unpacked his dirty clothes, he still hadn’t emptied out his pockets, and now as the pack fell on the floor, he heard a jangle.
His shoe polish tin. Where he kept his military identification tags. “You don’t have to wear your dog tags to be a SEAL. That’s in here . . .”
Whatever. He was still giving serious thought to reactivating. It had only been six months—he could pass the psych evaluation now, he was sure of it. Besides, he’d never been broken. Just angry.
Just the devil—if he were to believe the press.
Okay, sometimes he did.
He unzipped the pack and pulled the tin out.
Opened it.
Inside lay his tags. And a necklace. A half heart.
Aria’s.
The memory whooshed in, brusque, jolting.
“My necklace. It’s gone.” Her panic had grabbed hold and taken him under. He’d searched the tent with her, and finally found the gold chain in her sleeping bag, broken. She’d taken it from his hand, held it to herself. Tried to pass it off as nothing until he pried it out of her.
She broke his heart with her explanation. “It’s just a trinket my sister gave me when we were kids.”
Her sister. Her dead sister. Her twin dead sister who’d given Aria her heart. Literally.
He’d put the necklace into his pack for safekeeping. Then promptly taken it home and forgotten it.
He needed to give it back.
He put it back into the tin and set it on his nightstand. Got up, went to the bathroom, and scrubbed his face. Outside, rain lashed his window. Hot cocoa sounded good.
In the kitchen, the microwave was humming. Ellie stood in front of it, in the glow, watching her cup circle inside.
“Hey, Jake,” said his mother, who sat at the counter.
“It’s a party,” he said. “Did I wake you?”
“My kids can’t get up in the night without a mother knowing.” She pushed a plate of oatmeal cookies his direction.
He sat on the stool next to her. “You okay?”
He braced himself for something negative, but she just nodded, blew on her cocoa. “Aggie seems to be doing okay. When is Ham getting back?”
“I don’t know.”
“I still can’t believe he has a daughter he didn’t know about. How does that happen?”
The microwave dinged and Ellie retrieved the mug, then set it in front of him along with a container of whipped cream.
“See, we have a vibe going, you and me,” Jake said, and picked up the can, swirling the foam into his cup.
She laughed, then filled another mug and added a packet of cocoa before putting it in the microwave. “So, what’s the yelling about?”
He shook his head. “Just . . .”
“The war?”
He looked at his mother before he answered Ellie. “No, actually. I was on Denali, falling into a crevasse, if you must know.”
She held up her hands. “Sorry.”
“Not everyone who comes back from war has PTSD, El.”
“Fine.”
He didn’t look at his mother.
She gave him the grace of not looking at him, either.
“By the way, you left your phone down here. It buzzed a while ago,” his mother said quietly.
He walked over and retrieved it from the counter.
A text had come in. He read it, frowning at the unknown number.
Hey J. I wish you were here. Went snorkeling today. I spent the day throwing up and now I feel like I have the flu. I could use some TLC, LOL. This is worse than Denali. Why do I always get myself in over my head? Anyway, try and stay out of trouble until I get back. See you in a few days.
He read it again, trying to make sense of it, wondering if it might have come from Ham.
But, snorkeling.
Aria?
“Who’s texting you at this hour?” his mother asked.
He looked up at her. “Uh . . .”
“Is it that girl?” Ellie said, bringing her cocoa over to the counter.
“What girl?”
“He got dumped by that brunette at our party.”
“I wasn’t dumped. We weren’t even dating.” He texted her back.
Aria? Is this you? Are you okay?
He waited for the sent notification to change to delivered, but it didn’t go through.
“That doctor?”
He set the phone on the island. “Yeah. She was one of the women in the party in Denali. She went down to the Keys this weekend to, I don’t know, unwind, I guess.”
“I might need a trip to Florida if I got trapped on a mountaintop,” Ellie said.
“The Keys?” His mother put her mug down. “Your father has been following the storm coming in. Lucy, I think they’re calling it. They upgraded it to a Cat 4 hurricane right before we turned it off.”
“There’s a Cat 4 headed to Key West?” Ellie said. “And your not-a-girlfriend is there?” She reached out for his phone. “What did she say?”
“Hey!” He made a swipe for it but she pulled away.
“Wait. She said she wishes you were there?” She looked up at him. “She’s sick and needs some TLC!”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“What happened on that mountain, Jake?” His mother raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing. I mean—” He shook his head. “Nothing. We’re just friends.”
“She doesn’t sound like just a friend,” Ellie said. “‘Try and stay out of trouble’? Sounds like she doesn’t want you rescuing any other women.” She finger-quoted “rescuing” and winked.
“Give me my phone.”
“Are you sure she’s okay? Is she by herself? It sounds like she’s pretty sick.”
“I texted her back. There’s not really much else I can do at the moment.”
His mother picked up the remote and aimed it at the kitchen television. The Weather Channel, of course, popped up, with an update on Hurricane Lucy.
“It looks like it’s still headed north, away from the Keys, so she’ll probably be okay.”
But the swirl on the screen had his gut in a roil.
It was a weird text. Aria didn’t do helpless or needy. At least not with him.
He texted her again.
Aria, this is Jake. Just text me back that you’re okay.
They sat in silence, him holding his phone as they watched the predictions roll in.
“They say that the biggest killer with hurricanes is the fact that no one leaves,” his mother said. “It’s all blue skies and sunny, and no one believes that a storm is heading their way until it’s too late.”
“Thanks for that, Mom.” Jake got up and pressed dial. The call went right to voice mail.
So, her phone was off. That at least gave him answers.
But what if she was really sick?
Like, the kind of sick that was more than seasickness, or food poisoning, or even the flu.
Her heart had taken quite a beating up there on Denali.
Her transplanted heart . . .
Jake got up, dialed his phone, and walked out into the sunroom, staring out the window into the darkness. Wind lashed the trees, the rain sending the lake to the shore in frothy, dark waves.
Not a twenty-foot swell of death and debris to swamp an island. Trap people. Drown them under collapsing houses and uprooted trees.
“What?” Orion’s voice came on the line.
“Where is Aria staying?”
A pause. “Jake?”
“Yeah. I got a weird text from her, and I’m worried.”
“It’s after midnight.”
“I know, but . . . listen, let me talk to Jenny.”
Another pause, and he imagined Orion sitting up. “Dude, what are you thinking? Jenny isn’t here. I’m not staying at her place. I got a hotel room. You want to talk to Jenny, you have to call her. But what’s going on?”
Jake sank onto the arm of his father’s recliner, aware that his mother had turned up the volume on the Weather Channel. Thanks, Mom. He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m just . . . I’m worried, okay? Aria seemed pretty rattled when she was here for the Fourth of July party. She said she was okay, but—”
“Aw, Jenny found out that Aria had lost a patient. A baby she’d operated on.”
Oh, Aria.
“Lucas sent her down to the Keys for some medical conference, but mostly to get away.”
He wanted to ask, but probably shouldn’t and then couldn’t help it—“Did she go with that Devon guy?”
Silence. “Who?”
“That guy—the resident—who came with her to the party.”
“I don’t know, dude. I’m not in charge of her social life.”
“Well, ask Jenny!”
“She’s not here. Sheesh, bro, breathe. I’m sure Aria is fine. Relaxing—”
“There’s a Cat 4 hurricane heading her direction.” He was on his feet now. “Okay, just . . . listen, calm down—”
“I’m calm. You’re the one yelling.”
“I’m not yelling—”
“You’re yelling,” said Ellie from across the room.
He shot her a glare but cut his voice down and turned away, toward the window. In the reflection he saw a guy who might need to yes, calm down. Unshaven, his blond hair in rats, his eyes a little wired. He pressed his hand to the cool glass. “Listen. I just . . . she’s not picking up and I thought I’d call the resort and see if I could find her.”
“Why?”
“Because she texted me and said she was sick, okay?”
He heard rustling. “Sick?”
“Yeah. And the symptoms of heart-transplant rejection are flu-like symptoms and nausea . . .”
“What?”
“Aria is a heart-transplant recipient. And females have a higher chance of rejecting hearts. And after Denali, it’s possible that maybe her heart was damaged, and I’m just worried—”
“The only one with a damaged heart is you, buddy. Listen, it didn’t work out between you. You need to just deal with that.”
“It’s not—I’m not—I’m worried about her!” Oh joy, the shouting was back. “I just need to know where she is, okay? Just talk to her, and then . . .”
“You’ll be a normal human being? Right. Okay, hang up, Jake, and let me call Jenny. She’ll know what to do.”
“Fine.” He hung up. Tapped the phone on his leg.
“Okay, you’re all set.”
He turned around.
His sister was leaning over his mother’s shoulder and now glanced back at him. “We got you booked on a 5:00 a.m. flight to Miami. Go pack.”
He stared at her, and his mother turned and met his eyes.
Oh.
“We’ll watch Aggie,” she said softly. “You go.”
His throat thickened. “This is stupid, isn’t it?”
His sister picked up the container of whipped cream. Opened her mouth. Shot a wad in and closed it. Grinned as she swallowed it down. “Sometimes you just gotta follow your heart, bro.”
She’d turned the bedsheets into a soggy mess.
But at least she wasn’t dead.
Aria rolled over onto her side, thankful that her stomach didn’t protest and decide to send her scrambling again to the bathroom.
The room didn’t swim.
She smelled rank, felt like the living dead, and given the shadows banking through her window she’d slept well into the day.
Maybe longer. She didn’t want to guess.
Sitting up, Aria pressed her hands to her face. So, she might live. But not if she didn’t eat something.
Crackers, maybe. Some soda.
She shuffled to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, stared at her reflection in the mirror. She hadn’t so much as tanned her nose during her day at sea. In fact, she’d gotten a better tan in Alaska, albeit raccoon eyes.
A quick shower, a change of clothing, and she decided she was alive enough to trudge down to the restaurant and order a coffee.
She walked outside. Overhead, the sky had clouded over, and a fierce wind had tumbled a few deck chairs poolside. Palm fronds floated in the water. She must have slept through a storm.
Oddly, no one walked the beach.
She headed along the upper deck, took the stairs down to the cobblestones, and wandered around the resort, toward the cabana cafe. Closed. She peered inside, but no one manned the hostess stand, no patrons ate lunch.
Overhead, gulls cried, and the ocean sounded angry as she tucked her head down and scurried across the walkway to the main resort headquarters.
Inside, the gift shop was dark. She walked down to the main desk, but it was empty.
She half expected Jack Nicholson to jump out and say, “Here’s Johnny!”
“Hello?”
Through a door behind the desk, barely ajar, voices lifted.
Phew.
“I don’t care what everyone else is doing, girl. I’m not leaving. This is my home—”
“Mimi, don’t be stupid. You remember what happened to those folks in New Orleans—”
“This isn’t New Orleans—and we’ve weathered tougher storms than that. When Irma hit, I was sitting right here, listening to her wail.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Hello?” Aria leaned over the desk. “Hello, front desk?”
The door opened and a woman emerged. Maybe early twenties, dressed in a teal collared shirt with the Bahama Mama logo on the breast pocket and a pair of faded jeans. She might have the most beautiful skin color Aria had ever seen—a light brown, almost golden. She looked at Aria with deep, dark brown eyes that betrayed a hint of panic. “What are you doing here?”
For a second, Aria had nothing. Then, “I’m . . . in room 217.”
The woman approached the desk and typed into the computer. “You’re with the medical conference group?”
Aria nodded.
“I’m sorry—they all checked out this morning. We have your room as vacated. I didn’t realize . . .”
“Yola! Who is that?”
Yola turned. “Room 217, Mimi. She didn’t evacuate yet.”
“Evacuate?” Aria noticed rain starting to pelt the windows. “Is there a storm coming?”
Yola turned back to her. “Yes—”
“It’s nothin’ to worry about!” said Mimi, the voice from the back room.
Yola rolled her eyes. “She’s lived on the island for nearly fifty years and thinks she knows best.”
“There isn’t anything we can’t handle. We just have to hunker down.” Mimi appeared in the doorway. Thin, her skin tanned to leather, her long white hair flowing down the back of a tie-dye maxi dress. She hung on to the frame. “A hurricane is nothing to be afraid of.”
“Did you say hurricane?” Aria said. Outside, the sky appeared eerily green, the rain sheeting down in gusts. The palm trees at the front of the property had started to blow.
“Oh, don’t you worry. Those are just the outer rain bands. They’ll pass soon enough.”
Water ran down the street, emptying into rain gutters. The parking lot was empty, save for her rental Honda and the resort van.
“Mimi, sit down.”
“I’m fine. We’re all going to be just fine.” She approached the desk. “But it might be a good idea to raid the cabana for fresh water bottles and some of that shrimp gumbo Sonny makes. I’m sure he’s got leftovers in the freezer.” She ended her speech with a cough, her breath rattling in her chest.
Yola eased her down into a high-top chair. “My grandmama has COPD.” She looked at Mimi. “Because she smoked for twenty years.”
“And not just cigarettes,” Mimi said, looking up and winking.
Oh. Uh.
Yola rolled her eyes. “Mimi is a child of the sixties.”
“Oh, calm down. That was then. Now, I believe that nothing soothes the soul like prayer and a daily dose of sass.”
Yola grinned, shaking her head. “See what I’m dealing with here?”
“I’m a little worried about your grandmother’s cough. Mimi, how’s your chest? Is it tight?”
“Oh, honey, I’ve had it called a number of things, but tight isn’t one of them.” She laughed. Coughed.
“Mimi! She’s trying to help.”
“Can I come around?” Aria asked and when Yola nodded, she came around the desk and turned Mimi to face her. “Can I take your pulse?”
“My heart is beating just fine.”
Aria took her wrist, felt the rhythm there. Fast, maybe too fast, but given the storm building outside, maybe Mimi wasn’t as calm as she’d like to convey. Aria turned her hand over. Her fingernails were gray with a tinge of blue.
The woman probably needed oxygen.
“What stage is her COPD?”
“I don’t know—”
“The ‘I don’t worry about it’ stage,” Mimi said but ended in more coughing that had her reaching for a tissue on the desk and putting it to her mouth.
Aria noticed the mucus she spat out.
Mimi wadded the tissue and threw it into the trash.
“Ma’am—”
“You can call me Mimi. Everyone does.”
“Do you have a nebulizer here?”
“Doc said I should get one, but I have the beach. That’s fresh air enough.”
Aria looked at Yola, who just shrugged. “It’s like trying to tame a cat.”
“Okay, Mimi, I think it would be good for you to go to the ER. Get some oxygen. Maybe a bronchodilator, just to help you breathe easier.” Mimi’s breaths were raspy as they filtered out, long, almost painful. Aria would guess her at a stage three, if not four.
“I’d like you to take a spirometry test. Just to see how far your COPD has progressed. Do you have a primary care doctor?”
“Good old Doc WebMD,” Mimi said.
“All right, that’s it. You’re going to the ER,” Yola said.
“I’ll go with you,” Aria said. “And then I probably need to leave for Miami.”
“Oh, honey, it’s too late for that. If the storm is headed our way, you don’t want to get caught on the overseas highway during a hurricane. What we need to do is finish boarding up these front windows.”
Aria stared at her. “I . . . I need to go home . . .”
Mimi lifted a shoulder. “Sorry.”
“I’m going to get my stuff. I’ll meet you here in ten minutes.”
She stood inside the door, waiting for a break in the storm. The rain was sheeting down now, blowing the palm trees, their fronds twisting in the gusts. The sky had turned an eerie green, the ocean frothing onto the shore.
The wind had piled more chairs into themselves around the pool, and broken glass from a poolside light littered the cement.
Rain blew by in gusts.
There was no escaping it. She ducked her head and ran out into the deluge, across the cobblestones, and finally under the balconies. Her clothing was plastered to her body by the time she scooted up her stairs.
She tried her room key.
She tried again.
Nothing.
They must have checked her out, zeroed out her key.
Perfect.
She raced down the stairs and back out into the pelting rain, shivering violently by the time she slammed the lodge door behind her. “I’m locked out!”
Her voice carried across the lobby even as she followed it to the front desk. “I’m locked out of my—”
Mimi lay with her head on the desk. Yola stood over her with the phone pressed to her ear. Drool ran from Mimi’s mouth.
“What happened?” Aria ran around the edge of the desk, pressed her fingers to Mimi’s jugular. A rhythm, fast and thready.
“She just collapsed. What’s wrong with her?”
“Mimi?” Aria kneeled before her. “Mimi, can you hear me?”
Her eyes opened, and she took a breath. “Oh, my . . . um . . .” She lifted her head, clearly disoriented.
“Maybe she just passed out from lack of oxygen,” said Aria. She helped Mimi sit up. Her skin was crepe-paper thin, despite the leathery look. “Mimi, can you smile for me? Show me teeth?”
Mimi frowned at her.
“Mimi, please.”
She made an exaggerated smile. No facial weakness.
“How about lift your arms for me?”
“I’m fine!” She went to stand up but fell back into her chair.
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m just a little dizzy. I haven’t eaten lunch, with all the excitement around here.”
No slurring of speech. And aside from the balance . . . maybe she wasn’t having a stroke. Still— “Do you have keys to the van?”
Yola opened a drawer and pulled out the keys. “I don’t have a license.”
“I do, let’s go.” Aria hoisted Mimi up and pulled her arm around her shoulder. “Get her other side.”
Yola ducked under her grandmother and helped her up.
“This is ridiculous,” Mimi said, but when she stumbled, her grip tightened around Aria. She said nothing as they approached the door.
The van sat on the far side of the parking lot, lashed by rain. Across the street, water had pooled in the sports shop parking lot, and a fleet of kayaks floated free.
“Wait here,” Aria said and lowered Mimi down onto a nearby bench. Then, ducking her head, she ran for the van.
She unlocked it on the way, dove into the driver’s seat, and fought to get the key in the ignition with her trembling hands. Rain bulleted the front windshield.
The engine turned over and she pulled out, then alongside the resort entrance. Yola had Mimi up and headed to the van by the time she came around. They loaded Mimi onto the bench seat and Yola climbed in beside her.
“The Key West hospital is up the road a couple miles, on Stock Island, just off Highway 1,” Yola said.
“We had a tour a couple days ago,” Aria said and put the van into drive.
The wind howled, shivering road signs, tearing palm branches from trees, sheeting water down the road. It had risen to maybe six inches—not so deep she couldn’t drive through it—but she eased out onto the road slowly. A kayak had dislodged from the pack in the lot across the street and edged out into the road. Farther down, the traffic light blinked red, and a tree limb partially blocked the road.
“There’s no signal,” Yola said, pocketing her cell phone. “Maybe the lines are down.”
“She’ll be okay. We’ll get her to the hospital, get her on oxygen, give her a treatment, and . . .” Aria didn’t want to suggest anything else, like monitor her for a stroke, but COPD patients had a myriad of potential problems, from stroke, to lung cancer, to heart disease. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, but we can’t be too safe.”
“Yeah,” Yola said as she hung between the seats. “That’s why I came down here this summer. I go to college in Queens, but I thought I’d spend the summer here, you know. I lost my mom to cancer a few years ago, and Mimi is all I have left. She tries to run the place by herself—”
“I’m just fine!”
Yola cut her voice down. “Frankly, I’d like her to sell the place, but she’s had it for over forty years, so there’s no budging her. She and my grandpop bought it, fixed it up after a hurricane came through in the early seventies.”
“Tropical Storms Dorothy and Felice. Only two weeks apart. Tore the Mama to shreds. Rollo and I took it on from the owner and worked for free for years to pay him back, but we built something. We believed in something—” Mimi doubled over, coughing.
Aria glanced in the rearview mirror. Yola was rubbing Mimi’s back.
“Mimi and Pops rebuilt the place. Pops said it could be a little piece of paradise. He died about twenty years ago, but Mimi refused to move. This place has always been home, at least in the summer.”
Mimi sat up. “I’m not selling, Yola.”
Aria crawled through the entertainment district—past the closed tiki bars, the pubs, the museums, the seafood restaurants—and toward the business district on Caroline Street. As they passed the beach she noted the sky had turned darker, the waves now crashing against the cement barriers, spraying fury into the sky and over onto the boardwalk. A tree branch skittered across the road in front of her.
She cut right, down to Eaton, and followed that to Palm Avenue Causeway.
Waves crashed over the two-lane road, the Garrison Bight harbor furious as it drenched the road.
“Go back,” Yola said, and Aria was already backing up.
They doubled back on Eisenhower and took Truman east. They passed the empty parking lot of the Parrot resort, the car rental place, Home Depot—advertising an empty display of plywood and hurricane protection—the Pizza Hut, and another empty hotel lot.
The road narrowed near the ballfields, the ocean to the left crashing over the breakwater and onto the highway. Boats moored in the causeway slammed into the barriers that tethered them. The palm tree fronds blew horizontal.
“This is just the outer bands. Good thing the eyewall isn’t going to hit us,” Mimi said.
Aria kept her eyes on the road, the windshield wipers on full as she motored down Roosevelt and the long stretch of unprotected highway. She hazarded a look once and the foamy torrent of the sea put a hand in her gut.
She might prefer a blizzard to this chaos.
A gust nearly knocked them into the ditch, but she gripped the wheel, righted the van. Stepped down a little on the gas.
They passed a medical building and a set of three-story apartments facing the Salt Pond Keys, then finally made the turn south to Highway 1.
The bridge stretched over the water, between Key West and Stock Island.
“There’s the hospital.” Yola pointed to a three-story building on the north of Stock Island.
Two miles away.
Waves splashed against the bridge, spittle flying into the air, crashing down onto the pavement in a tumult of power that could wash their van right over the edge.
“Maybe we should go back,” Mimi said.
Aria glanced at Mimi. Her lips appeared blue. She turned back, watching the surge, timing it. “Hang on. But you might not want to buckle in case we go over.”
“What?” Yola shrieked.
Aria gunned it. The waves had receded, and she slammed the gas into the floor, praying the van had the get-up-and-go she needed.
The water was rushing back, the rain blinding on the windshield. She leaned forward, willing the van past the surge.
The wave crashed down just as they reached the other side, a frothy explosion of fury that could have certainly washed them out to sea. She eased off the gas, afraid to tap her brakes and hydroplane. But they slowed enough for her to turn left onto College Road.
They passed the Monroe County Sheriff’s department and detention center, and she noticed lights on in the building.
“Those poor inmates,” Mimi said. “They must be terrified, stuck in their cells.”
Huh. Aria hadn’t thought about the fact that the prison might not evacuate.
The vegetation here was nearly washed away, the road littered with shrubbery and debris. She eased around the litter, kept her foot on the gas, the gusts hitting the van hard, fresh off the ocean some twenty feet away.
An electrical pole sparked right in front of them, and she swerved, nearly plowed into the sand and mud on the side of the road.
“You have some kind of spunk, girl,” Mimi said, her voice weak.
Yeah, well, she was channeling her inner Kia, the sister who had possessed enough spunk for both of them. She, on the other hand, was the brainy one. The one who got straight As and landed at the top of her class.
The one who didn’t get in over her head. Usually.
They passed the teal-and-gray buildings of the elementary school, a fine arts center, then finally—
“There it is!” Yola said.
Aria pulled in on the right, across the parking lot and right under the overhang entrance of the three-story orange-and-white building.
The hospital was evacuating.
A massive coast guard chopper sat in the lot, under bright lights washed by the raging winds and rain. A handful of people—staff, maybe, dressed in scrubs and street clothes—waited under the shelter of the awning. A few more held umbrellas, moving a handful of patients in wheelchairs out to the chopper.
The few onlookers parted as she braked and got out.
Yola had already opened the door.
“Aria, what are you still doing here?” She looked over to see Drey, dressed in a pair of khakis and a collared shirt, moving around the front of the van. “I thought you’d left with the others.”
“I was sick, but I’m fine now. I need help.” She reached in and helped Mimi out of the van, Yola on the other side. “What are you doing here?”
“I stayed to help. The others left for Miami. But now everyone is leaving. The hospital has been evacuated. You can’t stay here.” He said this as they moved Mimi toward the doors. They opened, and she stepped into the cool air-conditioning and relative quiet of the lobby.
“Where’s the ER? She needs oxygen.”
He gave her a look, then pointed down the hallway.
She set Mimi down into a nearby wheelchair. It was wet. Aria turned to Yola. “Take her to the ER. Get her on a bed. I’ll be right there.”
Yola hustled her away and Aria turned to Drey. “I agree. But I need to stabilize her first.”
“The chopper is leaving now.” Drey glanced toward the door. “The highway is closed—you can’t get out by car. You need to go now.”
“What about Mimi?”
He looked back at her. “I’ll see if there’s room, but they’ve already agreed to take the staff on this flight. We stayed because they promised they wouldn’t leave us behind. I think the chopper is full.”
“She’s in danger of having a stroke, Drey. I can’t leave her here.”
He held up his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can ask if they’ll come back—”
“Yeah, do that.” She shook her head. “I’m not leaving her behind.”
“If she didn’t already evacuate, then she doesn’t want to leave—”
“It doesn’t matter. She needs help, and I’m not going to abandon her.”
“Fine. I’ll ask if they can come back for you. But are you prepared to stay here if they can’t?”
Yola had emerged out into the hallway, soaked to the bone, her shirt plastered to her body, her hands wrapped around her waist. Clearly she’d gotten Mimi settled.
Or maybe not, because she was trembling, worry in her eyes.
“Yeah. I’m not going to trade my life for someone else’s, thanks. You go. We’ll be fine.”
His mouth tightened in a grim line. “I don’t like this—”
“You could stay.”
He drew in a breath.
“Doctor?” A nurse had stepped inside the building. “They’re leaving.”
He cocked his head. “I’m sorry, Aria.”
“It’s fine. It’s not my first storm. We’ll be fine.”
“I’ll ask them to come back—”
“Just go.”
She headed down the hallway to Yola.
“She’s over here,” Yola said and directed her to an ER bay where Mimi lay on a gurney. Her eyes were closed.
First things first. She opened the drawers, searching for an oxygen mask, found one in a package, and ripped it open. Then, she turned on the pulse-ox monitor and attached the clip to Mimi’s finger.
The reading was 62mm, dangerously close to hypoxia. She turned on the oxygen and heard it hiss as she affixed the mask to the hose, then tucked it over Mimi’s mouth and nose.
“You’re going to feel better in a bit,” she said. She’d like to get a FEV/sec test, along with a spirometry test, but for now, she just wanted Mimi to breathe.
Outside, she heard the roar of the chopper as it lifted away, disappeared.
A hand reached out, gripped her arm. She looked at Mimi.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” Mimi said, drawing away the mask. “God always shows up in a storm.”
Huh. She didn’t know why, but the words settled inside her, found her bones.
She covered Mimi’s hand with hers.
“Uh-oh,” Yola said quietly.
Aria looked at her.
Yola was standing in the hallway, looking at her feet.
Her white tennis shoes were covered with an inch of water, dribbling down the hallway.
The smells of fried chebureki turned in Ham’s gut as he walked down Victory Avenue on his way to Pushkin Park.
Ukraine, the city of Kiev, the place of his last, worst mistake.
Okay, he’d made more since then, but none of them of the epic nature of losing, for the final time, the woman he loved, right here in this city.
Well, the end had started here.
The grand finale happened in the mountains of Chechnya.
He stuck his hands into his jacket pockets, head down, trying not to draw attention. Not that the local militia had any reason to look for him, but attracting attention wouldn’t do anything to fix his current op-gone-south.
He was supposed to be on a train to Moscow to rescue a woman who’d been accused of an international crime. And everything would have gone off as planned if her brother, a navy SEAL named Ford Marshall, and his girlfriend, Scarlett Hathaway, hadn’t turned Ham’s well-oiled plan into a tangled mess, causing him to have to stay behind and sort out their exfil details.
It did, however, give him time to track down Royal Benjamin.
How Senator White had gotten a bead on Royal, he didn’t know, but apparently Royal was masking his identity with the code name Prince.
Which felt a little on the nose, but the guy hadn’t been known for his creativity, just his ability to get the job done.
Ham had a dark feeling that he knew exactly what Royal’s current job was.
Unfortunately, he’d missed their planned meeting in Prague, where Royal told Ford how to find his sister.
Ham wasn’t going to miss this one. Not with Royal, but a contact Ham had made through his SEAL connections, namely former teammate Luke Dekker, now a private security contractor with Stryker International. Luke had set Ham up with his boss, Chet Stryker.
Right here in Kiev.
Ham walked past a hospital, a music academy, and then into the park with its paved paths, tall oak and linden trees, and the smell of wild raspberries thick on the vines. Mothers walked their children in prams, a cool breeze rustled the foliage and carried in it the sound of an accordion and the smells of more fried street food.
“I miss hamburgers.” Signe, tugging on his hand, her green eyes finding his. “And french fries. What do you miss?”
“Besides pizza?” No, besides her smile—healing, moment by moment, the terrible gash inside him that he’d lived with for the past five years, since he came home from his deployment to find her gone. Vamoosed. Without a trace or a forwarding address. She’d warned him—he just hadn’t believed her.
Never stopped looking for her.
“And country music. I can’t believe you got me hooked on that.”
He wanted to pull her into a two-step right there on the sidewalk.
Ham put a hand to his chest at the memory, took a breath. It didn’t do him any good to rehash it. It still ended up the same way, every single time, no matter how much he reworked it.
They simply didn’t see the world the same way.
Didn’t see their relationship—their marriage—the same way.
The music he heard was coming from a street performer, a man in a ragged pair of pants and a grimy jacket. Ham dropped a couple hryvnia into his upturned hat and kept going, toward the benches near a playground where he planned to meet Chet. The brightly colored equipment had seen better days, the paint peeling, the wooden teeter-totter worn, the wood rotting.
“Let me down, Ham!” Signe, trapped at the top, banging the board, him at the bottom, grinning up at her. He wanted to leave her there, trap her so she couldn’t leave him again. Couldn’t scare him.
“Not until you agree to go home.” Stupid words, he couldn’t believe he let them emerge.
A darkness crossed her face, her smile vanishing. “That’s like me asking you to quit the teams. I have a job to do.” She lifted her leg over, hopped off, and stalked away.
Brilliant, Ham.
Now a dog barked in the park and he watched a little girl, maybe age ten, her hair in pigtails, wearing a school uniform, chase after it.
Reminded him of Aggie, her laughter with Jake at the party.
His little girl had been like a board when he hugged her goodbye later that night. He’d bubbled an “I’ll be back,” and even to his ears it felt cold, a little like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.
“Vera! Come back!” The voice of her mother called the little girl back. In Ukrainian, of course, but Ham’s rusty Ukrainian was coming back to him. He glanced over, spotted the woman—midthirties, wearing a short skirt and heels, holding a jacket, her hair short behind her ears.
Signe would have been in her midthirties by now. He held her in immortality in his head for some reason, young, her blonde hair long and twining between his fingers, her laugh a balm for his soul.
What were you doing in Italy, Sig?
But right now wasn’t the time because he spotted Chet sitting on a bench across the play area. A former Green Beret turned private security operator, Chet Stryker had worked in the eastern European theater, namely Georgia, just south of Chechnya. So he knew Russian, not to mention the right people to help get Ford and his friends out of Russia via Kazakhstan should they need to travel south.
But more, Chet had connections—the kind who could track down an under-the-radar wet-work operator.
Chet wore a black dress shirt, a suit coat, and a pair of jeans and met Ham’s approach with a nod.
Ham sat down beside him and extended a hand.
“Never thought I’d see you again in this part of the world,” Chet said. “I heard you were in Afghanistan.”
“I’m retired. Live in the States.” With my daughter. Naw, that felt too fresh to say. “I run a private global SAR team now.”
“Interesting. Finding tourists who wander off?”
“Something like that. How’ve you been?”
“Good. I just got done consulting on a job and Dekker shot me a text, said you wanted to meet up. I’m on a train out tonight, back to Prague.”
“You’re HQed there?”
“Yeah. My wife and I just had our second kid.” He pulled up his cell phone and opened it to a couple redheaded rug rats, the oldest no more than two. “Finally got Mae to agree to sit out a few missions, although she’s aching to get back into the cockpit.”
“I get it. Signe never was one for sitting still, either.” And wow, he didn’t know why he’d said that, like he was a married man, with a wife who wouldn’t quit.
Except, that was sort of the truth. Or would have been if everything had gone according to plan.
But nothing, it seemed, went according to his plans.
“So, what brings you to Ukraine?” Chet asked.
“Right now, I’m working on extracting three people from Russia, possibly across the southern border into Kazakhstan.”
“I have a few contacts, people in immigration, some friends inside their security forces. I’ll have my guy Artyom send you a number.”
“Great. Can I ask another favor?”
“Give it a try.”
“I’m trying to track down a buddy of mine—Royal Benjamin. He was mixed up in something in Afghanistan and sort of disappeared. We think he’s working in Europe, going by the name Prince.”
Chet gave a half-grin. “That’s a terrible code name.”
“Agreed. But he might be in trouble, and I just want to check on him.”
Chet folded his arms, his gaze on a couple kids kicking a soccer ball down the pavement. “Did you hear about the assassination attempt in Russia?”
“Some general—”
“Boris Stanislov. One of the troika. The leadership. I have a contact in Russia who thinks the Bratva, the Russian mob, is behind it.”
No wonder Ford needed to find his sister, get her out, if the Bratva were after her—or framing her—for the attack. But he didn’t add that to Chet’s words.
“There is some conversation on the dark web suggesting the Bratva was behind the recent assassination attempt on Senator White.”
“The one in Alaska?” Ham didn’t mention that he’d been there, that he and Jake had been the ones to take down the terrorist. “I thought he was acting alone.”
“Maybe. But there was another in San Diego, at the national convention.”
Ham had heard about that—a thwarted bombing. “You think Russia is behind this?”
“I think Russia has always been interested in our politics. It’s the game we play—we spy on them, they spy on us, but now . . . well, it’s getting personal.”
“Yes, if they want to try and assassinate our presidential candidates.”
“Didn’t we just try to assassinate their general?” Chet said.
“I don’t know.” Ford seemed to think his sister was innocent, that she’d been set up.
“Have you ever heard of the NOC list?” Chet asked.
“Of course,” Ham said. “The list of agents working non-official cover for the CIA.”
“No immunity, no protection if they’re caught, but patriots, in the employ of the US government, defending our country. Acting as diplomats and humanitarian aid workers and journalists and photographers and international employees and even occasionally simply going dark, becoming ghosts.”
“In other words, spies.”
Chet nodded. “And according to the dark web, the NOC list is out, and up for sale.”
“How did it get out?”
“We’re not sure. But imagine if Russia got their hands on it.”
“Where is it now?”
“The offer went out about a month ago, but there’s been no movement on it, and the sale is still open, so we’re not sure what’s going on. Artyom has been monitoring the sale.”
“You think my friend Royal might be on that list?”
“If he is, he’s in trouble, along with everyone else on that list—a list Russia or the Bratva would very much like to have. And a list that might include who made the attempt on General Stanislov. The Russians—or the Bratva—getting their hands on that list would ensure that they could take out anyone who might get in their way.”
“Including Royal. Can you figure out a way to reach out to him?”
Chet considered him. “I’ll try. No promises, but Artyom can tap a few private message boards. Prince, you said?”
Ham nodded.
The boys kicked the soccer ball into the yard. Chet got up and stopped it with his foot, kicked it back. Stood in the shadows of the playground, his hands in his pockets. “Tell me again why you’re here, Ham?”
Ham stood up. “Just helping out a friend.”
“Okay. I’ll get you in touch with my contact in Kazakhstan. But listen . . . if your friend is in trouble with the Bratva, they’re not slowed down by any borders. You find her, and you tell her to hide.”
“I will.” He shook Chet’s hand.
“And you tell that pretty wife of yours hello. I met her in Italy a few years ago, when Luke spotted her. She had your daughter with her, if I remember correctly.”
Ham stared at him. For a moment the words didn’t fully engage and he nearly let them slide off him.
And then, “What?”
“Your wife. I saw her in Italy.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. It was before Mae and I were married, so . . . maybe eight years ago? We were working a kidnapping in Italy at the time. Luke was sort of freaking out when he saw her, I’m not sure why.”
Because he’d been with Ham in Chechnya when Ham thought he’d killed her?
A hand pressed Ham’s chest, took out his breath.
“She said you’d been spun up but were working out of Sigonella and she’d come to see you.”
The lie felt so believable, he almost nodded.
What if she’d been in Italy all this time?
All this time, with his child, and never said a word. Never contacted him.
Never cared.
“I’ll tell her,” Ham said, the Terminator voice back again.
“Your daughter’s, what—”
“Ten. Her name is Aggie.”
“Cutie pie, if I remember right. We’re lucky men, Ham.” He checked his watch. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything about Royal too.”
Ham nodded and watched him leave, unable to move.
He sat back on the bench. The sun was cresting down, casting goldenrod fingers through the trees. “I love you, Ham. I always have. But we . . . this can’t be any more than right now.” Signe, in silhouette against the hotel window, her back to St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, the setting sun glinting off it, blinding him. Watering his eyes. He’d arranged this getaway to help them find their footing again. For him to remind her that once upon a time, they loved each other.
“But we’re married, Sig—”
“Only because you didn’t annul the marriage. That’s why we got married in Vegas, for Pete’s sake—so it would be easier to annul.”
“I married you because I loved you.”
“You married me because you said we couldn’t be together unless we were married. Because of your black-and-white sense of morality.” She turned away from him. “I can’t be married to a navy SEAL.”
She sighed. “You know why. I can’t watch you die. I can’t . . . I can’t do that, Ham.”
Was she kidding? “What about you? You’re working as an aid worker in a refugee camp in the middle of a country in a civil war!”
She folded her arms.
“C’mon. Why are you even here?” His own voice, reverberating through the tiny room.
“You don’t understand . . . ” She’d started, then stopped herself, her voice cresting low. “I have to be here.”
He’d forgotten about that conversation. Had swept it away into his subconscious, had told himself it was one of her justice-for-humanity causes that made her say it.
As in, she was compelled to be there.
But what if . . . what if it was her job?
“Have you ever heard of the NOC list?”
“No immunity, no protection if they’re caught, but patriots, in the employ of the US government, defending our country. Acting as diplomats and humanitarian aid workers . . .”
No. Except, after their hurry-up wedding in Vegas, he’d been deployed, and she’d suddenly stopped writing. Then she’d graduated and vanished.
It had taken him five years to find her. In the back hills of Chechnya, of all places. Somehow, he’d convinced her to sneak away to Ukraine to sort it all out.
His phone vibrated and he tapped it.
A text from Ellie, Jake’s sister. He opened it. A picture of Aggie filled the screen, sitting on the sofa, cuddling with Arthur, the Silver family’s goldendoodle. Smiling, of course.
The night was descending. Ham got up and headed back to the hotel.
But he couldn’t help but see Signe again, in his mind as he walked. Her arms folded, her mouth tight, her eyes bright, as if she too might be holding back tears as they fought during their getaway to Kiev. All he wanted to do was cross the hotel room and take her into his arms. Again.
Keep them both safe, forever.
“You don’t have to be here. This is a dangerous place, with dangerous people. I know you’re tough, and brave, but . . . I can’t lose you, Sig.” He couldn’t stop himself from advancing on her, taking her by the arms. Meeting her beautiful eyes. “Please, please go home.”
She put her hands on his chest, warming his beating heart, and in a gesture that he thought might be a yes, lifted her face to kiss him. “I’ll be safe, I promise.”
And his foolish heart believed her.