CHAPTER 11
YOU PICKED A FINE TIME TO LEAVE ME, LUCILLE.”
Aria didn’t know why the old Kenny Rogers tune kept rolling through her head, but of course, the minute Jake left, taking with him his calming, steady presence, everything fell apart.
Aria didn’t like the look of Mimi’s oxygen levels, and Yola looked like she might be getting hand cramps from the ambu bag. Which might not have been a problem if Angel hadn’t suddenly doubled over in pain.
Please let her not be in labor.
As for Hagan, she’d searched the supply closet off the nurses’ station and found a cardboard box. She doubled it over, then wrapped it to his arm and fashioned a makeshift splint.
“So, what happened to give you these bruises?” she asked after splinting his arm. A purple welt swelled his cheek, and a dark line split his lip. The ER doc in her labeled it a bar fight, but that didn’t make sense.
“I was taking cover in my bathroom when the storm took out a wall. I got down but one of the joists banged me across the face.” He drew his arm close. “I tried to brace it with my arm, but that wasn’t the best idea.” He added a grimace.
“You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” she said, wishing she had an ice pack.
“Yeah. The tub protected me, but it was terrifying.”
“You’re safe now,” she said. “But let’s get some fluids into you.” She gave him a bottle of water. “The vending machine has a few snacks left. Jake got the door open, so help yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Probably it was a good thing to have another man around, although Hagan didn’t possess the don’t-worry-I’m-here aura of Jake Silver.
Probably no one did.
In fact, Jake exuded a confidence unlike anyone she’d ever met—well, except for Kia, maybe. Kia knew how to make people laugh. Looked danger in the face. Never said “I can’t.”
That’s what had scared Aria the most.
“I need to check on Angel,” she said to Hagan. “Give me a shout if you need anything.” She left him in the break room and headed down the hallway to the patient room where Angel lay on the bed Jake had inhabited, her hands over her belly, her face twisted. The puppy cuddled in her arms, whining. Aria took her pulse, then found a blood pressure cuff and scope and took her pressure.
“Are they contractions, or just one solid pain?” Aria said, feeling Angel’s stomach, reaching back to her residency days in the OB department.
“They come and go,” Angel said, and her breath caught, her eyes closing.
“Another one?” Aria asked.
Angel nodded. Grabbed Aria’s hand.
Aria timed the contraction. Thirty seconds, then it eased.
Next to them, Yola and Mimi were watching her.
“I was in labor for two days with Yola’s mama,” Mimi said, her breath thin and wispy.
Aria turned to her, took her pulse. Eighty-five beats a minute—she didn’t like it. And Mimi seemed pale, tired. “We should try another nebulizer treatment,” she said to Yola. “I’ll go back down to the pharmacy to get more.”
Angel groaned again. Aria checked her watch. Four minutes. She put her hands on Angel’s stomach, feeling the baby. It felt head down, ready to deliver.
“Angel, when are you due?”
“Not for . . . another month.”
“Don’t hold your breath. Just keep breathing, nice and easy.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not lying in a hospital bed in pain!” Angel’s eyes widened at her outburst. “Sorry.”
“No, I get it. And I remember very well how it felt to be helpless, in pain, and even unable to breathe.” She looked at Mimi. “I was born with a congenital heart defect that kept me in bed for the better part of my first seventeen years of life.”
The contraction subsided. Angel took a deep breath. “What happened?”
“I got a new heart, and it changed my life.”
“Sometimes I wish I could get a new heart,” Angel said.
“Oh?”
“It seems that no matter what I do, I choose the wrong men.” She stared at the ceiling. “I keep thinking this is the one, and every time, I get my heart broken. And yet, I keep doing it—choosing a man who will only break my heart.”
She ran her hand over her belly. “And now I really did it. But we’re going to be okay. We are.”
Her eyes glistened as she looked over at Aria. “It’s going to be different for her. I’m going to take care of her. My mother abandoned me when I was six, and I grew up in foster homes. So I’m not sure why I think I’ll be a good mother for this child, but . . . I don’t know. I just can’t . . . I can’t give her up.” She looked over at Aria. “It’s the first thing I have that I know belongs to me.”
She winced, holding her breath.
“Deep breaths, Angel.”
Angel nodded. Breathed.
“I remember when I met Rollo,” Mimi said quietly. “He was a surfer in Fort Lauderdale, and he had the most beautiful dark skin. He wore dreadlocks and looked just like Bob Marley. I fell instantly in love, and I just knew he was the one for me. And then he turned stupid.”
Aria glanced at her and frowned.
“He decided to surf the maverick waves of Half Moon Bay.”
“What are those?” Angel asked, her voice tight.
“They’re monster waves in Northern California, just off Pillar Point Harbor,” Yola said, shaking her head. “They’re known for being up to sixty feet high. And they kill people.”
“I was so angry with him,” Mimi said, then started to cough.
“Shh. I’ll tell the story,” Yola said. “Rollo was determined to do it, so he piled Mimi and a couple other friends into his VW bus—”
“It had safari windows and camping gear,” Mimi whispered, a sort of ethereal texture to her voice, as if she might be caught in memory.
Yola smiled. “They drove across the entire country and camped out near the beach. Rollo spent a couple weeks watching the other surfers and trying to understand how to surf the waves. See, surfing the big waves is really dangerous. If you wipe out, the breaking waves can push a surfer down for twenty, maybe even fifty feet. The wave spins them around, and they lose their sense of equilibrium, and then, when they’re down there, another wave comes in to hit them. There are also currents that can slam them into rocks, or even a coral reef—it’s really dangerous.”
“No wonder you were angry,” Angel said. She took a long breath, her contraction clearly over.
But the rhythm worried Aria. She should probably check her and see if she was dilating.
“She was furious, right, Mimi?”
Mimi nodded.
“But he was determined to do it, and so, finally one day he got a ride out past the breakers and Mimi watched from shore—”
“Worst day of my life,” she whispered. “The waves were about twenty-five feet tall. It was cold, and all I could think was that he was going to drown, and I was going to watch it.”
Yola wrapped her hand around Mimi’s. “But he didn’t drown. He caught multiple left-breaking waves and surfed them all day. People came to watch, and that night, he was a celebrity.
“When he came in, one of his buddies asked him why he did it, and he said the famous line . . .”
“Because I can,” Mimi said quietly.
“Because he could,” Yola said, smiling. “Mimi always said that he scared her, the way he could look at a wave and not let it chill him. He had respect for the ocean, but he knew it too. Like he was born to it.”
Born to it.
Like Jake was born to rescue, to face danger, maybe.
And not just Jake. “My sister Kia was like that,” Aria said, getting up to find gloves. “She wasn’t afraid of anything, and it . . . it scared me. She was always living big and loud. Like her music. And her dreams—she wanted to climb mountains and skydive and . . . she wanted to taste it all. In fact, the last fight we had was about the fact that she was going to take Dad’s motorcycle out without his permission.”
“I love motorcycles,” Angel said.
“Yeah, well, this one killed her. She was driving too fast and she skidded on a wet patch that spun her out. She hit a tree and was declared brain dead.”
And that was how to quiet a room. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I understand how it feels to love someone who loves danger, Mimi.”
In fact, she hadn’t realized how much Jake was like Kia. Or vice versa.
Except Jake was capable. Smart. Not reckless. And he wasn’t going to do something foolish and get himself killed.
“I always sort of thought that she would love me enough not to risk her life, but . . .”
“That’s how you got your new heart,” Mimi said softly.
Aria looked at her. Oh, her conversation with Jake in the storm. “Yeah.”
“She was your twin.”
“Yes. And she died. And I took her heart. And now I have a debt I’ll never pay back.”
Really, she should stop talking, because she wasn’t sure where that came from. Maybe fatigue. Maybe the fact that Jake was out there, and she’d let him go, and if he didn’t come back—
“Really, that’s what you think?” Yola said. “That you owe your sister a debt because she gave you her heart?”
“No.” She winced. “Okay, yes. I feel like I owe it to her to live a life that is . . .”
“Exemplary.”
Aria lifted a shoulder. “At least one that is worth her giving her life.” She reached for the separating curtain. “I need to see if Angel is dilating. Okay, Angel?”
The girl nodded and Aria pulled the screen.
She was at three centimeters, so not precariously past the point of no return, but, “I’m going down to the pharmacy to see if I can find some terbutaline. That should at least slow your labor until we can get help.” She pulled off the gloves and tossed them in the trash.
Mimi reached out and grabbed Aria’s arm as she walked past her. “If we spent our entire lives trying to pay back what we owe, we’d live in a constant state of debt. Always feeling we weren’t enough, always scrambling to make ourselves better, make ourselves more.” She squeezed her arm. “You are enough, Doc.”
Aria stared at her a long moment before she nodded, moved away from her grasp.
The sun had cast itself past the apex of the day, long shadows reaching down the hallway as she headed toward the stairwell.
“You are enough.”
She didn’t know why those words slunk in under her skin, turned to an itch. But no, she wasn’t enough.
How could she be?
Hagan lay on his mattress, curled into a sleeping ball as she walked by the supply room. She glanced at the dark stairwell.
She could probably use a light. And a bag. She found a pillow and pulled the case off. Now, a light.
Jake’s backpack. A tiny Maglite dangled from a clip on the side. She retrieved it, spying the shoe polish canister tucked into a pocket. The one that he’d tucked her necklace in just a few weeks ago.
When he’d saved her life.
Now, we’re even.
She couldn’t believe she’d actually said that.
She would never be even with Jake Silver, for the way he stormed into her world, stripped away all her defenses, and made her see herself as . . .
Well, as more than she ever thought she could be.
Enough, maybe.
Entering the stairwell, she braced herself for more murky cold, the water over her waist now. It should be receding, shouldn’t it?
She moved into the darkness of the lobby, half-swimming through the water as she headed toward the pharmacy. The door was still propped open, and she climbed over the chair, then over the counter to the back.
Turning on the flashlight, she skimmed it over the tall shelving, searching for the betamimetics.
Soggy boxes and packages cluttered the water, and she picked up a few, found one that contained budesonide, and tucked it into her pillowcase.
Then she flicked the light over the shelves. There, terbutaline, in bottles. She grabbed a handful and dropped them into the pillowcase.
A splash sounded behind her, and she froze, listening. Flashed her light toward the sound.
When her beam landed on a skinny, nearly skeletal man, his eyes reddened and staring at her, she let out a scream that reverberated through the building.
“Stop!” the man said, coming toward her, his hand out. “Stop screaming!”
He clamped his hands over his ears and she stepped back, slamming against one of the shelves. It wobbled. “What do you want?”
“Make it stop!” he said, his hands still over his ears. He wore a grimy black T-shirt, his hair cut short, a tattoo along the underside of his forearm.
She dug down, searching for her voice. “Make what stop?”
“All of it! All—” He lowered his hands. Stared at her, or through her.
And suddenly, she got it.
He was high. And looking for drugs. Opioids, probably. She flicked off her flashlight and felt along the shelving as she moved away from him.
“Hey! Hey. Don’t . . . Where’d you go?”
She moved along the edge of the row, around the corner. Spied the door.
Made a dash for it. Except slogging through the water felt like moving through cement, her body brutally slow—
“Where you goin’?”
She’d barely reached the door when hands clamped on her shoulders, yanking her back. “No—stop!”
Her hands missed the door frame. She tripped.
Hit the water.
And just like that, she was underwater, his hands holding her down. She grabbed his arms, trying to wrench them from her shoulders.
Like claws, they dug into her neck, her collarbone. She kicked, fought, twisted, her air seeping from her.
No! Not like this!
Still the claws pressed her into the darkness, trapping her.
Her chest burned, her vision turning blotchy—
Jake!
Then, just like that, the hands released, and another hand grabbed her and yanked her up.
She hung onto the wrist of her rescuer as she cleared the water, gulping the air as it burned her lungs.
And yes, she expected to see Jake, to see the panic in his blue eyes, to even leap into his arms, and hold on with everything inside her.
Except it wasn’t Jake.
Hagan had her by her upper arm, pulling her away from her attacker. He pushed her out into the open of the lobby, turned, and she could hear the smack as he delivered a punch to the young man’s face.
She winced as he howled.
“The pillowcase!” she shouted, seeing a flash of it floating in the water.
Hagan fished around in the water, grabbed it, and shoved it at her. Then Hagan shut the door and shoved the chair in front of it, trapping her attacker in the darkness.
In a room full of drugs that could possibly kill him.
She stared at the dark window into the room as Hagan waded past her.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said to her when she didn’t move.
Right.
But as she followed him upstairs, she couldn’t help but glance out into the horizon, toward the setting sun.
Please, Jake, come back.
Jake could not watch another kid die.
But this could really hurt.
He drew in a breath, calculating the distance between Bailey, the prisoners, and the entrance to the resort. Bailey hadn’t yet crossed the threshold—
Jake sprinted for the building. Ham was roaring in his head, telling him he was an idiot, but frankly that’s how he survived. By following his impulses.
Okay, often he had to circle back around and fix whatever his impulses wrought, but right now, he had nothing else.
He launched himself at Bailey, took the kid down around the waist, rolled with him behind the door, then bounced to his feet just as a shot pinged off the door frame.
Whoever he was, Jake hoped he couldn’t shoot.
He grabbed the kid up. “Run!” Pushing the kid toward the back of the building, he turned.
A man came through the door, gun first.
Jake grabbed the gun with his left hand, right by the trigger guard, and directed the gun away. With the other hand he stripped the thumb of his assailant away from the gunstock, yanking it back.
In a second he had the gun in his hand.
He turned his back to his attacker, threw out a stinging elbow, and connected with the man’s nose.
The man roared.
Jake ran.
“Go, go!” he shouted to Bailey as the kid reached the end of the building. Bailey dove through the broken back entrance, over the tree, and out onto the plaza. He took off toward Margaritaville.
Jake emerged behind him, catching up fast.
Shouts, behind him.
“Faster, kid!” He caught up to Bailey and grabbed him by his jacket, pulling him along. Glanced behind him.
Five pursuers with lethal expressions, and one of them bled from his face.
“This way!”
Jake pointed across the marina, toward his little skiff, then shot out ahead of the kid. “Hurry!”
He leaped down the ramp to the dock, over the back of the beached yacht, and onto his skiff.
Turned around.
Good boy—Bailey was scrambling after him.
A shot cracked the air.
“Move it, kid!” Jake grabbed the rope, untying it from the yacht, then scrambled back to the motor and gave it a rip.
Nothing.
Please!
Another shot, and this one pinged off the water beside him.
Bailey landed in the boat.
“Push us off!”
Bailey pushed so hard he nearly unseated Jake, and he gripped the side of the boat with his left hand, pain searing through him. He’d ripped off his bandage, leaving his hand raw and freshly wounded. But he ignored it and ripped the cord again.
The motor sputtered, then caught.
He turned, grabbed Bailey’s jacket by the neck, and yanked him down in a horse-collar tackle. “Stay down!”
The brute force had reached the docks, and one of them sent another shot toward the boat, this time hitting the metal skin.
Jake dropped down onto the boat’s bottom and opened the throttle, turning them in the murky shallow water, praying he didn’t dig the rotor into the sand.
The boat turned, nearly unseating them, and then they were shooting out over the waves, bumping hard into the surf.
More shots, and for the life of him, Jake couldn’t figure out why they’d be wasting bullets.
Oh, wait. He’d bloodied one of them.
And now they were trapped on the island together.
Bailey curled on the bottom of the boat, his hands over his head.
Jake glanced behind them, saw the lot standing on the shoreline, yelling.
He turned the boat south, away from the route home.
Just because.
“You okay, kid?”
Bailey looked up at him. Sat up. Stared back along the wreckage of the island.
The sea had trapped debris and flung it back along the shoreline, everything from boats to housing wreckage to palm trees. They skimmed along the shoreline, fighting the waves, the sun casting long, dark fingers into the waves.
“Why didn’t you shoot them back?”
Bailey’s gaze was on the gun from the Bahama Mama, now shoved into Jake’s belt.
“Why would I? I don’t want to kill anyone.”
Bailey looked at him. “You sound like my dad. He says he will never draw on anyone unless he intends to use his weapon. But he hopes he never has to.”
“You said your dad is a cop?”
“Yeah. He works for the Key West Police.”
Jake remembered the cop on the bridge, on his way into town. Hopefully Bailey’s dad hadn’t been caught on the bridge when the storm hit. Jake turned his face into the wind and said nothing.
“I saw you disarm him.”
“You were supposed to be running.”
“That was pretty cool.”
Jake’s mouth tightened.
“What, are you special forces or something?”
“Nope. Just a guy.”
Bailey sat in silence, shivering.
Okay, fine. “I was a SEAL.”
“I knew it. Have you ever shot someone?”
The kid had big, eager eyes. A sense of innocence about him that felt rare.
“Yep.”
Jake angled the skiff toward the east, the bridge he’d crossed on his way to the hospital. The sea had crested it, and now just the cement edges showed. He slowed, eased them over it.
“Who was it?” Bailey asked.
“I was a sniper, so . . . more than one.”
He didn’t know why admitting that seemed to sear him. Like Mimi said—it was war.
“Oh,” Bailey said. Then he swallowed and turned away from him.
Yeah, Jake might have had the same reaction.
He motored them past the prison, and Bailey’s attention dragged past it, his head turning.
“Those men were escaped prisoners, weren’t they?”
He nodded.
“Which means there are more of them. Probably roaming the whole island.”
Yes. But his words sank into Jake for the first time.
More of them.
Wearing black pants and a gray shirt.
“Hang on, kid,” he said and turned the throttle as high as it could go.
They practically bounced into the lot of the hospital, and he slowed just barely enough to motor into the lobby.
He leaped out of the boat and sloshed toward the stairs.
“Hey, wait for me!”
Jake hit the stairwell running. Banged out onto the second floor. “Aria!”
He stalked down the hallway, his heart in his throat. “Aria!”
The staff room was empty and the sight of that only notched up his pulse. What if Hagan had taken her captive or hurt her or—
He skidded into the patient room at the end of the hall and caught his breath. Aria stood beside Angel’s bedside, administering a shot. Next to her, in the other bed, Yola held a nebulizer over Mimi’s mouth and nose.
Hagan leaned against the counter, watching the proceedings like he might be supervising. Or protecting.
And Jake simply lost it. “You!” He advanced on Hagan and jerked him around, searching for the KWDC letters on the back of the shirt.
Nothing.
Because the shirt was on inside out. He yanked it up.
“Hey!” Hagan wrenched it out of his grip. “What are you doing?”
“I wanna see your shirt. Or maybe I don’t have to. You’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Hagan stared at him, frowning, jerking back. “Get away from me.”
“Show me your shirt, Hagan.”
“What’s with my shirt—”
“You’re an escapee from the detention center down the road—”
“What?” Aria said. “Jake!”
“Stay out of this, Aria.” He slid the Glock from his waist. Pressed it up into Hagan’s neck.
“Jake!”
“Show. Me. Your. Shirt.”
Silence, as even Mimi gasped.
“Don’t, Jake,” Yola said. “He saved Aria. He’s a good guy.”
Hagan was meeting his eyes, a darkness in them that told Jake otherwise, so he tightened his jaw, not moving.
“Fine,” Hagan snapped and reached up, pulling the shirt over his head. He whipped it off, letting it dangle over his splint. “Gary’s Plumbing.”
Jake stared at the lettering, simple and white, on the back of the shirt. “Who is Gary?”
“My brother.”
“Why is your shirt on inside out?”
“Because I was in a hurricane! And I had to get to cover, so I grabbed any shirt I had and put it on. Seriously?”
“Put the gun away, Jake.” Aria’s voice, soft beside him. She put her hand on his arm.
He stared at the weapon. Slipped it back into his belt, turned, and walked from the room, shaking.
Oh. What had he . . .
“Are you okay, mister?”
He looked over, and Bailey stood there in the middle of the hallway, soggy, wide-eyed, white-faced. Jake closed his eyes and looked away.
“Who are you?” Aria’s voice. She must have followed him into the hallway.
“I’m Bailey. He . . . he rescued me.”
“Are you okay, Bailey?”
He must have nodded. “But we were shot at.”
Oh, great. Thanks, kid.
Aria drew in a shaky breath. “By whom?”
“Convicts,” Jake snapped. “Escaped convicts from the Key West Detention Center who are armed and roaming the island.”
“Bailey, go inside the room,” Aria said, meeting Jake’s gaze. “I need to talk to Jake.”
“He’s a SEAL,” Bailey said. “It was really cool—he disarmed the guy with only one hand!”
“I definitely used two hands,” Jake said quietly.
“Yes, Jake is cool,” Aria said evenly, her gaze still not leaving Jake’s. “Bailey, can you go check on my patients for me?” She looked over at him. “And then, there’s some juice boxes and chips in the room. Help yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jake watched him go, then turned. “What did Yola mean—he saved you?”
She pursed her lips, shook her head.
“Tell me.”
“I went down to get medicine from the pharmacy, and there was a guy there, trying to score drugs, I think. He was high and he attacked me.”
Everything stripped out of Jake. “What?”
“He didn’t know what he was doing, Jake. He’s sick and right now he’s trapped in a room that could probably kill him if he finds the right opiates and takes them.”
“Get back to the attack part. What did he do?”
She ran her hands over her arms. Looked away. “He tried to drown me.”
The words punched him, landing in the center of his chest. “Are you . . . are you okay?”
“Mmmhmm.” She turned back to face him. “But I wouldn’t have been if Hagan hadn’t shown up. He hit the guy and pulled me out of the water, and then locked him in the room.”
“So the guy is there now?”
She nodded.
Jake ran his hand over his mouth. Turned away.
“Jake—”
“I’ll get him.” He turned back to her. “You. Stay here.”
She gave him a look, but he responded with a little shake of his head, turned, and took off down the hallway.
Shadows engulfed the lobby as he entered, nearly swimming through the water toward the pharmacy. He should have brought his flashlight but managed to find the door and the chair with which Hagan had barred it. He moved it to the side and wrenched open the door.
“Anyone in here?”
His eyes were adjusting to the dim light, but he saw no one.
A groan lifted from somewhere in the bowels of the room, behind the shelves. He worked his way toward it. “I’m here to help. Don’t freak out.”
Nothing.
He rounded the last shelf and found a long countertop under a couple inches of water. A huddled figure sat on top, his knees drawn up, his head on his knees. As Jake drew closer, he saw that the man trembled. He was too draped in shadow for Jake to place his age, but he seemed to be crying.
“Dude, are you okay?”
A whimper.
“C’mon. Let’s get you outta here.”
He reached out to help him, but the man jerked back, lifted his head. “Don’t touch me.”
Jake held up his hands. “Okay. Just . . . let’s go upstairs. We have a bed for you, some grub. Let us help you.”
Shadows covered his face, but Jake felt the man’s eyes on him, as if trying to get a fix on his words. Then, he eased out of his position and let himself slide to the floor.
Jake walked behind him as the man staggered out of the room into the dim light of the lobby.
He nearly went down, twice, and the second time, Jake grabbed his arm, pulled him back up.
The man didn’t recoil but let Jake help as they walked to the stairwell.
The light on his face as they climbed up to the second floor suggested he might be in his midtwenties. He wore a scraggly growth of beard, his dark hair wet and long, tucked behind his ears, and the bones in his body suggested he hadn’t eaten well for some time.
He crumpled at the top of the first landing, hanging on to the rail.
Jake reached down and scooped him up, fireman style, and carried him the rest of the way, emerging onto the second floor.
Aria was waiting by the door. Now, she leaned up off the wall. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get him into a room.”
Aria started down the hallway.
“A different room, Aria.”
She looked back, nodded, and went into the room next to the end. The windows were broken and the bed was wet but unoccupied. Jake set him on the mattress. The kid flopped back, his eyes rolling up.
“He might have overdosed,” she said, pressing her fingers to his carotid artery. “His heartbeat is steady, albeit fast.”
“Probably just needs to sleep it off.” Jake had picked up a sheet, stuck the edge into his mouth, and ripped off a long strip.
“What are you doing?”
He brought the strip to the bed, grabbed the man’s wrist, and tied it to the bed rail. “What do you think?”
“Do you think that’s necessary?”
He ripped another strip, then looked at her. “He attacked you.”
Her mouth tightened into a thin line, but she took the proffered strip from him and tied the man’s other hand. “I don’t like this.”
“I’m not taking any chances.” He blew out a shaky breath and stared at the man, his body still trembling. A blanket lay wadded at the end of the bed and he pulled it up over the man.
The young man started to cry.
Oh, fabulous.
“You’re okay,” Aria said quietly. “You’re safe now.”
Maybe. But he had a long way to go to okay.
Jake turned and stalked down the hall.
“Jake!”
He didn’t stop.
“Jake, stop. Where are you going?”
“Just leave me, Aria.”
But no. Of course she was following him. He didn’t slow, however, just went for the door at the end of the hallway, not sure why, but he needed air.
Fresh, free air.
He took the stairs to the third level, then climbed the ladder to the roof.
Aria said nothing, but her footsteps trailed him.
Perfect. Well, if she wanted to join him on the roof, he couldn’t stop her. He pushed open the door and climbed up, letting the warm breeze sift through him, ease the thundering of his heart.
To the west, the sun was dropping into the horizon, leaving a purple smudge on the clouds, a simmering fire of orange and red. If he ignored the destruction on the island, the beauty could steal his breath.
He could believe he was in paradise.
But that was his MO, really. Ignore the destruction, keep looking ahead.
Pretend everything was okay.
When, frankly, he was as stupidly broken as the kid in the bed.
Jake leaned over and caught his knees.
“Jake, what happened back there?” Aria had climbed out onto the roof, now stood beside him.
She touched his back and he just couldn’t . . . He stepped away from her.
“Okay. So—”
“You were right, Aria. I’m . . . I’m a mess.”
“What?”
“And probably you’re only going to end up hurt around me.”
“Jake—”
“No, you don’t get it. I . . . I’m that angry twentysomething guy in there. You just can’t see it.”
“What?”
He stood up and rounded on her. “I got in a tussle with a group of escapees, all armed, and now, they’re probably headed our direction.”
She frowned.
“I hurt one of them.”
“Oh.”
“But see, that’s what I do. I act first and pick up the pieces later.” He reached for the gun on his belt, drew it out, and set it on a nearby mechanical box. “Like in there. I was so sure Hagan was . . .”
He held up his hands, backed away. “See, yes, you should stay away from me. Because despite the hope that I’ve changed, I’m still the guy who shoots first and sorts it out later.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
He shook his head.
“Wait, Jake. Is this about the kid you shot in Afghanistan? The one you told me about in Alaska? He was a suicide bomber, right?”
“I thought he was wired up. And I had to choose. The kid or my team.”
“Didn’t I? Turns out it was a cell phone. He might have been trying to take a picture.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“Okay, maybe not at the moment, but afterward, I just keep moving it around in my head, looking at it from every angle, and . . . I can’t escape the fact that maybe I should have waited.”
She considered him.
“And it’s always with me. All of it. My sister, and every single life I took, including the one two weeks ago, in Alaska.”
“The terrorist at the hotel?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t have a choice. He was wearing a suicide vest.”
“So I shot him. And yeah, I probably didn’t have a choice, but it’s still . . . I killed someone. And I know it’s not supposed to bother me. I’m just doing my job, but . . .” He ran a hand behind his neck and turned away from her. “It sticks around, you know? When I’m sleeping, it finds me.” The wailing. In his bones.
In his soul.
Overhead the seagulls cried, the waves lashed the shoreline as the sun continued to fall.
“After I shot that kid in Afghanistan, I . . . I didn’t handle it well. I started drinking and fighting. I had anger with nowhere to put it. One night I got so drunk I ended up in a hospital. My team leader reported me. They shipped me home and put me in a psychiatric ward to detox. I went through treatment for six months. At the end, I was supposed to pass a psych evaluation to stay active, but I refused to take it, so they discharged me. Medical discharge. Unfit for duty.”
Unfit to be a sailor. A SEAL. A hero.
“See, I was that kid, Aria.” He found her eyes. “I’m still that kid, sometimes, just trying to keep it together.”
“Except you mask it with all these heroics. Saving people. Jokes. Charm.”
“Oh no, the charm is real.” He didn’t know why he said that, and winced. “See?”
“What I see is a man with a broken heart, trying to figure out how to live with it.”
“Or maybe I’m just really a bad person. Maybe I’m the villain of the story, pretending to be the hero.” And that felt way too real, too raw, so he turned away from her. “I shouldn’t have freaked out with Hagan. But that’s me . . . act first, fix later. And as much as I try and keep a lid on that, you’re probably right to stay away from me, Aria. Because in the end, you could get hurt around me, no matter how much I try and protect you.”
“Probably.”
He turned, frowned.
She just stood there, the sun behind her, turning her brown hair to layers of amber and gold, her brown eyes holding his with so much fierceness, he couldn’t look away.
“Because you’re right. You do go looking for trouble. But not because you’re a mess, like that kid down there. It’s because it’s in your DNA to find trouble and fix it. That makes you the good guy, not the villain. The difference between you and the kid downstairs is that you might know your weaknesses but you don’t let them take over. You are dealing with them.”
He stared at her, the words embedding, finding his bones. The wind teased her hair, her gaze unmoving. She had the most incredible eyes, layers of brown embedded with gold.
His voice dropped. “What I don’t know how to deal with is the fact that I . . . I care about you, Aria. I came down here thinking I could convince you to give us a chance, and now I’m just freaking out that something is going to happen to you, or I’m going to do something stupid and I won’t be able to fix it. And then you’ll get hurt and—”
“Sheesh, Jake. Have you met me? I’m a tough girl, with a tough heart.”
He drew in a breath. “Or trying to be.”
Her mouth tweaked up on one side. “Yeah, that.”
“I really want to kiss you right now,” he said, his voice a near growl. “But I don’t want to do something we’re not going to continue when we get home.”
“Who says we’re not going to continue when we get home?” She stepped up to him, put her hand on his chest. “Wasn’t that your fabulous idea—to start having conversations that don’t include trauma?”
Her touch bled heat through his chest. He put his hand over hers, needing it there.
“Kiss me, Jake Silver.”
Oh, Aria. He put his arm around her and pulled her to himself, searching her eyes.
Then his closed and he kissed her.
She tasted like home, sweet and familiar, a place to land, to stay.
She wrapped her hand around his neck, drawing him close, deepening her kiss, keeping it slow, sinking into him.
As if they belonged together.
Jake and Aria, kissing under the sunset, just like he’d planned.
No, hoped.
Maybe he didn’t make a mess of everything. Or maybe Aria just knew how to fix it.
He just knew, as the sun set behind her, that he’d stopped trembling.
She finally moved away, her hands on his chest, smiling up at him. He drew her to himself, wrapping his arms around her, soaking in the warmth of her.
Over her shoulder, winking in the last glint of the sun, he spotted the seaplane from before, still riding the waves.
He put her away from him. “I think I know how to get us off this island.”
She touched his face. “Not before I rebandage your hand, tough guy.”
“Aye, aye, Doc.”
He followed her back down the ladder, down the stairs, and back to the second floor.
The puppy came scrambling down the hallway, barking, high yips of excitement, clearly fully recovered. Jake caught it up and it wriggled in his arms, licking his face.
“Okay, okay, I’m glad to see you too!”
“You found him, Jake! You found him!” Bailey ran down the hall, all smiles.
“Found who?” Jake put the puppy down.
Bailey knelt on the floor, clapping his hands. “C’mere, Ringo. Here, buddy.”
Aria touched his arm. “What did you say about not being a hero?” She winked at him.
Okay, maybe.