Ellie wasn’t high maintenance, but she wasn’t used to being told no.
“You still pissed about Ellie?” I asked.
Tyler swung his Pulaski, the sharp end landing just a few inches my from my boot. I jumped, glad to still have ten toes when I hit the ground.
“I was just asking, Maddox, damn!”
“I wasn’t even close, stop crying.”
I shifted. “It’s not right what they did. We all think so. She earned her red card. If she was a dude she’d be up here.”
“She blames me,” he said, his eyes falling to the ground. “I don’t even know what to say to her when we get back. I don’t know how to apologize for something I had no control over.”
“You don’t have to apologize. Just empathize,” I said.
“Ellie on the mountain with her camera … there’s light in her eyes. She’s different.” He swung the Pulaski at the ground, this time far away from my feet. “Talk about something else, Zeke. What about what’s-her-name?”
I frowned. “It’s Naomi.”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“She’s…” I swung, hitting the ground harder than I needed. “She’s way outta my league, Tyler. She’s a bad ass. Like, a total bad ass. She doesn’t need anyone. But she’s a widow, and she still loves him and—”
“Oh, man. That’s a rocky road, Zeke. You sure?” he asked.
“You didn’t exactly pick a smooth path yourself.”
He smirked. “Accurate. But what fun is that?”
“I guess.”
“Does she know you’re interested? Or is this one of those times you’re hoping your half-ass flirting will send the message?”
“She knows.”
“She doesn’t know,” Watts said, walking up behind me.
“Man, shut up,” I complained.
Watts and Maddox smiled, and Watts planned to shoot off at the mouth again, but Jubal cut him off.
“Is it break time and no one told me?”
“What the hell is so important?” Chief called from down the line. His radio must’ve gone off at the same time because he scrambled to answer it. After just a few seconds, he jogged to meet Jubal.
“A woman was spotted in the fire zone. We’ve been taken off task and ordered northeast in the direction she was seen.”
Runt wrinkled his nose. “A woman’s just walking around out here?”
“She,” Chief began, glancing for the briefest moment at Tyler. “She might be a reporter. They’ve said she had a pack and a camera. Bobby’s spotted her once. Dark-haired adult female is all he reported.”
Tyler closed his eyes. “Tell me it’s not her.”
“I don’t know,” Chief said. “Either way, we’ve gotta get to her before the fire does.”
“Let’s move!” Tyler yelled, setting a quick pace for the rest of the crew.
Our typical single-file line turned into a wide search net. Bobby had seen her from the air hours before but not since, and we had no way of knowing if she’d changed directions.
We cut through brush, sawed through downed trees, Chief’s anger pushing us forward, knowing he was rightly furious about wasted time.
“Tyler,” I began.
“I know…”
“If it’s Ellie…”
“I know, Zeke, shut the fuck up.”
Someone down the line yelled, and we paused. After a confirmation, Tyler sprinted toward the center of our net. Scraped, scratched, dirty, and wide-eyed, Ellie was standing in the brush, her shirt torn, her arms bleeding, but her camera firmly in her hands.
“Goddammit!” Tyler screamed, his headlamp shining right into her face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Ellie winced. Her eyes were bloodshot. She smelled like liquor, something strong. She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the bright beam.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he yelled again.
Ellie bent over and vomited on his boots.
“Alpines to Base, we’ve found the journalist. She’s pretty banged up and dehydrated. Send a transport, over.”
“Base to Alpines, hold for instructions.” After several agonizing seconds, the man at the other end of the transmission began to speak again. “Alpines, transport is inbound. Meeting point is the country road over the ridge to your immediate north by northeast. Is she able to travel? Over.”
Ellie nodded.
Chief gripped his radio, holding it closer to his mouth. “She is, over.”
“Understood, Alpines. Be advised an officer will be accompanying that transport, over.”
Chief looked at Tyler. His hands were tied. He sighed. “Copy that, Camp. We’ll hike to the rendezvous point and wait for medevac and badges.”
The crew was deflated. Ellie had been traveling with us for several fires, and Tyler was in love with her. When one of us hurt, we all hurt, and Tyler looked like he was about to lose it.
Tyler shook his head. Ellie was oblivious to the shitload of trouble she was about to be in. She could have a dozen charges against her by sunrise. He unscrewed his canteen and held her chin, water dripping from her mouth down his fingers as she drank.
She stood and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looking sheepish. “Sorry,” she said.
Tyler hugged her, mumbling something into her ear.
I glanced behind us, seeing the fire glow in the distance. “We should get going.”
Tyler lifted Ellie into his arms and carried her up the steep incline of the ridge, reassuring her every fifty yards or so until we reached the road.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said again.
I put my hand on his shoulder, watching Chief speak to the officers in the transport before they headed over to apprehend Ellie. We all moved closer to Tyler—whether it was a conscious decision or not—preparing to stop him if he fought the officers when they cuffed her. Thankfully, they made it easier on everyone, no doubt because of Chief’s meeting with them beforehand.
“Ma’am, I’m Deputy Jansen. I’ll be escorting you out.”
Ellie nodded.
“Turn around for me, please,” the officer said. “Just going to slip these on nice and easy to keep everyone safe on the ride back.”
One of the medics turned to me, shining a small flashlight in my face. “You look a little pale, sir. You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, waving the light away. “I’m good.”
Ellie looked at Tyler, and he forced himself to say the words. “Just do what they say, babe.”
“Tyler?” she said.
He leaned forward, and I put my hand on his chest. “She needs you to stay calm, brother.”
The officers took her away, reading her rights as they walked. They took care to not let her hit her head on the way into the back seat then closed the door behind her. After a short conversation, they waved to us and drove away.
Watts folded his fingers on top of his head. “Holy shit.”
“Naomi is good friends with Trex. He was FBI at one point, right? Maybe he can help?” I asked.
Tyler turned to me and nodded, bewildered. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“Follow the road out to camp,” Chief ordered. “We’re done for the night.”
“Hey, Zeke?” Tyler said.
“Yeah?”
“If you want Naomi, you should tell her. I know she’s in love with her dead husband, and she’s a hard ass and all that, but damn … everyone needs to be told once in a while, you know? Sometimes you think they know you care about them, and then you find out too late they don’t.”
My heart bled a little for the shame on his face. “I’ll tell her.”
He nodded. “Good.”
chapter fourteen
cruel and unusual
Naomi
“W
hat are we doing here again?” Trex asked, peering over my shoulder.
I shrugged him off, looking closer at the monitors. In a
ddition to the cameras all over the Complex, Peter secured funding for drone deployment twenty-four hours a day. They were equipped with night vision, thermal imaging, zoom, and GPS beacons. Even with all that tech, they can’t to locate the mother effing Alpines? I knew Zeke had been on the mountain since around four thirty a.m. because I heard the helo going up just after sunrise.
“We’re looking,” I said.
“For what?”
“Just looking.”
Trex shot me an impatient glare, and I shrugged, walking out. I readjusted my rifle and waited for my partner. Trex didn’t mention it again as we did our rounds, pissed off the Deep Echo boys, then met the team for lunch. I worked out, ignored Peter, then sweat my ass off while I walked the perimeter in the heat of the afternoon. The next day, I did the same, and the next day. I listened to Trex talk about Darby, the tedious details of her pregnancy, and I listened to my boots echo against the metal grid, the water dripping from the pipes… Day in and day out, it was becoming clearer to us all that the execution of a normal life while still holding a gun wasn’t the utopia we’d imagined. My gun was going to rot if I didn’t use it.
“Plans tonight, Nomes?” Trex asked.
“Going to the range,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.
“The range?” Harbinger asked, interested. “The one down the road?”
I nodded.
“Spenser’s coming tonight, isn’t she?” Trex asked.
I smiled, excited. “She texted before we clocked out to say she was two hours out. I figured I’d squeeze the trigger a few times to kill time.”
Trex held up his hand, and I slapped it. “Glad she’s coming.”
Kitsch hummed. “If Karen wouldn’t shit a wildcat, I’d tag along to the range.”
“You should come,” Sloan said. “She wouldn’t mind.”
“Won’t mind,” he corrected.
I paused while my mind scrambled for a satisfactory response. “That’s what he meant.”
Martinez opened his mouth, but Harbinger slapped his chest—hard—and stepped forward. “I’ll go too. Call Karen. Maybe she and Caroline can get the kids together.”
Kitsch thought about it then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, all right, I’ll ask her.”
“Great. It’s settled then. Martinez?” I asked.
“Hells yeah, I’ll come. I thought it was just me. Patrolling a controlled environment sounded good at first, but I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin here.”
“No,” Harbinger said. “Not just you. When you’re used to chasing, hiding, or running for your life, a day job is a tough transition, even if you’re still holding a gun for a living.” When he realized we were all staring, he shrugged. “I’ve been … you know… Caroline talked me into seeing a therapist. She’s helping.”
“Good,” Trex said. “That’s awesome, John.”
“Same,” Sloan said, scratching his temple with the barrel of his rifle. “I’m itchy too. I need to blow off some steam and shoot things.”
“Meet you all there?” Kitsch opened his driver’s side door, waiting for an answer.
“Not me,” Trex said.
I rolled my eyes. “She’ll live without you for a few hours.”
“I’m already going to workout. I want to take her to dinner,” he said. “She’s been worried about her guys.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Alpines—the guys out of Estes Park—are all her friends. They hang out in the lobby all day, and she gets to know them. They’ve been up on the mountain for a few days. She’s just ready for them to get back.”
“Gun range,” I said, even more anxious than I was before.
***
Martinez, Kitsch, Harbinger, and Sloan were all to my left. We stood in a line, goggles on, in our own stalls, killing our targets so hard we were creating unwanted attention.
“Are you a team or something?” a man asked the second I removed my ear muffs.
“Yep,” I said, setting down my firearm.
“Are those Howard Leight’s?” he asked.
I looked down at my earmuffs. “Yeah?”
“Best of the best. They’re on my list.”
“Oh? Tell me more.” I put on the earmuffs and popped in another clip before turning around to obliterate my target.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Martinez laughing, his cheek still pressed against his rifle.
The sun was touching the summit of the mountain range, so I checked my watch and packed up, whirling my finger around to signal to my guys that I was leaving. They all waved, still focused on their targets.
I carried my shit to the FJ, hearing the chatty dude from the range stomping on the gravel as he followed me out.
I unlocked the door and opened it, but not before he could call to me. “Hey. I’m sorry. Did I say something to offend you?”
“No, why?”
“You were just so … abrupt earlier. I thought maybe I’d pissed you off.”
“No.”
He shifted, uncomfortably waiting for me to apologize, or twirl my hair, or maybe giggle. He clearly had no idea how to react to me.
“So.” He breathed out a laugh then shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“Good talk,” I said, getting inside my vehicle.
I rushed home, unable to sit still knowing Spenser would be there any minute. I’d made up the guest room, although I didn’t have to do much. There was already a bed, new bedding, and a dresser.
I pulled into the drive and groaned. Peter was sitting on my porch. I was so preoccupied with Spenser’s arrival, I hadn’t noticed his Maybach parked across the street.
I stepped out, carrying my duffle bag.
“If you wanted to go to the range…” he began.
“I’m good,” I said, passing him to unlock the door.
“Why didn’t you tell me Spenser was coming?”
I turned around. Peter had to step back to avoid getting smacked with my duffle.
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“She’s my friend too.”
“Did she call you? Did she say she was coming?”
He frowned. “You know she wouldn’t. She’s barely spoken to me since—”
“You broke my heart? Because she’s my cousin, Peter. My friend. Not yours. Get outta here before she gets here. I mean it.” I went inside, putting away my guns and returning to the kitchen to unload the dishwasher. Peter stood in the middle of my living room.
“Hurting you is the last thing I’d ever want to do, Naomi. You know I was in a terrible situation.”
“We’ve been over this, Peter.”
“We clearly need to revisit it,” he said, loosening his tie.
I made a show of thinking about it, looking up at the ceiling, then returned to the dishes. “Nah.”
“What was I supposed to do?” he begged. “There was nothing I could do. Could you have told your father no back then?”
“You lied,” I said, slamming a glass down on the counter. “You lied back then just like you’re lying to me now.”
“What are you talking about?” he said, exasperated.
“You brought me here! Not a committee—you! Do you have any idea how humiliating it is for me to try to face my colleagues? As if I don’t have to fight the stigma of sleeping my way to my rank or proving my aim is nicer than my rack every fucking day, Peter! Then you pull this?”
“You deserve to be here! Just like anyone else! Not out there, getting shot at, rolling around in the sand dodging explosives! What difference does it make if I made some calls?”
“The fact that you don’t see it…”
“Your guys needed this. Don’t think I didn’t take shit bringing in a guy who still talks to his dead wife and kids, a man who barely smiles, a field doc who takes nothing seriously. And don’t even get me started on Trex…”
“But I’m the one on probation.”<
br />
“You’re not just sad or broken. You’re dangerous, Naomi. Because for you … dying means seeing your husband again.”
I pointed to the wall. “You don’t think it means the same for any one of my team?”
“No! It’s not the same!”
“Dying means leaving behind friends. His friends, Peter. Men I’ve sworn to Matt I would protect! And fuck you for saying otherwise!”
“Knock, knock,” Spenser said from the doorway.
My cheeks flushed. “Spence.” After a few seconds of shock, I walked across the living room to hug her. Her long, blonde hair was caught under my grip, but she didn’t seem to mind. I released her, drowning in embarrassment. I gestured behind me. “You remember Peter.”
Peter took a step, but Spenser used her thumb to point behind her. “You’re still a selfish asshole. Get outta here.”
Peter wasn’t offended but annoyed. He knew Spenser didn’t really hate him, but for the moment, she was taking my side … again.
Peter had once had a crush on Spenser too, before he met me. She was the tall, flaxen-haired beauty of the family. She looked like a ballerina, but was downright frightening in training. She wasn’t just good at hand-to-hand, she was a dangerous sniper. But what made her scary was how cunning she was. She could outsmart any adversary, always one step ahead.
Kansas was the opposite of her older sister. Strawberry blonde and five-feet-one (and a half), she was the loudest of the Marcel granddaughters. We both led units in my father’s militia, and as much as they respected me, they feared Kansas. Our fathers, Spenser, and I were the only ones who dared cross her. She wasn’t only intimidating, she was ruthless.
Peter nodded then slid past Spenser, stopping to greet someone else. I peeked behind her. “Kansas?” My voice went up an octave. I wasn’t expecting Spenser to bring her. We were like a small group of unbeatable Amazons when we were together. Not in height, but absolutely in bad assery. “Oh my hell!” I said, hugging them both. Now it was Kansas’s strawberry-blonde hair mashed under my arms.
The Edge of Us (Crash and Burn Book 2) Page 11