“I convinced a few of my former teammates to join me—I started a small private security and SAR outfit. That’s what Orion and Jenny do—they are part of Jones, Inc.”
“You don’t miss being an operator?”
“We can’t live in the what-ifs, Sig. We have to live in the now. The fact that we have a second chance.” He met her eyes, held them. “Right?”
And again, she found herself nodding.
He had the skills of an interrogator to make her say what he wanted to hear.
What she wanted to say.
“Your turn. What has you so rattled that you can’t tell me who you saw, Sig?”
Oh. And this was where she listened to her brains, and not her heart. Where her training kicked in.
Because Ham was a patriot, right down to every cell in his body, and if he knew what she knew, he’d have to risk being a traitor to the country he loved.
The country he swore to protect.
No. She was about to shake her head, when—
“Do you smell that?” Ham took his hand away, started to get to his feet. “Smoke—”
Boom! The explosion rocked the air, shook the building.
Ham tackled her, pushing her to the ground, covering her body with his.
She didn’t scream but grabbed his shirt and hid her face in his shoulder.
Like a long-buried reflex.
He smelled of dust and old water and sweat, and she just wanted to curl into his strength and never leave.
The building shook, but no fireball rolled over them. He jumped up. “We gotta get out of here!” He reached for her and pulled her up. But when he took a step, he nearly collapsed.
“Ham!”
“I’m okay.” But he’d grimaced, holding his leg. “Just a little rush of blood flow. C’mon.”
Tough guy that he was, he practically ran from the building, hardly a limp.
The sky had turned eerily orange, and not from the distant volcano—impossible to see from the smoke clouding the sky—but from the inferno of a nearby restaurant.
Flames shot from the windows of the building next to it.
“The gas line has been damaged. It’s only a matter of time before this entire block explodes.” Fire reflected in his face, his eyes. Already the street burned with smoke. She coughed.
“The pipes run under the road,” Ham said. “We need to get back to the water.”
“What—but—”
“C’mon!” He tugged her down the street, back toward their kayak beached at the end of the street.
He found it in the night despite the dark sky and lack of stars, and she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. “Get in!”
She sat down in front of him, like before, and he climbed in the back, pushing them off.
They had just cleared the pavement, floating free, when the voice lifted in the distance.
“Aiuto!” Help. Again. “Aiuto!”
“Where are you?” Ham shouted back.
He didn’t say it in Italian, so she translated. “Dove sei?”
Screams, then, “Qui! Qui!”
“There, Ham.” Signe pointed to a building, half submerged in the water, and the dark outline of someone waving their hands.
She turned on her phone’s flashlight as Ham paddled them toward the woman.
The woman wore a grimy leopard-print shirt, a dirty rag wrapped around her arm, her hair gray with soot. She knelt on the first-floor landing of an apartment complex, nearly hysterical as she reached out and took the hand of someone below.
“Oh no,” Signe said quietly.
“I see it,” Ham said. She recognized his SEAL voice—cool, detached, the one that got business done. He used the same one in Ukraine, when she told him she would be returning to Chechnya.
“Is that a kid?” Her heart froze at the face pressed to the open window. Only a kid’s arm could weave through the metal security bars. They were old, decorative, and lethal for trapping someone inside the building.
The woman ran to them. “Grazie—grazie—” She erupted into Italian, but Signe got the gist.
“Her daughter is caught in the house, and the water level is rising,” Signe said. She shined her flashlight onto the window.
The bars protruded at the bottom of the window maybe a foot, mostly to allow the window to open. It was hinged at the top.
“That’s not the only problem,” Ham said. “Look.” He pointed to flames burning against the first-story windows.
Burn or drown. No wonder the mother was screaming. Ham pulled up to the landing, but Signe was already out of the kayak and over to the window. She landed in the well in front of the window, the water chest deep, grabbed the bars, and put her foot against the wall.
They didn’t budge.
Ham joined her. “Again!”
They strained together, but nothing budged.
Inside, the little girl, maybe twelve years old, was banging on the half-opened window.
“Hang on,” Ham said to her. “We’re going to get you out!”
Signe wanted to believe him. But the fire had broken an upper window and the water seemed to be rising.
Ham ran up the steps. Put his hand to the door. Yanked it away. “We can’t go in that way.”
“This stone is old. Maybe we can break it free,” Signe said.
He sat down on the landing. “Stand back.” The bars shuddered with his kick. He gave another devastating kick, and the bars shook. But they moved.
“Again, Ham!”
He kicked again, and the bar began to wiggle, slightly.
“If I had a grinder—” he said. The heat of the home began to radiate out into the street. The girl began to cough.
“How about a lever?” Signe said and pointed to a street sign up the road, still out of the water.
A car had plowed into it—maybe a casualty of the earthquake—and bent the pole over the end, severing it.
He ran, no hint of injury, toward the sign. Picked up the pole and carried it back. It looked heavy, especially as he moved it into the space at the bottom of the window between the grate and the stone wall of the house.
He leveraged his leg against the house and began to pull on the bars with his good arm, working them free.
The stonework crumbled around the edges where the bolts fixed to the stone.
“You need help.” Signe pushed next to him. “On two.”
They heaved together, and probably she didn’t add much to his strength, but the bars began to shift.
“Kick it at the base as I pull,” Ham said, even as the girl disappeared from the window.
Ham heaved. “God—please!”
Signe braced her back on the edge of the landing, took a breath, submerged herself, and put her feet against the base of the bars.
Then, she kicked. And kicked. Surfaced to the mother screaming, grabbed a breath, went back down.
Kicked. The bars shuddered. She surfaced, gasping.
“Almost,” Ham said, his eyes wide. “You okay?”
She ignored him and went under again, heard Ham’s voice in her head. “God—please!”
Kicked again, and again, and again.
Her breath slipped to a tiny wisp.
Kicked again.
And just like that, the grate broke free at the bottom.
She surfaced, gulping air.
Ham broke the metal free from the bottom of the window like he might be Hercules, raising the bars as far as he could. It was enough for her to squeeze in. Then, he put the metal bar through the glass, swept it around the frame.
Signe took a breath and dove up through the opening.
No way Ham could have fit. As it were, the metal tugged at her as she pulled herself through.
The little girl had crawled onto a table, curled into a ball, her hands over her mouth. But her eyes were open as Signe surfaced. Signe coughed, the air smoky.
“Take a breath,” she said.
The girl nodded, and Signe grabbed a gulp of bitter
air and pulled the girl under.
She pushed her out of the window, and into Ham’s waiting hands.
Pushed herself out the window.
The metal bars grabbed her.
Ham surfaced, climbing out of the water.
Signe tugged on the bars, wrestling to work herself free. The metal locked onto the hem of her pants, trapping her.
She was running out of air. And Ham had left the water.
Ham!
She thrashed, fighting, then reached for her waistband to wiggle free.
Her brain had turned foggy, to dots and blotches, and even as she unzipped her pants, began to dim.
Hurry!
Don’t breathe. Don’t—but her body wanted it.
Oh, she was going to die right here, in a dirty basement apartment—
Hands closed around her arms, reached down her leg, and suddenly, she was free.
Her head broke the surface and the air turned to fire as she gulped it into her lungs, coughing.
Ham held her above the water, his hands gripping her arms as she writhed out the smoke from her lungs, tried to come back to herself.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded, still coughing. Spittle had formed at the edges of her mouth. Oh, that was pretty.
No, what was pretty was the mother holding her daughter, shaking with her weeping.
Signe wanted to weep, to shake.
To hold her daughter and never let her go.
She looked at Ham, who was searching her face, and saw the same sentiment in his eyes. She swallowed, her throat burning.
Ham helped her out of the courtyard and onto the steps. He ran his hands over her arms, then turned to the woman. “Are you okay?”
Maybe she knew some English because she nodded, still holding her daughter.
“What’s your name?” Signe said to the woman.
“Federica, and this is Rosa.” She looked at Ham, then back to Signe. “Are you Americans?”
Oh. Um . . .
“Yes,” Ham said.
“I met one today. In the coffee shop,” she said.
“Where?”
Federica shook her head to Signe’s question, but added, “He might have gone to the school.”
“Where is it?” Ham asked.
Federica got up. Took Rosa’s hand. “I will show you.”
Signe’s stupid legs almost refused to move, but she pushed to her feet.
“Babe. You’re a little . . . undone, there.”
She looked at her pants.
Ham raised an eyebrow.
“I was trying to free myself.”
“Good idea. Glad we didn’t have to go that route.”
Her pants were ripped at the bottom, but she refixed her zipper and buttoned them.
Then Ham took her hand, his firm and solid in hers.
Hamburglar and Shorty.
The murky smell of old water, sewer, smoke, gas, and even the rancid odor of fish followed them through the cobblestone streets.
“Now that I found you, I am bringing you home.”
Her eyes burned, and for the first time in hours, she thought of the jump drive, still secured in the zippered pocket of her cargo pants, along with her various passports, thankfully, all in plastic, waterproof cases.
“Help me trust you. Tell me who you saw.”
They came to a courtyard that edged what looked like a church, the roof imploded. Federica opened a gate and let them into the yard.
Soggy, sooty, and ash-gray survivors sat in groups in the yard, some of them under blankets, a number of them holding sleeping children. A giant bell sat in the middle of the yard.
A church, attached to a school. People slept in the hallways, but the smell of coffee lured Signe down the hallway.
They came into a lunchroom, with tables and chairs and people eating. Bread, bowls of noodles and sauce, and every person looking as if they’d been through war.
Maybe they had.
And survived.
And come together to find each other. To regroup.
To eat with families.
“Ham!”
The voice turned her, even as Ham jerked.
“Orion!”
The man had brown hair and with him was a blonde woman who broke into a run as she dodged tables. Ham caught her up. “Jenny!”
Huh. Signe refused the spurt of jealousy. Because he wasn’t hers anymore.
Or maybe he was. Because he hadn’t annulled their marriage.
Except, she’d married someone else, so there was that.
Ham set her down. He met Orion’s hand, then pulled him in for a quick slap.
Orion scrubbed a hand down his face.
Ham swallowed, looked away.
Men, for Pete’s sake. But she got it.
Spies didn’t cry either.
“You okay?” Ham said then.
“Yeah,” Orion said. “I found Jenny on a roof. Where were you?”
Ham looked at Signe and smiled. “We went out for pizza.”
“We can’t live in the what-ifs, Sig. We have to live in the now. The fact that we have a second chance.”
She smiled back. “And a little late-night swim.”
He put his arm around her, pulled her against him. “Ry, Jenny. This is Signe. My wife.”
Yes, yes she was. Right now, she was his wife. So she held out her hand to his team. “Nice to meet you.”
Orion just had to stay focused on the current problem. On examining Ham’s wrist, on splinting it so that whatever damage he’d done to it didn’t become worse.
Then, on checking on the patients lined up in the hallway, most of them already attended to over the past four hours. Lacerations, butterflied with the meager supplies in the health center of the school, hematomas, and a few broken bones that he’d splinted to the best of his ability.
Jenny was helping too, as were a few local doctors and nurses, but one look at the survivors told him that they needed help.
Yet all he could think about were Jenny’s words. “Yes, I will marry you—we just have to talk.”
“Go easy there, bro,” Ham said, his voice thin as Orion turned his wrist to gauge movement. Ham sat on the grimy floor and looked fresh off a mission. Scrapes marred his face and chin, filth embedded his hair, and he smelled of smoke and body odor.
Maybe Orion looked the same.
Darkness enfolded the corridor, and the rank smell of old water, stone, dust, and the hint of gas still layered the air. The electricity and phone lines had died with the earthquake, and the occasional crying or moaning filtered down the hallways, bouncing against the hard surfaces.
Daylight couldn’t come soon enough.
Daylight, and The Talk.
“Sorry,” Orion said. He held his cell phone light over the wound. “Without an X-ray I can’t be sure, but it definitely seems broken.” He reached for a piece of cardboard he’d found in one of the classrooms. Folded over, it would keep Ham’s wrist protected until he got to help. He bent it into a U-shape and tucked it against Ham’s arm.
“How’d this happen?”
“I was jumping between buildings,” Ham said without a hitch. “Missed the edge, fell, caught a balcony.”
“Of course you did.” Orion shook his head. “Were you still on that roof when the volcano blew?”
“Yep. Took cover in an elevator—”
Orion lifted his gaze, raised an eyebrow.
Ham held up his hand. “I know. But I kept thinking about all those toxic fumes and that outweighed the fear of getting crushed. Besides, it was an old elevator, the sturdy kind.”
“So you hid out in an elevator.”
“Until the tsunami hit. Then we climbed out—”
“And you pulled a Superman.”
“Hardly. Broken wrist, remember?”
Orion had cushioned Ham’s arm with a piece of cloth. Now he wrapped it with packing tape, pulling it snug against his arm. “Did you get the information from Signe?”
&nb
sp; Ham was watching his ministrations. “Not yet. But I will.”
Orion broke the tape off. “I have to admit, I was worried we’d lost you.”
Ham was nodding as if he got it. “How’d you find Jenny?”
“A miracle. I went back to the hotel—which isn’t there anymore—”
“I know. We watched it go down. I was praying you and Jenny weren’t inside. Or anyone else.”
“Yeah,” Orion said. “I found our waitress, Nori, and the concierge on a nearby roof, and they’d seen Jenny. Like I said, miracle.”
“And?” Ham said.
Orion frowned.
“Did you two talk? Are you okay?”
Orion was looking at the laceration on Ham’s leg.
“Ry?”
“We’re . . . I don’t know.” Orion ripped open Ham’s pants leg. “You need stitches.”
“You don’t know if you two are okay?”
The wound ran down Ham’s calf, maybe six inches, and knuckle deep. Orion recognized the subcutaneous layer. “I need to close this up, at least temporarily.”
“Dude.”
He leaned back. “Okay, yes, we . . . I think we’re okay. She said she’d marry me—”
Ham raised an eyebrow.
“But that we needed to talk first.”
“So, you talk.”
“We will. As soon as things calm down, but . . .”
Ham frowned.
“I can’t get it out of my head that it’s something bad. Something I can’t fix.”
Ham fell silent across from him.
Orion reached for the first aid kit. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just wondering what it was that made her so scared to talk to you.”
Orion considered him, and the way that Ham glanced down the hall toward Signe, who was also helping people. Orion could barely make her out in the glow of a cell phone light beam as she examined a wound on a little girl.
Clearly her years surviving in a terrorist camp had taught her survival skills, as well as first aid.
“Do you think I somehow frightened her?” Orion found the first aid kit and pulled out some white medical tape and iodine. The thought ran a fist into his chest.
“I don’t know. But she had a pretty visceral reaction to your proposal.”
“I gotta clean the wound,” Orion said. “This is going to hurt.”
“Right,” Ham said. “Sorry I said anything.”
The Price of Valor Page 16