Fighting For Valor

by Patricia D. Eddy

  “No.” A sigh carries over the connection. “I don’t know what happened, Rip. She said, ‘help me,’ rattled off an email address and password—which, by the way, contained screenshots of a whole lot of Parr’s incriminating text messages—and then I think she dropped the phone. They didn’t take it from her. That’s all I can tell you. The connection stayed open long enough for Wren to trace it. Hell, it’s still open now. But all Wren can hear is the wind.”

  Help me.

  Glancing at my phone, I blow out a breath when there aren’t any new messages. I didn’t tell Ry about the last video. The one where Jessup cut up her arm and slammed her head into a pipe. I transferred another ten million within seconds of seeing that and didn’t bother with a tracer code.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  “Ask the guy driving,” Ryker replies. “In the field, I don’t do shit until he tells me. Pulling up to Terminal 18 now and going dark.”

  “So?”

  West shoots me a look. “I found out where we were going exactly two minutes before you did. I’ve never been here before, and I don’t know what the fuck we’re dealing with. At this point, the plan is to take down Jessup and Parr without getting ourselves killed, find Cara, and get the hell out.”

  As soon as West stops the van next to Ry’s truck, I’m out the door. “Charlie, stay here.” He whines once, and I wrap my arms around him. “You can’t come, buddy. It’s too dangerous. But I’ll be back with Cara. Soon.”

  Charlie sits, and I grab the go bag, close the door, and join West and Ry as they gather around a map spread out on the truck hood. “Wren pulled up photos of the inside of this place,” Ry says. “The room they had Cara in is here, and the phone is here.”

  West narrows his eyes at the poorly lit map. “There’s only one door out of that room. Unless she managed to subdue Jessup and Parr, she didn’t use it. But see this?” He points to a line that starts in the third floor processing room and bends at a ninety-degree angle after twenty feet. “I think it’s a ventilation shaft. If it was big enough for her to squeeze through, she’d come out in this smaller room here and could get onto the roof.”

  The NVGs West hands me are so much lighter than any night vision we had the last time I geared up, and I slide them on, adjust the magnification, and examine the corrugated metal roof on the side of the facility. “She’s not there now.”

  Ry kneels, opens a black case resting on the ground, flips a couple of switches, and taps his ear. “Wren? Take her up.”

  “What the…?”

  A drone rises from the case, wobbles slightly in front of our eyes, and then speeds off towards the facility. “New toy,” West says. “Courtesy of Cam and Royce. Thermal imaging drone. Get out your laptop, Rip. Wren’ll send the images directly to your screen.”

  It’s an agonizing five minutes before the screen flashes with an incoming transmission. “Two heat signatures in the northwest corner,” Wren says. “That’s it. I took the drone around the whole building. Up and down all three floors. Cara’s…not there.”

  No. She has to be. Or…she is and her body’s no longer warm. I stumble back, my heart pounding. They killed her. I think…I think I might have loved her. Or at least, I was close to loving her.

  “Ripper. Focus,” Ry snaps. “Jessup and Parr are going to pay for this. All of it. What happened to you, what may or may not have happened to Cara. If she’s dead, so are they.”

  I meet his gaze, then look to West. The SEAL pulls a knife from a sheath at his hip, turns it over in his gloved hand, and then slams it back into place. “They hurt one of us, they hurt all of us. My conscience is clear.”

  My phone vibrates with an incoming photo, and I tap the screen. Cara’s tear-stained face comes into focus. Jessup holds the blade to her neck.

  Another message follows almost immediately. Only two words.

  Time’s up.

  West snorts. “They don’t have her.”

  “What?” I whirl around to face him, not quite sure how he ended up behind me.

  “Open the picture again.”

  When I do, he nods. “What’s that in the corner there, geek?”

  All I can see is Cara, but I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and then focus on the room behind her. “Sunlight.”

  “Yep. This was taken at least three hours ago. If they still had her, they’d show you a video. Reply. Stall.”

  That last forty I owe you? Tucked away in an account only I have access to until Cara’s free. But I just found another five accounts in Antwerp. Give me one more hour and you’ll have all of your money and then some. I want her returned to the apartment you shot up this morning in sixty minutes, or no deal.

  I only have to wait a minute for another message to come in.

  You fuck with us, she’ll die screaming. One hour.

  I shove the phone into one of my pockets, reach into the bag West packed for me, and pull out my knife. The one Ry used to kill Faruk. “We end this. Now.”

  “Hooah,” Ry says as he holds out his fist.

  West mirrors the motion. “Hooyah.”

  I haven’t uttered the army battle cry in more than six years, but it rolls off my tongue like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe…it is. “Hooah.”

  The drone takes another pass around the abandoned facility. “They’re on the move,” Wren says over comms. “Fast. Frantic.”

  West chuckles. “They’re scrambling because they don’t have a fucking clue where she is. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Until he slams his hand against my chest seconds before I’m about to slip through a side door. I’m about to say something less than polite when he nods towards the floor and the small red laser light on one side of the jamb.

  Ry and West snap on their NVGs and twist a little knob on the side. After I put mine on, Ry reaches over and flicks that same knob, and…holy shit. Infrared. “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” I mutter as I follow them through the door, stepping over the motion sensor and sweeping my gaze around the room.

  “They’re separating,” Wren says. “Based on body mass, Jessup’s heading for the roof and Parr’s coming down. Straight for you.”

  Taking up flanking positions on either side of the stairwell, we wait. As Parr flies into the room, West crouches, grabs the man’s legs, and flips him upside down and onto his back.

  Parr stares up at the three of us. Ryker has his Beretta pointed at Parr’s head, and I crouch down and press my knife to his throat. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. She got away. Jessup’s tracking my phone—she took it—and we know she was on the roof at one point. We lost her after that.”

  “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat right now, asswipe. You hurt her. Repeatedly. And you left me in Afghanistan for years, let that sick fuck destroy everything I was.”

  The split-second realization that I care more about him hurting Cara than all the pain I endured at Faruk’s hand hits me hard, but I shake it off and press the knife harder against his windpipe.

  “Jessup called in backup. They’ll be here in five minutes. Please. I don’t want to do this anymore. I never wanted to kill Caroline in the first place. I tried to help her. Or at least, make her more comfortable. Jessup…he threatened my family.”

  “Your call, brother,” Ry says.

  “Um, guys?” Wren’s voice isn’t steady as she breaks in over comms. “There’s an SUV approaching your location at high speed. Four heat signatures inside.”

  I slam my knife back into its sheath, grab Parr by the upper arms, and haul him up. “You get to live—for now. But only because we might need you before the end. If she dies, so do you.”

  Ryker pulls a pair of flex cuffs from one of his pockets and binds Parr’s wrists behind his back. “Up the stairs, asshole. I know just the place to stash you.”

  West makes a sharp clicking sound, then gestures out the door, two fingers in the air. We’ve got company.
Ry goes up, and I follow West until we reach the corner of the main building.

  Go left, he signals, and I nod, the weight of my knife in my hand so familiar, and yet so foreign at the same time. Keeping low, I use a rotting fence as cover, moving almost soundlessly through the tall grasses. No one’s used this place in a dozen years, if I had to guess. Peeling paint, crumbling walls…

  Cement explodes just above my head, and I tuck and roll, then slither on my belly until I can take cover behind a large vent shaft maybe four feet high and easily that wide.

  Tapping my comms, I whisper, “Base, got a visual?”

  “One hundred yards at two-fifteen,” Wren says.

  I hope I remember how to shoot straight. The H&K submachine gun with its internal suppressor should be quiet enough, but I was always more of a close quarters guy. Dax, Gose, and Ry all beat my ass in sniper training.

  “Eighty yards,” Wren says quietly. “Approaching at a fixed angle.”

  You’re gonna regret that move, idiot.

  I can feel my heartbeat in my neck, the anxiety crawling up from my stomach to settle in my chest, but I can do this. For Cara. For myself. For Ry and West and this whole family of men and women who want me with them.

  Drawing down on the shadow creeping towards me, I blow out a breath and squeeze the trigger. The shots land center mass, and the guy’s down. Probably not dead if he’s wearing body armor. Holstering the weapon, I leap over the decrepit fence and sprint for him, knife at the ready.

  When I reach his prone form, he’s clawing at his chest, the wind knocked completely out of him, but when he sees me, he tries to raise his gun.

  My knife slides across his throat, severing his windpipe and his carotid artery like they’re made of butter, and I’ve just killed a man. “Target down.”

  Falling back on my ass, I want to be sick, but a quiet series of pops behind me pulls me out of my panic. I race back to the main building, weaving back and forth to make myself a more difficult target.

  “Pinned down on the top floor,” Ry says in my ear. More pops echo from inside the building, too many to be from only one gun, and definitely not the sound of our H&Ks.

  “How many?” I trade speed for stealth as I reach the rusty metal stairs, creeping slowly, testing each step.

  “Three.”

  “Second target neutralized. And I disabled their vehicle.” This, from West, whose voice is rougher than normal. “Headed to you now.”

  The gunfire doesn’t let up as I climb, and at the top, a long, dark hallway looms ahead of me. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling, leaves cover the floor, and the stench of dead animals fills the air.

  But floating on top of all that? Sweat. A lingering hint of harsh cologne, and gunpowder. Five doors in this hall, all yawning open, and I have to clear each room before I can get to Ry.

  The first is nothing but broken down pallets. The second, an odd closet through which half a dozen pipes crisscross, some with shut-off valves on them. As I head for the third, a solid weight slams into me, taking me down to my knees. The knife tumbles from my hand, and the barrage of punches to my back leave me gasping for breath.

  “Where’s. My. Money?” Jessup hisses in my ear as he grabs my hair, yanks my head up, and then slams it back down. I see stars, and then he straddles me.

  The flash of terror fades when a pistol presses to the back of my neck. He won’t kill me. He needs me. “Where’s Cara?”

  Ry and whoever he’s fighting continue to exchange gunfire, and then an explosion rocks the far side of the facility.

  “She got away. You want the chance to find her, give me my goddamned money or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

  I don’t know what it is in his voice that makes me believe him, but I do. He doesn’t know where she is, which means it’s possible she’s still alive.

  “You have ten seconds, Richards. Or make peace with your God.

  Not a chance, asshole. I survived six years of hell, and I’m getting my fucking happy ever after.

  “You want your blood money? Fine,” I spit out. “I just need my phone, shithead. Reaching for it now.” The barrel presses harder against my skull, and I dig into one of the pockets of my tactical vest. “Got to see to initiate the transfer. Or are you just that stupid?”

  The pressure lets up as he rises, and he mutters, “I should kill you anyway. Get the fuck up.”

  Slowly, I get to my knees, then stand, keeping my back to him. “Sixty million coming at you in three, two—” Whirling around, I punch Cara’s kitty cat brass knuckles into Jessup’s forearm, sending the gun flying across the hall. My next punch pierces his cheek, the cat ears digging into the soft flesh just above his jaw.

  He howls in pain, and I sweep his legs out from under him, aim a swift kick to his mid-section, and pick up my knife. “You’re the worst of humanity, Jessup. Profiting off the suffering of others. You knew what Faruk was doing to me. You fucking saw me there and did nothing. Didn’t tell my brothers. Or JSOC. You know what he did to me?”

  When he doesn’t answer, I kick him again, and he curls on his side in the fetal position. “Do. You. Know?”

  “Fuck you, Richards. I don’t care.” Jessup pulls a small pistol from an ankle holster, and as he fires, his aim so far off it’s almost comical, I drive the knife through his heart.

  “No. Fuck you.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Cara

  The gunfire stopped a few minutes ago. I should try to climb out of my hiding place, but I can’t move. Sliding down the pipe was easy. Stopping? Not so much. Everything hurts. In order to wedge myself into this broken-down industrial fan hood, I had to wade out into the murky, frigid water of the Duwamish. I fell over when my foot caught in a soft patch of mud, I lost both shoes, and I’m still soaked to the skin.

  “Cara!”

  Ripper. The voice is so faint, I wonder if I’m imagining things.

  But then I hear it again. Along with barking. Charlie. He found Charlie.

  “Here,” I try to call, but my teeth are chattering so badly, I barely make a sound. “Ripper!” My heart pounds and I feel like my head’s about to explode, but I use the metal walls to try to push myself up. I almost make it. But my legs cramp from crouching in this position for so long, and I collapse, one hand clawing at the edge of the fan housing.

  I try again. “Ripper…here…”

  Flashlights sweep over the area, and Charlie’s barking gets louder until it’s right below me. But my hands are wet, and I lose my grip and fall onto my ass with a tiny yelp.

  “Help me up,” Ripper says, and three seconds later, his face appears above me. “Thank God. Cara? Sunshine, can you take my hand?”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m so cold, but he’ll keep me warm. All I want is his arms around me. I’ll be fine if I can just get to him.

  “Hold my legs,” he calls behind him, and then wriggles forward until half his torso’s inside the fan housing. “Push up, Cara. Just a foot or two. I’ll take it from there.”

  I can barely see his eyes in the darkness, but he’s so confident, I don’t hesitate. My thighs tremble, and a sharp pain snakes across my chest, stealing my breath, but I grit my teeth and inch upwards until Ripper can grab me under the arms.

  “Pull,” he calls. I don’t know who’s out there, but he wouldn’t be so calm if Jessup and Parr were with them. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I hold on for all I’m worth as we slide up the shaft and onto the edge of the housing. And then he’s trying to loosen my grip on him, and I whimper. No. Don’t let go.

  “Cara, sunshine, look at me.” As his warm hand cups my cheek, I meet his gaze. “I’m standing on Ry’s back. I need you to swing your legs around so you’re sitting on the housing. Once I’m back on the ground, I promise, I’ll hold you as long as you want. As long as you let me.”

  I’m still shivering so violently, I can’t answer him, but I nod, and he snakes an arm around my back, then helps me spin around.

  Ryker’s bent over, his hands b
raced on his thighs, knee deep in the water. Another man, one I don’t recognize, stands a few feet away out of the water with Charlie pacing around him.

  Jumping off the platform Ry made for him, Ripper lands with a splash, then straightens and holds his arms out to me. “Just let yourself drop. I’ll catch you.”

  He does just that, crushing me against him, and I start to cry, even though I didn’t think I had any tears left. “You’re freezing,” he says, and after he’s back on dry ground, crouches down with me cradled to his chest. “Charlie, get over here.”

  The dog presses himself against me, and I’m sandwiched between two warm bodies, safe. “Can’t breathe,” I gasp. “Heart.”

  “Ry?” Ripper says. “In the back pocket of my vest, there’s a purple case. Get me one of the white pills.”

  He has my meds.

  When he holds a metal flask to my lips, I manage a healthy sip of water to wash down the pill that will calm my racing heart.

  Charlie licks my cheek, and then the other man, the one I don’t know, clears his throat. “I don’t want to interrupt this touching reunion, but we set off a grenade six minutes ago, there are five dead bodies in that mill, and we have an army intelligence officer tied up in the van. Can we get out of here now?”

  “Let’s go, sunshine,” he whispers to me, and I nod, then rest my cheek on his shoulder.

  As he carries me to a four-door pickup truck, no one says a word. The other man climbs into a black van, while Charlie jumps up into the backseat of the pickup.

  “Is it o-over?” I stammer as Ryker pulls a black bag out of the truck bed and throws it on the passenger seat.

  Ripper accepts the blanket Ryker hands him and tucks it around me. “It’s over. It’s finally over.”

  I only remember pieces of the ride back to Ripper’s apartment and how I ended up in his bed. The tension radiating off of him as he carried me into the elevator. The warm water in the tub. His naked body against mine as he washed away the dirt and blood and that terrible cologne Jessup wore that clung to me the whole time. Bandages to my upper arm. A soft t-shirt, thick socks. A man—a doctor—who came to examine me, assuring me a dozen times there would be no record of his visit. A pill to help me sleep, another for the pain, and an order to call him if I had any nausea.