by Zoe Dawson
“Keep it cool,” he said when he felt Jason tense.
They approached the chopper and the man asked, “Who are you?”
“Max, his friend, and I’m going with you.”
“We don’t—”
“It’s not negotiable.” Max slung an arm around Jason’s neck. “Just consider me another hostage.”
He turned to the second man who had exited the chopper and inclined his head. The guy walked toward them. “Drop the weapon.”
Max complied, and the man searched both of them before getting behind them and ushering them toward the helo.
“After you,” the man holding Shea said.
Max and Jason climbed inside, and as soon as she climbed in, she threw her arms around Jason and hugged him briefly before the man pulled her back into the seat.
“This is your show, Mr. Palmer.”
“Your name?” Max asked. “Just so we’re all acquainted.
“Jose.”
“Head toward the mountains.”
Jose inclined his head. “That’s very vague, Mr. Palmer.”
“There’s a slight issue,” Jason said. “I lost my memory and I am getting pieces of it back.”
“Is that so? You wouldn’t be jerking me around, would you?”
“With my sister’s life hanging in the balance? Don’t you think if I wanted to take your money, I could have two years ago?”
Jose’s features smoothed out. “Okay, what do you remember?”
Jason rubbed his temple. “It was near an outcropping of rocks.” He looked down. “Have the pilot swing around.”
Jose made the request, and the chopper banked and turned until Jason’s window was facing the mountainside. He closed his eyes, concentrating, then opened them again to survey the scenery. There was a copse of scraggy brush, white rocks protruding from the mountainside.
“There!” He pointed, and Jose murmured instructions to the pilot. He made a beeline for where Jason had pointed. “Land here,” Jason said.
Once the chopper touched down, he scrambled out of the helicopter and stared at the area. Then he started to move. To Max, it looked like nothing but brush, vines, and moss. Jason kept walking, then stopped. He walked toward the cliff face, then stopped again.
“Here.”
“Where?” Jose asked.
Jason moved forward, touched the vines, and Max saw it—a large cave entrance. Without prompting, he disappeared inside. When Max followed, his boots hit rock beneath his feet. Jason was up ahead and he went to the right and vanished. Max followed as Jose’s muscle flashed a light behind them, strong enough to see by, but not enough to chase away the shadows.
Max turned the corner and stopped dead. Piled in the back of the cave were large duffels.
“Watch them,” Jose said as he moved forward and grabbed one of the duffels. He unzipped the encrusted zipper and smiled, pulling out a brick of cash wrapped in plastic. Perfectly preserved.
“Seré condenado. You are a man of your word, Mr. Palmer.”
“I did what you asked. Now let my sister go.”
Jose inclined his head and the guy let go of her arm. She ran to Jason, and he caught her in his arms.
“It’s so good to see you, Shea.”
“I missed you so much, Jason.”
“Call in the transport,” Jose said. He rose with the brick of cash in his hands. “You are to be commended, Mr. Palmer. There aren’t many men who could have resisted the temptation of all this money.”
“What those Marines did was wrong. We went to Argentina to help your people, not steal from you. I was righting a wrong. Nothing else.”
Jose tucked the bills into the duffel, picked it up, and offered it to Jason.
Jason blinked several times and stared at Jose.
“Take this for your trouble and for your honesty.”
Jason still didn’t touch the handles.
“You wouldn’t want to insult my generosity. Take the bag.”
Jason took the duffel and slung it over his back.
“We have one request, and it’s not really a request. Leave South America and don’t come back. Comprendre?”
“Yeah, I got you. But can we have a grace period? I have farm animals and a house to sell. My wife has a vet practice. That will take time.”
“You have a month. Now, you’re free to go.” He turned back to look at the other man. “Take them back to where we picked them up.”
“Wait,” Jason said. “Could we ask a favor?”
Jose smiled. “Other than me granting you your lives?”
“Would you be willing to take Max and his people to their transportation?”
Back at the farm, Max exited the chopper with Jason. The SEALs were all in the house. Max walked in and they crowded around. “They let you go?”
“Yeah, they were surprisingly decent about it. Jason made a good impression.”
“Brilliant,” Dodger said, and fist bumped with Jason.
“So why is the chopper still here?”
“They’re going to take us back to our transportation.” He looked at Renata while addressing his teammates. “Go ahead and load up. I’ll be there shortly.”
Carolina hugged her husband and said, “I am so proud of you.”
“There’s a catch. I have to leave South America.”
She gasped.
“I’m sorry, Carolina. I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together. Whatever it takes,” he said fiercely.”
“I don’t regret a moment of loving you.” She caressed his face. “You have to go back to your home, back to make the explanation to your commander.” She looked around and smiled. “All this is just things and objects. We will rebuild.”
He buried his face in his wife’s hair. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I hate to leave you here to handle all this, but the faster I get back to work everything out with the Marine Corps, the better.” He turned to open his arm and Shea joined him. “This is my sister, Shea.” He beamed at his wife. “This is Carolina, my beloved.”
The two women hugged.
Renata walked over and immediately went into Max’s arms. He held her tightly and said, “I’ve got to go, babe. Do you want—”
“No. I’ll stay here with Carolina and help her with everything.”
If there was one thing Max had learned from being a SEAL, it was how to disconnect and shut down. But he had learned the lesson well. They had pretty much said all there was to say last night. There was nothing left but the leaving.
He went to Carolina and kissed her cheeks and squeezed her hands. “Thank you for helping to save my life, for all your hospitality. Without you, I wouldn’t be here. Take care of yourself, Carolina.”
“You too, Max. Hopefully, we will see each other again. Goodbye.”
He went to their room and grabbed his pack. Back out at the pool deck, he turned toward the pasture.
“Max,” Renata said, coming up to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and swallowed hard. When she let go, he bent his head and kissed her softly on the mouth. “You know how to contact me when you make up your mind.”
She nodded, her eyes filling. “I’m going to miss you, Max.” She crouched down and hugged Jugs. “You too, you helmet-stealing rascal.” He licked her cheek and she buried her face in his fur for a couple of seconds, then rose.
“Stay safe, Renata,” he said, his voice gruff and unsteady. He started for the waiting chopper up the hill from the house. She made a choked sound and hugged him one more time, then watched him leave.
Dodger made sure he had all his gear as he packed his duffel. They had arrived back at the safe house in Asunción, and the team was reunited. Everyone gave Fast Lane a wide berth. Dodger could tell the five of them were out of sorts after losing Angar Said. But he was optimistic the bastard would give them another chance to nab him. Those wankers always did.
“So, you’re heading out,” Anna said from the doorway.
He didn’t look
at her. He was trying to remain neutral and distant, genuinely relieved that her tempting lips, body, and spirit would be thousands of miles away from him again. He might be able to take a full breath.
“Yeah,” he said. He looked at her and sighed. Damn, the woman. She always looked so bloody good. “How about you?”
“Now that Max and Jugs are rescued, I’m going back to fulfill my assignment. I still have photos to get for the magazine.”
“Right.” He picked up his duffel and slung it over his back. Walking to the door, he went to brush past her, but she touched his arm.
“Oliver—”
“No, Anna. It’s impossible. I think I made myself clear.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them and stared at him, a hollow look back in her eyes, she lifted herself up enough to kiss him softly on the cheek. “Be safe, and you keep Max in line and watch his seven. Okay?” She stepped back.
He chuckled. “It’s his six, and I will.” He started out the door then stopped. He wanted to ask her to tell her family that he hadn’t wanted to stay away, but then shook his head and left.
On the plane, Dodger settled in, feeling for Max as he stoically took it on the chin, but Dodger could tell he missed Renata like hell. The bitterness came out of nowhere when he remembered how crushed he’d been when he’d found out Hermione had not only fallen out of love with him but had cheated on him with another man. He thought Max was better off. Giving everything made it really hard to get everything back once it was over. Dodger believed he was still missing pieces of himself.
In fact, there was nothing but a somber, reflective mood hanging over them. A strange emptiness settled in his chest, a feeling he couldn’t define, but it was as if he had missed out on something—or lost something very rare and special. Something that was really not his to lose.
But he left it at that. He wasn’t going to start digging around to try to analyze the feeling. There were some things that were just better off left alone.
A loud crack of thunder brought Renata sharply awake, her heart pounding, adrenaline racing through her system. For an instant, she didn’t know where she was. She remained perfectly still, the disoriented feeling fading when familiar things began to take shape in the darkened room. Then the wave of grief hit her. Right, she had come in here to cry after Max had left. She needed to release all that pressure in her chest.
Another crack of thunder reverberated through the house, and she got out of the empty, unappealing bed and went to the window. The wind had picked up and was rattling the shades, whipping the curtains. She closed the window, then rested her shoulder against the wall, watching the lightning roll across the sky, wondering where he was right now. Probably halfway back to San Diego.
Feeling hollowed out, she watched the wild display as lightning rolled across the blackened sky, flashes zigzagging up the towering thunderheads, arcing from one cloud to the other.
A strange, heavy feeling unfolded in her chest, making her suddenly restless. She opened the window a bit, so she could smell the rain, the heavy feeling climbing higher. Folding her arms tightly around herself, she tried to will away the heaviness inside her. She didn’t know why she felt suddenly so exposed.
Because she loved Max and she was so mired in her own shit, she couldn’t seem to find a way to pull herself out.
Renata emerged from the room and Carolina slipped her arm around her as she came into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea?”
“I’d love some,” she said. Her life and her emotions were in total chaos.
“How are you feeling?”
“Terrible. You?”
“Terrible too.”
“Well, we are a pair of sad sacks, then.”
“We are. But there is always a rainbow after a storm. I’m sure we’ll find one, and it will have all the colors that we love in it.”
Renata smiled as Carolina brought the tea to the table.
She sat down and took a careful sip of her own. “There is much to do, and that will keep us very busy.”
“Okay, what is our plan of attack?” As though there was an enormous energy built up in her, she met Carolina’s gaze, her shoulders squared and her chin up.
When she spoke, her voice was shaky with emotion. “Find my passport, put my house on the market, pack, deposit this enormous bag of money in the bank, figure out how I can ship my animals to the US, check on veterinarian licensing in the US, buy a house in California, and pray that Jason won’t be court-martialed and imprisoned.”
“That is a large list,” Renata agreed. “We’d better get started.”
Staying busy had worked for her, but it had also kept her from thinking about her own problems for two weeks. After finishing up the packing, Renata fell into bed. She caught herself as she started to rummage through her thoughts again. She got angry with herself. It was time to get a grip. She had done nothing but wallow for the past few weeks, and she was wallowing again. And even she could see that she’d spent far too much time picking at emotional lint. It was now time for action.
In the morning, she left her friend with promises of them seeing each other again, and even though travel was getting better, it took her some time to get to town, then get transportation back to Asunción. She met with the government official for antiquities and presented him with the helmet. She then told him that she would have to postpone the search at this time because she had several things to handle.
Then she got herself a hotel room and made two phone calls. One was to her mentor, Dr. Carlos Benitez, to make an appointment, which was an easy call. But the other one was to her father. That wasn’t easy at all.
“Hello,” he said as he engaged the call.
“Dad, it’s me, Renata.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, then he sighed. “I haven’t heard from you in a long time.” His voice was full of bitterness.
“I need to see you and talk to you. How does next week look?”
“You’re coming home? Why the hell for?”
“Dad, please. I need to talk to you.”
“I’ll see you next week then.” The line went dead. Yeah, it was safe to say her dad was still pretty pissed at her.
Maybe that’s where she should start her journey of understanding. When was the first moment that she’d realized her dad was railroading her into medicine? She closed her eyes and settled against the headboard. It had been in grade school. She had done a project on human anatomy and presented it at her science fair. She had won. That’s when he’d told everyone she was a chip off the old block and indicated that she was going to become a doctor.
She remembered that she hadn’t slept well that night and had told him in the morning that maybe she didn’t want to be a doctor. He had flown off the handle and she remembered being shaky at his sudden anger. That moment had seeded the kernel of resentment she carried all the way through medical school, residency, and practice.
She took a breath, trying to untwist the thread that meshed her father’s interference and aggression from that child’s love of medicine.
She had loved it. Studying, memorizing, learning, and operating. The first time she’d caught something someone had missed and saved a man’s life, all the sacrificing to learn everything flowed through her. Now that the strands were free of each other, she could clearly see how she had made her error.
Being forced to save Max’s life and operate on him had brought it all back, causing the imbalance in her mind regarding what she had given up and why.
It was her dad’s pushing and prodding, ranting about grades that had taken most of the enjoyment out of it for her, not the discipline itself. That is what she had to deal with.
She searched her soul and discovered that it was what she wanted to do with her life, that anthropology was interesting, and she’d enjoyed it, there was as much depth and interest in the subject that overshadowed medicine.
The first stop was Universidade de São Paulo, located on the
east coast of Brazil on the South Atlantic Ocean. When she explained everything to her mentor, he was saddened that he wasn’t going to work with her but, the true scholar he was, wished her well.
When she landed in San Diego, she realized how close she was to Max, but before she could go to him, before she could be one hundred percent sure, she had to hash it out with her dad.
When he opened the door, it struck her how much he’d aged. That was because she hadn’t seen him in so long.
“Renata,” he said by way of greeting, but her mom rushed to the door and pulled her inside. Then they ate as her mom peppered her with questions about her travels. All the while, her dad sat there, barely acknowledging her.
Finally, she banged her hands on the table and both her parents jumped.
“I’m returning to medicine,” she blurted out. Her father turned to look at her, and the hope in his eyes made her heart soften just a bit.
“Dad, I felt my whole life that all that mattered to you was that I was a doctor. That you never saw me, heard me, or cared about what I thought or said. There was only your opinion and desire. It left me feeling resentful. I pushed back and made a mistake.”
He took a big breath and said, “That wasn’t my intention. You were so smart and talented. I pushed you because I knew you had the potential to be great.”
“It was my error in not being more proactive with you and it was your error in not listening to me.”
He reached out and clasped her hand. “I’m listening now.”
Suddenly, that was all she needed.
Two Weeks Later
The party to celebrate the dropping of all charges in Jason’s case was in full swing. Max clapped him on the back after he walked in the door of Shea’s condo. Max was exhausted, emotionally and physically. They had actually just come off a tough mission. The brass had lost some trust in them after they lost Angar Said, and Fast Lane didn’t do well under constant scrutiny. Tiny cracks were getting bigger in everyone.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve been reinstated with the Marines?” He kissed Carolina’s cheeks in greeting. “You better have some custard for me, lady.”