by Susan Stoker
“I just want it done,” she told him swiftly, trying to forestall his complaints. “The faster I tell them what they want to hear, the quicker I can try to move past this. Please?”
Beatle moved then, reaching for her. His thumb rested on the pulse at her neck and the rest of his fingers curled around her nape. As if he didn’t give one shit that his teammates were there in the room listening, he said, “Are you sure, sweetheart? They can wait.”
“I’m sure,” she told him. Then, deciding if he wasn’t hiding his attraction to her in front of his friends, she wouldn’t either, she said, “If we have to spend another day here, I’d rather it be with you, and not thinking about what happened.”
“Okay,” he acquiesced. “But if I think it’s too much, I’m going to stop the interview and we can do it tomorrow.”
Casey didn’t really like that, but appreciated why he was saying it. She vowed to do whatever was necessary to be unemotional and matter of fact about everything so he wouldn’t feel the need to stop the questions. “Okay.”
Beatle turned his head, but didn’t remove his hand from Casey’s neck. “Go ahead and call them, Ghost. But give us an hour. She needs to eat.”
“Will do,” his teammate said.
Casey didn’t think Beatle was going to move from her side, but was surprised when, the second her brother stepped up to her, he took two steps backward. Blade took her into his arms, but Casey was more than aware of how close Beatle still was. He might’ve let her brother into her space, but he hadn’t gone far. She felt warmth move through her. The longer she was around Beatle, the more she liked and respected him.
“I’m so glad you’re all right, Casey,” Blade said softly into her hair. “I’ll call Mom and Bill tonight.”
Bill was her dad, and Aspen’s stepdad. He hadn’t ever called the man anything but Bill. Even though her dad had been more of a father to Aspen than his own, no one complained about the moniker. Aspen was two years older than her, and the result of a whirlwind relationship their mom had had with a man who hadn’t wanted anything to do with his son once he’d gone his separate way from their mother.
Luckily, she’d met and married Bill not long after breaking up with Aspen’s father. Bill had raised Aspen as his own son, and never once complained about the fact they had different last names. Their mom had wanted to keep Aspen’s last name as Carlisle, in case his father ever had a change of heart. He hadn’t.
“Thanks,” Casey told her brother. “Thank you for coming to find me.”
“Always, Case. Always,” Blade replied. Then he pulled back and cleared his throat. “See you downstairs.”
One by one, the other Deltas left the room, until it was just her and Beatle once more.
He immediately came to her side. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? It’s all right if you wait until tomorrow. Sleep will do you good.”
“I’m sure,” Casey told him. “I really would just prefer to get it over and done with.”
“Okay, sweetheart. But let me know if you need a break.”
“I will.”
He leaned forward and tilted her head down and kissed the top. “I need to feed you. What are you in the mood for?”
Casey hadn’t thought much about food thus far. She’d been more concerned with getting out of the jungle alive, not stepping in any bullet ant mounds, and then getting clean. But now that Beatle mentioned food, her stomach growled with the thought. “A cheeseburger. And fries. And a soda.”
Beatle frowned at the mention of the soft drink. “You need water, Case.”
She sighed. “I know. If I promise to drink a whole glass, can I please have at least a sip of soda? I’m craving the carbonation.”
“I’m such a pushover,” Beatle complained. “This doesn’t bode well for our relationship. Fine. Soda and a water.”
Goosebumps broke out on her arms at his offhand words. He’d said it as if a relationship between them was a foregone conclusion. She’d somehow been afraid that all his words in the jungle were a result of the moment. But they were currently safe, and clean, and he still seemed to want to see her when they got back to the States.
She smiled. Huge. Then teased, “I think it bodes great for our relationship.”
“You would. You got what you wanted,” Beatle groused.
Feeling more like herself than she had in a very long time, Casey leaned forward and boldly kissed Beatle. It was a short kiss, merely a brush of her lips against his. “Thank you, Troy.”
His hand caught the back of her head, preventing her from moving away from him after her kiss. “You’re welcome, Casey.” And then he slowly dropped his head.
Casey’s eyes closed and she tilted her head in welcome. She’d been half hoping making the first move would encourage him. If she’d had any inclination how well her kiss would work, she would’ve done it way before now.
He kissed her as if it were the last kiss either of them would ever have. Passionate, possessive, and lengthy. It wasn’t until her stomach growled that he pulled back. Once again, his brown irises were hard to make out because of the size of his dilated pupils. “I need to feed you,” he said in a low, grumbly voice.
“Yeah,” she agreed, but stared at his lips even as she licked her own.
“Fuck,” he murmured, before dropping his mouth to hers again.
It was several minutes before he tore himself away from her once more. But this time, he actually backed away to the other side of the room. He shook his head. “You’re addictive as hell, sweetheart.”
“It’s not me,” she countered. “It’s you.”
Without another word, he picked up the phone and ordered room service for them both, offering a hundred-dollar bonus if they got the food to them in the next twenty minutes.
* * *
The cheeseburger that had been so delicious an hour earlier sat in her belly like a rock. Casey was at a table in a room at the hotel, sitting across from two Costa Rican police officers. They had been polite enough, but it was more than obvious they were anxious to hear everything she had to say. She’d been adamant with Beatle that she wanted to get this over with, but now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to talk about her experience at all. With anyone.
The longer she sat there silent, the harder it was to start talking. She swallowed hard and licked her lips. Then she took a sip of the water in front of her. She clasped her hands together, then flattened them on her shorts and tried to dry the sweat from her palms.
She made the mistake of looking up, and saw the impatient look on one of the police officer’s faces before he looked away.
Shit. She couldn’t do this.
Just when she was about to blurt out that she wanted to go back to the room, Beatle took her hand in his. He was sitting on one side of her, and his teammate, Coach, was on the other. Ghost, Blade, and Hollywood were standing behind her somewhere. Fletch and Truck weren’t in the room; she had no idea where they were or what they were doing.
She felt a finger under her chin and almost rolled her eyes. Beatle loved to do that, but she obediently turned her head and met his gaze.
“Don’t look at them. Tell me what happened.”
Casey wasn’t sure that was any better. But she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She felt Beatle take hold of her other hand as well. His thumbs rubbed over the backs of her hands and, amazingly, his touch helped calm her.
“We were at the research spot in the jungle we’d been using for several days. We’d found a leafcutter ant colony and had been studying it and taking pictures. Astrid had forgotten her notes from the day before, and she and Kristina had gone back to Guacalito to get them. I always made sure we traveled in pairs. Because, you know, it was safer.”
Casey blew a huff of air out her nose. “Right. Safer. Anyway, they had been gone a long time and I was getting worried about them. So me and Jaylyn started back toward town to see what was taking them so long. I was walking behind Jaylyn, and saw two men approaching in front of
us. I was smiling and calling out a greeting, when I saw the knife in one of their hands. Before I knew what was happening, there were men all around us. Yelling in Spanish and English. Telling us to shut up and no one would get hurt. They herded us away from the town and after walking only a short distance, we were inside a truck. Astrid and Kristina were there too, already tied up with their eyes covered.
“They blindfolded me and Jaylyn and they wouldn’t tell us anything about what was happening. We drove for a while, then they forced us out and made us walk. I don’t know how long we walked, but it seemed like a long time. We got to the village and they shoved us into a hut. They didn’t bother to untie us or take off our blindfolds, but I managed to get Astrid to turn her back to me and I got the rope off. She helped get me free, then we untied the others. We looked around the hut but there was absolutely no way out. We even tried to dig, but they’d reinforced the outside with some sort of mesh or something, so we could only go so far.”
When she took a breath, Beatle asked, “Did you hear them say anything about what they were going to do with you?”
“No.”
Beatle squeezed her hands. “Close your eyes. Think, Casey. I know it’s painful, but try to remember what you heard. Was anyone talking while you were in the truck? Did they talk about where you were going? What about when you got to the village? Did you hear any of the villagers talking?”
Casey squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think back. Without her knowing it, she began to tremble. The harder she tried to think, the more she shook. There was something there, but she couldn’t remember. All she could think about was how scared she’d been. But the girls had needed her, so she’d sucked it up…
“It’s okay, Case,” she heard. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”
She did as requested, and saw Beatle’s beautiful brown eyes looking into hers. “That’s it. We’ll come back to it. What happened after you were in the hut?”
Feeling as if she’d dodged a bullet for some reason, she resumed telling her story. “We were in the hut for a while, and things were…okay. Not great, but they were bringing us food and water. Not a lot, but I divvied it up so we all got our fair share. The girls had stopped being so freaked out, and we were just waiting. No one had hurt us and we didn’t really feel threatened. We were actually bored, if you can believe it. Then one day, that guy, the one from the jungle, with the ants, came to the hut and told me to get up. That my ransom had been paid and I was going home.
“I had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, we didn’t even know they’d asked for ransom for us. I tried to reassure the girls that I’d make sure their ransoms were paid as soon as possible too, and I left.”
Casey got quiet again, thinking about what she’d just said. “There wasn’t any ransom paid, was there?” she asked Beatle.
“No, sweetheart. There wasn’t ever a demand for one. When Astrid’s dad didn’t hear from his daughter, he started trying to locate her, and when he couldn’t, got to work getting the Dutch Special Forces team down here to find her.”
“So if we were in Costa Rica doing our research without her, then no one would’ve known we were taken?” Casey asked, the realization of how lucky they’d all been sinking in.
“What happened after you were taken out of the hut?” Beatle asked, not answering her question.
He didn’t need to. Casey knew exactly what would’ve happened if they’d all been nobodies. Eventually they would’ve been missed, but it would’ve been too late. Especially for her. Casey didn’t know what had happened to the girls after she’d left the hut, but from the little she’d learned from Truck and Beatle as they went through the jungle, it wouldn’t have turned out well for them either. She would’ve died in the hole in the ground and no one would have ever found her body. She shuddered and looked to her lap.
“You’re safe,” Beatle said softly from beside her. “I found you, you kicked the jungle’s ass, and we’re here in this luxury hotel waiting to go home. You’re safe.”
Casey nodded. She was. Beatle was right. So, she took a deep breath and continued her story. “They put a blindfold on me again, and I thought they were taking me back to the truck and I’d be driven back to Guacalito. Stupid me, I didn’t even think about any other scenario. I was too focused on figuring out how to get the other girls freed too. I walked for a while, and I heard whispering around me, then the man who had gotten me from the hut stopped me. He tore off my blindfold, and I saw the hole there in front of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I should’ve looked around to see who else was there, but all I could think about was that damn hole. It took me a second to understand what was happening, and when I did, I fought. But it didn’t do any good. They shoved me forward and I fell right into it. The breath was knocked out of me for a moment, and when I regained my senses, I looked up, only to see the hole above me being covered up. I—”
Casey massaged her temple, the headache seeming to come out of nowhere. There was something she needed to remember, but she couldn’t. It was right there, but she couldn’t bring it to the forefront of her mind. Something had happened while she was at the bottom of the hole looking up, but what? She remembered seeing the trees above her head and hearing voices, then it had gotten dark. What wasn’t she remembering?
“Casey?” her brother asked from behind her.
His voice grounded her back to the present, and whatever it was she was trying to remember was gone.
“They covered the hole and it was pitch dark,” Casey continued. “It took me a while to figure out there was water coming from somewhere above me. I tried to climb out, with no luck. But I used the random boards at my feet to make a perch for myself to get out of the water at the bottom of the hole. You know about the bra water filter,” she told Beatle with a pathetic attempt at a grin. He didn’t smile back.
“Did you hear anything else while you were down there?”
“Not really,” Casey told him. “I mean, I heard people talking every now and then. I tried to yell that I was there, for them to help me, but they either didn’t hear or were ignoring me. I don’t know how much time had gone by when I heard gunshots, I guess that was when the girls were rescued. I thought for sure they’d come and find me too, but after everything got quiet again, I figured I was a goner.
She looked up at Beatle. “How did you find me?”
“I don’t know,” he told her, not taking his gaze from hers. “A little bit of instinct, a little bit of a hunch, and a fuck of a lot of luck.”
“You wear cameras, yes?” one of the police officers asked from across the table.
Casey startled at the voice. She hadn’t even remembered they were in the room.
“Yes,” Ghost replied. “We turned them on when we got close to the village.”
“We would like copies,” the other officer ordered.
“When we get home and get copies made, we will send them to you,” Ghost reassured them. “The village was deserted when we got there. There was evidence the Danish Special Forces had, unfortunately, killed a few villagers in their rescue mission, as well as burned some huts, but nothing that spoke to a slaughter or widespread destruction of the entire village. I know you have no reason to believe us, but when you watch the videos, you’ll see that the huts had been burning for several days by the time we got there, and the decomp of the bodies will also prove we weren’t the ones who killed them.”
“You were wearing a camera?” Casey asked Beatle, her eyes wide.
“Yeah.”
“Was I…did you film me in the hole?” She absolutely didn’t want to see that. Ever. In fact, she didn’t want anyone else to see it either. The thought of someone seeing how low she’d sunk, literally, was horrifying. She knew she’d been close to dying. Had wanted to die.
Beatle took her face in his hands and said, “You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you did everything right.”
“I just…people will see me like that?”
“They’ll see
a miracle, Case. Just like I did. When I leaned into that hole and saw you looking back up at me, I swear to Christ I was looking at the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen in my life. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing. With that said, the only people who will see that video are these officers here and my commander. The tapes are used to review our actions, not to judge anyone else who might be on them. Trust me.”
Casey could only nod at the sincerity she saw in his eyes. She did trust him. How could she not? “Okay.”
“Okay,” Beatle echoed.
The rest of the meeting with the officers went fairly fast. Beatle described their encounter with the group of men who had been talking about their boss wanting to get her back. Coach added what his group had experienced, how they’d been shot at, and how they’d had to neutralize the men who were obviously looking for Casey and her rescuers.
When the officers were satisfied they’d heard everything, they all stood. Everyone shook hands and the officers said they would be in touch with Ghost.
Before she knew it, it was just her and the Deltas left in the room.
“You look exhausted,” Blade told his sister. “Why don’t you go up to sleep?”
She didn’t want to go anywhere without Beatle, but forced herself to nod. In another day or so, she’d have no choice but to part with him. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life glued to his side.
“I’ll walk you up,” Beatle told her. Then he turned to his friends. “Someone desperately wanted to find her out there. We can’t leave her alone until we’re out of this country.”
“Agreed. We’ll all go upstairs, and we can meet in the room next door to hers. That way we won’t disturb her, and we’ll be able to keep our eye on her,” Hollywood said.
“That work?” Beatle asked her. “We’ll keep the connecting door open just in case, but you’ll still have your privacy.”
Casey wanted to ask if he would be staying in her room, but chickened out. She didn’t want to look weak in front of her brother, and, more importantly, didn’t want to sound desperate in front of Beatle. “That’ll be great. I’m looking forward to stretching out on that comfy mattress.” She tried to say it nonchalantly, but wasn’t sure she succeeded, especially with the side-eye Beatle gave her.