by Lainey Reese
Chapter 14
Pain would come, he knew, but for now there was only chaos. Silence was a deafening roar in his ears. The absence of sound thrummed though his head like a vacuum and his vision had gone psychedelic from the flash. Every movement had tracers and even the things that were stationary looked as though they pulsed and swayed.
He had to move. Shy. He had to get to Shy and make sure she was all right. The disorientation was familiar, a partner he’d waltzed with before.
Years of military training moved him now. Got his arms to release their hold on the boy and allowed him to push himself to his hands and knees over the prone body beneath him. Dude’s first thought, his only thought, was Shy. He’d do what he could for Miguel once he knew she was safe.
Clouds of smoke and debris still floated in the room and the orange glare from the smoldering rubble cast the light with an eerie glow, only worsened by his still-ruined vision.
It took all his strength to push back to a kneeling position, but he made it. Just as he was trying to convince his body to get to its feet, Cheyenne stumbled to him and collapsed at his side.
“Thank God.” Relief poured renewed vigor into his body and he wrapped her in his arms and clung. Dude felt her sobbing on his chest, though he still couldn’t hear and pulled her in tighter. “Thank God, you’re safe.”
Chapter 15
Cheyenne couldn’t hear above the ringing in her ears. She supposed she should be grateful for the shrill sound, though a few moments ago, there hadn’t even been ringing, only the strangely buzzing silence that reminded her of being underwater. Relief and pain mixed in a head-spinning brew of giddy confusion and her thoughts jumbled like the flecks in a snow globe as she held on to Faulkner and cried.
She felt the rumble in his chest that told her he was talking, although she still couldn’t hear him. His big, scarred hands rubbed a soothing circle along her spine before he gripped her shoulders and pushed her back from his chest.
As soon as she was at arm’s length, he started the pat down. Shy understood completely—she also had a need to ascertain for herself that he was all in one piece and free of injury, so she returned the favor. When one of her hands landed on his side just over his ribs, a jolt of panic lanced though her heart. Wet, sticky and terrifying because there was a chunk of metal sticking out of him. He flinched and stilled when she landed on it and the two of them locked eyes for a moment before they both looked down.
His maroon shirt was black with blood and stuck to his side. The black turned crimson when it ran to his jeans and Shy was alarmed at how far down the streaks already were. Gingerly, she lifted the hem of his shirt and peeled it away from his flesh as gently as possible. Her gasp and cry fell on still-deaf ears but he showed he knew her worry anyway for he brushed a calming hand over the crown of her head that seemed to say it was going to be all right.
Looking at his ruined side, a thumb-sized chunk of pipe stuck in his ribs, Cheyenne felt her stomach threaten to revolt. The wound seeped a steady flow of red and she didn’t have enough medical knowledge to know how much was too much, but it horrified her. Dude grimaced and grabbed the piece between two fingers. It came free with little effort and a new rush of blood. Gruesome as it was, Shy was relieved to see it wasn’t as bad as she’d first believed.
There were other wounds, as well. Gashes that ranged in size from superficial scratches and scrapes to gouges as long as her forearm. Scrambling around to check for further damage, she saw more on his back and shoulder on that side as well as several places that had already started to bruise.
The ends of his hair were the ashy brittle brown of dead leaves and there was an angry red flush to his skin from where the blast of fire singed him, but she guessed he was in pretty good shape for having just gone toe to toe with a bomb.
Cheyenne worked her way back to his front, looking for damage she might have missed, when his voice cut through and she heard him speak. “Shy. Hold still and let me check you again.”
“I’m okay,” she said, shaking her head and running her hands along his blood-soaked thigh. Thankfully, it seemed as if there was no other damage aside from the side of his torso that had taken the brunt of the blast.
He wasn’t to be put off though, and she stopped her fussing. All it took was for her to see him flinch when she tried to keep going. She froze, and then it was his turn to examine her.
She was unhurt. There was a sting in her palms and her knees from where she’d fallen. Or, more accurately, where he’d thrown her. Cheyenne had already been leaping away, so with the added force of his heave, she’d almost made it completely across the room before the explosion. Shy had curled into the fetal position as tight as she possibly could and covered her head.
What had happened next had been nothing but a blur of sound and heat.
She wasn’t sure if Miguel intended for such a small blast from his bomb or if it had misfired somehow, but she was thankful for it all the same. Euphoric relief washed through her as the shock and adrenaline started to wear off and the realization that they had successfully stopped the bombing sank in.
Cheyenne raised her face, wanting nothing more in that moment than a kiss from Faulkner to celebrate their survival. Only, as soon as she saw his expression, all the joy she felt evaporated like mist in the sun.
He wasn’t looking at her; his expression was solemn as he stared intently just over her shoulder.
“Miguel,” she whispered, but Faulkner’s eyes finally lowered and he met her gaze. The look in them told her she didn’t want to know. She did not want to turn to the frighteningly still body of a seventeen-year-old boy and see for herself.
But that was what she did. It was what she had to do.
She cried, “No! Oh, Miguel!” And tenderly as she could, took those small shoulders in her arms and turned him. “Oh God, baby. Sweet boy. You’re going to be okay, hang in there, ’kay? Stay with me.” Her mouth crumpled and her chin quivered uncontrollably, making speech almost impossible.
Miguel’s stomach wound made Dude’s injuries look like nothing more than playground boo-boos. There was a strange hollowness to his middle that terrified her.
Adrenaline flooded anew as she prepared to wade into the battle for this child’s life.
“Don’t let go, baby,” she told him. “You stay with me.”
“Shy, sweetheart.” Faulkner’s voice came through. Somewhere in all the pandemonium happening inside her head, he was the calm within the storm. “Lay him back a little. Let’s see. Ah, fuck me. I’m sorry, Shy.” His soft curse held a lifetime of experience. That experience told him when there was no hope.
And it broke her fucking heart. Her eyes snapped to him in panic and she shook her head, shaky in jerky denial.
Then she heard a tiny crackle of a voice and looked down into Miguel’s pale earnest face.
“Did—they—find the—rest?” Long pauses with shallow pants in between, but she understood every word.
“Yes.” She blatantly lied because she had no way to know the answer to that yet. But that didn’t matter—he needed peace right now, needed to believe that he’d been able to reverse his actions and redeem himself. “All clear. You did it. You saved them.” She laid a tender kiss on his too cold forehead. “You saved everybody.”
His lips stretched fractionally in smile of victory. “I—couldn’t—do it. I’m sorry. I never should—have come. Never wanted to but—she—made me. Said I didn’t—love—love my brothers if I pussied out.” He faded and seemed to wilt in her arms and she felt panic rise again. “I loved—them. I did. But s’not right. Just—not—”
Then nothing. His mouth moved in a silent gasp and suddenly it was if he weighed only half as much as he had only a moment ago. Cheyenne knew he was gone.
“No. This isn’t right. It isn’t fair! He’s changed. He was sorry! Didn’t they know he was sorry? It should be okay now! This isn’t fair! GODDAMMIT!”
She sobbed as she gathered him up.
The
pain was almost more than she could bear. It might have broken her in that moment if not for one thing, the one thing that had become her greatest joy and her greatest source of strength—her husband.
As she cried, she held that poor abused boy to her chest.
Faulkner wrapped them up in his big strong arms and held them both to his.
Epilogue
Faulkner stepped up to the podium to address the crowd. The press, the politicians, and most importantly, the community, had all turned out for today’s grand opening of Riverside’s new rec center for teens, Delgado’s Grotto.
“I should probably start off by thanking you all for coming today. This center holds a special place in my wife’s heart and mine. Six months ago, a young man, only seventeen years old, had been used and manipulated and twisted until he’d been turned into a living weapon. Then that weapon had been aimed directly at my wife and me. Not just us either, but law enforcement in general. I’m sure most of you have read the story of how he’d come to the city with explosives and a plan that had been drilled into him so relentlessly, he’d become brainwashed. And mass destruction was his mission.”
Emotion threatened to undermine his composure so he took a breath and his eyes fell on Shy, sitting whole and beautiful with their daughter on her knee. He and Shy were closer now than ever before; their experience in the club in New York had been more than he’d dared hoped for. They’d enjoyed it so much they had even made a couple visits to some of the local clubs as their horizons broadened and the trust they shared deepened. Looking at her now, surrounded by his SEAL team and their families in the front row, made a feeling bloom in his chest that was larger than he even had words for. They centered him, his family, his heart and soul, so after a moment he was able to continue.
“His was a story that is unfortunately all too common. Not to the extreme that he was driven, but common nonetheless. If he’d had a place like this center available to him growing up, a place filled with people who cared, would he have been driven to the same conclusions? We’ll never know now. But I like to think the answer to that is no. That he would have grown to be a man free of turmoil and would have found love and a family and would have lived a life he could have been proud of.”
He paused for effect, hoping that the what ifs settled into the crowd’s minds like a wakeup call.
“No child should be raised in anger and hate. With resources like this center, our hope is that Miguel’s story will never be played out in another child’s life. Miguel’s story does have a silver lining that you would’ve heard if you’ve heard anything about him. Without any outside influence, and against all the odds, Miguel became a hero. He changed his course of action all on his own and gave his life to stop the destruction he’d been used to implement. His last words were those of a hero, his only concern was for the safety of others and reversing the deadly chain of events he’d set in play.”
Looking over the people gathered, Faulkner saw tears on many of the solemn faces and hoped that they settled in deep enough to make a lasting impression, not one that would be easily forgotten when the monotony of daily life returned.
“With help from the Wellington/Marshall Foundation, Miguel’s story will live on in this center. But I’m going to let them tell you about that in a minute. First, I just wanna say something about that day. I looked in Miguel’s eyes that afternoon and I didn’t see a terrorist or a killer. I saw a scared and confused kid who was trying to right his wrongs. A kid who will never know that his sacrifice would ignite a nation and bring change to so many communities, not just his own. A kid who proved to us all, it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
He stepped back and motioned for Trevor to come forward and take over.
Trevor would fill them in on the state of the art arcade and the go-cart track, as well as all the other wonderland-like features the center had in store. He’d get the bigwigs in the audience stirred up and reaching deep into their pockets, which was a good thing since the center would run on donations.
Thanks to Miguel’s story, the center had already received more money than they’d even hoped for. Enough to fully fund the center and its staff for the next three years, but Trevor Wellington didn’t let that put a damper on his speech. He spoke with the enthusiasm of a Baptist preacher on Sunday, and today was no different. People were cheering and crying by turns as his strong voice rang with conviction. He had them eating out of the palm of his hand.
Faulkner looked to his wife again. The loss of the kid had hit them both hard, but it was even more so for her. It helped knowing that Miguel’s useless excuse of a mother was locked away.
Miguel had left behind a laptop in the grimy motel he’d stayed in while in New York. On it were two video files of confessions. The first, labeled Vengeance is Mine, had been incomplete. Miguel’s face had been covered in a ski mask and it was obviously a recording he’d intended to release after the bombing. He’d spewed propaganda about police brutality and the oppression of the poor, but already his conviction had waned. His voice had shaken and he’d stopped and restarted dozens of times. One failed attempt after another as he’d tried to spout the rhetoric that’d been drilled into him.
The second file had been titled If I die. There they’d seen the true Miguel. His face had been ravaged by tears as he’d looked into the camera and confessed. He’d told of his brothers and his childhood and weaved a story of abuse and torment that was hard to watch.
After he’d outlined the task that he’d been given and his harrowing journey to accomplish it, he’d confessed how he couldn’t go through with it. He’d known he was going to die and he’d believed it was the only way. He’d asked for forgiveness and signed off. The time stamp on that video was less than a half hour from when Shy and the others had stumbled upon him.
They hadn’t been able to save Miguel, but every day both Dude and Shy helped save others. It didn’t make his loss any easier, but this did, he thought as he looked at the building behind them. This sure as hell did. The boy’s death, though senseless, had brought this about—not just here but in cities across the nation, and by God, that was something. He hoped the kid knew somehow. He liked to think he did.
When Trevor finished with a rousing flurry of words that got the crowd to their feet, Faulkner made his way off the platform and to his family.
As he wrapped them in his arms, Faulkner thought again of what might have been if Miguel hadn’t found bravery within himself. The bombs he’d rigged and where he’d placed them couldn’t have toppled the entire building, but the destruction would have been massive and lives would have been lost for sure. Maybe even theirs.
So he held his family a little tighter, a little longer, and sent one more prayer of thanks to the heavens. He took it as a sign when Shy lifted her beautiful face and just as his lips met hers, the clouds parted. They were bathed in the warmth of a brilliant ray of sunshine while they shared a tender kiss and their daughter cooed happily between them.
About the Author
Lainey lives in beautiful Washington State. She's the youngest of five and has always wanted to be a writer. Her first novel, A Table for Three, was nominated for best debut novel of 2010 by the Romance Review and marked a dream come true for Lainey.
With her third published release -Damaged Goods-, Lainey saw another of her dreams realized when she took a leap of faith to become a full-time author and left the safety net of a day job behind. Now she spends her days writing, with her dog at her feet and a cat curled in her lap, and asks herself a dozen times a day; how'd I ever get so lucky?
Find Lainey Online
@ReeseLainey
AuthorLaineyReese
www.laineyreese.com
Also by Lainey Reese
Guarding Nadia
Snowfall
The New York Series
A Table for Three
Damaged Goods
Innocence Defied
Embracing the Fall
;
Lainey Reese, Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting New York (Kindle Worlds Novella)