Hail Mary

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Then there was the way she completely rearranged her life to revolve around mine. She kept Mary while I worked days and nights and whenever in between. I didn't ask her to take over Mary's care—she naturally stepped into the role of her mother because she wanted to and because she loved Mary as much as I did.

  I was so focused on how Cobie cured me of some of my demons that I didn't see the car that was stalled on the side of the road until I'd nearly missed it.

  “Shit.” I slowed down.

  Then I backed up and stopped until the truck's hitch was inches away from the car's bumper.

  I'd done this so many times over the years that it was ingrained in me where I needed to stop to make it easiest to hitch up the car.

  Getting out, I hooked it up in a matter of moments, secured the vehicle, and then was back in my truck a few minutes after I'd parked.

  My phone was ringing when I got back inside, momentarily confusing me.

  It was so late at night that nobody should be calling me. Dispatch would call, sure, but they'd do that on my radio, not on my personal phone.

  Hitting the answer button without looking at who it was, I placed it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Finally!”

  I frowned and pulled the phone away from my head, looking at the display.

  Cobie?

  “Who is this?”

  “It was so fuckin easy.”

  A cold chill slithered down my spine.

  “Who is this?” I repeated.

  “Your worst nightmare.”

  Something inside me snapped, and I snarled out, “You have no fucking clue what my worst nightmares are!”

  “Oh, but I kinda do.”

  I started to say something, but the sound of flesh hitting flesh stopped me.

  “Don't.”

  I didn't recognize my own voice.

  “Sorry, too late. You ruined me, so I'm gonna ruin you.”

  Then he started to laugh. “Bet you didn't know that it was me with your wife, too.”

  Everything inside me stilled. “I’d had a few problems. I was thinking about the kid, and whether I was making the wrong decision leaving him in the back of my car all day. Not like I could do anything. But still.”

  Bile started to work its way up my throat, and I sat there, frozen, as I tried to decide what to do.

  I couldn’t hang up and call the cops…that would make it to where I no longer had him on the line. And I knew I needed to keep him on the line.

  “Where are you?”

  I didn’t want to hear anything about what he was talking about, but Drake acted like he didn’t hear my question. He continued with his story.

  “I ran that kid off the road toward your sister’s car. It was an accident, of course. They blamed it on the kid texting and driving, but I was the one who’d caused her to lose control.”

  And then I heard what sounded like a door opening. Followed by Mary’s screams.

  “You hear that?”

  I put the truck in gear, momentarily forgetting that I had a car semi-attached to the back of my truck, and started to roll forward.

  The jerk of the chains on the car had me glancing in the rearview mirror, but I still didn’t stop.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

  “Oh, I won’t hurt her. Or at least it won’t appear like it was me.”

  And then I heard what sounded like him throwing the phone against something hard. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. Take two, and go!”

  And I knew then, exactly what he was going to do.

  He was going to make it look like Cobie had driven off the same bridge that my wife and children had died on.

  I didn’t think.

  I didn’t do anything but drive.

  I was two minutes away.

  Two minutes.

  I could make it.

  They would make it.

  It would be okay.

  It had to be okay.

  Chapter 28

  I want to live my life like a bear. Eat when I want to eat. Sleep when I want to sleep. Kill people when I want to kill people. You know, bear shit.

  -Rafe’s secret thoughts

  Rafe

  Blood was running freely from the wound on my scalp. It was running into my eyes, down my cheeks, around my nose, to my chin and then down my neck.

  I was fairly sure I had a broken collarbone, as well as a concussion.

  But I managed to drive behind Cobie and Mary’s captor, Drake.

  I’d somehow managed to stay hidden.

  I’d even managed to call for help so I could stay where I was.

  Because I sure as hell wasn’t fooling anyone—not even myself.

  I knew the moment that I got out of this car, I’d collapse onto my knees.

  I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my legs would give out, and I’d crumble to the ground in a useless heap.

  Did that stop me from getting out of the car, though?

  Hell no.

  It sure as fuck didn’t.

  It also didn’t stop me from running—or more likely limping, but I wasn’t quite sure—toward the bridge where Drake had just pushed Cobie’s car off the bridge.

  It hit the water below with a huge splash, and I vaguely watched as Cobie returned to consciousness when the jolt of the car hitting the water jarred her awake.

  I’d just reached the bridge when I heard, rather than saw, a large truck heading toward us.

  Just as I made the decision to jump, I saw a truck pass—a car on a chain directly behind it—headed straight for Drake who was now laughing.

  He’d seen me, and he saw the state he’d left me in back at Dante’s. He knew just as well as I did that I was about to make the last decision I’d probably ever make.

  I had just enough left in me to get them out. I knew I did.

  I’d make it happen.

  I would.

  Over the side of the bridge I went, hitting the water feet first.

  The cool water, a huge contrast from the humid air, washed over me, reviving me.

  I swam toward the car, which had hit the creek landing on all four wheels. It was slowly settling into the water coming up to the middle of the windows.

  I didn’t go to Cobie’s seat. I went to the back seat and started to yank on the door.

  “The locks! Unlock it!”

  Cobie’s head turned, and she hit the locks.

  The moment the door was unlocked, I yanked at the handle, pulling with everything I had to get the door open.

  It didn’t so much as budge.

  ***

  Dante

  Drake’s body didn’t even hit the pavement after the car I had attached to my truck plowed into him before I was out of the truck.

  I dove over the side of the bridge, hitting the water so hard on my stomach that it momentarily stole the breath from my lungs.

  I didn’t really notice, though, as I swam with the current toward the slowly filling car.

  I had a crowbar in my hand, so the strokes were less than elegant as I sliced through the water.

  Rafe had one foot planted in the riverbed and the other braced against the car’s doorframe as he pulled, and I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Back up.”

  Rafe, blood running into his eyes, did as I asked.

  I didn’t spare him another look as I took the crowbar to the back window.

  It broke with one swift pop.

  Glass shattered inwardly, pelting not just my baby girl with glass, but Cobie as well.

  Cobie was already in the back seat, pulling Mary free of her car seat.

  I didn’t miss the way her movements were slowing.

  Her head was bleeding, too.

  She handed me Mary, and instead of taking just her, I yanked them both out.

  Cobie came willingly, but Mary had clutched onto me with a death
grip around my throat, and I wouldn’t have been able to let her go if I tried.

  I turned away from the car and trudged through the water carrying the two—three counting our baby—most precious people in my life to the river bank.

  It was only when I was placing them on the grass that I turned and saw Rafe was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter 29

  Surely not everybody was Kung Fu fighting?

  -Cobie to Dante

  Dante

  Six hours later, they were dragging the river.

  Four hours after that, they called a halt in the search until daylight returned.

  ***

  The five men and one woman standing in front of me looked exhausted.

  As exhausted as I felt, yet here we all were.

  I was standing in the hospital corridor.

  “Daddy,” Janie pleaded. “His phone is about six miles downstream. I swear to God, he’s there.”

  Janie’s father, James, looked at his daughter with sad eyes.

  “They’ve already swept that area, Janie. He’s not there.”

  “He has to be there,” she replied stubbornly.

  I felt a cold hand slip into my own, and then Cobie wrapped herself around my body.

  She’d gone to get us some coffee and something for Mary to snack on when she woke.

  Mary was in my brother’s arms in the waiting room, and Cobie had stopped there with her spoils before finding me.

  She handed me my coffee, and I gratefully took a sip before wrapping my arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

  The last ten hours had been bad.

  So bad, in fact, that when Mary, Cobie, and the baby got checked out, I’d gotten checked out, too.

  I had been having pains in my chest. I was still not fully recovered from the rhabdomyolysis. My electrolytes were still a little out of balance, but the ER doc said the pain in my chest was likely due to the stress over the last few hours, but I was to be careful.

  Hence why I nearly choked when I tasted the decaf coffee Cobie had somehow thought she could slip by me.

  I looked down at my woman, and she batted her eyelashes at me. “They said no coffee or anything that’ll cause you undue stress for two weeks.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I didn’t.

  Instead, I turned to stare at Janie, who was now openly crying.

  “Fine,” Janie snapped, pushing away from her father. “I’ll do it myself.”

  James followed after her, leaving the four remaining men of Free standing in front of me.

  “Did you hear Drake’s confession?”

  I gritted my teeth.

  I had.

  I’d been standing in the hospital doorway as he laid out his plan—which was to have a reduced sentence for kidnapping and attempted murder—if he gave up the four men who were involved with him in this scheme to steal retired inventory from the military and resell it.

  Four men who were not only still active duty, but were also high-ranking.

  “Kind of hard to understand him through his broken jaw.”

  I looked over at Sam, who was staring at me with open appreciation.

  “I didn’t much think about it,” I told him. “I just saw him standing there, and meant to knock him into the water. I didn’t much remember that I had a car barely attached to the back of my truck until it was swinging around to cut off his exit. And by cutting off his exit, I mean it was slamming into him. He’s lucky all he got was a concussion and a broken jaw.”

  “What we do know is that the ADA—assistant district attorney—is going to give him that deal. They really want to know who exactly is behind these thefts. They didn’t just stop at guns and old inventory. They’ve stolen military secrets and intel that could lead to world war three if we’re not careful,” Max muttered, his eyes on the door down the hall where Janie and James had disappeared.

  “I don’t know…”

  A loud ‘CODE BLUE’ call sounded over the loudspeaker above our heads.

  Cobie stiffened beside me.

  “What does that mean?” I asked just as we saw a ton of doctors and nurses running into Drake’s room.

  “That’s the crash team,” Cobie murmured, her eyes on the scene down the hall. “That’s the team that comes around when a patient has either lost a pulse or is straight up dead.”

  A doctor came rushing chaotically out of the room, his white coat flapping behind him in his haste to move, and rushed through the door of the stairwell.

  The same door that Janie had pushed through a few moments earlier.

  The elevators at our sides chimed, and I turned just in time to see Rafe stumble out of the doors before they closed.

  I let go of Cobie in my haste to catch him before he fell.

  I wasn’t successful.

  Rafe fell in a heap at my feet, and I rolled him over to his back just in time to see his eyes roll back into his head.

  “Oh, fuck.”

  Cobie was down on her knees beside me, pressing her hand against his throat, and cursing all in a matter of seconds.

  “Dante, go get help!”

  I did as she’d asked, hurrying in the direction of the nurses’ station that was right past Drake’s commotion-filled room.

  But what I saw as I passed—a doctor calling Drake’s time of death—wasn’t reassuring.

  ***

  “Do they expect him to be okay?”

  I looked over to find Cobie standing beside me, but she answered the young woman’s fear-filled words with brutal honesty.

  “He had no recollection of what happened, how he got here or even his own name when the doctors asked,” Cobie replied gently. “Will he be okay? Yes. Will he regain his memory? I believe he will, eventually. For now, though? We just don’t know if when he wakes up, his memory will have returned. He has a brain bleed from the concussion of the stun grenade that went off in our house. It affected the part of his brain that controls memory. So it’s likely, at least for a while, that he won’t remember anything.”

  With that, Janie turned to go into Rafe’s room, leaving me alone in the hallway standing with Cobie.

  I dropped my head down to hers.

  “This was a bad day,” she whispered.

  It had been.

  I couldn’t even put voice to the words that churned through my brain.

  Scared. Frantic. Thankful.

  I was feeling everything all at once, and I couldn’t freakin’ breathe when I thought about it too hard.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I pulled back and looked down at my woman.

  “For what?”

  “For… not protecting her better.”

  I framed her face.

  “When I was in basic training, they gave us training on how to handle a stun grenade attack without losing all of our focus on our surroundings,” I told her. “It wasn’t easy. Even the best of soldiers became disoriented. You, my dear woman, did everything that you could’ve done under those circumstances. I don’t blame you, and I don’t blame Rafe. I blame Drake.” I blew out a breath. “I just want to put this behind us. With Drake gone, and everybody accounted for and on their way to being okay… I want to just be us. I want to enjoy my life with you. I want to be fucking over the moon and sharing the fact that our baby is the size of a fucking banana or avocado. What I don’t want to be doing is living in the past. The past is just that—the past. I’ll always be thankful for it, but it’s time for me to take a step into the future.”

  Cobie’s hand went to my face, and she pulled me down to brush a kiss against my lips.

  “I think I can do that.”

  I growled against her lips. “Good.”

  Epilogue

  I’ll do anything with you except downhill sports and butt stuff.

  -Text from Cobie to Dante

  Dante

  One year later

  “You’re pregnant?�
�

  Cobie was busy throwing up in the toilet, so she didn’t answer me.

  I just looked at the test on the counter next to where she was and shook my head. “But how?”

  “You do know how babies are made, right, D?”

  I flipped my brother off. “Yes, Travis.”

  My brother nodded. “Okay. Just checking. I didn’t want you to make this mistake again.”

  I grinned. “Believe me, this is no mistake, fucker.”

  Travis’ grin was wide as he offered me his hand. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  I took his offered hand and shook it hard, squeezing it like only a big brother could.

  “Fuck you,” Travis growled, shaking his hand out as he pulled away.

  Cobie slammed the door closed, effectively closing us both out, making Travis smirk.

  I chuckled as I pulled my hand back and wrapped my arm around Travis’ shoulders.

  “Since you’re here,” I started, leading him out into the kitchen. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Travis didn’t stop until he was picking up our son, Dante Junior, whom his big sister and his mother called Junior.

  Travis brought Junior up to his face and inhaled, just like I sometimes did, and smiled.

  “What?”

  Travis turned his face to me as he cuddled Junior to his chest.

  “Selling you my half of the business so I can start a new one, here in the Longview/Kilgore area.”

  His eyes went up in surprise, then lowered.

  “Why do you have to sell at all?” he questioned. “Why not just open another place?”

  I thought about that for a long moment then shrugged. “I guess I kind of thought you’d want something that was all yours.”

  He started shaking his head. “No. I don’t want that. Hannah and I don’t want that. We want to keep doing it like we’re doing it. I wouldn’t mind having a reason to come up here and visit more often.”

  I grinned.

  After the shit that went down with Drake at my old place, we’d never gone back.

  My mother, father, and brothers had packed up the house without our help and brought all of our belongings here, to Cobie’s place that her grandfather had left her.