by Layla Reyne
Lowering into a crouch, Nic drew her gaze and raised his hands, palms out. “I’m here to help.” He reached for the collar of his shirt and yanked it down, exposing his SEAL tattoo. “I’m a Navy SEAL captain,” he said, using one of Cam’s tricks and combining it with proof, the rank and emblem always seeming to assure people.
She relaxed a little, watching him closely.
“And my boyfriend is an FBI agent,” he added, for good measure. “He’s on his way here.” Nic was sure of it. Cam would figure it out. He was the Bureau’s best at rescuing people.
Had already rescued him.
The girl twisted, letting her knees fall to the side.
“Can I help you?” he said. “I can take that gag out of your mouth. It can’t feel good.”
She eyed him another few seconds, then nodded.
He approached slowly, checking with her every step of the way until he was by her side. He held up his hands again for her to see, then moved them toward her face, carefully, no sudden movements, until he pulled free the gag.
She coughed and sputtered, working her jaw, wincing.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Emma.”
He moved to untying her hands next, and she started to shake. “Am I gonna die?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“He keeps going back and forth. Saying he’s going to take me to the farm. Then saying he’s going to bury me in the back with her.”
Erin was here.
Oh God.
“I don’t know who her is,” Emma said. “But I don’t want to die like her.”
No, she didn’t, and Nic wouldn’t let that happen either. He finished untying her hands, wrapped the hoodie around her, then moved on to unbinding her ankles. “How long have you been down here, Emma?”
“Since yesterday.”
Which was why she hadn’t been reported as a missing person yet.
“I was cutting through the alley from the library,” she carried on between sniffles. “Ma says I shouldn’t, but I was late leaving, and—”
“I’m sure she’ll just be glad to see you.”
Harper’s voice a floor above boomed, shouting at someone, and Emma flinched, staring up at the ceiling.
Nic grasped her hand, squeezing. “We’re gonna get out of here.”
Her big brown eyes shot to him. “How?”
Straightening, Nic stood in the middle of the room and made a three-sixty turn, looking for any other exits or windows.
None.
“Have you seen him go in or out any way but the stairs?”
Emma shook her head.
He searched the table for potential weapons. Wrenches, anvils, socket. Something he could make work for an attack.
Emma moved, trying to stand, and fell back against the wall.
The thump echoed.
He brought to mind the outside of the house, having paid close attention when Harper had driven the car around back. He considered the arrangement of windows and the approximate dimensions of its footprint, then surveyed the basement again. It was smaller than the building footprint. Or at least this part of the basement was.
He stepped around the mattress, knocking gently on the wall Emma had fallen against.
Hollow, with only a few studs.
Plenty of room to go through.
“Okay, Emma, I’m going to need your help, if you’re up to it.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“This is a false wall,” he said, laying a hand on the wall in front of them. “There’s a room behind it. Maybe an exit.” He picked up the mattress, and when the waft of putrid smells assaulted his nose, he forced the rising bile down his throat. “Can you hold this upright? It’ll muffle the crash.” He patted the corner of the mattress where he wanted her to hold it. “Now when I hit it, you let go, okay?”
She nodded, standing back already, but holding it up like he asked.
He backed up as far as he could in the space, then ran full-tilt, shoulder first, at the wall. He crashed into the mattress. And through the wall.
The mattress fell to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust, and Nic landed on top of it, almost retching from the smell.
Then almost retching from the waking nightmare he’d fallen into.
The walls were covered.
In pictures of Cam’s sister.
Every inch of wall space, at least several years’ worth of pictures, highlighted by the light streaming in from above.
And beneath him, beneath the mattress, the ground wasn’t flat.
It was mounded, like a grave.
He closed his eyes, hoping to wake up in bed with Cam, hoping this was all just a nightmare that would fade in the light of day.
Light of day.
Eyes popping back open, he scrambled up and whipped around.
There was a subbasement window, definitely big enough for Emma to crawl through, and maybe even big enough—
“What’s going on down there?” Harper jiggled the lock on the basement door.
Emma burst into the tiny room and almost fell, letting out a yelp. “He’s coming,” she cried in Nic’s arms.
Nic looked around for something to use to bust through the window. Finding nothing, he hiked up a foot and thanked all that was holy that he’d slipped into Cam’s heavy-ass boots this morning. Tearing off one, then the other, he didn’t waste time or try to be quiet, heaving them through the window and opening up an escape route.
Steps were thundering down the stairs.
“Give me the sweater,” he said to Emma, hand out. “Then stand back.”
She tossed it to him and he wrapped it around his fist, using it to punch out the rest of the glass, careful not to cut his bare feet on it.
Warm summer air wafted over his face, and on it, the sound of sirens, growing louder.
“No!” Harper roared, clearly having caught on to what was happening.
“Okay, Emma, time to go.” She was both nodding and shaking her head. Not altogether convinced with this plan, but not wanting to stay here either. “The cops, my boyfriend, I can hear them coming,” Nic reassured her, as he swiped at the thin trickle of blood by his hair line. He wiped his hands off on his pants and made a brace with his hands. “You’re going to put your foot here, I’ll boost you up and out, and you run to them.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a SEAL, I’ll be fine, sweetheart,” he said, even drawling a little like Cam did, hoping to put Emma more at ease. “But I need you to get to safety. And tell my boyfriend where I am, okay?”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip.
“Okay, on the count of three.”
“No, you can’t let her go!” Harper shouted, on their level now.
Nic glanced over his shoulder, seeing the other man running toward them.
“Go, Emma! Now.”
Her eyes grew wide, seeing the bogey-man closing in on them, and she planted her foot in Nic’s hand. He heaved, tossing her through the window. Her bloody foot had just cleared the frame when a flash of metal caught the light in Nic’s periphery.
He ducked, spun, and righted himself as Harper came barreling at him again with a wrench. Nic shot up a hand, diverting the wrench Harper was trying to bring down on him, while lifting a leg and landing a kick to his stomach. Harper stumbled backward, out of the tomb, and Nic advanced.
Out in the open, he heard the thunder of footsteps overhead. As did Harper. He was trapped, and by that desperate gleam in his eye, foolish enough to think he could take Nic and use him as a hostage. Steadying himself, he gripped the wrench firmly and hurled himself at Nic. This time, with more room to maneuver, Nic grabbed his wrist, forced it out wide, and slid under his arm, before yanking it back.
The wrenc
h dropped from Harper’s hand, and Nic dropped him to the floor, knee in his back.
“Dominic!”
“Here, Boston!”
What sounded like an army barreled down the stairs, and it looked like it too, as agents and officers, led by Matt and Di, spread out around him, weapons trained on Harper.
A pair of cuffs appeared over his shoulder.
He wanted to look over it, to the dark eyes that he knew were scared and eager for him, but as soon as he did that, he was going to have to bear witness to something dying in Cam. A hope that someone you cared for deeply was still out there, alive somewhere. Nic hoped that for Victoria and Garrett. A part of Cam still hoped that for Erin, even though the bigger part of him knew it was unlikely. That bigger part was going to be proven right today. Nic wasn’t ready to bring that kind of pain down on Cam, yet.
So he stalled. He took the cuffs from Cam, snapped them around Harper’s wrists, and heaved them up to standing. He handed Harper off to Matt, and Cam yanked him into his arms.
Nic hugged him back, not a care for the agents or officers around him. Cam had said no more hiding, he seemed to mean that, and Nic didn’t want to hide either. But he did hide Cam’s view of the room behind him, grateful for the couple of extra inches he had on the other man right then. “Emma?” he asked.
“She’s safe.” Cam leaned back, wiping the cut at his hairline clean for him.
Fuck, he wanted to kiss him, then wanted to turn him around and walk out of this room. But he also wanted to bring Cam peace, and he was here, to hold him through the pain of getting there.
“Dominic, what’s wrong?”
Nic cupped the side of his face with one hand and tangled the fingers of the other with Cam’s, squeezing hard. “I found Erin.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cam stared at Nic’s slowly seeping head wound, the blood a thin trickle that Nic wiped away every few minutes. Right then, it was the only thing holding Cam together. Worrying about something small, an incidental injury easily cared for, not life threatening or life shattering, was easier than thinking about the injury that couldn’t be fixed. And the news of it he had to deliver to his family.
The hospital elevator continued to climb, and when next Nic lifted his hand, Cam intercepted it, slipping free the wad of tissues and cleaning the wound himself. “We should’ve gone by the ER to get you checked out.”
“It’s just a scratch.” Nic wrapped a hand around his, lowering it and prying the tissue from his fingers. “And you need to tell your mother, while there’s still time.”
He was right of course. They’d called Bobby from the field, and while his mother’s condition hadn’t worsened, she hadn’t woken up either. Every minute her coma stretched on, the less likely she would wake. But if some part of her was still in there, still here with them, she needed to know.
He’d promised.
“Thank you,” he said, then glanced across the cab to his friend. “Both of you.”
“Sometimes the answers hurt,” Jamie said. “But it’s better than the not knowing. Your family will see that now.”
“I hope so.” He took Erin’s necklace out of his jacket pocket. It would be as sure a sign as any to his family, if they hadn’t already realized why he’d had Bobby call them all here.
The doors opened, and Cam claimed Nic’s hand again. “No hiding,” he said, repeating his pledge from last night. “More than that, I need you.”
Nic’s blue gaze didn’t waver. “Then I’m here.”
After that, his hold didn’t waver either. Not when Jamie came to Cam’s other side, hand clasping his shoulder. Not when the three of them turned the corner and found all of Cam’s family gathered in the hallway outside his mother’s room. And not when their eyes darted first to his and Nic’s clasped hands, then to the topaz medallion hanging from his other.
The reactions were varied, and each one pummeled Cam.
Bobby’s “Oh, God,” as his wife, Josie, gathered him into her arms.
Quinn’s dark eyes glassy with tears, before he buried his face in his wife Elena’s hair, their teenage kids hugging him from the other side.
His dad lumbered toward him. “You found her?”
Cam nodded, and the next instant his father crashed into him, heaving. Hands wrenched apart, Nic stepped back beside Jamie, but still close enough Cam felt his presence. Knew they were both there for him. But it was Keith Cam needed to be there for most. Over his father’s shoulder, his younger brother stood shell-shocked, unmoving and pale.
“She’s not coming back?” Voice thin, trembling, he sounded closer to eleven, the age he’d been when Erin disappeared, than the thirty-one-year-old Marine he was today.
Cam untangled from his father, handing Ken off to a waiting Jamie, and moved to stand in front of Keith, lightly grasping his biceps. He vibrated in Cam’s hold, wrought thin by emotion, a glass on the edge of breaking.
Cam understood. A little of him had died today too when they’d opened the grave Nic had found and saw the tiny skeleton clutching the familiar medallion. The last shred of hope that maybe Erin was out there somewhere had vanished. And that same little bit of Keith, though a bigger piece for all that his big sister had meant to him, was dying too, right here in the hallway.
“I’m so sorry, brother.”
The trembling became full-on quakes, and Cam drew his brother all the way into his arms. Cam felt every hiccupping breath, every tear, every shudder, right down to his soul, which was shattering too, but he had to hold it together. He’d been the one to bring this down on them. He had to be the strong one as he delivered the news he’d so relentlessly pursued. Including to the person who’d set him on this path, if he wasn’t too late. Later, after he took care of his family, he’d fall apart in the arms of the man he trusted to hold him together.
Eventually, Keith’s tremors subsided and he quieted, breaths evening out. He pulled back, blue eyes damp, but without the daggers of long-held resentment. “I know I didn’t make it easy on you,” he said, “but thank you, for finding her.”
“Thank Nic,” Cam said, taking another step back and extending an arm toward the man with his chin ducked, clearly not wanting to draw attention to himself. But he deserved it, deserved all their gratitude for bringing peace where it’d been missing for so long. “He risked his own life to go with the culprit and find where Erin was buried.”
“Why would you do that?” Ken asked.
Nic glanced up, looking first at Ken, then at Cam, a question in his eyes that Cam answered with a nod and an outstretched hand.
No more hiding.
Nic stepped to his side, tangling their fingers together. “Because I’m in love with your son.”
There were some surprised faces, at least one very happy face, several realization-dawning faces, and then there was Bobby’s face.
Smug, no other word for it.
“Something to say?” Cam asked.
“I’ve been telling ’em this since April.”
“Our phone call, about the case?”
“When you told me about Nic working with you, there was something more in your voice. More than when you talked about your FBI partner. Or anyone else for that matter.”
He glanced around again at his family. None of the faces were angry, disgusted or what he’d feared the most, disappointed.
“He obviously loves you,” Quinn said. “And you him. As long as you’re happy, brother, that’s all we care about.”
“And Mom got to meet him too,” Keith added.
“I wish I’d told her though,” Cam said quietly, echoing his sentiment from last night.
“She’s still here.” Bobby stepped forward and wrapped him in another hug. “Go tell her. Tell her to stay. To be here to see you get married.”
Nic’s hand spasmed in his, and Cam swallowed his half c
hortle, half choke behind a “Whoa now.”
Laughter improbably rippled through the group, until his dad approached again, hand patting his cheek. His eyes were misty, and there was resignation there, mixed in with peace and hope. “And tell her if she needs to go, Erin’s waiting for her.”
Cam swallowed down the lump in his throat and blinked away the threatening tears. Just a little bit longer. With Nic by his side, he entered his mom’s room, no longer shocked by her condition, but terrified in a whole new way. He’d promised her this truth, and if she needed to move on, he had to let her, as his father had said, but he hoped to God that what he was about to tell her wouldn’t push her that direction.
“I’ll be right here,” Nic said, leaving him at the side of the bed. He took a seat in the chair, giving Cam a moment with his mother but not leaving him alone. His presence filled the room, wrapped him like a blanket, as the chill of the truth settled on his shoulders and in his gut. As he put words to that truth and had the hardest conversation he ever had with his mother.
Completely one-sided.
“I found her, Mom,” he started, then told her everything. She’d want to know. Would need to know, if she were to find Erin waiting for her. It ended on a high note, however, Cam also telling her about Nic, who stood and wrapped an arm lightly around his waist.
When he was done, goodbye and I love you said in case God forbid the worst did happen, exhaustion began to creep in and fill the void dogged determination and two decades’ worth of guilt had left behind. He leaned heavily against Nic. “I’m ready to go.”
Nic kissed his temple, then reached out a hand, lightly grasping his mother’s forearm. “I promise to take care of him, Edye.”
Tucked beneath Nic’s arm, they were halfway to the door when the heart monitor beeped off rhythm. Cam turned, expecting the worst, and found the best.
His mother’s dark eyes were open, and she was smiling, at the both of them. “’Bout time you caught a good one.”