She releases a heavy sigh into the phone. “Oh, thank God. You scared the shit out of me. The storm’s been all over the news here too.”
I hold the phone away from my head and blink at it. Did she just admit that she’d been scared? On my behalf? That little detail shouldn’t matter, but damned if I’m not all warm and tingly all of a sudden. I put the phone back up to my ear. “Can you repeat that?”
“I said, the storm’s been all over the news here too.”
“No, not that. The part before it. You know, where you said that you’re worried about me. Like a real wife and all.”
There’s a pause where I can practically see her roll her dark eyes. “Seriously? You call from training to give me crap?”
I chuckle at the exasperation in her voice. Damn. I really do miss her and her spunky ways. “You’re staying inside, right?”
There’s another brief pause. “Not exactly. I’m needed on a callout to Shenandoah National Park.”
Those are about the last words I’m expecting and my fingers tighten around the phone as if trying to crush it into pieces. The weatherman warned the storm would be one of the worst this year. “Inara, it’s going to be too dangerous. If you get hurt, then you can’t help anyone.” I grip the cell tighter while my chest flutters, the lack of control causing my head to go light. “Please, stay home.”
“Tony, you know how important this is to me. I promise, I can handle it.”
I rub my hand over my smooth scalp to try to calm myself down and when that doesn’t work, I hit my fist against the nearby wall. A woman pulling a suitcase behind her turns at the noise, then averts her eyes and picks up her speed toward the lobby. I try to keep my tone low and steady, but by the time I get to the end of my speech, it climbs again. “They’re saying it’s not even safe to drive. What do you think is gonna happen while you’re hiking through the mountains?”
Her voice rises this time. “I’m doing an important job. I know it’s dangerous, but what about your job? Yours is even more dangerous and I support you in all of it.”
“You mean the way you did when I first got the news I was leaving?” I’d told myself that her reaction that day was no big deal, but I guess some subconscious part of me has been clinging to the hurt.
She sighs again, a soft sound that I barely catch. “You’re right. I did react poorly, and I’m sorry. I was caught off guard. I’ll do better next time.”
“Well, okay. Good.” While touched by her quiet admission, and also flustered, that is so not the point! Doesn’t she understand I’m scared shitless for her? “But that still doesn’t mean you should be out there.”
“Why don’t you explain to the missing girl how you deem my life more valuable than hers?”
I lean my head against the wall and exhale. “Shit. I’m sor—”
“And you might as well tell Jim to stop calling Taya because she’s just going to say the exact same thing to him.” She hangs up before I have a chance to respond, before I can mention that I respect what she’s doing. I respect her strength, her courage, but I don’t love the risk. I don’t love that at any moment she could be called away and have to wade through dangerous settings to find someone. Aren’t there limits, though, circumstances that determine whether or not she should go out? Surely a hurricane coming is grounds for sitting this one out.
I stomp back to Jim, passing the guys seated at a table, staring at their own phones. He’s got the same irritated and worried face I must have. Jim rubs his eyes with his palms. “Let me guess, Inara’s got the same idea as Taya.”
“I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking.” My stomach aches with a sourness I can’t place. What if something happens to her and I’m not there? My mother’s face flashes across my mind. This. This is exactly what I promised myself I’d avoid. I don’t want to worry about someone else. To think about how devastated I would be if something bad happens to her. I’ve lived through that kind of pain once already. No way do I want to sign up for a second round.
Damn you, Inara.
Jim throws his hands up as he paces back and forth, his jaw ticking with each step. “I wish they would listen. And it’s not like it’s their job and they have to go.”
Bear lets out a loud snort as his giant form rises, shakes his head as if we’re too thick-headed to understand, and then walks over to the coffee station to pour a mugful. “You girls done crying into your hankies yet?”
Really? Here I’d been expecting Bear to share some kernel of wisdom, and instead, he shit-talks us? I shoot him a glare and Jim pretends to not have heard. Craiger looks up from his phone as if the show’s about to start and Trevor fakes us out by getting up, walking toward the coffee station, and just continues on down the hall. Guess he didn’t want to be a part of this discussion. I don’t blame him.
Bear sips his coffee and steps closer, raking his gaze over both Jim and me. “Support goes both ways. Learned that the hard way with Marge when Splitsville came knocking.”
Excuse me? My gaze jumps between Bear and Jim, and by Jim’s wide unblinking eyes, I’m going to guess he didn’t know this little tidbit of information either. But that can’t be true. Bear and Marge? The perfect couple that all of us aspired to be? I just can’t picture them as anything less than what they are now. They’re so close that it’s gross how close they are sometimes. I swallow and rub the back of my neck. “Had no clue.”
Bear shrugs. “Was a long time ago. We had Hayden young and Marge was barely out of high school when we found out she was pregnant. She was a Valentine’s Day baby.” Bear smiles at the mention of Hayden, which times perfectly with the front-desk clerk coming over to check the coffeepot. She returns Bear’s grin, and he gives her a polite nod that almost makes me chuckle.
“We didn’t plan for her, and I wouldn’t change that bit for anything, but we were so young. Didn’t know what we were going to do, so I did what I had to do—enlisted. And I dragged Marge around, made her move with me.” He pauses and his lips press into a thin line as he remembers.
“Must’ve been tough,” Jim says, taking a seat on the couch.
“Tough?” Bear appears to roll the word around in his head in that unhurried way of his before snickering. “That’s one way of putting it. Never once considered how a SEAL life would affect Marge. She’s so smart, always did well in school, but I didn’t even ask her how she felt about moving with me. About being at home alone with Hayden. Never asked what she had wanted to do after high school.”
I join Jim on the couch, leaning my elbows on my knees as Bear scratches his head. By the looks of it, this story isn’t something he’s comfortable sharing. While we know more about one another than our wives do, some things we just keep to ourselves.
“So, what happened?” Craiger asks.
“After a few years, the trainings and deployments took a toll and one day she told me she was accepted to a college not far from her family. She moved back home, took Hayden with her, and I kept myself busy.”
Craiger mouths a shit and I hang my head, seeing a flash of my possible future.
“Was angry for a long time. Until I missed her. Until I realized what a fool I was being, and all she had given up to be with me.” He takes a seat across from Craiger at the table, setting down his cup and facing Jim and me with a fatherly expression.
Jim grunts and I just nod. There are no words. His story is not unusual. Happens to so many of us. Marriages to those of us in Special Forces fail about ninety percent of the time. Just never figured Bear and Marge had almost become part of that statistic.
“I’ve been blathering for too long already but let me just say this. I’ve been with Marge forever, but it also took me a long time to realize that relationships take a lot of work, and a lot of compromise. It’s give-and-take.”
Jim snorts. “Yeah, well, Tony wants to give it to her but she ain’t takin’.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or punch Jim’s ugly mug, but thankfully, Bear’s booming voice saves
us both from either. “Look, you two are scared to death about what is going on back at home, but you can’t take away the one thing those women really care about. It’s not fair to them. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t pay, it helps them in some weird way. Man, those four years Marge was gone were some of the worst years of my life.” He shakes his head and then pins us both with a knowing glare. “I’m telling you this so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
Jim and I both nod. Then I pull out my phone and hit redial. I need to talk to Inara again and apologize. Instead of a ring, I get an automated message. We’re sorry, all circuits are busy. Please try your call again later.
I try two more times only to get the same greeting. The storm must be causing problems already. I slow my breathing, work on calming myself down. She’s with a group of people. She’s not alone. And while that’s what I need to keep telling myself, it’s not enough. I need something to distract me and pushing my body to the limit seems like the perfect plan. “Hitting the gym. I need to train, and then I’m getting some fucking tacos.”
Jim jumps up. “Going with you. Can’t sit here thinking about Taya alone in this storm. Not with everything that happened.”
I pin him with a semi-glare. “You know she isn’t alone. My wife is with her. And let’s face it, they aren’t sitting at home either.”
We head down the hall to the small hotel gym containing some dumbbells and a functional trainer cable machine, and I try to think of how strong Inara is, try to tell myself that she’ll be safe. But all I see is her diamond-shaped face streaked with rain.
Chapter Sixteen
Inara
The air whips my face and stings my skin. We’ve been out here for hours and my muscles are starting to exhaust themselves. The weather has turned quicker than I anticipated. Though the rain is gentle, my clothes are already heavier from the water, and I’m having difficulty keeping myself warm now that the winds have picked up.
Every moment we don’t find the missing girl means she’s one step closer to being gone for good, especially since teams have been searching for a couple of days now with no success But I can’t think like that, I can’t even consider it. So instead, I focus on my last conversation with Tony, which only makes my chest ache and doesn’t push me any closer to having a positive mental attitude. Given his entire career path, I figured he would have been a hell of a lot more understanding than he was. But I haven’t needed anyone to worry about me . . . ever. Well, maybe Bennett. But once Mami divorced him, I was back to taking care of myself since she was too busy dating. I jog to catch up to Taya ahead, but keep my eye on the ground as it’s slippery as fuck.
Taya looks over her shoulder at me. “I swear it’s as if I can hear Jim telling me I shouldn’t be out here.”
“Tony would literally swoop in, pick me up, and drag me back home if he could.” The thought of him swinging me over his shoulder, though very caveman-ish, does cause some excitement to twinge between my legs. I’d give up a lot to see that side of him. However, given how upset he was on the phone, I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance.
“How are things going with him?”
The stubborn part of me refuses to admit my husband plans to bail in nine months when we go in for our one-year meeting with the IPP committee. Taya wouldn’t judge me, but I just can’t bring myself to say it. Like if I admit it aloud, I’m only a few steps away from being the same as my mom, first divorce in the making. I grab a low-hanging branch and pull myself up the small hill. “The man drives me nuts. If he was the Tony I met last year, I’d be able to definitively say things suck. But he has this whole other side to him I never would have guessed existed, and it puts us in this gray area. One where I’m not sure what to think and it’s driving me crazy.”
Taya waves a dismissive hand in the air as she trudges through thick brush. “I went through the same crap with Jim. Took him forever to open up. But in the end, it was worth it. It’s like you told me, the whole experience is one big, ass-awkward date, except you knew who walked through your door.”
I snort. “Tell me about it.”
We finally get out of the thick brush and hike along a deer path. The rain is coming down harder, and the wind is whipping through the trees. In the distance, thunder rumbles, but we haven’t seen any lightning, so we keep going. I pull out the radio and check in with command as Taya studies the topographic map of the area.
After I tuck the radio back into my chest harness, I sidle up to Taya and glance over the map. “We’ve pretty much covered the area. Let’s double back and hang to the west a bit.”
Taya nods.
I quirk an eyebrow at her. “You know Jim and Tony must be shitting bricks that we’re out here.”
She smiles and tucks away the map. “There will be hell to pay, especially since both of them have such an innate fear of losing people they love.”
My mouth hangs open and I blink rapidly.
Taya catches my confused expression and huffs. “Let me guess, Tony hasn’t shared with you that his mom died of cancer when he was in high school.”
“What? No.”
Taya grimaces. “Figured he would’ve told you by now. Jim mentioned it to me when I was recovering. Tony had been a bit overprotective, and I thought Jim told him to be. But turns out, it was all Tony.”
I shake my head as we turn west in silence while I digest this shocking bit of information. “That sort of makes sense, because I caught him talking on the phone with his dad one day, and he was super-uncomfortable. Then he clammed up afterward.”
I keep lingering on the idea Tony has this whole life I don’t know about. I take a deep, centering breath. It’s not like I expected him to tell me everything, but I wish he would have told me this. At the end of the day, if he isn’t willing to open up to me, then I can’t force him, no matter how much it makes me ache in a way I had long forgotten was possible.
The clouds above are swirling a deeper gray, and I curse under my breath. Shenandoah National Park is huge and the more time that passes, the more concerned I become the girl won’t be found alive. My stomach twists and I clench my hands into fists. I still don’t understand how a school could leave one of their students behind. But the girl has some basic survival knowledge, according to her parents, so I hope we can find her before the storm really hits.
Bennett is the one who introduced me to camping and who sparked my interest in search and rescue. The first time we went, I’d been super-excited to spend time in nature, hoping it would be some kind of cool, spiritual experience. It definitely wasn’t. I returned home with probably a thousand mosquito bites, blisters on my toes, and very sore calves. But I fell in love with the outdoors to the point some days it is hard to convince myself not to run away and live off the grid in Alaska.
The sky lights up, and the woods vibrate with the loud crack that follows the lightning. Taya looks up and then back at me. “Shit, it’s about to come down on us.”
“We should return to the staging area. It’s becoming too dangerous to be out here.”
Taya nods and we turn to head back. After a few meters, my foot slips at one point on a too-smooth rock, but Taya catches my arm. Lightning continues to streak through the sky, and we quicken our pace. Instead of cutting back through the thick brush, we wander outside of our assigned area and hop on another deer path.
We’re only twenty feet away from the falls when I hear it. A soft whimper. At first I stop and think it might be the wind, or a bird of some kind hiding from the storm. But then I hear it again, followed by sniffling.
I whip my head around and walk in a widening circle. “Julia? Is that you?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m over here.”
At first I don’t see anyone, but then the girl emerges from a forest-green tent a couple of meters to my left.
“Taya! Taya! Over here.”
Taya runs over as thunder bursts overhead. Julia is a little sunburnt, badly bitten by mosquitos, and her lips are blistered. But she can
walk, and more important than any other detail, she’s alive. She hugs us, then pulls away and wipes her eyes. “I was so scared being out here. I tried to find my way back to a trail but couldn’t. Everything looks the same. When the storm started, I thought I’d never see my family again.”
“You’re okay. We’ve got you.” I hug her once more as Taya radios in that we found Julia and that we are heading back down.
After grabbing some of Julia’s belongings and making sure she is well enough to walk, we make our way back to the staging area. The poor girl finishes a granola bar Taya hands her in two bites. When we hit the edge of the tree line, the medical staff rushes over to Julia and takes over while Taya and I go to debrief.
To know that Julia will go home and be with her family after this experience because Taya and I and the rest of our team were willing to work hard means everything to me. When the girl gets into the ambulance and leaves, I turn to Taya and start bawling. Taya joins in immediately. With all the chaos in my life, everything with Tony and with my mom, it’s just such a relief to know I can still do good in the world.
Chapter Seventeen
Tony
These last six weeks have been grueling, but in an entirely new way. I hadn’t expected to miss Inara so much. It’s surprising how often I thought about things like holding her, lying next to her. I imagined her lips and her eyes, of course, but it was more than that. For the first time, I actually missed her being, like she’d somehow become a part of me, and I hadn’t noticed until we were actually separated.
Bear was right about search and rescue. And thankfully, the storm passed and nothing happened to her. Though I still can’t believe she was out there. I wish I could have been there to make sure she was okay, but she did it all without me—and they found the missing child. My girl is kind of a badass.
Matched (Navy Seals of Little Creek Book 2) Page 14