Slade put one arm around her waist and the other on the back of her head.
“Did you kill him?” she mumbled into his skin.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
And that was that. She didn’t ask how. She didn’t ask if Slade was sure Zach was dead. She merely relaxed against him. Her entire body going lax as she lay still in his embrace.
Slade looked up at the stars as they raced toward shore, marveling at how bright and clear they seemed. He’d seen the sky from remote places before, but it had never seemed as beautiful as right at that moment.
As he held Dakota in his arms and stared upward, a shooting star flew across his line of vision. It had been ages since he’d seen one. Slade closed his eyes and wished on that star as if he were a little boy instead of a hardened former Navy SEAL.
Please let her live.
Epilogue
“Are you looking forward to our trip?” Slade asked Dakota. They were walking along the beach near his apartment. He had his arm around her waist, letting her lean on him as her knee wasn’t one hundred percent healed yet.
“More than you know,” she said, looking up at him, the love easy to see in her eyes. “I can’t believe Patrick is letting you leave so soon.”
“It’s been three months, love, it’s not that soon,” Slade protested.
She gave him a skeptical look, her eyebrows raised.
“Okay, yeah, having a homegrown terrorist working right under your nose would make anyone leery to let someone new in to take my place again, even temporarily,” Slade agreed. He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose as they resumed their walk. The physical therapist had said she needed to continue to take walks to build up the strength in her knee. She’d had surgery to repair the patellar tendon, which had torn when she’d been kicked by one of Zach’s followers.
“Who did he finally approve?”
“It’s another retired SEAL. Hurt said he will never work with another contractor who hasn’t been a SEAL ever again.” Slade shrugged. “Can’t say I blame him. Not sure he can actually control that, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Your dad okay with us taking off?”
Dakota nodded. “Yeah. He wasn’t happy with everything that happened to me, but he’s one of the strongest people I know. I’m so glad Jessyka went and got him and brought him to the hospital so he could be there with me. I know she was freaked out about Benny, but she took the time to go and get him. Your friends’ wives are amazing.”
“They are, aren’t they?” Slade asked with a small smile. “But love, you’re just as amazing.”
As he thought she’d do, she shook her head. “No, I’m nothing like them.”
Slade bought their slow stroll to a halt. “Please tell me you’re not still blaming yourself for what happened to Caroline.”
Dakota slowly shook her head. “No.” When he continued to look at her skeptically, she sighed and shrugged. “I know she doesn’t blame me, and neither does Wolf. But thinking about how pissed he must have been when he realized she was practically naked and all of Zach’s men saw her like that…I can’t help it.”
Slade took her face in his hands and kissed her briefly on the lips. “She got off much easier than you, love. Wolf got to her and she was fine. Bruised and out of it from the drugs, but fine.”
“You swear Wolf doesn’t hate me?” Dakota asked softly. “Or the other guys? I know they say they don’t, but I can’t help but think that if it wasn’t for me, she never would’ve been in that position.”
“They love you. They’re in awe of you. No one blames you. You need to let it go.”
She sighed. “I’ll try. Promise.”
“Speaking of the guys, Benny wants to know when you’re going over to his place again. His kids had such a great time with you, and you managed them all so well, I think you’re in trouble.”
“They’re great kids. I’m glad Benny is okay. I was so scared when he slumped over the table that day.”
“Zach had it well planned. They darted him through the kitchen window, then it was an easy thing to break one in the other room and enter the house. I told you how he’d decrypted my phone and listened to all my conversations. He had the code for the alarm, and punched it in while two other men took care of incapacitating you and Caroline.”
She shivered. “I’m glad I don’t remember anything after that.”
Slade thought about how Zach and his men must’ve stripped the two women, and silently agreed with her. He was glad she didn’t remember either. “You might be interested to know that I found out the Johnson house was recently sold.”
“That sucks.”
“Sucks?”
“Not that the house was sold, but that Zach killed his parents. I mean, who does that? He chopped them up and kept them in a freezer. That’s just sick.”
“Love, this was the same man who laughed about that bomb at LAX and was planning on duplicating it all over the country.”
“I know, but they were his parents. How could he do that?”
Slade kissed Dakota’s temple and continued to walk with her. “Some people are just wired wrong.”
“I guess. But saying they went on a cruise around the world was really smart. No one missed them and he was free to set up his terrorist shop right there on the beach.” She bit her lip then said, “I’m kinda glad they weren’t around to find out what a horrible person their son was.” Then Dakota looked up at Slade. “And someone bought the house? I can’t imagine living there. Talk about seeing ghosts!” she shivered.
“The city of Coronado bought it to tear it down and make it into a parking lot for the public beach nearby,” Slade told her.
“Well, whew!” Dakota pantomimed wiping sweat off her brow. But then sobered. “It’s still sad.”
“You, my love, are simply incredible. I’m in awe of you. You have compassion for everyone you meet. Not only that, but you survived something that even today the doctors are still talking about. Your body temperature was ninety-one degrees, and that’s by the time you got to the hospital. Most people lose consciousness at that point. They usually can’t reason and are extremely confused. You defied all the odds. You not only weren’t that confused, you were completely conscious and talking when we found you.”
“It was the drugs,” Dakota protested. “I have no idea how Zach knew about conscious sedation or where he got the Propofol, but it was certainly effective. I was helpless to protect myself from him, and he could’ve done whatever he wanted to me. I would’ve known he was doing it, but I couldn’t have stopped him.”
“No, love. It was you. You knew I was coming and you held on. For me.”
“That’s true,” she conceded. “Caroline told me time and time again that you guys would be coming. She swore that you’d figure out my message and were on your way.”
“She was right,” Slade said. “But be that as it may, Caroline being kidnapped again wasn’t your fault.”
Dakota sighed and rested her head on Slade’s chest, burrowing into his warm strength. “What happened to the bodies of Zach and his buddies?”
Used to her topic changes, Slade went with it. “Rex’s teammates, Phantom, Gumby, Ace, Rocco, and Bubba, secured the boats and their bodies were taken care of.”
“And?”
“And you don’t need to know anything more than that,” Slade told her.
“They’re really all dead though, right? They’re not sitting in Guantanamo Bay plotting revenge against us? You wouldn’t lie to me about that to try and make me not worry, would you?”
“They’re all dead. You have nothing to worry about,” Slade said in a hard tone. He felt Dakota’s arms squeeze him, but she didn’t move out of his embrace.
“Do you think…that storm the next morning seemed to move in out of nowhere,” she said. “It was supposed to be a beautiful day. Maybe it was a higher power cleansing the entire area, getting rid of the evil vibes that remained or something.”
“Hmmm.” Slad
e made the noncommittal noise deep in his throat.
“Whatever. I’m glad he’s gone.”
“Me too, love. And you don’t have to worry about anyone from Ansar al-Shari’a coming after you again. Tex posted a note on the same underground site Zach had been using to say that you both had been killed. The movement pretty much died after that because there wasn’t anyone around to pick up the cause. I’m not saying they won’t regroup, but if they do, it’ll probably be with a real Tunisian, not an American impersonating one.”
They walked for a while, both lost in their thoughts before Slade spoke again. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” Dakota said, looking up at him.
“Are you really okay with not going back to work? You’ve been there a long time. The school board said they’d take you back in a heartbeat if you wanted.”
She shrugged. “I know, but…it’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“Bossy,” Dakota said, but she was smiling when she did. “Slade, I’ve spent my whole life working. I quit for a valid reason, but I found that working at the A’le’Inn was a whole new kind of satisfaction. I didn’t need a degree, it wasn’t that stimulating but it was freeing. I didn’t have to worry about paperwork after my shift. Once I was done working, I was done. No meetings, no pleasing parents, no worrying about test scores or politics. I met a ton of really neat people. And I enjoyed the freedom of doing what I wanted, when I wanted.” She shrugged. “It probably makes me a bad person, but I like not working.”
“It doesn’t make you a bad person, love. It makes you human.”
“I guess.” Then she smiled up at him and put her hand on his bearded cheek. Her thumb caressed him as she said, “I hate lemons, but I love lemonade.”
Slade filed away the random fact about her, just as he had all the others he’d learned over the months. “In a box at my mom’s house is the very first uniform I ever bought when I joined the Navy. She wouldn’t let me throw it away.”
They smiled at each other for a long moment before Slade turned her in his arms and they slowly started back toward his apartment. They’d begun sharing small facts about themselves shortly after she woke up after her knee surgery and was coherent.
They both realized how little they knew about each other and set about fixing that as soon as possible. She’d learned sign language because one of the kids in her school was deaf. She’d wanted to be able to communicate directly with the child instead of going through her interpreter. If he’d known that about her, they could’ve figured out her message sooner and gotten to both women before the terrorists had left for the boats.
“If I had a choice between watching only Disney movies for the rest of my life or action/adventure, I’d choose Disney every time,” Dakota said as they walked.
“Why?”
“Because there’s always a happy ever after with Disney.”
“You wouldn’t get sick of the cartoons? Or the singing?” Slade asked, smiling.
“Nope. You know how much I love to sing in the shower.”
He did. The first time she’d been allowed to shower without the home health care nurse with her, he’d heard a god-awful noise coming from his bathroom. He’d raced upstairs and burst into the room, a knife in his hand, ready to kill whoever was hurting his woman, and had realized the screeching he’d heard was actually Dakota singing. Or trying to. They’d shared a good laugh and he’d made her promise not to scare the shit out of him like that ever again.
Surprisingly enough, as much as he’d been reluctant to rush it, their love life was amazing. Even with her recovery and bum knee, they’d found ways to be intimate. Last month, she’d finally convinced him she wasn’t in any pain and was ready to become his in every way.
He’d taken his time, learned every inch of her body with both his fingers and mouth, before slowly sinking into her hot depths. It had been an amazing experience for them both. They hadn’t rushed, had taken their time, savoring the feeling of being one for the very first time.
Tomorrow they were taking off on a three-week trip through Vegas, up to Rachel, where they were spending a whole week, then down highway ninety-five, where they’d take their time and visit every haunted hotel and mine they could find. He had a bottle of peppermint syrup already packed in his bag. It wouldn’t make her morning coffee taste like the specialty ones she liked, but it’d come close…he hoped. He’d bought one of those fancy coffee makers so she could have a cup of her favorite peppermint coffee every morning.
He’d made plans for them to stay at one of the super-expensive suites in Vegas toward the end of their trip, although Dakota didn’t know about that yet.
Slade smiled when he thought about the ring he’d bought for her. It was at the bottom of his bag, and he was going to propose to her one night when they were in Rachel. It seemed appropriate that he ask her to spend the rest of her life with him in the same place they met for the first time. He planned to propose while they lay on top of his car watching for shooting stars. He couldn’t ever look up at the night sky and not think of her.
Then he was going to see if he couldn’t convince her to marry him in Vegas on their way home. He’d already made arrangements for her dad to fly out so he could be there if she agreed. There was no way she’d want to get married without her dad present, and Slade would never ask it of her.
But he wasn’t willing to wait for anyone else. It was unfair of him, and selfish; she probably wanted the whole white-wedding-in-a-church thing, but he didn’t want to wait. He wanted his ring on her finger and his name after hers. If she wanted a big shindig, he’d give that to her when they got home. In fact, Wolf and the rest of the guys would probably demand it, but he wanted to officially make her his as soon as possible.
“I’m sad we can’t take your Harley,” Dakota told him as they reached his apartment complex.
“I know, but we’ll go out another time,” Slade reassured her. There was no way she’d be able to ride the bike for long distances with her knee still recovering. He’d bought her a brand-new Subaru Outback to replace the car Fourati’s goons had stolen from Rachel. When they’d figured out that their friend had been compromised, they’d left him there to fend for himself with the cops. It hadn’t been hard for them to steal Dakota’s Impreza since her keys were in the ignition. At least they hadn’t killed anyone in the small town.
They hadn’t had to rush after them though, because, thanks to the conversations Zach had overheard, Slade’s plan to go back to San Diego and Wolf’s house wasn’t exactly a secret.
Later that night, after Slade had made them a delicious meal of steak and veggies, they showered together and slipped into his king-size bed.
Dakota lay on top of him, naked from head to toe, and played with his beard.
“When I was out there—you know, in the ocean—I thought about us,” she told him quietly.
Slade was hard and more than ready to slip inside her hot, wet body, but he waited patiently as she worked through what she wanted to tell him.
“We’d only known each other for a short time, but I felt as if I’d known you forever.”
“You know I feel the same way. From the first time I saw your photo, I knew I had to find you.”
“Do you think…no, it’s silly.”
“What, love? Nothing you think is silly.”
“It’s just that…do you think we were lovers in a past life? That we somehow knew each other?”
Slade’s heart stopped for a beat, then continued with its regular rhythm, albeit a bit faster. He hadn’t really thought about it before, but it made sense. All his life he’d felt as if he was missing something. None of the women he’d been with had made him yearn for them as Dakota did. He’d thought he’d loved his ex-wife, but now that he’d met Dakota and realized what love really was, he realized that he’d liked Cynthia, but had never truly loved her like she deserved to be loved.
“I think anything is possible,” he told Dakota.
“There’s really no reason I should’ve survived,” she continued, oblivious to the impact her words were having on the man lying under her. “I mean, with the beating, the drugs he gave me, being able to escape the boat without Zach knowing, and then being so cold…it’s just not feasible I was that lucky. You know what I think?” she asked softly, leaning down and kissing Slade on the lips.
“What, love?”
“I think we were meant to be together. And even though it took us forever to find each other, whoever is in charge of souls decided we were gypped and it wasn’t fair to break us up so soon. We’d found each other, but didn’t have time to truly enjoy it. So we got a break, a second chance.”
Slade was quiet as he considered her words.
“I told you it was silly,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose. “Don’t listen to me.”
“It wasn’t silly,” Slade insisted. “I’ve had some close calls in my career. Times when I knew I should’ve been killed, but somehow wasn’t. I was sitting right next to Tex when that IED hit. He lost his leg, and I came out with not even a scratch. I never understood why. Until now. It’s because I hadn’t met you.”
“Slade,” Dakota whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
It was his turn to frame her face with his hands now. “Call it God, call it the keeper of the souls, call it whatever you want. But I’ll believe until we’re old and gray that it’s Fate. We were meant to find each other. Meant to spend our lives together. And you know what else?”
“What?” she asked.
“I think we’ll find each other in our next lives too. And the next, and the next. A love like ours can’t be confined to only one lifetime.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so,” he countered. And with that he kissed her. A long kiss that quickly turned carnal. Slade carefully flipped them until Dakota was under him. Her legs spread and his hips notched into hers. One hand went from her face, down her body, stopping to play with her nipples along the way. When they both needed to take a breath, he moved his lips from her mouth down to her chest.
Protecting Dakota: SEAL of Protection, Book 10 Page 22