The days rolled by without any problems. One week turned into two before I got the call to go back to headquarters. I was glad for it. There were only so many things you could do all alone, holed up like some kind of crazy person. Had I spent any more time acting like a recluse, it might have drawn unwanted attention to my presence.
I paced the floors most days. Phone in hand, fighting the urge to call Riley, even though I promised Oliver I wouldn’t. Some days, it felt like the walls were closing in on me. Those were the worst.
I jumped right back into training once I arrived. From the time I woke up until the time I went to bed, I was put through the paces. I was so tired I’d fall asleep under the hot spray of the shower. Days blended. Time meant nothing anymore.
“Ace.” Flint snapped his fingers in front of my face.
Rolling over, I lifted my head up to look at the clock on my nightstand. “What the hell are you doing waking me up so early? It’s not even daylight,” I grumbled as my head hit the pillow with a soft thud.
“Jared’s been taken.”
“What? What happened?”
Flint filled me in as I dressed, and then we ran for command.
I fought wave after wave of panic from the time we left Cole Enterprise until we landed in the sweltering heat of Haiti in a small clearing within the jungle. A large tent had been set up with a handful of men heading in and out in a flurry of activity.
“Let’s go,” Flint said the moment our feet touched ground. I was running on fumes of sleep, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding out where Jared was and how I could get him back.
Flint barged into the tent as if he owned the place. He stopped for a second, eyes scanning for the right face, and then he directed me to a man pointing to a map. “Ace, this is Baxter. Baxter, this is Ace.”
Baxter nodded hello to me as Flint kept talking, “Latest intel puts Jared here, close to Port au Prince, but that’s all we’ve been able to come up with. The locals aren’t going to make it easy for you since you’re outsiders, but you have to do whatever you can to find him.”
My mind felt scrambled as I weeded through my thoughts and all my training. “They’re not gonna just give him up, and this area is huge. There are tons of places they can hide him.”
The hum of conversation around me buzzed in my ears, but Baxter’s voice cut through it all as he said, “First things first, change into civilian clothing. You’ll need to blend in.”
Flint followed that up by slapping a large wad of cash on the table and saying, “If all else fails, money always talks. You’ll split up into two groups. From there, start talking to the locals and see if they’ll give you anything.”
“What about you? Where will you be?” I asked, unsure of the plan.
“I’m going to check out another lead. Baxter and his team know this area really well, which is why I’m leaving you with them for right now,” Flint answered.
“You’re leaving? Just like that?” I followed him out of the tent as he made his way over to a busted-looking jeep. Why would he leave when we needed everyone we had to look for Jared?
“These guys won’t stop until we find him, Jake. And I’m not leaving you here without good reason. Grant asked me to check out another location on the other side of the island. It’s possible Robert de Fleur, the man we think is responsible for Jared’s kidnapping, is laying low in a location away from where they might be holding Jared. The minute he gets wind that people are snooping around, he’ll take off and we’ll lose our chance at taking him down.”
There wasn’t anything I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut and watched him drive off.
Baxter stuck his head outside of the tent and called for me. “We’re headed out in just a few minutes. You need to be ready to go.”
After I changed into clothing that better fit our surroundings, we split up, each going in groups of three to set out to see if we could get any leads on where Jared might be. The locals weren’t a bit of help. They wanted nothing to do with the name Robert de Fleur, or anyone asking around about him.
After two days of scouring every area we could, we weren’t anywhere closer to getting anything remotely helpful. That in itself was aggravating. Add the combination of sweltering heat, the occasional arguments that brewed up when one of the locals thought they were going to pull a fast one on us, and the fact that I didn’t speak a lick of French Creole, so I had no idea what people were saying most of the time, and it was beyond frustrating.
It was as if we’d hit a dead end. The odds of finding Jared were slipping through my fingers. I wanted to lash out at anyone and everyone who looked at me sideways. What I really wished I could do was lift the damn island over my head and shake Jared out of it.
“What the hell do we do now?” I asked Baxter as we sat at a small, outdoor cantina. “They aren’t talking, and we’ve shown our faces to enough people that if someone is watching us, we’ll never get close to where he is.”
“Did someone call in reinforcements?” Eli asked as he came up behind me, slapping me on the shoulder.
“Eli?” I blinked, wondering if I’d somehow become delusional in the heat.
“In the flesh.” He smirked.
“What… how?” The words wouldn’t come.
“Grant called me. Told me what was going on and asked if I could help,” he answered, pulling out a chair beside me. “Good to see you guys were smart enough to wear regular clothes. People around here get antsy when they see someone in camo.”
Baxter leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table, giving Eli a once over. “Grant asked you for what sort of help exactly?”
Eli lifted his hand at the bartender and ordered a beer. “Gotta blend in, homie. Otherwise, people get real antsy when you look like you have some sort of agenda. Sit back, relax, and take a breath.”
“In case you don’t know, Jared Jackson has been kidnapped. I don’t have time to sit back and relax, as you put it,” Baxter answered, scowling.
The bartender walked over and put the beer in front of Eli, giving him a quizzical look. “You’re the doctor my sister told me about at the… the camp?”
His accent was thick, but his English was at least understandable.
Eli shook his head. “Nah, I’m just a volunteer with the Red Cross. She’s probably taking about Doctor Eaton.”
The bartender nodded, taking in our group. “You take care of the people? The sick ones?”
“Yes,” Eli said, giving the man a warm smile. “As a matter of fact, we’re going to be making our rounds to the outside villages to offer medical care to those who can’t make it to us.”
“Oh?” The bartender’s face broke into a grin. “I will let my customers know. They will let the villagers know. It’s not safe in some of the places…”
Eli pulled his wallet out to pay for the beer, but the bartender waved his money away. “No, is my gift for helping the people.”
When the bartender walked away, Eli brought his beer up in a toast. “And that, gentleman, is how we’re going to check every damn house in the city. We will find him.”
Baxter leaned back in his seat. “Might work.”
Eli brought the glass up to his mouth, stopping short of drinking it to say, “Oh, it’ll work. We’ll make it work, but what the bartender said about it not being safe? He wasn’t kidding. Port Au Prince is no joke. Remember that.”
“It's that one," Eli said, wiping the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his shirt as he rounded the corner of the alley we stood in.
“For sure?” Baxter asked. “How do you know?”
“Trust me. It’s that house. They got real antsy when I started asking questions. The guy who answered the door looked like a damn drug cartel enforcer,” Eli answered.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, turning to Baxter.
“Eli, you’ll need to keep going to houses… we have to make sure you’re not linked to the extraction,” Baxter said. “Our team will scout the are
a and find a good place for us to get high enough to see over these walls.” He flicked his finger at the wall that wrapped around the property. “Once we have an idea of how many people are patrolling the property, and figure out a good entry point, we’ll move in. Hopefully, we’ll find Jared inside.”
I could tell Eli wasn’t happy about being left out of Jared’s rescue mission, but he kept it to himself as he said, “Good luck, Ace.”
“Wait up,” I called to him when he walked off.
He stopped, waiting for me to catch up.
“Thanks for helping us.”
“Jared’s my brother, just like you, Aiden, Mark, and Josh. I got your backs. Always have,” he said, squinting against the bright sunlight beating down on us. “I gotta ask though… What exactly did you get yourself into? I mean, you did go to boot camp, right?”
A trail of sweat rolled between my shoulder blades as I struggled with what to say, finally settling on, “It’s complicated, but, yes, I went to boot camp.”
Eli chuckled. “Grant wouldn’t answer me either. Must be something pretty top secret.”
I sighed. “Eli, I wish I could tell you everything, but I can’t.”
“Sworn to secrecy, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
We stood silent for a few minutes before Eli turned to me. “I hope you find him. Do you think…? Can someone call and tell me if you did?”
“I’ll make sure someone does,” I answered, clasping him on the shoulder. I wouldn’t say good-bye. It felt too final.
“Listen… if something happens and you need help, I’m five miles that way.” Aiden lifted his arm and pointed off in the distance. “Take care of yourself, Ace.”
My hand fell away from his shoulder as he turned and put his fist out, knuckles bumping with mine before he walked off, disappearing around the corner of the alley.
“Let’s get into position,” Baxter said, coming up behind me.
Chapter 4
“Extraction complete. ETA ten minutes," Baxter relayed to headquarters.
“Roger that. Standby,” a tinny-sounding voice replied.
The fear that had been lodged in my gut since I’d found out Jared was taken melted away. We’d found him, and he was safely tucked away in the second helicopter Baxter requested, along with the nurse we’d brought along with us. Our helicopter followed at a safe distance, keeping eyes on the ground for any backup needed.
It took everything in me to ignore the need to sit with my friend and ensure he was okay, but we couldn’t be too careful. I wasn’t letting my guard down until we were safely tucked away on the private plane and headed back to Chicago.
Until then, I kept my eyes on the helicopter carrying Jared to safety.
Images of what we walked into flickered in and out, dotting my forehead with sweat and rolling my stomach with nausea. He’d looked like hell, and that was saying something. Jared had always been on the thin side. He was one of those wiry kind of guys who could slip out of most any hold you put him in.
Finding him in that cell had been a shock. He’d surpassed thin and went straight for the anorexic look. Each bone, a sharp definition, was easily countable. They stood out like gaunt sticks. His eyes, always snapping with humor or anger depending on the situation, were sunken with black-grooved circles underneath them, looking like shallow bowls of death. Had we taken any longer, Jared would have died alone in a cell underground.
I wasn’t sure I would have ever been able to forgive myself.
The heat he’d been trapped in was like nothing I’d ever felt before. The air was so hot that it stole the very breath from my lungs. So heavy that it felt like breathing soup. The smell of his unwashed body and the algae growing on the concrete walls had burned a path up my nose, leaving the stench of it behind. It didn’t matter how much clean air I breathed in, the smell wouldn’t go away.
I wanted to kill every one of the men who had been in that house. Had it not been for Baxter ordering me to stand down, telling me those left alive needed to be taken in for questioning, I probably would have.
And I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
“You good?” Baxter asked, studying the side of my face as I gripped my knees.
Static crackled in my ear as the pilot shouted a warning of, “The engine’s failing. Hang on,” into the headset right before the helicopter shuddered.
Jared.
Panic flooded my system. The pilot fought to keep us from going into a spin as the nose dipped and bobbed like a cork. The panel in front of him flashed like disco lights. He shouted into his headset for us to grab what we could as his partner called it in.
There was no time to think. Only to react.
Baxter grabbed a fistful of my shirt and hauled me to the open doorway. “We have to jump!” he yelled, giving me a solid shove that sent me tumbling out of the helicopter.
The wind ripped at my clothes as I frantically clawed at the air, trying to grab for something to keep me from falling. There was nothing to stop me. Even though I knew that, I kept trying.
Above me, the sky rained metal fire. Bright, hot pieces raced to catch up with me.
I yelled for her. I felt her name rip up my throat, but the wind snatched the sound away from me. It wasn’t supposed to end like that. I needed time. I needed to see her again. We needed to grow old together and live. Fight and bicker. Get wrinkles and gray hair.
The wind shifted, spinning me head over heels in an aerial somersault. Green and blue raced past my eyes so fast they blurred.
Adrenaline kicked into overdrive.
Forcing my arms and legs out, I tried everything I could to stop the roll I’d been pulled into, catching the briefest glimpses of a thick patch of vegetation below me. I sent up a silent plea that the wind wouldn’t shift and blow me past it. Maybe, just maybe, if I was lucky, they’d be thick enough to break my fall, and I’d make it out of the jungle alive.
Branches slapped at me, breaking under my weight as I plummeted into a sea of greenery.
With arms flailing, I grabbed at everything I could to stop my fall, but the jungle was unforgiving, only putting thin branches and vines that ripped away with the weight of my descent.
Flaming pieces of the helicopter rained down around me as something hit me in the shoulder, sending me cartwheeling through the air and into a tree. White-hot pain shot down my hip as my vision wavered like the leaves above me.
I hit the ground hard, gaping like a landed fish too stunned to move. It was as if I were floating out of my own body, sure that I had broken something, but unable to feel anything but the desperate need to breathe.
As I closed my eyes, my hands gripped at my shirt, pulling at the neck so I could breathe easier. I gasped, scared for the moment the adrenaline would wear off.
The cracking sound of branches snapping sounded all around me as the debris fell through the canopy overhead. Had I been the only one to make it out of the helicopter alive? Where was Baxter? Had Jared’s helicopter exploded too? Were we under attack?
I got one good, deep breath in before rolling over, ignoring the sharp, shooting pains spiking throughout my entire body. Getting on my hands and knees, I crawled my way around jagged pieces of smoking metal. I had to get to a place where I could call Grant.
My head felt like a chisel had been taken to it as a tree wavered in front of me, turning into two images. Sluggishly, I blinked, telling myself to keep moving. If I could just make it to the trees, I could use them as support to get to my feet. If I could get to my feet, I could walk. And if I could walk, I’d get out of the jungle faster.
That was my chant. That was what kept me moving.
The bark under my hand was smooth, making it almost impossible to get a good grip. Each attempt was made worse by what felt like buckets of sweat covering my slippery palms, but I refused to give up. I had to find out if Jared made it to safety. Had to find out if Baxter and the other two men in the helicopter had made it out before it exploded.
; It took every bit of energy I had left, but I made it to my feet, wrapping my arms around the tree as I fought the spinning sensation that pulled at me with invisible fingers. Pressing my head against the tree, I took deep, even breaths.
In. Out. In. Out.
I did that until everything settled.
I steadied myself, leaving the support of the tree. Taking slow, deliberate steps, I headed in what I hoped was the direction Eli had pointed out before we’d parted ways. But standing in an ocean of green, there was no telling. Only luck.
With every step, I listened with ears practically bent toward every single sound. Listening for voices, cries for help, or the sound of civilization. Around me, birds squawked, bursting from the trees if I got too close to them. The screech of a parrot directly above me was the only warning I got before it dove from the tree and beat its wings at me, screeching again as it did a swoop around my head before flying off.
My arms, which had instinctively gone up to protect my face, shot out to my sides, pin-wheeling in an attempt to keep me upright, but it was no use. There was nothing to stop me from tumbling down a very unforgiving slope.
I came to a stop at the bottom, rolling into something that looked like mud, and managed to turn over onto my side before I vomited.
I laid my cheek along the cool earth and closed my eyes. Rest. I needed to rest.
I wasn’t sure how long I slept. It couldn’t have been too long. The lighting looked somewhat the same as it had when I’d closed my eyes. What I did know was that my body ached fiercely. My eyes were gritty and swollen. My tongue felt like a piece of cork left out in the sun to bake. With every attempt to get to my feet, my knees threatened to give out, but I fought on. I damn sure wasn’t going to allow myself to give up when I was so close to being able to get the hell out of Haiti.
I almost cried in relief when I caught sight of Eli’s base camp. Flagging down the attention of one of the volunteers, I asked for directions to Eli’s tent. She was an older woman. In her past life, she was quite possibly a damn draft horse, because before I knew it, she’d had my full body weight braced against her as she all but carried me to Eli’s tent. I waved off her attempt to help me to bed, asking if she would mind letting Eli know he had a visitor. She eyed me suspiciously when I told her I was Eli’s brother, but she agreed to get him regardless.
Relevance (The Six Series, book 2.5) Page 4