Page 77 of Fighting Salvation

Val shook her head. “Don’t be. You’re going to make wonderful parents.”

“I hope so.”

“I know so.”

“So, I hope we’ll see more of you and if you must, you can bring the idiot with you.”

Val punched Rafe’s arm and grinned. “Hey, don’t you start on the love of my life.”

Rafe sobered his gaze finding hers. “Is he the one, Val?”

“I think he always has been. I just took my time finding him.”

“In that case, if he makes you happy and he treats you right, I’ll curb my tongue for you.”

“Thank you, but don’t go too easy on him. He’ll think something is wrong if you don’t bust his balls a little.”

She didn’t talk like he might not come home to her because, right now, she needed to believe it was a fact. Anything else just wasn’t something she could cope with.

Chapter 23

“Hey, you alive?”

Bás rolled to his back and groaned as pain sliced through him. He looked at the rock above and everything came back to him. Sitting up gingerly, he focused through the eye that would open on the voice across the way.

“Yeah, just about.”

“You’re one crazy motherfucker, laughing like that all the way through that kicking.”

“Yeah, so I hear.”

“You’re the one they call Bás, right?”

“Yeah that’s me and you’re the guys who rescued Addie?”

“You know Addie?”

“Yeah, she married a friend of mine.” That might be stretching it, although they were kind of family now through Novem and Payton.

“She’s good people.”

“So how did you end up in here?”

Bás stood and heard his back crack and groaned as his entire body seemed to thrum with pain. He was definitely getting too old for this shit.

“We were tracking Hansen after he made the move on Addie and Payton. He caught up with us after the explosion at the facility where the girls were being kept in Leeds.”

“Was this a sanctioned op?”

“Yes and no.”

Bás grunted. “So the CIA sent you in to clean up an embarrassing mess but if you got caught, they know nothing.”

“Something like that. One of our guys got out, although we have no idea if he survived.”

“How?”

“The guards like to taunt us and take us out every few days, almost tempting us to try and escape. It’s like sport for them, but Sutton got sick of it and he dove off the cliff about a week ago. Crazy asshole probably smashed his own brains in or got eaten by sharks.”