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That caught me off guard, but I went with it. “What kind of story? A sexy Green Beret story?”
She gave a small laugh. “Save that for later. No, about your parents.”
A tight knot formed in my chest. I breathed through it. “Okay, Jack and Gwynneth. He was an x-ray technician.”
“Medicine. You didn’t tell me.”
“No, I didn’t.” I hadn’t told her much of anything about them. That was a damn shame, because she would have liked them and they would have loved her. “I think that’s where Kerri got the idea to be a nurse. Mom was a musician. She was fronting a rock band when they met.”
“Cool. How’d they meet?”
“Dad had just finished studying and gotten his first real job, so he bought himself a motorcycle. He decided to show it off at a biker bar. Mom and her band had a gig there that night, and the rest is history.”
“She liked his bike?”
I grinned, remembering Dad telling Kerri and me the story many times when we were kids. “Hated it. And the bar. The night she met Dad was the last time her band played there. And two weeks after he met her, Dad sold the bike and bought a ring.”
“That’s fast.”
“Yeah, and probably crazy.” I took a long, slow breath as I pushed the bags forward another foot and my shoulders screamed with the effort. “He proposed on a hilltop at sunset. Mom said he never did anything half as romantic for the rest of their relationship, but we knew she didn’t care. They loved each other like crazy.”
“That’s one way to spend a two-week anniversary.”
I chuckled. “What, you don’t like the tunnel I chose for our celebration?”
She laughed. The light, confident sound of it made it easier to keep moving. That, and what might be a small sliver of light up ahead of us. As I inched forward, I said, “Red, I have to tell you two things. You ready?”
“Ready.”
“It’s about our agreement.”
“Fuck me. This is not the time to dump me, Prescott.”
“Agreed. But it might be the time to tell you I’ve reconsidered what I told you that first night we were together. About the roster. If it’s that or nothing, I’ll join the roster.”
“Oh! That’s...” She cleared her throat. “I’m...”
Maybe this had been the worst possible time to bring it up, after all. I’d wanted to distract her as we made the painful climb on the upward slope of the tunnel. More than that, though, I wanted her to know, just in case something truly awful awaited us on the other side. I hoped the sounds she was making meant she was choked up with happiness, but I’d face her reaction, whatever that was, later.
“Ready for the second thing?” I asked her.
“Um...”
“You’re going to really like the second thing.” I clicked off my headlamp to be sure, then clicked it back on. “There’s literally light at the end of the tunnel. A few more yards.”
She made a noise between a laugh and a sob and patted my ankle. “Good job, Hero.”
“You too, Red.”
Now that we had almost emerged, the comms burst back to life in our ears. The team was talking—to Bennet, to each other, to Kessler. I took a few seconds to place the voice talking to her, then realized it was Derek. I hoped they’d patched him in to boost her spirits and not because she was fading.
“Prescott and Bond here, about to exit the tunnel,” I said, and a little cheer went up.
The light was brighter now, so bright, we didn’t need our headlamps. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to it. A thin metal grill covered the exit in front of me. I gave the bags in front of me one more hard shove to push the grill aside. Seconds later, I emerged from the tunnel into a small cinderblock storeroom, turned around to help pull Red out the rest of the way, and pulled off my dirty overclothes so we could get to work.
“Never thought I’d be so happy to see your ugly mug.” Bennet still had his hands pressed over Kessler’s wound, but he was bright red, sweating, and shaking. Any minute, he would topple and lose his grip.
Stripped back down to my jeans and tee shirt, I doused my hands with Betadine and snapped on nitrile gloves. “Switching on three,” I told him. I counted down and took over the pressure as he let go.
