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“I just wanted to . . .” He took a sip and set the glass on the table. I watched as he turned it round and round. “How’s everything going?”
“I’m okay.” I looked past him and then back to where Hudson was. “We’re good.” I painted a fake smile on my face.
“Good. That’s good,” he said. His voice was shaky, his smile tense. “Do you have a few minutes? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure.”
“Hailey, I need you to sit down.”
My hand automatically reached for my necklace as I collapsed into the chair. The cool metal of Vince’s and my wedding bands clashed against the heat radiating out of my palms. “No,” I whispered. “Not again. Please, God, no.” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Every worst-case scenario played out in my mind as I stood there waiting for him to tell me the bad news.
Pete reached for my hands. “This isn’t bad news, Hailey.” He squeezed my hands to bring my attention back to him. I looked into his eyes.
“We found Bacca. We got him back.” Were my ears deceiving me, or did he sound choked up?
“What? Who?” Even though he was using Vince’s call sign, the words made absolutely no sense to me.
“Vince is alive, Hailey.” His eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “We found him. He’s alive.”
Chapter 2
Vince
“Stay with us, Bacca.” Hearing my call sign was surreal. I would have thought I was dreaming if it wasn’t for the pain slicing through me. My body was a two-hundred-pound sack of potatoes, but somehow, I was floating. My arms were cement bricks hoisted in the air, my shoulders like cinder blocks. My legs were lifeless entities. I could not move.
“Please,” I whimpered, swallowing the metallic tang of blood. I wanted to cough, spit, drool—anything to get the taste out of my mouth. The desire to lay on the ground and go back to sleep tore through me.
“Don’t you give up.” The voice was loud and commanding, even over the gunfire and explosions.
Pow. Pow. Pow. Another series of shots behind us. Shouts and more gunfire. Complete chaos.
My inherent training wouldn’t kick in. There was nothing I could do to fight back.
“I got these fuckers. Keep moving.” I knew that voice, but I couldn’t place it. My body continued floating. It was hard to open my eyes. No way in hell I could keep them open. The ground was black and hazy, but I knew it was the earth. A foreign floor, nothing recognizable or familiar.
“Hailey,” I croaked out in a prayer. Blurred vision made it impossible to concentrate. It was too difficult to keep my eyes open and focused.
“Get him in,” the voice roared over the deafening whirling overhead. I surrendered to the incessant drowsiness; my lids closed as my body was pitched forward.
Every cell in my body ached—excruciating pain. Endless exhaustion. I surrendered to the darkness around me, inside me.
“Fight, goddammit. C’mon, Bacca. Fight you stubborn asshole.” That was the last thing I heard as my body started floating again.
Chapter 3
Hailey
My chest tightened and constricted so tightly. If it weren’t for the shock of hearing Pete’s words, I would have sworn it was the beginning of a heart attack. “I don’t understand.”
Pete’s sigh was bereft. “I can’t go into everything about it. But there was some chatter. We received some promising intel, and after digging into it, we put a team together.”
I scrunched my brows together. “A team?”
“A rescue mission.”
“But how? I don’t—”
“Hailey,”—Pete shook his head—“I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t.” He sighed. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. The intel was good, but until we had solid stuff to go on, I was asked to keep it under wraps. You have to understand. I didn’t want to put you through it all over again. All I can tell you is that we found him and took him to a hospital until it was safe to transfer him. He is in transport now. He should be here by morning.”
