Chapter 14
Rhett
Two years ago, my team was running a mission to get a U.S. ambassador’s six-year-old kid back to his family safely. He’d been kidnapped while coming home from school, his security detail killed in the confrontation, and he was being held for ransom at the kidnapper’s compound.
It was my job to lead a few guys into the place while the rest of the team, including a row of shooters stationed on top of the buildings around it, secured the site long enough for us to get him out safely.
The kid’s name was Eli. And as I snuck inside the building, careful not to kick up any of the dry dust at my feet, I’d seen a small bike leaning against the wall of the first building’s exterior. The training wheels were bent off the ground.
It was my one and only mission that directly involved saving a child.
Wobbly, I’d remembered thinking, looking at the tires, just before pushing my way inside, wondering if that bike had been set out there for him to ride.
Burn some energy.
Maybe stay quiet.
That was my first distraction.
My first clue that my head wasn’t where it should have been that day.
We found him inside, secured the building, then rushed to get him and the rest of us out alive, but it all went sideways.
SEAL team missions are known to be one part finely orchestrated action plan, detailed out within an inch of our lives, and one part total chaos.
The rest is luck.
Details hold, or don’t, and chaos either goes the wrong way or in our favor.
In this case, it was all of that and more.
I’d scooped Eli up in my arms — now totally vulnerable, having to trust my best friend Cory with both of our lives to get us out since I lacked the ability to fight anyone well while holding a six-year-old securely in my arms.
I’d told Eli to put his head down on my shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” I yelled into his ear over the sound of everything coming undone. Hoping that we could protect him from not only what was waiting for us outside, but from what he was about to see as well.
I felt his head nod against me, so small inside the crook of my neck.
And I cupped my hand over his hair, making sure that he stayed down while running through open fire as Cory pulled cover to get us out.
I trusted my team with my life and with Eli’s life, given the position we were in.
But I knew Cory was the best we had when this type of hell broke out.
Distractions waste seconds.
And wasted seconds become liabilities.
Too many liabilities, and you don’t make it out.
Distractions will kill you.
There’s no way around it.
You want as few as possible in a situation like the one we found ourselves in.
Already under fire, I threw Eli into the back of the exit vehicle we had waiting as shots rained over the SUV. Cory stood cover behind me, firing back at those who were already firing at us.
I was supposed to throw myself in after Eli, knowing the only one of us not wearing full bulletproof protection was the kid. My armored body was to be his shield when we sped off, should the vehicle’s exterior not hold up to the bullets pouring in all around us.
But I got distracted.
For one fraction of a second, I paused to take in the look of terror in the six-year-old’s eyes. The eyes that were now wide open in the backseat, despite what I’d already told him to do.
“Close your eyes,” I told him, again.
Cory was supposed to jump in right after me.
But I paused.
Long enough for me to tell Eli to keep his eyes shut.
And throw a hand over his face.
Knowing that what he was witnessing outside the windshield would change his life forever.
And then I jumped in.
One second later than I should.
But that’s all it took.
Cory was shot in that one moment.
Gone forever.
Because I hesitated.
We’d get him out of there, but there would be no saving him.
Then, with Cory down, I was shot next.
“Bailey, get back outside, now,” I tell her, pointing down the hallway where we just came in.
“Oh my God.” Her voice is shaking, feet stuck to the floor.
“Now,” I repeat.
I put an arm around her, keeping myself between her and whoever might be left inside her apartment right now, and rush us back out into the hall toward the entry.
Her place is a mess. Glass is shattered everywhere, with all the furniture slashed or overturned, lamps torn apart, and the word whore in all caps written out across her wall of windows in red block letters. I spotted a tube of lipstick tossed on the floor beneath the E before running out.
Once outside the unit, I close the door, then stand to the side of the handle. Holding the whole thing shut. I turn to see her standing near the elevator. Shaking like a leaf, staring at my hands, still holding the doorknob to her apartment shut. Her face is pale, eyes wet.
Her apartment is the only one in this hallway. A narrow top-floor wing with only one sizable apartment at the end.
If there was someone to stay in the hall with her, I’d already be going back in to sweep the place. But there’s no way I’m taking my eyes off her. The apartment can wait.
“Get flat against the wall and call the police,” I tell her, holding the doorknob firmly from the side. It’ll slow someone down if they’re still in there and have any plans to burst through the door and out into the hall with us.
I eye the elevator doors behind her.
Every entrance is a liability.
And every liability is—
“Now, Bailey.” My voice is sharp. Harsh. I know she’s scared, but it cuts through the shocked look on her face. She finally looks back at me and then flattens herself up against a wall.
“Call them,” I repeat, still holding the doorknob. “You can put it on speaker and I’ll talk if you want, but you need to call now.”
She pulls her phone out of her pocket on the side of her leggings.
“I’ve got it,” she says, quickly typing in 9-1-1. “Why would they do this? How does he know where I live?”
I keep the elevator door in my line of sight while straining to hear movement behind the door.
From what I can tell, it’s still silent in there.
My gut tells me that whoever did this has already left, but I’m not taking any chances until we have some type of backup in here.
The stairwell is out of the question, just like the elevator. Too vulnerable. Too closed-in.
Either way out would leave us more open to harm than this hallway right now. At least here, we have more ways to run, or room to fight, if this guy barges in.
Cut the risks.
Cut the liabilities.
“I need to report a break-in.” Bailey’s voice slices through the silence of the hallway. She gives her address, then turns to me while taking a few steps toward the elevator, pointing toward it. “They told me to stay on the line. Shouldn’t we go down? What if they’re still in there?”
“If we get in that elevator, they could be waiting on another floor,” I tell her.
“I’d rather be in this hall than in that tiny thing if I need to—” She sucks in a breath, and I don’t finish that thought.
I don’t need to explain what I’d do if that guy showed his face right now, because the look on her face tells me she already knows.
Wrapping an arm around herself, she glances around the empty space.
It’s so quiet that it’s eerie.
Like someone wasn’t just up here, demolishing all her things.
A cry, barely audible, breaks the silence.
“Hey, look at me,” I tell her. She shifts her gaze back to mine, eyes blinking wide, and I nod.
“Good.” People get the most hurt when they let chaos win.
Especially in situations like this. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, forcing myself to smile.
“I don’t think he’s here anymore. But remember?
It’s my job to be overkill, so I’m not taking any chances.
” Her eyes dart toward the elevator. “Stay near the wall,” I tell her, my voice is calm but firm.
“What if they’re still in there?” Her voice is nearly breathless. The phone in her hand is still shaking.
“Then I’ll handle it,” I tell her, trying to make my voice sound light, but it comes out deep and guttural.
She swallows and nods.
I look at the camera perched in the corner of the hallway. She’d asked the building manager to add it after what happened with the lipstick tube.
She begins following my eyes when a loud female voice speaks up.
Bailey holds the phone to her ear but keeps her eyes glued to mine.
“Yes, there’s damage. A lot of damage.” Her voice cracks as she presses the heel of her hand up to her forehead. “Yes, and they—” she steals a breath — “they wrote whore across my windows, so this was on purpose. Everything is cut open. My couches, everything.”
Bailey’s eyes slide down the door to the lock.
“I don’t see any damage there.”
I nod. The door looks untouched. “Looks like they picked the lock.”
If they can pick a lock, it puts Bailey at risk anywhere she goes. It also means that the empty lipstick case left on her bathroom counter before the party was likely from him, too. Something we hadn’t been able to sort out, until now.
“We’re in the hall outside my apartment.
Just me and my, um, Rhett. Rhett Monroe.
This is Bailey Jones. Can you let Officer Landsome know?
He was one of the officers helping this weekend when this guy was sending me photos and videos they’d taken of me.
It’s the same guy. It has to be.” She swallows like her mouth has gone dry, then she lowers the phone from her ear. “They said to stay on the line.”
“Good,” I tell her, wishing I could hold on to her instead of the door. If she were trying to navigate this by herself, today could have ended horribly. I don’t even want to think about it. Instead, I tighten my grip on the door. “They’re going to have him on film this time,” I tell her.
Her bottom lip quivers, and she tucks it between her teeth. Almost her whole neck has gone red, like a sunburn. She brings her free hand up and begins to rub at the spots. I don’t even think she realizes she’s doing it.
“What if you hadn’t been here?” she whispers, biting her lip when it starts to shake again. Her eyes flood, but I still see it sink in.
Because I’ve seen it. Dozens of times.
Tiny pieces are shifting inside her right now, Changing parts of her forever.
Bailey’s body will hold on to the way this moment feels, ensnaring the trauma of it like a twisted knife left inside her long after we’ve left this hallway today.
It’ll create a nasty scar, a mental one, which is harder to heal, so every time she opens the door to her own home for the rest of her life, something in her will bite back.
Spring out from the forgotten corners of her memory and terrorize her quietly.
The memory will become physical.
A nervous tic she’ll never fully let go of, or recover from.
Even when her mind tells her that she’s over it as time passes, her body will never let her forget. Trauma can do that to a person. And the fact that this guy is doing shitty things to change that innocent part of her enrages me.
“Come here,” I whisper.
The hall is nearly silent. Just the sound of her breath cutting the air.
I’ve seen this moment come at some point for all of my guys. Myself, included.
It feels like I could be back inside a low-key mission, one we’d call a success, easy, even toast later on because no one got hurt. But it’s a nightmare unfolding for her.
She slowly inches her way toward me, eyeing the door I’m still holding shut.
When she’s close enough, I take one hand off it and wrap my arm around her shoulders, nudging her in, tucking her head against my chest. She melts and presses up against me, circling her arms around my waist, leaning her cheek against the cage surrounding my heart, pounding underneath.
I hang on to her like that until her breathing becomes steadier, and we both wait to hear sirens wail down the street outside. Already trying to work out where we go next.