Chapter 4
Chapter 4
“ T here you are. Cheater.”
His team member, Eliza, greeted him with a pouty frown. She’d been in petulant meltdown mode since his return from Jones’s island.
“He’s still tan,” his other team member, Logan, added.
“Guys, I couldn’t pick my team. If so, I obviously would have taken you with me. Look at you both, so pasty. The island sun would have done wonders,” Ribs said, making them frown harder.
“It’s not that you went without us,” Eliza said.
“Yes, it is. Shut up. You went to paradise without us,” Logan accused.
“It’s who you worked with,” Eliza continued undaunted, ignoring him. “Them. The others.”
“We’re all on the same side,” Ribs reminded her. There was a bit of competition between teams, and Ribs got it. Ridge’s team tended to get the high profile assignments, and they always nailed them. Ribs’s team tended to get the leftovers. (And they nailed them, but it seemed to matter less.) Since Ridge was his former team leader, he felt less competitive about it than the others who didn’t have that sort of mentor/subordinate relationship to rely on. To them, Ridge’s team was the favored chosen one while theirs all too often got the shaft.
“Tell me one thing,” Eliza pled, clasping her hands together under her chin. “Did Blue mention me?”
“You know he’s married,” Logan reminded her with a grimace. “To The Colonel’s daughter.” Quickly, his head darted side to side, the natural motion everyone did after mentioning The Colonel, as if he would hear and know and, more terrifying, suddenly show up.
Eliza grimaced. “I don’t have a crush on him. Gross. I’m a fan of his work, have been for a decade since I first learned to code. The man is legend.” She kissed her fingers and released them into the air.
“He didn’t mention you,” Ribs said. “But I’m sure he was thinking about you and feeling intimidated by all your gains lately.” He motioned to the massive wall of computers behind her.
Mollified, she turned and gave the computers a loving stare, too.
“You said gains and your name is Gaines,” Logan nodded. “You’re, like, a master of ceremonies or something. Barnum and Bailey, dropping the rhymes.”
“Are you under the impression that Barnum and Bailey were rappers?” Ribs asked.
“Weren’t they?” Logan asked, so deadpan it was hard to know if he was joking.
“Maybe we should get to work,” Ribs said, eyeing him cautiously. He and Eliza were both still firmly in their twenties and Ribs was beginning to feel like the old man in the group. It didn’t help that Jones, one of the only other bachelor holdouts in their group, had now found love. I should go on a date or something, Ribs thought but pushed it away before it could take root. Someday he’d get around to finding someone special. Until then he had a job to do.
He worked steadily for a few hours until his phone rang. He glanced down, confused to see Ridge’s name staring back at him. Ridge was a diehard texter, reserving phone conversations for earth shattering things. Maybe Maggie is pregnant again, Ribs thought. Since their baby was still a newborn, that would definitely be earth shattering.
“What’s up?” he asked, in lieu of a greeting.
There was a pause, the sort of pause that said more than words, and Ribs gripped the phone tighter, dread filling his chest. Too many years in the military and intelligence had taught him what that pause meant. He sucked a deep breath and held it.
Ridge swallowed hard and spoke, his voice a rough rasp. “It’s Shimmer.”
T here was some back and forth about who would tell Jordan. Ridge felt like he should. Their former team leader, he still felt the weight of responsibility for all of them.
Ethan thought he should, given Amelia’s strong friendship with Jordan and her kids.
In the end, everyone agreed Ribs should be the one. Early on as newbie SEALs, he and Shimmer formed their own sub-unit, a close friendship that never dimmed with time. When Jordan came along, they became a trio. The three of them were close, so close everyone agreed the news should come from him. Ribs agreed, but he had never dreaded a task more.
He left work immediately and drove straight to her house, hoping to prevent the gossip network before it reached her. Soon the other wives would start to show up with casseroles, assuming she knew because their husbands knew. The truth was she would probably be one of the last to know. For that reason it was imperative to arrive before someone well meaning texted her, alerting her before he could do it in person. And still he lingered, white knuckling his steering wheel, gritting his teeth together, pushing back the tears that clogged his throat. Now was not the time to fall apart; that could happen after he’d seen to Jordan.
With a deep breath, he forced himself to leave the car and stride toward the house. The walkway had never felt so long, the house so far away. Usually he jogged the few steps from his car to the house, anxious to get inside and see his friends and their children. Today each step was filled with leaden anxiety.
He knocked lightly, in case the baby was sleeping. Jordan must have been nearby because she opened the door and beamed at him.
“Hey, it’s the magic time of day when both kids are napping. Come in and have a cup of coffee.” She grabbed his hand, clasping it as she used it to tug him inside. She turned toward the kitchen but his feet planted in the entryway, pulling her back. She stopped short and swiveled to face him, the expression on her face slipping from amusement to confusion to horror with lightning speed. She put both hands over her mouth, shaking her head furiously as she took a step back.
He opened his mouth and took a breath.
“Don’t,” she croaked. “Don’t say it.”
If he didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be true, he got that. But denial wouldn’t change anything. “Jordy,” he said, all the misery that was in him contained in that one word and she went down, collapsing like an unsteady high rise. Her knees buckled and she would have smacked the wood if Ribs hadn’t caught her, arms reaching out and grasping her, pulling her close against him as he sank with her.
They melted into a combined puddle on the floor, she half in his lap and sobbing, great wracking sobs that shook her body so all he could do was hold on, bestow whatever strength he could. He was all that held her upright. She gave him her full weight as everything within her turned inside, trying and failing to absorb the shock.
For forty minutes they remained that way, long after his feet and legs went numb, long after his arms started to ache and her tears went dry. She had what he would call sobbing dry heaves. Her body still shook with them as a sound of unearthly pain wrenched from her throat, but the tears were gone. It must have been intensely painful, but she seemed unable to stop. Ribs didn’t say a word in all that time, merely held her and petted her and rocked her.
And then the kids woke up, first one crying and then the other. And that penetrated. Jordan sat up and shook her head as if waking from a dream. She dashed at her eyes, eyes that were dry and swollen and red, and sniffled pathetically.
“Want me to get them?” Ribs offered.
“I’ve got this,” Jordan said softly. With a shaky breath, she peeled herself off the floor and went to get her children.