22. Lucas
LUCAS
Wynn’s expression changed.
The warmth in her emerald eyes vanished.
“No.”
I almost smiled.
She hadn’t even heard the plan.
“You don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You offered yourself to an army.”
“I offered them a target.”
“Same thing.”
“Not remotely.”
Bullets tore through the trees behind us.
Adam fired toward the ridge.
“We can argue inside the pass.”
Wynn grabbed my vest.
“We aren’t finished.”
“No. We’re being shot at. Again.”
Boone limped past us.
“For the record, I’m on Wynn’s side.”
“No one asked you.”
“She has a gun.”
“So do you.”
“Yes, but she looks angrier.”
Russ helped the injured pilot between the rocks.
“She usually does.”
Wynn stared after them.
“You all remember me as angry?”
Hawk entered the pass carrying the enemy radio.
“We remember you married to Lucas.”
I glared at him.
“Move.”
For some reason, Wynn laughed.
I caught her hand and pulled her into the narrow opening.
Stone walls rose on both sides.
The passage twisted through the mountain before ending above a fast-moving river.
No way across.
No trail down.
A dead end.
Adam studied the cliffs.
“This is your plan?”
“I didn’t put the river there.”
“No, but you led us to it.”
“Hawk led us.”
Hawk stopped beside him.
“I followed the map.”
Boone leaned against the rock wall.
“Excellent leadership all around.”
Another volley of enemy fire struck the mouth of the pass.
Stone fragments sprayed around us.
Russ lowered the pilot behind a boulder.
“We have less than five minutes.”
“I only need three.”
“For what?” Wynn demanded.
I held up the backup tracker I’d removed from the pilot’s collar.
“They think this is still attached to him.”
Her face changed.
“You said you were giving them yourself.”
“I said we’d give them what they wanted.”
“You enjoy frightening me.”
“Not even a little.”
Adam looked between the tracker and the upper ledge.
“What’s the plan?”
“I carry the tracker east along the upper trail. They follow me while the rest of you use the old maintenance cut behind the western wall.”
“What maintenance cut?” Adam asked.
“It leads to an abandoned observation post.”
Hawk checked the map.
“Nothing is marked.”
“It was never official.”
“Whose post?” Wynn asked.
“Ours.”
Silence followed.
The Brave knew what that meant.
A covert installation.
No records.
No support if something went wrong.
“When were you here?” Adam asked.
“Eight years ago.”
Wynn flinched.
We had still been married.
I had come home from that mission with three broken ribs and a knife wound beneath my arm.
I’d told her I had been injured during training in Germany.
Another lie buried beneath classified orders.
She looked toward the scar near my side.
“Eight years ago.”
I knew exactly what she was remembering.
“Yes.”
“You said you fell during a training exercise.”
“I couldn’t tell you where I’d been.”
“You could’ve told me how badly you were hurt.”
“I told you when I came home.”
“After I spent nine days believing you were safe in Germany while you were bleeding on this mountain.”
Her voice shook.
“Wynn—”
“No.”
She stepped back.
“This is why I left.”
The words struck hard.
Not because they were cruel.
Because they were true.
Even now, after everything we had said, the past remained between us.
Love didn’t erase it.
“I know.”
Her eyes glistened.
“And now you want to disappear into those mountains again.”
“I want to get you out.”
“I don’t want out without you!”
The words echoed through the pass.
Every part of me wanted to promise I would never leave her again.
But I had spent my life making promises the battlefield didn’t always let me keep.
“I’ll do everything I can to come back.”
“You can’t promise you will.”
“No. I can’t.”
Her face crumpled.
At least the truth was better than another lie.
I caught her hands.
“But this time, I’m not leaving because the mission matters more. I’m doing it because you do.”
“How is that supposed to make it easier?”
“It isn’t.”
“Then don’t ask me to let you go.”
Her words stopped me.
Six years ago, she had asked.
And I had obeyed.
Now she was asking for the opposite.
Stay.
Choose me.
Fight for us.
I looked toward the river.
Then the ledge.
Then my team.
There had to be another way.
Hawk raised the enemy radio.
“They’re at the entrance.”
A voice shouted from beyond the rocks.
“Spencer!”
Not Wynn.
Me.
“We know you have our transmitters.”
Of course they did.
Both signals had stopped moving.
Adam had recovered the original aircraft tracker when he searched the unconscious copilot. The backup transmitter remained in my hand.
“Send your wife out,” the voice called. “And perhaps you’ll live long enough to watch us open the box.”
Wynn went pale.
Rage moved through me.
Cold.
Controlled.
Useful.
I looked at Hawk.
“Can you block both signals?”
“For how long?”
“Long enough to move them without Meridian seeing where they start.”
“Two minutes.”
Adam smiled slowly.
“That’s enough.”
Wynn looked between us.
“For what?”
I looked toward the unconscious copilot.
“They believe he still has their asset.”
“You,” Wynn said.
“They don’t know he’s down,” Adam said. “Not yet.”
I crouched and slapped the copilot across the face.
His eyes opened.
He groaned.
Then tried to move.
Russ forced him back against the rock.
“Easy.”
The man focused on me.
“You’re dead.”
“Probably.”
“Today?”
“No.”
I held up his radio.
“You’re going to tell them you have Wynn.”
He laughed weakly.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m giving you to her.”
His gaze moved toward Wynn.
She folded her arms.
“I’m extremely upset.”
Boone nodded solemnly.
“I’d cooperate.”
The copilot smiled despite the blood on his teeth.
“You won’t kill me.”
“No,” Wynn said as she stepped closer. “But I might tell Lucas you touched me again.”
The copilot’s smile disappeared.
Boone looked delighted.
“She really does fit in.”
I pressed the radio against the traitor’s chest.
“Tell them you have Wynn.”
“They’ll know I’m lying.”
“Then make it convincing.”
“And after that?”
“You’re going for a swim.”
Everyone stared at me.
Wynn was the first to understand.
“You’re sending him downriver with one tracker.”
“And an empty raft with the other.”
I held up the backup transmitter.
“We attach this one to the copilot. The aircraft tracker goes inside the raft. Hawk blocks both signals until the river carries them away from us.”
Adam finished the plan.
“Then we release the signals at different times.”
“Two moving targets,” I said. “Meridian won’t know which one has Wynn.”
“They divide their force,” Russ said.
“And we take the middle,” Boone added.
Every man looked at Hawk.
He opened the bottom section of his pack and pulled out a tightly compressed emergency raft.
Wynn stared at it.
“You’ve been carrying a raft this entire time?”
Hawk shrugged.
“I like to be prepared.”
Boone looked toward the river.
“Do you also have a waterfall detector in there?”
“No.”
“Then I feel like we’re missing something important.”
An old maintenance cut ran behind the western wall.
Invisible from the pass.
Too narrow for vehicles.
Wide enough for us.
It led directly to the observation post.
And the post had something we desperately needed.
“A buried emergency cache,” I said.
Adam looked at me.
“Weapons?”
“Ammunition. Medical supplies. Long-range communications equipment.”
“Still operational after eight years?” Hawk asked.
“The cache was sealed.”
Hawk nodded approvingly.
“Now that is prepared.”
“Can everyone reach it?” Wynn asked.
I looked toward Boone’s ankle.
The pilot’s ribs.
Hawk’s concussion.
Her injured leg.
“It’s two miles uphill.”
Boone sighed.
“I preferred the waterfall.”
Enemy footsteps echoed near the entrance.
We had seconds.
Adam made the decision.
“Do it.”
Hawk began blocking both tracking signals.
Russ and Boone removed the compressed raft from Hawk’s pack.
I looked over the edge of the ravine.
Nearly sixty feet below us, the river hammered against the rocks.
We couldn’t throw an inflated raft that far without destroying it.
“Climbing rope.”
Hawk removed a coil from his pack.
Boone glanced inside.
“Is there anything you don’t have in there?”
“Snacks.”
“Finally, a serious failure.”
Adam secured the rope around one of the steel anchor rings embedded in the rock wall. The old observation post had once used the rings to lower equipment to the river.
Before lowering the raft, Russ secured the aircraft tracker beneath one of its straps.
We attached the compressed raft to the rope and lowered it toward the narrow strip of bank below.
When it touched the ground, Hawk pulled the extended inflation lanyard.
The raft opened with a sharp hiss, its black sides expanding beside the rushing water.
Adam buckled an emergency flotation vest around the copilot and fastened the backup transmitter beneath his collar. Then he fitted the man with a climbing harness.
“You’re going down next,” I told him.
The copilot looked over the edge.
“You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
Before lowering him, I pressed his radio into his hand.
“Make the call.”
The traitor looked at Wynn.
Then at the gun in my hand.
He raised the radio.
“I have Mrs. Spencer.”
Static.
Then the calm voice answered.
“Bring her out.”
“I’m injured.”
“The Brave?”
“Contained.”
He glanced toward me.
“Spencer is dead.”
Wynn went rigid.
Even knowing it was a lie, the words hurt her.
I saw it.
The copilot saw it too.
His smile returned.
I pressed the barrel against his ribs.
It disappeared again.
“Bring the asset to the northern ridge,” the voice ordered.
The transmission ended.
Hawk checked the tablet.
“They’re moving toward the entrance.”
“Signals?” Adam asked.
“Still blocked.”
We lowered the copilot over the edge until his boots struck the narrow bank beside the raft.
Adam released the quick-detach line from above, leaving the flotation vest and climbing harness secured around the man.
The copilot looked up.
“What now?”
“Get in the river.”
“You said I’d be on the raft!”
“I lied.”
He cursed before jumping into the current.
His flotation vest inflated automatically, lifting him to the surface as the river dragged him downstream.
Russ released the raft several moments later.
The current caught it instantly.
Within seconds, both decoys disappeared around the bend with the distance growing between them.
“Release the first signal,” I said.
Hawk tapped the screen.
“The copilot is visible.”
We waited.
“Now the raft.”
The second signal appeared farther downstream.
Enemy movement shifted on the damaged tablet.
“They’re dividing,” Hawk said. “One team is moving toward the riverbank. Another is heading downstream after the raft.”
“And the entrance?” Adam asked.
“A smaller group is holding position.”
“The split worked,” Boone said.
By the time the remaining soldiers entered the pass, we were already inside the maintenance cut.
They found blood.
An abandoned medical bag.
And no one else.
The narrow trail climbed steeply between the rocks.
Adam led.
Hawk followed with the damaged tablet.
Russ helped the pilot.
Boone limped behind them.
Wynn walked beside me.
I caught her waist when her injured leg weakened.
For a moment, we stood pressed together in the darkness.
Her hands rested against my chest.
My arm circled her.
Her lips were inches from mine.
“Lucas…”
Gunfire erupted below.
The enemy had discovered the deception.
I sighed.
Wynn almost laughed.
“Still terrible timing.”
“The worst.”
I pulled her farther up the trail.
Behind us, Meridian’s soldiers flooded into the abandoned pass.
Ahead, the old observation post waited.
If the cache was still intact, we had a chance.
If it wasn’t…
I looked at Wynn.
At the woman I had loved for half my life.
The woman who had finally said she loved me too.
Failure was no longer an option.