Chapter 28
The words package secure had been sitting inside Glenna’s chest for twenty-three minutes, and somehow they still hadn’t found their way into any part of her body that understood what they meant.
Remi had turned from the bank of monitors the second the transmission came through, his headphones shoved halfway off one ear and something dangerously close to relief breaking through the hard concentration on his face.
“They have her, Glenna. Zorro has her.” Jorja had been beside her before her knees finished trying to give out, one arm locking around her waist while the other woman repeated the words until they almost sounded real.
Kelsey was alive. Tyrone had her. The team was moving. The targets had been eliminated. They were coming home.
Coming home. It should have been enough to let her breathe…
but it wasn’t. So here she was standing at the edge of the compound’s parking area with her arms wrapped around herself so tightly her fingers had gone numb.
She stared down the driveway toward where the gates were just around that corner.
She’d refused Jorja’s suggestion that she wait inside.
Then she’d refused Serena’s offer of coffee, Chari’s offer of a sweater, and Petra’s quiet attempt to steer her toward one of the benches beneath the old stone archway.
She couldn’t sit down. Sitting implied patience, and she had used up every freaking scrap of patience she possessed somewhere between watching her daughter disappear through those gates and being told Tyrone had her back.
She checked the time again. Four twenty-seven. Dawn was a little bit off, but it couldn’t come soon enough.
If she’s there, I’ll have her back in your arms before dawn.
Tyrone had promised her. She glanced up at the sky, watching for the light streaks that would indicate dawn’s arrival, and pressed her fist against her mouth and stared harder at the gates.
“Breathe.”
She didn’t look at Jorja. How did they expect her to react? She was about two seconds away from losing her mind. All. Of. It.
“I am breathing.”
“Barely.”
“I’m doing enough to stay conscious.” That would have to be enough, because at this point, it was all she had to give.
“That’ll do for now.”
The quiet acceptance in Jorja’s voice nearly broke something Glenna was fighting desperately to hold together, and she blinked until the pressure behind her eyes eased enough that she could see again.
She couldn’t fall apart yet. Not when Kelsey was going to come through those gates scared, exhausted, and needing Mommy to be something stronger than a trembling mess who couldn’t even remember the correct sequence of inhale/exhale needed to breathe properly.
She could fall apart later, when Kelsey was safely asleep in her bed.
After she’d counted every finger and toe, checked every inch of her, tucked blankets around her shoulders, and heard her breathe for long enough to convince herself nobody was going to take her again.
Then, and only then, could she lose her fucking mind.
Every time the low rumble of a car driving by carried up from the road beyond the walls, she alternated between almost stopping breathing entirely and jumping straight out of her skin.
Where are you?
Jorja cocked her head to one side. “That’s them.” She grabbed her arm, stopping her before she got more than two steps down the drive. “Wait, they’ll come to us.”
Everything happened too slowly and too fast at the same time, her mind catching on stupid details because looking directly at the possibility of having her daughter back again was suddenly too much to comprehend.
Mud streaked the side of the first truck. One headlight on the second had a crack across the corner.
Her hands flew to her mouth when the rear door of the first truck opened, and Tyrone stepped out with Kelsey wrapped around him. The sound that ripped from the depths of her soul didn’t feel human.
“Kelsey!”
Her daughter’s head snapped up from Tyrone’s shoulder, and for one impossibly long second their eyes met across the courtyard.
“Mommy!”
She didn’t remember deciding to move. One moment she was standing beside Jorja, and the next her shoes were slipping against gravel as she flew toward them with tears blinding her and her heart trying to punch its way through her ribs.
Tyrone barely had time to turn before she collided with them, and suddenly Kelsey was right here, sobbing against her, one little arm coming away from Tyrone’s neck long enough to lock around Glenna.
“Oh, baby. Oh, my baby.” Glenna buried her face against Kelsey’s hair and breathed her in. “Mommy’s here. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“Mommy.” Kelsey sobbed so hard, Glenna’s heart shattered. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”
“I know. I know, sweetheart.” She tried to take her, but Kelsey wouldn’t let go of Tyrone.
For half a second, confusion cut through the relief, then Glenna saw the white-knuckled fist wrapped into the shoulder strap of his plate carrier and understood.
Her daughter was home; she was terrified, and Uncle Zorro had been the person who found her and saved her yet again.
“Okay.” She wrapped herself around both of them instead. “Okay, baby. You don’t have to let go.”
Tyrone’s arm tightened around Kelsey while his other hand came up and settled against the back of Glenna’s neck. “I promised you,” he murmured. “I just about made it.”
The words destroyed what little control she had left. Glenna pressed her forehead against his chest because she couldn’t look at him without completely coming apart. “You brought her back.”
“She’s ours. I’ll always go for her if she needs me.” His face was smeared with dirt, exhaustion carved into every hard line, but his eyes were locked on hers with a certainty she felt all the way to her bones.
Before either of them could say anything else, a small, indignant noise came from somewhere between them.
“Mew.”
Glenna froze and watched as Tyrone closed his eyes. “What is that?”
Kelsey sniffed loudly.
“Mew.”
Glenna leaned back far enough to look down. A tiny orange head poked out between Kelsey’s sweatshirt and Tyrone’s plate carrier. For several seconds, she could only stare.
“What is that?”
“My kitty.”
Of course it is.
Tyrone opened his eyes and looked at her with the exhausted resignation of a man who knew this was the argument he had absolutely no chance of winning. “Before you say anything, she was holding it when I found her.”
“I saved him,” Kelsey whispered.
Glenna looked at her daughter. She took in the dirt on her cheeks and the tear tracks from the corners of her eyes and knew she would figure out a way to make it happen.
“You scared ten years off my life for that cat.”
Kelsey’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”
Shit.
“No, no, baby.” Glenna kissed her forehead quickly. “I’m not mad. Scared and mad aren’t the same thing.”
“I opened the gate.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I wasn’t s’posed to.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Kelsey stared down at the kitten. “He was gonna get lost.”
Glenna closed her eyes for a second, because of course a kitten getting lost was important to a six-year-old. Of course her daughter had risked everything because something smaller than her needed help. She looked up at Tyrone, who was very deliberately not saying a word. “Don’t.”
His eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t say dang thing.”
“You’re thinking it.”
“Absolutely.”
A rough laugh escaped her, tangled so thoroughly with a sob she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
Behind Tyrone, doors opened, and boots hit gravel as the rest of the team climbed out.
Colt appeared first, then Levi, Marco, Mojo, Talon with Zombie tucked close to his side, and finally Gunnar.
Every single one of them looked tired, dirty, and completely fucking beautiful to Glenna because they had hunted for her daughter in the darkness of the underbelly of a world filled with horrible people, and every one of them had come back in one piece.
Kelsey lifted her head. “Zombie.”
The Malinois’s ears flicked toward her voice, but Talon kept him under control instead of letting him charge across the courtyard. “He came to get you too, Trouble.”
Kelsey gave him a watery little smile. “He’s the goodest boy.”
“That he is.” Talon tugged lightly on one of Kelsey’s curls. “That he is.”
Gunnar stopped a few feet away and looked from Kelsey to the kitten, and his expression twisted into a scowl. “No.”
Jorja appeared beside him. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“We already have cats.”
Kelsey tightened her arm around the kitten.
Tyrone’s arm tightened around Glenna as he looked over Kelsey’s head at Gunnar. “Choose your next words very fucking carefully, Grizzly.”
Colt snorted.
Gunnar stared at all of them, apparently realizing there was not a single ally available to him, and muttered something under his breath that Glenna was fairly sure included the words fucking zoo.
Kelsey’s little head lifted. “Can I keep him, Mommy?”
Glenna looked from the kitten to the gates, then back at the child she had nearly lost because of the furry little bastard.
There should probably have been a conversation.
There should definitely have been rules.
Maybe even vaccinations and whatever paperwork was needed to take an Italian kitten anywhere.
But she figured someone here could help her figure that stuff out another day.
“Yeah, baby. You can keep him.”
Kelsey burst into tears again.
Tyrone looked at Glenna. “You sure?”
“No. But if anyone in this compound thinks I’m taking that cat away from her after today, they can go fuck themselves.”
“That’s my girl.”
Glenna’s heart stumbled at the endearment, but she had to ignore it for now, because there was only so much she could handle today.
“Inside,” Gunnar ordered, apparently deciding cats were no longer his problem. “Everybody gets cleaned up. Debrief. Then we can chill.”