Chapter 1 #2
Her five-minute warning buzzed and vibrated on her wrist. Her timing was perfect.
As she pulled up her black flight suit from where it rested on her small hips and zipped up the front, she walked into her adjoining suite and sat in front of her open computer.
Ashlin clicked to accept his call and automatically smiled, knowing Clint’s face would appear on the screen within seconds.
Eleven o’clock on Tuesday night had become her favorite time of the week.
They had talked so often that Ashlin felt like he knew her better than her teammates, with whom she shared everything.
More than knowing his favorite color, Army drab green, she knew that he fiercely loved his family.
After spending several holidays with the Riggs family, she’d seen firsthand how much Clint cherished his brother and sister as well as his parents.
He wasn’t afraid to show them how much he cared.
Even if it had only been a few days since they’d seen each other, he would greet them with a hard hug and warm words.
Their constant banter was another way of showing true familial love.
At first, Ashlin had been a little turned off by the Riggs family’s public display of affection.
Her siblings barely acknowledged her existence.
She was the only one in the blended family.
As an oops baby, born to a mother in her early forties and a father already in his mid-fifties, all her half-siblings were in their teens when she entered the world.
Both paternal sisters resented the hell out of her because they were often forced to babysit during their every-other-weekend stays at what she later came to think of as her house.
She lived there twenty-four seven, while the other children only visited on weekends and occasional holidays.
By the time Ashlin was finished with elementary school, she’d been the flower girl in five siblings’ weddings.
In high school, she’d been a bridesmaid in two weddings, both of them second marriages.
In so many ways, she barely knew her brothers and sisters.
None of them had stayed in the vicinity of her parents’ house after graduating from high school before Ashlin had entered kindergarten.
That’s what made watching Clint’s family fascinating.
After she got over the shock of how demonstrative they all acted toward each other, more than once, she felt sorry for herself.
Was this what other families experienced?
If so, she had missed so much love growing up without close siblings.
Perhaps that was why she valued being part of Black Swan Team 2.
She was closer to the four women on her team than she had ever been to any other person her entire life.
Except now there was Clint.
As his image focused on the screen, Ashlin sucked in a breath at the vision before her. “Clint, what happened? Were you shot?” She then looked into his reddened, puffy eyes before glancing down at his bloodied utilities.
“No,” Clint sniffed, then blew his nose. “I…I wasn’t the one…”
Oh, no. It must’ve been someone on his mission last night.
He upended the bottle of beer in his hand and downed the last of it. “It was my fault,” Clint gritted through clenched teeth.
Ashlin could tell he was fighting to tamp down his emotions. He was such a strong man. He probably believed that old adage of “real men don’t cry.” That was a bunch of shit. Real men had real feelings that sometimes ran real deep.
“I wish I were there to hold you,” she admitted. She knew if the roles were reversed, he would want to be there and hold her as she cried and released all that pain. It hurt her all the way down to her soul to see this powerful man suffering so much.
Clint sucked in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. “I wish you were, too. I’d ask you to go with me to tell Javier’s wife…that…he’s gone.”
Oh, shit. Since he and his team were no longer active-duty U.S. military, there was no trained casualty assistance team. No one he could turn that responsibility over to.
“Practice on me,” she encouraged, knowing the more he said the words, the easier it would get, at least in her experience.
“I know how you feel. I lost a good friend during our first mission after going through JAFSOS.” He stared at her from eleven thousand miles away, concentrating all his attention to her story.
“We were in Central America, taking out a high-value target. While escaping, we were caught by his guards and involved in an intense firefight.” Ashley involuntarily shivered from the memory.
“Jeanette and I were covering each other as we ran away from the bad guys. It was just a fluke shot.” Her voice broke, but she could picture the entire scene once again like a slow-motion movie in her brain.
“The bullet ricocheted off the concrete block building right into her upper leg. It sliced open her femoral artery.” Ashlin swallowed hard.
“There was no way anyone could have saved her…but I tried. I had to try.”
“Oh, my little tiger, you couldn’t have saved her. Not with a shot there.”
Well, damn. Here he was trying to comfort her. She was supposed to be comforting him.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Ashlin redirected the conversation, knowing it was a secure connection.
“We were on surveillance. Everyone in the camp below was passed-out drunk.” He looked at the floor.
“We checked for lookouts. We were vigilant, with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweeps every few minutes.” He raised his eyes to look at her and pleaded, “I have no idea where the son of a bitch came from. I swear, I had just checked down the mountain behind us,” Clint sniffed.
“He came out of nowhere, sneaking up behind Javier…” He took a swig from another bottle of beer, obviously reinforcing his voice. “And cut his throat.”
“Oh, Clint. I’m so sorry.”
“I snaked over and killed the motherfucker.” There was such resolve in his voice, his justification couldn’t be denied.
“Good!” Ashlin felt joy in his success, the same way she would have if her own teammate had taken out a target. “Then what did you do?”
“I scooped up Javier and called for a chopper.” His dark blue eyes met hers. “He’d lost too much blood by the time I got him to the landing zone.” His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I couldn’t save him. I tried to…but I just couldn’t stop the bleeding.” He looked down again and wiped his eyes.
Ashlin watched his shoulders rise as he inhaled deeply and let the breath out slowly before he lifted his gaze back to hers.
He raked his fingers through his long, dark hair hanging to his shoulders.
She grinned inwardly at the flash of gold from his wedding ring.
She wore hers on a titanium chain around her neck, like Piper and many members of Team 1 had done.
It was a few seconds before Clint spoke again. “I can’t tell his wife that,” he said, moving his head slowly from side to side.
“No, you can’t,” Ashlin agreed. “But you can tell her that he was killed in action, serving honorably.” She remembered similar words from the brief training they had on being a casualty assistance call officer (CACO).
“That sounds really good.” Clint took a sip from his new beer. “What else should I say?”
Because he sounded genuinely in need, she continued, “Don’t give her any of the details you just told me.
Be short.” More details of being CACO popped into her mind.
“You have to deal with the business of death. What’s going to happen to his body?
What happens to her now? Is she living there in Ethiopia or here in the States? ”
Clint quickly answered, “They have a house here on the compound.”
Ashlin suddenly felt worse for him. He had to do this in person rather than by phone. “Do you guys have any insurance on him for situations like this?”
“Yeah.” Clint was perking up more with each suggestion. “Because we recruit from active-duty military, we offer them a little bit more than the standard US military’s Servicemember’s Group Life Insurance.”
Ashlin was quite familiar with SGLI. The military currently carried half a million dollars on her as an Air Force Captain. During her last annual review, she had changed her beneficiary to Clint.
“Good, you need to be prepared to talk to her about that.” Her smart watch started to buzz.
Damnit. Fifteen minutes had gone so fast. “I’m so sorry you lost your friend tonight.
I’d love to sit here and help you come up with the best words to tell his widow, but I need to go.
Literally. We’re heading out in just a few minutes.
” Ashlin wished she could tell Clint that she was heading to Africa, not far from Ethiopia.
But she couldn’t. Even though their conversations were encrypted end-to-end, operational security was priority one.
No one could know where the Black Swan Team was headed.
Clint’s whole demeanor changed. “I guess, then, I’ll talk to you when you’re back. Thanks for helping me through some of the shit tonight.”
“I’m glad I was here for you,” she said in all sincerity.
“Stay safe,” he recited their typical last words.
“Good luck talking with the widow.” Ashlin was afraid he was going to need it. “You stay safe, too.” As she went to sign off, she took a good look at the man she’d married. “Hey, Clint. Shower and put on some clean clothes before you go to see the new widow. You’ll scare her to death wearing that.”
He smiled. “More good advice from my lovely wife.”
Ashlin kissed her fingers and put them over the camera as she repeated, “Stay safe.”