by Jo Chambliss
“Turn around and walk!” Rachel commands. Putting my hands in the air, I do as she says.
As we move through the house, I can feel the barrel of the gun pressing against my spine. In my mind, I run through all the Krav Maga training I’ve completed to make sure I’m ready. Not that I really believe it’s necessary. Easily, a thousand times, I’ve practiced this maneuver, but this will be the first time my life depends on it.
The sun hits my as soon as I’ve cleared the open garage bay, and I take a deep breath. Now or never, Fish.
Time seems to slow as I spin right as fast as humanly possible. I anticipate her reflexively pulling the trigger and can only hope that I’m fast enough to clear the trajectory of the bullet.
I hear the shot but continue my spin, using one hand to grab her forearm and the other to grab the slide of the gun.
A super-fast twist forces Rachel to her knees and wrenches the gun from her hand. Pointing the pistol at her head, I yell, “Get on the fucking ground!”
Her eyes are filled with hate and defiance, but she complies. Dropping my shin across her back, I pull my keys from my pocket and untie the paracord keychain. Once she’s hog-tied, I unload the weapon and place it on the seat of the truck.
It takes a moment for my heart rate to slow down before I can step back and close the door to the truck. God, I hope I never have to do that again.
Keeping Rachel within sight of me, I step back into the garage and pick up the landline phone to call the police.
When I finally hear the approaching sirens, I take out my wallet and place it on the hood of my truck, open to my ID, and put my hands in the air.
It doesn’t take long for the cavalry to arrive. Hearing footfalls on the concrete, I call out, “Back here, officers!”
The first cop peers around the corner of the house. Seeing Rachel tied up and me with my hands in plain sight, he advances with his gun trained on me. Rachel begins squirming. “Officer, please help me. This psycho tied me up. Please, don’t let him hurt me.”
Ignoring the crazy woman on the ground, the cop approaches me. “Are you Hill?”
“I am.”
“I’m going to need to cuff you until I can verify a few things, Lieutenant.”
“Understood.”
“Turn around and put your hands on the hood of the truck.”
I obey the command and stand absolutely still. “Pocket knife right front. Keys left front. Knife right ankle.”
“Thanks,” he says. He removes those things and frisks the rest of me. “Where’s the gun?”
“Unloaded on the front seat of the truck. You’ll have to unlock the door.”
Two more officers approach and head toward the house.
“My family is hiding in the master bedroom. Tell them that Fish sent you, and they’ll come out.”
This entire time, Rachel has been yelling and screaming on the ground. Before too long, a fourth cop puts cuffs on Rachel’s wrists and unties the paracord.
When she realizes she’s being led to a squad car, her victim act ends, and she starts fighting against the officer holding her arm.
The officer with me gets a call and steps away for a moment. When he returns to me, he removes the cuffs. “My captain says that he checked on the claim of Ms. Castle about the kidnapping. Richmond police were able to confirm it pretty quickly with footage from the nursing home. It seems yours wasn’t the first call to come in.”
The officer and I both look at the bullet hole in the side of my truck. “Not my best day,” I tell him.
He’s dead serious when he says, “I’d say that it was.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You got bullet holes in your shirt instead of your back.”
My hand flies to my back, and sure enough, there are two holes where the bullet went in and out of my shirt as I spun away from Rachel’s aim. Feeling a little lightheaded at just how close I came to leaving Willa, I bend down and take a few deep breaths. “That’s why I brought this shit out here.” Straightening again, I gesture inside the house and add, “Better me than them.”
“Speaking of them…”
Willa comes rushing out of the garage holding Ari, and I run to meet them, wrapping my arms around them both.
Epilogue
Two months later
Willa
The sun is just beginning to set behind me as I stare at the breaking waves of the Atlantic. From a lounger on the back deck of Bandaid’s beach house, I watch as the sun paints pink and orange the few remaining clouds in the sky.
Today has been the perfect day.
I’d hate to see it come to an end, except for one thing. Threading my fingers with Chris’s, I turn my head just enough to brush a kiss on his jaw. He reaches for my chin with his other hand and holds my face while he leans down to kiss me tenderly.
All too soon, he releases me and smiles. “Is that what you needed, Mrs. Hill?”
Dreamily, I answer, “Not quite, but I’ll call that a good start.”
With a laugh, he drapes his arm between my breasts to draw lazy circles on my waist as I snuggle back against him.
We lie there on the lounger, me sitting between his legs and leaning against his chest. All around us, our family and friends are having a great time just being together after a day filled with beautiful forevers.
On the beach, Ari is building a sandcastle with Skin and Ink. Hawk, Judge, Wrench, and Commander O’Reilly are playing volleyball. Chris’s father, Bandaid, and Devil are doing some fishing from the shore. Sitting at the table on the deck, sipping lemonade are Mrs. O’Reilly and Chris’s mother.
Yep. Today has been the best day of my life.
This afternoon at twelve-forty-five, Chris’s whole team, his parents, and the commander and his wife stood with us in family court as the judge performed two ceremonies.
In the beginning, Devil walked Ari into the courtroom and led her to stand in front of Chris. Ari didn’t know why we were in the strange room, but because all her SEAL uncles were there, she didn’t really care.
Chris dropped to one knee before Ari as he did in the hospital. “Ari, do you remember the night we met?”
“Yes, sir. That’s when you crashed your motorcycle and saved me and Mama from the bad man.”
“That’s right. There’s something else that happened that night that I never talked to you about.”
With wide eyes, she leaned forward and whispered, “What?”
“That night in the middle of the road, you saved me too.”
Ari’s eyes got even wider, and she stared at Chris in shock. “I did?”
He nodded at her. “You did. By promising to hold my hand while Dr. Miller stitched me up, by sharing your blanket with me in the hospital, and by trusting me when you were scared. You gave me the best gift anyone has ever given me.”
He took her tiny hand in his, and I began to cry. “I’d like to give something back to you if it’s all right. Ari, would you let me be your daddy? I promise to always protect you when you need protecting, give you hugs when you’re scared, teach you how to cook all the things you like, and help you grow up to be an intelligent, strong, and wonderful young lady. If you want, your last name can even be like mine.”
With tears in her eyes, she jumps into his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck. It’s hard to tear my eyes away from the two most important people in my life, but I do so and look around the room to our other family. Chris’s mother is dabbing a tissue to her face. The men in the room are trying to be a little more subtle about dealing with their own misty eyes.
The judge calls out to Ari to get her attention. “Young lady.”
Chris stands and turns around to face the bench. He lifts her face from his neck, and she looks at the judge. “Ariel, do you want Chris to be your daddy?”
Ari looks over at me, then to Chris, and finally back to the judge. “Will he be my daddy for a little while or forever?”
“This is permanent, forever.”
The judge bangs his gavel and signs the paperwork making it official. After that, he announces to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you father and daughter, Christopher James Hill and Ariel Reese Hill.”
Ari grabs Chris’s cheeks and looks him in the eye. “I love you, daddy.”
“I love you too, Tadpole.”
Ari wiggles down to the floor and jumps around in celebration. “Can we go get ice cream now?”
At her question, Chris bends down and whispers in her ear. She covers her mouth and giggles, thinking she’s being let in on a big secret.
The whole room laughs, including the judge, because they all know what’s coming. With a conspiratorial grin, Ari struts over to me and takes my hand. “Mama, my daddy would like to marry you. What do you say?”
The group explodes in laughter again at her choice of words. Trying to keep a serious face, I bend down and confer with her, “Well, if you think it’s a good idea…”
“I think it’s the best idea ever,” she interrupts.
Chris
Watching Ari break the news of my proposal to Willa was the highlight of the day. Everyone else already knew it was happening, but in order for the adoption to be a surprise to Ari, everything had to be a surprise.
After Willa agreed with Ari’s suggestion to marry me, the judge performed the ceremony with Devil by my side and Ari standing with her mother.
She took her job as Willa’s maid of honor seriously, especially when Willa told her it was her job to hold my wedding band.
Ari loved every bit of both ceremonies until time for me to kiss the bride. She covered her eyes and made a disgusted sound.
One of the best parts of the day came after the wedding when I introduced Ari to her brand-new grandparents. For the longest time, Ari just stood there and looked at them in wonder. “My friend Julie has a Mimi and Pop. Is that what you are?”
“Is that what you want to call us?” my mom asked her.
My daughter brought her hand up to her chin to tap on her cheek. “Hmm. I’m going to have to think about that for a while. I’ll get back to you.”
That was the instant that my parents fell in love with the little girl.
For the rest of the afternoon, Ari would get an idea of names and run up to them to get feedback. I think somewhere along the way, they all decided on Nana and Pop.
It didn’t take long to find out what kind of grandparents my folks would be. Yeah, one look at Ari and my father together, and I realized that I’d better watch out for those two. Instant partners in crime, those two are trouble waiting for a place to happen.
Later, after the intimate reception at Bandaid’s beach house, everyone changed for an afternoon in the sun.
As I watched Willa dancing with Ari on the sun deck, I thought of all the steps we took to get here. We traveled a rough road, but I wouldn’t change one mile. Every step we’ve taken since has been better than the last.
I bend down to kiss my wife again and lean back, thinking of the day I proposed for real. It was a month ago. Devil and Bandaid came over to babysit Ari while I took her mother out for dinner.
The meal was a picnic in the lantern room of the Cape Henry Lighthouse. Afterward, we simply stood on the observation deck looking out over the ocean.
I stood behind her, looking out over the water as she leaned against the stone barrier. Just like that night in the kitchen, she pressed her body back against mine. “Chris, love me.”
There were people below us on the beach, but we were safe from being seen by them. I reached down to touch her and found that she wasn’t wearing panties and was already soaked. While stroking her sensitive flesh, I pressed my lips to her ear. “They can’t see us, but they can hear us.”
“I can be quiet,” she whispered.
Willa braced her hands against the railing, and I released my straining dick from my pants. Lifting her dress just enough, I pressed inside her slowly. Willa sighed long and low, and I placed my hands outside hers on the rail while thrusting unhurriedly.
That’s when I started talking about our unlikely beginning and time together since then.
In and out, in and out.
“I love you, Willa. More than I ever thought possible.”
In and out, in and out.
I recited the same words I said to her hanging on the side of that mountain, the day I almost lost her. Words that I hadn’t realized I’d said and would never have remembered if Devil hadn’t written them down as soon as we got back to the ranch house.
“Willa, I can’t imagine being without you now or ever again. You have become my world, my everything. If you promise to hold on, I promise to never let go.”
Pulling my right hand from the railing, I continued thrusting as I removed a small box from my pocket.
In and out.
“Willa, will you be my wife?”
A single tear tracks down her face, even as her head is thrown back in ecstasy.
In and out.
“Yes, Chris. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
I pulled her left hand from the railing and slipped the ring on her finger. The instant I did, her body soared on a powerful orgasm, and she called out for me. My release followed closely behind hers, and I growled out her name.
We stood there for a long time in that position, me spilling my seed inside her and gripping her tightly.
Now, I’m married to her, and after the best day of my life, I hold my wife close to me in the fading sunset while all of our family and friends gather on the deck to celebrate with us.
My wife, my daughter, and me.
Devil
This has been one hell of a day. My best friend became a husband and a father, almost in the same breath.
I love Fish like a brother, Willa like a sister, and Ari like my own daughter. Of all the people I know, those girls deserve the best possible life, and I can guarantee that Fish would give his life to make sure they get it.
Not all of us will get that kind of chance, particularly bastards like me.
No, I had my chance. I fucked up the only good thing I ever had outside my job as a SEAL.
As I’m driving home to my empty house after all the celebrating is over, I think back to the look on Ari’s face when Chris, down on one knee, asked if he could be her daddy.
What should have been one of the most beautiful moments a person could ever witness, instead hit me like a freight train. All at once, I was standing in the middle of the street looking into an empty bedroom. She was gone, and the letter I held in my hand burned like fire into my fingers, up my arm, and into my chest, destroying my heart.
On days like this, before I joined The Team, when the hurt was too much, I used to drink myself stupid. That nonsense lasted about three months. Then the Navy called.
These days, there’s only one thing I can do to ease the pain crushing my chest. The only thing that’s worked for the last eleven years.
I go home, pull out the old box from my closet, and sit down at the table with paper and pen.
Dear Son or Daughter…
###
Find out if Devil gets another shot with an angel in the next thriller in the Waterproof series, Flameproof.
Other books by Jo
Ranger Mine series
Get to know the Group of Army Rangers that make up Pantera Security
Remember Me
Forget Me
Lose Me
Find Me
Coming up next in the Waterproof series
Flameproof
Crashproof
Bulletproof
Escapeproof
Soundproof
Leakproof
Fadeproof
Acknowledgments
As soon as I was old enough to read, my endless list of curious questions was always met with the same response, “That sounds like something interesting for you to research.”
&n
bsp; I didn’t appreciate it much as a child when my mother said that to me, but looking back, I’m glad she did.
Throughout college, my career, and eventually researching for my books, I’ve had many opportunities to quit when answers weren’t readily available.
My mother’s gentle prodding in my childhood instilled in me determination and a confidence that I will always find the answer as long as I don’t give up.
Thanks, mom.
To my editor, Rose Lipscomb of Flawless Fiction. I cringe sometimes when I see the bonehead mistakes that you’ve had to correct in my work. Still, you’re always encouraging and gently teaching in order to make me a better writer. I can’t imagine working with anyone else.
About the Author
When she’s not writing her next best-selling novel (first… that would be first), Jo keeps her skills sharp as a fabulous custom home and interior designer (building codes geek).
Living in the sunny and warm Southeast with her husband and two charming children (charming, right. Might want to dial that back a bit), she enjoys maintaining her home’s beautiful garden (ha… um, no).
Being a locally famous (I wish) graphic artist, she often delights her tens of thousands (did you even look at my insta page?) of Instagram followers with her clever wit (clever wit? Really?).
Ahem… Hi, I’m Jo. I write books because I like to. I think they’re pretty awesome, and so far, my readers do too. I’m no best-seller yet, but people in countries all around the world buy my books so that means I don’t suck, right?
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