BELONGING: Hope, Truth And Malice (Beauty 0f Life Book 3)

by Laura Acton

  Jon and Loki went to meet the soldiers and help with the basket and gear. “Captain Blain?” Jon asked loudly to be heard over the noise of helicopter’s engine as he approached the Army Officer.

  “That’s me, but call me Blaze, everyone does. This is Winds,” Blaze responded even louder reaching out to shake Jon’s hand.

  Jim’s head shot up instantly and looked in their direction.

  “Blaze? Winds?” Jim bellowed, not believing they were there.

  Everyone turned and stared at Jim.

  “Patch?” Blaze questioned as he took in the sight of his buddy. He could always read Patch—an open book to him. Fear, concern, and relief were running through Patch with equal measure.

  “Found Blondie, it’s bad!” Jim yelled as he pointed to the TRF officer on the ground.

  “Holy shit!” was all Blaze could say as he saw Blondie and processed what Patch had said. It was something they had said way too often. ‘Found Blondie, it’s bad’, meant action now, questions later.

  Blaze called out commands and Blondie was strapped onto the board, into the basket, and hoisted to the helicopter in record time. Blaze, Winds, Patch, Jon, Loki, Lexa, and two other Special Forces soldiers silently watched the unconscious man as the bird headed for the hospital.

  St. Michael Hospital – ER Information Desk – 9:00 p.m.

  Heather Barkley disliked working the Emergency Room Department which was why she’d transferred to the Surgery Department long ago. But Nancy had begged her to cover her shift tonight so she could see her daughter’s ballet performance. Heather had reluctantly agreed to do it this one time.

  It wasn’t the blood and gore of emergency she hated. In fact, if she was the nurse working on the patient it was good, she was helping. What she hated was being assigned as the ER waiting room nurse—the one everyone came to for status on patients. Seeing the anguish of those waiting for word on their loved ones—that sense of helplessness was what she hated. It tore her heart watching them wait and crumble upon hearing bad news. As her luck—bad luck—would have it, that’s what Nancy’s shift had been assigned to today.

  She was wallowing in her own little pity party when Clare, another emergency room nurse, approached and asked if she had seen the news yet. Heather shook her head no. She’d been too busy dealing with a group of firefighters waiting for word on their buddy. Luckily, he wasn’t badly hurt, a fractured leg and a few second-degree burns.

  They had just left with smiles on their faces. But the hour or so they had paced and waited for news on their buddy was hard on her. Heather had a soft spot for firefighters and constables. She felt an affinity with them, they all were about saving and protecting life. The difference, though, was that they put their lives on the line every day to do it.

  Heather was always amazed at how the teams would rally together when one of their members got hurt. Most teams consisted of concerned friends and professional buddies. But a few—a very rare few—were more like families. In those rare teams, she saw bonds that were stronger, ran deeper, and rivaled any natural family bond because they had chosen each other—it wasn’t just some accident of birth. It was so very hard to watch those types of teams deal with the painful realization that they couldn’t protect one of their own.

  Clare pointed to the TV. “I can’t believe something like that could happen here. A full-scale gang war in Rouge Park. The news said that almost every TRF constable was involved. They had to track down more than a dozen armed gang members. Took them hours and hours, but they got them all …”

  Heather was no longer listening to Clare. Her attention had been grabbed by the TV news footage of the command area. It was repeating a loop that showed a group of TRF officers going off the wall. Definitely not something she saw every day. TRF officers were the best of the best and could be counted on to be calm and in control even in the worst situation.

  She saw things being thrown and the officers yelling—unmistakably in distress—while another group behind them stood watching tensely. Something bad had happened. Then she recognized the officers. They were the ones that saved everyone that day when Adalyn Slater’s husband stormed into the dialysis department and took Adalyn and Dr. Reynolds hostage. He had threatened to kill both of them because they were having an affair.

  It was so sad when the truth came out. The TRF negotiator talked Mr. Slater down and was able to help him see that there was no affair. Adalyn had been seeing Dr. Reynolds professionally and didn’t want to tell her husband that her diabetes had progressed to the point that she required dialysis. Heather tuned back into what Clare was saying but only caught the tail end, “… heard the injured one is coming to us.”

  “Sorry, Clare, I wasn’t listening. What did you say?” Heather inquired.

  “Well, if you’d get the cotton outta your ears, I was saying the injured officer is being air-lifted to us. I overheard dispatch tell the ER doctor to prepare for gunshot wound, head trauma, and possible internal bleeding. Hope the constable makes it, they already lost one guy today. I’d hate for them to lose two officers because of stupid thugs,” Clare said.

  Heather sat down heavily at her desk, placed her head in her hands, and sighed deeply. She wondered which one it was. Who was missing from the news footage? She didn’t see the female officer, Lexa they called her. Hope it’s not her, that one has courage and heart, Heather thought.

  Who else was missing? Oh, the cute blond guy that just wanted to shoot to solve the issue. They shut him down and she remembered laughing a bit. The tall, bald officer had asked the officer with wavy dark hair, Loki, yeah that was his name. The bald officer had asked Loki for duct tape.

  Loki had produced a roll and the bald officer had proceeded to rip off a piece and threatened to put it over the blond guy’s mouth if he didn’t shut up, sit down, and just watch how the big boys resolved a situation without killing everyone. Lexa and Loki had snickered when the blond clenched his jaw closed, sat down, and glared at them. They didn’t seem to like the blond guy too much, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. So with the reactions she saw on the news, the injured officer had to be Lexa.

  Wait, Clare had said they lost one guy—guy, not girl. That team was the only one going berserk so the officers must have been from that team only. The blond was dead, that was sad, he was so young. He may have been a bit of a jerk, but he lost his life protecting others and that was sad, very sad.

  So the injured one, it had to be the female officer Lexa. This was going to be hard. Heather wished that her shift was already over. She could tell by the reactions that she was going to be dealing with one of those rare teams that had formed deep unbreakable bonds.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  July 15

  Army CH-146 Griffon Helicopter – Inflight – 9:05 p.m.

  As the helicopter left the scene and headed towards the hospital, Blaze spoke to his pilot. “Hal, Winds and I are staying with Blondie. We can’t leave him right now. I need you to take over the unit for me until I return. If the Major wants a reason, just make something up. Tell him we’re staying to retrieve our supplies, ya know … the backboard and shit. We’ll return when … when … when we can.”

  “Roger,” Hal responded. Their unit was still fairly new, but Winds and Blaze had been together for years. They had shared some exploits of past missions when the unit was just hanging out getting to know one another. Blondie was in many of the tales they told. Most tales involved how the kid did crazy shit to save their asses when things went south. He understood their need to be there now and would make sure the excuse for their absence, no matter how long, was plausible.

  No one spoke for the remainder of the flight, all in their own private thoughts.

  Blaze was staring at Blondie. Why was it so hard to finish that last statement? Probably had to do with the fact that Blondie’s face was covered in blood, the bullet wound in his arm, his chest covered in god-awful bruises, and that he was unconscious. Yes, that was part of it, but he’d seen the kid in
worse shape before—more dead than alive. So that wasn’t really it. Why then?

  It clicked, it was because of the terrible fear he had read in Patch. Patch was never afraid of Blondie’s physical wounds—well, except for when they’d rescued him from the terrorists and when he’d been poisoned by Savelievich. And even then, Patch could handle it well—always did. Blondie was alive today because of some of the magic Patch worked in the field and because the kid was just too stubborn to die. Patch always knew how to help physically—it was the other that scared the shit out of Patch.

  Patch tried to help, but it was Brody and himself that dealt with Blondie’s emotional needs. From the look in Patch’s eyes, Blondie needed him now. Blaze wasn’t sure he could do it alone—he’d never had to do it alone before. Brody had always been there to help—but Brody was gone now—so it was up to him.

  Blaze knew he’d failed Blondie last time—his guilt still ate at him. He’d been too caught up in his own grief over Brody’s death that he’d failed Blondie when the kid needed him the most. He’d screwed up and lost the young man he considered a son. He’d spent the last year searching for him—only to find him in a ravine in Toronto, beat to crap.

  What kind of blackout protocol was this? What was the General up to this time? It made no sense to him. Blaze pushed all his questions about how Blondie came to be in Toronto and a member of the TRF to the back of his mind. There would be time to figure that out. What was more important was that Blondie needed him. And now that he’d found Blondie, he wasn’t going to lose him again. Blaze vowed he wouldn’t fail the kid ever again, he’d make things right somehow.

  Winds was speechless when he saw that the TRF officer who needed help was Blondie. He was never at a loss for words. It knocked the wind right out of him when Patch said ‘found Blondie, it’s bad’. That was something he’d never, ever wanted to hear again in his lifetime.

  He had no idea why, but his mind went back to the day that the kid joined the unit. Blaze’s seasoned unit was down two men who decided to retire from Special Forces. They got two rooks fresh out of Special Forces Guardian Unit training. Winds thought someone was playing a joke on them when a blond headed kid, yes kid, hopped out of the jeep and gave the guy with him a lopsided grin as he grabbed his sniper rifle and they headed towards the command tent. Blondie didn’t look much older than twenty—too damned young to be in Special Forces.

  It was no joke though. Blondie was only twenty-one, the youngest ever. With the name of Broderick, Winds had figured that the General had pulled strings to get Blondie in early. At first, they’d all been worried that they might’ve been stuck with a pretty boy just playing at soldier to impress the girls.

  But the very next day the unit was sent out on a mission and the entire unit was quickly disabused of that assumption. Blondie was the unit’s sniper and the other new guy, Brody, was his spotter. The mission went to hell in a heartbeat. They all would’ve been dead—several times over that day—if Blondie hadn’t been there covering their asses.

  Blondie took out twelve targets, several in rapid succession. The kid was fast and accurate—damned fast on the trigger. Blondie proved himself that day, he had their backs and the unit vowed to have his. The kid actually proved himself over and over to the point that Blaze wanted to turn Blondie over his knee and tan his backside for some of the stupid risks that the kid took to keep the unit safe.

  Winds came back to the here and now and relief coursed through him as he watched Blondie’s chest rise and fall—Blondie was alive. He’d feared that Blondie wouldn’t survive Brody’s death. A small part of him had believed that Blondie had eaten his gun. He’d voiced that only once to Blaze and had a black eye to show for saying it out loud. Winds had instantly forgiven his best friend because Winds knew how much Blondie meant to Blaze. Blaze had already lost his entire natural family—and Blaze couldn’t stand the thought of losing his surrogate son, too.

  He smiled at that thought—not the morbid thought—but the one that Blaze hadn’t lost Blondie. Here he was—alive—a little beat up but alive. It did Winds’ heart good. Perhaps he would finally be able to make amends with Blondie and the kid would forgive him for the way he handled things after Brody died. None of them had known what to do—and in the end, did nothing—which turned out to be the worst thing they could do.

  Winds felt so much guilt over that, that when Mason started in on them when he returned from the field and found out they’d lost Blondie, he didn’t raise a hand in defense against Mason—he just took his well-deserved beating. The pain of Mason’s massive fists was nothing compared to the pain he felt for letting Blondie down.

  However, beating the shit out of those that attacked Blondie before he left had been a small bit of redemption. Winds didn’t even mind getting demoted all the way down to Private again when he let loose and told Major Plouffe just exactly what he thought of him when the Major had the nerve to dismiss all assault charges against Murphy. Murphy was a piece of shit that didn’t belong in Special Forces, but the Major seemed to favor him and Murphy got away with all kinds of shit and was even promoted to Sergeant.

  Jon closely watched both Dan, aka Blondie, and the guys named Blaze, Winds, and Patch-Jim. He grinned slightly at all the damned nicknames. Jon got the sense that they knew Dan well, very well. He couldn’t miss the protectiveness that exuded from each of them and the worried faces they all wore as they stared down at Dan.

  They had to be buddies from his Special Forces unit, Jon was sure of it—otherwise they wouldn’t have called him Blondie. Maybe these were the ones that Trevor had referred to earlier. But there wasn’t a giant man or a green-eyed man. Wait, Dan’s best friend Brody was probably the green-eyed man. Jim, err Patch, the damned medic, had used the same phrase ‘found Blondie’ that Trevor had related. That phrase sent the Captain into immediate action mode. Damn they were fast at extraction.

  That made Jon happy. He’d been angry and worried when the air-evac had said ETA was two hours. He was worried they would lose Dan. The team needed him—Dan was an integral part of the family now. They’d smoothed off some of the soldier edges and the rookie was proving every day he was a perfect fit for Alpha Team and TRF.

  Today, Dan had nailed negotiating—he’d truly connected. As painful as that must’ve been for Dan, he did it to save others who were in pain. He saved Jason and Marty. Too bad about Garth, but Jon knew that they couldn’t save everyone—some were just too far gone and Garth was one. Dan had also saved little Sara today. Jon recalled what occurred in the alley and realized that there was way more to that one than they knew—maybe Dan would share one day.

  Jon seriously wondered about the four shots in the ravine. What order did they occur? Was Dan in a position to help Aaron? Did Dan neutralize both subjects or did Aaron shoot one?

  One thing he knew with absolute certainty was that Dan would’ve done everything within his power to protect Aaron. Though he conceded that Dan would likely see some fault on his part and beat himself up over it. Jon would have to set Dan straight about that. He’d remind Dan that sometimes they did everything right and it still turned out bad. That was one of the cruelties of life—one of the things they had to live with as TRF officers.

  Loki absolutely hated seeing Dantastic like this—it physically hurt. He wanted—no, he needed—Dan to be up and about, joking and flashing that smile that sent ladies swooning. Today had been profoundly unique. Did he jinx them with that omen crap this morning?

  No that was a stupid thought—but then again … No, no it was stupid. It was just as stupid as the name Blondie. Loki smirked. Where did that thought come from? Blondie was okay, but wasn’t near as good a nickname as Dantastic.

  His thoughts turned serious again. That blank stare on Dan’s face just before he closed his eyes really troubled Loki. There was more than physical pain at play here. Loki was absolutely sure of that. Dan was complex, he hid emotions too well when he wanted to. Dan could be open and fun—Loki liked that guy. He’d seen a
lot more of the happy guy in the past few months since they’d gotten their heads on straight and started treating Dan properly.

  After seeing into Dan’s soul at the bank today, Loki was also absolutely determined to hold on tight, not let go. He wanted to figure it out and to be that person to … what was it that Dan had said? That’s right … to pull him back to the beauty of life.

  This was a vow Loki had to keep—one he would keep no matter how long it might take and no matter how many corny jokes it took. He would get Dan to laugh again and see that mischievous light shine in his eyes. Dantastic was his brother by choice—he’d always be there for him.

  Lexa’s mind kept wandering to the feel of Dan’s hair between her fingers. Why couldn’t she let that go? She wasn’t sure. This guy with the WOW smile was worming himself into places she didn’t know existed within her.

  She had stroked his hair three times today. Twice in front of the other guys. Lexa bet that didn’t go unnoticed. She hoped they saw it as her simply offering comfort to a teammate. That’s what she would claim if they said anything. But would she ever do that to any of the other guys? Yes, she answered.

  Then the little devil on her shoulder challenged her. “Be honest, Lexa.”

  Well to be honest, no, she wouldn’t do that to the Boss, Jon, Bram, Ray, or Loki. But that didn’t mean she cared more or less for any of them. They all were family. Why was Dan different? Why did he evoke these unconscious actions? She’d learned so much from and about him this past year and it seemed like she’d only scratched the surface. A shiver ran through her as the thought of her nails raking down Dan’s back as he pleasured her popped into her head, Boy, I would sure like to scratch that surface again.