SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle

by S. M. Butler

  He hung his head, feeling more ashamed of himself than he had in a long time. Before coming, he hadn’t thought twice about the poor and sick people in Haiti. Caught up in his own troubles, he’d ignored the rest of the world. He was a selfish bastard.

  Danny had said it. No one should get to choose who lived and died. Not even the Guardian.

  *

  Ysabeau started to panic. She was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Poor Brigitte wasn’t getting anywhere fast. All around her the horns blared and nothing moved. Her heart ached as she replayed the hateful words she had yelled at Luke. If I never see him again…

  “Please God, let me make it to the Montana before it’s too late.”

  *

  Luke went back inside the suite to soak his pounding head. On the way to the bathroom, he stopped to study a painting on the wall. It was a bright, sparkly blue-green painting of a two-tailed merman with crazy Tico dreads. The Naif artwork reminded him the day they’d gone to the Iron Market. How he longed to go back to that day and start all over again.

  There was no going back. He’d learned that the hard way with Soli and it seemed the lesson was being hammered in all over again with Ysabeau.

  He splashed cold water on his face until the pounding eased back to a dull roar. Through water-soaked lashes, he stared at himself in the mirror.

  “What the hell?” he said out loud.

  He grabbed a towel and dried his face, hoping to improve his vision. It didn’t change a thing. He saw what he would have bet money didn’t exist. There in the mirror were two auras clinging to his body. One red. One blue.

  “No friggin way,” he said as he turned his head this way and that, watching the auras shimmer and pulse around him.

  He was still in shock when the next surprising thing happened.

  “Leave! Go! Go! Go!” A voice careened inside the bathroom.

  Luke stood still, every cell in his body frozen.

  “Hurry!” She yelled again. The voice came from the blue aura that blazed like a hot flame around his reflection.

  “Soli?” Luke whispered.

  “Please, Luke, leave here.” Was she sobbing?

  “Sweetheart, you’ve got to understand. I’ll always love you. Nothing will change that, ever. You are my wife, the first woman I ever loved. The other part of my heart. But…” this was hard to say but he had to get it done. Soli deserved the truth. “I love Ysabeau too. It’s different, but I do. I need to be with her.”

  He stared into his own reflection and wished he could actually see her face-to-face. At the same time he knew this was completely bonzo crazy. Who talks to his aura? Scratch that. Who could see auras? The heat must’ve melted his brain. Or the Great Grann had busted something in there during the Voodoo ceremony.

  But he didn’t stop talking to the aura—that could not in any realm of possibility—be Soli. “I’m not leaving Haiti until I tell Ysabeau how much I love her. Because of her, I feel again. I have a new beating heart. I need to tell her, let her truly see what we could be if she chooses me. If she doesn’t love me, then…then I’ll leave.”

  Soli sighed. “Then go to her. Right now! Don’t look back.”

  Not exactly what he expected to hear from his dead wife. “You mean…you’re okay with…”

  “Go to her. Run! Luke, run as fast as you can.” Her voice tore through his brain.

  And he did.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‡

  Ysabeau drove into the circular drive at the Hotel Montana. The valet opened her car door and she gave him her keys. The Montana always gave her a sense of pride. It was a reminder of the beauty and grace that existed at the heart of Haiti. Her people were poor and yet they’d accomplished this great magnificent feat that could be compared to any four-star hotel in Europe, Asia, or America. A shining star proving things could be magnificent throughout her beloved country. One day.

  The last time Ysabeau had ventured up the hill to the Montana was two years ago when Leesha, a friend from the university, had gotten married. It had been a beautiful wedding inside a beautifully decorated ballroom. Leesha’s dress was one of the most extraordinary things she had ever seen, only to be outdone by the bride’s brilliant smile. Ysabeau was struck by the lavishness that was mere minutes from the squalor and slums of Port-au-Prince. Outside children were filling their bellies with mud cookies to stave off the hunger. Inside they were eating crab cakes.

  After the I-do’s, the party had filtered out onto the terrace where the bartenders kept the patrons plied with rum. Musicians played traditional Haitian music, as well as modern American songs to dance the night away. It had been a beautiful evening full of hope and love, the exact opposite of what she was feeling at the moment.

  Fear quivered in her chest as she walked into the hotel. What would she say to Luke? What if she didn’t find him in time?

  Throughout the lobby there were several floor-to-ceiling mirrored columns. She looked for Luke’s handsome face in each mirror. Someone spoke English behind her and she spun around to see a group of six American men heading toward the restaurant. Luke was not one of them. She swallowed the lump in her throat and continued searching the lobby.

  Would Luke want to talk to her after all she’d said to him? Would he forgive her?

  A little boy interrupted her thoughts when he peeked at her from behind a giant kentia palm. One of his front teeth was missing. When he realized he’d been caught spying, he giggled and waved.

  She waved back and got in the check-in line.

  As the line advanced toward the counter, the hotel’s owner came out of an office. Ysabeau studied her. The woman looked remarkably well for all that she had been through. Five years earlier, the co-owner of the Hotel Montana had been kidnapped and held for ransom. The kidnappers had done all sorts of unspeakable things to her, including injecting her with blood they told her was tainted with AIDS. Ysabeau had been working at GHESKIO at the time. The ransom had been paid and the hotel owner was released from captivity. It was Ysabeau’s job to test the woman’s blood every three months over the course of a year. She remembered saying a little prayer of thanks each time the blood tested clean. She knew how close she herself had come to being victimized by a rapist with AIDS. If Deolina and Grann hadn’t stopped the bad man, she could’ve been the one having her blood tested, or worse, dying with AIDS.

  Even now, Ysabeau felt a deep sense of respect and awe for the hotel’s owner. She had been the victim of an atrocious act and yet she fought back and lived. It gave Ysabeau a new resolve to find Luke and start living too.

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped up to the counter. “I need to speak to one of your guests. His name is Mr. Luke Carter.”

  The man behind the counter smiled. “Oh yes. He just checked in on the fifth floor.” He picked up the hotel phone. “I’ll call his room for you—”

  Just then, a thunderous roar rolled through the lobby. Ysabeau had the strangest feeling a train had jumped its tracks and was now coming into the lobby. It was especially strange since there hadn’t been tramways in Haiti since the 1950’s. A voice from the floor above her yelled, “Look out!”

  She looked up to see a large, square chandelier swinging overhead.

  “Get down!” The check-in clerk yelled to her as he dove beneath the mahogany lobby counter.

  Screams came from everywhere. Terror gripped her as she tried to comprehend what was happening. People grabbed each other and raced for the doors. Her mind barely had a chance to register the thought “earthquake” before her feet were running too, her screams joining the others. Tiles beneath her feet seemed to buck and writhe in pain. It was hard to run, impossible to get away. A split-second too late, she saw a woman in front of her. They were going to crash into one another. Ysabeau put her hands out to brace herself for the impact. She hit hard.

  The woman stared back at her with her own terrified eyes. She’d collided with one of the mirrored columns and was looking at herself.

&nb
sp; How stupid, she thought.

  It was her last thought before the Hotel Montana, Haiti’s shining four-star, crashed down on top of her.

  *

  Luke was in the back of yet another cab. He’d paid the guy double to get him to Ysabeau’s clinic before it closed at five o’clock. Making it with ten minutes to spare, he gave the cabbie the money and jumped out of the car. He didn’t have time to rehearse what he was going to say to win Ysabeau’s heart. He hoped to let his lips and embrace do all the talking.

  He vaulted up the steps to the glass door entrance. Yanking on the door handle, he was surprised when nothing happened. The place was locked up. He peered through the glass, unable to see much since the lights were off.

  “It’s closed,” a little voice said.

  Luke turned around to see Talitha behind him.

  “Oh. Hi there.” He looked over her head toward the street. “Are you by yourself?”

  “We live close. I walked over to give Dr. Morno this bread my mom made.” She lifted the bundle in her arms. “We were very happy she found a cure for my disease. You should see my mom, laughing, crying, and dancing like a mad woman.” Talitha smiled and the dark circles under her eyes lifted. “I’ve never seen her like that. She is going to be so disappointed when she hears about the note.”

  “Note?”

  She pointed to a piece of paper taped on the door right in front of his eyes. He’d missed it in his hurry to get inside.

  “I can’t read it. Will you tell me what it says?” he asked.

  “It’s from Dr. Morno. Here it says…” She pointed to the words that Luke couldn’t understand. “…there is no more money. Dr. Morno will explain it to us, but for now we need to understand that the clinic is closed. Forever.”

  “I don’t understand. She didn’t need to close. I gave her enough money to—” Luke stopped talking. He heard a rumble deep and low as if the earth itself was splitting apart. Living in San Francisco, he recognized the sound only too well as…

  “Earthquake!” He grabbed Talitha’s hand and dragged her away from the glass clinic doors. They had to move away from the glass, the building, anything that could fall on them.

  The world shook violently, tossing them as if they were two Voodoo dolls made of straw.

  Talitha screamed. Luke cursed. Several car alarms went off all at once and the ground continued to roar. Luke had one thought and one thought only—protect the girl!

  He shielded Talitha with his body and they both half-fell, half-dove to the ground while the earth continued to shake. It was the longest tremor he’d ever experienced. Tremor, hell, this was the earth ripping apart at its seams. Behind them there was a tremendous crash followed by another and another, each one more terrifying and gruesome than the last. Glass exploded like shrapnel into the street. In Iraq, Luke had survived days of bomb blasts exploding all around him. This was almost the same.

  “Don’t move!” He screamed at Talitha, barely hearing his own words.

  *

  “Do you see her yet?” Grann stopped pacing. “Where is she?”

  Deolina massaged her temples. “No. For the fifty-eleventh time. Visions don’t come when you nag me. Can you stop looking like that? You’re givin’ me the heebeegeebees.”

  Grann put her palm against the door jamb. “Woman, I have the right to—”

  A strange rumble interrupted her thoughts. It was as if one of the spirits from the underworld had let loose a terrifying belch. Grann hardly had time to raise her eyebrows before the spirits took Ysabeau’s little house and shook it like an Ason rattle.

  “I see it now!” Deo yelled above the roar. “It’s an earthquake!”

  Grann didn’t bother chastising her for pointing out the obvious. The blades of the fan over Deo’s head were spinning ominously. That couch where she was sitting was not the safest spot to be. “Get…over…here!” Grann yelled.

  Deolina held onto the couch with both hands as if she were riding a wild bull. “Wait! Ysabeau’s in the hotel—”

  Grann was violently thrown into the wall. She smacked her nose so hard that blood spurted and white dots flew before her eyes. I broke my nose? She didn’t have time to register the pain before she was bounced off the wall and driven to her knees. Once down, she crawled as best as she could to the doorway. The teeth rattled in her head.

  “No! No! No!” Deo screamed.

  Grann wondered if she was locked in a vision, or being murdered. “Deo! Get…your fat…ass…over here!”

  Deo mumbled incoherently.

  Throwing her arms over her head, Grann curled up in a ball and begged the spirits to let Ysabeau’s house go. She did her best to focus every ounce of Voodoo power she possessed to stop this madness. Closing her eyes, she chanted, begged. For reasons she could not comprehend, the vicious spirits were in no mood to listen to the High Priestess of Light. A gigantic crash on the other side of the wall tore a scream out her body. With complete abject terror, she realized she was no match for this evil.

  To her surprise, her own laughter, shrill and hysterical, rose above the rumbling. “Damn you, Legba! Close the friggin’ spiritual door!”

  Five feet from where she sat, the bookshelf toppled over. Dishes fell out of the cupboards in the kitchen, exploding like mini-grenades on the tile. The fan overhead ripped out of the ceiling and crashed onto the burl wood table. A chunk of ceiling, nearly as large as Ysabeau’s car, landed in the entry behind her. Grann curled into her knees even tighter.

  “Deo! Please, please come to me…” She whimpered toward her bellybutton.

  There was no answer.

  When the quake ended Grann lifted her arms slowly, waiting to see if it was going to start again. She felt weak. It was hard to breathe. When all was still, she touched her bloodied nose. It was a mess. She thanked God and the Virgin Mary for keeping her alive in that doorway. Quietly, she thanked Legba for getting those spirits back on the other side where they belonged.

  Grann couldn’t believe her eyes. The wall she had bounced off of had fractured and collapsed as if it were nothing more than a sand castle at the beach. Most of the entryway to the house had caved in as had much of the ceiling. Just as Deolina had predicted, Hell had finally come to Haiti.

  “Sweet mother!” She stood on wobbly legs. “Deo! Where are you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‡

  Ground Zero…Sixty seconds after.

  Finally, finally, the quaking ended. Luke rose carefully so as not to squish little Talitha. “Are you…” he coughed and sputtered. The air was so full of dust he could barely catch a breath. “…okay?”

  Talitha nodded. Her eyes were wide with fright and shock. Luke imagined his looked about the same. They both turned around and stared with open-mouthed wonder. The two-story clinic they had been standing next to seconds ago was nothing more than a pile of rubble.

  Ysabeau’s clinic was destroyed.

  Luke blinked. Dust and crap poured out of his eyes. All around them, buildings had been leveled. People were running into the streets crying and yelling, or the opposite, moving in a slow-motion daze. This quake was ugly, the worst he’d ever experienced. Depending on where the epicenter was…Ysabeau. Where was she?

  Adrenaline pounded through his body. He grabbed Talitha by the shoulders, “Was anyone inside the clinic?”

  She stared at him, clearly in shock.

  He squeezed her shoulders gently, “Please, think. You got there before I did. Did you see anyone inside the clinic?”

  Her gaze drifted back to roughly where she had been standing. Even though it was hot—made all the more stifling by the dust clogging the air—Talitha shivered and her teeth clacked together.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” He cooed in her ear. “Please, I need your help. If anyone was inside, I need to get them out. Do you understand?’

  She nodded slowly and spoke with a scared little mouse’s voice. “I walked all around, t
ried every door. They were all locked. All the lights were off. No one was inside.”

  Luke breathed a sigh of relief.

  His heart started to beat again with hope. She wasn’t trapped—his eyes flicked to the flattened building—in there. “That’s real good news. But I need to be sure. Stay here and I’ll go check—”

  “No!” Talitha grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me!’

  Luke studied her pale face. The girl was filled with terror.

  “Okay.” He patted the hand that had the death-grip on his forearm. “Come with me.”

  They circled around the building, picking their way over the broken pieces of concrete, metal, and glass.

  “Ysabeau!” Luke yelled. “Anyone in there?”

  He listened for sounds but didn’t hear a thing. With all his might, he yanked a crooked piece of rebar from under the mess and started banging on the demolished building. He was dripping with sweat and fear. “Can you hear me?”

  He stopped to listen for signs of life.

  Nothing.

  He banged again and again on chunks of what was left of the building. His hands stung from cuts opened up from the rebar. His body throbbed with adrenaline as hundreds of terrifying visions clouded his brain—Ysabeau trapped under her patient picture wall, Ysabeau unconscious under her desk, Ysabeau dying…

  The ground shook again. Talitha screamed and flung herself at his back. He wrapped his arms behind him and held her to him as the ground rolled beneath their feet. It was a big aftershock, not as big as the original monster, but a 6.0 at least.

  When the quake stopped, he saw more debris in the street. More damage. What happened inside the clinic?

  “Step back,” he told Talitha and whacked that bar as hard as he could against a large block of concrete. “Ysabeau!”

  Talitha tugged on the back of his shirt scaring the beegeezus out of him.

  “Listen, honey, you have to step back, or I could hit you with this thing.” He lifted the bar again.