Hard to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

  But now Rafe’s voice forced him to tamp down anything resembling emotion and turn around with a barely there control.

  “This is where it all began …”

  His fingers tensed around the familiar grip of the gun, his breathing as nonexistent as his body would allow and still let him function. It didn’t matter that the woods were nearly pitch black—Jake didn’t need his NVs. Rafe’s shadow was clearly defined, and even though all Jake wanted to do was run to Isabelle, who was less than twenty feet from him, he refused to take his eyes off the target.

  “This is where it all ends,” Jake told him.

  “So you’re Cal’s golden boy.”

  “Stand down and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  Rafe laughed, a harsh sound. “But you want to hurt me. You’ve wanted to hurt me since you first met Isabelle.”

  Jake didn’t answer, held the gun steady as sweat formed between his shoulder blades.

  “Senator Cresswell and her husband took my father. I figured I’d take something near and dear to her heart,” Rafe continued.

  “It’s not your job to do that.”

  “It’s mine if no one else has the balls to do it,” Rafe said.

  Jake hadn’t lowered his gun, hadn’t let his arm twitch or his hand shake, the muzzle aimed straight at the man’s head.

  All he had to do to end this was pull the trigger. But there were so many questions Isabelle would want answers to …

  “Isabelle’s innocent,” he said.

  “Yeah? So was my dad. He never did anything but serve this fucking country. In exchange, he was betrayed. Killed.” Rafe paused. “Isabelle’s a nice piece of ass. Doesn’t mind her sex rough. But I bet you already know that.”

  “I know that you love her,” Jake said. If Rafe was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. “You’re not going to get her.”

  “No, but I can make sure she doesn’t get you.”

  “Stand down.”

  “I’ll fight you for her,” Rafe said.

  “She’s mine, Rafe. I’m already the winner in this game. But if you want the satisfaction of knowing that I can kill you with my bare hands, I’m all for it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Stand down and I won’t have to hurt you.”

  “I’m not going to stand down. You and I are going to play a big game of chicken, until one of us decides to shoot. We’re both fast. No matter what happens, we’ll both be dead within seconds. So make your peace.”

  Jake knew he was faster—could and would take Rafe out. And when Rafe shifted, an almost imperceptible motion, Jake’s brain screamed, Go!

  Two shots and Rafe slumped to the ground.

  Two shots, neither one of them fired by Jake’s gun.

  Nick emerged from the bushes, his face covered in full cammy paint.

  “I would have done it,” Jake said, but his voice sounded rough, ragged to his own ears.

  “I know. But you shouldn’t ever have to make a choice like that.”

  Only after Nick pressed Jake’s arms gently did Jake disengage, realized he was still holding the weapon pointed at the spot where Rafe had been standing seconds earlier.

  “Is he …” Jake asked, even though he’d seen enough dead men to know that Rafe was gone the second the bullet had entered him.

  Still, Nick bent over Rafe’s body, fingers on the pulse point of the man’s neck. “Yes. He’s gone. It’s over.”

  Over? No, it wasn’t. It was all just beginning.

  But before he could move over to free Isabelle, who he heard crying through the gag, Nick grabbed his arm.

  “That’s the detonator.” Nick pointed to the Talkabout Rafe wore taped under his shirt around his waist. The mechanism was covered in blood, half-crumpled from the shot Nick had fired—Rafe had worn it close to his heart.

  Jake’s breath caught, and even as his gut screamed for him to free Isabelle, his training took over. “Isabelle, honey, listen to me—everything’s going to be fine, just hang in there and stay still. We’ll get you out of there soon, but you’ve got to stay as still as possible.”

  Isabelle stared at him. She’d already moved earlier to try to get his attention, so he didn’t think Rafe had trained an infrared detonating device at her or on her.

  Still, he wasn’t taking a chance.

  That meant neither he nor Nick could cross the line to get to her until they were sure they wouldn’t trip anything.

  “He’s got this place fully wired,” Nick said quietly. “We found some over by the training ground. It’s chaos back there. Between the war games, the IEDs and the infrared sensors he planted, no one knows what’s ready to trip and what’s not. This must’ve taken him months to do.”

  “Yeah, two months.” Jake wouldn’t let himself think about the IEDs that were elsewhere, easily camouflaged in sandbags or trash cans around base, homemade devices that could be pure dynamite or synthetic C4 or a deadly combo of both. Instead, he knelt next to Rafe’s body for a closer look, and then stared up at his brother. “This one could be a secondary. If that’s true, he’s got something rigged that could take the whole base down.”

  “Saint, we’ve got a big problem.” Jake spoke into Nick’s mic and prayed he’d hear his CO’s voice respond. That explosion he’d heard seconds before Rafe died had come from the direction the teams were training.

  “Jake, what the hell’s going on? We’ve got men down here.” Saint’s drawl was clipped.

  “The base is wired to blow—IEDs all over the place, trip wires … the works. We got the guy who did it—he was using a Talkabout—rotating the frequency to key the mic—but I have no way of knowing what the device he was holding controlled. It’s not the only detonator.”

  Saint confirmed his worst fears. “Some of these IEDs are still live. We’re having trouble jamming their frequencies.”

  He heard Saint call out to the team, “We’ve got to find the primary—until then, assume that every wire, every mine, every IED is wired to blow. Jam what you can, back away from the rest.”

  And then Jake heard another explosion, both in his ear and in the distance, heard Saint cursing and yelling, and shit, it sounded like Rafe had set up IR bombs in strategic locations, on top of everything else.

  He didn’t even want to think about what Rafe had planned for the finale.

  “Where the hell is the other detonator?” Jake muttered to Nick.

  “Where the hell is Cal?” Nick asked.

  They stared at each other for a second, and then looked toward the old concrete structure used for Close Quarters Battle practice, which was about ten feet from where Isabelle was tied up.

  Jake scanned the exterior without moving, spotted the motion alert device on the rooftop, pointing east.

  “I’ll go,” he told Nick. “We’ve got to get it before someone comes down that path. Don’t go near her. Not yet.”

  Nick nodded, and Jake moved slowly, threaded around the side of the structure and ended up on the roof, above the IR. With a flash of a knife’s blade, he had it disabled and he motioned all clear.

  He stopped dead when he heard the voice. It was calm and capable, even though it shouldn’t have been. And it was coming from inside the structure.

  Nick was staring at him, knew something was up.

  Don’t scare her, he motioned to Nick, because he knew exactly where the originating wires were located.

  Cal was wired to blow.

  He was the main source.

  Isabelle didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe—and didn’t know what to think when Nick finally walked over to her.

  “It’s okay, Isabelle, you’re going to be fine,” Nick said, his rough voice calming her as much as she could possibly be at this moment. He took the gag out of her mouth, and from the corner of her eye she saw Jake climbing carefully across the roof of the one-story building.

  “Tell me what’s happening.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming. “Is my uncle in there?”

  Nick did
n’t stop what he was doing, just nodded yes and continued to work on the handcuffs that bound her arms together in front of her. For the first time, she noticed the fine wires woven in between the hard metal that bit into her wrists, as Nick’s fingers flew on the wires, clipping them carefully, precisely and with a confidence she was grateful for.

  She turned her attention back to Jake, watched him stop, saw his lips moving. Saw him nod and knew by the set of his shoulders that he was in full battle mode.

  If Uncle Cal was inside that building, he could be as wired up as she was. Maybe even more so.

  “Rafe told me that you’d never see the red light,” she whispered, more to herself than to Nick.

  “Rafe was dead wrong,” Nick told her. “Don’t you dare give up on us now.”

  And then she was free. All she wanted to do was collapse, but she knew that it wasn’t over. Not at all.

  “I won’t give up,” she whispered. Nick took her hand and held it and together they watched Jake on the rooftop.

  “I’m wearing a homicide vest with a detonator. There’s an IR positioned right at me. There’s only one way in, and there might not be a way out.” Cal’s voice was steady as he laid it on the line. Jake remained poised on the roof, above the only door leading into the structure.

  “You’re going to have to walk me in, Admiral. I can disable it and then the rest will be easy.”

  “There’s a problem, Jake.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He wired the primary to my cell phone.”

  “I’ll put out a no call order—”

  “It’s scheduled to ring a reminder for me to take my medication. Every night. Exactly at 2100.”

  Jake checked his own watch. 2055:42 and counting.

  “Is Izzy out there?” Cal asked. “Rafe said he was bringing her here.”

  “She’s here, Admiral,” he said, turned to glance back at her, standing next to Nick, looking uncertainly up at him.

  “Then you take her, Jake. Take her and get out of here. Tell her that I’ve only wanted to keep her safe. Do this for me.”

  Jake kept his eyes trained on Isabelle as Cal spoke. Nick would trade places with him in a second. He knew that.

  He owed both men more than that—owed himself and Isabelle as well. “Get her the hell away from here, Nick,” he said firmly. “Go now.”

  Isabelle was screaming, “No, no no!” even as Nick lifted her from the ground and took off in a dead run for the woods, the way he’d come originally, back to an expanse that was too dense for Rafe to wire.

  He could’ve argued with his brother, could’ve insisted on taking his place on that fucking rooftop. But Jake had trusted him with maybe the most precious thing in his life—and Nick wasn’t going to blow that.

  The next explosion shook the ground—pushed them both forward. He lost his breath momentarily as his body shielded hers, held her down even as he repeated silent prayers in his head.

  And Izzy was still screaming.

  She just didn’t realize that she was doing it for both of them.

  Isabelle fought like hell to get out from underneath Nick, began to kick and scratch, heard him curse softly when she caught him between his legs.

  “Izzy, I’m on your side.”

  She heard the tone of his voice, realized that he was just as worried about Jake as she was. “We have to get him.”

  Nick wouldn’t let go of her wrist. “If he’s gone, that’s not something you want to see, Izzy. Not that way.”

  Halfway between twisting herself out of Nick’s grasp, she turned to him. “You saved him once. And now you saved me.”

  “Jake saved himself. All I did was get him to the hospital quicker. All I did for you was what he asked.” Nick eased up with the pressure on his wrist. “He’s all right.”

  “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “Because he’s standing right behind you.”

  She whirled around to find Jake less than a foot from her—how he’d come through the woods so silently, with Cal by his side, was something of a miracle in itself.

  “How did you do that?” she asked Jake.

  “Only with Cal’s help,” Jake told her.

  When the floodlights came up simultaneously with the sounding of a centralized alarm, she saw that both men were covered in dirt and mud and blood and she managed to hug them while simultaneously checking to see which one of them was bleeding.

  “Cal needs medical attention,” Isabelle told Nick. And somehow, Chris was there, telling her not to worry, and there were two other men there in full gear and then it was just her and Jake, standing together in the midst of the old O-course. Just like the picture Uncle Cal had in his office. Where it all began so long ago for her family.

  Where it was all going to come full circle now.

  “You were in the trunk the whole time … you never really let me go.”

  “I didn’t know Rafe was in the car—I would never have let you go through that. Never. I would’ve taken him out before you got to the car.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  “I wouldn’t have let them take you away from me, Isabelle. I never go down without a fight.”

  “You would’ve known where I was the whole time.”

  “Yes. I would’ve followed you to your first safe house—and your second—kept watch for however long it took. But once I got out of the trunk and saw where the hell we were, I knew something was really wrong.”

  “This is why he waited two months … he’d come here, probably right after I came back to the States. He needed to plan this out. Set it all up. He was here … when I was here, he was here, on the base …”

  “It looks that way. But he’s not now.”

  “I know. It’s over—it’s really over.”

  “You’re shaking.” He pulled her close, into a warm embrace. His heart beat so fast against hers and she buried her face against his shoulder and hung on as tightly as she could, not leaving any room between them for doubt.

  “Jake, I still … I still need to go back to Africa.”

  “I know that,” he said. “I know that you have a lot of things you need to do, and that they might not include me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Isabelle. Not because of the rescue, not because of what just happened.”

  “I know that—”

  “No decisions about us now,” he said fiercely.

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

  “Dr. Markham, I’ve got two men down on the other side of base—they need your attention stat.” Saint’s drawl was heavy as he crashed through the woods. Jake’s CO looked at him. “We’re still finding wires, but so far, they’re all defused. The area’s been swept for mines. I’ll keep her with me—she’ll be safe.”

  Isabelle took Jake’s hand and he turned his attention to her. “Go now. Go do what you do best,” he told her. “I’ll get Cal out of here, make sure he’s all right. And I’ll contact your mom.”

  She squeezed his hand tightly before she took off with his CO, thankful she’d found a man so willing to give her back all of her strength, plus so much more.

  CHAPTER

  25

  It was hard to come down from what had happened on base—the enormity of the consequences, for Cal, for all of them, had Jake tamping down his emotions in order to deal with the debriefings and the senator. To the outside world, this was merely a training exercise.

  You rescued me again, Isabelle had whispered to him when they’d met up much later that evening in the clinic. He’d wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how to respond.

  The night he’d rescued her in Africa, he knew they’d survive because he hadn’t had that gut-clenching feeling he’d gotten once before, on a mission where he’d literally thought it was all over.

  He’d come so close to the edge that night in the Sudan—his first mission as a platoon-based SEAL, eighteen years old
and thrown into the fire. Which was where he’d wanted to be, had trained to be, fought to be.

  His swim-buddy and teammate lost his life that night and there was nothing Jake could’ve done to stop it. And as he and his teammates went into the sea, dragging Trey’s body with them because they would not leave him behind, Jake learned the real meaning of no way out.

  They’d all come so close that night—too close. All because of a man who Jake couldn’t stop thinking about. And he found himself standing outside on the deck, well before dawn.

  He took out his phone and dialed.

  “I was wondering when you’d call.”

  Jake smiled into the phone. “Like you didn’t know, Dad.” He paused, shuffled his feet on the deck and pretended Kenny was right in front of him, the way he’d been the night Jake told him he needed written consent to join the Navy. “How do I know I’m doing the right thing?”

  “You know, Jake. You’ve always known,” his father told him. “You’re a good man. Nobody can ever take that away from you.”

  Jake stared straight ahead, tears in his eyes, but a small smile of pride played on his lips.

  “The doctor, she’s all right?” Kenny asked, and Jake didn’t bother to ask how he knew. It could’ve been through regular means, through Chris or Nick, or he might’ve known from the start, but it didn’t matter.

  “She’s all right.”

  “And she knows everything.”

  “She does.” He paused. “She says that she loves me.”

  “You understand, probably better than anyone I know, about what can happen to a man to make him go bad,” Dad said. “You can forgive that. And yourself.”

  Jake clutched the railing, wishing it was that easy.

  “It is that easy,” Dad said quietly.

  Isabelle remembered working on the three men nearly simultaneously, all of whom had made it to surgery and survived and then she’d slept for almost two days straight. She’d been vaguely aware of Jake and Nick and Chris fending off any stray law enforcement and media and anyone else who wanted to bother her, including the FBI.