Don't Let Go

by Marliss Melton

  “Neither did I,” he replied drolly, as he sped her back to her home.

  They were more than an hour late. To give Graham credit, he hadn’t called to complain yet. “Oh, come on. Tell the truth, now. You were a party animal in your youth, living it up in the city that never sleeps.”

  A reflective silence filled the sedan. “No, actually,” he refuted.

  Jillian slit her eyes and turned her head to admire his Mediterranean profile. “What were you like?” she asked, utterly drawn to who he was, both then and now.

  He sighed. “Studious,” he admitted. “Diligent. In high school I had dreams of going to college and graduate school, but—” He shrugged.

  “But what?” she pressed gently.

  “I got my girlfriend pregnant. So I married her.”

  Jillian regarded him in surprise. She’d assumed he’d married Teresa out of love, the way she’d married Gary. “You never told me that,” she accused. During his recovery at St. John’s two years ago, they’d talked about almost everything.

  “By day, I beat the streets as a rookie cop. At night I went to school,” he confessed. “It took me eight years to earn a B.S.”

  He fell suddenly quiet, and the only sound in the car was a haunting aria sung by a lyrical soprano. Jillian sensed a sudden darkening of Rafe’s mood. Earlier that evening he’d gone to great lengths to keep her thoughts off Jordan and her spirits lifted. He’d treated her to dinner at one of Waterside’s finest restaurants, distracted her with stimulating conversation, and taken her on a stroll along the river, afterward, her arm in his.

  It had been Jillian’s idea to slip into the dance club that pulsed with an enticing beat. She’d known a devilish urge to loosen Rafe’s tightly bound self-control by drawing him onto the dance floor. If she could dance in her third trimester, he could take his jacket off and join her.

  He’d done more than that. For one wild and wonderful moment, he’d become spontaneous, fun-loving, happy. Earlier he’d apologized for not buying her a gift. He didn’t even realize that his kindness, his companionship, and his playfulness were gifts in themselves.

  But now, with conversation turning back the hands of time, she could feel him retreating into his shell. She turned onto her left hip and placed a hand on his arm, a friendly and affectionate gesture. She felt him flex, and her pulse leapt. He’d mentioned once that he worked out at the gym at FBI Headquarters. Given the rock-hard bulge beneath her palm, he worked out religiously. The woman in her delighted in her discovery.

  “Did you love her, Rafael?” she heard herself ask. She longed to know him even better than before—intimately, soul to soul. He had mentioned Teresa only fleetingly in the past, preferring to dwell on memories of his children, Tito, Serena, and the baby, Emanuel.

  “Of course,” he said, vaguely.

  “As a lover, as a soul mate?” she pressed. “Or as the mother of your children?” Why, she wondered, was it suddenly so important for her to know?

  He was quiet so long that she could feel heat building in her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was to compromise their friendship.

  “As the mother of my children,” he finally replied, his voice more ragged than ever. He stared dead ahead, two hands on the wheel.

  Her heart felt curiously buoyant. At the same time, she felt sad, sad that he’d never truly been in love, never truly real. No wonder he was content to work day after day in a relentless pursuit for justice, putting aside his own needs and desires, scarcely even alive.

  “You deserve so much more than that,” she lamented.

  “I’ve gotten what I deserve,” he countered flatly.

  “Oh, no you haven’t,” she insisted. She lifted her hand from his shoulder to his cheek, where she breathlessly stroked the hint of stubble and the hard line of his jaw, pleased to hear his indrawn breath, to see the rise and fall of his chest. “You deserve joy, Rafael. Joy and passion,” she added, savoring the heightening of her senses as desire flooded her, as intoxicating as it was unexpected. “I wish . . .” She caught herself, measuring the words that teetered on the tip of her tongue. “I wish you trusted me to show you what you’ve missed.”

  “Jillian,” he said, with as much reluctance as doubt, “I can’t be what you need.”

  His words were meant to push her away, but she refused to hear them because his body was telling her a different message. She could feel the tension in him as she drew her hand slowly down his arm to his thigh. It wasn’t self-doubt that made his muscles flex. He was as aroused by the possibility of a connection between them as she was.

  “You already are,” she told him, unperturbed, but drawing back before she took her discovery too far. “You’re exactly what I need,” she said, turning her gaze out the window as they crossed a high, arched bridge. Stars winked in the sky as if privy to her personal satisfaction. “Thank you for a wonderful night,” she added. “I almost forgot all about Jordan.”

  Her stomach clenched with renewed dread as she thought of her sister so very far away.

  To her deep gratification, Rafe placed his hand over hers, and their fingers twined together. Desire rose up again, just as abruptly, and Jillian opened her hand to draw him closer. Their bond became fervent, almost desperate. Jillian’s heart pounded, her ears rang. “Would you stay with me tonight?” she heard herself beg.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said, shakily.

  “If it’s my pregnancy that disturbs you, then I understand,” she began, wetting lips that felt suddenly dry. Was she really going to say this? “But if it’s because you’re afraid to really live, to feel things the way other human beings feel them, then I think it’s time you forgave yourself for what happened to your family.”

  The silence following her words was deafening. Rafael slowly removed his hand from hers. She turned her head to look at him, and the cold mask he’d donned made her heart sink. But she would not apologize for telling the truth. She gazed out the window at the cars they passed as Rafe sped along the freeway.

  Not another word was spoken. Jillian’s cell phone rang, and she spent a moment drawing answers out of Graham about his and Agatha’s evening. “I’ll be home in about five minutes,” she promised, hanging up.

  She slipped the phone in her bag and sighed. “I know you don’t like what I said,” she told Rafael, “but please think about it.”

  His only acknowledgment was a brief nod. With a despairing sigh, Jillian looked out the window again as he peeled off the highway on the exit to her ranch.

  Short moments later, they were crawling up the long gravel driveway. Jillian dug deep for the courage to end the evening on a positive note. As he threw the car into park, she seized his arm to prevent him from getting out. “I’ll get my own door,” she told him. “Good night, Rafael. Thank you for the dinner and the company. But the best gift was seeing you dance.” He sat in stoic silence as she rolled up on one hip to kiss his cheek. He didn’t take advantage, but when she drew back, she saw that he’d closed his eyes.

  “Good night, Jillian,” he rasped as she pushed her door open and got out.

  She headed toward her house. A horse nickered, reminding her that tomorrow would bring her first patients, one paraplegic and two amputees, all looking to regain their grace and balance.

  Aren’t we all? she thought with a wistful smile.

  She stepped onto the porch that sagged worse than ever, put her key into a door that needed painting. The pressures of single parenthood nudged aside the pleasantness that had enveloped her until now. Her belly contracted fiercely, almost painfully, as she pushed her way inside.

  Jordan awoke to a small hand stroking her face. Her first thought was of Silas, but then she cracked her eyes and recognized Miguel, his blue-black hair reflecting the sunlight that framed the heavily curtained windows. It was morning.

  Pulling him into her arms with a happy cry, she savored the familiar feel of his body pressed to hers. My child, she thought, eyes stinging with emotion an
d lingering exhaustion. Oddly, though, thoughts of Silas and Solomon pressed closer, and her heart ached with loss.

  Pulling back, she inspected him. Balling up a hand, she asked, “Remember the game we played? Rock, paper, scissors.” She spread two fingers to represent scissors, and he tapped them with his fist. “Rock beats scissors, that’s right.” It thrilled her that he remembered, though they hadn’t played that game since before they’d hidden in the cellar. “I love you,” she said, stroking his cheek. “Te amo mucho.”

  He hugged her again, as sweetly affectionate as she remembered. She wished he could articulate his experiences and fears. For now, they remained locked within his mind until his fluency developed enough to share them.

  A distant rumbling followed by the clatter of gunfire snatched Jordan’s thoughts to the situation outside. She rolled from the bed, hefting Miguel in her arms as she crossed to the window and drew the curtain back.

  The bright morning haze made her blink. Plumes of smoke billowed in the distance, in the direction of the airport at Maiquetía. Squinting down at the crush of smaller buildings, she caught sight of people running, carrying guns and throwing rocks. The sound of gunfire came again, then again and again, drawing nearer.

  There was fighting in the streets! How was she supposed to get Miguel out of the country in this mess?

  “Help me, Solomon,” she heard herself whisper. He’d thrown her a lifeline in the form of Lucy Donovan. Perhaps that was all he could or would do for her; he’d told her not to come here.

  A knock at the door preceded its abrupt opening. “We need to leave here in five minutes,” said her hostess, her tone calm but grave. “Come grab a bite to eat.”

  Jordan stuffed Miguel’s change of clothes into her backpack, then led him into the kitchen, where she set him on a stool and tempted him with bread and goat cheese. When he would only take a token nibble, she wrapped the rest in a napkin and jammed it into her backpack.

  Lucy Donovan reappeared in camouflage slacks, a gray T-shirt, with a handgun holstered under her left arm. Miguel reached mistrustfully for Jordan.

  “Don’t worry, Little Guy, I’m on your side,” Lucy reassured him, even as she strapped a webbed belt loaded with paraphernalia to her waist. Dragging a rucksack from a closet, she swung it onto her back. “Ready to go?” she asked Jordan.

  “Yes,” said Jordan. The bread she’d just swallowed felt like it was stuck in her throat.

  She would have to trust GI Jane, here, to get her to the embassy alive. But what would happen to her and Miguel after that?

  “Damn,” swore Lucy Donovan, braking to a halt. They’d driven straight into a mass riot outside the walls of what had to be the U.S. embassy.

  Lucy threw the SUV into reverse and stepped on the accelerator. Jordan, who clung to Miguel in the backseat, lurched forward as the tires squealed. Lucy backed up into an alley, flinging the occupants of her vehicle forward as she sped away from the crowd.

  “There’s another way in, right?” Jordan asked, swallowing down her sudden queasiness.

  The mirror on the passenger’s side shattered with a loud pop. Lucy gunned the engine. The Hummer roared and flew. Jordan shrank lower in her seat, shielding Miguel with her body. “Was that a bullet?” she squeaked.

  Lucy didn’t answer. She swung a sharp right up a road that appeared deserted. She whipped into an open gate to park on someone’s driveway, hidden behind their walls, and whipped out her cell phone.

  Jordan watched and waited, her heart thumping. Miguel twisted in her lap and pushed his face against her breasts. “Hush, sweetheart. I’ll protect you,” she whispered.

  “Hey, Tommy,” Lucy said in a voice that didn’t even waver. “It’s Lucy. Are you inside the embassy?”

  “Yes”—Jordan could discern the faint thread of his voice on the other end—“hell are you?”

  “Six blocks away. When are you planning to exfiltrate?”

  “We can’t,” said Tommy. “The insurgents . . . every major road in the city blocked. We’ve locked ourselves in . . . burning the files.”

  “Damn,” Lucy swore again, and this time, Jordon could hear the stress in her voice. “I’ve got an American woman with me and her adopted son, a small boy.”

  Tommy presumably chastised Lucy for not reporting in last night.

  “I was busy picking up the woman and kid,” Lucy replied.

  Actually, thought Jordan, she’d been out digging a hole somewhere with the shovel still under her feet.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” said Tommy, his voice suddenly audible as Lucy switched ears. “Go back to your apartment and lock your doors. Try to stay safe, and when we’re evac’ed out of here, I’ll make sure someone comes for you.”

  “Will do,” said Lucy, but Jordan could tell by her voice that she had no intention of waiting out the coup in her high-rise apartment. “’Bye, Tommy.”

  “Take care, Hot Shot.”

  Lucy grimaced as she severed the call. She put an elbow on the back of her seat, preparing to back out. Meeting Jordan’s gaze, she hesitated. “Listen,” she said, with resolution in her light green eyes, “I’m going to get you out of the city and head for the coast. But I have something important to do along the way, and you two are just going to have to sit tight and wait.”

  “You’re not really an embassy worker, are you?” Jordan replied, her limbs filmed in cold sweat.

  Lucy didn’t answer. Instead, she floored the Hummer, ejecting it from its hiding space. In the next instant, they were roaring down streets that seemed too narrow for the broad, American SUV to navigate. They came upon a wave of protesters, ordinary citizens of Caracas, pouring out of their shops and hovels to welcome the ex-president back into the city.

  Venezuela’s poorest were convinced that the bones the Populists tossed them would change their lives for the better. From their perspective, it meant nothing that the Populists opened their doors to terrorists.

  “Keep your head down,” Lucy advised, jamming a Kevlar helmet on her own head as she drove the Hummer straight into the crowd.

  Angry fists beat on the reinforced steel and tinted windows. The protesters couldn’t see inside, but government plates made it apparent to those who could read that they weren’t locals. To Jordon’s horror, two men leapt aboard the moving vehicle.

  Lucy accelerated, then braked abruptly, shaking the hitchhikers like a couple of annoying flies. She kept driving, turning into alleys and unpaved roads rutted with potholes and hemmed in by houses made of cardboard, leftover lumber, tin cans.

  The rumbling of tanks grew more distinct. As they crested a hilltop, bouncing onto a paved street from an unpaved alleyway, Jordan got her first good look at the Populist Army.

  A line of tanks at least a mile long cruised ominously up the thoroughfare and then diverged, tanks splintering off in three different directions. Citizens of Indian descent ran alongside the convoys, cheering, waving them on.

  “Hold on,” said Lucy.

  They shot across Avenida Sucre, driving into the yards that separated dilapidated row houses. Clotheslines snapped. Trash cans and boxes flew. They bounced into a public park, scattering pigeons. Not a soul got in their way.

  Jordan willed her tense muscles to relax. Miguel was trembling. She’d be lucky if he didn’t wet them both. Even she had to pee, but Lucy obviously knew what she was doing. Provided they could get away from the troops and out of the city, they’d all be fine.

  Or so she hoped. The alternative was way too scary to think about.

  At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, SIS Gordon Banks waited politely for the director, John Hurley, to give him his undivided attention. Hurley skimmed the remaining documents in the folder Gordon had given him, then flipped back to Lucy’s photo on the first page. “Where is she now?” he asked.

  “According to the GPS on her cell phone, she’s heading out of Caracas toward Maiquetía.”

  “That’s not the evacuation port,” Hurley pointed out.
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  “No, it’s not.”

  “Why the hell is she going that way? The Populists seized the airport last night.”

  “There’s a warehouse there, sir, that she was scrutinizing when we told her to bury her intel gear and pull out. I have a hunch she’s going back there.”

  “In other words, she’s ignoring orders to go on ice.”

  Gordon hesitated. He didn’t want to see a good case officer get sacked. “Obviously she thinks she’s got a target that’s more important to U.S. security than her career,” he replied, defending her.

  Hurley sent him a wry grimace. “Look, I’m not out to hammer this girl. She’s extremely promising. I just want her kept safe. Who’s getting the rest of our people out of the embassy?”

  “Er,” Gordon conferred with the memo in his hand. “SEAL Team Twelve, sir.”

  “Twelve?” Hurley perked up. “I think we’ve trained at least one member of that team—fellow by the name of Atwater. He was detailed to us in Afghanistan last year. Go ask the CNO if the Navy will loan him to us for a week or so to find Lucy Donovan and bring her home.”

  “Will do, sir,” Gordon replied. Relief left his shirt sticking to his back. “Good day, sir.”

  He hastened back to his office to call the Chief of Naval Operations on the green line.

  Solomon felt sick to his stomach. His commander couldn’t tell him if Jordan was among the nine Americans stuck inside the embassy in Caracas or not. He supposed he should be grateful that Team Twelve, having just been in Venezuela, was the team selected to extract the remaining Americans. He just wished he knew whether Jordan was among them.

  “We don’t have a roster of who’s inside,” Joe Montgomery had said earlier, before the meeting started.

  Echo Platoon now sat around the circular table in the Briefing Room, brainstorming. That was standard operating procedure, and every man from the lowliest petty officer to the CO himself got to give his input, though it was the operations officer, Lieutenant Lindstrom, who, with the CO’s blessing, got the final say.