by Susan Stoker
Fletch and Ghost and their team, had the man in front of them down and out before he even knew what was happening as well.
Fish and Tex moved as if they’d been competing in three-legged races their entire lives, reaching the man who’d pushed Annie to the ground at the same time the man across the lawn howled in pain at being hit by Akilah’s prosthetic. From what Hollywood said later, Tex punched the man at the same time Fish’s foot came out in a classic side kick and took out his knee.
Then TJ was there, ripping the AK-47 out of his lax arms. As soon as the man was on the ground, laying on his back and gasping for air, TJ had the barrel shoved into the man’s forehead. “Move one inch, motherfucker, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
Fletch didn’t bother watching whatever TJ was going to do the man, his concern was for his wife and daughter, and the rest of the women.
Obviously he wasn’t the only one apprehensive, as Ghost and Coach, along with Tex and Fish, were moving across the lawn.
The last gunman, the one who had been guarding the women, was lying on the ground unconscious, blood pouring from a cut lip, as well as a large gash on his head. One leg was obviously broken, and a bone in his forearm was sticking out of a bloody hole.
Not caring at the moment what happened, how it happened, or who made it happen, Fletch went straight for Emily. She was kneeling on the ground holding Annie in her arms, clutching her little head to her chest, making sure she didn’t see the violence behind her. Fletch dropped to his knees behind his daughter and engulfed the women who meant more to him than anything else in his life in his embrace.
He felt Emily shudder once, then control it. They stayed like that for several seconds, until Annie wiggled between them and whined, “I can’t breathe, Daddy.”
Taking a deep breath, more relieved than he could put into words that everyone seemed to be okay, Fletch eased back. He lifted Annie gently from Emily and turned her so she was standing in front of him and they were eye to eye.
“You’re okay?” he asked, running his hands up and down her arms.
She nodded.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, Daddy. I’m sure. Are you okay?”
He smiled for the first time since everything had started. Leave it to Annie to turn the tables and want to make sure he was all right.
“I’m okay, sprite.”
She turned in his arms then, and called out to Akilah, “Your arm is awesome, Akilah! You’re right. It is heavy!”
Fletch heard chuckles all around him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his daughter. She was amazing. He put his finger under her chin and brought her face back around to his. “Were you scared?”
She looked into his eyes and said softly, “Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Mommy told me once that being scared means you’re about to do something really brave. And I want to be brave. Like you.”
Fletch’s eyes left his daughter’s and met Emily’s. “Your mommy’s pretty smart.”
“I know. Just like me,” Annie said matter-of-factly.
Not breaking eye contact with his wife, Fletch kissed the top of Annie’s head and murmured, “Exactly.”
“How ’bout you and me try to sort through everyone’s stuff?” a deep voice said to Annie from above their heads.
Fletch looked up to see Dude standing there. He didn’t know the man very well, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at his daughter, that Fletch understood on a basic level. He’d seen it in the church when he’d stood up to move the plastic toys Annie had dropped in the aisle so Emily wouldn’t trip over them. Dude was deadly, but he’d never hurt a woman or child. He might be gruff and order them around, but he’d never hurt them.
“Yeah!” Annie answered, and held up her arms toward Dude without hesitation. She’d just met the man today, but apparently she had good intuition when it came to strangers.
Fletch looked up and saw his daughter with both arms around the large SEAL, snuggled into him. He made a mental note to watch her carefully when she started dating. It seemed she had a weakness for alpha men.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t see anything,” Dude told Fletch gruffly.
“Appreciate it,” Fletch said.
Dude nodded, and Fletch saw the man named Mozart come up next to them. The last thing he heard his daughter say was, “You have a scar like Truck does!” and she reached out her tiny hand to pat the other man’s cheek.
Fletch would’ve been exasperated at Annie’s penchant to touch and soothe large, scary men who had scars on their faces, but he had more important things to do at the moment.
He turned to Emily and fell back on his butt as she threw herself at him. He gathered her into his arms, managing not to fall to his back. He buried his face into the side of her neck as she did the same to him. They didn’t say anything for a long moment, just enjoyed being with each other, safe and unharmed.
When Fletch felt Emily start to shake in his arms, he tightened his hold on her and leaned back so he could see her face. “Em?”
“I’m okay,” she reassured him quickly. “It’s just adrenaline.”
Fletch knew all about that. He ran his hands up and down her back, trying to soothe her.
“Those assholes ruined our wedding,” she grumbled quietly.
“No,” Fletch said gruffly, “they sure as hell did not. Today is our wedding day and I won’t let anyone take that from us. This is not the day we almost got robbed. It’s our day. We will celebrate this day in the future and I’ll take you out for dinner then make love to you for hours when we get home. Today is the day I thank God for making you mine.”
“That’s sweet,” Emily murmured.
“No. It’s not. It’s fact. Everything that happened to those assholes, they asked for. They picked the wrong fucking party to crash and they’ll spend a long time in jail regretting it.”
“The cameras were on?” Emily asked quietly.
“Of course.”
“So the police will see that you guys acted in self-defense?”
Fletch took her head in his hands and forced her to look at him. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
Emily bit her lip then said softly, “I don’t want you guys to go to jail.”
“We aren’t going to jail,” Fletch said immediately. “It was clearly self-defense, love. And they’re not dead.”
“They’re not?” Emily asked, one eyebrow raised.
Fletch wanted to be pissed that she thought he’d kill someone in front of Annie, but he understood that she probably wasn’t thinking clearly. Besides, he’d told himself not ten minutes earlier that if any of them hurt his girls, he’d kill them without thought. “No. They’re just unconscious. I think Penelope was the one who messed up the one guarding you guys the worst.”
Emily turned her head to look at the unconscious man nearby. He looked gruesome. Whatever had happened to him had been fast, hard, and brutal. She looked over at Penelope, who was standing next to the firefighter named Moose. He had an arm around her shoulders as they spoke to Beatle and Blade.
“Oh. Has someone called the police?” Emily asked.
“Yeah.” Fletch had no idea if that was the truth or not, but figured someone had certainly called nine-one-one by now to report what had happened and to let them know an ambulance was needed. If it wasn’t one of the civilians, then TJ certainly would’ve done it. As a law enforcement officer, he’d be on it.
Emily smiled then. A wide, bright smile that lit up his world. “Life is never going to be boring with us, is it?”
Fletch relaxed completely for the first time since the men had shown up with guns. “I highly doubt it.”
7
Three hours later, the reception had moved indoors. The guests had been interviewed by the police, the bad guys had been arrested and taken away by ambulance to the hospital to be treated. Everyone’s belongings had been returned to the rightful owners, including all th
ree of the prosthetics. And most of Fletch and Emily’s friends had long since made their way home.
Those left were safely locked inside Fletch’s house, lounging or sitting on every available surface. It was a tight fit, but no one seemed to mind.
Tex sat on one end of the couch, Melody tucked into his side, baby Hope sleeping in her arms, and Akilah sitting on the floor in front of them.
Penelope was sitting in one of the large armchairs with Moose sitting on the arm next to her, hovering protectively.
Mary was sitting on the other end of the couch from Tex and Melody, with Truck right next to her. They weren’t cuddling, but Mary’s usual antagonistic attitude was nowhere to be seen. Instead she looked exhausted.
Ghost and Rayne were sitting on a couple of cushions on the floor, Rayne leaning back into Ghost’s chest. Coach and Harley were sitting nearby against a wall, Harley’s head on Coach’s shoulder, their arms intertwined.
Wolf, Abe, Cookie, TJ, and Fish were sitting at the kitchen table behind the couch, and Mozart, Dude, Benny, Hollywood, Beatle, and Blade were standing in various places around the room.
Annie was sound asleep on the couch next to Truck, her head resting on his massive leg, her knees and arms tucked into her chest.
And lastly, Fletch and Emily sat on the hearth in front of the fireplace. Their clasped hands rested on Fletch’s thigh as they decompressed and talked with their friends. It was a large group, and they’d been through a lot over the last eight hours, but no one seemed to be in a hurry to go home, nor had anyone even suggested that the kids be taken off to bed.
“So,” Fletch began softly, not wanting to wake up his daughter, “I was a bit busy, someone want to tell me exactly what happened to the asshole guarding the women?” He looked at Penelope as he asked the question.
Her chin went up and she straightened in the chair. “He underestimated me, that’s what happened,” she growled.
Fletch chuckled and remarked lightly, “That much is obvious. You fucked him up, Tiger.”
She smiled then and relaxed, obviously relieved she wasn’t going to have to defend her actions. “Okay, it really wasn’t so much me, but I held him still while the others did the dirty work. When Annie hit him with Akilah’s arm and distracted him, I went for his gun and we wrestled for it. He was stronger than I was, but my other thought was to keep him from shooting anyone. I didn’t have to worry about that for long though, Moose was there almost as soon as I was. He punched the guy in the face while I had my hands on the rifle, splitting his lip, and the guy whipped his rifle up as if to shoot Moose.”
Moose took up the story. “I ripped the weapon from his hands and clocked him in the head with it. I went to kick his knee out from under him, but missed and got his thigh instead. I heard the bone snap as my foot connected. He went down.”
Then Fish continued the tale. “Tex and I got to him around this time and he’d reached up and was trying to punch Tiger. To prevent her from getting hurt, Tex grabbed his wrist at the same time I kicked at him.” The newest member of the group shrugged unapologetically. “It just so happened that his arm was in the way of my foot and it kinda snapped in two and broke through the skin.”
“He passed out after that,” Tex finished, grinning.
“Thank you for returning my necklace,” Penelope told Tex.
Tex nodded at her, giving her a look that said he understood how important it was for her to get the tracker necklace back around her neck as soon as possible.
“Everyone got everything of their own back, right?” Emily asked for the third time.
“Yes, love, everyone got their stuff back,” Fletch told her, pulling her to him and kissing the top of her head lovingly.
Emily looked around the room and stated to no one in particular, “I hated giving them my rings. Penelope, I know it hurt for you to take off your necklace. And Tex, Fish, and Akilah, I can’t imagine how it felt to have to give up your prosthetics. And I know you guys,” she said nodding at each of the Navy SEALs, “didn’t expect to have to get into World War III when all you were doing was attending the wedding of a friend. All I can say is that I’m sorry.”
“This is not your fault,” Fletch growled at the same time almost everyone said the same thing.
Fish stood up from the table and came over to where Emily and Fletch were sitting on the brick hearth. He kneeled down in front of them and said in a low, earnest tone, all the more intense because of the lack of emotion in it, “Your husband and his team saved my life. I wasn’t sure I wanted my life to be saved at the time, but they did it anyway. Fletch and Truck browbeat me until I finally agreed to come today. I didn’t want to. I wanted to lie in my bed at the rehab center and feel sorry for myself. But somehow, after all that happened today, I finally feel like I can crawl out of the dark hole I’ve been living in for the last few months and reach the top and the sunshine.”
“What happened today?” Emily asked softly, not taking her eyes from the tortured soldier in front of her.
“Your daughter happened,” Fish said earnestly. “She walked down the aisle happy as a clam in her combat boots dropping flowers and Army men as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And Akilah, a girl who has been though much worse than me, and is a hundred percent happy, made me open my eyes and realize that my life isn’t over. And that my dead teammates wouldn’t want me to live the rest of my life bitter and pissed off at the world. And your reception got held up by four men who didn’t give a shit who they hurt or scared…all in the name of making a few bucks.
“I saw men I respected and trusted in action. I saw a woman I’ve never met confront a man with a rifle without a thought to her own safety. I saw a little fucking girl with more bravery in her pinkie finger than most people have in their entire bodies, outsmart a man four times her size. And I saw teamwork. Between two groups of soldiers that historically have butted heads when it came to the best way to take down the enemy. It was seamless and selfless and it made me glad to be alive for the first time since I lost my arm.”
Emily held her breath as Fish continued.
“So don’t be sorry about today, Emily Fletcher. Be thankful for your friends. Be glad that everyone is sitting and standing here safe and sound. Revel in the love of your husband and daughter. Laugh at the fact that the stupid jerks who tried to ruin your day were foiled in grand style and will be behind bars for years to come. Know that you’re protected, loved, and that you have good men at your back.”
“I know,” Emily told Fish in a whisper.
“I’m not better yet. I have a long way to go,” Fish said, standing and looking around the room. “But you all have given me hope that I can get there. I’ll never be the man or soldier I used to be. But I’ve realized that it just doesn’t matter. This is what matters.”
Emily heard a few sniffs around her, but didn’t take her eyes from Fish. “You’re always welcome here, Dane Munroe. We have a room above our garage. If you need a place to go, you can come here. We won’t bother you, you can live there as a hermit for as long as you want.”
Fish smiled then. The first real smile Emily had seen on his face. “Thank you, Emily. I appreciate that. But once I’m released from rehab, I’m going west. Maybe Idaho. The fresh air and mountains appeal to me. As does the history of people living there on the fringes of society.”
“Just don’t become one of those prepper people,” Fletch murmured, only half kidding.
Emily jabbed her husband in the side with her elbow, but continued to look at Fish. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Emily told him softly.
“Me too,” Fish replied with a heartfelt sigh.
The room was quiet for a long moment, everyone soaking in the conversation between Fish and Emily and simply enjoying being in each other’s company. Then Wolf stood up from the table. “On that note, I think we need to get going.”
Emily and Fletch stood immediately and Wolf waved them back down.
“Don’t get up.
We can show ourselves out.” He came over to where Emily was still standing and the other SEALs followed him. One by one, as they’d done at the ceremony not so long ago, they leaned down and hugged her goodbye.
Then each went over to Tex and shook his hand, smiling down at his family.
“We should get going too,” Moose said quietly to Penelope.
“You’re not driving back to San Antonio tonight are you?” Emily asked in concern.
Penelope shook her head. “No. We’re staying at a hotel and will head out in the morning.” At the wide-eyed surprised look Emily gave her, Penelope quickly clarified, “Not in the same room.”
Emily grinned huge at her friend.
“I’m headed back tonight,” TJ shared. “I’m used to long shifts in my highway patrol car at night, so the couple of hours it’ll take to get home isn’t a big deal for me.”
“Will you let us know you made it home?” Emily asked.
TJ smiled as if amused by her concern, but merely nodded.
Emily looked over at Rayne and Harley. “I suppose you guys will be leaving too?”
Rayne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but you know we’ll see you in a day or so. It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
“I know, but after what happened tonight, I feel as if you’ll be a million miles away.”
Rayne’s smile died and she walked over to Emily and gave her a huge hug. “Us Delta women have to stick together,” she told her in a whisper, still hugging her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Emily said, relieved.
She gave Harley a hug, then their men too.
The living room almost seemed empty, even though several people were still there.
Mary was still sitting on the couch with Truck at her side and Annie’s head in his lap. Tex hadn’t moved, so neither had Melody nor their daughters. Hollywood, Beatle, Blade, and Fish also remained.
“So…who’s spending the night?” Emily asked somewhat nervously after the room had cleared out. It was a spontaneous thing to say, especially since it was her wedding night, but for some reason she couldn’t bear for everyone to disappear. She needed them around. She knew Fletch would keep her safe, but she wanted to have his back. And she knew the few men left would, just as they had tonight.
