“What happened? Who'd we lose?”
Chase sighed, lowered the gun and shook his head. “I'm so sorry.”
Wyatt felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. His breath swooshed out. “No! Mom?”
Chase didn't look at him. He stared down at the ground. Wyatt couldn't breathe. He felt as if the entire world was spinning and he couldn't stop it. Would fate be so cruel as to take his entire family? He couldn't believe that. He couldn't believe he’d have to endure that much pain and grief.
“Where's everyone else?” Chase asked with dread.
Bryan answered. “Megan and Willow are down there. We wanted to check things out before we brought them up.”
Wyatt looked up in time to see the look of horror on Chase's face. “JJ's fine.”
Chase's shoulders sagged in relief. He looked around again. “Evan?”
Bryan shook his head, but didn't say the words.
“Wow,” Chase said. “That's too bad. He was a really good guy.”
“I'll head down and get Megan and Willow. Megan is chomping at the bit to see Caitlin,” Bryan said.
“Um,” Chase started.
Wyatt's eyes grew huge. “No! It can't be! Don't you dare say it, Chase!”
He pushed his friend to the side and rushed inside the cabin, quickly doing a head count. He counted over and over again, looking at the faces staring back at him. Caitlin and Rosie weren’t there. His mind refused to acknowledge the fact. He looked around the small one-room cabin again as if he missed them on his first scan. He ignored the eyes all looking at him. He couldn't greet anyone. Not right now. His mind warred with what he was seeing. He couldn't accept the loss of his mother and Caitlin. It couldn't be true. There had to be a mistake.
Running a hand through his hair, he walked back outside to where Chase and Bryan were quietly talking. “I can't tell Megan. This will kill her, Chase. What the hell happened?” he half screamed.
“I'll explain once you get her and Willow up here,” Chase said with a great deal of sadness. “I have to say, I’m almost glad Evan isn't here to come back to this. We lost Tara and Amy as well.”
Wyatt was shaking his head, refusing to hear the words. Right now, he felt like a failure. They’d left them alone. Hadn't Bryan lectured Megan for doing exactly that? He should’ve told Neil to leave. He should’ve fought Megan a little more. So many wrong choices led them to this very moment. It was overwhelming, but he wouldn't break. He had to be strong. He had to be the guy that kept it together.
Taking a deep breath. “I'll go get her,” he said, walking back the way he’d come. His feet felt heavy, as did his shoulders. He couldn't stand up straight. The burden of guilt and devastating grief was weighing him down. In that moment, he suddenly understood what Megan had been feeling these past few months. It was catastrophic.
The guilt was clouding his mind, interfering with his ability to think straight. So much of what had happened over the past few months and days became clearer to him. Megan had been coping with so much. He hadn't fully understood it until this moment. His training had always given him the luxury of compartmentalizing all the crap he’d seen and dealt with. It was different when it was your own family. He couldn't chalk it up to service for the country or tell himself they died as heroes. These were people he loved with all his heart. They died because he left them to fend for themselves.
He mulled over the advice he’d given Megan when she was feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. Could he heed his own words? He had to. As he walked back to Megan and Willow, shock quickly turned to anger. He didn't feel the tree branches sideswiping him, cutting his arms as he stomped through. He was on a mission. He would exact revenge. He may die doing it, but he would kill Neil and every single one of those men.
“Megan?” he called out, barely above a whisper. They didn't know if the men had spread out and he didn't want to take any chances.
She stepped out from behind a large tree. “Clear?” she asked.
He nodded, then realized she wouldn't be able to see him all that well in the filtered moonlight. “Yep. We have a lot to talk about.”
Willow stepped out and the three of them walked up the hill in silence. Wyatt didn't know how to tell Megan her daughter wasn't with the others. He’d been too afraid to hear the answer to the question; was she dead, kidnapped or missing in general?
He sensed she knew something was wrong. If she didn't ask, she wouldn't have to hear. He figured that was okay. It would give her some time to brace herself for what was coming. He wouldn't take that from her.
5
Megan took several deep breaths before approaching the cabin. Duke ran out to greet her, jumping and yapping and licking all at once. She reached down to scratch behind his ears while doing her best to calm him down.
“Hi,” she greeted Chase who was standing outside the doorway.
“I'm so happy to see you. All of you,” he said, expressing his relief. She smiled when he reached out for JJ. Willow quickly removed him from the carrier and let Chase cradle him close.
“I've missed you, big guy,” he cooed, rubbing JJ's head before giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Well? What did you find out? Is JJ going to be okay?” Chase asked, clearly anxious to hear the news.
Willow sighed. “Honestly, I don't know much more than I did before we left. The doctor confirmed it was a heart murmur, but how big and how serious it is was never established. The stupid building exploded before we got a chance to get any tests done,” she said with frustration. “Where's Ryland?”
“Inside. The building exploded?” he asked, moving JJ to his shoulder where he was gently patting the baby's back like a pro.
“Long story,” Wyatt answered. “Do you have any water? We had to leave everything behind and we’re all dehydrated.”
Chase nodded. “We do. Not a lot, but enough.”
Megan was excited to get inside. She’d been dying to see Caitlin and know that her little girl was okay. She felt there was still some serious tension, but figured it was with the situation of being holed up in the tiny one room cabin.
She walked through the door and froze. This couldn't be right. The absence of her daughter and Rosie was the first thing she noticed. She looked around the room and saw Albert and Brenda sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. They wouldn't look at her.
Frankie was sitting close by with his head propped up on his knees. Ryland jumped up from his spot next to the boy and ran to his mother. Her eyes scanned over the two new faces in the room, before moving back and forth.
“Where is everyone else?” Megan asked in disbelief. The group felt too small. For so long they’d been living as one large, cohesive unit. It didn't feel right to have such low numbers. “Who is that?” she gestured at the identical twin faces staring at her.
Albert started to stand, but was unable to do so on his own. Brenda quickly jumped up and pulled his arm, giving him the leverage he needed. Albert walked towards her with sadness in his eyes.
She was shaking her head no, demanding he not say the words she knew were coming. “No. Uh-uh. Don't you dare tell me she's, she's,” she couldn't say the word that terrified her more than anything else on this earth.
“We don't know,” Albert said, shrugging his shoulders. She could see the tears in his eyes along with the exhaustion. Albert looked as if he’d aged ten years in the time they’d been gone.
Megan held onto his words like a lifeline in an ocean of despair. He didn't know. That had to be good, right?
Her head stopped shaking no and suddenly started bobbing up and down. “Okay, okay. You don't know. That means she ran away with Rosie, Tara and Amy?” She said the words as a question, praying someone would say yes. All she needed was one of them to tell her Rosie and Tara had escaped with Caitlin and Amy.
Albert looked behind her. She spun around and looked at Chase. “Well?”
“I don't know, Megan. I honestly don't know. Everything happened
so fast,” he replied, sorrow in his voice. “We looked, but we haven't been able to get close to the lodge. We haven't been able to do much of anything but sit here.”
“We'll find them. It's okay,” she repeated. Saying the words over and over helped calm her racing heart. “Tomorrow morning, we'll go out and we'll find them, right, Wyatt?”
He put a hand on her arm. “Yes. We'll find them. Let's take care of us so we can start searching. We all need to drink some water. We can talk about what happened and formulate a plan. One thing at a time.”
“Yeah, like who are they?” she asked again, looking at the obvious identical twin teenage boys sitting on the floor.
Chase answered. “That’s Aiden and Jayden.”
“And you picked them up where?” she asked.
He smiled. “Actually, we found them here. They've been making this little cabin their home the past couple weeks. When we showed up, they welcomed us in.”
She looked at the twins, taking in their tall, thin builds. They stood, held out their hands and in unison said, “Pleased to meet you, ma'am.”
She raised an eyebrow before looking at Chase. “I'm Megan. How exactly did you end up here?”
“I'm Aiden,” the one on her left said. “We've been kind of roaming around the past few months. Our folks were killed some time back and we wanted to see if we could find somewhere safer.”
Megan's heart softened a little. She guessed the boys couldn't be older than eighteen and here they were, on their own.
“Where'd you come from?” she asked.
The other twin smiled. “The middle of nowhere. We had a family farm. We were living there, minding our own business, then one day, some guys started to take our cattle. My dad tried to warn them off, but well, they shot him. My mom shot one of the guys before his buddy shot her.”
Megan nodded, knowing their story wasn’t uncommon. They’d all ended up here for similar reasons. It was hard to imagine young, innocent kids going through such horrible tragedies. This stuff happened in third world countries not the United States, or that's what she kept telling herself.
“I'm real sorry to hear about your parents. Cattle, huh? I bet that was nice,” she said, with only a hint of jealousy. “Are you boys planning on sticking around or are you passing through?”
Chase answered. “We kind of took over their home, Megan. They've been working on making this place sustainable and livable. We encroached on them,” he stressed. “They've been kind enough to let us stay here and have been helping us out.”
Again, Megan raised an eyebrow, questioning him without saying the words. Technically, this cabin wasn't theirs, so why she felt they had a claim to it, she didn't know, but it felt as if the twins were in her territory. Clearly, Chase felt otherwise and in this matter, she accepted he had the final say.
“The boys hunt, fish and have been raised on a ranch their whole lives,” Albert added. “They have a lot of know-how and are handy to have around,” he said with a smile. “Especially when it comes to guns. They told us they've been shooting since they were old enough to hold a gun.”
Megan understood the motivation behind keeping them all together. They could always use more people who knew their way around a gun. The fact they could hunt was another huge bonus and once things settled down, would take a lot of pressure off of her. That was assuming their lives would return to the new normal to which they had become accustomed.
Aiden and Jayden both had that “aw, shucks” look about them. Their shaggy brown hair made them appear much younger than they actually were she suspected. They were thin and looked as if they hadn't had a proper meal in some time.
“How old are you?” she asked, not caring if it sounded harsh or forward.
“We'll be eighteen next month,” the one with the green shirt, answered.
This could be problematic. “Great, um, how am I to tell you apart? You guys take identical to a whole new level.” She chuckled, trying to make up for her earlier rudeness.
“Jayden is a hair taller than me,” Aiden replied.
Megan looked back and forth between them. There was no way to see that unless one had a measuring stick.
“You'll figure it out, our friends always did. Jayden is shy. He doesn't talk a whole lot. I tend to do most of the talking for us.”
If he was talking about Jayden that would make him, Aiden, she surmised.
“Okay, well, I guess you'll have to correct me when I'm wrong so I can learn who's who,” she said with a smile. “Don't change your shirts. That's about the only way I can tell the difference between you two for now.”
“How about some water now?” Albert said.
Megan smiled, pushing down the lump in her throat. With the introductions out of the way, her mind went back to the fact her daughter wasn't in the cabin. The twins could definitely be a great addition to their group, but that wasn't what she was worried about at the moment. Right now, it was about getting their missing members back.
A plan. That was what she needed. Planning her daughter's rescue gave her something to focus on. She was barely holding it together. It felt as if a million needles were stabbing all over her body. She didn't know whether to cry and wallow in misery or run into the night screaming for her daughter. Nothing felt right. Her skin felt too tight. Wyatt gestured for her to take a seat on the wood floor, but she refused. She had to keep moving. He pushed her down, demanding she sit. She wanted to argue and fight back, but once she sat, she didn't think she could get up.
Brenda poured cups of water for each of them, instructing them to drink it slowly. She added a little salt and sugar to the water to help replace the electrolytes they’d surely lost in their mad dash to get home.
When Megan questioned her about the additions, Brenda explained. “This is some of the stuff we left up here. The buckets kept it dry.”
Megan remembered they’d taken almost everything from the cabin, but after a small debate, had decided to leave some basic emergency supplies just in case. They’d hoped never to need the stuff, but now, she was grateful it was here.
The exhaustion set in as she thought back to the breakneck speed they used to get back home. They’d managed to cut a week-long expedition in half. The heat had been extreme. It wasn't until they were closer to their mountain that they got any relief from the temperature. They were all sunburned, which earned them a lecture from Brenda. Megan shrugged. There was nothing to be done about it. None of them was willing to sit in the shade and wait for the sun to set when they knew their family was in jeopardy.
The longer Megan sat, the more tired she felt. Her body felt the need to remind her of the punishing journey she’d put it through. Every muscle ached and her feet felt as if they were swollen to twice their normal size. She could feel the blisters on the sides of her feet and her heels. When Brenda saw the condition of her feet, which was probably the same condition as Wyatt, Bryan and Willow's, she was going to be irritated.
Once they replenished themselves with salad foraged from wild plants and more water, Chase began to explain what happened while they were gone. Megan's blood ran cold as she listened to him describe the events that led to them being forced to seek refuge and leave everything they had behind.
“He snapped. One minute we were playing cards and the next he had a gun on Albert and was saying all kinds of crazy things,” Chase told them running his hands through his hair as he spoke. “He’d been doing great. Helping out and being normal in general. I should’ve known it was all a game.”
“You and me both,” Wyatt agreed. “I had a gut feeling the guy was off, but I wanted to believe there was a chance.”
Megan looked down at her hands. “I pushed you both to ignore your better judgment. I guess I still wanted to believe there are good people out there.”
“There are good people. We all agreed to help him and let him stay. No matter how much crap we’ve gone through, we keep falling back on all those manners our parents taught us. Being respectful, kind and
generous are good traits and I’m glad we’ve managed to hold on to that part of our humanity. I don't think that’s a terrible thing, but we definitely need to assume the worst in people from now on. Let them prove us wrong,” Wyatt added.
“What caused it?” Bryan asked. “I mean, why did he snap? Did you guys say something or hint at kicking him out?”
“I heard him talking to someone on the radio, saying something about the lodge was the perfect place to set up and then I heard him say something in Russian. When I confronted him, he pulled a gun I didn’t know he had. Chase saved my butt,” Albert confessed, shaking his head at the memory.
Chase nodded. “We soon figured out what that something was. I managed to get the gun away from Neil. We locked him in the long house, but it was too late. The next morning, his team arrived. I thought we were safe with him locked down. Boy, was I wrong. We had no warning at all. His army flew in. Literally. Dropping out of the sky from several helicopters. Others came up the mountain in Army jeeps.”
Albert shuddered at the memory. “There were so many of them coming from every direction. It was an invasion. I didn't know anyone still had the means to fly. I think we were all in shock as we watched the choppers come in.”
“We grabbed as much as we could and ran before they could follow us. There were too many for us to fight,” Chase added, the expression on his face revealing how terrible it’d been.
“You did the right thing,” Wyatt said, trying to bolster his friend's confidence. “I don't think there was a single trigger you or any of us set off. He came to the lodge under false pretenses. Getting rid of us and taking our lodge was his plan from the get go. We were never a part of it. By sending us away to be killed, he made it easier for his men to take over and control the lodge.”
Chase shook his head. “The dude is a master manipulator. I can't believe we did exactly what he wanted us to. We didn't stop to question him once. I feel like such an idiot,” he groaned.
“We were all naive. Please, Chase, don't take this all on you. Each of us had a part in handing over our home, but we're going to get it back,” Bryan said in a quiet voice.
EMP Lodge Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 99
