Chapter Sixteen
Mel stood midway up the gangway, racked with indecision. Go ashore or go back on board. Danny wanted her on shore, safe with their family. She wanted to see her husband, kiss him, one last time in case, God forbid, they weren’t able to defuse the bomb. But would she even make it to him in time?
The only other instance she’d ever been this indecisive had been the day Danny decided they should get married, on a whim.
Four Months Ago
She was sure they were not the first couple to have this argument at McCarran International Airport. Thankfully, though, they were in a private hangar where no one could hear the goose-like noise she’d made in response to Danny’s ludicrous suggestion.
“We can’t just get married,” she squawked.
“Sure we can,” he said with a shrug. Smiling, he leaned back against the jamb of the roll-up hangar door, the sun setting over the Vegas Strip just beyond them.
The aptness of the location—where countless other elopements took place daily—was not lost on her.
On their way home from a shipping conference in Greece, they’d stopped in Vegas to refuel, restock and take a night off before returning to San Francisco. A wedding had not been anywhere on tonight’s or this trip’s agenda.
“Melissa.” Danny waved a hand in front of her face. “Yoo-hoo.” She shook her head, trying to snap out of the stunned daze. “Well, if I ever need to startle you silent, I know what works.”
“We can’t get married,” she repeated.
“Tell me why,” he replied, though he didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by her objection. He lifted one foot, bracing it on the jamb, and withdrew a playing card from his suit pocket, flipping it through his fingers.
She paced the ten or so feet back and forth in front of Danny. “A license, for one,” she said, holding up a finger.
“This is Vegas,” he said, waving his card and hand at The Strip behind him. “We can get a license on the spot.”
She raised a second finger. “Your parents, for two.”
“They’ve got Aidan and Jamie’s wedding to worry about.”
She lifted a third. “Aidan and Jamie, for three.”
“Are busy being disgustingly in love.” He waved his hand again.
She darted forward, snatching the card away. “Danny, you can’t just wave this off. They’ll never forgive us.”
He pushed off the jamb and closed the distance between them, lifting his hands and cupping her cheeks. “Do you want to marry me, chica?”
Speechless. Twice in the span of minutes.
She couldn’t find a word to save her life—too many thoughts, too many scenarios, too many emotions tearing at her heart and head. She didn’t know what to say, what to do, indecision as good as cuffs around her limbs and a gag in her mouth.
Danny’s face fell, and he dropped his hands. “Oh, I see.”
Pain, burning right at the center of her chest, like it had that day in Cuba, like it had every day after until he’d forgiven her.
She broke through her indecision and reached out, snagging his wrist and turning him back to her. She tangled their fingers, the card clasped between their hands. “Of course I want to marry you. But do you really want to marry me?”
One corner of his mouth ticked up. “Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. You be serious, for one minute.”
“Oh, I’m plenty serious.” He lifted his other hand and put it right over her gut, where a bullet had almost killed her four months ago. “I’ve wanted to ask you every day since you woke up in the hospital.”
She covered his hand with hers. “Why now, Danny?”
“Why not?”
She started to object, and he kissed her quiet.
When they parted, his dark eyes shone with the setting sun and more. “Do you need another year, or ten, to know this is real? Because I don’t. And I sure as hell don’t need all the trappings of a big wedding to make it any more real. I just need you, and your ‘I do.’”
She couldn’t help but chuckle, though it sounded watery and choked to her ears. “Me?” She cast her gaze aside, staring at their bound hands. “I’m forty-five, I work two high-risk jobs, I’m barely home...”
He stepped closer, nuzzling her temple. “I know all these things.”
But he didn’t know it all. There was one topic they hadn’t broached, and in the spirit of full disclosure, since he was, after all, proposing they spend the rest of their lives together, she gave it to him. “I don’t want kids.”
It had never been her job, her dominant tendencies, or her efficiency with guns and knives that scared men away. It was because she wanted different things out of life, and didn’t want certain other things, namely children. She liked them all right, loved all the Talley grandkids that she considered her own nieces and nephews already, but she had no desire—at twenty-five or forty-five—to have any of her own.
She should have known by now that Danny didn’t scare easily. And that he was smarter than she often gave him credit for. “I didn’t expect you to,” he said.
She reared back, glancing up at him. “You’re only thirty-three. You could find someone who could—”
“I don’t need kids to be happy. I just need you, and your ‘I do.’” He drew up their clasped hands, pulled the card from between them and turned it around so she could read the back.
It was a business card. For Ace of Hearts Wedding Chapel.
“What do you say, M?” he asked with a wide grin. “Will you marry me?”
Her indecision was no match for his smile and for the shot at happiness his laughter promised. “All right, Q. Let’s get hitched.”
Present
A thread ran from her heart deep into the ship, straight to Danny’s, rooting her to the spot. If she walked back down that gangway, it would stretch too tight and snap, separating her from her other half.
From the light and laughter that grounded her in a job—in a world—that was otherwise filled with so much darkness and despair.
“Boston, no!”
Nic’s strangled shout broke through her careening thoughts. She whirled around, finding Cam charging up the gangway toward her. Over his shoulder, down the gangway and on the pier, a pale and wide-eyed Nic had both arms wrapped around Aidan’s torso, holding him back.
Reaching her, Cam clasped her upper arm, jerking her the opposite direction of the ship. “They’ll make it, Cruz. We gotta go. Now!”
The thread pulled taut.
And everything went black.
“Daniel!”
Rip.
The connection shredded as the comm in her ear wailed and crackled. Between the dark and the sound of her world crumbling, she stumbled into Cam.
“Everybody get down!” Cam yelled, as he hustled them the rest of the way down and off the plank. He shoved her into Aidan and Nic, then piled on to their huddle, forcing them all down into a crouch.
Mel waited for the explosion, for the boom outside to echo the booming in her ears, the explosion in her chest.
For the final snap.
One beat.
Two beats.
Three beats.
Mel lifted her torso, forcing the huddle to break.
“What the fuck just happened?” Aidan said.
“Does anyone’s comm work?” Cam asked.
Mel shook her head. After the wail and crackle, it had died. Aidan’s and Nic’s the same. Cam withdrew his phone from his pocket and tapped at the blank screen. “This is dead too.”
Realization dawned. As she stared back at the ship, hope started to weave the strands back together. “They triggered the EMP.”
“An EMP?” Aidan asked.
“I had Jamie program it into the security protocols.”
Aidan began to nod, blood rushing into his pale face. “That would kill the trigger device on the bomb.”
They started for the ship at the same time, only to be blocked by Nic and Cam. “Wait!” Cam said, holding up his hands. Around them, the bomb squad rushed onboard. “They need to check if there’s a secondary device.”
It was the longest five minutes of her life. Aidan’s too, judging by the way he paced and barked at everyone. Until Sonja and Paul appeared, hands bound behind their backs, and behind them, the best sight Mel had seen all day.
Perhaps in her life.
Her husband and Jamie.
The crowd on the pier cheered.
Aidan moved first, rushing past her, past Paul, and into Jamie’s arms. Cam caught up to them and took hold of Paul and Sonja, clearing her path to Danny.
But she remained glued to the spot, afraid to believe the single brightest light of her life had been turned back on, afraid that a single wrong step would somehow plunge her back into darkness. Danny, though, was fearless. He smiled, big and wide, laughing as he strutted confidently toward her. The light shined bright and she came unglued. She launched into his arms. “You are a bomb magnet.”
“I’ve gone from a chick magnet to a bomb magnet. Totally your fault.”
She couldn’t contain her laughter, relief bubbling out, and Danny swallowed it down, sealing their mouths in a kiss. His tongue teased her lips and she gladly opened for him, tasting traces of champagne and caviar from the party. She clinched the ends of his loosened bowtie and held him to her, savoring the much-missed connection.
They only broke apart when someone cleared his throat behind them. Barefoot, she had to rise up on her toes to whisper in his ear, “Don’t tell them yet.”
He glanced down, dark eyes questioning.
“They’ve had a rough enough night.” She smiled and kissed his cheek. She didn’t want him to think her reticence was about him. She didn’t think the Talleys would begrudge them their happiness, but she and Danny had begrudged them a wedding. That might sting, a little. They should save that news for a less harrowing day. And maybe the present she’d brought back with her from Ireland would soften the blow.
“Good call,” Danny said, before shuffling them toward his gathering family.
John hugged her the tightest. “Melissa, you’ve saved this family again. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Danny and Jamie were the real heroes,” she replied.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Danny tapped his ear dramatically. “I don’t think I heard you right.”
Chuckling, she patted his chest. “You’re a superhero. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
He smiled wide. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”
The next thing they all heard, though, definitely was not.
“One big happy family, aren’t you?”
Standing beside a nearby cruiser, Mitch resisted the officer who was trying to push him into the backseat. They’d done him the courtesy of cuffing his hands in front, and that courtesy wasn’t returned. Mitch lifted his arms, rammed his right elbow back, and popped the officer right in the nose. The officer staggered back, and Mitch swiped his sidearm. He swung it up and around, pointing it directly at Mel. “Here’s what I have to say to—”
His sentence ended in a gasp. Right shoulder jerking back, he dropped the gun as blood stained his white undershirt. Mel followed the trajectory of the shot.
To Nic’s Beretta, pulled out of her waistband, and smoking in Danny’s hand.
He lowered the gun, clicked the safety back on and placed it in her hand. “I can do more than just pick locks.”
She curled her fingers around the gun and his fingers. “I’m getting that.”
He’d saved her life, multiple times over, in more ways than one.