Chapter Thirty
12:10 p.m.
Private Airfield, Martinique
If you couldn’t fix him, nobody could.
Marcus’s words played on repeat in Jesse’s head as they watched the team’s jet, affectionately called the Hornet’s Nest, land at the airport shortly after noon. Right on schedule.
If things had gone according to plan, they’d all be soaking in some tropical sunshine today. Gabe and Seth would have reunited with Audrey and Phoebe here at the airport before going on to the hotel. Quinn would’ve headed home to Mara. Connor and the recruits would’ve bonded over volleyball and trips to the beach. He and Lanie would have spent the day in her cabana discovering each other.
And Marcus and Danny would be surfing.
But things hadn’t gone according to plan. At all.
If you couldn’t fix him, nobody could.
A lie. He’d never felt more like a fraud in his life. Danny could’ve lived. He’d started declining the moment Jesse had cut him open and gone searching for the bleed. If he hadn’t done it…maybe Danny wouldn’t have bled out before he reached the hospital.
If ifs and buts were pots and pans…
He could almost hear his mom’s voice repeating her favorite idiom. And, as always, she was right. He had to stop thinking about it, stop torturing himself with everything he did or didn’t do, or else he was going to fall into that hole he’d clawed so desperately out of a few years ago.
The Hornet’s Nest came to a stop on the tarmac and a few minutes later, the door opened. Audrey came running out of there so fast her feet barely touched the ground. She took a flying leap into Gabe’s arms and he dropped his cane, catching her despite his bad leg. Audrey was crying. The two kissed, held each other in a tight embrace, and kissed again.
Phoebe was only a few steps behind, and Seth met her halfway across the tarmac. More kissing, more hugging.
Jace Garcia, HORNET’s pilot, appeared next. He took one look at the group of them and shook his head. “You cabrones always have all the fun without me.”
Normally, a comment like that would have elicited jokes and jabs at Garcia. But nobody was much in the mood for joking, and when Garcia spotted the coffin waiting to go home, his smirk faded.
“Who?” But then, he didn’t need anyone to answer. He had eyes and could see who was missing. “Danny.” He swore in Spanish and if Jesse wasn’t mistaken, the usually inscrutable bastard actually had tears in his eyes. “It’s always the good ones.”
“Which is why we’ll all live forever,” Tucker Quentin muttered to nobody in particular as he stepped up beside Jesse and swiped a sleeve over his sweating brow.
“Did you find the sniper?” Jesse asked.
“No. He got away, but not before he winged one of my guys. The asshole’s a good shot.”
“Why Danny?” He was just thinking out loud and didn’t really expect an answer, but Tucker went very still beside him. Before that moment, he’d never seen the man look less like the billionaire Hollywood heartthrob he was, and more like a straight-up killing machine. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think the shot was meant for him.”
“Then who?”
Tuc released a long breath. “While you were working on Danny, Lanie found Schumacher on the roof of the convention center. He was taking potshots at us, but he didn’t pull the trigger on Danny. He said Defion has it out for us. They must have put Schumacher in our training program as a plant to keep an eye on us. They’re HumInt’s biggest competitor and they were probably worried about what we were up to out there in Wyoming.”
HumInt, Inc. was HORNET’s parent company, the private military contractor arm of Tuc’s empire, Quentin Enterprises. Jesse hadn’t thought there was any group on the PMC circuit as big or well-connected as HumInt. “Is Defion a threat?”
Tuc waved a hand in the general direction of the hotel and the look on his dirt smeared face said duh.
“No shit,” Jesse snapped. “But they were there after a very specific target and shit went sideways on them. I mean, are they a threat to us? To HORNET and you?”
Tucker looked at the coffin, sleek and black in the sunlight. Like an oil spill. “I don’t know,” he admitted and rubbed both hands over his face. All at once, he looked exhausted. “I don’t know what their end game is. I fucking hate not knowing, but I’ll find out. I always do.” He dropped his hands, sighed. “I’m sorry for Danny’s loss. I was prepared to offer him a job. He’d have made an excellent addition to HORNET.”
“He’d have taken the job.”
“Mm.” Tucker hummed an agreement, then turned and clapped Jesse’s shoulder. “I’m going to need you now more than ever.”
“Me?”
His gaze traveled over the pavement to the happy couples still holding each other. “Gabe and Quinn are out of the field permanently. They’ll still do the behind-the-scenes work and run the training center, but I can’t ask them to put their lives on the line anymore. HORNET needs a strong, stable leader.”
It’s not me, Jesse wanted to say. If Tuc only knew how unstable he really was, always teetering on the edge, always one spark away from an explosion he might not come back from. If Tuc knew, he sure as fuck wouldn’t be getting a job offer now. “I’m not the right man.”
Tuc’s brow arched. “Then which of the men do you suggest I offer the job to?”
He spotted Lanie walking across the parking lot. She was supposed to be on bed rest, but he’d had a hell of a time keeping her there when there had been so much damage control to do. She was moving slowly, painfully, but she was in surprisingly good condition considering she’d had air in her chest, crushing her heart and lungs, less than six hours ago. But once he’d drained the air and re-inflated her lung, her bullet wound had proven to be very non-fatal. He’d been able to remove the bullet with tweezers and close the wound with a couple stiches.
She was an amazing warrior. Brave, strong, and stubborn.
He watched her sit down beside Marcus and wrap her arms around him. Yes, she was a warrior, but she also possessed a softness the rest of them lacked, a kind of all-encompassing empathy that even the best men he knew weren’t capable of.
She was so afraid she didn’t have a place on the team. But she did. She was their heart.
He turned back to Tuc. “Who said anything about a man?”
…
Lanie felt like shit. Not only because she’d been shot, but also because watching all the happy couples reunite only served to drive home the fact that Danny gave his life for her. He’d shoved her out of the way, and because of that, he’d never have a happy reunion with his wife.
To make maters worse, her own happily ever after seemed to be slipping farther away with each passing minute. Jesse had distanced himself again. Okay, true, he’d had a lot to do in the last few hours, but now that they were getting ready to go home, he still hadn’t spoken to her. He stood over there with Tuc Quentin and hadn’t spared her a glance.
Okay, girl, enough with the pity party.
She turned away from him and spotted Marcus over by his best friend’s coffin, watching all the happy couples come together on the tarmac. God, she’d never seen him look so defeated. Marcus was one of those guys with a bigger-than-life personality. He lit up every room he walked into, and was always quick with a joke and that charming mega-watt smile of his.
Now, he was just…broken.
She walked over and set a hand on the coffin. A knot rose in her throat. She hadn’t known Danny long, but she felt his loss as sharply as a knife through her heart. She couldn’t imagine what Marcus was feeling. “Are you okay?”
He didn’t speak for a long time. So long, she almost turned away, figuring he didn’t want the company.
Finally, he sucked in a sharp breath and looked at her. Tears spiked the thick lashes rimming his blue eyes. “Lanie. I don’t know what to do.”
No, he didn’t need solitude right now. He needed a friend. She sat down beside him, careful not to jostle her wounded side. “What would Danny have done if the situation were reversed?”
“He’d take me home to my mom.”
She placed a hand on his knee and waited until he looked at her. “Then take him home.”
He shook his head. “It’s all wrong. It should be reversed. It should be me in that coffin. I don’t have a wife, kids…”
“You have a mother. I know you’re close with her and she’d grieve if it had been you.”
He bent double and buried his face in his hands. “Oh fuck. What do I tell his wife? I don’t know what to say to Leah. She’s going to blame me and she’ll be right. This is my fault. He never should’ve been here. I convinced him to come. He never should have been here.”
At a loss, she pulled him into her arms and held him while he cried. What else could she do? Her own eyes teared up and she again glanced toward Jesse. Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. Hell, she wouldn’t have had a tomorrow if not for Danny.
Jesse might break her heart again. Being with him might impact her future with HORNET. But not being with him when her whole heart and body demanded it, seemed like an insult to Danny’s sacrifice.
Both Jesse and Tuc looked her way right then. They seemed to be intently talking about her, which wasn’t a comfortable thought. Maybe her career with HORNET was already over. If that was the case, what was stopping her from pursuing something more with Jesse?
She held Marcus for a few minutes more, and cried a few tears of her own. “I wish I’d known Danny better.”
“He was impressed by you.” Marcus gave a watery laugh. “He also called Jesse a few names for not snapping you up.”
She laughed, too. “I think we would’ve been really good friends.”
“Yeah.” Marcus finally pulled away and swiped at his eyes like he was angry with himself for the tears. “He was a—a great friend. The best.”
“He was more than that. He was your brother.” She leaned in and kissed his forehead, then cupped his beard-stubbled cheeks in her palms. “And please don’t think you need to be a tough guy right now. You’re allowed to cry.”
A large shadow fell over them and she gazed up at…everyone. Jesse, Gabe, Quinn, Seth, Harvard, Ian, Jace Garcia, and Tucker. Even Jean-Luc had been brought over in his wheelchair by Rex, the medic from Tucker’s team. The women, Audrey and Phoebe, stood off to the side.
One by one, they each embraced Marcus, then paid their respects to the coffin. Gabe and Quinn both pounded a pin into the lid—their SEAL tridents. Jean-Luc murmured something in another language, then lay his gris-gris on the coffin between the pins. Tucker stood with his hand on the coffin for a long time, his expression torn between devastation and rage.
When it was Ian’s turn, he held onto Marcus a bit longer than everyone else. “I’m sorry,” he said in a broken voice. He turned away without looking at the coffin as if he couldn’t bear the sight of it.
They were family.
Having come from a very dysfunctional family herself, their bond was a beautiful thing to witness. And, God, she wished she didn’t still feel like such an outsider.
“It’s time to take him home,” Gabe finally said.
Marcus nodded and took hold of one of the coffin’s handles. Jesse, Harvard, Quinn, Seth, and Tuc took up positions around the coffin. Together, the group lifted it and moved silently across the tarmac to the plane.
The others, including Tuc’s men, all saluted as the procession passed.