Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Redemption for Avery (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Ryker Townsend FBI Profiler Book 2) (9 page)

Lucinda wanted to curse and rage at the men who would kill her, but nothing came out.

***

Ryker Townsend

Mozart blew the lock and the door shattered in a hail of splinters. I yanked the cellar door open, pulled the pin on a flashbang and tossed the stun grenade into the pitch-black chamber. We flipped up our NVGs and shielded our eyes and ears.

After a one-second delay, an ear-piercing blast rumbled underground. The percussion from the grenade jarred the door and a blinding light from the flash powder erupted through the cracks. Anyone on the receiving end of the explosion would be deaf, disoriented and blind. We had six seconds before the effects would wear off. I secured my NVG and breached the door.

Through smoke, I yelled, “Moving,” and clambered down the stone steps with my assault rifle. Mozart put his hand on my back as I passed him, to make a tight stack. He squeezed my shoulder to signal me and he closed in on my boot heels.

“Ryker!”

I heard Lucinda shout to warn me. A man cursed and she cried out in pain.

Please…don’t let her die.

“Your woman is getting out of here alive,” Mozart cursed under his breath. “Count on it.”

At the end of a corridor, a dim light glowed. Thermal images flashed across my eyes before shots rang out. I slammed my back to a wall and took cover with Mozart across from me.

Reed had a better look into the dead-end chamber. He gave me a hand signal to let me know where I would find Lucinda. Two men had her pinned down. I nodded and we deployed a double bang—one stun grenade landed near the opening and the other rolled deeper.

Balls of light rocked the room with percussive blasts that hit my chest, hard enough to make me wince. We had only seconds to scramble.

“FBI,” I yelled and rushed in. “Drop your weapons!”

“Get down! Stay down!” Mozart bellowed, with weapon aimed.

One man staggered to his feet and pulled a gun, but he didn’t aim at me. He had the muzzle pointed at Lucinda.

“No!” I stepped in front of the blast and took the hit to my chest. I stumbled back, but not before getting off two shots.

“Ryker, no!”

Lucinda’s voice—the last sound I heard.

True Light Ministry

1:45 a.m.

Ryker Townsend

“You’re one lucky bastard.” Mozart’s face hovered over me. He flashed a grin and patted my cheek.

“Lucinda?” I gasped and tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down.

“Your woman is good, man. EMTs are checking her out. She’s got a concussion, but she’s okay.”

With the efficiency of a field medic, he peeled off my body armor and let me breathe.

“I have to see her.” When I tried to sit up again, I winced. “Ow.”

“You took one to the chest and you lived to tell about it. You should consider a trip to Vegas. You have seriously wicked karma.”

My chest ached and it hurt to breathe.

“I got off a shot.”

“You did more than that. You took out Deputy Lovell, one to the pump, the other between his eyes. He’s dead, but preacher man is alive and will answer for his crimes.”

I could’ve kept my secret about Avery and the dog and my waking dream, but I owed it to Mozart—who’d risked his life to save Lucinda. He deserved the truth about his sister.

“Elias Fenton killed Avery.”

Reed stopped cold and swallowed hard. When his eyes watered, he couldn’t speak. I let him find his way back through the years of loss and unanswered questions.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I hoped he wouldn’t ask me any more questions, but I would find a way to force a legitimate confession out of Fenton, for Mozart’s sake—and when we found Fenton and Lovell’s stash of trophies, I knew a familiar bear belly badge with ears would be among them.

Mozart nodded and heaved a ragged sigh.

“Come on. I’ll help you.” He hoisted me off the ground and helped me stand.

When I saw Lucinda covered in blankets on a gurney near an ambulance, nothing else mattered. The lights, the uniforms, the barrage of questions, everything faded to black. Mozart slung my arm around his shoulder and he led me to the only woman I wanted to see.

“You asked me how I knew Summer was the woman I wanted to marry,” Mozart said, with a bittersweet smile. “Well, what you just did? That’s how you know. I’d say if a guy is willing to die for a woman, it’s the real thing, man.” He winked. “Hallmark doesn’t make a card for guys like us.”

Mozart left us alone and the paramedics cleared a path for me. Lucinda grabbed my shirt and pulled me into her arms. I cradled her head in my hands and kissed her deeply, not caring who saw. I held her in my arms and nuzzled her neck and ears. I couldn’t get enough of her, but when she pulled from my embrace, she stared into my eyes.

“If you ever step in front of a bullet for me again, I’ll shoot you myself.”

I brushed a strand of hair from her precious face, not taking my gaze off her.

“No promises.”

Mozart had been right. I loved a woman I’d take a bullet for. That had to mean something.

***

Big Bear Valley Hospital

After 3:00 a.m.

Ryker Townsend

Lucinda had a concussion and her wrists and head were bandaged. Doctors wanted to keep her for observation.

So did I. They won.

She told me how Lovell had killed unarmed Grayson Barbour in cold blood and shared what she could on her horrifying experience. She would have plenty to report on what Lovell and Fenton had admitted to her. I listened to every word, fighting back the emotion that gnawed at my insides. After a nurse gave her something to help her sleep, I refused to leave her.

I had a gun. They had to let me stay.

While my sweet, brave Lucinda slept in her hospital bed, I couldn’t take my eyes off her—too afraid that if I looked away, she would disappear again. I pulled up a chair and sat beside her bed, leaning close enough to breathe her into me. I stroked fingers through her hair and I touched her face—still gut wrenched over how close I’d come to losing her.

The harsh reality of our jobs and what nearly happened tonight collided into a chilling quote that wouldn’t leave me—something from Ted Bundy.

‘You learn what you need to kill and take care of the details. It’s like changing a tire. The first time you’re careful. By the thirtieth time, you can’t remember where you left the lug wrench.’

I shut my eyes tight and grimaced at the thought that my beautiful, intelligent, funny and compassionate Lucinda almost became a number to two serial killers who got caught because one of them misplaced a set of keys.

Hard to fathom human life could mean so little.

The weight of thirty-four lost souls and the deaths of little Avery Reed, the forsaken Lily Rae Hubbard, and Grayson Barber—who never stood much of a chance—pushed me over the edge into a chasm I didn’t have the energy to crawl out of. My team had put names and faces to two UNSUBs and stopped them from killing, but in the aftermath of our investigation, what I did never felt like enough.

I couldn’t save them.

I rested my arms on Lucinda’s hospital bed and laid my head down next to her, hoping that for one night, I wouldn’t dream.

***

Hillside Memorial Cemetery

Four days later

Morning

Ryker Townsend

Lily’s funeral service and burial had taken place on a sunny day, but in my heart, there had been only gloom and air thick with grief. No mother should have to bury a child, but in my line of work, I saw it far too often.

Sinead had found Lily’s online diary, a day after we’d rescued Lucinda at the church. In it, the girl talked about her abusive father and a mother who’d been too afraid to stop him. The girl also named her older lover, Elias Fenton—not Altamonte. I told Mrs. Hubbard where she could find her daughter’s last words, when she’d be ready to read them.

At the cemetery, I wore my dark glasses and stood alongside an insistent Sandra Hubbard and her husband, Mark. It hadn’t taken much to convince me to attend. It’d been my way of coming full circle with the victims who touched me.

I attended alone, by choice. The commitment I made with the dead had always been personal.

After I said my good-byes to Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard, I turned to leave, but something kept me rooted where I stood. When I saw Avery peeking at me through the headstones, I knew why I felt compelled to linger, but her somber presence surprised me. Her killer had been identified and finally caught. The families of dozens of missing girls would get the closure they desperately needed, thanks to her. Yet she had sought me out at Lily’s funeral.

From the first day I met her, Avery had something keeping her earthbound and I felt certain it had to do with her brother. When she beckoned me to follow her, I did. The thin girl with long tangled dark hair led me through grave markers and looked over her shoulder to make sure I kept up. After she vanished at the crest of a hill, I ran to catch her and saw a familiar sight under the shade of a tall pine.

Mozart stood over a grave. He didn’t know his baby sister stood beside him. She didn’t touch him. She couldn’t. Her big eyes stared up at her brother—the man he had grown to be alongside the child forever frozen in time—and it broke my heart. If she needed to reach him, I would have to be her bridge.

But how would I get Mozart to believe me?

“I didn’t realize Avery was buried here,” I said.

It’d been my turn to startle the Navy SEAL. Lost in thought, Mozart hadn’t heard me walk up. I saw the surprise in his eyes, but he quickly recovered.

“My parents fought over where we would bury her, but my mom won,” he said. “This had been our favorite place to vacation, growing up. My sister loved it here. It’s how I always picture her. She said when she imagined heaven it always looked like Big Bear.”

He turned his face toward her grave.

“My dad wanted her cremated, because of the condition of her—” He couldn’t finish. “But mom didn’t want her body destroyed as if she never existed. She wanted to know her little girl would be here, in the place that made her happiest.”

“You asked me how I knew about your sister’s bear. The truth is, I found out about it from Avery.
She
showed me.”

Mozart did a double take and glared at me.

“You are one sick bastard, you know that? Why are you doing this?”

I knew I’d never convince him with words. When Avery touched her little red heart and pointed to the ground at the base of her headstone, I had to take a chance for her sake. I pulled a small knife from my pocket and dropped to my knees, cutting back the grass. With my hands I dug into the soil.

“What are you doing? You can’t—” He cried out and tried to stop me.

He pulled at my arm until he saw what I yanked from the ground. Dirt clung to the fur of a small stuffed bear, rotting from decay—Avery’s bear without its heart—the last Christmas gift Mozart ever gave to his little sister.

“I was the only one who knew that was there,” he said. His voice cracked. “I buried it. Not even my parents knew.”

“Avery did.”

“What the hell are you doing, man, messing with my head like this?”

Anger came first, but that faded fast. Mozart knelt beside me and pleaded for answers with the pain in his eyes. I had to find a way to ease his burden. For his sake, I no longer had a choice.

“Please don’t ask me how I know what I’m about to tell you. I want to speak the truth—Avery’s truth—and not make this about me. Can you do that?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I’m willing to try,” he said.

“I need you to open your mind…to hear her through me. You don’t have to believe
me
, but if what I tell you sounds real, that’s between you and your sister. I’m only here because she has no other way to reach you.”

“Is she h-here? Can you see her?” Before I answered, he said, “Describe her to me. Please.”

I looked at Avery and a slow smile brightened her tragic face. I memorized everything about her.

“She has a sweet face with freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her mischievous brown eyes can see into your heart. And her crooked and endearing grin can make anyone smile.” I described her height and weight and clothes before I got to distinguishing marks he might remember. “She has a chipped front tooth and a small scar over her right eyebrow.”

“I gave her that scar. It was an accident, but she never told mom and dad. It’d always been our secret.”

“A bicycle accident,” I said. “You took the training wheels off and—”

“Oh, God, yes.” Stunned and shaken, Mozart shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

I had more to explain.

“She can’t speak. I’m only sensing what she wants me to understand. Are you okay with me going on? What I say next will come from her.”

He nodded and his eyes watered.

I turned toward Avery until our connection deepened and her grief became my own. She tapped into the death of my parents to make me understand. My eyes stung with the burn of tears as I spoke.

“Avery wanted you to know that she fought hard. She never gave up wanting to come home, but she’d been too little to stop him.”

Mozart gasped and stared at me in disbelief. He collapsed onto his haunches and dropped his chin to his chest.

“I’m not ready to hear this. I can’t,” he said. “What happened to my family was like watching a slow motion train wreck heading straight for them. I wanted to scream, but I could only watch it happen. I never wanted to feel that powerless again, but here I am. It’s like those feelings never left.”

“She’s still here for a reason and I think that reason is you.”

“I can’t do this. I’m not ready.” He shook his head, unable to look me in the eye.

“Yes, you can. Both of you need to move on and there’s only one way to do that. She wants you to let her go.”

Avery reached for my hand. I couldn’t feel her touch when she inched closer to me, but I sensed the chill of her tiny fingers before they turned warm with the love she had for big brother, Sam.

“She wants you to know there was nothing you could’ve done. Nothing.”

“No. She can’t know that.”

His guilt would not be easy to shake, but that remorse had turned him into a compassionate man—and the good father he would turn out to be.

“I’d never cried before, except at her funeral. It’s all coming back.” A tear trickled down the scar on his face. “I love you, Avery. I’ll always love you.”

Tears glistened like diamonds in the eyes of the little girl. She reached for her brother’s hand, but stopped before she touched him.

“Let her go. It’s finally over for both of you,” I said. “Letting go doesn’t mean you’ll stop loving her or remembering how she lived. You’ll always have that.”

When Mozart finally nodded, Avery smiled for the last time and slowly drifted apart like glistening white sugar blown into the wind. I felt sucker punched in the wake of her absence. Her brother wouldn’t be the only one grieving her loss.

‘God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.’