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Pure, unbridled joy — unlike anything I’d ever felt before — surged through my entire body. It choked my throat. Made it feel like my heart was about to burst!

I dropped to my knees, tears filling my eyes as they finally saw me.

“Here?” Jason was asking incredulously. “You brought her here?”

He’d lost weight — at least fifteen or twenty pounds. And he looked like hell, especially with a scruffy dark beard running wild all over his face and neck.

But he was alive. He was safe.

Our eyes met, and even through my tears of happiness I could see the relief in his expression. He was grinning. I was smiling. Everything in my world was suddenly right again.

I leapt up and we all rushed each other, tears still streaming. Kyle limped in and the five of us hugged in a little circle, together again at last.

“You’re an asshole Dakota,” Ryan squinted. “You know that?”

“Yeah yeah,” he grinned. “Sue me.”

The anger was hollow and we all knew it. A mask to hide behind, in lieu of expressing gratitude.

We hugged and hugged, putting our heads together. Holding each other for a long, long time…

… long past the point where the whirring blades of the chopper spun themselves back into silence.

Forty-Three

SAMMARA

The next few days were an absolute blur. A combination of travel, of exhaustion, of jet-lag…

And of course, of catching up with work.

We arrived home two days later, after sleeping our way across the world. I’d spent most of the flights sprawled across one shoulder or the other, drooling on Kyle, snoring on Ryan or Dakota. Jason woke me in the dead of night at one point, to tell me I was having a dream. I’d been murmuring in my sleep — complete sentences even — but nothing that made any sense when I became conscious again.

“We’re all wound up tight,” he told me. “Every one of us. We just need a little time to decompress.”

He looked pale, and though still strong, thinner than I’d ever seen him. For that reason alone, I was happy to see him eating everything in sight. Jason was absolutely ravenous, especially after we’d arrived back at the house. He grilled entire steaks in the morning. He piled burgers and spaghetti on the same plate, and then polished it off with a side of mashed potatoes.

Back at the house, we’d fallen quickly into recoup mode. I had tons of work to catch up with, both at the office with Cindy and with the work crews at Modern Vintage. The guys disappeared more than usual too, spending long hours on the base every day. Or in Jason’s case, arranging meetings with his various contacts, government and otherwise. Whatever had happened out there in the desert, they were working on figuring it out. On finding the responsible parties. On rectifying it.

And of course, on making sure it never happened again.

“I’m sorry honey,” Ryan told me one morning, during our pre-dawn coffee ritual. “We all are. You should’ve never been dragged into this.”

“Heard that one before,” I smirked over my mug.

Leaning against the counter, he shrugged his two big shoulders. “Yes, but—”

“Look,” I said. “I get it. You know I do. Just promise me one thing.”

His apologetic look turned deadly serious. “Anything.”

“You’ll nail whoever did this to you. To us. No matter what.”

Ryan nodded, once, very solemnly. It was all I really needed to see.

I brought Sarge home on a Wednesday. He ran straight over to Dakota and began licking him feverishly, but thankfully there were no accidents.

“Good boy Sarge!” he smiled enthusiastically, scratching behind his triangular ears.