Page 47 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

FORTY-ONE

Where Grief Begins

ALLY

The monitor lets out a long, unbroken tone.

Not a beep. Not a warning. Just a single, piercing note that cuts through the chaos like a blade—cold, mechanical, final.

My breath hitches.

Hank’s chest—where the medic’s hands press rhythmically—stops moving.

Still. Too still.

Like the air has been sucked out of the room. Like time stutters.

No rise. No fall. No fight left in his body.

That sound—the flatline—it drills into my bones, fills my skull, drowns everything else. It’s not just sound. It’s a scream I can’t make. A truth I can’t hold.

I mourned him once. I can’t do it again.

The thought shatters something inside me that I’d carefully rebuilt during our brief hours together on this boat.

When I believed he was dead—when Malfor showed us that helicopter exploding—I’d already grieved him.

Already said goodbye. Already accepted a future without his steady presence, his quiet strength, his love that made me braver than I had any right to be.

And then he came back. Alive. Real. Bleeding but breathing, joking through pain, promising we’d figure out how to heal together.

We just got you back. We just…

The medic steps back, defeat written across his sweat-streaked face. Blood soaks through layers of gauze, stains the metal table beneath Hank’s body. Dark pools that catch the harsh overhead lighting, reflecting it back like broken mirrors.

Too much blood. Too much time.

“Time of death, twenty-two forty-seven.” His voice carries professional detachment that makes me want to scream.

“No.” The word explodes from my chest, louder now, desperate. “Check again. Check again!”

But Hank’s hand lies slack between mine. There’s no pulse beneath my fingertips when I press them to his wrist, his throat, or the hollow of his chest where his heart beat moments before. His skin is already cooling, that vital warmth that made him Hank beginning to fade.

The silence where his heartbeat should be echoes louder than any explosion.

Gone.

“No,” I whisper. The word breaks apart in my mouth. “No—no, please—this isn’t fair. This isn’t fucking fair!”

The rage hits me like a physical blow. He survived the helicopter crash. Survived hours in the ocean. Survived Malfor’s compound and guards and bullets and everything designed to kill him. He made it to the boat. Made it to safety. Made it back to me.

And then he dies anyway.

Dies saving me. Again.

The cruelty of it steals my breath. I drop to my knees beside him, grabbing his hand, fingers slick with blood and seawater. Still warm. Still here. He has to be.

“We were supposed to have time,” I sob, the words tearing from my throat like shrapnel. “You promised we’d have time to figure this out. You promised?—”

But the line doesn’t change. The medic doesn’t move.

Only the silence pulses louder than the tone. Deafening. Paralyzing.

Gabe’s voice cuts through it, ragged and unrecognizable. “Hank—don’t you fucking dare—don’t you dare leave us again!”

But the machine says otherwise.

The medical bay fractures into individual tableaux of grief, each person processing loss in their own devastating way.

Carter stands motionless by the far bulkhead, tears tracking down his cheeks. Silent, steady streams that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. His hands hang loose at his sides, the eternal soldier suddenly looking every one of his years.

Walt moves forward on autopilot, medical training overriding personal devastation.

His hands shake as he checks Hank’s pulse points again—wrist, throat, chest—even though the monitor’s flatline makes the gesture meaningless.

“Come on,” he whispers, pressing harder against Hank’s throat. “Come on, brother. Don’t do this.”

Blake’s fist connects with the bulkhead before anyone can stop him. The impact reverberates through the hull like a gunshot. “Fuck!” He hits it again, harder, blood spattering from split knuckles. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Rigel and Carter move to restrain him before he destroys his hands completely.

Ethan’s command mask slips for exactly three seconds—his face crumpling, breath catching on what might be a sob. Then he turns away, shoulders rigid, and walks to the far corner of the medical bay where he can pretend we can’t see him falling apart.

“We just got you back,” I breathe, leaning over Hank’s still form. “We just … How is this happening? How can you be gone when you just came back to me?”

“Don’t.” Gabe’s voice cracks as he moves to my side, his own hands hovering over Hank’s body like he’s afraid to touch and confirm the reality. “Don’t do this. You can’t—you can’t go where he’s gone. I can’t lose both of you.”

“He died saving me.” The words taste like acid. “Again. He came back from the dead to save me, and I killed him anyway.”

“He died doing what he chose to do.” Gabe’s response is fierce, desperate. “What he wanted to do. Don’t you dare take that choice away from him.”

But the guilt eats at me anyway. If I hadn’t been captured. If I’d been stronger, smarter, more careful. If I hadn’t needed rescuing in the first place.

Time fractures around the sound as the monitor screams its final note. Flat, unbroken. A blade through the air.

No one breathes.

Ethan stands frozen, arms wrapped around Rebel like she’ll shatter if he lets go.

Blood streaks from a brutal gash that slices from her temple to her mouth, dried and cracked.

One arm splinted tight against her body.

Her ribs grind when she breathes, each inhale a quiet sob buried against his chest.

She doesn’t look at the screen. She doesn’t have to. She feels it. We all do.

Jeb holds Stitch close. Her shirt clings to her back in dark, tacky patches—open lashes still oozing from where the whip tore her skin. She sways on her feet, pale and shaking from blood loss, from pain, from too much everything.

She was whipped. Caned.

Her legs tremble beneath her, but she stays standing because she refuses to collapse. Not yet. Not while Hank lies still on that table.

Carter braces Jenna against his side, his tears still falling silently.

Her hand is wrapped in thick gauze, two fingers gone.

A souvenir from Malfor’s sick games. Her expression doesn’t crack.

Her lips are pressed into a line so tight it’s colorless.

But her eyes… God, her eyes. They’re locked on Hank.

Wide. Empty. Like something inside her broke and hasn’t stopped falling.

Walt stands tall, one arm around Malia, his other hand still pressed to Hank’s throat as if sheer will can restart circulation.

Her arm’s in a makeshift sling, and her skin’s pale beneath bruises that haven’t even started to fade.

But she stays upright, chin lifted, eyes hard.

Her body shakes, but her voice is steady as she whispers Hank’s name like a prayer she’s too afraid to believe in.

Blake cradles his bloodied knuckles against his chest, Rigel’s restraining hand still on his shoulder.

Shoulders squared despite the pain. Eyes red-rimmed but dry now, grief transformed into something harder, more controlled.

Sophia wasn’t taken. He was the only one of us who didn’t feel that helplessness.

But this? This is worse. Watching Hank die—there’s no mission to complete.

No enemy to shoot. Just silence, and that goddamn sound.

And then there’s Rigel, holding Mia as gently as a man trained to kill can.

She leans into him like she’s been hollowed out.

Her entire body bruised, battered, drained.

Her cheek rests against his chest, lashes fluttering like she’s on the edge of unconsciousness, but she won’t let go.

He murmurs something only she can hear, and whatever it is keeps her standing.

Barely.

They all loved him. Every person in this room owes their life to decisions Hank made, orders he gave, and sacrifices he chose. He wasn’t just my lover and Gabe’s partner. He was the heart. Their anchor. Their moral compass. The calm in the storm. The reason we’re alive.

This isn’t just loss.

It’s a tearing.

A wound across every one of us, raw and open and screaming.

And now he’s gone.

“Please,” I whisper, but I don’t know who I’m begging anymore. God? The universe? Hank himself?

The room stays silent, every soul inside it waiting for a miracle that won’t come. I close my eyes, just for a second, but the monitor doesn’t care. It blares the truth again—flat and final.

Why? The question burns through me. Why bring him back just to take him away again? Why give me hope just to destroy it more completely than before?

Gabe’s shoulders jerk. One silent sob. His hand settles on Hank’s chest like he can restart it with touch alone.

Then he roars in denial, his fist slamming into the bulkhead hard enough to crack fiberglass. The impact reverberates through the hull, metal groaning in protest. Blood spatters from his knuckles as he hits the wall again, then again.

This is the sound of the world breaking. None of us will ever be whole again.

“Don’t.” Blake catches his arm despite his own injured hands. “He wouldn’t want you to destroy yourself.”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Gabe whirls on him, eyes wild with grief and rage that has nowhere safe to land. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

His chest heaves like he’s drowning. Blood streams from split knuckles, drips onto the deck in steady drops that sound like rain on metal. The medics move around us, turning off equipment, preparing for transport, the business of death.

“I should have been faster,” Walt says suddenly, his voice hollow. “On the rappel. I should have covered him better.”

“Stop.” Ethan’s command voice cracks. “We don’t do this. We don’t tear ourselves apart with what-ifs.”

“Then what do we do?” Blake demands, pain making his voice sharp. “How do we process this? How do we?—”