Page 50 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)
FORTY-THREE
The Long Way Home
ALLY
I wake to the steady throb of engines and the smell of salt air mixed with diesel fuel. For one blissful moment, I forget. Then reality crashes down like a rogue wave—Hank is gone, and I’m curled against Gabe’s chest in a narrow bunk aboard a trawler carrying us home incomplete.
Gabe’s arm tightens around me when I stir. He’s been awake for a while, I can tell by his breathing. Neither of us slept much. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Hank’s face going slack, heard that terrible flat tone of the monitor.
“Morning.” His voice sounds like gravel over broken glass.
“Is it?” I don’t move from his warmth. Outside the small porthole, gray dawn light filters through clouds. “Feels like the same endless night.”
“Two more days.” He presses his lips to the top of my head. “Then we figure out what comes next.”
What comes next.
The phrase sits heavy between us, loaded with implications neither of us are ready to face.
What comes next is a house with three coffee mugs but only two people to use them. What comes next is learning to be enough for each other when we’ve always been part of something larger.
A soft knock interrupts the silence. “Ally? Gabe?” Jenna’s voice carries through the thin door. “Breakfast in the galley if you’re up for it.”
Food is the last thing I want, but the alternative is lying here, drowning in thoughts that lead nowhere good. I untangle myself from Gabe’s arms, ignore the protest in my muscles, and reach for yesterday’s clothes.
“We should go,” I say when Gabe doesn’t move. “The others need to see we’re okay.”
“Are we?”
The question hangs in the air like smoke. I don’t have an answer, so I hold out my hand until he takes it.
The galley buzzes with quiet conversation when we enter. Charlie team sits around the scarred wooden table, picking at plates of eggs and toast. The women cluster together on the bench seats, coffee cups warming their hands. Everyone looks up when we appear, faces carefully neutral.
“There’s coffee,” Carter says, gesturing toward the pot. “Strong enough to wake the dead.” His words fall into sudden silence. Carter’s face goes white as he realizes what he’s said. “Shit. I’m sorry…”
“Hank would’ve appreciated that,” Blake breaks the tension with a rough laugh. “Man lived on coffee and stubbornness.”
“And those protein bars that tasted like cardboard,” Walt adds. “Swore they were good for you even though they could probably stop a bullet.”
A ghost of a smile touches Gabe’s lips. “He made me eat one once. Tasted like punishment.”
“ Collective suffering builds character ,” Rigel quotes in a passable imitation of Hank’s command voice.
The stories start small—shared miseries and inside jokes.
But they grow, becoming something larger.
Someone mentions the time Hank got food poisoning in Thailand but still managed to complete the mission.
Blake recounts an experience from last summer when Hank taught his nephew to fish, describing how patient he was with a hyperactive eight-year-old.
I find myself contributing too, telling them about that first morning at Gabe and Hank’s condo when Hank was making breakfast. Gabe always said Hank’s culinary skills were legendary among the team.
“He was so focused on getting the eggs just right,” I say, smiling at the memory.
I don’t mention how Hank looked at Gabe that morning, that subtle nod that communicated volumes between them.
Don’t tell them how Gabe lifted me onto the kitchen counter while Hank told Gabe to fuck me with that steady gaze that always made my pulse race.
How afterward, with Gabe catching his breath, I slipped to my knees in front of Hank, following the silent command in his eyes. The way his hand tangled in my hair.
“Somehow he got completely distracted,” I continue, meeting Gabe’s eyes across the circle.
His slight smile tells me he remembers exactly what I’m leaving out.
“Smoke everywhere, alarms going off. And there was Hank, standing in the middle of his ruined kitchen, bacon burnt to a crisp, scrambled eggs somehow charred, looking absolutely bewildered about how it all went wrong.”
It was one of our first times. Maybe the first. The three of us…
“He was so careful with everything else,” I say, surprised by the steadiness in my voice. “Precise to the point of obsession. But put him in a kitchen…”
“He banned me from cooking after one tiny grease fire.” Gabe joins in. “He called it self-preservation, but I did it on purpose. He was a virtuoso in the kitchen. That man could cook. Remember how he could turn MREs into something resembling actual food in the middle of a combat zone?”
The laughter that follows isn’t bitter. It’s warm, shot through with grief but not overwhelmed by it. For the first time since the medical bay, I can think about Hank without feeling like I’m drowning.
Day three brings rain. Gray sheets of water turn the ocean into hammered pewter. The weather matches the mood as we approach home waters. Tomorrow we dock. Tomorrow, this strange suspension between crisis and reality ends.
“He would’ve hated this weather,” Rebel observes from her spot by the porthole. Her face has healed enough that the stitches are barely visible, but shadows linger in her eyes. “Always said rain during operations was God’s way of making things unnecessarily complicated.”
“He said that about everything,” Ethan corrects. “Rain, snow, wind, excessive sunshine. According to Hank, optimal weather was seventy-two degrees, light cloud cover, and minimal humidity.”
“ Optimal conditions for optimal performance ,” several voices quote in unison.
The words hit like a gut punch—familiar, automatic, drilled into every one of them by the man they lost.
I laugh. I can’t help it. It bursts out, sharp and aching, too close to a sob. Because even gone, Hank’s voice still lives here. In their mouths. In their muscle memory. In the damn motto he barked before every mission like it was sacred scripture.
He made them better. All of them.
He made me better too.
The low thrum of approaching rotors cuts through the rain, growing louder until wind whips against the sides of the trawler. We step out into the storm as the helicopter descends toward the deck, searchlights slicing through the mist.
The bird touches down hard, engine whining as the blades slow. The door slides open, and Forest steps out, rain flattening his usually polished hair and soaking the shoulders of his jacket.
Stitch appears behind me in the corridor, water dripping from her own coat.
“Forest wants everyone in the main cabin,” she says. “Says we need to talk about tomorrow.”
We gather in the larger space, cramped but together. Forest stands at the front, papers in his hands, the salt wind having wrinkled his shirt and darkened the fabric over his chest and sleeves.
“Port authority knows you’re coming in with a KIA,” Forest says without preamble. “Guardian HRS has sent a team to receive the body. They’ll handle everything internally—no outside interference.”
I look around the room at faces that have become family. These people who bled with us, who watched Hank die, who’ve spent three days learning how to carry his absence.
“Just us at the dock,” Gabe says quietly. “No one else needs to be there.”
“That will be arranged.” Forest nods. “We’ll keep it contained.”
“Thank you.” The words come out rougher than intended. “For everything.”
“He was a good man,” Forest says simply. “Deserves to be sent off right.”
That evening, someone—I never figure out who—suggests we have a proper toast. Not the quick, desperate words we’ve been sharing, but something formal. Something worthy of the man we lost.
Walt produces a bottle of bourbon from somewhere. “Figured this qualifies.”
We gather in a rough circle, plastic cups in hand. The bourbon burns going down, but the warmth that follows feels like courage taking root.
“To Hank.” Ethan raises his cup first. “Who never let the team down, no matter what the mission threw at us.”
“To Hank,” Carter echoes. “Who never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.”
“To the man who could field-strip a rifle in thirty seconds but took an hour to pick a movie,” Blake adds, earning soft laughter.
One by one, they share memories. Stories I’ve never heard, moments that happened in the field before I knew them.
I learn that Hank once carried a wounded teammate three miles through enemy territory.
That he never missed a shot when it mattered.
That he sent money to the widow of a soldier killed on a joint operation, even though it wasn’t his responsibility.
When it’s my turn, the words stick in my throat. How do you summarize a man who became your foundation? How do you toast someone who taught you that love could be shared without being diminished?
“To Hank,” I finally manage. “Who showed me what it meant to be cherished. Who made me believe I was worth fighting for.”
“To the man who held us together.” Gabe’s voice cracks as he speaks. “Who forgave me when I didn’t deserve it. Who died believing in us when I’d stopped believing in myself.”
We drink in silence after that, letting the bourbon and the words settle. Outside, rain continues to fall, but inside this circle of grief and love, something like peace takes root.
“He’d want us to be happy,” Jenna says softly. “All of us. He’d want us to build something good from this.”
“He’d want us to take care of each other,” Mia adds.
“He’d want us to remember that love doesn’t die just because people do,” Rebel finishes.
The truth lands hard—like breath knocked from my lungs, leaving me raw and exposed. Hank isn’t really gone, not if we carry forward what he taught us. The way he loved—fiercely, completely, without reservation—that lives on in every choice we make.
Gabe’s hand finds mine under the table, squeezes once. A promise. A commitment. A recognition that tomorrow we start the impossible task of learning to live without the best of us.
But tonight, we remember. Tonight, we honor what was and begin to imagine what could be.