Page 51 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

FORTY-FOUR

Where Three Became Two

ALLY

Morning comes gray and cold, the kind of weather that seeps into your bones and stays there. I stand at the rail watching the familiar coastline emerge from mist, and my chest tightens with each mile that brings us closer to a life that doesn’t include Hank.

“There.” Gabe points toward the dock where a small group has gathered. Guardian personnel in dark suits. A black vehicle waiting to carry Hank away from us one final time.

The trawler’s engines downshift as we approach the pier, their pitch dropping like a sigh.

Dockhands move with quiet efficiency, lines thrown and caught, metal groaning against wood as the vessel eases into place.

The mechanical routine of arrival unfolds, indifferent to the fact that my heart’s tearing itself apart behind my ribs.

We gather near the stern—what’s left of us.

The women flank me, bruised and broken and standing anyway.

Malia, arm in a sling, eyes fierce with unshed tears.

Rebel with her jaw swollen, stitches stark against mottled skin.

Stitch leans on Jeb, who holds her like he’d take every lash for her if he could.

Jenna’s bandaged hand finds mine. Mia sways slightly beside Rigel, his arm wrapped tight around her waist.

And Gabe. At my side. Silent. Haunted. Not touching me, but I feel him anyway—his grief sharp and serrated, the storm he refuses to let loose.

Footsteps sound behind us—boots, six pairs. The men step forward together. Ethan. Jeb. Rigel. Carter. Blake. Walt. No words spoken. No discussion. They decided this quietly. Without asking. Without telling Gabe. So he could stay with me.

They move through the tight corridor to the small, cold room below deck.

And then they return.

Carrying Hank.

The coffin is simple. Clean lines. But it holds more than a body. It carries my heart.

I can’t breathe.

The air thickens. The sound of their boots on the trawler’s deck matches the pounding of my pulse.

Six across. Steps perfectly in sync.

This is brotherhood. This is love.

Gabe’s arm comes around my shoulders, solid and grounding. His hand flexes once against my arm, a tremor he doesn’t hide.

They reach the dock and descend the ramp, backs straight, eyes ahead. The coffin rests like it belongs to them—because it does. They don’t hand him off. They carry him all the way to the waiting transport.

The rear doors open with a soft hiss.

He disappears inside.

The doors close with a gentle finality that punches the air from my lungs.

I sway. Gabe catches me.

“Where—” My voice snaps off, caught on a sob I can’t swallow. I try again, quieter. “Where are you taking him?”

Gabe says something, but I hear none of it. The pain is too loud. The loss too much to bear.

The vehicle disappears, and no one moves. We stand there, suspended in the hush left behind.

“Ready?” Gabe asks beside me, voice rough with everything he isn’t saying. None of us are. But we move anyway.

They bring a bus to carry us all home. Doors open and close in subdued clicks. No chatter. No ribbing. No comfort in routine.

Just silence.

The drive back to Guardian HQ is a blur of streetlights and reflection.

Rain streaks the windows. Red taillights bleed across the glass.

Rebel rests her head against Ethan’s shoulder.

Jeb runs his fingers gently along Stitch’s spine, careful of the raw wounds beneath her shirt.

Rigel doesn’t take his eyes off Mia. Walt hasn’t spoken since the trawler.

Blake stares straight ahead like he’s still carrying Hank’s weight in his arms.

Gabe’s thigh presses against mine. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t look away from the dark outside. But his hand stays wrapped around mine like it’s the only tether he has.

At HQ, no one lingers. There’s no debrief. No gear unload. Just weary bodies peeling off into the night—each of us shattered in our own quiet orbit.

Gabe leads me to his car, fingers brushing the small of my back. He opens the door like he always did, like nothing’s changed. But everything has.

The car door slams shut with metallic finality. Gabe’s hands shake as he grips the steering wheel, knuckles still split and bloody from the bulkhead, from Malfor’s face, from everything his fists could find to destroy in the aftermath of violence and loss.

I sit in the passenger seat, numb. My body feels disconnected, like I’m floating somewhere above myself, watching a woman who looks like me stare through rain-streaked glass at a world that doesn’t make sense anymore.

The engine turns over. Gabe’s breathing is too controlled; the kind of deliberate rhythm that means he’s fighting something larger than grief.

The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. Not the comfortable quiet we used to share, but something raw and bleeding that neither of us know how to bandage.

“Is he really dead?” The words slip out before I can stop them, barely above a whisper.

Gabe’s hands tighten on the wheel until his knuckles go white. “Yeah. He’s really dead.”

The confirmation hits like a physical blow. My chest constricts; my lungs forget how to expand properly. Some part of me has been waiting for this to be another nightmare, another trick, another psychological game Malfor was playing.

But it’s real. The flatline was real. The sheet over his face was real. The cold skin beneath my fingers was real.

“I’m going to kill Malfor.” Gabe’s voice is flat, emotionless. “Torture him first. Make him suffer.”

I turn to look at him—really look. His jaw is set in that dangerous way that usually means someone’s about to get hurt, but his eyes… His eyes are empty. Hollow. Like he’s used up every emotion he had and found nothing waiting underneath.

The rain starts again as we pull away from the curb, droplets spattering against the windshield like tears the sky can’t hold back. The windshield wipers begin their rhythmic fight against the persistent moisture, back and forth, back and forth, a mechanical heartbeat in the silence.

We drive through familiar streets that now feel foreign. Everything looks the same, but nothing feels right. The world kept turning while our universe collapsed, and the disconnect is jarring.

“I keep waiting for him to call,” I say softly. “To check in. To ask if we made it home okay.”

Gabe’s throat works like he’s swallowing glass. “He always worried about the drive. Said it was more dangerous than our missions because people get complacent on familiar roads.”

A sob catches in my throat. Such a Hank thing to say—practical concern wrapped in love, statistics disguised as affection.

Familiar landmarks scroll past. The coffee shop where Hank bought me my first latte, patiently explaining the difference between a flat white and a cappuccino while I pretended to care about milk foam.

The park where the three of us walked on Sunday mornings, Hank pointing out birds while Gabe and I made fun of his amateur ornithology.

The grocery store where he insisted on reading every ingredient label, not because he cared about preservatives, but because he liked the science behind food chemistry.

Memories layer over geography, turning the simple act of driving into an archaeological dig through our shared life.

“I never thought it would be him,” Gabe says suddenly as we turn onto our street.

The words hang in the air, heavy with implications I’m not sure I want to explore.

“What do you mean?”

“I always figured if one of us didn’t make it home, it would be me.

” His hands tighten on the steering wheel until the leather creaks.

“I’m the one who takes risks. Who pushes boundaries.

Who doesn’t think things through.” His voice drops to something barely audible.

“Hank was supposed to be the steady one. The one who lived to be eighty and complained about his arthritis and taught our kids how to fish.”

Our kids. The phrase cuts through me like a blade. Plans we made. Futures we imagined. Dreams that died with him on that metal table.

The house comes into view—weathered cedar shingles, wide deck overlooking the Pacific, windows that reflect the gray sky like empty eyes. Home. But how can it be home when the person who made it feel safe is gone?

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admit as Gabe kills the engine. The sudden quiet feels oppressive without the mechanical comfort of the wipers. “Walk through that door. See his coffee mug in the sink. Smell his cologne on the pillows.”

“Neither do I.” Gabe stares at the house like it might attack us. “We built this place for three people. Everything about it assumes he’ll be there.”

The kitchen with its oversized island designed for all of us to cook together, Hank chopping vegetables with surgical precision, while Gabe and I argued about seasoning.

The living room with the sectional sofa arranged so we could all watch movies in a pile of limbs and contentment, Hank in the middle because he ran warm, and Gabe and I both got cold.

The bedroom with the California king that seemed perfectly sized when we were all in it, but will feel cavernous with just two.

“Maybe we should sell it,” I say, the words tasting like betrayal even as they leave my mouth. “Find somewhere new. Somewhere that doesn’t have his ghost in every corner.”

“Maybe.” But Gabe doesn’t sound convinced. “Or maybe we learn to live with the ghosts. Maybe we figure out how to honor what we had here while building something new.”

Rain patters against the windshield, filling the silence while we both stare at a house that represents everything we’ve lost and everything we still have to lose.

“Do we keep the house?” I ask, voicing the practical concern that’s been lurking beneath the grief. “Do we change everything? Move his clothes? Pack up his books?”

“I don’t know.” Gabe’s honesty is brutal and necessary. “I don’t know how to make those decisions yet.”

“What about us?” The question scrapes my throat raw. “What happens to us without him to balance the equation?”

Gabe turns in his seat, reaches for my hands. His fingers are warm despite the cold that’s settled into my bones, despite the violence those hands committed just hours ago.

“I’m scared,” he admits, and the words cost him everything.

“Of what?”

“That I won’t be enough. That without him to balance us, we’ll fall apart.” The confession tastes like poison in the air between us. “That you’ll realize you don’t actually want just me. That what we had only worked because he was there to make it work.”

His words crack something open in me. A sob climbs my throat, raw and hot, but I choke it back, pressing his hands between mine as if I can force him to feel what I can’t yet say.

“Our dynamic will be different,” I say carefully, testing each word before I speak it. “The way we… The way we’re intimate will change. The way we fight will change. The way we heal will change.”

Gabe’s jaw clenches. “What if we don’t know how to be together without him there to show us the way? What if we try and it’s all wrong?”

“Then we learn.” The words come out stronger than I feel. “We stumble and fail and figure it out as we go. But we do it together.”

“I fell in love with both of you,” I continue, the admission feeling like stepping off a cliff. “That doesn’t change because he’s not here. He made me feel stronger, and you made me feel seen. The two of you didn’t split my heart—you expanded it. I can’t breathe without you.”

Tears blur my vision, salt and grief and truth mixing together until I can’t tell where one ends and another begins.

“I’m scared too,” I admit, voice breaking. “Scared of walking into that house without him. Of climbing into a bed that still smells like all three of us. Of reaching for you and feeling how different it all is.”

Gabe closes his eyes, jaw clenched tight against words he doesn’t know how to say.

“But I’d rather hurt with you than try to heal without you.”

Silence stretches between us, thick with everything we’ve lost and everything we still might save.

“You are not a consolation prize,” I say fiercely, needing him to understand. “You are not the piece that’s left over after we lost the good part. You’re the reason I want to keep breathing even though it feels impossible right now.”

“But we’re different without him. The dynamic changes. What if?—”

“What if we become something different but equally beautiful?” I reach out and cup his face, thumbs tracing the familiar geography of cheekbones and stubble. “What if we honor Hank by refusing to let his death destroy what he helped create?”

Tears spill over, hot against the cold morning air. Gabe leans into my touch like a man dying of thirst.

“I love you,” he says simply, and the words feel fragile as spun glass. “Not because you were Hank’s too. Because you’re you. Because even in the middle of the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, you’re still trying to take care of me.”

His voice breaks on the last word, vulnerability cracking him open in ways violence never could.

“But I’m terrified we don’t know how to love each other without him there to anchor us.”

“Then we learn,” I repeat, leaning forward until our foreheads touch. “We stumble and fail and figure it out as we go. But we do it together. The way Hank wanted. The way we promised.”

Through the rain-streaked windshield, the house waits. Empty rooms full of memory and possibility. A life that needs to be rebuilt from whatever pieces we can salvage.

“Together,” Gabe confirms, the word a vow, a prayer, and a promise all at once.

We sit in the car for another long moment, gathering courage for the simple act of going home. The rain continues its steady percussion against the roof, a rhythm that feels like time passing.

Finally, Gabe opens his door, and rain rushes in to remind us that the world keeps moving whether we want it to, or not.

The front door swings open on rooms that smell like him—coffee and soap and the faint trace of gun oil he never quite managed to wash off his hands completely.

I step across the threshold and freeze.