Page 51 of Ripple Effect

No one has to tell me twice. I want to go back to the darkness where reality didn’t intrude to hurt so much. Closing my eyes, I shut out all of their faces and voices before I absorb any more pity than I already have. As if to reiterate my point, I press the button on the pain machine again and again. And again.

Sweet relief begins to flood through my veins. I begin pressing the pain medicine button in earnest. The drugs are kicking in; I can feel them slithering through my veins.

There’s silence in the room as I start to go under. A door opens and closes. Then just before I lose consciousness, I hear my mother hiss at my father, “Call Cal again.”

“He should be answering,” my father growls.

No, Dad. He should be here.And an unnoticed tear leaks out of my eye before I go back into the void.

34

Calhoun

Year One - Ten Years Ago from Present Day

“Nice driving, Cal,” Sam says laconically. “Next time, why don’t you hand out barf bags.”

Iris, who’s been puking in her boot for the last fifteen minutes, gives her nonverbal agreement of her husband’s assessment.

“Listen, it wasn’t my fault you literally got caught with your pants down and the situation went from hot to inferno in about two minutes.”

“Yeah, but we got the intel,” Sam smirks. “And the location of the weapons warehouse.”

Since I can’t disagree with him, I focus on driving because one false move and none of us are making it home. We’re barreling down the Italian Alps in a stolen Humvee trying to escape the carload of Spanish tangoes on our ass. The team split up. Even though it’s the other team that has the intel, they want Iris and Sam for playing them to get it.

“Fuck me,” I curse as my phone pings with an incoming voicemail just as I’m taking another hairpin turn. “Whose fucking idea was it to try to take this route to the rendezvous point?”

“Yours,” Iris manages in between bouts of nausea that I’m beginning to suspect have little to do with my driving. “And I hate you for it.”

Sam and I both chuckle. “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah, man?”

“Check my voicemail to make sure nothing’s changed. It’s been pinging nonstop since we crossed over from Germany. If we’re not meeting up with the team in Meiringen, we need to know that stat.”

“On it.” Sam leans over the seat and snags my phone out of the holder. Flipping to the voicemail app, he frowns. “Cal, these are all from the family. And there’s…” He begins to count under his breath. “Seventeen of them since last night.”

“What about your phone? Iris’s? Anything?”

Sam whips his phone out of his pocket and begins to curse roundly. “Mine’s been on silent. There’s at least ten.”

Something’s wrong. There has to be. Panic begins to whip through my veins. “We can’t call them back. Not until we reach base,” I snarl. “We’re not safe.”

“Can we listen to the messages?” Sam growls at me.

I calculate the risk. “Are the messages already downloaded from the secure number?”

“Yes.”

“Then yes. Find out what the hell is going on!”

A minute passes. Not a sound from the back seat other than the consistent heaving. “Jesus, Sam. What the fuck is going on?” I scream.

“Just get us to base as fast as you can, Cal. Get us home.” The note of joviality in Sam’s voice that lives there even despite his own wife being ill is suddenly missing.

“I swear to God, I’m going to turn around and punch you. Then you can worry about your wife ending up over the side of this damn cliff,” I threaten. “What the fuck is wrong?”

“It’s Libby. She’s been taken to the hospital.”