Operation Swift Mercy (24 page)

Mercy felt her smile wobble slightly as she breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.” She couldn’t say any more, already she felt warm tears threatening to escape. She really didn’t want to fall apart here in front of everyone. How lucky had she been to have found them? Only a few days ago she had been alone and terrified—now she had
people on
her side and she felt
protected,
safe and for the first time a long while—strong. She could face Nikkos when the time came with friends like this behind her.
The way she felt now, she could do pretty much anything.

With full tummies they sat in foldout chairs and looked out at
the beach
and ocean before them. The sun was slowly sinking and the sky was a riot of spectacular colour.

“Just another day in the office,” Tate said taking a sip of his beer from the can.

“Give it a few months, and you’ll be itching to get back out there and raise hell,” Tupper drawled, emptying
yet another can. He’d been steadily drinking most of the evening
.

She saw Summer send a glare across at the younger of the men before Tate slid his hand over hers and give it a squeeze. Obviously the two had come to some kind of pact about Tate and his career change and she wondered if Tupper’s constant pessimistic attitude was causing problems
. The
other men
had apparently
dealt with it
. She glanced over at Chase to find him quietly taking it all in, and smiled. He seemed to be the thinker of the group—he didn’t say
a lot but when he did it t
ended to be diplomatic, in order to defuse the situation. He was the
team’s
peacemaker.

Tate was the obvious leader—he had a quiet, authoritive manner about him and Del was like his wingman—ready to jump in when needed. Tupper on the other hand, she thought shifting her gaze onto the man in question, was like a younger kid brother. Although there wasn’t anything kid like about him, it was clear he was at a loss to explain why any of the others would consider swapping the military for family life
.
 

“I still think you’ve gone soft,” Tupper added under his breath.

“Tupper, man. Knock it off,” Del said with a shake of his head. “It’s getting old.”

“Fits right in around here then,” Tupper threw back.

“Yeah, alright—fine we get it—you’re pissed at us for upsetting your life, but dude, you need to learn to move on,” Del said.

“We’ve always had each other’s backs, and I’m tellin
’
you—you’ve both made a big mistake,” Tupper persisted. “There’s no way the men I fought
alongside
all these years could be happy playing tour guide and house husband
,
”
he spat waving an irritated hand towards Summer and Willow.

Summer stood abruptly and began clearing away the remnants of their meal from the table, her brisk movements indicating she was not happy.

“
Enough Tupper!
Taking it out on me is one thing—making my wife feel like crap is not cool and if that’s how you’re going to be then maybe you shouldn’t be here,” Tate snapped.

“You forgetting a few things Ox? Like one, you’re no longer my CO, and two, I’m an equal owner of this place, so on both counts you can go shove your orders up your—”

Tate lunged across the semi-circle they’d been sitting in after dinner to watch the sunset and grabbed Tupper by the shirt collar. Immediately Chase and Del were up out of their seats and dragging the two men apart.

Mercy stared at
the scuffle
of men and swearing in stunned surprise. Summer and Willow looked on wearing twin frowns, both seemingly more angry than upset.

Chase pushed Tupper out of the way, bending to sit the tipped over chair to rights. “Go home and sober up Tupper, before you end up saying something you’ll really regret,” he ordered.

“Regret,” he laughed, wiping at the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth where obviously Tate had managed to land a punch during the
fight
. “Too late for that. I got plenty.”

They watched as Tupper vanished back the way he came from, presumably heading to his own hut.

“Well, that was a lovely ending to the night,”
W
illow announced,
moving
to help her sister finish cleaning up.

Mercy felt somewhat uncomfortable, like an outsider who’d just accidently witnessed a family argument and silently began collecting empty glasses to carry inside.

“They’re not usually like that,” Summer said with a sad smile, as she followed Mercy inside. “Usually they’re inseparable,”

“What happened?”

“We happened,” Willow said, coming into the kitchen.

“What did you two do?” Mercy asked with an unconvinced grin.

“We married Tupper’s hero’s and upset the whole apple cart,” she shrugged.

“So Tupper’s jealous?”

Willow
smiled slightly at that
, as she put away left over food. “They’ve been a tight knit group for a long time—been through hell together and a lot of stuff we’ll probably never understand. Everything’s different now. Tupper’s got a new unit and he’s struggling to figure out where everyone fits, I guess.”

She felt a little sorry for him, but then again, surely he was a grown man and realised that his friends finding women to love and wanting to start a family wasn’t something he should punish them for?

She had a lot to figure out about this complex little family. It seemed the more she learnt about them—the more she didn’t understand after all!

****

For the next two days, everyone kept to themselves. There were no more barbeques, no friendly barter—in fact no contact at all. Tupper
had all but vanished and Mercy could tell
Chase
was worried about his friend.

“Do you think he’s okay? I
mean
should maybe someone go out and look for him…or something?”

Chase had smiled at her, kind of in the same way a parent smiles at a slow witted child, she thought somewhat indignantly. “I think he’ll be okay, baby. He’s trained in
wilderness survival—I’m pretty sure he can take care of himself.”

It seemed to be affecting them all. Chase was a lot more quieter than usual and Mercy hated to see him so troubled, but didn’t know if she had the right to pry when she was still so much of an outsider.

“I’m bored—how about showing me around the island a little more?”
S
he asked while they were sitting quietly on the front porch after lunch.

In the short time she’d known him—she’d figured out Chase was not a man who sat around doing nothing for long
, so his mood today was most un-Chase like
. Maybe if they were out and about, they’d bump into Tupper and it would at least break the ice.

When he headed for the jeep, Mercy stopped him.
“
Can we walk instead?”

“You want to walk? I was going to take you over to where we used to live. It’s a bit of a hike on foot,” he warned her.

Each day he went for a jog along the beach or a swim—not a floating, gentle kind swim—more like a
marathon kind
, going out for miles
.
When she pointed out that he was supposed to be on holidays, he’d told her how he had to keep his fitness level up because with his job he had to be in prime physical condition ready at an instant to be deployed at any moment
.

“What’s the matter, soldier boy? Scared a girly girl will show you up?”

“Soldier boy?”
H
e eyed her dangerously, stalking towards her. “I’ll have you know I’m no soldier boy…”

“Well, I’m sorry, but there’s something just wrong about calling
you
semen,
” she said deliberately.

“That would be a seaman…not semen,” he growled, stopping within grabbing distance.

“I don’t care what it’s called—it sounds wrong and I’m not saying it,” she told him. “What else can I call you?”

“God? Master? Oh, wise and studly one?”
H
e suggested, seemingly having an endless number of suggestions but he made a lunge for her and pulled her tightly against him for a long kiss, making her forget what her own name was, little own what their conversation had been over.

In the end they took the jeep because it was a lot later than they’d originally planned to be due to a rather energetic demonstration of his God-like mastery skills in the bedroom.

“So this is it?”
S
he said when he’d parked in the front of a long wooden, rather nondescript building.

“Yep. This is where we lived for about eighteen months.”

While his expression was neutral, his voice
held a slightly bitter note. He’d told her how for over a year they’d been forced to live on the run, when a corrupt CIA agent had tried to frame them for a weapons heist. Maybe that was why Chase was so eager to help her, because he knew
firsthand
how it felt to be looking over your shoulder all the time.

The building was still in reasonable condition but pretty primitive.

“What’s going to happen to this place?”

Chase shrugged, “we’ve talked about maybe using it as bunk style accommodation for school groups or something one day.”

“So Los Cavern
a
s means something about caves, the others said. Where are they?” Mercy asked, standing on the bottom step of the bunkhouse.

“They’re through that way,” he said pointing towards a track that disappeared behind thick foliage
.
“But a rock fall pretty much decimated the place.”

Mercy enjoyed the
walk;
it really was a beautiful island. The track soon started following a rock face and then
abruptly
ended. A mound of rock was piled up on the side of the track and Chase moved aside some foliage and there hidden behind the vegetation was a crevice in the rock, partially boarded up.

“We’ve been trying to clear
it out—to see if we can reach the pool. But the last time we went in, there was a lot of movement, so we’ve decided to leave it boarded up for now. We’ll have to make sure tourists can’t get in there in case the whole thing caves in. It’s pretty unstable.”

“What a shame. It sounds amazing. I hope you manage to clear it out some day,” she said wistfully.

“Yeah, it was pretty impressive. It saved our lives
.” At the question brimming in her gaze, he picked a leaf off a nearby plant and began twirling it between his fingers
,
talking quietly. “The cave leads to a deep pool, which has an opening that
faces
out to the other side of the headland. We were outnumbered and out gunned when Treágo found the island and if we hadn’t been able to make it to the caves and go out through the pool—we’d have been dead.”

Oh my God,
the thought of this man being killed before she’d ever even gotten to know him tore at her heart. Instinctively she reached for his hand and held it tightly
.

Glancing across at her
, his expression softened and he smiled, dropping the leaf and tilting her face up to kiss his gently. “That’s all a long time ago. It’s over.”

“I
don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” she whispered and saw something smoulder deep in his eyes. She couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud—she should be screaming at
herself for saying something so
…deep and…well,
deep!
But it was true and it felt
…
right.

They hadn’t met Tupper along the way anywhere, but at least Chase didn’t seem quite so down in the dumps after their little outing. She just hoped the men sorted it out soon, it was obvious they had gone through so much together—had to depend on each other in situations most people would never be able to imagine themselves in. They needed to make things right between them again.

Chapter
Twenty

Just after they had breakfast and were thinking about heading out to go snorkelling, Chase
’
s phone began beeping loudly with a message from Summer to get up to the main house, immediately.

Mercy’s first thought was that there had been some terrible new development with their case against Nikkos and when they all found themselves seated a
t
the kitchen table, including a rather sullen looking Tupper, Summer made her big announcement.

“This ends right now,” she declared.
“I
will not put up with this moping around a second longer. You guys are brothers—you always have been—always will be no matter what changes over the years and I am not going to stand by and watch you all throw it away over a stupid argument.”