ChapterTwenty-Seven
In a daze, Audrey entered the lodge a half hour later. The building smelled of gunpowder and singed electronics. The power was out again, and there were dead bodies lined up against the wall in the great room.
One of them was the man who’d attacked her in the woods behind the post office.
In spite of the carnage and destruction, this was still her lodge. Or maybe it was her lodge once again, no longer held by mercenaries who’d seized it without firing a shot.
With George’s groundwork, they’d reclaimed the building, rescued the hostages, and won the day.
Or rather, night.
It wasn’t over. At least five mercenaries remained at large. Three SEALs remained missing. And they still didn’t have communication with the outside world. Two SEALs had been injured in the battle for the lodge, and one of the hostages was critically injured. The injured hostage was a SEAL from the missing Fire Team.
The great room was in a shambles. Antique sofas and wing chairs upended, blood marring the upholstery, lamps shattered.
From the smell, she guessed George had managed to exchange some of the lightbulbs with his ignitors. When the generator powered on, the lights exploded.
She spotted George sitting on the stone lip of the massive central hearth, a medic tending to a wound just above his knee. She crossed the room and planted herself beside him on the side that wasn’t injured, throwing an arm around his shoulders and giving him a grateful squeeze.
She’d never hugged George Shaw in her life, but figured this was an appropriate occasion for it. “George, you beautiful, brilliant, badass—” She stopped. Her mind went blank as she took in everything he’d done, so she just spoke the truth. “I don’t even have words…”
For the hundredth time since this ordeal began, her eyes teared. But the feeling behind it now was different.
He wrapped an arm around her waist, squeezing back. “With that list, I think the next word should be bastard.”
Tears leaked from the sides of her eyes. “No way. I think saint is more appropriate.”
He shook his head. “Hell no. I’m much more bastard than saint.” He leaned back and studied her face. More tears spilled, as she took in his lined cheeks and long dark hair streaked with gray.
His gaze landed on her throat, which she imagined was red from her encounter with the tango in the forest. “You okay, Aud?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. That we’re even here at all is thanks to you.”
“Hear, hear,” the medic tending George’s leg chimed in.
Audrey turned her gaze to him and realized he wasn’t one of the SEALs she’d met in the forest. He must be one of the men from Xavier’s team who’d been taken hostage.
“It was your call when the cameras went out that alerted me,” George said. “I got your message right away and grabbed my binoculars and went to see what the hell was going on. It was clear they weren’t looters. They were dressed for combat, and when I saw them recover their cache of weapons from the site, their plan to attack the training was obvious.”
“Why didn’t you call or text me?”
“I think they had a shorter-range signal jammer on them. My phone worked one moment, and the next, it was toast. If your cameras had been wireless with a satellite feed, there would have been no need for them to cut the line.”
She thought of those days in November of backbreaking work as she buried the conduit for the cables. It was common for satellite signals to be interrupted, and the security team monitoring the camera feeds might never have noticed—especially if the signal was restored once the weapons had been retrieved.
Without those cut cables, George never would have been warned. Audrey wouldn’t have entered the park. Xavier would have been ambushed along with the rest of his team.
The events of the last day and a half would have played out very differently.
Several SEALs, including Xavier, gathered round as George gave his account. He’d witnessed Jeb’s murder and watched as a man was forced at gunpoint into the lodge, his hand dripping with blood. He’d seen the other trainers all get dragged into the ballroom. He’d then gone to Jeb’s and set to work making weapons, unsure how he could use them, but aware his ability to move unseen in a forest combined with his knowledge of the lodge complex and surrounding woods could be used against the intruders.
Others chimed in when his account intersected with their experiences. A man she guessed was Paul Cohen due to his bandaged hand shared the story of a dead merc being shot with a nail to the eye in the wee hours of yesterday morning. Huang and Flyte had witnessed that body being dumped in the lake.
The mercenaries had no intention of taking their dead home, it seemed. How many more had been deposited in the lake? Cohen stated the mercenary leader’s words indicated at least two others had died.
The one Xavier killed in the forest, and possibly the man who fell from the ledge before the SEALs had jumped into the lake?
When those accounts were complete, Cohen cleared his throat. “There was another exchange I witnessed, between the leader and two goons.” His gaze shifted from Audrey to Xavier, then back to Audrey. “I believe these men were the ones who cornered you in one of the inholding cabins, Dr. Kendrick.”
“Audrey, please,” she murmured. She was fairly certain she knew what Cohen was about to reveal. Her hand went involuntarily to her belly. She’d gone from no one but her doctor knowing about the baby to telling Xavier, a group of mercenaries, and now a platoon of SEALs. Not the usual progression for sharing big news, but at least she was alive to do it herself. “They found my letter to Xavier.”
Cohen nodded.
“They know I’m pregnant.”
Again, Cohen nodded. He turned to Xavier. “But the part that interested the leader most was the fact that you are the father. It was the second time he’d made it clear he knows you.”
Xavier jolted. “Knows me? By face?”
“Yes. The first time was when I was delivered to him. He was angry when he saw me. Said I wasn’t Rivera.” He faced Audrey again. “He’d put a bounty on Rivera. He doubled it for you. He said…well, he said he wants to hurt you in front of Rivera.”