Page 117 of Travis
Through the blur of my vision, through the blood and the smoke and the ringing in my ears, I saw Beckett. Coming down the corridor behind Kindt’s position with his weapon up, Hunter and Coop flanking him, moving in the coordinated formation that Warrior Security had drilled until it was instinct.
They’d come back.
Kindt hit the ground. The gun fell from his hand. His glasses landed beside him on the floor, one lens cracked, reflecting the fire.
Beckett reached me first. He grabbed my shoulder to keep me from falling forward, and I heard his voice, my name, something urgent I couldn’t fully process because the world was narrowing.
Sera was on her knees a few feet from Kindt’s body. She crawled to me.
Her hands found my face. Gentle. So careful. I couldn’t see her clearly, but I felt her palms settle against my jaw, her fingers in my hair, and I reached for her arm and gripped it and held on.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
I tried to speak. What came out was her name, broken, wet with blood.
“Don’t talk. Don’t try to talk.” Her hands moved over my face, my neck, around my vest, assessing damage with shaking fingers. Her voice kept going, low and steady, the same voice that had guided me through missions on comms, except now she was the one shaking, and I was the one who couldn’t respond. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
I pulled her closer, felt the wetness of her tears. I hurt everywhere, and I didn’t care. My forehead found hers and I stayed there, breathing her air, feeling her pulse through the places where our skin touched.
“I love you, Travis. You’re going to be okay, you hear me.” Not a request, a demand.
“I love you,” I said. It came out thick, slurred through split lips.
“We can spend the rest of our lives telling each other every single day. But right now, you just hang on.”
“We need to move.” Hunter’s voice, cutting through everything. “This building is coming down.”
The team took over. Hunter guided Sera out. Coop and Beckett hauled me up, one on each side, because my legs weren’t working on their own.
“Can you walk?” Beckett asked.
“Fuck no.”
I leaned on both of them—the men who had come back for me even though I’d lied to them for years.
We hit the exterior door, and the cold air was a shock against my swollen face. The perimeter team was there. Lachlan, Lucas, Daniel, Liam. The children were already loaded, safe, accounted for. Everyone was out. Everyone was alive.
Sera appeared beside me. I couldn’t see her clearly, but I could feel her hand locked around my wrist, her fingers pressinginto my pulse point, her grip tight enough to leave bruises. I wanted every one of them.
They loaded me into a vehicle. Sera slid in beside me. Her hand found mine and I held it, her fingers laced through my split knuckles, blood mixing between our palms.
The vehicles started moving. Through the back window, I saw Lachlan’s truck pull off from the convoy and stop. He was staying behind with the children.
“Lachlan’s holding position with the kids,” Beckett said from the front seat. “FBI’s inbound on the main access road. He’ll tell them he saw smoke, investigated, pulled the children out. Local sheriff doing his job. Rest of us were never here.”
Lachlan, standing in front of a burning building in his jeans and flannel shirt, presenting himself as a concerned sheriff who’d stumbled onto a fire and rescued six children. Giving the FBI exactly what they needed to close a case and no reason to look any further.
Our convoy turned onto the secondary access road, away from the approaching headlights. Away from the smoke and the bodies and the man who would never traffic another child.
They would never even know we were here. The fire would destroy all evidence.
I rested my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. Sera’s weight settled against my right side, careful, finding a place that didn’t make me hiss with pain. Her breathing steadied slightly. Her hand stayed in mine.
The Ghost was finished.
And I was still here.
