Page 39 of Uncharted

Not here was the answer I was thinking of, but probably not the answer that was going to go down the best. My emergency contact when I’d first joined the team had been one of my old buddies from the Corps. Last year it changed because I had someone in my life who was closer and knew more about my current life.

“Reno,” I said with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t think he had your number.”

“He knows how to get into your phone,” Darren told me, and when I looked around for the one face that was missing, he gave me a strained smile. “We’ve left messages. They assure us that when he gets back, they’ll let him know.”

I nodded. “That’s how it goes. Ryan might not be able to come anyway. The military don’t always like to let ya go.”

“I remember,” Darren said with a snort. “You were spittin’ mad the day they wouldn’t let you come home after Dad’s accident.”

“Wasn’t even that bad,” my father muttered, and I couldn’t help but smile. Years ago, he’d taken a fall at a job site. A moderate concussion, several staples, and a worried family later, and he was just fine. I hadn’t known that at the time; however, I’d been overseas, and Darren was right, I’d been fighting mad when they denied my emergency leave.

“Ryan won’t get that mad,” I assured him. “He’s a better Marine than I was.”

“That’s not a good thing,” he muttered, but Mom cleared her throat, and with a sour face, he looked away.

Poor big brother, always wanting to look out for us, but cursed with siblings who didn’t take the easy or safe paths through life. He had been furious when I joined the Corps and then stuck with it, and was even madder when I was sent on a tour, only to come back and sign up for another. Now our youngest brother had joined up, more out of a sense of duty than adventure, like I had, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous in Darren’s eyes.

And Lauren? Well, between her previous horrible taste in men that confused every member of our family and her love of taking risks, she was just as bad in his mind as the rest of us. I would have said it was a shame that she never joined the military, whatever branch she wanted. Only for her to find her way into SWAT while I had been overseas the first time, cementing in our eldest brother’s eyes that we were all insane and doomed to die a violent, painful death.

My mother leaned forward, her eyes narrowed in concern. “Do you remember?”

“I remember what I was told,” I said with a wince. “Reno and I went out to the beaver dam he was so worried about, and apparently he was right to worry.”

We were supposed to be shoring it up, hoping maybe with enough sandbags, we could keep it from bursting and sending all the water it had been barely holding back flying downstream into town. Aidan and Mika had come to help, and according to them, the dam had shattered while Reno and I had been standing on it in our apparently hopeless attempt to stop it from breaking. We didn’t get enough warning to get free of the dam, but apparently I had tried to throw Reno to the bank before it broke.

From there, it was chaos. I had been swept away, and in all truth, I should have been dead several times over. The river had beaten the hell out of me, with a little extra on the side for good measure, but the rest of the team had found me lodged between two rocks and pulled me out. Reno had been luckier; he’d still gone in the river, but luck and maybe a little angelic assistance had kept him close to the edge. And Aidan⁠—

Aidan had saved Reno at significant risk to his own life; the man had almost died in the process. That, of course, came with the caveat that he had apparently been ‘selling us out’ to someone higher up the food chain, but I was still waiting for more details before I figured out if that balanced the scales or not.

“But I don’t…remember it myself,” I said with a shrug, and then winced. My left arm had taken a thorough beating: a fracture in my forearm and my upper arm, and the shoulder had been dislocated. There was no way I was going to be using it anytime soon, and I suppose I was lucky because at least I still had use of my right arm. Or at least, I would in theory, except it too had been dislocated, the only injury by some stroke of luck, but that didn’t mean it didn’t still hurt like a son of a bitch when I tried to move it.

Broken ribs, bruises everywhere, cuts that required stitches all over the place, twisted ankles, a gash down the side of my head, and a concussion. It sucked beyond words to know I was out of the running for much of anything, especially my job, but even with that sinking understanding, I knew how ridiculously lucky I had been. I should have been dead, and barring that, I should have been in a full body cast for months.

“That’s probably for the best,” my mom said, running a hand over my head, careful to avoid the staples. It still tugged at my scalp a little, and I felt the wound protest, but I ignored it. No way was I going to deny my mother the chance to comfort me, especially when comfort was exactly what I needed. “And Reno will be down later, he promised.”

“I’m just glad he’s okay; he doesn’t have to worry about me,” I told them quietly.

Darren snorted. “Sure, okay.”

I glared at him. “What?”

It was my father who answered. “We overheard your friends talking earlier. The first time you woke up, the only name you said was his.”

“I guess part of me remembered he was on that dam with me,” I said with a frown.

“Sure, okay,” Darren repeated in a wry voice, and I sighed when Lauren let out a soft snicker. “If you weren’t so damned into⁠—”

“Darren,” my mother chided, and he sighed.

“If you weren’t so into women,” he corrected dryly. “I’d have wondered when we were going to hear wedding bells.”

“And that would be just fine,” my mother said, glaring at her oldest.

He blinked. “I didn’t say it wouldn’t be.”

Lauren hummed thoughtfully. “Do you think they’d wear matching tuxes? Or would they go for something a little different?”

“Dress blues,” my father added, and when I eyed him, he smirked. “What? It’s what I always imagined you’d wear when you got married.”