If Ever I Fall: Book 3 of The Six Series (17 page)

“Just keep moving; the weather’s in our favor right now. There’s no way the helicopter can get close enough to pick him up in this. It’d be suicide for the pilot to even try it.”

“It’s suicide for us to even try it,” I said, tossing my thoughts in.

“We’re halfway there, so it’s either man up or give up,” Grant snapped in our ears.

“I vote up, cause down isn’t looking too promising,” Oliver butted in.

Grant looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze, seeing the water level had submerged the spot we’d been standing only ten minutes prior. “Up it is,” I added, watching a wave crash violently against the wall about five feet below us.

There was no more talking about it after that as we clung to the rocks with everything we had to keep from succumbing to the elements.

Mother Nature was pissed, and I couldn’t help but feel like her personal target.

Oliver hissed a curse, growling a string of words. I looked back and saw him tuck his right arm against his side.

“What happened?” Grant asked, pushing himself up to peek under his arm, trying to see past me where Oliver was.

“Slipped. Caught my arm on a rock,” Oliver replied, adding. “Keep going. I’ll be fine.”

Grant took his word for it and moved up to the next rock. “Two more from here and I’ll be at the mouth of the cave.”

We moved up another foothold and stopped, waiting for Grant to pull himself up onto the ledge that led to the mouth of the cave.

When he made it to his feet, he swayed slightly. Regaining his stance, he braced his back against the wall. “Aiden, be ready to move up to this position once I slip inside, but don’t move in until I give you the all clear,” he said, keeping his face turned away as he issued the order.

I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t turn my eyes from where Robert had disappeared into either.

When he slipped inside the opening, I moved up, fighting a wave of dizziness that threatened to buckle my legs. I pushed my back hard against the rocks.

Something sharp poked me in the shoulder blade, keeping me completely aware of the situation I was in.

“You good?” Oliver asked. I looked down at him, noticing a streak of red rolling over his elbow and spreading out where his hand gripped the rock he used to keep himself anchored.

It was then I saw the waterline as each wave pulled back and then raced forward again, slapping at the wall. Only three feet below us, it looked angry enough to swallow us whole and never spit us up if we made any mistakes.

“Fine. You?” I said, flicking a glance at his arm.

“I’ve had worse. Just need to get to a spot where I can bind it. Last thing I wanna do is slip up on my own damn blood and fall into that,” he said, jutting his chin towards the water below.

Thunder rumbled closer, bringing the storm over our heads. Forked lightning split the bruised-looking sky. The visibility went from low light to almost no light, as if night had crept up on us.

There was no sign of the helicopter anymore, so that was at least one good sign.

“Aiden, can you hear me?” Grant’s voice whispered from the com.

I pushed my finger against it, plugging my other ear so I could hear him over the howl of the wind.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my answer brief.

“When you come in, keep to the left wall,” Grant said.

“Copy that.”

“Oliver, standby at the edge until Aiden’s inside. If he’s watching the opening, I don’t want him to know you’re with us. Okay?”

“Copy that, Grant. Be careful,” Oliver said, reaching up to tap my leg, giving me the signal to enter the cave.

Even with the darkened sky outside, the cave was much darker, but I made my way over to the far left wall with only a few minor missteps. Kneeling alongside it, I pulled the pistol Grant loaned me before we left the church from the side pocket of my cargo pants.

“Aiden,” Grant whispered as he moved to stand beside me.

I looked up, seeing only the outline of his face.

“Oliver, hold your position. Aiden and I are going to move towards the back of the cave and see if we can flush him out.”

“Copy that, standing by.”

“Okay, Aiden, let’s see how good your night vision is,” Grant said, gesturing for me to follow him. “Com communication going silent. Stand by,” Grant warned.

“Copy that,” Ace and Oliver answered.

Blackness enveloped us, the cave briefly illuminating with flashes of lightning, but not long enough to give us any detail as to what we’d find the further we walked.

The damp air around me felt suffocating. The walls pressed in as the darkness swallowed us, making me feel like I’d entered the belly of a beast. And hadn’t I?

Robert de Fleur didn’t make it onto Cole Enterprise’s list of most wanted for being a good person after all. I’d seen the charges against him. Knew the kind of madness he’d plunged himself into.

Even knowing all he’d done, I still knew he wasn’t the biggest fish in the pond of scum he swam in. Taking him out wouldn’t even touch the rest of the underground world he’d immersed himself in, but he’d be one less madman the rest of society had to deal with. One less child smuggler. That had to count for something.

Grant halted, putting his hand to my shoulder and leaning in close, speaking low into my ear. “Do you hear that?”

Shutting off my thoughts, I listened. Somewhere in the darkness, water dripped, plunk, plunk, plunking, and I fought to hear past it and the sound of my own heartbeat.

Faintly, just past the water and my own blood pumping though my veins, I heard something, but it was hard to tell what it could be. “What is it? Bats?”

“Not sure, but it’s faint, which means this cave goes back quite a ways,” Grant whispered.

“We can’t even see our own feet in front of us. How the hell are we supposed to find out what that noise is?” I asked.

“We can’t. Not right now anyway,” he said, stepping around me as he kept his hand on my shoulder, turning us back to the mouth of the cave.

As much as I wanted to keep moving and get to the end… get to him, I understood Grant’s reason for turning back. Neither one of us would be much good if we ended up plunging to our deaths over a ledge we couldn’t see, or dying from whatever other dangers that awaited us in the darkness.

We’d gone deep enough into the cave that we’d lost the minimal light coming from the opening. Darkness swarmed around us as we shuffled back along the same wall we’d followed down.

“Aiden,” Grant said, halting us. “Something is not right. We should have been able to see the opening by now.”

Dread wormed its way up my spine and settled into my bones. We couldn’t be lost inside the cave. We hadn’t veered from our original path. Or had we?

A small beam of light shot out from Grant’s hand, landing by my feet. I swallowed hard, noticing for the first time what kind of danger we’d almost put ourselves in without a clue.

Inches from where I stood solidly on the ledge was a drop off that seemed endless. Grant shined the flashlight over the edge, losing the end of the beam in complete darkness.

“We need to get more light and more people. God only knows what’s in this cave. He could be anywhere.

“Move one step and I’ll drop him right here.” My heart slammed against my ribcage so hard that I half expected it to burst from my chest and keep going until it flew out of the cave and did a swan dive to the water below.

“Aiden, don’t move,” Grant said, bringing the flashlight up, partially blinding me with it.

Something clicked inside my ear. He’d brought communication back up, linking everyone to the situation we were in.

“Lower your weapon, Robert,” Grant demanded.

“No. Back away and I’ll let him live. For now,” Robert answered, pushing the barrel of the gun against the back of my head.

“Let him go and take me instead,” Grant countered, moving a step closer to me.

“No deal. He comes with me. And you… die.” The gun moved past my ear and fired at Grant at about the same time that everything went pitch black.

I couldn’t move, but that didn’t stop me from hollering out to Grant, waiting to hear him answer me past the ringing in my ears.

The only thing that kept my ear drum from shattering was the com tucked into my ear canal.

There was no amount of training that could compare to the real deal. A man with a gun pointed somewhere at your head who had the opportunity to end you should he choose to. A ledge that was mere inches from your foot with no bottom to be seen and a path that led out to blackness and confusion.

I was fucked, unless I went along with him willingly and made my move when I had a handle on the situation.

So that was what I did. I stayed as calm as I possibly could, praying with everything in me that Robert hadn’t killed Grant.

Jabbing the gun against the back of my head, Robert clamped his hand on my arm, pulling me backwards. “Make one stupid move and you’re just as dead as he is.”

“Hold on, we’re coming for you.” Oliver’s voice sounded garbled as I retreated further back into the cave, stumbling over my own feet.

Robert maneuvered us onto what I hoped was a path to solid ground before marching me in front of him.

I didn’t answer Oliver back. I couldn’t without tipping Robert off, but I had a feeling he knew we hadn’t come alone.

WHAT
THE HELL WAS TAKING
Aiden so long? He’d been gone most of the day. Granted, I’d slept for a little while after Father McKinnon’s visit, but that had been a while ago.

I was done lying around. I wanted to see Aunt Brenda and Mum.

Pushing myself up, I moved my legs over the side of the bed, rubbed sleep from my eyes, and then stood.

As I left my room, I had no idea where I’d find Nadia, but I sort of remembered the path Ace led me down to where they were keeping Aunt Brenda and Mum.

They. Who were
they
anyway? And how had they come to our rescue when we’d needed it the most?

It was obvious they had no intention of hurting us. And even more obvious that Aiden was either one of them or they’d drafted him into helping them. Either way, I had no answers.

The hallway was empty and quiet, all but the sound of my own feet treading against the carpet. Coming to a stop at the doors Ace had led me through, I reached out, pushing the door open. I stepped inside and was met with a flurry of activity.

The beds weren’t in the same place. Two men and three women moved around one another, almost synchronized in their individual movements, as first one bed and then the other were made travel ready.

“Where are you taking them?” I asked, my voice weak as I moved quickly to Mum’s side.

“What are you doing in here?” one of the ladies asked, whisking over to my side as if to escort me out.

“It’s okay, Ruth. I’ve got her,” Nadia called as she briskly crossed the floor and came to stand beside me.

“What are they doing?” I asked her as she put her arm around my shoulder, gently nudging me back a step.

“It’s okay, Airen. They’re just getting them ready to transport to the hospital now that they’re both stable enough to move,” she answered.

“I want to go with them,” I said, trying to pull away from her.

She made no move to release me. “You can’t. Not right now, but I promise, I’ll take you to them later.”

“Later? No, not later… now! I’m going with them, so let go of me,” I hissed, yanking my arm from her grasp and gasping as white-hot pain boiled in my chest.

“Airen, you can’t go. They’re being transported along with my staff directly to a secured intensive care unit. No one, not even me, can get into that unit until after they’ve been seen to. Both your aunt and mother need surgery that we can’t do here. Please understand, we’re doing all of this so that they will survive,” Nadia said, coming to stand in front of me, blocking me from where the crew of people had taken position to wheel the beds away.

Before I could form the words to protest what she said, a man I’d not seen before burst through the door. His eyes locked on Nadia as he said, “Need you in command. There’s a problem.”

Nadia rushed both of us out the door and down a hallway, stopping only when we made it inside a large room set up with a long desk and a flat-screen monitor mounted on the far wall.

“Status report,” Nadia said, releasing me as we entered the room.

“They entered a cave here,” the guy said, laying a map down on the table in front of her. “Ace and Oliver are outside the cave on standby.”

“Eli, what’s the status on Grant and Aiden?” she asked, reaching out along the table to a black box with a glowing red light.

The sound of heavy breathing filled the air as I fumbled my way to an empty chair at the end of the table.

“Com’s up,” the guy Nadia called Eli said, rounding the other side of the table where a keyboard sat. “Visual is a no go with the weather conditions.”

“Oliver, this is Nadia. Do you copy?” Nadia asked.

The sound of breathing kept hissing through the speakers, but no reply came. She waited a few seconds and tried again. “Oliver, do you copy?”

Oliver’s voice broke through the speakers. “I copy.”

“Status report,” she fired back.

“Two inside. One shot fired. No response from Grant or Aiden,” Oliver paused briefly, “Nadia, we need reinforcements.”

“Copy that. Stand by,” she answered.

She was cool under pressure, or at least until she hit the button on the black box and exploded into a tidal wave of curse words that stopped when she pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingertips and took a deep breath, saying, “Eli, patch me through to Chicago.”

After that, I was lost in a flurry of commands and procedures. The only thing I knew for sure was that Aiden and Grant were in a cave with Uncle Robert… and all hell had broken loose.

Nadia, as small as she was, was like a hurricane of motion. Seeing it not only awed me, but it terrified me as well.

At no point did I say a word. There wasn’t enough air in the room to speak my thoughts with everything else going on, so I watched intently, piecing things together.

At once everything quieted as Nadia sucked in a sharp inhale. “We don’t have all the resources we need for a team. Looks like it’s you and me, Eli. Get Grant’s contacts up and alert his guy in the FBI that we’re going in for an extraction. We’ll need a chopper and a medic team as soon as they can get us one.”

Eli nodded, fingers dancing over the keyboard in front of him briefly. Getting the information he needed, he plucked up a cell phone.

Nadia didn’t wait to hear the conversation as she turned her focus on me.

“Come with me, Airen,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her out the door, but I refused to get out of my seat.

She made it a few steps down the hallway before noticing I hadn’t followed her. Her eyes spit fire when she walked back into the room. “Let’s go. I don’t have time for this!”

I got to my feet. “Yer no passing me off anymore. I’m going with ye.”

Nadia snorted, shaking her head. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. Robert de Fleur is my uncle. He’s my problem just as much as he’s yers. I’m no staying here while everyone else puts their neck on the line because of him.”

“You don’t understand the danger that puts you in. Now, please follow me. I need you safe upstairs before we can leave,” Nadia said, reaching out to take my arm and, evidently, lead me to Father McKinnon.

“He’s come after me before. What if he still wants me? What if I can help get ye into the cave? Think about it—I could be yer bargaining chip,” I said, trying everything I could to make her take me along.

“Are you crazy? Putting you back in danger is the last thing I want to do. You’ve seen what he’s capable of. No, just let us handle this without any more to worry about,” Nadia argued.

“I have just as much to lose as any of ye! Maybe even more. Ye owe me this much, and you ken it. Had my family and I been warned what we were up against…” I left the rest unsaid.

“Would it have made a difference? Made him any less dangerous?” she asked, tossing her hands to her side. “Airen, I don’t have time for this right now.”

“Then stop fighting with me and tell me how I can help ye. Because if ye leave me here, I’ll just show up anyway,” I said, squaring off with her. There was no way in hell she’d be leaving me behind.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, I ALMOST wished she would have knocked me out and left me behind.

The helicopter shuddered, lurching on pockets of turbulence as the pilot fought to keep it in the air. How Nadia managed to get anyone to fly in that kind of weather was beyond me. Had I been the pilot, I would have told her to piss up a rope.

Nadia pointed her finger at the window from her side as she asked, “Can you set us down there?”

“I can try, but this damn wind is making it almost impossible to keep this bird on a steady course and not crash as it is,” he answered, keeping both hands on the stick between his legs.

Swallowing the terror of the situation down, I closed my eyes, hoping we landed somewhere before I vomited.

Beside me, Eli’s leg bounced up and down as he looked out his window. The light coffee-colored skin around his mouth and eyes pinched with each jolt that shuddered through the metal hull of the helicopter.

By the time the pilot had us on the ground, I could have kissed him.

“I don’t know how soon evac can get here to pick you up. You might have to ride out the rest of this storm before they’re cleared for takeoff. Radar’s indicating this is just the beginning of the storm coming through. Looks like it won’t let up for a few hours. Good luck.”

Nadia bolted out of her seat with a nod, tossing her headset behind her and coming around to the door in one swift motion.

“Let’s go!” she shouted over the roar of sound that hit my ears when she ripped off my headset and practically rolled me out of my seat to the ground.

She had us jogging, hunched over until we were well away from the helicopter. Eli was right on our heels, lifting his arm to give the pilot a thumbs-up.

With that, the helicopter lifted off and blew away on the wind.

Nadia pulled a map out of her back pocket, fighting the wind from ripping it from her hands as Eli put his hand up in front of his eyes at an angle to look around.

Rain poured down over us in buckets as the wind shoved us.

“Let’s get to the rocks and get our bearings,” Nadia said, jerking her thumb behind her.

I’d been caught in a storm like this once with my dad. It had come in off the water and rained for hours. Instead of trying to get us back to the house, he’d found a spot in the rocks with an overhang that sheltered us and we’d waited it out.

That same spot wasn’t too far from where we stood. So I tugged on Nadia’s arm. “This way.”

As a child, the spot had seemed bigger, but it barely had room for all three of us.

Kneeling down, Nadia pulled out her map again, studying it.

“Ye know all ye have to do is ask. I know this property like the back o’ my own hand,” I said, squatting down beside her.

Ignoring me, she turned to Eli and said, “It looks like this path will take us around the bigger rocks where we can get a good look at the cliffside.”

“It’d be a whole lot easier if we were com linked,” Eli said, wiping lines of water rolling down his face.

“That’s no going to work,” I said, dismissing the whole com link thing Eli spoke of. I had no idea what the hell he meant by it anyway.

Nadia’s head snapped over as she squinted at me. “What’s not going to work?”

“If ye go that way, round the rocks I mean, ye willna be able to get to the cliffside.” I smirked when she looked back at her map.

“That’s the only way to the cliffside. How else will we get there?” she asked, turning the map as if a different path would reveal itself.

I laid my hand on top of the map, drawing my finger along a spot where it looked like jutting rocks. “Here, there’s a small path that takes ye out to the cliffside. It’s narrow, but it will give ye the best view. Besides, if ye go the other way, you’ll no make it to the other path with the tide in.”

She flicked a quick glance at Eli, lips pinched together as if deciding the best course of action.

“At the end of the path you mentioned, is there a way to get down from there and over to the cliff?” Eli asked.

“Yes, but it’s a bit ‘o a climb over to the next path,” I said, turning my head sharply as a burst of wind drove the rain into our hiding spot.