I looked over the area she’d pointed to and got that tense feeling I’d had all day.
Everyone looked tense. They looked like how I’d felt.
I felt lumbered with their tension and my own. Tension for the mission we were about to go on and why.
It was the first time that any of us had been taken. Captured.
Paul…
He’d been captured a week ago by Balthazar and his Spades. Tonight we were going to rescue him. We were going into the mouth of hell on a rescue mission.
Damn Paul. I wish I didn’t care so much.
Fuck. I wished it had been me.
I had Claire but she wasn’t my wife yet. I had Jack too, but I was sure if I’d been captured and killed they’d grieve and time would heal them.
Paul had a wife and a newborn baby he hadn’t seen yet.
He had a family. One he’d created for himself. A woman who loved him to no end and a child who needed to know him.
We were looking for Balthazar and I felt we got pretty damn close. Close to him and someone else he was liaising with.
After Kazakhstan the stakes went up to bring him down. That was one year ago, and for that fucking year we’d done nothing but chase.
The thing was, it was clear there was more at work because the asshole was always one step ahead. One step ahead of us. It didn’t take rocket science to guess that someone had been feeding the motherfucker intel. Giving him the juice on who was after him.
Nobody was that good at staying hidden and escaping a unit like ours.
That fucking prick….
Paul was taken in Russia. The trail led us here to Nepal.
This morning we got a call from him letting us know where he’d been taken.
He’d said he managed to hide out in one of the storage rooms but couldn’t escape on his own. It was too dangerous to try. The signal cut and the connection broke as he was about to tell us more.
That was all we got.
It was enough to spring a team like us into action. A team like us who were close as family. It also clouded the other part of the situation which screamed that this could be some kind of trap.
I dare not say it, I dare not say it because if I did it wouldn’t be about me, it would be about her.
Claire. Me trying to protect her.
Me trying to stop anything bad from happening to her. A trap wouldn’t be enough to stop us from entering sure death, but it was enough for me to want to protect the woman I loved.
Claire was a real hard ass and she knew her stuff. She was her father’s daughter through and through. She didn’t care about herself. She put others before her. Her team before herself.
John was the first to stand. He’d taken it the hardest when we got the distress call from Paul that morning. He and Paul were like brothers. Lucas however, who stood next, was a man after my own heart. He’d questioned the call. Thought it was … off.
“Let’s get ready to go. You spoke to Ethan?” John asked.
Ethan was perhaps the only thing we had that made me feel comfortable. But… only because he agreed the mission. A mission we really shouldn’t be going on. He knew what Paul meant to us.
Ethan agreed it and arranged with some allies to help us if we rescued Paul and got out of the mess. That was the most he could do. It was a lot because a mission like this was against protocol. If an agent got captured the way Paul had by an enemy like Balthazar the guidance was to assume death. Not go in for a rescue.
It was worse for a specialist unit like ours that had been put together because of the skills we each possessed. Take us out, as in eradicate us—the only people who’d managed to get close to not just Balthazar but The Ra in general—and the government would lose a lot.
“He has everything ready,” Claire answered after a moment of silence. It was obvious that she wasn’t comfortable with what we were about to launch ourselves into. “We just need to get Paul.”
Ethan arranged with the allies to meet us on the other side of the mountain. We just had to get to them.
That was where I came in, and I seriously didn’t like this part of the mission. While they were going into the facility to get Paul, I’d be in the tower on the roof with my rifle. Ethan sent us the building plans for the place and we were able to plan out how best we could get in, but most important get out.
I wanted to go in with Claire and the others, but in missions like this, we looked at each other’s skills and worked accordingly. I was damn good with a rifle and my sharpshooting skills were off the scale good. It was that attention to detail ability of mine. I’d shoot anything that moved. Even if it was an ant.
So, I’d be covering them from above when they went in and came out. Then we’d head towards the allies.
I had one request to make though, one I knew she wouldn’t like.
“Let’s move guys, get ready. Clock’s ticking.” Claire nodded. Lucas and John went out the door.
I continued to sit where I was, just looking at her.
She frowned when she saw me and set her hands on her hips. She might not have meant for that to look as feminine as it did, it did though. My eyes went straight to her curves and the way her body looked in her catsuit.
“What?” she huffed.
“Don’t go in,” I stated. No point pussyfooting with a conversation. I needed to go in for the kill and tell her straight.
“Are you crazy? I’m captain of this unit, I have to go in.”
I bolted up. “In two month’s time I will take you to Paris, I will ask you to marry me and you will say yes. We’ll get married and you will be my wife. So as your husband—your husband to be— I’m asking you not to go on this mission. I can take charge and still cover the guys.”
I was known for being fearless and forward. It was how I was when I first kissed her, and how I was when I first declared her mine.
Just then however was perhaps the most forward I’d ever been.
We’d known each other since we were sixteen, got together when we were eighteen and stayed like it for the last thirteen years. I’d been with her for the last thirteen years and I loved her like nothing else. Never spoke about marriage though.
It was always a given for me though. I always knew I was going to be with her.
The stunned expression on her face softened and she blinked to focus.
“In two months’ time you will take me to Paris and when you ask me to marry you, I’ll say yes. We’ll get married and I will be your wife and you my husband. So I expect you to understand, as my husband to be, that I can’t just sit down and do nothing while Paul goes to his doom. Death. He has a baby and if we had a baby, I’d want to know that your team did everything they could to get you back to me. I’d want to know that your captain didn’t just back out of any chance of rescuing you.”
Damn it.
I gazed at her and saw the softer side of the woman she was, underneath the harsh exterior she portrayed to the world.
I walked up to her and pulled her into my arms. She held me, held me close and I savored the feel of her. I savored the feel of her in my arms.
“I love you,” I whispered into her ear.
She moved back and looked at me. “I love you too Xander Cage.”
“You better be careful Claire. You better be. I can’t lose you. I can’t. I’m gonna say that something feels off about this whole situation.”