Saving Emmy by Rayne Lewis
Chapter 1
PRESENT DAY
The emergency vehicles were all around her, though the sirens were now silenced, but the lights still flashed.
This is bad.
Oh, God, so bad.
“Gunshot wound to the chest and head. This was no accident.” Sheriff Richards looked at the victim lying face up, barely recognizable, and shot the Ranger a side-eyed glance, discreetly motioning him towards the woman.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step to the side. Ranger Matthews would like to talk with you.”
How could this be happening? Her world was spinning out of control and nothing was making sense. She saw the sheriff’s mouth moving, but no sound came out, as if someone had pressed the mute button on her life and there were no subtitles.
“Ma’am,” he stiffened his tone, “I need you to go with Ranger Matthews.”
The sheriff stood in front of her, yet she couldn’t comprehend what he was trying to tell her. What is he trying to get me to do?
Somebody turned off the mute button, but the volume was just above a whisper. With all the sensory overload, the lights, the previous sirens...the man lying dead twenty feet away with half his cranium missing, she was having trouble tracking. His blood-soaked t-shirt was now more crimson than white.
Was this shock? Was her PTSD resurfacing? Was this a battlefield flashback?
Sheriff Richards placed his hand on her shoulder and upper arm and turned her away from the horror show playing out in front of her. His deep, commanding voice was a bit more forceful and authoritarian. “Ma’am.”
It snapped Ember out of her head and she brought her eyes to the grey-haired man beside her. “Yes?” She heard herself speak, knew the words were her own, but her body stayed frozen in place, like an invisible carbonite slab cocooning her in an alternate universe. Her eyes darted about his face as she tried not to look at the chaos taking place around her.
“Ranger Matthews will take you to the station and will need your statement.”
She turned to see the Ranger holding out his hand to her, but her feet were lead weights rooted in place. Could she go willingly? Before she made the decision, one hand led her by the forearm away from the scene while the other rested on his utility belt and the light glinted off the set of handcuffs.
Oh, shit, this was BAD!
* * *
On the edge of town stood a nondescript building. If there were a sign out front it would read Hellforce and it would be the most accurate description of the men inside. Six highly trained, former military Special Forces operatives willing to bust through the doors of hell in some of the worst, darkest, most dangerous hellholes on the planet, raining brimstone on those on the other side. Each of them willing to risk it all to bring home victims subject to the most vile, depraved, violent atrocities imaginable.
Hellforce was King’s dream, vision and reality. His team of Deltas—Slate, Cypher, T-BAR and Trip—rescued King and Arctic when their SOF team was ambushed in the foothills of Afghanistan after hitting a roadside IED. And now six worked as one. They knew what it took to get a mission done and they were stellar at mission execution. Each looking out for the other with little disregard for their own safety knowing their brother would have their six. They were brothers.
Slate was about to jump off the loading dock at Hellforce and onto the blistering hot asphalt when his cellphone peeled out familiar beats. Ember. His Red. A smile crept across his face. He loved hearing her ringtone. She was his longtime, childhood friend. He’d known her practically all his life. It was Ember and her family, mainly her father Mitch, who played a pivotal role in shaping him into the man he was today.
The thought drew him back to the past, at the age of five, when he lost his father to cancer. After that Eli was lost as well. He was a little boy, alone, and only his mother to fill the shoes of both parents. In kindergarten, he’d met the girl he loved to this very day, though she was oblivious to his true feelings. Ember was the girl with fiery red hair. His Red. His Emmy. It was as if the setting sun had reached out and touched each unmanageable strand on her head. They were coppery-orange, unlike most Irish gingers who had a lighter, blonder orange. Ember’s locks were, well...like embers. The blazing red-orange of stoked coals; the type that burn hot in the belly of a fire. Yup, that was his Emmy. She was fiery and magnificent.
Ember’s parents had befriended his mother, giving a middle-aged, widowed, unskilled, inexperienced woman a job at their hardware store. His mother and Susan became best friends and formed an unbreakable bond. Ember’s father, Pops, took Eli under his wing, fishing, hunting, camping, teaching him a multitude of trades and skills, growing a bond a father and son would’ve shared.
A second instrumental chorus sang out from the phone and he was jerked to the present as the memory faded. Reaching into the side pocket of his cargo pants, his gloved hand fumbling, the incessant melody continued to sing from the speaker as he tried to pull his phone out. Biting the tip of the gloved finger, he pulled it off just as the phone fell silent.
Damn it!
The “missed call” icon displayed across the screen. He swiped it and entered his security code. With his thumb hovering above Ember’s contact, he was about to dial her back when Arctic burst through the dock doors with a hurried, bleak expression on his face.
Beelining straight to Slate, he motioned his thumb over his shoulder, “Boss wants everyone in the conference room, pronto.”
“What’s up?” Slate’s adrenaline piqued in his veins.
“Now, Eli.”
Eli?Rarely did the team use given names. With the exception of business meetings with clients or formal events, the guys monikers were more their identity than the name on their birth certificates.
Arctic’s face paled and for a moment Slate thought he detected a hint of fear. Before he could question it, his phone pinged with an incoming text. Looking down, the message notification backlit across his locked screen; it was Ember.
Three words made his blood run cold.
“I need you.”