Kayla moved through the tunnels and walkways, all jarringly identical to each other, with singular purpose. She was truly terrified, so focusing on Steve like a laser in the dark was a necessity to override that gripping fear. She realized she was in deep trouble not two minutes into their descent into the cavernous, yet relatively modern, compound. Her sense of direction, normally quite good, was no match for the continued array of one white-washed concrete hallway after another. She tried to remember turns and straight-aways, but she quickly lost count and now just had to hope that she was able to find her way out with the compass they were all issued if she became separated from the agents.
All 15 of them reached the mountain base in very short order, and Kayla was very pleased with just how in shape she really was. Her 2009 body in the best of health would have been winded, but this one did ok.
“I don’t like it, Shane,” John said when they found a man-made back entrance that was built into the small land mass; it was almost like a cave, only with a concrete foundation clearly meant for land vehicles to go in and out. “Why aren’t there any guards here? I mean, we can just walk right in?”
“John, we don’t have a choice, this is the way in that our contact indicated. We’ve done everything he’s said, and it’s all panned out.”
John was tired of having the argument with Shane and just had both his weapons ready to go. Shane had to lead the contingent of 12 agents, all heavily armed, and wouldn’t be able to protect Kayla. Much as he wished he could have her in his eyeshot, he’d have to rely on John to do that and assigned him to take up the rear with Kayla in front of him. Everyone wore body armor with ski masks allowing only for a long, oval eyehole that accommodated their peripheral vision, including Kayla.
Shane entered the code into the keypad that the mole had sent to ISA headquarters along with all the other instructions. Then she held her breath waiting to see if the lights would turn green on the heavy, steel door, or if something out of a 007 movie was about to entrap them. Sure enough the lights shifted to green, and Shane let out a nervous guffaw before leading the team through the caverns that they now made their way through.
Despite the ease with which they entered the compound, Kayla never let her guard down, her hand a steel vise around the 9mm that felt foreign in her grip. Nevertheless, when the bullet whizzed by her ear, she was completely shocked. “What was—“
“Down, Sis!” John tackled Kayla to the ground and covered her with his body as one of the agents ahead of them fell, as well, a bullet now lodged somewhere in his groin. The entire contingent took up a defensive stance in a nearly 360-degree fan. The lead agent felled the guard with a bullet between the eyes just as he was about to radio for backup. Kayla instinctively crawled to the injured agent who was writhing against the wall.
“Easy, easy,” Kayla soothed. “I’m a doctor,” she said, “let me have a look.” John’s eyebrow lifted at Kayla’s mention of being a doctor, but she didn’t see him react with her attention focused on the agent.
“Have to keep moving, ma’am,” the man strained. “Can’t stop, follow Captain Donovan.”
“You’re injured, just let me look,” she said as she loosened his vest.
The agent relented, and Kayla’s heart sank. That was a major artery, and the blood was pumping out of him at an alarming rate. Just then John got her to her feet, “Gotta move, Kayla,” he said. In the span of the seconds she’d been focusing on the injured agent, John had stripped the dead guard of his radio, weaponry, and green t-shirt.
“But, John, he’s hurt!”
“He knew the risks.”
“No! We can’t leave him!”
“What’s the problem?” Shane whispered in an angry tone.
“This agent is injured, Shane, we have to get him out.”
“Kay, we’re moving, he’ll get himself out.” Kayla looked at the man, and she saw a mixture of duty and fear as he looked her in the eye. It all resets. She knew she didn’t have a choice here, and took comfort in that fact.
Kayla squatted down to him and took off his ski mask so she could see his face. Someone should remember his face; he shouldn’t just be a number. He had close-cropped blonde hair, brown eyes, and a sensitivity about him. “Thank you for risking everything to rescue my husband. What’s your name?”
“Kayla!” Shane shouted as loudly as he could while still whispering.
“Chase,” he rasped. “Mark Chase.”
“Keep pressure on it, Mark. Whatever you do, don’t let up on that. I know it hurts, I’m sorry. Try your best.” Then Kayla leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I won’t forget you. Thank you,” she said. Then she got up and let John shove her at triple speed down the corridor. She looked back at Agent Chase as he continued to bleed all over the concrete floor and knew that he was not going to live.
Very quickly they came to the first actual door, and this is where their first video camera came into view, too. An agent very quickly dispensed of it, but they were too late, as the voices on the other side of the door were clearly those of alerted security guards. Kayla’s adrenalin was through the roof as the door opened, and a rush of armed men poured out. The agents took up an immediate stadium-seating formation with the front three having hit the deck, the ones behind them on one knee, and the others standing while John fell to a protective stance behind them covering Kayla again.
Shots fired out so quickly that she wasn’t sure whose shots were whose, but her anxiety was forcing a heartbeat from her that as beyond abnormal.
“Move, move, move!” she heard Shane yell, and she followed John up and past the room. Three men hung back to divest Stefano’s guards of their effects just as John had done to the first one, then they stripped to don their clothing. They caught up to the group very quickly and looked every bit like they belonged there. Taking the new lead in front of Shane, he now directed the mission from his new spot in the formation.
Suddenly the hair on the back of Kayla’s neck stood up, and she stopped. “John?” she reached out for him with a look of worry (for what she couldn’t identify) on her face. Before he could answer, she felt a pain in her gut and a tug straight against the wall. If only it were the jump; unfortunately, it wasn’t. She didn’t have time to figure out what was happening as the blood spattered all around her and her world went black.
*****
Steve had left the building. He was physically there, laying on his bed, facing the wall, and whispering Kayla’s name over and over to himself while not once having let go of the photos. But he wasn’t cognitively in his head anymore. They’d killed Kayla. How could he have let this have happen now when it didn’t happen the first time? He ran it over and over in his disembodied mind and it hit him with the worst kind of pain that all the brainwashing – all the forgetting he allowed to happen – he did it for them. He had been threatened with their deaths. No wonder he so successfully erased them from himself. Because he must have known that they were serious back then. They must have demonstrated that they would follow through on Plan B, because he very quickly found a way around the sensory torture and wouldn’t have acquiesced to that conditioning.
“God, Sweetness, I killed you,” he cried out as the re-engaged sensors picked up the prohibited word and began its overload. But Steve was in a state much like the meditative one of the doctor. Completely outside himself, shutting out stimuli from anywhere other than within. He recognized that it was all there, but he wasn’t actually experiencing it. All he was experiencing was his grief. And his guilt. “I did this,” he cried. “I didn’t know, baby, I didn’t remember. I’m sorry,” he sobbed as he looked upon the photos of Kayla’s deadened eyes staring up at nothing while her body was spattered with angry red blood. “God, I still don’t remember!” The slices in her flesh and the blood evidenced from them clearly indicated to him that she was alive when those wounds were inflicted, and the pain she must have endured before she died hit him so hard that he nearly choked on his tears. The torturous loop had ended, leaving the room quiet but for his sobs. “I won’t let them kill our baby girl, Kayla,” he whispered. “I promise … Stephanie,” he cried. “Your papa … your papa …,” he couldn’t finish the sentence. … loves you, he finished in his head.
Steve’s grief was so profound that he’d stopped thinking it all through. He tried to focus on the fact that none of this was real, but the truth was that it was completely real. He couldn’t tell himself that it would reset, because he didn’t know if his Kayla had died with her 1992 body. He was quite sure that his Kayla was in there, because she jumped first, but he couldn’t begin to rationalize anything. He wasn’t looking closely at the photos for doctoring, because he couldn’t bear to look at them for too long.
It was too bad, because with focused scrutiny, his 2009 skills would have detected the mistakes in the 1992-level of doctoring in the entirely faked photos. One seam, three shadows, and a super-imposed wound that wasn’t quite up to snuff would have eventually been found if he had been able to think straight. The photos were very good, but not good enough to fool an expert with 16 years of technology on their asses.
It wasn’t even the week of solid torture the likes of which no one could have guessed that had rendered him in this state; it was the torture after days of the ratcheted angst and exhaustion of the immediately previous jumps. And preceding that the uncertainty and emotional rollercoaster of the jumps before those. Steve was human – an extraordinary human, certainly – but ultimately, he was just a man who had a breaking point like everybody else. Two weeks ago he’d discovered that Kayla had been with Shane after he was presumed dead, which caused him to have a meltdown, resulting in him killing his father in the next jump. Then there were the injuries during the jump to Mike Horton’s lab and the emotional release he’d experienced there, followed by waking up dead and fighting his way out of the morgue to find Kayla. Now he was here. Enduring physical and emotional torture for a week and culminating in what he believed to be the death of his wife. And not just an easy, straight-forward death, but the kind he had to now question, because the body did not match the mind.
Each jump from Alamain’s boat seemed to increase the anxiety and urgency that much more. The stakes were that much higher each time. Somewhere in his grieving and wayward mind, Steve realized this, but all he could do was leave it on the buffet and make a mental note he hoped he’d remember to come back to it.
What it all spelled out was that Steve was done in. His line in the sand had been crossed, and now he simply laid on the bed, his lame duck awareness only awaiting its next destination where he prayed Kayla’s would be waiting.
Just then he felt the room shake as something exploded very nearby. Even in his despair, Steve couldn’t ignore the trembling walls and sudden shouts from what had to be directly outside the door. “What the hell was that?” he asked as he wiped his tears against the mattress. Steve somehow came back to himself and sat up to look out through the bars, not because of the explosion, really, but because he didn’t know if it had anything to do with Plan B, and his baby girl was still out there to protect.
After a moment, he saw the doctor run in and shut the door behind him as he quickly began attending to whatever instrumentation was in that room outside his cell. Steve waited for his tinny voice to come through the loudspeaker, but it took several moments for that to happen. Steve couldn’t see anything other than directly through the window, and that was frustrating.
“We’ve got a situation, Mr. Stockton,” the hypnotherapist fairly shouted into the speaker. It was the first time Steve had heard the man truly ruffled. His calm reserve was gone.
“Is my daughter alive?” he asked guardedly.
“Quite. Just don’t screw this up, and she’ll stay that way.”
*****
Her brother’s voice sailed down to her from somewhere very far away. Was she in a tunnel?
“Roman?”
“She’s coming to, Donovan!”
“Roman?” Kayla repeated.
“John, honey, it’s John, remember? You took a nasty blow against the wall. Open your eyes, Kayla, come on.”
“Kay? Darling, come ‘round now, can you hear us?” Shane’s British lilt was affectionate and worried, and she very quickly came fully conscious. Each of the two men who cared about her most on this mission had one of her hands in theirs and looked down upon her with concern in their eyes.
Remembering just where she was, she bolted upright causing the room to spin, so she grabbed on to John and just held on. “What happened?”
“Booby trap,” Shane said. Lost two more men.
Tears sprang to her eyes for the loss of their lives. “God, I’m sorry,” she said. “So it was a trap, after all?”
“No, quite the opposite. Stefano just knows how to protect his interests,” Shane said gently. “Come now, let’s get you up.”
“How do you know it wasn’t a trap?”
“Because everything is where we were told it would be, plus the man we’re told is Steve’s handler just walked into that room. When he saw us, he panicked and set off the booby trap.”
Kayla suddenly felt no pain. “Steve is in there?” Her eyes were wide with hope.
“We believe so,” Shane said, “but let us – KAYLA!”
She barreled past them without warning and shot down the corridor. The agents waited for instructions as Shane and John shouted after her, but all she knew was that mere feet separated her from Steve. Luckily, John followed closely on her heals. He understood how she felt, he’d been there before, desperate to get to Marlena – desperate to get to himself, too.
Kayla drew her gun as if it were something she’d done a hundred times before. If she had realized what she was doing she’d have been both impressed and horrified. When she entered the room, a man with white hair and a driven if not perplexed look on his face met her frenzied stare. She ripped off her face mask and pointed her gun at him.
“You’ll put that gun down and turn right back around if you want your husband to live.”
*****
Just then the man turned to someone who had entered the anteroom, out of Steve’s view from where he was in his cell.
“You’ll put that gun down and turn right back around if you want your husband to live,” the doctor said.
“What?” Steve replied. What was he talking about? “Who’s taking care of my daughter?!”
The man who looked to her like something of a less goofy, dead serious version of Doc from Back to the Future took his finger off the microphone button just below the tiny window. But it was too late, Kayla had clearly heard Steve’s voice ask who was taking care of his daughter, and she knew it was almost over. He was through that window – on the other side of that door – all she had to do was open it.
“You step away from that door and let my husband out,” she said in her lower register. Her tone was nothing short of baleful; full of dire promise.
“You’re in no position to demand anything, Mrs. Johnson.”
Kayla waved the gun. “Duh,” she said. “Now move it, because I have had it up to HERE!”
Steve didn’t understand what was happening. Who was he talking to? Then he involuntarily shivered. He could swear he felt Kayla nearby, and he cursed God for being so cruel. “What the hell is going on?!” he yelled to the doctor who was clearly getting torn a new one as the walls were coming down somewhere.
Kayla was now shrieking at the doctor. “I have been here all alone for a week! I’m scared, I don’t remember anything, and my daughter is almost two years old! Can you believe that, she’s almost two! And if I’m melting down, you can just imagine what Steve is going through!”
Shane and John had taken off their ski masks, as well, and were now standing in the doorway watching this unfold, caught somewhere between bafflement and being horrified at Kayla’s apparent state of mind. Every living agent was fanned out around them, already having picked off several of Dimera’s henchmen who’d come and failed to fortify the prisoner.
“You steal people from their families. You do things to their minds! You steal people away and turn them into soldiers and princesses and pawns! My brother … my cousin… my best friend … my husband! Who the f*ck do you think you are?!”
“Who is she talking about?” Shane mouthed to John. John got a very strange feeling in his gut.
“Kay, let us handle this, just come over by—“
“NO! NO I WILL NOT JUST COME OVER BY YOU, SHANE!” Kayla’s short hair poked up in all directions as she began swaying back and forth. “Open that door!”
“He’s already lost to you! He’s a Soldier of the Phoenix now.”
“BULLSHIT! NOW OPEN THE DOOR!”
“She’s hysterical, mate,” Shane said nearing hysteria of his own.
“Yeah, that’s ok with me,” John said with a reserve that unnerved Shane.
“Just how do you plan to get him out, Mrs. Johnson, there are soldiers everywhere.”
“Just because I’m a doctor, don’t expect me to respect the Hippocratic Oath with you. Open the g0ddamn door!”
“I don’t have a key.”
Kayla pointed the gun at the doctor and shot him in the thigh. Fortunately for him, she was aiming for his chest. Shane and John hit the deck while the doctor toppled to the floor.
“Next time I’ll shoot your balls off,” she rumbled low in her throat through clenched teeth. “Now open the door, open the door, OPENTHEG0DDAMNDOOR!!!!”
The doctor reached to the wall and hit the red button that stood out like a sore thumb on the control panel. If she’d known it was that easy she would have just hit it herself. The doctor went fetal on the ground as the door unlocked with a click, and Kayla stepped over the hypnotherapist and barreled into the room.
When Steve saw her, he physically flinched. He couldn’t believe she was real. He dropped the photos still in his hand, and they scattered upon the floor, slicing through the air on the way down landing forgotten at his feet. Steve’s heart filled with hope and happiness and relief and fear that it was a trick. That she was a projection or a double or a lie.
Kayla didn’t register how thin he’d become, how terrible he looked, or how swollen and red his eye was. All she saw was Steve. Any Steve. Standing there. Looking like he was seeing a ghost. For just a moment, neither one moved. They locked eyes and both began to weep.
“Are you real?” he asked her. The electronic hum began to oscillate, and Kayla startled at its sudden presence, jerking her head around the room looking for its source.
“St—“
“NO! DON’T SAY MY NAME!”
“Wh-What?”
“It’s me, ba—it’s me. Is it you? Please tell me it’s really you?”
Kayla nodded and let the thick tears pour from her reddened eyes. “Yeah, all the way from February of 1992,” she said.
“How?” he cried. He was afraid to believe it. “Thank God.”
“St—“
“No, please, don’t!” he cut her off. “If you say may name or yours or our daughter’s, there’s – gonna – Jesus …” he started to cry anew as he dragged a shaking hand across his forehead. “Are you really alive?” He threw himself against the bars and reached his arms through as far as they would reach, as if he could even slip through them if he only reached far enough.
Kayla ran to him immediately. “I don’t care which of you I have, I just have to get you out.”
“It’s me!” he cried as he wrapped one weakened arm around her waist through the bars and used his other hand to trace every last inch of her face. “It’s me,” he assured her. Steve ran his hand through her hair and kissed her forehead and eyes through the bars. “You’re not dead,” he cried. “They told me you were dead. Showed me.”
By now Shane and John had very quietly and carefully entered the cell room behind Kayla. John took her by the shoulders, and she jumped. “It’s ok, it’s me. Just me,” John assured her gently. “Easy, Kay, come on, how ‘bout you let me take that now,” he said as he carefully pried the 9mm from Kayla’s hands, “and let Shane get Steve out of there.”
They all turned to look at Shane, each with a different look on their face.
“I know this reunion is long-awaited,” Shane said with a slight smile, “but we still need to get out of here, so let me shoot that lock if you don’t mind.”
Kayla didn’t want to let go of Steve’s hand. Touching him, feeling his skin on hers, was the only thing keeping her together right now, and she couldn’t bear to do it. The fact was that she wasn’t herself, and John could see it plainly even if the others didn’t. He knew his sister – or who he’d thought was his sister – and she was off. It wasn’t just the pressure, something was … not right. And what scared him most was that he wasn’t surprised.
“Come on, honey, it’s ok.” John got Kayla to let go of Steve and brought her into a protective embrace away from the bars. Steve, however, did not move from where he was now white knuckling them.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Shane smiled with a bittersweet wonder. “Might want to step aside, mate.” Shane lifted his firearm to his squinting eye and prepared to shoot the lock, but Steve didn’t move. He shifted his focus back to Steve and couldn’t begin to interpret the look he was now giving him. He wasn’t sure if Steve wanted to hug him or kill him. It was a very odd mixture, indeed, and a tinge of shame came over him. It almost felt like Steve knew that Shane had been intimate with his wife. Steve literally watched him push through the self-consciousness that was evident on his face. “It’s going to be alright, but you need to step aside so we don’t all become Soldiers of the Phoenix.”
Steve broke his stare and moved aside. When he looked back to Kayla, she looked like as much of a basket case as he felt.
Shane re-aligned his aim and quickly shot through the lock on the bars. Steve immediately opened the door, and left the cell he’d been in since he jumped there a week ago. Kayla ran into his arms, and they both just held each other tightly.
“Do you remember Stockholm,” he rasped into her hair as he crushed her to him and ran his searching hands up and down her back.
“What is this, 20 questions?” she replied with an adrenalin-fueled shake to her voice as she melted into him.
Steve let out a whimper of pure relief. “You found me. I can’t believe you found me.”
“Oh, Steve,” she cried softly into his chest.”
Oh sh!t.
The sensory onslaught ripped through the room, and every single person in the vicinity fell to their knees in agony. Kayla screamed live and in person, creating a very unnerving stereo effect for everyone else to hear. The two agents nearest the door vomited, and the doctor who had already passed out from the pain remained passed out. John and Shane were on the floor riding it out, and Kayla had collapsed against Steve, who wasn’t doing so hot, himself.
When it finally ended, he found the strength to explain. “No one say my name, her name, our kid’s name, or the town we’re from! Those words trigger the sensors in this room, that’s what that hum is. Then that’s gonna happen longer next time and even longer the time after that.”
Kayla found her footing and looked at Steve in horror. “My God,” she cried. She couldn’t have imagined that this was what he’d endured. She just wanted to cry for the rest of her life, it was that devastating to her. Then she spotted the photos on the floor. “What’s this?”
Shane knew they were just about out of time, here. “No time for this, we need to get St—“
“NO, MAN!”
“Right, sorry, we need to all get out of here, back to the safehouse.”
“Safehouse? What there’s a rescue party here?”
“ISA, partner,” John said, his voice completely affected. “Come on, we need to go.”
“My God, these photos! They … they look like … am I dead here?”
Steve nodded. “They had me fooled, ba … they had me fooled.”
Kayla touched his face with a pity she couldn’t help. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Steve nodded, held her head to his lips, and kissed her forehead.
“Enough,” Shane said, we’re leaving. Now!”
“Is that a nine-mil, John?” Steve asked as Shane led the remaining team back out the way they’d come.
“Feelin’ like you can handle it?”
“I’m good,” he said, which was not really entirely true. “Hand it over.”
John passed the gun to Steve, and he held it securely in his hand while he held on to Kayla, who’d gone very silent, with the other.
Shane led the team back through the endless corridors until bloody footsteps became apparent going the opposite direction. When they came to Mark Chase’s body, Kayla wondered about the other agents who’d died. Did they have wives and daughters to get back to like Steve did? What were their names?
They didn’t stop for the agent, but Shane radioed to Tarrington, who would see to collecting their dead. They moved past the door to the surveillance room that they’d previously secured and headed down the hall with John, once again, taking up the rear.
The shot that sliced through the silencer from behind them opened up a hole in John’s neck that would never be repaired. When they all turned toward the high-pitched whir culminating in the sound of pierced flesh, the look on Kayla’s face mirrored that of Steve’s; it was a look of pure horror.
“John?” she cried, and his regret-filled eyes cut toward her as he instinctively clamped his hand down on his carotid artery. “ROMAN!” she screamed, “NO! God, please no!” John collapsed into Steve’s arms, and the three of them fell to the floor. “Stay with me, I can fix it! I’m a doctor, I can fix it!”
“Save your cries, my dear,” Stefano whined from the doorway while holding the gun at his side. “There’s really no point.”
Immediately, the ISA team trained their guns on Stefano, but he reacted like it was a nothing more than an annoying delay.
“You’re a monster,” Kayla spat at him.
Steve brought John to rest between his legs and leaned him against his chest. “Come on, stay with me, man, we’ve got all kinds of great things to tell you back home, dude.”
Kayla continued. “How could you kill your own brother?! He never did anything to you but be BORN!”
That got Stefano’s attention. He was dumbfounded at her declaration. “How do you know that?”
Then without another word, Steve raised the gun and put a bullet in Stefano’s head. Stefano’s brain was now spattered along the walls, and his body fell backward so that his upper half was in the surveillance room.
“And that’s three,” Steve said in a slightly detached manner.
“Sis …” John called to her. He was wheezing air through his lungs and tried to keep it together as the blood alternately pumped out from the hole in his neck, and down into his chest cavity from the gaping wound.
“Don’t talk, man,” Steve said, “we’re gonna get ya some help. Aren’t we?” he said to her.
But Kayla knew better. Even in shock, Kayla assessed John’s wounds and clinically determined that John would not be living more than another few short moments. Shane was barking orders into the radio at his shoulder, and half the agents ran ahead while the remaining half awaited orders from their captain, their guns trained and ready.
John looked at Kayla, his eyes clear and in need of the truth. “You’re … you’re not quite you, are you, Sis?”
There was no question in Kayla’s mind that she would be telling him the truth. “It really is me, Kayla,” she said as she shook her head, “but something’s happening to Steve and me, and we don’t … belong here. How did you know?”
“I … I dunno. The almonds. Familiar. Screaming. Did that to me, too. Doc. Af—after they … gave me his memories.”
“John, man … thank you. For coming for me. I’ll never forget it, man. Never.”
“You’d … for me.”
Steve smiled. “That’s a fact,” and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“Tell me who I am,” he said to Kayla. “You … know.”
Kayla didn’t waste a word. “You’re a Brady, You just belong to our Aunt Colleen instead of Pop.” The fact that he was also a Dimera was something that he just didn’t need to know.
“I’m a Brady?”
Kayla was sobbing now as she held John’s hand. She nodded and kissed his forehead. “But to me, you’re my brother, Roman. And you always will be,” she sobbed. “I love you.”
“Love you – Buttercup.”
Kayla saw these were his last breaths and irrationally tried to bargain with him. “Don’t go, I need to tell you about Brady! And Isabella! Please, Roman, don’t go!.”
“IzzyB … Doc?” Then he smiled, closed his eyes, and took his last breath while Kayla squeezed his hand.
*****
Somehow, Shane and the agents had gotten Steve and Kayla out of the cavernous compound and into the light where the sun was now coming up. Two of the remaining nine agents dragged John’s body out with them while another one had thrown Mark Chase over his shoulder, after all. The other two back at Steve’s cell weren’t so lucky.
Kayla tried to keep it together, but it took Steve’s periodic reminders in her ear that his death wasn’t going to stick to bring her from the brink of catatonia. And all while they were running for their lives, Steve and Kayla never took their hands off each other, desperate not to be separated again.
Finally, they all emerged at the rounded concrete mouth of the back entrance to the compound. A helicopter could be heard in the distance, and suddenly the world felt very, very oppressive to Kayla. She could feel its weight upon her chest, in her bones, within the pores of her skin. She would have just laid down right there and checked out, only Steve collapsed to the ground, and that got her attention.
“Baby, it’s ok, I’m here!” she assured him. “Stay with me, please!”
“Sweetness, it’s ok,” he said softly. “I’m just tired. I need a … rest.”
Shane approached them and crouched down while he felt Steve’s pulse. “You’re not tired, Steve, you’re weak. You look like you haven’t eaten in days, and your muscle tone is clearly telling me you’re unwell.”
Steve threw a look at him. “I’m not weak, Donovan.” Steve snatched his wrist away from him and tried not to tear his head off.
“Mate, listen.”
“Shane, you listen,” he said while still controlling his anger. “I know what you did.” Shane’s heart skipped several beats, and Steve saw that his brother-in-law knew unequivocally what was meant by that. “But I also know what you did to get me out. Thank you.” It was not the heart-felt thank you he gave to John, but it was genuine.
“You should be thanking your wife. She’s very convincing.”
“She didn’t swim here from Salem did she? Take the gratitude, dude, because it’s all I’ve got for you at the moment.”
“Steve,” Kayla tried to cut in, “I think we … should just …”
“It’s alright, Kay,”
“And you don’t call her that!” Steve raised his voice. “You got me out of hell, Shane, I will be grateful for the rest of my life for that. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know that you risked everything and – and lost something to do it.” Shane remained silent, but his eyes were soulful as he pumped the muscle in his jaw. “But now—it’s—done.”
Steve was now out of energy. He laid himself down on his back and waited for the rescue.
Shane got up from his crouch and turned to coordinate with his men when Kayla caught his hand in hers. Shane looked back at her, and the look in his eyes was nothing short of sad. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for bringing my husband back to me.”
“You’re welcome, Kayla,” he whispered back. And he meant it.
Steve saw the exchange and knew that whatever closure each of them may have been seeking had been achieved.
The explosion that then rocked the island threw everyone on their feet to the ground and everyone on the ground three feet up before crashing back down.
Steve found some energy and flew up to a sitting position. “What now?!”
“Earthquake!” an agent yelled.
“No,” Shane yelled over him. “Not an earthquake! Self-destruct!”
“Self-destruct?!” Steve screamed? “Are you for real?! Are you telling me now we’re adding Star Trek to the f*cking list of shows we might be living here?!”
“Steve, I don’t know what you’re on about, but you’d better get on that damned helicopter!”
The Blackhawk set down dangerously on an uneven area, and everyone started to pile in. More explosions rocked them, and the chopper would have to lift off immediately if they were all going to make it.
“Sweetness!” Steve called. “Don’t let me go!”
Kayla smiled. “I’ve got you, baby!” she yelled.
Just as they went to get on the chopper, Steve felt what he’d begun praying for a week ago. The tug at his diaphragm that signaled a jump. The force made him let go of the chopper, and he fell back to the ground. Three agents were there to catch him, but Kayla jumped out and went to him.
“Steve!” she cried out.
“The jump, Kayla! I can’t believe it, I’m jumping!”
The relief that poured through Kayla was like an oasis in the desert. She flung her arms around him and squeezed the life out of him. “I’m not letting you go!”
“I’m scared, Sweetness,” he confessed to her. “I’m so scared of losing you.”
“Me, too, Steve. God, me, too!”
Then he was gone, and Shane was tugging on her. “Bloody hell, Kayla, we have to go!”
She ignored everything going on around them. She just clutched at the frozen and empty Steve in her arms and prayed that wherever they next went, maybe it could finally be home.
Coming Soon – Chapter 64