Page 29 of Love for Thea

Wyatt slammed his kit closed and looked up. “Sling and swath secure. He’s mobile. One-armed, but he can move.”

Ben turned to Thea, his massive hands reaching out as if to scoop her up and shield her from the precarious terrain.

Thea stepped back, her boots crunching firmly into the vibrating ash. “I’m walking, Ben.”

“Thea, the ground is⁠—”

“I need to feel the vibration,” she interrupted, her voice thin but absolute. “If I’m off the ground, I can’t tell you where the hollows are. I’m the navigator, remember? You’re the armor. So, stay close, but let me lead.”

Ben searched her face, seeing the fierce, quiet determination that had once saved a robin. He nodded and stepped in right behind her, his hand settling gently on the middle of her back, not to carry her but to serve as the steady wall she needed behind her.

“Lead us home, Thea,” he whispered.

Thea looked at the ridgeline. She let herself do one calculation aloud, because numbers sometimes save lives and sometimes heal misplaced pride. “That vent erupts fully about two and a half minutes after we clear that rib. If we clear it now, we make the cave. We need to move fast. Stay windward of the ash. Move.”

The team didn’t argue. They followed the slender, confident figure of the doctor as she picked a path through fire and stone, her feet reading the mountain’s conversation before it could turn into a scream. When the secondary tremor sent a cascade of shale down the route they’d just escaped, Thea felt a small, private vertigo: gratitude wrapped in guilt. Gratitude that their timing had spared them; guilt that their data had to be translated into flesh and pain.

They reached the mouth of the cave together. Picasso took point at the threshold. “Ranch Lead, Atlantic One. We’re in the sink. Falcon: stabilized. Doc and team intact. Holding for the secondary wave.”

The cave was cool, a sanctuary of stable stone. Ben eased Thea down against the wall, his fingers lingering a moment to steady her before he knelt beside her. He took her raw, granite-dust coated, trembling hands gently in his own, his calloused palms rough but steady. Slowly, her shaking fingers curled into a fragile calm. She didn’t meet his eyes at first, staring instead at the uneven floor, as if grounding herself.

“You’re doing it again,” Ben whispered, his voice soft, edged with both awe and something like disbelief.

“Doing what?” she asked, her voice barely above a breath, fragile yet searching.

“Saving us,” he said, a small, bittersweet smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Fourteen years ago it was a robin. Tonight it’s a SEAL team.”

Thea let a tiny, private smile slip, and then felt the old reflex to add a data point, to translate the gratitude into numbers and make it safe. She stopped herself, cheeks warming with a human flush she hadn’t felt in hours.

Data point: I am no longer prey.

“Benji, I want to go home,” she whispered.

“Soon,” he promised, cupping the back of her head. “But first, we have to show the world what’s on that drive.”

SEVENTEEN

GRIZZLY

03:15 Hours (Day 2) (Time Elapsed: 10 hours, 45 minutes)

The limestone cave swallowed the roar of the mountain, muffling its prehistoric screams into a rhythmic, low-frequency hum that Grizzly could feel in the marrow of his bones. It was a sanctuary of cold stone and ancient dust, smelling of damp earth and the metallic, sharp tang of their own adrenaline-soaked sweat.

Grizzly turned his attention to his younger brother, who was already knee-deep in his trauma bag.“Wyatt, get some fluids into Falcon,” Grizzly said, his voice a low, tired rumble. “We need to know if he’s going to be a runner or dead weight in four hours.”

Wyatt didn't even look up. He was already spiked into a bag of saline, his movements a blur of clinical efficiency. “I’m a PJ, Benji. I was ‘on it’ while you were still figuring out how to sit down without groaning. Why don’t you worry about the perimeter and let the medical professional handle the medicine?”

Reef, leaning against a nearby stalagmite, let out a dry, hacking chuckle. “He’s got you there, Grizz. I think the Air Force just pulled rank on your kitchen-table seniority.”

Grizzly grunted, the ghost of a smile pulling at his soot-stained face. “Just get it done, Wyatt.”

“I’m doing it,” Wyatt wheezed, his voice rough from hours of inhaling volcanic dust, then softened as he turned back to Falcon. He handed around silver emergency blankets, the crinkle of the Mylar sounding like a lightning strike in the silence. “Drink up, Falcon. I don’t care if it tastes like plastic and ash. Your blood pressure is the only thing keeping that arm attached right now. If you don't hydrate, I'm sticking a needle in you, and I promise I won't be gentle about it.”

Falcon managed a grimace that might have been a smile. “You have the bedside manner of a brick, Wyatt. Grizzly told us his brother was a PJ, but he didn’t mention you guys were trained at the same charm school as the IRS.”

Reef leaned forward, his eyes glinting with a mischievous spark in the dim chem-light. “That’s the Air Force for you, Falcon. They get ten hours of sleep a night and a five-star meal, but the second they jump into a pile of dirt with the Navy, they start acting like they’re the ones doing the heavy lifting.”

Wyatt didn’t even look up from the bandage he was securing on Falcon’s arm. “Funny. I seem to remember it was a ‘five-star’ Air Force PJ who just navigated your Atlantic team through six miles of crumbling logging trails and ash-drifts while you lot were busy playing sardines in a cell. If you want a SEAL to fix that shoulder, I can stop right now and we can wait for the Navy to send a rowboat.”