Hold On (Delos Series Book 5) (30 page)

She gave a jerky nod. “I-I thought we were both going to die . . .”

“Can you tell me about the whole event, then? It might help me to help you.”

Callie sank against him, closed her eyes, and finally let the story pour out of her. Her grandfather had never judged her, not ever. And she knew he was the only member of their family who had been in the military, so intuitively she knew he would understand.

When she was finished telling the story, she pulled out of his arms, blowing her nose. It hurt to look up to see the expression in his face, but when she did, Callie was amazed. His eyes were bright with unshed tears and there was such sympathy in his expression it nearly made her collapse with relief.

“Are you open to a suggestion, Callie?”

“Of course . . .”

“Why don’t you email that young, heroic man of yours and plead with him to come here and spend Christmas with you? Tell him you need him. I’ll bet he’ll find some way to make it happen. He’s on the sick list, and if he’s got back leave coming, his CO should grant it to him, no problem.” Looking deep into Callie’s hopeful gaze, he added gruffly, “I believe that he will find a way to come home to you. Am I right?”

“B-because you know how the military works, Grandpa?”

He smiled a little and brushed her damp cheek. “No. Because I know how the human heart works. Go email him, baby girl. Something will break loose to get him here. Right now, you need him more than the military does, so go get him.”

C
hristmas music was
playing throughout the Butte airport terminal as Beau made his way through security. He wore civilian clothes, not wanting to advertise he was military. His brown leather bomber jacket, jeans, black T-shirt, and motorcycle boots made him look like anyone else. After getting his CO to sign off at HQ giving him his thirty days’ leave, he limped past the security guards and into the open terminal.

His heart was pounding with anxiety over Callie’s email. She needed him. Could he come for a visit? Could he spend Christmas with her? Was there any way his CO could release him and allow him to come stateside? It was a cryptic email, but Beau took her plea seriously. Luckily, snow was falling heavily in the mountains and high valleys of Afghanistan, and the Taliban intrusion was coming to a halt. No one was going out on missions right now, so his captain was able to give him leave.

“Mr. Gardner?”

A man’s gruff voice made him turn to the right. Although Beau was six feet tall, this man with silver and black hair was probably six feet five inches, with sparkling blue eyes and a thick handlebar mustache. He held his hand out and said, “I’m Graham McKinley, Callie’s grandfather. I told her I’d pick you up. Thanks for coming, son.”

Gripping the man’s weathered hand, Beau said, “Good to meet you, sir. And please call me Beau.”

The Montana rancher was wearing a gray Stetson, jeans, scuffed cowboy boots, and a championship bronc rider silver belt buckle. His cranberry long-sleeve shirt was hidden by the worn Sherpa jacket draped over it.

“I can do that, Beau. I’m the only one meeting you here. Callie’s in too much emotional turmoil to come to a crowded, noisy place like this. I’m sure you understand.” Graham gave Beau a sharp, measuring look.

“Yes, sir, I do understand.”

“Good. You got luggage?”

“Just a duffel bag, sir.”

Nodding, Graham said, “Let’s mosey along this way, and we’ll get it in baggage claim. After we stick it in the truck, we’ll go find the best hamburger joint in the town, eat, and have a little chat.”

Beau felt exhaustion tearing through him, and his need to see Callie overrode everything. But he appreciated that she had sent her grandfather, whom he knew she adored. Over at the baggage claim area, Beau stood near the carousel to wait for his luggage to be spit out by the machine. He noticed McKinley constantly looking around, keeping an eye on things. His bearing told Beau he’d been in the military at one time. “What branch were you in, sir?” he asked, curious.

McKinley’s mouth turned up into a grin. “Marine Corps. Sniper.” And then he looked at Beau, holding his gray gaze. “You and I share a common denominator. We’re both black ops.”

“Yes, sir, I was sure you were.” Beau’s regard for the rancher had already escalated. For being in his sixties, he was a large-boned man, leanly muscled and—regardless of his age—more able-bodied than most. Beau suspected it was from running a ranch. “How is Callie?”

“Needing you, son. But I don’t think that’s any surprise to you, is it?”

“No. And, sir, I believe you and I share common concerns about Callie,” Beau said.

“That we do.” Graham saw an olive bag drop onto the carousel. “Is that yours?”

Beau checked and said, “Yes, sir.”

Graham nodded. “Good. Let’s get it and get going, son. We have a lot to discuss.”

On their way to the café outside of the city, Beau saw that Montana was covered in snow. McKinley didn’t say much, but Beau could feel a lot going on inside the man. Most of all, he felt the love he had for Callie, and that made him relax. This man was a friend and a former black ops, to boot. Every operator shared a common base of understanding. There was respect, integrity, morals, and values unspoken between them. Beau was sure it was no accident that McKinley told him he’d been a Marine Corps sniper. They were almost always black ops. And he would bet his next paycheck that McKinley had seen his fair share of action.

At the truck stop, they found a booth in the back where it was quieter. Beau was starving and ordered two hamburgers and a double order of French fries. McKinley had a bowl of chili that looked like it could eat chrome off the bumper of his Ford pickup. He could tell that the rancher wanted to talk to him about Callie. After all, he was her grandfather, he loved her, and he wanted only the best for her.

Beau understood about family matters. In Seattle, he’d been able to call his parents, and they were happy and excited to hear from him at last. His other two brothers, Coy and Jackson, were home for the holiday, and Beau knew that their presence softened the blow that he wouldn’t be coming home. His parents were great—they completely understood why he was in Montana instead of coming home to West Virginia for the holidays. He loved them for grasping the situation with Callie, and they fully supported his seeing her instead of them.

Wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, Graham McKinley eyed the young soldier opposite him. Now he could see why Callie was madly in love with the man. Beau Gardner, despite his West Virginia drawl, rugged good looks, and easy smile, was not a man to tinker with. Graham was very familiar with Delta Force operators and had worked with his fair share of them over the years he’d been a sniper. There was a confidence in Beau that Callie needed, he realized.

“Do you love my granddaughter?” he asked sharply, his eyes riveted on Beau’s face.

Beau sat up, unable to keep the shock out of his expression over the unexpected, blunt question. Looking into McKinley’s narrowed blue eyes, he said, “Yes, sir, I do love her. Very much.”

“It’s not a passing fancy on your part, son? I know black ops men draw women by the truckload.”

Beau pushed the empty plate aside. “No, sir, Callie has never been a passing fancy to me.”

“Tell me how you met,” her grandfather said.

Beau realized McKinley was checking him out, testing him, seeing if he was really worthy of Callie. But Graham McKinley represented something even more daunting. As her grandfather, he could decide here and now whether or not he’d see Callie. He was going to protect his granddaughter at all costs, and Beau silently celebrated the man’s attitude. Callie didn’t need a man who only wanted sex from her. There had to be a lot more than that involved before Graham was going to allow him back into Callie’s broken life. Unworried, he folded his hands.

Without preamble, Beau told him just about everything except their shared intimacy. The man sat there like a sphinx, eyes unblinking. He listened closely to everything Beau had to tell him. By the time he was finished, Beau could feel sweat trickling down his ribcage.

“Now, tell me what happened in Afghanistan to put her into this agitated state. She’s told the family very little about that experience.”

Beau hesitated. The whole fiasco was top secret, but looking into McKinley’s flinty blue eyes, he decided,
The hell with confidentiality.
This man carried as many, or more, secrets as he did. Keeping his voice low, he told him.

Graham sat back when Beau had finished, waiting until the waitress poured them fresh coffee in their cups and left. He stared at Gardner, sizing him up, seeing an equal hardness in the younger man’s narrowed gray eyes. “You left one thing out of your story, son.”

Beau scowled. “I left nothing out.” He saw the man’s expression grow thoughtful, his mouth pursed. Beau wasn’t about to divulge their loving one another. That was none of anyone’s business.

“Yes, you did, and you know you did. I want to know why you didn’t divulge that Callie had run from the position she was hiding in and threw your entire op into disarray. It left you with few choices except to deal with the consequences.” He raised a gray brow. “It also got you shot twice.”

Leaning back, Beau met the man’s implacable stare. This was no ordinary Marine Corps sniper. No, his intuition told him that in his day, Graham McKinley had worked with all the black ops groups, not just the Marines. That put him in a highly specialized, top-tier position within the community. And damned if he didn’t recall that someone named McKinley had been instrumental in an op during the Persian Gulf War in February of 1991.

A group of SEALs and Delta Force operators had been pinned down in a Kuwaiti oil refinery and were being picked off by several Iraqi Republican Guard snipers far above them. The Marine sniper, known only as the Ghost, had sneaked into the firefight like the shadow he was. He took the Iraqi snipers down one by one, thereby allowing the other black ops teams to operate within the refinery and complete their important mission—to eradicate the Iraqis trying to hold on to it. The Ghost had also held the highest position within the refinery and spotted thirty of Hussein’s Republican Guard speeding toward them to take out the black ops teams.

When it was all over, the Ghost had killed many of the enemy troops. He’d singlehandedly saved a mission that could have gone bad. The black ops teams captured fifty other Iraqi soldiers, leaving the refinery intact, and the Ghost left with those teams and became a legend within the black ops community.

Beau knew snipers were called “force multipliers” for good reason, and now he was looking at the man who had saved so many American lives on that fateful night. This man was a bona fide hero in Beau’s eyes. And if his memory served him correctly, the Ghost was later awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest medal a military person could receive, next to the Medal of Honor itself, for his accomplishments.

Moving the cup around between his fingers, Beau returned the Ghost’s steady gaze. Obviously, Callie had told him what happened, which didn’t surprise Beau. There was a strong tie between her and her grandfather, and she had certainly told the right person, because if anyone would understand her actions, it would be Graham McKinley.

“You know, your granddaughter is carrying enough guilt around already, so I wouldn’t, with all due respect, divulge the choice she made out there.” His voice lowered. “I know you love her with your life. And if Callie hadn’t already told you what she’d done at that ambush, you would not be hearing it from me. Ever.”

Graham pulled in a deep breath and then took a sip of his coffee. He literally bristled with protectiveness toward Callie. Setting the mug down, he nodded thoughtfully. “That tells me everything I need to know about you, son.”

Beau remained motionless, unsure of what McKinley meant by his statement. The rancher continued to assess him, like a surgeon contemplating a patient on the table, intent on learning all he could before operating. Beau suspected that McKinley lived very close to the surface of his skin, and he used his five senses to an extraordinary degree.

There was nothing else Beau could say to defend what he’d done to keep Callie’s good name intact. Her family didn’t need to know her decision. She was laboring under enough guilt as it was, because she’d urged Dara to go with her to that village.

“So,” Beau said, challenging him, “where does this leave us, sir? Am I going to get to see Callie or not?”

Graham nodded. “Yes, you’ll get to see her, son.” He smiled a little, his eyes glinting. “Ordinarily, I don’t put up with liars. But you lied for all the right reasons. You can see that my granddaughter is already on the edge of what I call the ‘black hole.’ I’ve been there too many times myself. I know what she’s staring into, but then, so do you.”

“Yes, sir, I do know.”

“She trusts you.”

“And I trust her.”

“Even after you ordered her to remain hidden and not move, and she disobeyed?”

“She’s a civilian, sir.” Beau hesitated, his voice deepening as he held McKinley’s implacable, unblinking gaze. “Answer me one thing. If I don’t miss my guess, you were called ‘the Ghost’ back in the Persian Gulf War. So I don’t think you miss a damn thing, sir. And you know civilians are not trained up to our military standards to defend the position they’re given. The same standard that’s applied to a military person is not applied to a civilian who might be caught in the same situation.”

Graham refused to respond to Beau’s revelation about the Ghost, and his respect for the young Delta Force operator rose another notch.

“She calls herself a coward,” Graham tossed out. “What’s your opinion?”

Beau snorted. “She’s anything but that, sir. She was brave, never complained, never whined, and was a fighter in every sense of the word.”

“Good. I like how you see her, because that’s the way she is. Right now, I’m afraid, she’s got a pretty severe case of PTSD.” Graham grimaced. “Back in my day we knew about it, but everyone ignored it. We just continued to do our jobs, regardless.”

“I agree with you.”