The Price of Valor Read online

  He wore a bandanna around his neck and a pair of hiking books. “I’m Harley. I’m from Seattle.”

  “Jenny. Minneapolis.”

  “Are you here for the volcano?”

  She looked at him. “What volcano?”

  “Mount Etna. It’s been simmering for the past few months, and a bunch of us are going to climb it and look inside the crater. It’s supposed to be gnarly.”

  He gestured to a group of college kids sitting at a nearby table. A couple girls, one dark haired, the other blonde. Two more guys were dressed similar to Harley. She waved and a couple of them waved back.

  “Wanna join us?”

  She shook her head. “But I do have an extra coffee to donate. I wanted to get it to go. My mistake.”

  He laughed. “Are you sure?”

  “I was going to bring it back for my boy—” And she caught herself. Then didn’t know how to finish, so, “A friend. But apparently that won’t work. At least I scored a couple chocolate croissants.” She held up her bag.

  Harley gave her a face. “Those are probably raisin.”

  Oh. “I was hoping for chocolate.”

  “Weren’t we all. But they’re still good. It is Italy. Everything here is good. It’s just a matter of letting go of your expectations, letting your taste buds take you where they will. You might be surprised.” He reached for the coffee. “Thanks.”

  She nodded again to his group, then exited and wandered down the alleyway, toward the sea.

  “Just a matter of letting go of your expectations.”

  Harley’s words followed her as she came out to the harbor, to the boats docked on shore.

  “You might be surprised.”

  She walked down the hill to a long dock that stretched out into the sea, fifty-foot sailboats moored in rows on either side. A few sailors worked on their boats, hauling out ropes or buckets. Others sat in the back, eating breakfast.

  She wandered down the dock, the boards moaning under her feet. Seagulls cried in the air overhead. Circling, as if agitated.

  Frankly, her expectations, her analysis of problems kept her safe. Kept her from getting in over her head—well, most of the time.

  She couldn’t help it when a mountain decided to blow up, toss her off the top, and strand her in a crevasse.

  Yeah, she hadn’t exactly calculated for that.

  But she knew Orion well enough to know that she was going to break his heart.

  Or maybe . . . well, he’d surprised her with his forgiveness before. It was possible that—

  No. Some things didn’t get forgiven, ever. And she should have never caught Orion up in a story she couldn’t finish.

  Didn’t deserve to finish.

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t realized it until now . . . or maybe she’d just hoped that God might forgive her anyway.

  But Orion deserved the truth. And, he deserved a happy ending.

  She’d reached the end of the dock. A kid, maybe twelve, sat on the end, his pole in the water. Skinny, short black hair nearly shaved to his skull, dark skinned and barefoot. His sandals sat near a sack leaning against a pylon.

  “Are you catching anything?”

  Probably he didn’t speak English.

  “No. I usually don’t catch anything.” He had deep brown eyes and now looked up at her and grinned. “But if I go home, I’ll have to do chores.”

  She laughed. “Your English is good.”

  “I have a good teacher. He’s an American.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gio Beneventi—”

  The noise behind them startled his gaze and he glanced past her.

  She turned.

  Everything inside her stilled as she watched the mountain, the one covered with a cap of white, explode.

  Black hurtled into the sky, with a gray plume of debris and earth and fire. Lava geysered into the smoke, bright red, spitting down on the mountain.

  The earth began to shake. Jenny grabbed for a pylon. Next to her, the boy scrambled to hang on to another dock pinning.

  Sailboats at dock slammed into each other as the cloud of smoke began to thunder down the mountain toward the city.

  A protoplasmic cloud of ash and sulfur and toxic fumes and—

  “We gotta get in the water!” She turned to Gio. “Jump!”

  His eyes widened. He shook his head.

  She grabbed his hand. “We need to get into the water or that cloud could burn us alive!”

  “I don’t swim!”

  “Well I do! C’mon.” She turned and didn’t even pause before she launched herself—tugging Gio with her—into the sea.

  They landed and went deep, but she kicked up to the surface hard, pulling him with her.

  He surfaced, sputtering, clawing for her.

  She grabbed his arms. “I got you!” She turned him around and pulled him against her. “We’re going to hang on to this pylon!” Kicking them over to the post, she pushed him against it. “Hold on. And when the cloud hits, take a deep breath and go under. Don’t come up for as long as you can.”

  Thunder filled the air, and it thickened with smoke and ash.

  She pressed herself to the pylon, her hand on his arm. “I’m here, Gio. I won’t leave you.”

  Then, as the roar filled her ears, she said, “Now!”

  She pulled him under as death rolled over the water.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HAM’S WORLD HAD ROCKED, given out from under his feet long before the volcano blew. Long before the lift to the building tore from its axis and plunged toward the ground.

  And long before he found himself trapped in the stone rubble of the ancient hotel building.

  It started when Signe sat down at the table, just like that, and looked at him through her cat-eyed sunglasses. A white flowing scarf hid her head and face, and a linen cargo shirt rolled up at the elbows covered a tank. Her black cargo pants ended above flat tennis shoes.

  Just in case she had to make a break for it, maybe.

  And, no. She hadn’t known she was pregnant.

  But yes, she’d been a CIA agent all along, and never told him.

  He understood that, maybe, but as she sat there, cupping her coffee, not looking at him, her jaw a hard line, he had to drag up his words to Orion and cling to them.

  “I’m going to forgive her.”

  Please, God help me. Because he wanted to dispense forgiveness. At least in his head.

  In his heart, the betrayal, the rejection roiled hot in his core.

  It only made it worse that she wouldn’t even look at him. She stared at the sea, her blonde hair falling out of her scarf to whisper against her face. He could trace her profile in his sleep—her cute nose, those pretty lips, a light dusting of freckles that had nearly vanished. A pensive expression, always, but when she looked so mysterious and distant he wondered . . . well, maybe he’d been assuming he knew her.

  Maybe he had never really known her.

  To confirm it, he’d asked, subtly, if she still trusted him.

  It almost felt appropriate that, right then, Etna decided to blow. Because he’d felt his own fury building in his chest. What did I do to you to make you walk—no, run—away?

  But he never got that out because her horrified glance over his shoulder made him turn.

  Instinct made him dive toward her. Pull her to himself, protect her.

  They landed on the tile of the terrace and he’d curled himself around her as best he could. The building shook, tile cracking, breaking. A line fractured across the rooftop as smoke descended over them.

  He hauled her up. “Run!” He grabbed her hand and spied the waitress headed for the stairway near the end of the building.

  Then it occurred to him—

  Volcano ash was deadly. Sulfuric, toxic. And if he remembered his history lessons of the Mount Saint Helens’s eruption, sometimes volcanoes spurted out a pyroclastic cloud of hot gas and rock. Leveling forests and maybe cities and certainly suffocating
them—

  They needed cover. He headed for the stairwell near the lifts, pulling Signe with him, then pushed her in front of him. “Go—go!”

  A glance over his shoulder showed the mountain covered in black, thick smoke that was heading toward them.

  The hotel was shaking so hard he nearly fell. They needed a windowless room—maybe a bathroom, or a closet or—

  Except, if the ash didn’t kill them, the rubble might.

  They also needed something to protect them.

  He practically pushed Signe into the lift, hoping he hadn’t just killed them. “Get down!”

  It was an old cage lift with a wooden box, maybe three feet square. But it had metal girders holding it up. Ham closed the wooden doors, then crouched over her, on his knees, his arms braced over her body against the wall.

  Closed his eyes.

  Oh God, keep us alive!

  The lift shuddered, but yes, they might live through this.

  Then, the light flickered out, the lift gave a lurch.

  Falling!

  He wanted to shout. Instead, he reached for Signe, pulled her to himself, and braced them both for the drop.

  The lift stopped so fast, they bounced—maybe the emergency brakes kicking in—but he fell back, hitting the wall, Signe on top of him in the darkness.

  She was gripping his shirt.

  Roaring filled the compartment, the hint of wind, the smell of cement and dirt and sulfur.

  “Close your eyes.” Maybe the ash wouldn’t find them here, but he didn’t know. He rolled them over and pushed their heads to the floor of the lift. “Put your hand over your mouth, breathe through your fingers.”

  The building was still shaking, and he just dug in and started to breathe.

  Oh God, don’t forget us!

  The terrible howl continued, and around them, rocks and pebbles kept falling, pinging against the lift box.

  He didn’t know how long they crouched there, listening to the building groan and shift, the wind moaning. He smelled smoke, a hint now of gas in the air.

  Please let the electricity be off. The last thing they needed were live wires sparking into all that gas.

  Finally, the building settled.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he got up.

  “I think so.” But her voice trembled.

  Ham dug his cell phone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight.

  Beheld the destruction.

  The lift had probably saved their lives, the antique metal casing dented in around the sides, splintering the wood, but still intact.

  The electrical panel was dark—probably a good sign—but when he got up and tried the doors, they opened to a cement wall.

  They were between floors, but he hadn’t a clue how far down. But he could touch the ceiling, and for right now, they weren’t moving.

  He shined the light down at Signe.

  She’d sat up, her scarf off her head, her shirt and hair grimy and covered in gray dust, her green eyes big as she stared at him. “What just happened?”

  “Pompeii?”

  She gave out a huff—half laugh, half disbelief. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “I would have gone down the stairs.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. We might be trapped in this thing forever.”

  He probably shouldn’t have said that because his words turned her expression stricken.

  She got up. “These old elevators have escape hatches on the top. Maybe we can climb out. If the shaft isn’t clogged.”

  He directed his light up, scanned it across the panels. They’d just covered urban rescue scenarios, including elevator rescue, during his training in DC. But his guess was that no K9 was going to find them down here. “I think we probably need to sit tight for a bit and let that ash cloud disperse. It’s full of tephra, which are jagged edged particles—”

  “I remember our Mount Saint Helens’s report, Ham. I think I wrote most of it.”

  “I did the construction, thank you. We got an A.”

  “Because of my report.”

  “Ours was the only volcano that actually erupted.”

  Just like that, he was back in the seventh grade, working on the volcano on his kitchen table, late at night, listening to Boyz II Men and wondering if it was possible to fall in love forever at the age of thirteen.

  He couldn’t stop himself. “Signe, did you ever really love me?”

  Her eyes were bright in the glow of his phone light. It flashed him to her expression the night he told her he was being shipped off to military school. Sort of desperate and pleading and hoping that he had the right answer for her. Only now it was him wondering what answer she would give him. Had she forgotten him? Or maybe he’d never been to her what she’d been to him.

  “Ham,” she said softly, almost a whisper. “Of course I loved you. I loved you with everything inside of me, every cell of my body.”

  He stilled, not sure what to do with her words. Or the past tense of them. But he didn’t want to ask the follow-up question—Do you love me now?

  Instead, “What happened to you? All I remember is that we got married, we spent an amazing weekend together, and then I came back from my first deployment and you were gone. I know we talked about that, but then five years later I find you and again we spend the most amazing weekend together and then you’re gone. This time, I think you’re dead, but ten years later I find out you’re not dead and I have a child. What happened? Why didn’t you come back to me?”

  She sighed then, and the defeat on her face shook him to the core. He’d never known Signe to be defeated. She was light and life and curiosity and a force to be reckoned with. But sitting there in the lift with ash covering her body, she turned into a ghost in front of him.

  And right then . . . no, he didn’t know her at all.

  “It’s a long story,” she said quietly.

  He sank down, his back to the wall. “We’re not going anywhere. I’m listening.”

  Jenny.

  Orion had one thought as the world stopped shaking, as water sprayed from a broken line in the coffee shop, as people around him cried or screamed.

  Get. To. Jenny.

  He’d dived under a table with two women, both middle-aged, dark hair. Now, as he leaned up, he saw one bled from her arm, a jagged piece of glass embedded in the flesh of her bicep. The other woman curled into a ball, her knees up, her head down. When she looked up, blood dripped down her forehead from an open cut.

  “Don’t move.” He scrambled out from under the table. Around the cafe, others had also taken refuge under tables or behind the counter. A few simply lay on the floor, hands over their heads. A couple young bucks were getting up and he pointed at the water spraying through the cafe. “Turn that off!”

  Maybe they spoke English, or maybe they simply caught his meaning, because one of them scrambled over the counter.

  The other turned to a young woman who was holding her bloody leg and crying.

  Orion hit his feet and grabbed a couple cloth napkins that had spilled onto the floor. He came back to the women and pressed one to the woman’s head. “Hold this here.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide, and he turned to the other woman, the one in the leopard shirt. The glass still protruded from her arm, and he couldn’t tell if it had nicked an artery.

  He should probably wait until she could get to an ER before he removed it, but given the tragedy, even in this little coffee shop, that could be hours.

  He held her arm, met her eyes. “Can I see it?”

  She was a pretty woman, big brown eyes, olive skin, maybe midforties. “Si.”

  He pulled back the skin around the wound and she whimpered. But it didn’t look that deep.

  What he really needed was a way to stop blood flow, just in case.

  She wore a scarf in her hair. He motioned to it and she nodded. Taking it off her, he put it around her arm, then grabbed a nearby butter knife and fashioned a tourniquet around her up
per arm, above the wound.

  “I’m going to take this out, okay?”

  The other woman reached out and took her hand.

  “I’m Orion. What’s your name?”

  “Federica.”

  “Okay, here we go. On three.”

  He counted, and pulled on two. She cried out, and blood surged, but he pressed the cloth over the wound and tightened the tourniquet. The flow stopped. “Hold this on here until help arrives.” He tied off the tourniquet.

  Federica grabbed his shirt. “Where are you going?”

  “To find my girlfriend.” The words came out easy, as if nothing had changed between them.

  Maybe, right now, nothing had.

  So she didn’t want to marry him—right now, all that mattered was that she was alive and safe.

  Orion pulled his cell phone from his pocket. No signal. Outside, sirens blared in the distance, a car alarm honking somewhere in the fog. Most of the windows in the coffee shop had shattered. Smoke darkened the streets.

  Smoke filled with ash and volcanic debris. It might even be toxic. “Cover your mouths!” he said, the realization sinking in. He grabbed more napkins off the floor and tied one around his mouth, handed them out to the patrons now mending their wounds, trying their cell phones.

  The water had stopped spurting, but the floor was slick and muddy with ash, coffee stirred into the mix. A barista had been scalded and one of the young bucks was pouring water over her hand and arm.

  Orion stepped out into the street, trying to get his bearings. He couldn’t see the sky, the world gritty and dark. Ash layered the cars, the blue fruit truck parked in the street. Flowerpots lay smashed on the sidewalks, having toppled from balconies, and a couple buildings were cracked, terra-cotta roof tiles in broken piles along the road. The cobblestones had buckled, and the tables outside the cafe were flung over, glass from storefront windows scattered all the way down the street.

  He had no idea which way to go. He pulled out his phone, pulled up his GPS, but it gave him nothing.

  “Orion. Where are you going?”

  Federica called to him from where she sat on the floor, through the space of the open glass.

  “To my hotel. It’s on the harbor.”

  Federica pointed to her right. “That way. Four or five blocks.”