Troubleshooters 16.8 - Free Fall Read online

  Up this close, Ben also noted that Wade had really nice skin—smooth and blemish-free surrounding a pretty mouth. But he also had a serious case of dog-ass breath. Holy crap, that was deadly. Ben had to hold his nose. For a half a second, time froze as Wade stared back into Ben’s eyes.

  And for the weirdest nano-second, Ben thought that maybe Wade was going to kiss him.

  Don’t hesitate.

  Those instructions came in a full variety of voices. Izzy’s. Dan’s. Mark’s. Eden’s. Even Jenni, who usually preached non-violence.

  So Ben didn’t wait to see what Wade was going to do next—be it kiss or death-delivering chokehold. He stepped even closer and brought his leg between Wade’s. He may have been skinny, but the muscles in his thighs were solid and strong, and it didn’t take much to swing his right leg up and completely crush Wade’s balls.

  Wade screamed as he let Ben go, but he was clearly fucking insane, because even though Ben danced back, Wade lunged at him again. And that was when Ben popped him with a hard, carefully placed right jab to the nose.

  Ow.

  The force sent Wade slamming noisily into the lockers, Ryan’s friends scattered, but Ryan stayed. God, he was cute, but then again, Ben had always been a little bit in love with Harry Potter.

  “Go,” Ben told Ryan as Wade sank down onto the floor across the hall, clutching both his balls and his face as he moaned in pain. “Now. Before a teacher shows up. No point in you getting suspended, too.”

  But Ryan hesitated. “My mom’s a doctor,” he said, “so I know some stuff and—your head hit the wall really hard. You need to tell someone and get that checked. Promise me, Ben.”

  Ryan Spencer knew his name. Huh. “I will, I promise. Thanks. But go,” Ben said again, and the younger boy finally dashed away.

  And yup, clomping down the hall that led from the main office came a bevy (pride? gaggle? Ben was never sure which word applied) of teachers and administrators, including the portly security guard who sat near the front door, as well as the new vice principal, Ms. Quinbey, who was in charge of discipline. She was shaking her head in resigned disapproval as she approached.

  “Mr. Gillman, I didn’t expect to see you here,” she told Ben. She was maybe Jenn’s age, at most. She had to work it, hard, with the costume, hair, and make-up, to deliver the stern and scary.

  Ben backed even farther away from Wade, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  But it was Wade who spoke, playing the pity card. “He hit me!” He didn’t bother attempting the He hit me first lie. He was well aware that that wouldn’t play. However, it was very evident that someone had hit him, so . . .

  Besides, it didn’t really matter who threw the first punch—or in this case, the first shove. The school had a zero tolerance policy for fighting.

  No doubt about it, Ben and Wade were both seriously screwed.

  Somewhere up in Napa, Eden and Jenn were probably having a leisurely breakfast with a group of Jenn’s friends. Somewhere on the Coronado Navy base, Izzy and Dan were no doubt doing some kind of crazy crap to keep their SEAL super-powers functioning at their usual high levels.

  As Ben was escorted to the front office, he also knew, without a doubt, that what he’d just done was going to seriously screw up their days, too.

  ****

  Chapter Three

  Adam Wyndham’s agent sent the news via email.

  He didn’t get the job.

  Shit. The role was one that he wanted—badly. The script was well written and the movie was destined for the bigger film festivals—maybe even Sundance or SXSW.

  But it was the character—intriguing, complex, a blur of both darkness and light—that had set Adam on fire.

  He reached for his phone to text his fiancé, Tony, who always knew exactly what to say to soothe Adam’s pain. Tony always put things into perspective using words like disappointment and irritation instead of pain and anger, or even miffed instead of bat-shit, forehead-vein-pulsing outraged.

  Adam smiled just thinking about that. As an actor, he was drawn to both drama and hyperbole, taking what was, in fact, merely a disappointment, and ballooning it into soul-wrenching agony.

  So he didn’t get a role he wanted. Was he disappointed? Yes. Was he in agony? Nope.

  Tony’s even touch brought everything into a more realistic point of view, allowing Adam to recognize that his failure to get this job probably wasn’t personal. The casting director didn’t have some terrible vendetta against him. They’d no doubt gone with another actor who had a different look. Someone taller, probably. It happened.

  Adam didn’t need Tony to tell him that.

  At the same time, Adam didn’t need a reason to text Tony with a quick message: Sitting here loving you madly.

  Tony didn’t text him back—probably because he was running ten miles in his BDUs, boots, backpack and all, sweat pouring off of him . . .

  And yeah, like that wasn’t hot. Sometimes Tony came home already freshly showered, and sometimes he came home sticky and dirty, still in a sweaty uniform that needed to be peeled off.

  Adam liked it both ways. Most of all, he liked days like today where he wasn’t working, so he’d actually be here when Tony got home.

  He shot his husband-to-be another quick text: Chinese take-out later? Maybe MUCH later . . . ? :-)

  And, yes. He’d become one of those guys who texted smiley faces to his partner. But so-the-fuck what. Sue him for being happy.

  Because minor disappointments aside, today was going to be a really nice day.

  Of course, that was when the house line rang.

  ****

  Chapter Four

  “Adam, oh good, you’re there!” Eden looked across the hotel lobby to where Jenn was sitting with her friend Maria. She gave her sister-in-law a thumbs up and what she hoped was an everything’s a-okay smile.

  “I am,” Adam said from his home on Coronado. He and Tony shared the sweetest little cottage not far from the island’s charming downtown. Eden tried not to be envious of them—easy to do because they were both great guys, and it wasn’t as if they didn’t have their own challenges. While the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had just been signed into law by the President and everyone knew that change was coming, it hadn’t happened yet. And although Tony was out to his friends and teammates, they all still had to tread carefully. “And you’re . . . oh, wait, isn’t this . . . ?” He answered his own question. “The wedding shower long weekend. You’re up in Napa with Jenn.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, no doubt sounding more grim than she’d intended. This trip was supposed to be fun, but it was exhausting hanging out with so many women she didn’t know. They were all professionals, too. Lawyers, doctors, congresswomen even. And then . . . there was Eden, who’d busted her ass to get her GED, and who’d pulled in her biggest salary while stripping in Vegas.

  “Is everything okay?” Adam asked with a wariness in his tone that broadcast his hope that she was not calling to ask a favor. “Is Jenn . . . ?”

  “Jenn’s fine,” Eden said. At eight months pregnant, her brother Dan’s wife glowed with such good health, it was obnoxious. But in a good way, she quickly corrected herself. “But—and I’m so sorry to have to ask you this, but I just got a call from Ben’s school. He got into a fight and he’s actually being suspended—”

  “Oh, shit,” Adam said, laughing his surprise. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” Eden sighed heavily. “I was hoping it would be better here.”

  “Oh, God, it is,” Adam told her, all reservation gone from his voice. “That wasn’t that kind of Oh, shit, it was more of an Even when it’s better it’s not perfect Oh, shit. Honey, trust me, it’s so much better for Ben at this school. I can tell just from talking to him—God, just from looking at him. He’s doing really well. But there’s always gonna be assholes, wherever he goes. That’s just life in America. So Oh, shit, you know?”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  “I k
now so. How can I help? You want me to go get him? Buy him an ice cream?”

  “Yes, please.” Eden closed her eyes. “But check his blood levels before the ice cream.” Ben was diabetic, and being in a fight had probably messed up his blood sugar. “Thank you so much. I called the base and spoke to the senior chief, and both Izzy and Danny are doing some kind of training jump. Tony, too. And Mark and Jay. Chief Lopez. Everyone’s gone. They won’t be back for . . . I don’t even know how many hours.”

  “Oh, good,” Adam said darkly. “A jump. Thanks for sharing. God, I hate jump days.”

  Eden did, too. The idea of Izzy leaping from a plane and falling to earth with only a piece of fabric to keep him from splattering on the hard ground below . . . “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “But . . .”

  “You had to tell someone,” Adam guessed, “and you didn’t want to tell Jenn, because God forbid the anxiety makes that baby suddenly pop out of her—which is crazy-thinking, by the way? That baby’s not coming out until it’s good and ready. But whatever, and yay, I won the prize. Jump day. Whoo-hoo!” His laughter was a mix of admiration and disgust. “You and I are so much alike, it’s scary.”

  “Maybe after you pick up Ben,” Eden said, “you could, you know, swing past the base?”

  “Casually drop by. It’s already on my to-do list,” Adam reported. “I’ll text you when I know they’re safely on the ground. And oh, yeah? As long as you’re up in wine country, Toots, Tony likes a full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon. And I like whatever Tony likes, so . . .”

  “Got it,” Eden said. “Thanks, Pookie. Glare at Ben for me.”

  “That you’ll have to do yourself,” he said, and then out-obnoxious-nicknamed her by dropping a “Later, Cupcake,” before cutting the connection.

  As Eden hung up, too, she could feel Jenn watching her, so she forced another smile and reported, “Adam’s gonna get Ben.”

  And then she went and got herself another cup of coffee, because it was going to be a long, long morning.

  ****

  Chapter Five

  Izzy tried to slow his dive by opening up his arms and legs just before he nearly hit the edge of Tony’s canopy.

  This was not the right way to do this—get tangled in the para-fucking-chute and kill them both—but it was better than missing him.

  Tony hadn’t cut away—hypoxia’s loss of oxygen to the brain could make the smartest men stupid—and Izzy grabbed on to anything he could—Tony, his pack, the lines—anything. Izzy clenched his entire body and clung like a motherfucker, refusing to let go, locking himself around his teammate with his arms and legs, wishing he wasn’t wearing these gloves so he could grip with his fingertips, too, but knowing that even if he’d managed to pull them off during that dive, his hands would’ve frozen and been even more useless than they currently were.

  The chute miraculously held, bouncing under his sudden additional weight, and then dropping—marginally—faster than the other six SEALs.

  Tony’s eyes were open, but no one was home. You’d think the jolt of suddenly being hit by a human bullet would’ve woken the guy up, but he’d completely checked into the stupor suite at the Hotel Hypoxia.

  Izzy heard the chatter over his radio headset—the chief asking him for Tony’s condition, and the CO already talking up the chain of command, requesting medical assistance on the ground.

  Except they were jumping into the desert, which was, as the word implied, deserted. They were many miles from the base. Even if the Navy immediately sent a Blackhawk, Izzy and Tony were gonna hit the ground first.

  “He’s in trouble, boss,” Izzy reported as he quickly fumbled some of his favorite short bungee cords free from his vest and hooked himself to Tony. He kept his legs locked around him, too, as he then checked the SEAL’s mask and the tube leading to his oxygen bottle. Step one in troubleshooting was always to tap the mic and say Is this thing on . . . ?

  Everything was correctly attached, and the apparatus appeared to be working—except for the fact that Tony clearly wasn’t getting enough O2. The malfunction might’ve been with the gear, or it might’ve been with Tony himself—couldn’t count that out. Not yet, anyway.

  Tick tock. Time was steadfastly marching forward the way time was wont to do, and there was only so long a human could exist without oxygen.

  Izzy moved quickly to his plan B and unplugged Tony’s hose from the O2 tank connector in his vest. “Might need a portable decompression chamber,” he announced over his mic. “Or two. And a hospital corpsman on the ground would be nice.” Hint, hint, Chief Lopez. “And maybe a coupla pizzas. I wouldn’t say no to extra cheese.”

  “A decompression . . . ?” he heard Big Mac echo, along with Chief Lopez’s warning, “Zanella, what the hell . . . ?” and Danny’s “Zanella, are you fucking kidding me!”

  They weren’t stupid. They all knew exactly what he was going to do. It was what they would do, too, if they were here, clinging to Tony V. like a giant space monkey.

  And now the conversation was temporarily over because Izzy was holding his breath after unfastening his own tube from his bottle’s connector in his vest. He popped Tony’s hose into his, hoping the other man was still capable of drawing air into his lungs by his lonesome.

  But . . . Nothing. He got nothing from the T-man.

  So he exhaled hard as he unfastened Tony’s hose and reattached his own, drawing in a deep lungful of the good ol’ O2 before popping both of their masks free.

  Fuck it was cold, but death was even colder. He covered Tony’s icy mouth and nose with his mouth and forced the damn oxygen into him. Izzy slapped his mask back onto his own face to draw another breath—rinsing and repeating one, two, three more times before Tony coughed and blinked and even retched a little.

  And then—oh, good, because this wasn’t hard enough—he began to struggle, trying to get away from Izzy.

  There was something called the oxygen paradox, and it basically went like this: When treating hypoxia with oxygen, the symptoms sometimes got worse right before they got better. And although T was now breathing on his own, he was still badly disoriented. Also, he was wildly sucking in this thin-ass non-air, which wasn’t helping the sitch.

  Izzy knew a thing or two about fighting with a Navy SEAL, even a groggy and weak one. Bungee cords or not, it was only a matter of time before Tony wrenched his ass free, sending Izzy back into a sky-dive while Tony slowly floated back into hypoxia and certain death.

  Arguing with him wasn’t going to get it done. There was really only one way to guarantee Tony would make it to the ground still alive.

  Izzy slapped the mask back onto Tony’s face, connected T’s tube to Izzy’s tank, and then went for the three-ring release that would cut away Tony’s chute and send them back into free fall.

  Together.

  It was a gamble—a big one—the assumption that breathing Izzy’s O2 would bring Tony back to cognizance in enough time so he’d return the favor and not let Izzy die. But it was the only way they’d both survive, and Izzy was willing to take that risk.

  As they plummeted to earth, with Izzy’s legs still locked around Tony, as Tony still flailed and tried to shake him free, Izzy recognized his own telling signals of hypoxia as he breathed the frozen, too-thin not-quite-air.

  The brilliant sky took on a haze of red, and Izzy could feel his heart accelerating as his mind sputtered and disconnected to a place where nothing hurt and nothing mattered because he simply didn’t care. “Z . . . out,” he managed to say, even as a part of him scoffed at the lameness of what could well be his final words before shuffling off this mortal coil.

  Because he did. He cared. Truly, madly, deeply.

  Eden. Eden. Izzy focused on the sound of his heartbeat racing in his ears, as his body attempted to find the oxygen he needed from somewhere, anywhere. Eden. Eden.

  Way in the distance, tinny and metallic, a song played in his head.

  Making love with you has left me peaceful, warm, and tired . . .<
br />
  Okay, those lyrics weren’t going to help him stay awake. Izzy fast-forwarded to the refrain and forced himself to loudly sing along.

  ****

  Chapter Six

  The other kid was a little bit shorter than Ben, but was probably half again his weight.

  Big guy. Broad shoulders, solidly built.

  A football player.

  Of course.

  As Adam went into the high school office, both boys were slouched in hard plastic chairs that were part of a row lined up against the wall, in what was clearly the designated punishment zone. He’d sat in similar seats plenty of times during his own high school years, even though he’d dropped out when he was only sixteen. Seriously, the colors and even the smell—he’d caught the first whiff of that unique public school aroma right when he’d walked past the guard and into the building—were enough to trigger flashbacks.

  With luck, he wouldn’t have to be here for long.

  Eden’s little brother Ben and his fight-club adversary had left three of those ugly plastic seats empty, like a no man’s land between them, as they both held medical icepacks against various body parts.

  The football star was nursing both a bloody nose and his crotch, while Ben was icing the knuckles of his right hand and the side of his head.

  Ben looked up as the door closed behind Adam, a defiant apology in his blue eyes. His face also held a hint of relief—probably that it was Adam who’d come instead of his brother Dan or Izzy. He knew that Adam’s can of whoop-ass was considerably smaller for a whole slew of reasons.