Steadfast Soldier Read online

  Her answering smile sat somewhere between sassy and sweet as she slipped, also reluctantly, in his opinion, away. “I’m glad.”

  Something magnetic tugged him toward her. He must have leaned that way because her eyes grew wide enough to stop him. “I should go.” Really. Right now. Before he apprehended her in a commando hug that he hoped would hold her heart hostage for life. He swallowed at the enormity of his own thoughts. “Bye, Chloe.” Though everything in him protested, he walked away.

  She followed him to the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow.

  He stepped into the cool air. A moist breeze brushed his buzz as he jogged down the steps. Now at his car, he turned and peered over his shoulder at her, knowing she was out of hearing range but wanting to say something nonetheless.

  “’Night, sweetness,” he whispered softly.

  Despite any logical reasons against it, he felt tethered to her like clips on a tandem harness.

  Safe.

  He felt it with her and knew she felt it with him.

  If this is what starting to fall in love with someone felt like, he was staring into the face of free fall.

  Should he pull the rip cord?

  Or scramble back and succumb to safety?

  Chance fastened his seat belt while questions raced.

  His call.

  It was not one he could make right now. Not with what he was facing tomorrow.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I know what it feels like to lose one.”

  Chance swallowed what felt like a knotted piece of rescue rope settling in his throat at the kind words of his teammate and friend, Ben Dillinger. Earthy aftershave scents strengthened as Ben moved to stand beside him in the small living room Chance had grown up in.

  He knew that by “losing one,” Ben meant the childhood home as well as a parent since his family’s home had burned down when Ben was a youngster.

  Ben’s words made Chance want to escape the profound sense of loss that had been dogging him all day and take a long walk in the woods. He’d visit the squirrels and deer around Refuge. Watching wildlife always relieved stress.

  “Me too.” Chloe moved closer to him. Her gaze brushed his mother’s face in a framed picture with tenderness.

  “Yeah, that’s precisely the reason I want a family soon. It’s hard losing so many family members at this age, while I’m still young. I want my children to avoid that.” Chance studied Chloe for a reaction, but all he could see was compassion as she studied his late mother’s image.

  “I’m sure she was as lovely a person inside as this picture shows outside.”

  Chance just nodded.

  He carefully set the photo back in the box but couldn’t bear yet to close the flap. “I always thought I was a s-s-strong p-person, until this—” Irritation drew Chance’s eyebrows inward. What on earth was up with his incessant stuttering today?

  Stress tightened the band of pressure that had wrapped around his chest last night as soon as he started dreading today.

  “I thought I was doin’ all right. Thought I’d licked this. Then I jolted awake in the middle of the night with some kind of weird p-panic attack. It’s like I woke up and realized what a shock to my system everything’s been and I hit rock bottom.” Remnants of dizziness, nausea and tremors dogged him right now, in fact. “I’ve never felt so physically ill nor such gloom, doom and despair.”

  “Dude, you shoulda called me,” Ben said.

  Chance shrugged. “You have a family.”

  “You’re also family, bro.”

  Chance laughed. “I doubt you would have brought me what I felt like I needed last night anyway. I couldn’t pray. All I wanted was beer. And lots of it.”

  Chloe giggled. “That’s normal. Did you drink?”

  “No. I haven’t kept alcohol in the house since I gave my life over to the Lord. But had it been there, I would have downed a case because I felt for several moments like I was seriously losing my mind.”

  Ben rested a hand on the pine bookshelf. “You went a week without sleep or proper nourishment for the training op. I’m sure that exacerbated it. Might be good you’ve hit rock bottom. Only way now is up.”

  “W-when will I st-top m-m-missing her?” Pushing the un-bending words out of his mouth felt like shooting square bullets through a little round hole.

  Chloe squeezed his hand. “Never. But it will get easier. No one can truly understand the pain of losing a parent until the weight of it sits on their shoulders.”

  Ben nodded. “She’s right. And, dude, you’ve been burying this. It had to come out sooner or later.”

  Chance released a frustrated sigh. Today’s sudden reappearance of the severe stuttering that had sent him into a shell of shyness as a boy didn’t make things easier. He didn’t need one more thing going wrong. Didn’t God know that? Of course He did.

  “Mom always t-told me that what doesn’t kill me will make me st-t-ta-tr…” Chance gritted his teeth and tried to think of another suitable word. An easier one. Since when did he take the easy way? Since it had been too long for him to remember tricks his elementary school speech therapists had taught him that had cured him completely.

  Or so he’d thought.

  How could he train to be a back-up communications specialist with his PJ unit in the event teammate Vince couldn’t be on a mission, and have a stutter?

  Easy answer.

  He couldn’t. Period. Not possible.

  Unless he beat it back into submission.

  He’d conquer this thing once and for all. He would.

  His parents always told him he could do anything he and God set his mind to. It had been a struggle for them to pay for his therapy when insurance didn’t cover it back then. But Mom had known how important it was to him to overcome it. What would she think now that it had resurfaced? Probably she’d tell him what she said about any difficulty he faced. To quit sulking, get his big boy britches back on and beat it.

  Chance’s eyes veered back to the photo and left him wishing it was she in lively warm flesh instead of a flat and lifeless image that paled in comparison. “Is it weird for me to want to keep the answering machine?”

  Chloe eyed it. “With her voice on it? Not at all.”

  “I still keep the last message my dad left on my voice mail. I listen to it from time to time,” Ben agreed.

  “Don’t ever erase the message.” Chloe brushed bangs from her eyes.

  “Or ditch the machine,” Ben said. “In fact, record her voice on DVD.”

  “It’s the only way you’ll hear her voice this side of Heaven.” Chloe bent to retrieve another packing box.

  “You go to church anywhere yet, Chloe?” Ben asked.

  She froze. “No.”

  “Would you want to?”

  “No.” Her tone snapped enough to seem like they’d asked her if she’d ever robbed a bank or wanted to.

  Ben caught Chance’s gaze, then slipped from the room, probably to give them a chance to talk.

  “Sorry.” Chloe sighed. “Ben was just being nice. I overreacted.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t know why. Not today. Let’s not talk about me. Tell me what’s going on with you. What are you thinking?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’ll help to talk about it. Come on. Purge.” She not only settled on the rug but tugged him down with her.

  One look and he knew she really wanted to know.

  He sat opposite her. “I wish I’d listened more when she was alive. Drank it in, you know. But everything happened so fast. I didn’t want to believe she was dying. In retrospect I wish I’d been sponging up everything about her while she was still here.”

  “There’s hope in all this. Don’t forget. You’ll see her again. Jesus is the ultimate answering machine. He made a way possible for you to hear her voice again.”

  Chance blinked at her.

  “Dime for your thoughts.”

  “Wh-what happ
ened to a p-penny?”

  She smiled. “Inflation.”

  “I’m c-concerned about Brock. His p-parents will die someday. So will he. I want him to b-b-be there too, ya know? Any m-mission, one or all of us might not m-make it home.”

  “I know. So we just keep workin’ on him and praying.”

  “H-h-have b-b-been p-p-p…” He huffed. “T-talking to God ab-b-bout Broccoli. A l-l-lot.” The entire team had adopted Chance’s nickname for Brock.

  “How’s your dad holding up today?” Chloe asked, probably to draw attention away from Chance’s frustration over the sudden return of dysfluent speech.

  Chance shrugged. “’Bout as well as c-can be expected.”

  Ben returned. “He still supposed to go fishing with Mary and Chloe today?” he asked when Chloe went to deep clean the bathroom for the new homeowners.

  “They asked me along. Not sure I can be around the two of them today.”

  “Mary and Ivan?”

  “Yeah. That re-reminds me. H-he never ret-t-turned my call. Sorry, B-Ben. Don’t know why I’m s-stuttering again.”

  “Man, no sweat.”

  Chance redialed his father’s phone number. No answer.

  Two terrible claws of dread punched through Chance’s rib cage and clenched his lungs, then caved his chest, leaving little room for air. He hit Redial on his father’s cell number. No answer there either.

  Chance stared at the phone, willing Ivan. Hear it. If he wasn’t answering either phone or returning calls, something could be very, very wrong. “Bro, I can’t get him to answer. I never shoulda left him alone this morning. But he insisted he was fine.”

  Acutely perceptive, as was every member of their team, Ben must have picked up on his fear because he beckoned Chloe from the bathroom, plucked his keys from a sofa table and motioned Chance toward the door. “Let’s go check on him.”

  Halfway to Refuge, Chance’s phone rang. An enormous blast of relief hit when he saw his dad’s caller ID.

  “It’s him.” Chance answered the call. Maybe his dad had just decided to venture outside and didn’t hear the phone or something. Which was an answer to—

  “Hello? Chance? Oh, thank God!” The shrill panic in Mary’s voice caused Chance to stiffen.

  “Mary, what’s wrong?”

  Ben accelerated and listened carefully at the same time. Chloe grasped Chance’s hand tightly and bit her lip.

  “Chance, don’t panic but the ambulance just came and picked up your dad.”

  The strangulating cord that was tightened around Chance’s chest moved a suffocating tendril up to wrap around his throat.

  Ben eyed Chance with caution and sped up to rates that would make even their friend Officer Stallings pull them over.

  Chance tried to make his stubborn mule of a mouth and airless lungs work. “W-wh-what happened?”

  “I don’t know. He stood abruptly from the garden bench and flat passed out.”

  Chance was too frozen with fear to ask the inevitable.

  Please. I can’t go through it again. Not this soon.

  “He came to about the time the EMTs arrived. Cole, the paramedic, gave me your military cell number and said I should call you but to tell you he thinks Ivan will be okay.”

  Chance took the deepest breath of his given life. “Good. That’s good. Where’d they take him?”

  “Refuge. I’m following in the car. I’ll call you when I know something more.”

  “Okay.” Chance hung up, feeling numb.

  What if his dad had had another stroke? Would he recover?

  Ben’s hand on his shoulder made him look up but the maelstrom of possibilities, fear and panic wouldn’t release his mind. Chloe, eyes closed, murmured soft prayers.

  Questions flooded Ben’s concerned eyes. PJs stuck together with a brotherly bond of unbreakable armor no weapon formed against them could pierce.

  In fact, Chance had fractured his ankle on a bad landing during a team jump the year Manny crashed into the only grove of trees for miles at NASCAR speeds. Chance, still attached to his parachute, hadn’t fully landed feet to earth before he’d started sprinting to Manny. He was the first one to him. Seeing him all busted up had done a real number on the team.

  But it had also bonded them and made them realize how precious life was and how dangerous their jobs were, even between missions on hostile soil. Thankfully, Manny recovered, but he never forgot the way Chance refused to leave his side, even for his own painful ankle fracture. And Manny had been the first one by Chance’s side when his mother passed on.

  Chance knew without a doubt their team’s Kevlar-thick bond had grown partly from the prayers of authentic Christian leaders, Joel Montgomery and Aaron Petrowski. Two of the strongest men, inside and out, that Chance had ever met, men who weren’t ashamed to live their lives by faith.

  The past few years, the seven-man team, eight with CO Petrowski, started falling into faith like dominoes.

  Chance had been the most recent addition. Brock was the only holdout and while everyone had thought Vince would be the toughest cookie to convert, Chance knew Brock had a stubborn streak the length of the Mississippi.

  Chance succumbed to the safety of silence. He concentrated a few composure-restoring moments on trees, power poles, electric lines scrolling by the Illinois interstate that would bring them back to Refuge. Chance leaned back on the headrest and closed his eyes. He sought God with his whole heart and being.

  Chance knew Ben and Chloe understood the need. The moment. The silence. The grief trying to gobble him whole.

  “Mary’s n-not sure what h-happened. Cole Trevino, Refuge’s paramedic, told her to tell me he thinks Dad will b-be okay. But what if he’s h-h-had another stroke?” Chance squeezed his eyes against an unexpected and frustratingly strong torrent of tears that refused to be bottled up any longer. “Guys, I can’t lose an-n-nother—”

  His words were choked off by the fear and emotion that got the better of him. He never lost it like this. Never. He hadn’t even cried at his mother’s funeral. Well, maybe a tear. Or two. But no more. He couldn’t. He had to be strong for his dad, who wasn’t holding up well at all.

  And now, Chance had to be even stronger, a tough feat when he felt like a paper-thin vase made of intricate porcelain that life had just flung violently from a fifteen-story window. There was no way he could land safely and survive this blow of losing his mom and now news of Dad’s collapse.

  Ben set the cruise control at just over the speed limit. No sense in risking their lives or others’ to get to Chance’s dad.

  Chloe still held Chance’s hand. Her silence surprised him.

  “I could use a good dose of chatter about now,” Chance said.

  “God, please intervene,” Ben said.

  Chance fought the insane urge to laugh and decided not to tell Ben he meant Chloe. But of course, Ben would pray. It’s what he did, how he dealt. And right now, Chance needed a good helping of that too. Probably most of all.

  Ben continued, “Right now, right here, in this car, in that ambulance, in that hospital, please intervene.” Ben’s normally calm voice carried an urgent air of authority as he began to release words that took Chance aback. He wasn’t used to people praying out loud. Chloe nodded her head and held Chance’s hand just a little bit tighter.

  Chance agreed by closing his eyes and nodding as he listened to the rest of the words.

  “You are the Giver of life and the Lifter of our heads. Step in right now and show Yourself strong. Be with Chance and Ivan.” Ben broke into a spontaneous worship song.

  Chloe looked up, then back down.

  “Heal him, Lord, unless you have a better plan. We lift him up, Lord, to your wondrous hands. Lead us, Lord, to come alongside your work, and help us trust through things we cannot understand.”

  “Amen.” Chance let the word flow from his mouth, along with a couple of renegade tears that wrestled for release. He opened his watery eyes to find Chloe watching.

  S
he smiled so sweetly, it almost looked like she actually loved him.

  Regardless, God did. He’d draw strength from that.

  Chance envisioned himself as a little boy crawling up in God’s lap, just as he had with Ivan when he was little.

  An enormous sense of peace washed over Chance and infused him with calm that didn’t make sense in the midst of the call he had just received. How it happened, Chance wasn’t sure. But every semblance of fear lifted.

  If only this moment-by-moment missing of Mom would ease too.

  A long-forgotten memory of his main speech therapist praying for him entered his mind. How had he forgotten about that? Had prayer made the difference?

  If it worked back then, maybe it would work again now if the stutter didn’t go back into remission after his stress level eased.

  Six months ago Chance didn’t have the assurance that he was firmly God’s. But he had promised his mother when she’d become ill that he’d try to learn the ways of God, and Chance hadn’t broken that promise. In retrospect, he wondered if she made him promise because she sensed she was going to die, even though doctors were convinced she’d recover.

  The doctors had been wrong, but his mother had been exactly right about his need for God.

  In seeking God, he had discovered that God had been chasing him for years. At least now Chance knew he had God’s strength to rely on. Whatever he was about to face, whatever happened, he would get through it.

  He had to.

  His team depended on him, as did the people they risked their lives to rescue. People whose survival depended on every single member of their team being in top form, physically fit and of sound mind, will and emotions.

  As if sensing the steel return to Chance’s resolve despite facing the unknown, Ben squeezed Chance’s shoulder and removed his hand. “God will help you, bud. No matter what hardship you have to walk through in this life, He won’t let you walk it alone.”

  “And neither will we,” Chloe whispered.

  Chance swallowed at the sappy sentimentality. “Thanks.” He’d never been more grateful for friendship. Chloe, Ben, the team and the abiding hope that had latched on to Chance’s heart the day he’d handed it to Jesus made the difference. He just had to be reminded sometimes, and Ben’s prayer had done that.