Ricochet (Renegades #3)(47)
Author: Skye Jordan

And her phone rang.

But this time, she didn’t move to pick it up. Didn’t break his gaze. He felt her desire to jump. But there was a lot going on beneath her surface. Things he’d never claim to be able to understand but wanted to know nonetheless. Because—and wasn’t this a shitter—he cared.

After another ring, she growled and pulled away as she looked down at the display. Then slapped her palm to her forehead. The obvious melodrama made Ryker laugh.

“Why don’t you let me answer?” he said. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t call again for at least a day or two.”

She hit Ignore on her phone, then stuffed it back in her pocket with a familiar mischievous light twinkling in her eyes. . “I may take you up on that, Master Sargent Nathan Jefferson Ryker.”

He snorted at his official title and full legal name. “Someone’s been reading my file.”

Her smile kicked up with some heat. “Just the public information. I already know the important private details. And now I know you’re equally impressive in and out of bed.” She adjusted her pack and turned back toward the hill. “Are we going down the same way we came up?”

This was a good sign and gave Ryker a solid plan on settling Rachel’s nerves about their physical relationship. Showing her they could work together without issue, flirting without anyone thinking they were hooking up, could be the fastest way to get her back into bed.

He was thinking up the next step to getting closer—like naked-skin-to-skin closer—when his phone rang. He dropped his head back with, “Jesus Christ.”

Rachel laughed, the sound light now, pleasing Ryker to ridiculous levels. “It’s probably Jax telling us he’s here.”

As soon as he glanced at the display and saw the long-ass number on the screen, his stomach dropped. Instantly he transferred from a gorgeous country hillside to a dark room, the walls closing in on him. Fresh sweat popped out all over his body, and the breeze made it cold, creating gooseflesh.

Something touched his arm, and he startled.

“Hey.” Rachel stood in front of him, her hand still out, touching air where he’d jumped away from her. “Are you okay?”

Rachel’s words jerked him out of his mind slide. “Yeah. Sure.” He tapped Answer. “Ryker.”

His own voice sounded gravelly and breathless, and the second spanning the moment before someone spoke on the other end of the line stretched thin.

“Dude,” another man exclaimed. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

Chappie. It was Ken Chappie calling from Afghanistan. The sound of the man’s voice hit Ryker sideways. “Are you okay? Are the guys…” He couldn’t breathe. “Are the guys okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s fine. It’s hot as hell here and, well…you know,” his voice dipped with sadness and longing, “nothing’s ever really the same after something like that. Once a team is broken up, it’s…yeah.” He forced his voice up again. “But Ghost and Zero are still at each other the way they always are when you’re not around. Dune tries to buffer, but you know those two.”

“Yeah,” he managed, but relief almost brought him to his knees. Ryker’s muscles relaxed, and he leaned on the tripod for balance, closing his eyes. But his heart galloped in his chest, and he couldn’t catch his breath. “What’s new?”

“Nothing, bro. They build it, we destroy it. They hide it, we find it. Same old shit, different damn day.”

Now that immediate fear had dissipated, a spear of longing pierced his chest. His teammates were his family. His best friends. His stability. His sanity.

“Thanks for holding down the fort,” he said, then forced a joke—because that was the normal thing to do. “Did you call just to hear my voice?”

“I don’t miss you that bad,” he scoffed. “I’ve got good news. Carmello was finally released from Bethesda. He’s home in Santa Ynez with Julie and Travis. That’s only three hours from LA. Isn’t that awesome?”

Ryker’s mind started to split—one side telling him he should think that was amazing, the other urging him to go to ground. Michael Carmello was the only one of Ryker’s four teammates to come out of patrol that day alive. Once he’d been stabilized, Carmello had been shipped to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland for major surgery.

Ryker’s mind filled with the image of Carmello on the medic’s stretcher, his limbs piled where they should have been attached to his body, but weren’t. And reality fragmented like pixels in a pong game. The same panic he’d experienced that day flooded in, rising slowly, compressing his gut, his chest, his throat. “I thought…” he rasped. “I thought his recovery was going to take, like, a year.”

“He’s still got a long way to go, but he’s done with surgery.” Chappie continued with gory details—the use of cadaver cartilage, the movement of Carmello’s own muscle and bone, prosthetic preparation, skin graphs… But an incessant ring had picked up in Ryker’s ears at the word “surgery” and continued to grow.

Now it was so loud it filled Ryker’s head. So loud it knifed Ryker’s ears until he heard nothing. Just a hollow, underwater-like garble. Then the garble grew louder and louder as if rising to the surface, and exploded into Ryker’s head, as if he’d burst from the water screaming.

“Carmello! Carmello, stay with me. Medics! I need medics!”

“Is it…is it bad?”

“I got you, bro. You’re okay. Look at me now.”

“Holy fuck. Holy…where’s my…where’s my arm?”

“Where are the fucking medics? Eyes here, Carmello. Right here. On me. We’ve got this.”

“Ry? I…I can’t feel my legs…”

“Dude, don’t move. Look. At. Me.”

“Oh my God. Oh my…”

“Hold on, Mikey. Medics are coming. I’m right here.”

“No. Let me go, man. I’m already dead.”

“Shut the fuck up. No shit-talk, Carmello.”

“Get out of here, Ry.”

“I’m not leaving you. And you’re not fucking leaving me, asshole. Medics! I need medics over here!”

“Tell Julie and Travis—”

“Tell them yourself, because you’re not dying, Carmello. You hear me? That’s a fucking order!”