Page 67 of Broken SEAL'S Secret Baby
Cece gives an extra little bounce on her daddy’s lap. Charles gives a muffled cry of pain and turns white as a sheet.
“Daddy?” Cece turns to her father, sliding off his lap.
“Sorry, Punkin, Daddy doesn’t feel so good,” he grits out between clenched teeth.
“Charles! Your hip?” I kneel down at his side, gently easing Cece away from her father.
“Yes,” he nods. His face is white, with two high spots of color on his cheeks.
“Old war wound?” Gregory asks.
“Yes,” I affirm. “He has an artificial hip, and it has been giving him trouble for several months. But he has a deathly fear of hospitals. His wife,” I swallow, knowing the information about myself I was giving up here, “passed away in the spring. She was hospitalized for Covid.”
“Mommy went to heaven,” Cece confirms. “The big heaven where it is too far to come back.”
“That’s tough,” Gregory says. Then he speaks into a microphone attached to his lapel. “Call off the teams, the girl is found. But we got a wounded warrior here, needs the special trauma unit.”
He listens a moment, and into the silence, Charles says, “Kate…you and James have custody. Manuela knows where the papers are. Tell her, thanks for everything.”
“Charles Emory,” I snap, fear making my tone sharper than I intended. “You are going to live through this. You have a bum hip, not a fatal disease.” Then I soften my voice. “Gregory knows all the right people. He’ll get you there, and Cece and I won’t be far behind. James might be a little longer, since he’s under observation for concussion.”
I know that Charles knows that. But it doesn’t hurt to remind him that he isn’t the only ‘wounded warrior.’
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just it hurts like hell, Katie. Don’t tell Cece.”
“I’m right here, and I’m sorry, Daddy,” Cece says, her lower lip trembling.
“Not your fault, Punkin,” Charles says, pulling himself together for his daughter’s sake. “Just a dirty old mine someone forgot and left in the road.”
“We got you covered, sir,” Gregory says. “I’ll witness your intent to leave your daughter with Kate. Just hang in there; we’re going to airlift you to KC. There’s a guy there who is the best with artificial hips.”
After that, there is a flurry of activity, and Charles is bundled into a mummy bag and loaded onto the helicopter that had landed at the hospital.
James is wheeled back to the hospital for observation, and Grace doesn’t want to leave him. So Larry winds up being our driver for the long road trip home. Our car is surrounded by guys from Gregory’s reserve unit, their jeeps easy to spot in spite of the growing dusk.
I ride shotgun while Cece sleeps in the back, worn out from all her adventures.
“Who are you, really?” I ask Larry.
“FBI. We knew that Mr. Emory had been getting death threats, and kidnapping threats, but we didn’t know why. I was working as a custodian, hoping we could get some idea of what was going on. It was a stroke of luck, or so we thought, that he liked my military record and hired me as part of his security.”
“You suspected him of something?” I ask indignantly.
Larry shrugs, looking sheepish. “His wife had some odd connections. You know, Doctors without Borders...”
“That’s not odd!” I protests. “That’s humanitarian!”
“I could tell you stories,” Larry says. “But in her case, you are right. She was a bleeding-heart, liberal humanitarian who lived her creed. The world lost a good person when she passed.”
I sigh, glancing back towards Cece. “I’m glad. I wouldn’twant to have to be the one to tell her daughter she was anything else. But why was Cece kidnapped?”
Now it is Larry’s turn to sigh. “Bunch of idiot kids playing politics. We picked up the four that took Cece off the boat. We had to rappel down and get them, after we rescued Cece. She’d managed to disable their boat, so they had a choice of climbing or swimming. Seems they were too heavy to climb, and none of them knew how to swim. Don’t know how that little girl managed it, but she’s going to be a formidable woman someday.”
I feel a flush of pleasure at his praise of my star pupil. “What about the kids? Did they talk?”
“Oh, yeah. Didn’t even take much persuasion to get everything out of them. They were holed up in this old motel off campus near Point Lookout. Had some weed, bunch of pamphlets of all sorts, and some peyote. No meth, thank the powers that be. There’s more to it, I’m sure, but these four are out on bail, released into parental custody.”
“You suspect something more?” I ask.
