Page 82 of Fade (Fighting Fate)

“Imagine if it’s a girl,” Kaeli said, eyes wide with mock horror. “It’s going to take one brave boy to face all the uncles she has. I can just see Noah now. He’ll be running background checks on anyone who tries to even friend her on Facebook.”

Amber’s expression turned dreamy as she faced Kaeli. “Ah . . . Noah . . . I think I’ll be forever jealous of you with him. Why haven’t we seen him lately?”

Kaeli laughed as we moved toward the kitchen. “I’m hiding him from you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. As if that boy even sees anyone else but you. Fuck, he’s hot.”

Jess grabbed some glasses from the cupboard. “I kind of have to agree with you there. Noah and Daniel have some serious swag going on. You’re both freaking bitches.”

Sliding into a chair at the table, I grinned. “I’d say I’m sorry, but . . . ”

“I have to say it definitely runs in the family for Noah, though,” Jess said, lifting herself up to sit on the counter. “I see Eli on campus all the time and almost trip over my tongue, he’s that freaking hot.”

Kaeli laughed. “Welcome to my life. I feel like an airhead when I’m around those boys. I swear, they have the capability to make you forget your own name sometimes.”

“And melt,” I added, thinking of every time I’d been wrapped in Daniel’s arms. “Like seriously boneless. They’re all dangerous.”

Amber huffed. “Yeah, yeah. You’re all surrounded by hot guys wherever you go. Whatever. I’ll find my own tatted and pierced hottie one day.”

I laughed, but inside, all I wanted was for my hottie to come home to me and our baby. It would be every wish and prayer I would whisper until it came true. It was all I had.

Chapter 42

Daniel

Deployed time: 10 weeks

The incoming sound was ominous. With bated breath, we watched and we waited. Darkness pressed in from all directions, raising the tension inside the compound a little more with every breath we took. Chaos was imminent.

And then it was above us like a shadow, almost invisible in the obscurity of the cloud-covered night, but its presence was undeniable. As the sound of the fighter jet passed, I felt myself pause, holding the breath inside me as my heart thundered out an abnormally fast beat.

Less than two seconds later, the bomb reached its target.

Just like the two airstrikes in the weeks before this one, the explosion stunned me. The fo

rce of it could be felt for miles. The bomb’s own power was enough to flatten the building it hit, but when it combined with the weaponry concealed inside, the result was terrifying.

Fire rose like an angry cloud, reaching high into the atmosphere, lighting up the destruction that now lay beneath it in a pile of dust and rubble. As the thunder of explosions lessened, and the reverberations of the falling rubble diminished, screams began to pierce the air like ghosts in a non-existent wind.

In this deep darkness of hot, dry night, the sound was chilling. Even when I knew it was coming. It still haunted me. And I knew with a sickness inside my soul, it would be a sound that would stay with me until my very last dying breath.

The call to move out was sharp and pressing. Just like the previous two strikes the week before, it was imperative we follow immediately with ground force while the enemy was still reeling. Lives depended on it.

Over the two weeks we’d been camped out on the remote northern outskirts of the city of Raqqa, our recon runs had managed to locate two separate holding cells where the Islamic State had imprisoned a number of Yazidi families. With the Kurds leading the rescue, we were to assist in their retrieval. Tonight.

I tried to keep my head directly in the task at hand, but after listening to the stories of what they were most likely doing to the young girls and women they had in captivity, it was fucking hard. My mind kept going to Amy, picturing her in the same situation, and it sparked the darkest of black rage inside me I’d ever known.

With focused movements, we filtered into the city like silent shadows. Explosions were still piercing the air around the weapons store point, followed by sporadic bouts of machine-gun fire. The latter made me increasingly nervous. I knew we didn’t have any men that far in the city just yet, so I sincerely hoped they were just shooting out of confusion or as a warning, and not eliminating prisoners.

Following Nelson down a darkened alley, I held my rifle at the ready, scanning the surrounding area through my night-vision goggles as we moved. At the end, Sergeant Cooper gave a signal to halt and crouch, while the Kurds cleared a busted gate for us to proceed.

Shouts and more gunshots came, this time deeper in the city, closer to where I knew we needed to go. The facility the Yazidis were being held in was a strategic one. From the intel we could gather from the most recent satellite images, it was very close to where a large quantity of Jihadists camped out. Extracting the prisoners was going to be dangerous.

Moving down the bomb-torn streets, we edged around the city, quickly and steadily moving closer to our target destination. The hand motions from the Kurds leading the assault told us we were close.

Sergeant Cooper paused, his signal alerting us to hold. Tension rose. The second we heard it, the shouts began.

The fighter jet flew past at lightning speed, loosing another deadly strike, this time the impact so close I felt my bones rattle inside me.

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