She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, racked by great, agonizing sobs wrenched from the darkest depths of her soul. Her heart physically ached from the crushing sense of loss.
The hiss of the ops center door barely registered before Caleb was kneeling beside her and circling his arms around her.
Cole said, “Caleb—”
“I’ve got her.” Caleb held her tight, as if worried she might break apart.
Too late—she was already shattered into a million pieces.
“We’re going in after Boone,” her boss replied. “Hawk, Calliope, you’re with me. Eddie and Viking, keep watch for Udall. Lucas, find someplace safe to hide the girls and stay with them.”
Hearing everyone’s names, especially Calliope’s, was a harsh reminder that Luna wasn’t the only one facing an excruciating loss.
Boone’s words came back to her, “Make no mistake, Luna—you are our lifeline.”
Dammit, he was right.
She needed to pull her shit together—her team needed her.
Boone needed her.
Luna sucked in a few deep beaths and blew them out slowly.
“I’m okay, Caleb.” She would fall apart later. Right now, she had work to do.
He held her slightly away from him and looked her in the eye. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Luna nodded, and he lowered his arms.
She swiped the useless tears from her face, pushed up from the floor, and rolled her chair back to the console to sit down.
Upon checking the feeds from all of their body cams, she could tell Calliope was running past the destroyed columns and into the tomb.
Her attention shifted from one video monitor to the next, ending on Lucas’s. He spoke gently and with extreme compassion to the scared group of girls, reassuring them they would be okay, as he guided them to a …
Luna must be hallucinating.
She tapped a few keys, leaned closer, and zoomed in on the image from his body cam.
He was holding back the branches of a willow tree so the girls could duck beneath the boughs. Once the last one was through, they all huddled together on the far side of the space.
Lucas held a finger to his lips. “Shhh.” The girls quieted.
Once they were well hidden, he let the branches fall back into place, stood with his back to the tree, and kept watch for any threats.
She was immediately yanked back to her time with Boone, beneath his own special willow tree. That’s when she’d begun to fall in love with him.
She listened, hoping and praying to hear his voice.
There was nothing but the sound of the team’s boots cutting through the eerie silence as they ran to find their teammate.
Surely, life couldn’t be so cruel and unfair as to take away the only man she ever loved, could it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Boone’seyesflickeredopen,and he stared up at acoustical ceiling tiles. There was an overhead sprinkler in the center of one of them with a nasty water spot surrounding it.
Wait a minute. Ceiling tiles? What happened to the jagged rock?
