Inside, curled up like she was sleeping, was a beautiful, blond-haired girl.
Fresh tears welled in Khaki’s eyes. They were too late.
But then she heard the unmistakable sound of a heartbeat. She exchanged looks with Xander and Cooper, then reached into the box and carefully pulled the girl out, hugging the tiny body to her chest.
Melissa sighed in her sleep and snuggled into Khaki’s neck, her small fingers curling against the straps of the tactical vest she wore. Khaki smoothed the girl’s wavy hair.
“It’s okay, Melissa,” she whispered. “You’re safe now.”
At the sound of Khaki’s voice, the girl lifted her head and looked around in confusion. There probably hadn’t been very much air in the box, so it wasn’t surprising she was disoriented. Plus, as far as the girl was concerned, it was dark as night down here.
“It’s okay,” Khaki said again. “You’re going to be okay. Your mommy sent us to come and get you.”
The girl looked around, her gaze going from Xander to Cooper. Then she turned and looked at Khaki again. “Why are all of your eyes so shiny?”
Khaki couldn’t help but smile as she hugged the girl closer. “Because we eat our carrots. You like carrots, don’t you?”
The girl rested her head on Khaki’s shoulder again. “Not really. They taste yucky. But I’ll eat them if they make my eyes shiny like yours.”
Khaki laughed, her gaze meeting Xander’s over the top of the little girl’s head. The look reflected in his gold eyes made her heart flip.
She cleared her throat. “How do we get out of here?”
Xander looked at that pile of wood farther up the tunnel. “Cooper, get a few of those four-by-fours. We’re digging our way out of here.”
Less than five minutes later, they broke through to the surface and climbed out of the ground to find themselves in the backyard of a house almost three blocks away from Reynolds’s. Khaki carried Melissa down the street to the cheers of onlookers, then carefully put the little girl back into her mother’s arms.
There were a lot of tears, some of them Khaki’s. She was filthy and beyond tired, but when she gave Melissa back to her mother, she’d never been happier in her life. Still smiling, she turned and did something that was probably very un-SWAT-like. She hugged Cooper, then threw her arms around Xander. While the hug she’d given Cooper was all about team and camaraderie and celebrating a job well done, the one she gave Xander was anything but. When that homemade bomb had gone off in the tunnel, he’d saved her life at the risk of his own. He’d believed in her when she hadn’t even believed in herself.
Khaki didn’t expect Xander to return the gesture, so when his strong arms went around her, she almost moaned. She settled for burying her face in his neck instead. Even covered in dirt, he smelled ah-mazing. She wasn’t sure why or how, but something told her things between them had changed.
Chapter 9
Khaki and the rest of the squad stayed to help with the cleanup operation. Once the DPD realized how bad the mess was, they’d called everybody—EOD, ATF, the fire department, even the state environmental office. It turned out that Reynolds had been brewing up batches of homemade explosives and storing them throughout his subterranean maze. Some of the tunnels had collapsed, trapping sensitive explosives and hazardous waste under hundreds of pounds of dirt. It would take a week to get all the contaminated soil out.
By the time they finished with the worst of it, the sun was setting. Khaki was starting to come down off her endorphin high and was more than ready to fall into bed. But they’d taken the suspect down alive and saved a little girl, getting her back to her mother in one, albeit slightly dirty, piece. Just as important, everyone on the team had made it through with no injuries. Even as new as she was to this SWAT thing, she recognized that today had been a big win.
Khaki was just telling the guys that she couldn’t wait to get home when Xander came over.
“No one’s going home yet,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked. “I thought we were finished here.”
“We are.” He grinned. “But I just finished briefing Sergeant Dixon on how well you did today and he decided you’re ready to come off limited-duty status. That means it’s time to celebrate.”
Beside her, a smiling Becker fist bumped an equally happy Cooper. On the other side of her, Hale, Max, and Alex were grinning too.
She looked at Xander. “Seriously? But it’s only been a week.”
“A week during which you’ve shown that you can do the job. So stop complaining.” His smile broadened. “Now let’s get back to the compound and clean up before the bars run out of booze.”
Khaki rode back with Cooper and Max, listening as Cooper once again related the story of how she’d found Melissa Kincaide simply by following the little girl’s scent.
“I couldn’t smell anything but dirt, chemicals, and stale sweat down there,” Cooper said. “But Khaki led us straight to the girl regardless of the fact that she was buried in a steel box under a foot of earth. That kid would have been dead in another ten minutes if it wasn’t for Khaki.”
Max glanced over his shoulder at her from the passenger seat. “That’s frigging epic.”
She felt her face color. “Don’t go giving me a medal yet. I probably would have gotten us all blown to pieces if it hadn’t been for Cooper and Xander.”
