Ever Hayes - Redemption

Deacon yelled at Royce, “I’m going in. Find Twix.”

Deacon dropped into the water and swam toward the cell. Once there, he felt his way along the bars until he found Trigger’s limp body. Somehow Trigger’s head was safely above water. It only took a second to discover how. Sam was holding him up.

After the explosion, Sam had swum from the back wall to the bars, hoping to find a way through. Finding none, he’d nonetheless found Trigger unconscious and lifted him up to the air space above the water. “Get him out of here,” Sam yelled, clearly unable to hear himself—his ears likely ringing from the explosion. Deacon gave him a thumbs-up and pulled Trigger toward the opening. He made it to the corner and called out for Royce.

Royce had found Twix, also unconscious and bleeding profusely from the head. Royce tore a sleeve off his shirt and wrapped Twix’s head with that, checking him for any other wounds. He heard Deacon yelling for him and checked once more to make sure Twix was breathing before hurrying back to the corner. He helped lift Trigger out of the water as Trigger coughed and came to. He lay on his side in the mud, spitting up water as Royce held him up.

“Did it work?” Trigger finally gasped.

“I think so.” Royce looked down at Deacon. “This rain isn’t helping, but it’s still coming out faster than it’s going in.”

“Twix?” Trigger asked.

“Over there.” Royce pointed. “He got knocked out, but he should be fine too. All good down there?”

“No clue.” Trigger shook his head and slowly sat up.

Deacon swam back over to the bars. “Everyone okay?”

“What?” Sam yelled back.

It was a little lighter in the room now, thanks to the hole in the corner, but still not enough to where Sam could make out the words Deacon was mouthing to him. Finally Deacon heard a female voice. “We’re okay.” Reagan pulled herself up beside them. “I’ve got both girls with me. Neither of them can hear anything either though. That explosion really rattled our heads. I was the only one still plugging my ears when it went off, and my ears are still ringing.”

“You’re lucky.” Deacon smiled at her.

“Speaking of luck, how did this happen?” Reagan splashed the water with her hand. “What’s all this water? What happened to the soldiers?”

“Tsunami. It wiped everything out, flooded the whole place. Your captors never had a chance or warning with all the defense systems down.”

“Holy crap…”

“We’re not out of this yet, Reagan. But as long as you guys can hold yourselves above water, we’ll eventually pop the lid off this thing.”

“We’re good.” Reagan reached out and took Deacon’s hand. “I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Deacon laughed. “We’re almost there.”

Two hours later, they had dug their way through the original hole in the roof—directly over the cell—creating a gap big enough to lift the four of them out. The girls were lifted out first, and they shrieked and clapped like they’d won Survivor . Reagan was lifted out next, and she wrapped her arms tightly around each member of the Pack, planting a huge kiss on each of them, followed by the most sincere and emotional “thank you.” Sam was pulled up last, and finally they could ask him how he’d survived—though it took them multiple tries before he could read their lips correctly.

“When Lazzo brought the girls here, he told the men where I’d fallen from the boat,” Sam shouted. Reagan got him to lower his voice a little, and he continued. “I was swimming back towards Redemption when they found me. Lazzo told them the entire mission would be blown if they didn’t bring me in. I don’t know for sure that Lazzo told them to keep me alive, but I suspect as much—or why wouldn’t they have killed me? I think if Lazzo had wanted to kill me with his shot, he easily could have. He was only eight feet away. Bullet went straight through.” Sam showed everyone the scar just below his right collarbone. “I think he hoped I’d live.”

The Pack members listened and looked at each other. Lazzo had been a trained military operative in Libya. That was possible.

“Do we know anything about Hayley?” Sam asked. He sat down on a pile of bricks, his eyes moving from face to face—anxious for anyone to mouth a reply or nod their head. He looked like he was anticipating bad news.

Deacon knelt beside him. “No one knows where they are. Last Damien heard from Danny, they were still in Colorado.”

“But Hayley was still alive?” Sam was shouting again.

Royce nodded. “Yes.”

Sam breathed a deep sigh of relief. That was all he could ask for right now.

“What about my mom?” Everyone turned to look at Emily.

This time Reagan was the one to speak. “That was the first thing I asked them, honey. They haven’t heard from her in a while.” She was careful to mask her concerns regarding the devastating storm surge. “But we’re going to go find out as soon as we can.”

The Pack had left their tablets and dog tags in a duffel bag off the property before they’d breached it. There was no telling where that bag was now. Deacon and Royce set off to try to find a way to message Damien for a pick-up. The rain continued to pummel Kauai, but the rest of them had found enough debris to at least create a small shelter.

Deacon and Royce rejoined the group two hours later. “Damien says ninety minutes.” Deacon flashed them a thumbs up. “Before 4:00 a.m. They’ll pick us up and we’ll all go to Redemption.”

“What did they say about my mom?” Emily asked.

“Nothing. Sorry. We forgot to ask.” Royce replied.

“Storm should be mostly gone by then.” Deacon added, glancing up at the rain. “Everything we saw looks like this.” He gestured at the mess surrounding us. “Like the aftermath of an EF4 tornado back home in Oklahoma… That’s an insane storm surge.”

The devastation was hard to believe, but Deacon knew—all of us did—that without the wave the girls and Sam would probably have been dead soon. Circumstances in Colorado had gotten so bad so fast, it was only a matter of time until the Libyan commander had called in the order to finish them off. But the good fortune here would mean little with bad fortune elsewhere.

Reagan knew Royce had lied to Emily about her mother—she’d seen it written all over Deacon’s face when he’d let Royce answer. That meant they had bad news, but Reagan couldn’t ask them about it now—not in front of Emily.

She waited for the opportunity to pull him aside and when she finally got it she was blunt with Deacon. “Don’t BS me—what do you know about Redemption?”

He turned away from the girls and leaned in towards Reagan. “It’s not good.”

In the movie Happy Gilmore, when everything is going wrong for the namesake protagonist, he is urged to find his “happy place.” That location is not geographical but imaginative, and while ludicrous in Gilmore’s case, Ryan, being the dork he was, always used to urge me—when I was sad or moody—to find my own “happy place.”

The problem was Ryan was my “happy place.” When I was sick, or missing my parents, or struggling with anything else, he was the one who lifted me up. He physically and emotionally lifted me up. He had his corny jokes, his incessant flirting, his inappropriate pinching, and his impeccable terrible timing. He had everything that made me smile when I needed it. I knew that. I always knew that, yet when I lost Emily, I placed all the blame on Ryan. He knew that. I know he knew that.