Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

Despite his anguish, Danny knew they had to keep going. He knew Kate was waiting for him, and he knew Hayley was dying inside with him. This wasn’t his loss alone, but it felt like it was his fault. He’d walked them right into those lions. He couldn’t compare it to losing his mother, but he didn’t remember ever feeling worse. If we hadn’t needed Danny as much as we did, I don’t know what losing his best friend would have done to him. But at that moment, Cameron’s last words reminded Danny of Jenna. Cameron needed him to keep going. He needed them to make it back to the cave. I don’t know how a twenty-year-old gets to be more mature than a man nearly twice his age, but Danny handled it better than I had handled Sophie’s death… by a mile. I could only credit that to his mother’s strength. Sophie would have had that courage, too.

Danny picked up his best friend and somehow carried him down several steep cliffs and across the face of Bighorn Mountain on his own. He wouldn’t let anyone else carry Cameron. This was his burden. Hayley and Blake respected his wishes and stayed ahead of him with Abbey. Hayley constantly checked behind her to make sure Danny was still with them and to help out the few times he needed it, but no one said a word to him.

She knew he was going to blame himself for this. She figured he’d probably even be a little short with Reagan and Abbey. There was no way he could help it. Cam had risked his life to save Abbey, and it had cost him. It had cost Danny. It had cost all of us who loved Cameron. We lost a lot of strength, smiles, and security that day.

As they closed to within a hundred yards of the cave, I saw them. And they saw me. The first thing I noticed was the little girl with Hayley. Yes! They found her . I was about to call back down the tunnel when I noticed Danny was carrying someone. Even without using the binoculars I held, I could see who Danny was carrying, and my hands started shaking. I could tell by their faces it was bad, if not the absolute worst. My mind went to the same place theirs was at that moment. It went to Jenna. And I went inside to find her.

I led her up the tunnel towards the ledge as Dad lifted open the front door. Blake stepped through with Abbey, and Reagan swept her up. Tara gave Blake a big hug, and then Hayley entered. Mom and Kate were there with open arms to meet her. Jenna could hear people coming in and was trying to see past me, to move past me, asking why I wouldn’t let her go, but I held her back.

“Jenna,” I said, shaking my head. It registered an instant before Danny stepped through the entry with Cameron. She covered her mouth with both hands and let out a stifled scream. Everyone in the room froze and looked at Jenna, then back at Danny, who gently set Cameron on the floor, stood up, and walked towards Jenna.

“No no no no no no noooo,” she cried, collapsing on the floor.

Danny knelt beside her and pulled her against him. “I’m so sorry. Jenna, I’m—” I could see tears running down his face.

“How could you?” she wailed, and I saw Danny bite his lip.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

Reagan was in a difficult place. She was hugging her little sister tightly to her and wanted more than anything to celebrate her return, but the mood in the room was anything but celebratory. It was clear Cameron had played a significant role in our lives. But then, I figured she had to be wondering what anyone knew about her dad…and she was probably afraid to ask. She didn’t yet know anyone other than Jenna well enough, and this was obviously not the time to ask her anything.

She knelt down beside her little sister and whispered to her. Tara took Emily over to introduce her to Abbey. Mom was trying to heat up some soup for Hayley, Abbey, and Blake. We knew Danny wouldn’t eat anything. He had walked up the tunnel to the back entrance with Kate and Jenna, no doubt trying to help Jenna any way possible.

I kept my eyes on Reagan and called Blake over. He wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and joined me at the tunnel entrance. “Blake. What happened down there?” I asked. I knew Danny wouldn’t be in the mood to talk.

He told me about everything that had happened at the hotel, about the Secret Service agents, the bunker, and the escape. Then he described the mountain lion attack. Cameron’s uniform had protected his body but not his throat. A major artery had obviously been nicked, because there had been no way to stop the blood flow completely and no way to get him here fast enough. It could have happened to anyone, but it didn’t.

I listened in disbelief. Of all the threats we each had worried about, mountain lions were probably not on anyone’s mind. You had to almost feel sorry for the dumb cats now. They’d made an enemy of a man who wasn’t going to forget what they’d done. Two dead ones barely scratched the surface of how many lions Danny probably wanted to take down.

I was about to ask what we knew about Reagan’s dad when Blake started telling me about the helicopter. He told me Danny was absolutely certain the soldiers had followed their tracks up the valley to the ledge… that the people in the helicopter knew they were there and still let them go.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I argued. “They needed Abbey, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what this all was about?”

“Well…” Blake paused.

“What?” I asked.

“Maybe they didn’t need her anymore.”

I could see Blake actually believed that. “But the only way that would be true is if the vice president had already talked or if—” Then I paused.

“He were dead,” Blake finished for me.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

“Danny says he’s dead,” Blake said, nodding up the tunnel behind us.

“But how would he know that?” I asked, aware someone was walking up behind me.

I glanced back as Danny brushed past us in a direct line towards Reagan. “Because I gave him the pill,” he said.

When the helicopter landed back in Denver, Eddie instantly sought out the guard with the keys who had been in the room with the vice president. He wasn’t hard to find. He was back at his regular post at the base prison. He and Lazzo convinced his superior—with a case of beer—to allow him an early lunch, even though it wasn’t yet 11 a.m. “Thirty minutes,” the officer said. “He’s not supposed to leave.”

“No problem,” Eddie replied.

They took the guard around the corner of the building and Eddie pulled his gun, placing it against the man’s temple. “What happened in that room?”

The man spilled everything. He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t have a tough side. He was a prison guard because his brother was an officer in the Qi Jia military and volunteered him for the job. He accepted the post to satisfy his brother and contribute to the cause. That was it. It was all he could do to keep from crying. Eddie didn’t even need the gun, so eventually he put it away. His huge stature was more than intimidating enough. The man begged them not to share with anyone what he told them. Neither Eddie nor Lazzo had any intention of doing so.

The man told them the Russian commander had been eager to get information from the vice president. As soon as Eddie flew down to the Stanley Hotel, the Russian was in the room with the VP, telling him they were going after his daughter. When the first radio call came up about the gunfight, he burst into the room and told the VP they had trapped her in the lower level of the Stanley Hotel. The prison guard watched as the vice president began weeping. The Russian kept pushing him to talk, and finally the American man nodded and began moving his hand as if to indicate he needed a pen. Ah, the pen and paper.