ROMANCE: Military: SEALED BY APACHE (Military Soldier Navy SEAL Romance) (Alpha Male Billionaire Bad Boy Romance Short Stories) (154 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The police officer drove them to the scene.  Belinda could tell that being in the back of the police car was making Ben tense.  He had a look on his face like a caged bear.  He kept sweeping his eyes around the inside of the car, darting them out the windows, as if looking for an escape route.  She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.  He gave her a smile in return, but it did little to ease his nerves.

They parked a block down from where Abraham’s old office was.  There was construction equipment at the front of the building, sitting idle for the moment.  There were police cars and fire trucks and EMT units everywhere.  The officer opened the back door of the car and they slid out with eyes wide.

“Holy shit,” Ben said.  He took Belinda’s hand.  “Come on.”

They followed the officer to the front of the building where he handed them over to the officer in charge.  They looked at the building in horror.  It was in the last stages of demolition.  Most of the third floor was already gone.

Ben worked construction; he knew the crews had already gutted most of the structure to make it easier for the bulldozer and crane to tear the building down.  He knew it wasn’t safe for anyone to be inside there, especially an old man who couldn’t even tell you his name.

“Captain Phillips,” the officer said, holding out his hand.  “The officer radioed that you think you know the old gentleman in there?”

“He’s my father,” Ben said.

“He has Alzheimer’s,” Belinda said, breathless.  “This was his office building.  His office was on the second floor, that front window there.  His name is Abraham Banner.”

The officer nodded and jotted Abraham’s name on a pad.  He used the pen to gesture at the building.  “OK, that makes sense because we spotted him looking out that window earlier, but he ignored us.  We haven’t seen him in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Can I go in and get him?” Ben asked. 

The officer shook his head.  “No, sir, too dangerous.  The construction foreman said they have the place ready for destruction.  Most of the internal supports have been taken down.  It’s not safe for anyone to go inside.  Honestly, we don’t know how he made it up the stairs without them collapsing.  The floor beneath him – hell, the entire place could collapse at any minute.  The firemen are looking at the blueprints with the foreman now to make sure that front wall will hold up.  The plan is to put a ladder up to that window and pull him out.”

“He won’t come out for you,” Ben said, staring at the window.

The cop huffed.  “Son, he won’t have a choice.  He either comes out that window with a fireman or goes down with the building.  Ben gave the cop a look that clearly said he was lucky to still have his head attached to his shoulders.  Belinda put a hand to Ben’s chest and gently pushed him back.

“So all we can do is wait,” Belinda said to the cop. 

“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

“Ok, thanks.”  When she turned around Ben was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Ben knew the old building like the back of his hand.  It had been his father’s office for as long as he could remember.  He quickly made his way through the crowd and went down the side street, then climbed over the eight foot tall construction fence that was erected at the back of the building.  He was glad to find no cops or fireman there since all the action was happening out front.

The alleyway behind the building was strewn with bricks and concrete blocks and building materials and scaffolding.  The backdoor and first floor windows had been covered by thick sheets of plywood.  Ben put his fingers along the edge of the plywood blocking the door and tried to pry it loose, but it was secured by a few dozen screws. 

He took a few steps back to survey the scene.  There was a dumpster sitting against the far end of the back of the building.  If he climbed on top of the dumpster he could reach the metal fire escape ladder that led to a small landing outside an open window on the second floor.     

Ben easily climbed onto the dumpster and hoisted himself up the ladder, the muscles in his shoulders and arms used to heavy lifting.  He stepped onto the metal landing and found it shaky beneath his feet. 

The glass was gone from the window.  He paused for a second to look inside.  Inside, the building was dark, but he could tell it had been readied for destruction.  The room he was looking into was a landmine of broken boards, bricks, and trash.  He could see the hallway beyond the open door.  His father’s office was at the end of the hallway, the last door to the right.

He crawled inside the window and tested the floor beneath his boots.  He felt it give a little, but he thought it was firm enough.  He proceeded slowly, moving along the edges of the wall, step by step, until he was out of the office and into the hallway.

The floor along the hallway creaked beneath his boots.  He pressed himself to the inside wall and side stepped until her reached the door that had “Abraham Banner, CPA” still visible on the opaque glass.  The door was ajar.  He pushed it open and saw his father sitting on the floor in the corner where his office chair used to be.

Ben took a careless step into the room and his foot went through the floor up to his knee.  He managed to catch his palms on the floor to keep from going all the way through.  Dust fell from above, covering him in a film of white. 

“Shit,” he said, managing to get his foot out of the hole.  Abraham didn’t look up.  He didn’t seem to realize that anyone was there.

Ben crawled slowly to the window.  He peered out at the crowd below.  He spotted Belinda standing by the officer in charge, wringing her hands and looking up at him.  He smiled and she smiled back.

A fireman with a bullhorn called up to him.  “We’re going to put the ladder up to you.  Can you get him to the window?”

Ben gave the fireman a thumbs up, then turned to Abraham.  “Dad,” he said, holding out his hand.  “We have to go.  Take my hand.”

Abraham was sitting with his knees up and his forearms across them.  He was resting his chin on his hands, staring into space with tears in his eyes.

Ben held up a finger to the fireman to indicate that he needed a minute.  He crawled to where Abraham was sitting and sat next to him on the floor. 

Ben was quiet for a minute, just listening to Abraham breath.  Then he leaned in and quietly said, “Rough day at the office, dad?”

Abraham blinked for a moment.  He lifted his chin and turned his face toward Ben and smiled.  “No rougher than most, son,” Abraham said.  It was an exchange they’d had every day for fifteen years as Ben would greet his father coming through the door.

Ben put an arm around Abraham’s shoulders and pulled him close.  He said, “I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you, dad.  I was an idiot.  If I could do it all over again…”  Ben sniffed back tears.  “I’m sorry I wasted so many years not being your son.”

Abraham looked at the large man sitting next to him and for a moment, clarity came.  He put a hand on Ben’s knee and said, “No, I’m the one who’s sorry.  I was a fool.”

Ben looked his father in the eye.  He thought he saw recognition there.  He was almost afraid to ask, but had to know.  “Dad, do you recognize me?”

Abraham gave him a tired smile and rested his head on Ben’s chest.  In a whisper, he said, “I love you, son.”

Ben wrapped his arms around his father and pulled him closer.  For a moment, Abraham hugged him back, then his grip loosened and his body went limp.  Ben pulled back, fearing the worst and finding it.  The light in Abraham Banner’s eyes had finally gone out.

Ben wiped away his tears and got to his feet.  The floor cracked and for a moment, he thought he was about to go through.  He lifted his father off the floor like a child.  Abraham probably didn’t weight a hundred pounds, a shell of the man he once was, though the realization that his father was gone weighed on Ben’s heart like a boulder. 

He carried Abraham to the window and found a fireman already waiting at the top of the ladder.  He could see Belinda at the front of the crowd below, her hands covering her face, realizing the truth.

Ben kissed Abraham’s forehead and handed him off to the fireman. 

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Per the terms of his will, Abraham Banner was laid to rest between his two wives.  Belinda remembered him laughing the day he made the final arrangements with the funeral home.

“I’ll have Elizabeth on one side and Homira on the other,” he said with a broad grin, gesturing with his hands.  “Lord help me, I’ll
never
get any peace!”

Ben sat on the back porch watching Ari play on the new swing set he’d just erected for her.  Belinda came out the back door with a big glass of iced tea and handed it to her husband.   With his free hand, he helped her sit on the steps beside him.

“God, I feel like a whale,” Belinda said, rubbing the sides of her huge belly with her hands.  “I don’t know if I can last another month.”

“Well, Mrs. Banner, I think you’re beautiful,” Ben said, leaning over to kiss his wife on top of the head.

“No, she’s beautiful,” Belinda said with a satisfied smile. 

“She gets it from her mommy.”

“OK, I’ll give you that.” 

Belinda was the happiest she’d ever been in her entire life.  She had a beautiful daughter and a new son on the way. 

She had a handsome, hard working husband who took great care of them both. 

Abraham had left them a sizable nest egg they’d use for the kid’s college someday, and the perfect house to raise a family in.

Belinda closed her eyes and took a deep breath, waiting for a message from Karma.  The only things that came back were good thoughts.

“I love you,” Ben said, pulling her close.

“I love you, too,” she said with a sigh.  “You really are a good man.”

THE END

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SEALED

BY

APACHE

A Navy SEAL Romance

By

Cassandra Cole

He was getting too damned old for this shit, John Harper thought, struggling to catch his breath.  The SEAL team commander known by his codename
Apache
, unclipped the harness and let the hundred-pound pack slip down his shoulders and off his arms.  He took off his t-shirt and mopped the sweat from his face with it. 

He pulled a water bottle from the pack and drained it dry as he looked at his watch.  Five miles in thirty minutes with a hundred-pounds of gear on his back.  Not bad for an old man, especially considering the scorching sun above that was baking his dark face and the Iraqi landscape around him.

He pulled a second bottle of water from the pack and poured it over his face and head.  Even though every muscle in his body was screaming, pushing the envelope sure felt good. 

He took a few minutes to rest, then pulled on the wet t-shirt, strapped on the pack, and started back toward the base at a steady jog.

Harper was pushing forty-five, which was the upper age limit for most Navy SEALs. It was at this age that most men started staying stateside permanently – riding desks on bases and settling into comfortable routines -- certainly not doing ten mile runs in the frickin’ Iraqi dessert.

Maybe that’s why Harper kept pushing himself.  He would rather have a stroke on the side of this road than ride a desk for the rest of his career.  Maybe he was just a glutton for punishment.  Or maybe he was just too damned stubborn to quit.

Harper figured he would retire when his body stopped supporting all the bullshit he put it through – and he was still a long way from that. He had passed his most recent PT test a month ago, and outpaced sailors a decade younger than him.

His father had always told him to treat his body as a temple, something he’d never done.  “You only got one body, boy.  You better take care it.” 

Too bad the old man didn’t follow his own advice.  A heavy smoker and drinker all his life, he died from lung cancer before his son reached fifteen.  Do as I say, son, not as I do...

He might have lived longer, Harper knew, but things had never been easy for the Harper men.  Still weren’t easy.

One of the reasons he was much more at home in the Middle East than he was stateside was the blood flowing through his veins.  He was a full blooded Apache Indian – a dying breed in the modern world.

Harper’s mother had died bringing him into the world, and so his father was all he had.  His old man had raised him off his job as manager of a general store outside Phoenix.  Times were always hard, money was always tight, but the old man said they had it better than most and Harper never argued with his dad, lest he find himself flat of his back in the dirt.

Until the cancer took him, his father had been a powerful man, standing over six and a half feet, with a broad chest and shoulders and hair the color of crow’s wings. From a young age, Harper had known not do disobey his father. To do so meant a lesson that he wouldn’t soon forget. 

Harper learned all the old traditions from his maternal grandfather, a shaman in the tribe, a man of great knowledge and respect. He grew up learning how to tan animal skins, grow fragrant herbs, and create handmade weapons that their neighbors always tried to convince his father to sell.

His grandfather wouldn’t sell a thing.  He would only give them away.  “This is how we share our culture,” the old man attested. It was his father who would steal the items and sell them out of his junk car to tourists in town, then use the money for booze and gambling and women.

To the day he died and long after, Harper resented the way his father robbed them of a better life.  For awhile, he thought he was just young, stupid, and unappreciative.

He was teased in their community for being the only one without a traditional Apache name, and for having a father that refused to bend to the society that ate up more of their land every day. His father told Harper many times that he had been given a white man’s name so that he might avoid the strife his ancestors faced.

His father had even gone so far as to legally change their last name to Harper – a “good white man’s name”.  Another thing to resent him for.

After his old man died, Harper found himself in a bad place. He was barely into his teens, and shuffled into a system that could give two shits about his heritage, who he was, or what he became.

Their house was sold to pay off debts, and aside from a few pieces he managed to keep for sentimental purposes, all his grandfather and father’s possessions were sold, as well, for perhaps a tenth of what they were really worth.

Harper had done his best to
not
be Native American. He was tired of all the name calling in his foster home, of picking fights that he won for sheer size, and of being something that he wasn’t. He didn’t have his grandfather’s knowledge of his father’s balls. Why couldn’t he just be an “American” like everyone else? 

He’d starting drinking at fifteen, and hard drugs came not long after. He ran away from his foster homes more times than he could count, and pretty soon, no one wanted to take him in anymore. He was a hateful, violent teenager – and he blamed his father for it all.

Change had only come after he’d almost killed himself in a stolen car.  Harper stole his foster mom’s car and took it for a joyride, high on some drug cocktail he couldn’t remember and half a bottle of cheap booze. He ran off the road and crashed into a tree, cracking his skull on the windshield and breaking half the bones in his body.

He would have burned to death in the wreckage if it hadn’t been for Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Hicks; a Navy officer who was passing by and spotted the car smashed into the tree with flames licking from under the hood. He pulled the broken teenager from the wreckage and kept him alive until paramedics arrived.

When the young man came around, he wished he
had
died.  His entire body was broken and bruised and burned.  He could barely breathe on his own and couldn’t swallow due to inhaling the fumes from the fire.  He was in for a long recovery that would include multiple operations, skin grafts, and physical therapy that would make most men bawl like little babies.  And the worst part was: he was totally alone.  Or so he thought.

Colonel Hicks came every day to see him.  Harper was resistant at first, not trusting the Navy SEAL’s motives for visiting.  “Nobody’s ever given two shits about me,” Harper said in a pained, hoarse whisper.  “I don’t need you to be the first.”

Hicks ignored the bitter young man’s protests and kept coming back every day.  Over time Harper came to appreciate the company of the straight-laced Navy man, who was a good talker and a good listener. He listened when no one would, and helped Harper come to terms with all the pain that had eaten away at him for years. He helped Harper heal the emotional and physical scars.  A friendship was formed that would last both men for life.

When Harper was finally discharged from the hospital, Hicks invited him to move in with him and his wife until her could get his life sorted out.  Harper resisted at first, then realized he had nowhere else to go.  He reluctantly agreed – though he told Hicks that he was old enough to care for himself.

As it turned out, some to care was
exactly
what Harper needed. It took two full years before he was back to his old self.  During that time, Hicks worked with him not only on strengthening his body, but also on enhancing his mind in ways that didn’t involve getting high. He gave up the drugs and the alcohol – though it was far from easy – and started to remember what his father taught him.

He needed to preserve his temple.  It had been terribly destroyed once.  He couldn’t let that happen again.

Hicks, a Navy SEAL commander, encouraged him to look into his roots, to be proud of his heritage rather than running from it. He would never be able to come to terms with his past until he embraced it for the future.

So that was exactly what Harper did. He returned to Phoenix and lived there for two years, in the poverty-stricken community where he had grown up. He had changed so much that no one there recognized him. He was far from the resentful, dark little boy who left years ago.

He returned to his roots, remembering everything his grandfather had taught him; how to find the right herbs and ingredients in the forest to make much needed medicine, what time of the year was best for planting fruits and vegetables, and the most merciful way to hunt and kill game.

Harper no longer ran from his heritage, and one of the oldest still-living Apache medicine men in their community had given him a new name:
Atsidi
.  It meant ‘hammer’ in their language, symbolizing how he had crushed his vices and risen above them.

Of course, he was still John Harper at heart.  And he’d never forgotten what Colonel Hicks and his wife did for him.

He was twenty-three when he joined the Navy and applied for SEAL training.  And he had never looked back.

The death of his grandfather and father had hit Harper hard, but nothing like the death of Colonel Brendan Hicks, who was killed during a skirmish with Afghan rebels several years ago. 

Harper was in Iraq by then.  When he got the news he walked far into the dessert where he could be alone with his thoughts and the stars.  He cried like a baby for hours.  Harper still heard from Hicks’ wife every now and then. She would write him letters to ask how he was doing and invite him to visit. He would write back with promises of a visit soon, though he knew he would probably never see her again.  A visit to see her would simply be too painful.

It was a moot point.  He had precious little time to even think about leave these days.  He was a SEAL Team Alpha Unit commander now, responsible for the lives of a dozen men.  He would never take leave, no so long as his men were still in the field.

Harper had made it to where he was by being a fighter. He fought for what he believed in, for his country, and for his men. He would give up his life, if need be, in service of the country that had both made and broken him. And that was that.

Unlike the other SEALs who had reached his level of service, Harper preferred to live a solitary life. He had no wife, no family, and no friends to speak of. On those rare occasions when his Alpha Unit all got simultaneous leave, he would head back to Phoenix to reconnect with the Navajo community and practice the skills his grandfather found so vital to their way of life.

His next trip to Phoenix would be a ways off.  He still had at least another twelve weeks on this deployment to Bagdad, which suited him just fine. Things were relatively quiet and there were no missions on the board. 

In fact, he’d given four members of his unit leave and they were currently stateside in Atlanta for a few weeks.  They asked him to come, but he declined. 

The younger SEALs needed the break a hell of a lot more than he did.  They were still full of piss and vinegar and lived life like they had something to prove.

Harper had proven all he needed to and he had the medals to prove it.  Let the kids go play, he told himself.  I’d rather stay here and wait for the shit to hit the fan.