Caribbean Gold

CHAPTER FORTY

For Alicia there was no hilltop, no weather, no hot sun and no grass. There was no lofty, malformed tree. There were no surroundings, no thought, not even a single ounce of breath. Everything in her world encompassed a single solitary figure.

Zack Healey.

The youngest of them all, the one with the most promise. Healey loved Caitlyn. And Healey had thrown himself in front of her when the pirate leader opened fire. They all assumed because Caitlyn was fine the pirate had shot wide, and then they went instantly into action. They never thought Healey had taken the bullets.

Alicia fell at his side now, tears streaming down her face. Caitlyn leaned over the dead man’s body, heaving, her breaths as ragged as a serrated blade. Crouch stared at Healey’s ashen face in horror, every feature frozen.

Alicia reached out a hand, watched as her fingers trembled.

“Zack?”

Russo, the big, gruff hard man, fell alongside his friend and sobbed, moans wracking his entire body. He placed a huge arm across Healey’s shoulders and buried his face into the ground. Caitlyn crawled closer and held on so tight she might never move again.

The sun waned in the western skies. No sound existed save for the team’s misery and the seeping of blood into the hard ground. Not from one but from over a hundred men.

In the end it was the helicopters that moved them. They might have stayed there the rest of the day and all night, into the next dawn, but the blood-red sunset heralded the choppers filled with police and agencies that Crouch knew, and made them sit back, stare up into the skies — see the clouds and the glorious sunset and the yellow sunshine that their colleague would never see again — and consider all they had lost.

It was true that you didn’t value what you had until you realized that someone close to you would never see it again. From the most wondrous trip to the swings in your garden. From the greatest, free feeling to the picture of your children on your mantelpiece. One day, there every day, taken for granted — the next something you just can’t grasp anymore and wished you’d given more of yourself to.

I will see it all for you. Alicia rose from Healey’s body, face red and streaked. And I will never say no to or push aside the people I love ever again.

Crouch looked up into the crimson sunset. “I… I don’t know what to do next.”

Caitlyn rose with him, slowly, shakily, her own face turned upward. “We finish what we all started. We finish this as a team.”

Alicia turned away, eyes brimming anew.