Then she was walking toward Traci.
Traci pulled Cannel into her arms, and together they got into the car.
Toot looked pissed as hell.
I turned my back on all of them and walked back into the house, taking my wife with me.
But, just before I could close the door, Toot yelled out.
“You ruined my life, asshole!” Toot yelled. “She was only at that store because of you! She just had to go get you an engagement present. Fuck you!”
I turned stiffly in the doorway, my body vibrating with rage.
“If we’re playing the blame game,” I said. “Maybe you should think about the fact that I almost lost not only my wife, but my unborn child.”
Toot blanched.
“What?” he asked.
“My girl was pregnant when you took her to that hellhole,” I said. “Do you want to know what sex trafficking places do to women that are pregnant?”
Toot swallowed. “I didn’t know.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s not an excuse.”
With that, I tossed Kansas a glare, clearly telling him to get Toot the hell away from me and walked back into the house.
“I don’t see how the hell Toot can still be in the Air Force,” Six said. “I mean, didn’t he do something just as bad, if not worse, than Trouper?”
“Because Toot has a lot of fuckin’ money,” Beckham grumbled as she walked over to the couch and sat down, causing Sin to bounce next to her.
I grinned when he tossed her an amused glance.
He moved over, allowing me room to sit beside her.
“Meaning he was able to afford a really good lawyer. And since the undercover operation is still going strong there, they were able to keep a lot of it quiet since Toot could be a great person to testify against the outfit if they ever found the men responsible for abducting all those women off base,” Beckham explained.
Six sighed. “Well, that just fucking sucks. But at least you have your life back now. Everything worked out in the end. Even if it took you a couple of rocky months to get to that point.”
She had a point.
The last year had been a struggle, but in the end, I was free. I had a wife and a child. I had everything that I would ever need.
There was no room left for complaints on my end.
As long as I had Beckham and Hiro, everything else was an added extra bonus.
“I’m tired.” Beckham yawned. “Let’s go home and get our baby, then go to bed.”
I’d never heard a better suggestion in my life.
EPILOGUE
Here coffee, coffee, coffee.
-Coffee Cup
BECKHAM
Three years later
Heart in my throat, I stood at the chain-link fence and stared through the holes at my man that was about to get into the cockpit of a very fast, very terrifyingly new jet.
A year and a half ago, Trouper and I had been in the middle of discussing whether or not to have a second child when he’d gotten a phone call from Kansas. Kansas had explained that there was a company looking for pilots to test out their ‘new birds.’
Trouper had hung up with Kansas, determined not to bother with it.
In the meantime, I’d talked to Lynn, and Lynn had then contacted the company for me to get details.
When it was realized that Trouper would, indeed, be able to fly for them, and not only would he get to do what he loved to do all over again, but also get to continue to do what he’d started in Souls Chapel, I’d signed him up.
And now, a year and a half later, he was flown via helicopter to the closest Air Force base once every couple of weeks, and from there he would try out all the new toys. Work out kinks. Offer suggestions on what to fix. And then do it all over again when they’d worked out the previous week’s kinks.
When I’d first brought Trouper here and explained what we were doing, he’d closed down.
He’d, reluctantly might I add since I might or might not have illegally signed him up for a contract that was three years long, gone inside and done what he had to do.
I didn’t feel bad.
He’d needed it.
Flying had always been something he loved.
And, even though he got to fly for Lynn on a regular basis, he still didn’t get to go fast. Didn’t get that adrenaline rush that he used to get while going fifteen hundred miles an hour through the sky.
“Hey, did I miss it?”
I looked over at Kansas.
“No,” I said. “He’s just about to go up. They’re doing a pre-flight checklist right now.”
“Hey, State!”
When Trouper had first been called ‘State’ again by Kansas, he’d bucked the name. But Kansas hadn’t relented.
Now Trouper was known as ‘State’ again and would continue to be known by it in his Air Force circles.
The ‘badass State’ that had gone to prison for beating someone up that had hurt his girl, lost his Air Force commission unjustly, and still come out on top.