Page 14 of Nightfire

Harry and Chloe were making a lot of noise, words coming out so fast they were garbled, hard sobs, sharp laughter.

Sam stuck his head in, frowning, looking ten years older. Nicole had had a hard time expecting their first child, Merry, and she was having a hard time with the new one, too. Sam’s nights were as sleepless as hers.

“What’s all this racket—hey!” He gaped at Harry and Chloe, clutching each other, crying their hearts out and laughing, at the same time. It wasn’t every day he saw his brother Harry holding onto a woman and weeping.

Mike could almost see the gears moving in Sam’s head. Slowly. Sam was having problems processing the scene, unusual for a former SEAL. SEALs aren’t easily surprised and don’t usually have problems processing things. Sam must be really sleep-deprived.

Harry lifted his head, joy all over his wet face.

He grinned at Sam. “Sam, meet my sister Crissy.” He looked down at her. “Or do you want us to call you Chloe, honey?”

Chloe glowed, like a little sun. “Chloe,” she said softly. “Please.”

Sam blinked, shook his head, as if the idea were too big for his brain to contain it. “Crissy? But, but isn’t she…”

Dead. He’d been about to say dead. Chloe turned fully toward Sam. Once that idea that Harry and Chloe were brother and sister was in your head, the truth was right there, on their faces. Unmistakable. The truth made flesh.

“Oh my God,” Sam breathed, eyes wide. Seeing it.

“Yeah.” Harry swiped at his face. “Yeah. Wait till I tell Ellen. And Grace!” He looked down at Chloe. “Honey, you have a niece. A beautiful little niece. Grace Christine. Named for you.”

Chloe’s face crumpled again, her shoulders shook. She buried her face in Harry’s now-wet shirt, sobbing quietly.

Sam walked in warily. Though he’d been married over two years now, for him a weeping woman was still the equivalent of a block of C-4 with the detonator in and the timer counting down. But before he reached them, Marisa rushed into the room.

A weeping woman. Marisa was hard-wired to react. She came in bristling, shooting filthy glances at Harry, Sam and Mike, men who’d dared make one of her women, one of the Lost Ones, cry. She put her arms around Chloe’s shoulders, glaring ferociously at the three men. Marisa weighed one twenty dripping wet and was fifty years old. But none of them, highly-trained former soldiers that they were, would dare take her on when she was in Protective Mode.

“What’s going on here? What did you men do to this poor girl—” She began furiously, getting right up into their faces.

“She’s my sister, Marisa,” Harry said at the same time. “Come back from the dead.”

Marisa’s face went utterly blank. They never talked about it, but everyone in the office knew Harry’s story. Knew that the loss of his little sister had been a tragic hole punched though his heart all his life.

“Mamma mia,” she whispered, reverting back to the language of her childhood. She pulled away to look Chloe in the face, holding her by the shoulders. Eyes flicking from Chloe to Harry and back. “Mamma mia.”

“Davvero,” Chloe said unexpectedly, smiling, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face.

Marisa whooped, kissed Chloe on the cheek and did a little jig. Mike stared. No one had ever seen cool, calm Marisa so excited, so joyful. “Una sorella ritrovata! A lost sister! Found! And she speaks Italian!”

“Solo un poco, very little.” Chloe smiled, wiped her eyes again. “I only studied it for a year.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Two beautiful women stuck their heads in the room, looking puzzled. Nicole and Ellen. Ellen had probably been working with Nicole on her accounts. Besides singing for them, Ellen kept the books of Nicole’s translation agency and of RBK. Mike always thought that was a great twofer.

Ellen rushed over to her husband, seeing the tears running down his face. “Harry!” She sounded more shocked than worried. “What’s wrong, darling? Are you hurt?”

This last was said slowly, as an afterthought, because though he was crying, Harry clearly wasn’t hurt. He started laughing and wiped away some tears, though more fell.

Chloe turned to smile at the two women, hope and light in her golden eyes. Mike had never seen anything so luminous. It was as if she had a light source glowing inside her. Her smile was heartbreaking, the smile of someone who wasn’t used to happiness.

“Come here, honey,” Harry called to Ellen. He opened one arm, the other around Chloe. When Ellen was by his side, in his embrace, he kissed her cheek. Ellen and Nicole were no dummies. Both of them were looking at Chloe, then Harry, then back at Chloe. Understanding that something was up, but what?

“Honey,” Harry said to his wife, then gave a sort of laughing cough, as if whatever was in his chest was too big to express but had to come out. “I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but this is…Crissy. My sister. Back from the dead. Only now she’s Chloe.” He threw his head back and laughed again.

Both Ellen and Nicole gasped.

Mike was barely paying attention to them, to Sam and Harry. He moved closer. He couldn’t help it. Chloe was light itself and he was helplessly drawn to it, to her. There was some kind of aura there, something he’d never seen in anyone else before, something that drew him in without any volition on his part. His legs moved without him willing it, his entire body moving toward the light, moving toward something it had never had before and instantly recognized as something it craved.

Harry was holding Chloe and Ellen in his arms. Everyone was talking all at once, the noise level amazing. Marisa had drawn away from the group and was wiping her eyes, smiling. Sam bent down to her.