Elijah bowed his head and sobbed, as he held his son in his arms, until finally no sign of life was left at all. After a long moment, Elijah looked up and around at all of them. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of it, but I knew. Once I found out, I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Turn him in maybe …” Mountain suggested.

  “Yes, I should have turned in the colonel. But my son? Was I supposed to turn him in? I couldn’t do that, not and still protect the rest of the world from the colonel,” he added. “I knew what the colonel had done too. I knew what he was capable of doing, but he wanted me with him, as he was stationed at various bases. We’d been best friends forever, and he couldn’t stand the idea that I might turn him in. It was more than he could handle. He always held my son’s actions against me. So, I stayed at the colonel’s side, and, as long as I stayed, he stayed sane, sober, and controlled, until all three of us—me, my son, and Joe—ended up here at the same time as the colonel.”

  He took a deep breath and sighed. “Chester and Joe were both here. I knew from that moment on that things would blow up, and they would blow up in an ugly way. Either Joe would get to know Chester and end up digging to find his son or the colonel would pit Joe and Chester against one another, the way the colonel used my son against me. Part of me couldn’t wait for the inevitable end, part of me was looking for the release from all these years of betrayal and worry. I tried to save as many as I could here, but the colonel continued to slowly unravel. If I had a good idea of who his target might be, I tried hard to warn them, but who is the one I tell when the colonel of the base is the bad guy?” he asked, with a sad look at the others here. “Given the circumstances, who was supposed to help us with that? There wasn’t anybody I could call for help, except one.”

  “Who did you call, Elijah?” Mountain asked.

  He turned and looked at Samson. “Mason.”

  Several people in the room were shocked, as they turned to look at the man they knew as Samson.

  Mason smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I’m Mason. Most of you know of me but have never met me in person. I was originally behind the covert investigation, trying to get up here to help out on the ground,” he explained. “However, this mission … was Mountain’s. We started as soon as Teegan went missing, but only recently did Elijah contact me. And he left out a few telling details.”

  Elijah nodded. “Yeah, but now it doesn’t matter because you got them all. It’s truly over now,” he declared, with a relief so profound that he looked at peace. “And me? I don’t have enough life left to even give a damn anymore. Besides, just like my sister-in-law, I won’t live long enough to see it.”

  Sydney looked over at him. “That’s why you wouldn’t come in to see me. You are dying.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed with a finality. “I already had the diagnosis. I already knew that this would be my last trip. My mistake was telling the colonel. He went off the deep end after that. There was no controlling him. I didn’t know how to handle the colonel, how to stop him, and I would be dead soon. … So I called Mason.”

  “Hence your need to call in the big guns, huh?” Mountain noted.

  “Yeah, big guns. That’s partly why I contacted Mason because this was a major problem, with no easy solution,” Elijah shared, “because nobody in the military would believe me, even with prior complaints from others. The colonel was trained to kill the enemy in the military. But he took to it too easily, without remorse, without guilt, and it became a personal obsession with him, a side gig, a hobby. I don’t know what a shrink would call him—a psychopath, a sociopath, whatever. I just know he was a serial killer who could not be stopped. Not to mention … the colonel would be all sour grapes and giving a million other excuses during any investigation, and he sure as hell wouldn’t provide any support, wouldn’t give any true answers, and I needed help to keep the colonel in line once I passed on,” Elijah explained. He looked over at Mason. “So, thank you.”

  Mason nodded. “You’re welcome, but you know it won’t be easy from here on out either.”

  “No, it won’t,” Elijah agreed. “I would like to think I could just curl up in a corner and retire, but I doubt that’ll happen. I deserve to be court-martialed, but I fear justice will come too late, after I’m gone.”

  Joe gave a harsh laugh. “How the hell should you be allowed to do that?” he asked, his voice breaking. “After everything, … after my boy is … shot to pieces in some unmarked desert corner … because your son put him there?”

  “I know, Joe.” Elijah nodded, looking at him sadly. “When was I supposed to tell you? How was I supposed to tell you?”

  Mountain couldn’t believe it, and yet so much truth had been told tonight that sadly it made way more sense than he ever could have anticipated. He looked over at Mason. “We had stolen drugs and food poisonings and love triangles and stupid bets and Eric’s blackmail scheme and the faulty generator issues all the time at the scientists’ camp—plus that dead scientist’s coded notebook found taped under a chair, which I guess we’ll never know what that was about. Still, there were too many suspicious deaths and missing persons, and that serial killer on base had to be found. Little did we know it was the colonel or how many years he had been killing people. Damn, not what we expected at all.”

  “No, not at all,” Mason agreed, with a shrug.

  Mountain nodded. “Yet we knew we couldn’t go forward without more information. We needed to push this thing to make the killing come to an end.” Mountain looked over at Elijah. “I presume you set up the colonel to go after Amelia?”

  Elijah nodded. “I did exactly as you suggested. I told the colonel that Amelia was running and that she already knew, that she recognized him from one of his killing trips, and that’s all it took. A few words and he immediately dressed and was gone. So, not only did I allow the military to make all this happen, I also betrayed him.”

  Mountain shook his head. “That man held you and your son as virtual prisoners, blackmailed you and your son into doing everything the colonel wanted over all these years,” Mountain pointed out. “You should have come forward sooner.”

  “I have no idea what we’ll do with any of this,” Joe said, looking over at Chef. “Elijah, I’m not sure that I can … It’s hard to forgive your part in this, yet … in a way it’s also understandable. What your son did, what you did, all you wanted to do was protect him.”

  Elijah nodded. “I did some things that I’m not proud of, but I never killed anybody. I couldn’t, plus that wasn’t what I was here to do. If I could kill, if I’d had the stomach for it, … I always knew who deserved it most. I was here to protect people from the colonel, and that was not the easiest thing to do. I spent my life, … all these years, … trying to keep him from killing anybody else. Blackmailing me to keep my son’s secret, at the same time the colonel was blackmailing me to keep his own secrets too,” Elijah said, with a headshake. “We’re a hell of a pair.”

  He stared down at his son’s body, sorrow on his face. Then he got up and leaned over and kissed his boy on the forehead. “There are no easy answers to this one, and I’ll be more than happy to join him.” He looked over at Joe and added, “I know you’ll have a hard time forgiving me for this, but this isn’t how I wanted it to go. I didn’t know how to get any of us out of it.”

  Joe sank into the seat beside him. “Jesus Christ, I can’t even imagine.” He gave a broken laugh. “I spent all this time thinking, hoping, my son was alive somewhere, but really knowing there was no way he could be. Still, I never would have imagined something so convoluted as this.”

  “That’s what happens with just one lie,” Elijah noted. “As soon as you lie, as soon as you try to cheat and deceive, the lies multiply and pile up, and you can’t ever get out from under them. Once I realized that the colonel would keep killing if I didn’t do something more, the only thing I could think to do was to try and stay with him, so that he left everybody alone, and that’s what I did. It was my penance.”

  “At least you had your son.”

  “I rarely saw my son,” Chef noted, “but I knew he was alive, and that was enough. So, yes, in a way, I had my son.”

  “Yeah, because yours was still breathing,” Joe said bitterly. “My boy was killed by your son.”

  Chef nodded. “Exactly. Mine was alive. Yours wasn’t, but I couldn’t bring yours back. I won’t ask you to forgive me, but maybe you’ll understand that life is never easy. … Bad things do happen to good people. And your Chester? … I don’t know that they’ll ever recover his body, yet my boy did go out and make several attempts to find him, but the desert had … done what the desert does. Sand was everywhere, but the landscape had changed. I’m so sorry for that too.” Elijah turned to Mason. “I’m really tired now. Could we possibly call this quits for the moment, and leave me alone for a few minutes to grieve?”

  Mason nodded, and, together with the guard, led Elijah to where he had been held before.

  Mountain looked over at Amelia, seeing the shock, the sorrow, and the pain on her face, and he nodded. “Not the ending any of us wanted,” he murmured.

  “No, definitely not,” she replied, “but it’s almost the ending that had to happen.” She looked at Joe and whispered, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  He nodded. “And yet, in a way, this is freedom. This is an answer that I hadn’t expected, really didn’t want, but at least now I know. So, I’ll take it.”

  Amelia nodded, then turned to Barret and groaned. “Thank you, Barret, for taking bullets for me tonight. I hope you feel better soon. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I really need to collapse. I can’t feel my legs.”

  Immediately Mountain was at her side and held her in his arms. “Come on. Let’s get you back to your room.” As they went out to the hallway, she looked up at him. “Are you okay? That was a lot to digest.”

  “Oh, I will be, but, yeah, a lot to process. There are still a lot of questions we would like to have answers to—like details regarding my brother—but that probably won’t happen.”

  “No, and I do worry about that. But that is what we have, … and really do we ever get all the answers we want?”

  “No, we sure don’t,” Mountain grumbled. “Sometimes we don’t get any of them. As much as that might be seriously depressing to hear,” he added, “it is reassuring that we got as much as we have.”

  “I was wondering that too,” she noted. “When you think about it, we already have a lot of the answers. Maybe we can be okay with not having the rest.”

  As they got to his room, she muttered, “I really need to collapse.”

  “You lie down. I’ll join you in a little bit.” He stopped and looked at her closely. “Are you okay without a guard for the first time?”

  She laughed. “I’m okay. Honestly I’ll crash from the dump of adrenaline that just left me.”

  “Good enough.” He closed the door and immediately headed back to join the pow-wow that would be happening right now. As he walked into the clinic, others were checking up on Mason. Mountain laughed at them. “I guess some people thought they should have recognized you, huh?”

  Teegan snorted at that. “I kept telling you that something was wrong with him, damn it. Didn’t I say that?”

  Mason grinned. “Don’t feel bad. Those of you who have met me before, you may have never seen me all shaggy and in winter gear,” he explained, with a smirk. He grabbed Teegan by the shoulder. “I’m so damn glad you survived that, Teegan. You have no idea how bad I felt, after I was the one who recommended that you come here.”

  “You’re sure as hell guilty for that,” Teegan teased, still staring at him, shaking his head at Samson. “However, I did come, and this was where I wanted to be.”

  “Yeah, well, right about now,” Sydney shared, as she looked at the group, “I’m thinking that the South Pacific sounds pretty damn good.”

  Many people seconded that suggestion.

  “What do you think will happen now?” Sydney asked, looking over at Mason.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, with a shrug. “The base will get a new commanding officer and carry on, or, maybe given the mess that we’ve had these last three months or so, they’ll close it down in a few months, whether permanently or part-time. So, you all might have to stay for a little bit longer, if you’re willing,” he suggested, one eyebrow raised. “I’m sure the brass will check into all the questionable deaths that occurred under the colonel’s command over the last twenty or so years.”

  Sydney shrugged. “I guess that depends on whether anybody else is staying, but, yeah, I signed on for the entire time,” she noted, “although I’m a little worried about Amelia.”

  “Amelia will be fine,” Mountain declared. “She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m taking her and her dogs down south pretty quick. She’s been up here living out in the Arctic tundra for a very long time, and those dogs of hers want their mama back,” he said, with a laugh.

  “Yeah, I’m not surprised.” Sydney smiled.

  They looked over at Joe, who even now sat staring off into the distance. “Joe, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, with a sorrowful look around. “I was already thinking it might be time to call it quits, long before all this, and now? … I know it’s time to call it quits,” he stated, with a headshake.

  Magnus looked at him with a hopeful expression. “So does that mean … I can have the dogs, right?”

  He laughed. “As if I had any chance of keeping them from you anyway,” he said, with a smile. “Yes, you can have the two you asked for.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Teegan stated. “He doesn’t get any, if I don’t get any.”

  “Every one of you has his favorite sled dog. Thankfully there is no overlap. So let’s see who all really wants their dogs,” Joe suggested, “and we’ll talk about it some more later. Right now, I’ll go have a shot of whiskey and commemorate my son’s death,” he stated, with a careless wave, “and relax, maybe for the first time in a very long time.”

  Teegan slapped his brother on the back. “Damn it, man, there’s shit no matter where you travel.”

  Mountain looked at him and nodded. “Isn’t that the truth?” Then he shook his head. “In this case though, it’s been a whole lot more than I expected.”

  “Good. I would hate to think you have this shit happening all the time when you are on missions. Where will you take Amelia?”

  He laughed. “She probably thinks about going home. I’m not sure how the sled dogs will acclimate, but I would say Australia or the South Pacific, but for now? … Maybe California. … The cabin would do.”

  At that, Teegan’s eyebrows raised. “The cabin sounds like a great idea. Are you guys up for company?”

  “Maybe, if you can behave for once,” Mountain teased, with a smirk. “What the hell. … Damn right we are up for company. Hell, anybody can come. We all need a chance to celebrate life and not death, … for a change.”

  Two Weeks Later

  Mountain turned off the SUV, opened up the back passenger door, and let out all the dogs. Since Amelia’s injury, the four dogs were even more protective of her. Thankfully he’d had no issue becoming part of the pack. They milled around excitedly, waiting for Amelia to come out. Then he walked over to the passenger side and opened the door, as he held out his hand.

  “When you told me that you were bringing me someplace to recover,” she said, looking out the windshield, “I really wasn’t thinking here.”

  “Yet why not?” he asked, with a smile. “Don’t knock it until you’ve had a chance to try it.”

  She stared out at the ocean in the distance and sighed happily. Before exiting the vehicle, she reached out to cuddle the dogs, who were jumping up anxiously for her to get out. Maybe the smell of the sea added to their exuberance. “I won’t knock it. I’ve always loved open waters.”

  “Water, whether it’s frozen or not,” Mountain teased.

  She laughed. “Absolutely.” She looped her arms around his neck and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Pretty damn special place you’ve got here.”

  “This …” He pointed to the cabin behind them. “I bought it years ago, as a way to find peace from all the torment and the nastiness that happens in life, particularly with the work that I sometimes do,” he shared, with an eye roll. “Don’t think this is the stuff I do all the time, but sometimes I do get caught up in these scenarios, and this is where I come to, where I call home afterward, at least for a while.”

  “What about the rest of the team?” she asked.

  “Seems we’ll be seeing all of them over the next few days, except Sydney and Magnus. They’re staying up there to see this through to the bitter end, and then they’ll come home in a couple weeks.”

  “Will we still be here?” Amelia asked.

  He shrugged. “You tell me.” He looked at her closely. “I’m up for staying the summer. Personally I think I need it, and so do you.”

  She smiled, as he picked her up and carried her into the cabin. However, as cabins usually went, this one hardly qualified. She stared, absolutely stunned. “This is freaking amazing,” she cried out.

  “It’s huge, and I wanted the space,” he said. “I always figured I would retire here someday.”

  She nodded. “Well, it’s certainly big enough.”

  “Yeah, it’s got four bedrooms and an annex off to the side, if I ever wanted to expand,” he noted, with a chuckle. “When it’s time to find that place that you can call your own”—he shrugged—“you have to listen to your soul, and my soul told me that this was it.”

  “Your soul has great taste. I absolutely love it.”