Free Troubleshooters 16.8 - Free Fall by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

rocket that would allow him to reach the other SEAL before it was too late.
     If Tony didn’t cut away . . .
     Izzy would have one and only one chance to grab Tony as he hurtled past.
     Please Gods, don’t let him miss.
     
    ****

Chapter Two
     
     When Ben Gillman punched Wade O’Keefe in the face, he heard an echo of his older sister Eden’s voice.
      No drama, please, while Jenn and I are away.
      Eden had said those very words to Ben yesterday, before getting into the cab that took her and their brother Danny’s wife to the San Diego airport. The two women were flying to San Francisco, and then driving up to Napa for a wedding shower for one of Jenn’s best friends. Eden went along because Jenn was pregnant and Danny couldn’t go with her. His SEAL team was in deploy-any-minute mode.
     Sixteen-year-old Ben had only been living in southern California with his brother and Jenn, and with his sister Eden and her Navy SEAL husband, Izzy—bouncing between their two equally awesome apartments—for just over seven months, but even in that short amount of time, he’d learned that deploy-any-minute mode also meant dialing back the drama to a negative five.
     But here in the high school corridor, the drama-knob had been cranked to a hot eleven. The world had gone into a kind of weird slow-mo, with Wade staggering backwards as blood erupted out of his nose—an apt visual to the sharp explosion of pain in Ben’s hand.
     Holy crap, punching someone in the face hurt!
     It was entirely possible Ben had broken his hand.
     Wade hit the lockers with a rattling bang as two of the three kids he’d been torturing skittered away, booking it down the hall. Ironically, it was the smallest of the three, Ryan Spencer, who stayed. Ryan now shifted his weight back and forth as he attempted to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ben. He even put up his dukes like an old-school boxer—assuming boxing had an “elf” weight.
     The kid was adorable with his sweet face and big blue eyes behind vaguely Harry Potteresque glasses. Fucking Wade had been targeting Ryan for weeks with all kinds of asshole-ish behavior—from name-calling and taunting slurs to knocking into him in the hall.
     Today’s assault was one of full-on intimidation, with Wade blocking the exit to the boy’s bathroom—keeping Ryan and his friends from leaving and getting to class on time. Ben had rounded the corner and seen the upperclassman’s aggressive body language along with Ryan’s stiff shoulders and courageously lifted chin, and something in him had snapped.
     No one hassled Ben like that anymore—at least not here at his new high school. Sure, he still got whispers and stares—but that could be for any number of things. He was the new kid, he was diabetic, plus ever since he’d gotten his hair cut he was a ginger again, and he frequently got dropped off in the morning by a variety of camo-clad Navy SEALs. So the murmurs and looks weren’t necessarily because he was gay. But some of them probably were—the world also being home to people who still clung desperately to ignorance and fear, like Wade O’Keefe, asshole jock.
     But Wade had carefully kept his distance from Ben—probably because Ben’s latest growth spurt had taken him into six-three territory. Yeah, he was still too skinny, but living with Danny and Izzy had inspired him to work out, and under their guidance, his hard work was starting to show. And, of course, Wade had probably made note of the whole dropped-off-at-school-by-SEALs thing.
     Bullies targeted kids who were unlikely to fight back.
     But it hadn’t been that long ago that Ben had been in Ryan’s shoes. And it had sucked. Especially when the other kids pretended not to notice the ongoing abuse. They were fearful—for good reason—of becoming the bully’s next target.
     But Wade didn’t scare Ben.
     And enough was enough.
     “Hey, Wade,” Ben had said, heavy on the faux-friendly as he’d approached all four