somewhere along the way Chase met one of dad’s old Navy buddies.
We all trusted Thomas, After all my dad loved him like a little brother. He was half dad's age but Everything he said, checked out. He had pictures of them together, war stories.. even mutual buddies of theirs to confirm it - the whole nine…..I checked it all personally.
We would go on mini vacations together, the three of us. Like the musketeers, inseparable. To Bali and Rome - wherever we decided we thought we'd like the weather that week. My favorites were the tropical venues.
I loved diving, surfing and even convinced them to go on a bit of a treasure hunt. They thought I was caught up in delusions of grandeur until we came up from the bottom with a nice little chunk of change.
" Oh my god, this is insane. You're insane, Megan. How did you know?!"
I can still see their Expressions. Eyes big with disbelief. Laughing and already making plans for our next extravagant tour…..
…."C'mon guys. Give me a little credit, you know I'm the one who studies and triple checks everything Shipwrecks have always fascinated me so I just found the ones thought to be fruitless and went after them." …
Ha... we never lost sight of the mission. We were just taught that if you pour all of yourself into the work you burn out quickly and put yourself in greater danger.
So. We took ski trips, went skydiving, and toured Greece. Some of our counterparts called us reckless for just taking off in the middle of a take down to "vacation" but, they're not here to tell their stories, so. I figure we were taught well. We'd use our Aliases on our little get aways when there was anyone else around. I have to smile when I think back on all of our adventures. They were a much needed break from the grind. We would brush up on Information and plan more into hunting my parents' killers while we took some time away. It gave us a chance to view things with fresh eyes.
Thomas fought alongside us to avenge my father’s death. Trained with us, we became as close as family ever could. and then one night we closed in on the last target and Thomas seemed to go M.I.A.. radio transmissions went black, we were expecting the worst. We just never expected the “worst” that came…
As we arrived we had a plan to close in on them from all angles. I’d take the North entrance, Chase took south, Don - the man that taught us everything took East and Thomas, West.
We secured our locations and radioed back letting each other know our positions but, when we tried Thomas - No one could reach him, so we headed to the west entrance and slowly moved in.
“Don. Chase and I have no visual of Thomas, you got anything yet?”
“No, Nothing ye-(his voice cut off by the sound of him being knocked unconscious).
“Damn it. Chase, do you have Don’s location?”
“No, I’m right at the west entrance now, Split up until we find them both.”
When we did, we found Don tied to a chair in the middle of the corridor. A stage like light lit the floor just in front of him.
Chase ran towards him Immediately and I saw the sight light up red on Don’s forehead as he screamed for him to get down with his dying breath.
I took a shot at the balcony where the sight came from. Whoever it was, I hit him but I wasn’t sure if it was a killshot.
“Chase, you okay?” “Yeah, let’s get these bastards.”
Thomas was the son of a man who lost his life as the result of casualties of war years earlier. My father was on a secret op. mission that he neglected to tell my mother about because he had claimed the life of one of our own… It destroyed him.
But, my father being the strong silent type, never mentioned a word of it to anyone. The guy he killed was undercover, and my dad believed his life to be in danger, so he did what he thought he had to. After the fact, the navy briefed him on the death…
Aaron Thomas 60 years old he was working undercover to bring down some pretty bad people with psychopathic tendencies. My father was brought in to stop the same men, but the Navy failed to tell him that they had a friendly stationed undercover nor did they mention my
father’s arrival to Aaron.
It was a set up. Somebody wanted both of them dead - but wanted to keep their hands clean in the process and now we were the target of Aaron’s son’s rage.
He let us kill all the intended targets before backing us into the main ballroom, coming out of the shadows gun drawn. He knew he’d have a hell of a fight. I never saw it coming and the one time I let emotion overtake logic, it bit me hard.
I took out Thomas' knee cap and as he went down he shot Chase in the chest but not before Chase put two in his..I got clipped by one of thomas’ bullets grazed my head.. Thanks to Chase, we made it out alive.
Shriden was his mother’s Maiden Name, he created an identity with his Father’s last name as being his first
...Thomas Shriden….