Protecting the Flame Read online

  Protecting the Flame

  Brotherhood Protectors World

  Ilsa J. Bick

  Contents

  Brotherhood Protectors

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  GRAVITY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  THE GOLDEN DAY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  AFTER THE STORM

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  THE DRONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  YEHI ’OR

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  AND THERE WAS…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Also By Ilsa J. Bick

  About Ilsa J. Bick

  Brotherhood Protectors

  About Elle James

  Copyright © 2019, Ilsa J. Bick

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  © 2019 Twisted Page Press, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  Brotherhood Protectors

  Original Series by Elle James

  Brotherhood Protectors Series

  Montana SEAL (#1)

  Bride Protector SEAL (#2)

  Montana D-Force (#3)

  Cowboy D-Force (#4)

  Montana Ranger (#5)

  Montana Dog Soldier (#6)

  Montana SEAL Daddy (#7)

  Montana Ranger’s Wedding Vow (#8)

  Montana SEAL Undercover Daddy (#9)

  Cape Cod SEAL Rescue (#10)

  Montana SEAL Friendly Fire (#11)

  Montana SEAL’s Mail-Order Bride (#12)

  SEAL Justice (#13)

  Ranger Creed (#14)

  Delta Force Strong (#15)

  Montana Rescue (Sleeper SEAL)

  Hot SEAL Salty Dog (SEALs in Paradise)

  Hot SEAL Hawaiian Nights (SEALs in Paradise)

  Dear Reader,

  What you’re about to read is fiction except for one little detail. There’s this necklace in the story that’s both made up and real. That is, the necklace doesn’t really exist and yet it sort of did. So, let me tell you the part that’s real.

  The Nazis came for my dad when he was seven. He doesn’t talk about it much. For years, he said he didn’t remember—and that’s probably true. I mean, he was seven. On the other hand, I’m thinking my dad, like most traumatized people, remembers what he can bear.

  I do know there wasn’t much of a family for the Nazis to grab, just my dad, his parents and his dad’s mom. I don’t know what my grandmother looked like. My dad has his dad’s hair and nose. My great-grandmother was just old. I know my dad’s father sold hops for beer. I know he and his family were in several different camps because this was early 1939, right before Germany closed its borders and the Nazis hadn’t hit on gas chambers just yet.

  Anyway, my dad got sick. At the time, the Nazis were principally concerned not with killing Jews but keeping them healthy for slave labor. As it happened, his father was the camp health officer (remember, this is a guy who sold hops) and somehow arranged for his son to get out. Things get a little murky here, but the gist is that my dad traveled by train in a cattle car for three days and made it to either Lisbon or Casablanca. He remembers that it was very hot and there was no water. Somehow, he got on the very last ship bound for the U.S and eventually ended up with a Jewish sponsor-family in Delaware.

  Not long after my dad got out, the entire camp was dismantled and all the Jews were sent to Auschwitz. For the longest time, my dad thought everyone died. About twenty years ago, though, the town where his family had lived opened a museum and invited survivors. That was when my dad found out that his grandmother—my great-grandmother—had survived and returned to live in the same town, the same house. Except she didn’t know he was alive; he didn’t know about her. So…

  My dad’s mom’s name was Irma. My parents decided they couldn’t do that to me, so I’m Ilsa. (They swear up and down that it has nothing to do with Ingrid Bergman’s character in their favorite movie, Casablanca…but my brother’s name is Rick.)

  Another thing my dad gave me many years ago was his mother’s gold brooch. The pin had this tiny ruby cabochon in the center of a small Mogen Dovid. How my grandmother managed to keep that from the Nazis, I’ll never know. I also will never see that brooch again because, twenty-five years ago, someone broke into our house one Thanksgiving and stole it. I mean, think about the irony. Here’s something that survived the Nazis which some jerk took without ever understanding what that brooch signifies.

  I think I included my grandmother’s brooch because, well, Emma wants to belong: to a family, a tribe, a tradition. But she’s also bitter and blind to how she gets in her own way and resists allowing herself to be part of a culture that’s in her blood and yet in which she has little faith. She’s not self-hating so much as untethered. The military’s failed her; she’s a widow; she doesn’t believe in any god and she’s done something really, really dumb. She thinks she belongs to no one and nothing.

  Emma’s ambivalence is something that I, as a Jew, understand. The desire to belong to something somewhere, whether that’s a relationship or a country or a tribe, is just as strong as the wish to negate that difference—because when you’re the minority, difference can be dangerous. Difference can get you killed. And yet, it is that difference I also celebrate. Judaism isn’t just a religion but a rich and diverse culture spanning thousands of years. We’re a people in a way many do not understand. We’re, well…a tribe.

  I’m not suggesting you feel sorry for me or Emma. I am suggesting that it might be important to be like Kim or Mattie: to recognize and respect and even cultivate a healthy curiosity and help your Jewish friends celebrate their difference. I am suggesting that if you throw a party, you might ask your Jewish friends if they eat pork or shellfish or beef stroganoff because I bet you do ask your gluten-intolerant or vegan friends what they’ll eat. Perhaps this Christmas, instead of inviting your Jewish friends for eggnog, get yourself invited over for Chinese takeout and a movie. Or a latkes party. (Or a fried-anything party: it’s traditional to eat all kinds of unhealthy, fried foods at Hanukkah to celebrate the miracle of the oil. Offer me spectacular fried chick
en or crispy fries with mayo and I am your friend for life.)

  You should not hide your joy at being Christian or pretend that Christmas is no big deal. Christmas is a big deal. So, yay! Enjoy! No one should ever try to shame you by getting all torqued because you’ve wished them a Merry Christmas either. (Full disclosure: I know fellow Jews who get completely bent about this. They’re being putzes.)

  Really, the only other thing you can really do for me?

  Seriously…enough with the Burl Ives already.

  PROLOGUE

  A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness.

  —Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, 1797

  Keyner zet nit zayn eygenum hoyker.

  No one sees the hump on his own back.

  —Old Yiddish saying

  Chapter 1

  Jess said he was a fool to let his cows calve this late (or early, depending on your point of view; Judd being an optimist, he liked early). You’re not getting any younger, she nagged. You’re going to kill yourself if you keep this up. A man your age needs to act his age.

  She might be right about the killing himself part. At eighty, there wasn’t a lot of spring left in this stringy old bird. But he’d be damned if he’d let himself degenerate into one of those overweight farts with their MAGA hats superglued to their scalps and spend his days down valley at Newsome’s hunkered around a potbelly amongst the jars of pickled eggs and hogs’ feet and jawing about this and that and what the world was coming to.

  Jess was also correct about the calves. Most ranchers let their cows calve in February or March, though some went for a fall calving as late as October. Those were generally bigger outfits, those factory jobs with plenty of money for feed because there’d be no pastureland for grazing until spring and most of those factory-style ranchers had neither the patience nor good sense to let their cows eat what was good for them instead of what was good for the ranchers. That always ticked him off, though. Being a small rancher lumped in with the factory farms, that is. He did his level best to make sure his cows were grass-fed all year round. That meant restricting some of his prime grazing land for harvesting only, but it was a way to make sure his herd got grass, even in winter.

  The problem was he’d lost fine young calves to that damn diphtheria this summer and all on account of wrecking his knee stepping off that finicky old ladder leading down from the mow. He’d slipped was all. Missed the rung and fell maybe four feet, which was enough to give him what the doctor said was a tibial plateau fracture—he had the man write it out so he could google it—and a couple torn ligaments. He’d been laid up for eight weeks, waiting to heal because, after his search, he decided no one was coming at him with a drill and a knife, no sir. This meant he’d had no choice but to allow his sister’s dumber-than-a-stump boy to “help out.” My God, that near about ruined him. That kid was so busy looking at his damn cell phone, he never did see when the calves wandered into thistle. Like every baby, a calf is a silly creature; everything goes into its mouth. Well, his calves’ mouths got all tore up and then the diphtheria set in and, within three weeks, fifteen calves had pneumonia. Ten died.

  Judd’s ranch was small. Ten dead calves in a season was huge. So he’d had no choice but to try and get a jump. Was it a risk bringing out eight new calves now? Sure. Nothing in this life was certain except death and taxes.

  But what was worse was to get beat. What was worse was not to try at all.

  Chapter 2

  For once, the weatherman was right about that storm, which just proved what his grandpa said: even a broken clock told the right time twice a day. Why, all any fool needed to do was go outside, look at the leaden bellies of those clouds, and get a good snootful. One whiff of that scent of chilled aluminum, and Judd knew the storm sweeping down from Canada he’d been tracking on his weather radar for the past week was going to be a doozy. In fact, he’d told all his neighbors about it, too, though they hadn’t believed him until the weatherman came out and said so, which went to show some men needed somebody else to tell them what they ought to think. (Although, yes, Jess had been right to nag him into joining the 21st century, even though that had taken almost two decades. He wasn’t against progress. He was against being bullied into it, was all.)

  By three o’clock, the day was already graying out, and dense curtains of clouds had descended to cloak the already snow-shrouded Whitefish to the west and Black Wolf Mountains to the north. As he headed for his cow barn—stumping through snowpack, his dog, Carson, pogoing up and down—his bum knee yammered and complained. Well, no help for it. He clamped his Stetson to his skull. A pregnant cow didn’t care about the weather, and he was sure Brett was going to drop her calf by in the next couple of days. Then it was gonna be Bart and Aaron and Jordy and Randall and pop, pop, pop all down the line until Christmas.

  That was something Jess never understood, him naming his cows after football players. He was partial to the Packers, primarily because Green Bay owned them and not some rich hotshot. But they’re girls, Judd, Jess said. Well, he knew that. But what difference did it make? Brett was better than Daisy any damn day. Although, well, he’d hemmed and hawed about Randall. Cobb going to the Cowboys was just wrong, like when Favre hopped over to the Jets—anyone coulda told the man that would be a disaster—before settling down for that last, almost glorious season with the Vikings. Soon as Brett let fly that last pass in the playoff game, he’d known it’d be intercepted and that would be the end. But what a wild ride it was.

  As he neared the barn, blasts of icy, wind-driven grit and balloons of fresh snow buffeted and snatched at his clothes. He’d bet those ski people up at those fancy places like Big Sky were popping bottles of champagne, beside themselves with relief. After last year’s scant snow, it had been a white September. Going to the Sun Road over to the west in Glacier had closed early, and they’d endured an even whiter Thanksgiving. With nine days before Christmas, he bet the resorts were cranking up Bing Crosby and ho-ho-hoing all the way to the bank. Not that he blamed them one bit. The last five years had been hard. Dry when it should be wet, the streams and rivers swollen to bursting when the levels should be low, first frost coming later and later, and not enough snowmelt to sneeze at for the spring thaw.

  They had seen no real warmups in the past month. This meant the forest service people had been busy setting off charges to bring down floods of sun-softened powder before some fool skiers got themselves into trouble. He’d read somewhere that California used a vintage 105mm howitzer loaned by the Army for avalanche control. My, he wouldn’t mind seeing that bad boy in action, though Jess opined he’d surely gotten enough of that in Vietnam, hadn’t he?

  She wasn’t wrong. Still, he wouldn’t mind watching the park service people lob some of those bad boys. Watch all that snow blow up, he thought, kicking aside drifted snow so he could lever open the door. Big white geysers and then it’d be like a river, a flood, all that snow barreling down the slopes with a—

  A faint boom grumbled to his right.

  What? At the sound, Judd stopped kicking and turned from the barn door, blinking against icy bits that nipped at his cheeks and pecked at his eyes. That had come from the north, probably the Black Wolf. Unless he was hearing things? He cast a quick glance down at Carson. The big shepherd had gone still, ears pricked, snout snuffling in huge draughts of air as if he might parse the sound by scent alone.

  Not his imagination, then. Odd noise. What had that been? He listened, ears straining against the whistle of the wind and he caught…yes, there was the slightest echo as the sound banged around and against the mountains.

  To his right, Carson stamped and turned him a worried look.

  “Beats me.” He didn’t know if his dog was spooked or wanted to be off because he sensed trouble. “If I had to guess, I’d say dynamite, but I’ll be honest, boy. Not enough of a boom. More like a bang. Like something breaking, the way mountains will sometimes calve in a rockslide. Know what I’m saying?”

  Carson whined in agree
ment.

  “Yeah, that’s what I think.” Judd cocked his head and concentrated. “Let’s see if it comes again.”

  The sound did not. He listened for another two minutes, long enough for the wind’s fingers to stroke his neck and make him shiver, but heard nothing more. Even Carson’s stance relaxed. Whatever had happened was clearly over.

  “All right, then, let’s get back to it,” he said, pulling open the door, and sighed with pleasure as the barn exhaled an aroma of warm hay and manure. Inside, the cows were crunching and grumbling over their dried grass. He liked that sound. Found it a comfort, even.

  At his entrance, Brett lowed from her birthing stall.

  “How you feeling, girl?” A single glance at that kinked tail of hers answered the question. His own dad, Darren, always said keep an eye on that tail: Cow goes into labor, she’s gonna get restless, start turning around looking for a place to lie down, and that tail’s gonna kink out to the side instead of hang straight down. In all his years of ranching, he had yet to find a reason to doubt his father. To his practiced eye—straw wasn’t wet, so her water hadn’t broken, and she hadn’t set to trembling or huffing like a blown horse yet—he thought Brett had a ways to go. Maybe another day and then all his girls would follow, possibly right up to Christmas. That made him chuckle. Talk about away in the manger. He wondered what his pastor would say if he missed the eleven o’clock service on Christmas Eve. Somehow, Judd thought his pastor would have a hard time seeing the poetic justice. Jess, who sang in the choir, loved the candles, the music, even the breathy toots from the church’s anemic organ. If he missed the service, she might not speak to him again until after the New Year. Some men his age might not find that a loss.