Breaking Through (Book 2 of the SEAL TEAM Heartbreakers) (3 page)

“We wouldn’t want that,” she agreed and lifted her head to kiss his throat.

He rushed to untie his boots and they hit the floor with a thump.

Another laugh bubbled up from inside her. “I think that may be the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard, Lieutenant Yazzie.”

Hawk’s smile promised more. “I think we can do better.” He pushed her t-shirt up and lowered his mouth to her breast.

Two Weeks Later

CHAPTER 2

Yasin al-Yussuf narrowed his eyes against the painful glare of the late afternoon sun. A wave of anxiety cramped his stomach. Sweat ran down the middle of his back, dampening his cotton shirt, already wilted from the heat.  As he passed an old man squatting in the dirt outside the low-level apartment complex, he averted his face. It would not do for anyone to recognize him here.

The building, three stories high, had circular pits of recent small arms fire scarring the west corner. Small patches of grass clung to the narrow strip of sandy soil between the structure and the cracked sidewalk.

So this is what he had come to. This is what the Americans had forced him to become. The very thing he had fought against for so long.

He turned the corner. A slow-moving car swung onto the street. He bent his head and focused on the sidewalk, then threw up a hand to conceal the side of his face as it passed.

A large chunk of concrete, blown from the top edge of the building, propped open the front door. He ducked inside and paused to allow his eyes to adjust.

A narrow flight of stairs disappeared upward, while a lower level hallway shot back into a dimly lit passageway. The smell of cooking fish had nausea gripping his stomach and twisting it.

He could leave this place. He had not gone beyond the point of no return. No one knew he was here.

But what of his son? Where was Sanjay? The two American men who had driven him home had to have played a part in his disappearance. They had surely killed him and buried his body somewhere in the desert. But why? He was only a child.

While the American military continued to drag their feet and offer him platitudes and empty sympathy, he and his wife had clung to their hope and to each other.

Four long months had passed since he had seen his son. Four months filled with an unrelenting fear and grief that he could no longer bear.

He had watched Levla change from a vibrant, joyful woman to a shadow. She disappeared into her grief more and more each day. Though she never spoke the words, he knew she blamed him for trusting strangers to deliver their only child home. He blamed himself. He had allowed his work to devour his life, and now his son was gone.

Anger and grief twisted together, clawing at his insides, burrowing into his brain. The men who were supposed to keep him safe and see him home safely had to pay. They must have killed him. He gripped the railing, and with steps heavy with determination, he trudged up the stairs.

At the top, he turned left down a hallway lit by ineffective intermittent lights and a dingy window at the end. Halfway down the passage he paused before a door with the numbers he sought.

Once again nausea struck him, and he drew deep breaths until the feeling passed. He had waited long enough. The Americans didn’t care about one lone Iraqi child. And his own people had been unable to find anyone who had seen his son since the moment the two Navy SEALs had taken him.
They were responsible. And they had to die.

He knocked on the door.

After too short a time, the hollow panel swung inward, and a man stared out at him, his dark eyes flat and hard, his skin dusky from the sun.

Suddenly desert dry, Yasin’s tongue lay useless in his mouth.

“What do you want?” the man demanded.

Yasin swallowed. “I wish to speak to you.”

“About?”

“The two Americans who killed my son.”

The man studied him, his features sharpening with recognition.

A shudder shook Yasin. He knew him. He had come too far. There was no going back. “They were two Navy SEALs. The same ones who killed your brother in the explosion.”

The man’s eyes widened, then shifted and became predatory. He swung the door wide. “Come in.”

***

Captain Russell Connelly paused just outside the luggage claim area and scanned the crowd. People stood queued up around the conveyor snagging their suitcases. The crowd parted to spit out two lucky men with their bags, then folded back in on itself. Neither man was Evan.

He checked his watch. Thirteen hundred hours. He had to report to the hospital at sixteen hundred for a meeting with the surgical staff, and he hoped to get Evan settled and share a meal with him before the meeting.

The dull florescent light caught the copper highlights in the auburn hair of the woman tugging a huge suitcase behind her. Something about the way she walked seemed familiar. As she moved closer, a smile of recognition curved her lips.

“Captain Connelly, how are you?”

“I’m good, Mrs. Weaver.”

She smiled again. “Clara. Surely you can call me Clara now.”

Why hadn’t he noticed this beautiful, vibrant woman two months ago?

Because she’d been the mother of his patient, and he’d been keeping his professional distance.

But also because she’d been under tremendous stress.

Her son had lain in a coma. Her older daughter had had an emergency C-section, a baby girl, if he remembered correctly. And the same team member rumored to have injured Brett and caused his coma had nearly killed her youngest daughter.

Jesus.

“How are your children doing?” he asked, then mentally slapped his forehead. He braced himself for the inevitable outpouring.

“Brett is doing well, thanks to you.”

Heat crept up the back of his neck at the look of gratitude she shot him. He shook his head. “He’s doing well because he’s a resilient young man. The medication I gave him may, or may not, have had a bearing on his regaining consciousness.

“You never gave up on him. You kept trying, and that’s what counts.”

“Your daughter Zoe would have kicked my butt all over the hospital if I’d ever hinted at quitting.”

Clara laughed. “She’s a force to be reckoned with. She’s a real steel magnolia—soft, southern and feminine, but with a core of steel.”

“Like her mother.”

Soft color touched her cheeks and she shifted the strap of her purse over her shoulder. Her blouse parted, showing the lacy camisole-style t-shirt hugging her breasts and offered him a glimpse of cleavage. “Thanks for the compliment, but I think all my children got more of that from their father.”

“And you’re here just for a visit?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet. After everything that happened in June, I decided to take early retirement and explore my options.”

How old was she? She looked too young to retire.

And why was he speculating about her age?

Because for the first time in a very long while he was noticing a woman.
Really noticing her.

“Dad.”

Evan’s voice just behind him caught his attention. He tore his gaze away from Clara Weaver to face his son.

Time stopped. His heart plunged.
My God. What the hell happened?
He barely bit back the exclamation.
What’s wrong?

Evan looked pale, and his face was thin. Dark shadows formed crescents beneath his eyes and accentuated the sharp thrust of his cheekbones. His clothes hung on him as though the cloth found it painful to touch his bony frame.

Six months. It had only been six months since they’d seen each other.
How had this happened?

 A soft hand gripped his, and he glanced down at Clara Weaver.

Her shoulder brushed his as she leaned forward and offered her other hand to Evan, filling the awkward silence, giving him time to recover.

“Hello, I’m Clara Weaver. My son was one of your father’s patients a couple of months ago.”

“Evan. I’m Evan.” His smile appeared strained as he accepted her hand. His brown eyes looked overlarge in a face that seemed to have shrunk.

“I’m glad to meet you, Evan.” Clara’s gaze swung upward to Russell’s face, searching, concerned. “It was good seeing you, Dr. Connelly.”

 His mind, sluggish with shock, began to function again. “Russell,” his voice sounded rusty. “Please call me Russell.”

“Russell, then. I’ll be staying at Brett’s apartment. Perhaps you and your son can come to dinner one night.” Releasing his hand, she rifled through her purse, then withdrew a pencil and a scrap of paper. She jotted something down and pressed it into his hand.

A knot the size of softball lodged in his throat. “Thanks, Clara.”

“I hope to see you both soon. Evan.” She nodded to them and, gripping her suitcase handle, sauntered out of the baggage claim area and down the terminal.

Russell opened the paper to read the cell phone number and the note,
If you need anything at all
. He tucked it into his pocket. “Let me take your bag, Evan.”

“I’ve got it.”

Russell matched his pace to Evan’s as they strolled up the terminal to the exit. He made a point of pausing at the artwork displayed along the way, giving Evan time to rest.

His mind raced with possibilities as he studied the way Evan moved, the color of his skin, looking for clues. Though they were the same height, Evan had always been less muscular. But now he’d lost at least thirty pounds, maybe more.

They caught a shuttle to the parking lot. Dread slowed his pace as they walked the short distance to the car. He hit the button on his key ring to unlock the doors and raise the trunk lid. Evan stuffed in the bulky case. Russell slid behind the wheel and waited for him to get in and buckle his seat belt.

He rested his hands on the wheel, but didn’t start the car. Emotion tightened like a steel band around his chest and choked off his air. “What is it?” His voice sounded hoarse.

Evan’s brown eyes grew glassy and his throat worked as he swallowed. “I have AIDS, Dad.”

***

Clara gripped the steering wheel as she pulled out into the stream of traffic traveling east away from the airport.

My God, what a horrible way to find out your child is ill.
The blatant shock on Dr. Connelly’s face had torn through the surprising pull of attraction she’d felt toward him and spurred her to offer him support in the only way a stranger could, through physical contact.

How long had it been since he’d seen his son? It was obvious he hadn’t seen him recently.

In the military, separations came so often and lasted anywhere from a few months to more than a year. But that was usually during deployment or training. Dr. Connelly was stationed here, had been for some time, or that had been the impression she’d gotten while Brett was ill.

Why hadn’t he seen his son? An estrangement? Could it be that Evan hadn’t wanted his father to know he was ill? But why?

She had no right to speculate. But the look on Russell’s face—Russell. The name suited him. The streaks of gray hair at his temples stood out against the sun-kissed tone of his skin. He must do some kind of outside activity.

His hand had gripped hers more out of an automatic response than an acceptance of the comfort she was offering.

He’d been so stunned.

She’d paused long enough to observe them out of concern—and curiosity.

He and his son hadn’t embraced, even after she’d left them. Pain had lain between them like shards of glass. How awful for them both. Was the distance a normal dynamic? Had it been shock that had held them apart, or was their relationship as strained as it seemed?

But after the shock, when Russell had begun to recover, she’d seen the look in his eyes and recognized it. The same look had stared back at her from the mirror for a long endless month until Sharon had recovered from her emergency surgery, and Brett had awakened from his coma.

Fear. Fear for your child, and helplessness, because there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to stand between them and the pain they were experiencing.

It had been etched into her husband Joseph’s features every time he’d seen Zoe in pain after the accident that had nearly cost her a leg. Not being able to shoulder their daughter’s pain had eaten at him. And her.

Evan had the hollow-eyed look of a cancer patient. The measured way he’d moved, as though he was conserving his strength between each step, spoke volumes. Whatever it was, it was bad.

Why wouldn’t he have turned to his father, a doctor, from the very beginning?

The question burrowed into her thoughts.

They owed Russell Connelly so much. Was there some way she could help? Would he even welcome the offer? He had her number. She’d just have to wait and see.

CHAPTER 3

“Are you going to tell Mom what Dr. Stewart said? Zoe asked.

“Are you going to tell her you’re sleeping with Hawk?” Brett shot back as he loaded the dishwasher.
Jeez.
How the hell did the place get in this kind of shape with only him here? He scanned the living room for any dishes he might have missed.

“That’s probably something I don’t have to say. She already knows—has known for some time.”

Brett’s head whipped around. “Damn, Zoe. That isn’t the kind of thing you talk about with your mom.”

“I’m living with him, Brett. We share a house and a bed.” Her dark blue eyes gleamed wickedly. “Do you really think she doesn’t know her children have sex lives?”

“If she ever asks, I’m still a virgin,” he said.

Zoe laughed. “Too late. She knows you and Jennifer Taylor swapped cherries in the back seat of her car on prom night. If you’re going to have sex in the family vehicle, at least get rid of
all
the condom wrappers.”

Brett squeezed his eyes shut. “Man. It sucks when you can’t hide anything from the women in your life.”

Her expression grew serious. “You already keep so many secrets. It helps us feel connected when you share the emotional parts of your life with us.”