Eye of the Beholder (14 page)

Oh,
God,
this was happening too fast.

She focused on Rafe. In the searchlight his hair was bleached silver. His arms flexed against his sleeves as he hauled himself up the rope. She thought of how soft his hair was, and how hard his arms were, and how safe he’d made her feel.

“Heads up, ma’am,” O’Toole called. “Here’s your ride.”

Glenna looked up. The open doorway of a large helicopter gaped in front of her, the interior lit with a dull red glow. More soldiers stood on either side of the opening and reached out to swing her inside. O’Toole un-buckled her harness and bent down to loop her arm over his shoulder. He hustled her to the rear of the helicopter just as Rafe and the others reached the doorwahe twisted to watch Rafe, but he didn’t look her way. The moment he was inside, he put on a radio headset and headed toward the cockpit.

Of course. He’d have to report what they knew about Juarez, she thought. He’d gotten her to safety. His duty to her was over.

It’s over, Glenna. You’re going home.

No, not yet, she thought. She wanted to make sure Rafe had his wound checked. She had to tell these people he needed more rest. She needed to feel his arms around her again, and she wanted the chance to make him smile the heart-melting smile she’d seen this morning. She wanted the chance to tell him again that she loved him—

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

She glanced up at Sergeant O’Toole. He was looking at her with an expression of alarm.

Only then did she realize that she was crying.

She dried her cheeks on the backs of her hands. “Some dust got in my eyes,” she said. “That’s all.”

The drone of the engines vibrated through the fuselage as the transport lumbered over the Atlantic. Rafe felt the hum from the soles of his feet to his molars. It rattled the map that was spread out on his knees. He’d never thought much about it before. On the way to a drop point, he was always focused on the mission. On the way home, he’d usually be catching some sleep.

But Glenna had never traveled in the belly of a plane before, with cargo nets instead of windows and a bare metal floor. The utilitarian bench seats that folded down from the walls bore little resemblance to the upholstered seating in the first-class section of a passenger jet.

Out of necessity, the transfer from the helicopter that had brought them out of the jungle to this transport had been swift. As Flynn had said, Delta wasn’t officially in Rocama, so they had to get back in the air ASAP. Rafe wished there was some other way to get Glenna home—he remembered what she’d said about preferring to take a train rather than a plane—but speed was of the essence. He’d made sure Glenna was provided with a few pillows and blankets to make her as comfortable as possible for the trip back to Fort Bragg, but he hadn’t thought about the noise.

“Rafe? Did you hear me?”

At Flynn’s voice, Rafe handed the map to his friend and got to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

“She’s still asleep, just like she was the last five times you checked on her.” Flynn tapped his index finger against the map. “Show me where you left the jeep you took from Juarez.”

“In a minute.” Rafe stepped over Flynn’s legs and moved past the other soldiers who dozed along the wall to make his way toward the tail of the plane.

Glenna was curled on her side across a pair of seats, a gray blanket draped over her legs. Her eyes were closed. Rafe caught hold of a strap on the fuselage above the bench to steady himself as a wave of weakness rolled over him. He studied her for any sign of discomfort, but she appeared to be sleeping peacefully despite the drone of the engines.

Good. S was what she needed most. That and some decent food. The medic who had examined her ankle said the sprain was healing well. She’d get a thorough medical exam once they got to the base hospital, but in all likelihood she’d be pronounced in good physical health despite her ordeal. No permanent damage. The scrapes on her knees were already healing. The scrapes on her back that she’d gotten when they’d made love on the ground would heal, too.

No, it hadn’t been love. It was sex, that’s all. Simple, basic, mindless sex. She had tried to dress it up to justify it to her conscience, but he’d known the score all along. They’d used each other. Now that she was going home, his usefulness to her would be at an end. She would get back to planning charity balls and he would get back to being a soldier.

He swayed on his feet as the plane jolted through a pocket of turbulence. His wound throbbed distantly, but he ignored it and focused on Glenna.

What would she do when she got home? Would she let some man kiss her at her mother’s next dinner party? Who would she be with on New Year’s Eve? She said she didn’t have a love life, but she was too passionate a woman to remain alone. She had so much warmth and compassion to share, she deserved to find someone who could make her happy.

Sure, she deserved it. But the thought of another man touching her made him want to break something.

I love you, Rafe.

He felt a wave of pain that had nothing to do with the wound in his leg. He’d known she hadn’t meant what she’d said, but it had felt so good to hear those words, he hadn’t tried all that hard to make her stop.

Damn, he was in worse shape than he’d thought. He’d known the deeper they got into it, the worse it was going to be when they were back in the world. If he really wanted to help Glenna, then he had to get his head straight before this plane landed.

She was going to hate him once she came to her senses. That was a given. The best he could hope for was that the shrinks made sure she didn’t hate herself.

He reached down, tugged the blanket up to cover her shoulder and tucked it gently behind her back. His hand brushed her hair. He curled a stray lock around his thumb, rubbing it against his finger, remembering how good it had felt sliding over his skin.

If only the chopper had showed up a few hours later…

With a muttered curse, he withdrew his hand. A few more hours, a few more days, what difference would it have made? It was over. It never should have happened in the first place. He returned to his seat beside Flynn.

“All finished?” Flynn drawled.

“Yes.” He picked up the map and spread it over his knees. He leaned over to study it once more.

“You sure? There might be a square millimeter of her face you haven’t memorized.”

“Shut up, Flynn.”

“Not that I blame you. She’s looking pretty rough now, but I’ll bet she cleans up real well.”

“Leave her alone, O’Toole.”

“No” Flynn scratched his forearm. “Females who cry give me hives.”

Rafe’s head jerked up. “She cried?”

“When we got her on the chopper. I thought you’d noticed.”

“No, I hadn’t. What did you do to her?”

“Hey, calm down. I didn’t do anything. She told me she had dust in her eyes.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“Of course not. Knowing the way women are, she was probably emotional about getting rescued, that’s all.”

“And you’re an expert on women, right?”

Flynn smiled. Twin dimples appeared in his camo-smeared cheeks to bracket his mouth. “Not yet. I need to do way more research.”

Normally Rafe found his friend’s attitude harmless. Women were drawn to Flynn’s striking Black Irish looks. They were charmed by his easy manner and his knack of telling them what they wanted to hear. If Flynn had been the one to rescue Glenna from the hijackers at the airport—

Then Glenna would have wanted to sleep with Flynn instead of Rafe. She would have told Flynn that she loved him. Any warm body would have done in the dark.

Rafe had an irrational urge to drive his fist into his friend’s teeth.

Instead, he jabbed his finger at a spot on the map. “This is where the track ended.”

Flynn’s smile winked out. He was immediately all business. “And where’s the Juarez compound?”

“In this area,” Rafe said, moving his finger to the southeast. “It’s heavily treed, so it wouldn’t have showed up on the satellite shots.”

“We’ll tell Sarah where to look. She’ll find it,” he said confidently. “She told us where to look for you two, didn’t she?”

Flynn was referring to Captain Sarah Fox. Technically, she worked for Intelligence because of the regulations barring women from combat roles in the Special Forces, but over the years Sarah had become as much a member of his team as any of the men. The camaraderie they shared transcended both her gender and her rank. “How did she do that, anyway?”

“When Juarez wouldn’t let anyone speak to his hostages after the first night, we figured you were either dead or had escaped. Knowing you, we put our money on escape. So Sarah got her friends in Intelligence to focus the recon satellites on a three-kilometer radius around the extraction points we’d agreed on. She used the infrared shots to penetrate the forest canopy.”

“Infrared? With all the wildlife? That’s like the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Apparently the Funny Platoon has some computer gizmos that can analyze body heat patterns to sort out the human ones. It helped that you built a fire and were stationary for three days. That’s why we mobilized for a look-see.”

Body heat? Rafe wondered uneasily exactly how much detail showed up on those surveillance shots. “I’ll be sure to thank Sarah when I see her. With Juarez’s men in the next valley, we might have had some trouble.”

“Yeah. The guy doesn’t seem to care who he goes up against. He wants his brother freed.”

“He’s got the local authorities on his payroll.”

“We figured that. How many men patrol the perimeter of his compound?”

“Unknown. I saw a total of twelve who were on duty, but that was only in a limited area.”

“We took down seven at the airport. I counted twenty-three reinforcements who were arriving before we drove off with the hostages, so we have to assume Juarez has a sizable force.”

“They’ve got serious ordnance, too. They used a grenade launcher to take out the ambulance.”

“What kind of security is at the house?”

“No gates, but the house is wired. The guards have automatic weapons. The one I took had a magazine full of hollow-point ammo, so they’re not pulling any punches. Why do you want to know?”

“The pilot died.”

Pilot? Rafe set his mind back to the minutes before his team had stormed the plane. He remembered the red stain on the pilot’s white shirt, the sound of his body hitting the tarmac. Juarez’s men had showed no mercy. Glenna would have been next. “I’m sorry to hear that. We should have moved sooner.”

“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty.”

“Did he leave a family?”

“No kids, and his wife died two years ago. But he was a vet. Decorated navy flier before he retired from the service, which explains how he had the skill to do a no-fuel landing on that short runway without crashing. It’s possible that his murder is going to give the politicians the leverage we need to authorize going after Leonardo Juarez.”

“When?”

Flynn gestured to the fresh bandage that showed beneath the ragged edge of Rafe’s pant leg. “How long before you’ll be good to go?”

“Whenever we get the word.”

Flynn grunted. “That’s more like it. You had me worried there for a minute.”

“What do you mean?”

“You seemed more interested in playing nursemaid than finishing what we started.”

“Since when haven’t I done my job, Flynn?”

“Never, Rafe. You do your job and then some.” He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles, then clasped his hands behind his head and looked toward the back of the plane. “If it wasn’t for you, Glenna Hastings would have been dead five days ago. I wonder if she realizes how lucky she is.”

Glenna couldn’t seem to stop crying. Up until a few days ago, she hadn’t cried since she was thirteen. Now it wasn’t only her passion that was bling out, it was every emotion she had ever tried to bottle up.

She tipped up her face, hoping the full force of the shower would wash away her tears, but they kept coming. She didn’t even know why she was crying. The nightmare was over. She was back on American soil. She was as safe from Juarez and his men as she could possibly be—she was in the middle of an army base, surrounded by thousands of trained soldiers. No one was going to hurt her now. She was well rested, she was well fed. She was in the process of getting clean. What on earth was there to cry about?

She grabbed the small container from the shelf in the shower and emptied the last of the shampoo into her palm. She lathered her hair for what had to be the fourth time, digging her fingers into her scalp to be sure she got rid of every last speck of dirt. But as the suds sluiced down her back, her tears came faster. Her chest felt hollow, as if she were losing far more than the grime that had accumulated during the past five days.

Five days. It seemed incredible, but only five days had passed since she’d put on her business suit and her favorite shoes and had boarded that plane in Montego Bay. Five days of being alive that wouldn’t have happened if not for Rafe.

Rafe. Where was he now? What was he doing? Was he in pain? Had he slept, had he eaten? Why wasn’t he here?

Glenna hiccuped on a sob and picked up the soap. She scrubbed at her skin until it began to hurt. She was being unreasonable. Rafe had other duties. He had things to do. She didn’t need him here to hold her hand, did she?

Oh, God. Yes, she did. She needed to see him. She needed to hear his voice and feel the reassuring warmth of his touch and look into his eyes and believe everything would be all right. After five days straight of being together, she couldn’t imagine being without him. She
loved
him. It wasn’t over. She couldn’t wash away what had happened.

She looked at the puffs of lather that swirled around the drain at her feet. The fragile mounds shuddered at the impact of each drop of water that fell, breaking apart, dissolving into flat spots of white that slipped effortlessly over the tile through the chrome grating, leaving nothing behind but the ceaseless beat of the water. Nothing. As if it had never been.

Glenna stared, her vision blurring. She heard a stream that gurgled lazily through lush ferns. She saw a peaceful pool in the moonlight. Her body was wet, moving over Rafe’s to cool him. Then she was moving under him and his lips were curving into a smile that stole her breath…