Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (33 page)

His shoulders, chest, and abdomen rippled with sleek, lean muscles in the flickering firelight. In fact, he looked like a piece of art, something Michelangelo might have sculpted in bronze or burnished copper. His sheer beauty took her breath away and sent tingles up and down her spine.

“You’re right. They barely qualify as scratches,” Zane said casually as he pressed a thick pad of gauze against his side and taped it into place. “Might need a couple of stitches so you don’t keep breaking the edges open.”

Scratches? They didn’t even qualify as scratches? He’d been shot, for God’s sake. And not just once.

Could they be downplaying the danger in order not to worry her?

Rawls must have recognized her brewing panic, because he stopped easing back into his T-shirt and took hold of her chin. He nudged it up until their eyes met. She relaxed slightly at the gentle warmth in his gaze.

“Trust me, darlin’. I’m fine. This isn’t my first rodeo. It won’t be my last either. I know when an injury is worth worryin’ over.”

Leaning down, he kissed her. Not a light brush of lips either. His mouth was hard instead—strong. As though he knew she needed an indication of his health and resilience, rather than tenderness. It worked too. Her heart rate settled as she leaned into him, returning the caress, strength to strength.

His sensual reassurance reverberated through her endocrine system long after the kiss ended, and he eased back into his T-shirt and camouflage jacket. But soon her traitorous mind found something else to worry over.

“Not my first rodeo . . . I know when an injury is worth worryin’ over.”

Meaning he’d been hurt before
. . .
shot before
. . .
probably countless times. An accepted hazard of his career path.

A memory struck her. Harsh as a bullet, it snagged her breath.
Moonlight streaming through huge trees. Rawls stretched across a mat of pine needles, his bloody chest motionless beneath Cosky’s and Kait’s hands.

He’d died that night
. . .
according to him, according to Jude, even according to Pachico—the ghost he’d brought back—he’d died.

This isn’t my first rodeo. It won’t be my last either.

And there was a chance, a good chance even, that he’d die during the next moonlight rescue, or mission, or whatever drew him out into the darkness. Only next time there might not be a Kait to save him.

This emotion brewing between them was serious—definitely for her, but she suspected for him as well. She needed to consider his career choice and its potential effect on her mental health before things went much further.

Her gaze returned to the long, lean warrior standing so solidly beside her. When their eyes tangled, he smiled, his face softening. Sensual heat, along with tender reassurance broadcasted from his gaze. That was all it took.

Her twenty-nine years and two heart transplants had taught her the value of living in the moment. Of not questioning what the future held. Of finding joy in the here and now. She couldn’t foresee what fate held in store for her, so why make decisions based on possible future events? She shouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

There was no way she was giving up joy in the here and now to avoid possible pain in the future.

A discouraged silence and sense of anticlimax invaded the chopper on the way home. It was a familiar atmosphere, one Mac remembered well from his stint on the teams. Not every operation paid dividends. Some flipped sideways, stirring up shit they hadn’t anticipated. Some brought death and regrets and memories that stole a piece of your soul. And then there were the status quo missions. Operations that cost money, energy, and time but yielded exactly nothing.

Insertions like tonight weren’t the worst, nor the best—but they rode that bleak zone into disappointment and frustration.

His ears still ringing, his entire body one big aching bruise, Mac slouched against the padded walls with Zane and Cosky on either side. Rawls had hauled Dr. Ansell—or Faith, as she’d insisted he call her—off into the corner, where they’d taken to cuddling all by their lonesome, until one of Wolf’s guys had invaded their privacy long enough to do a healing. At least Mac assumed it was a healing since the bastard had pressed his palms against Rawls’s side and then his arm for several minutes before retreating as silently as he’d arrived.

He scowled as he glanced at Rawls and his woman. Might as well get used to calling her Faith. From the way his corpsman was cuddling her, he’d bet they’d be seeing more of her. A lot more. Just like they were seeing way too much of Kait and Beth.

What the fuck was going on with his operators? Did men have fucking biological clocks? Christ, the motherfuckers were dropping like flies.

By the time the helicopter settled onto the super-secret tarmac masked by the ring of clouds smothering McKinley’s peak, the ache in his muscles had settled into his bones. Hardly surprising considering how hard he’d hit the ground back there. A long hot shower was sounding better by the minute.

He glanced out the cockpit window as the bird sank into the shaft. Dawn rinsed the mountains a delicate shade of lavender. No shit. Lavender.

But the sight of dawn breaking over the landscape reminded him of those early days, back when he’d been part of the teams. Before he’d taken the silver oak leaf and the gold bars. Before he traded his seat in the Zodiac for a desk, politics, and bullshit protocol. Back then he’d been a vampire, just like the rest of them. Riding the beach boat or the helicopter at zero dark whenever in the endless quest to keep hearth and home safe, and then crashing on his cot to sleep the day away.

As the helicopter settled, and the door slid back, Mac watched Wolf’s crew shake themselves awake and disembark in that all-too-familiar post-adrenaline shamble.

Cosky and Zane held back alongside him, waiting for Wolf’s team to clear the hold. As for Rawls and the good doctor, they hadn’t even emerged from their cozy little corner yet. Once the last of Team Shadow Mountain was on the ground, Mac hopped down, grunting in irritation when his entire body burned in protest.

“I still got a couple fingers left in that bottle of Jack,” Mac told Zane and Cos as they joined him.

The bottle had come with the room. He wasn’t sure whether it had been a gift from Shadow Mountain command or forgotten by the last occupant of the room. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Sure,” Zane said, with a long spine-popping stretch. “I could use a day cap.”

Cosky simply nodded.

“How about you?” Mac raised his voice as Rawls slowly walked past, supporting most of Faith’s weight. “You up for a night cap?”

The woman looked like she’d hit a wall. White face. Red eyes. Crumpled shoulders.

“I’ll pass.” Rawls turned down the offer without hesitation. “I’ll see you three at fifteen hundred.”

He meant the afternoon what-the-fuck-went-wrong meeting.

One hundred percent of his attention fixed on the woman stumbling along beside him, Rawls steered her to one of the electrical carts parked along the side of the hangar, lifted her into the passenger seat, and took the driver’s seat. Seconds later the cart was out of sight.

“Well, Rawls has finally been bitten,” Zane said, staring off in the direction the cart had taken. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

Mac snorted—he could have said the same about Zane and Cosky.

“Hell,” Mac said. “Most likely it’s a temporary thing.” He held out hope anyway. “His head’s been scrambled as hell lately. Besides, they’ve only known each other a week. Proximity and adrenaline, when combined, can have a temporary bonding effect.”

Zane shot him a dry look. “Beth and I only knew each other a few days.”

“And she was your fucking soul mate, which you realized the instant you saw her,” Mac said, forcing derision into his voice, which was surprisingly hard to sustain. Apparently he was getting soft in his old age. “Which makes that comparison complete shit.”

“I could mention how long I knew Kait,” Cosky pointed out. “But I won’t, because this has nothing to do with length of time. It has to do with the way he looks at her. He’s never looked that way at a woman before.”

“The way he looks at her?” Mac repeated with a harsh laugh. “Christ, you’ve been hanging around your woman too long. She’s turned you into a fucking emoticon.”

Zane rubbed a tired hand down his greasy, camo-painted face. “Nah, I get it. He looks at her like he looked at Baby.”

Mac cocked his head, confused. “Baby? As in his ride? What the fuck does his hot rod have to do with anything?”

“Rawls was obsessed with that damn car. Every chance he got he was out there in the driveway washing or waxing her,” Cosky told him with a shrewd look in his eye, as though he knew Mac was protesting a bit too vehemently. “He looks at Faith the way he used to look at that old Camaro of his—before those bastards blew it up.”

An icy mask slammed down over Cosky’s face as he mentioned the car. Mac couldn’t blame him. The same bomb that had incinerated Rawls’s “Baby” had also destroyed every possession that Cosky had owned. Leaving him homeless, carless, weaponless, and running for his life.

“You know, Commander,” Zane suddenly said, amusement glittering in his green gaze. “It’s not nearly as terrifying as you seem to think.”

Mac took a cautious step backward, every instinct he possessed shouting that he wasn’t going to like the new direction this conversation had taken. “What the fuck are you talking about, jackass?”

“Falling in love.” Zane cocked his head, the gleam in those grass-green eyes brightening.

“Yeah.” Another slow step back. “I’ll leave that to you pussies.”

Cosky snorted. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed how you look at her, Mac. Fuck—you look at her the same way Rawls looks at his doctor.”

What the holy fuck!

A hurricane of denial flooded him. “I don’t know what you jackasses think you’re seeing. But let me nip it in the bud. I am
not
in love with Amy.”

Goddamn it, I’m not.

It wasn’t until their uproarious laughter filled the hangar that Mac realized he’d been the one to put a name to the emotion.

Chapter Twenty-Two

E
RIC ROLLED OVER
, reaching for the phone vibrating against the nightstand. He groaned beneath his breath upon recognizing the number flashing across his cell’s front display. A call from Coulson never boded well for the quality of the day.

“Who in the world would call you at such an ungodly hour?”
Esme’s groggy voice asked from the pillow beside him. She sat up, craning her neck to see the flashing number, before collapsing back onto the Vividus mattress with a tsk-tsk. “David Coulson. I should have known.” She sighed, snuggling back into her pillow and closing her eyes. “Well, answer it. The sooner you tell him to go to hell, the sooner we can go back to sleep.”

Sitting up and bracing his back against the Parnian headboard that fanned out across the wall behind him, he slid his finger across the green arrow to accept the call.

“Bugger you, asshole,” he said sourly into the phone. “It’s three a.m., for bloody sake.”

A snort greeted that complaint.

“Your English is showing.” There was a distinct sneer in the American’s voice.

Eric bit back his retort. Like most Americans of his acquaintance, Coulson was far too proud of his heritage and country. “What do you want?”

“You know, I can actually tell you come from stiff-lipped, upper-crust, pansy-assed aristocracy this morning. Most of the time your accent is so subtle it’s barely there.”

“What do you want?” Eric measured the words out, ignoring the comment about his speech.

The lack of an accent had been deliberate and hard won. A universal accent meant universal acceptance. One could avoid the stereotypical stranger suspicion if one sounded like the people you were conversing with.

A pause sounded and then Coulson continued. “We’ve had an interesting development arise.”

Eric waited. Bloody hell, the man liked to drag things out.

“Our friendly SEALs showed up at our San Jose facility.”

Eric jackknifed up against the headboard. “The hell you say! How did they connect that property to us?”

“No idea. But they were there, and they weren’t alone. A Shadow Mountain team was with them.”

Eric stopped breathing. Literally. “They’ve teamed up with Shadow Mountain?”

“Apparently so.” But anticipation throbbed in Coulson’s voice, rather than foreboding.

What the hell did Coulson know that he didn’t? Shadow Mountain was no bloody joke. The council didn’t know much about their old enemies other than they hailed from a place called Shadow Mountain and for every step the council took to shove their agenda forward, those damn Indians managed a counterstep to shove the agenda back. For decades they’d been caught in this frustrating dance of one step forward and then one step back.

“What did they get?” He ran stiff fingers through his hair. They’d been rebuilding the prototype at that facility. It had been borderline operational. To lose it now, so close to the finish line
. . .

Bloody hell
. . .

It would set their time line back by months.

“Nothing,” Coulson said, satisfaction thick in his voice. “They got absolutely nothing. I shut the facility down last night. Took the generator with me when I left. Three of my crew stayed behind to grab the research and rig the lab. Those bastards didn’t have a chance to take anything before the building blew.”

Eric slumped, his heart rate settling. This was news. Good news. “You have the prototype?”

“I do. It’s been rerouted to our friends at Dynamic Solutions. Link’s putting together a new team. One that won’t have a problem with the device’s
. . .
repurposing.”

“What about those damn SEALs? I don’t suppose the blast took care of that problem.” But there wasn’t much hope in his voice because Coulson would have led with that news.

“No such luck,” Coulson said.

“What about your team at San Jose?” Eric asked slowly, although there was little doubt the scientists were dead. Coulson wouldn’t have accepted anything less.

“The bastards produced the prototype, but they refused to accept the repurposing, so I gave them all pink slips,” Coulson said, a hint of gloating in his voice.

As though the deaths of six of the world’s top minds were something to celebrate. Eric forced back a wave of repugnance. In war, one allied oneself with men who served the greater goal—regardless of whether one liked or respected them. As a child, it was the first lesson he’d learned at his parents’ table.

“So we’re still on schedule?” Eric asked, relaxing. This had to be one of the few times a Shadow Mountain attack hadn’t set them back by months, if not years.

“We are.”

“Are you certain Mackenzie and his men were with them?” Eric asked.

How would they have even connected? Those damn Indians were secretive as hell.

“Positive. They were caught on the cameras.” Coulson laughed, that earlier hint of gloating back in his voice. “They scrambled the regular camera feeds. But those new cameras Link sent us worked perfectly. Not even a twitch in the broadcast. Those bastards, all of them, were plain as day.” He paused, and for the first time, a disgruntled tone entered his voice. “Too bad they didn’t arrive a bit later. Like when the place went boom.”

Eric rolled his eyes. Of course the bloody sod would go and blow up a perfectly good building. He was far too explosives happy in Eric’s opinion.

“Well, we know who Mackenzie and his crew have hooked up with now,” Eric said.

That at least was something.

And then it occurred to him what else they knew. He froze, pure exhilaration flashing through him.

“Amy Chastain and her children were picked up by a helicopter. In light of this new information, we can assume Shadow Mountain provided that chopper, along with a safe haven,” Eric said, his brows knitting.

They’d undoubtedly provided the ground crew as well, which explained why his contractors had been defeated so easily. The SEALs were bad enough. But bloody hell, once you factored in those damnable Shadow Mountain warriors, the odds increased a billionfold against
. . .
well, anyone.

“That would be a fair assumption, considering that the SEALs were working with them last night,” Coulson agreed. Judging by his satisfaction, he knew exactly where Eric was going with this.

“And since the Chastain boys were broadcasting right up until they reached Mount McKinley—”

“We finally know where their fucking lair is. We’ve got the bastards,” Coulson finished.

Well, not exactly, Eric allowed. It could be they’d found something to block the signal up there in Alaska—as Link had suggested—and then continued on their merry way. But Eric’s instincts whispered otherwise.

The signal had disappeared at the base of Mount McKinley. The activist group called themselves Shadow Mountain. Not to mention if the boys had been secreted away inside a bloody mountain, the signal would be interrupted.

All signs pointed to Mount McKinley as the base camp for those annoying, interfering bastards—as Coulson liked to call them.

Which meant they finally had a location to target.

A smile bloomed. As it turned out, Mackenzie had done them an immense favor, one worthy of a Hallmark card—if they made one for such an occasion—he’d given them the means to kill two enemies with one missile.

Rawls anchored a limp Faith against his right side as he pressed his palm to the scanner next to his quarters. Faith leaned against him without protest, apparently so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, or her body upright. He was familiar with the effects of a post-adrenaline crash, so he knew with certainty that wasn’t what she was experiencing. At least not completely. Sure, some of her exhaustion could be contributed to the recent mission—but not all of it.

Most of the fatigue came from other factors: like dying, and being dragged back to life, the battery of tests she’d undergone over the past two days, followed by a night of sex rather than sleep. And then there was her grief.

He could feel the sorrow dragging at her, weighing her down. A thick blanket of oppression sucking the life from her. He’d wager the heartache was hitting her the hardest. To lose so many friends at once. Not just her mentor, but everyone she’d worked with. Sweet Jesus—that kind of loss would hit a person hard. He thought of losing Zane and Cosky, Mac, Aiden, Tram and Tag, and the rest of his buddies in ST7, and his soul went ice cold.

As soon as the lock clicked, Rawls pushed the door open, hit the switch to turn on the lights, and half carried Faith inside.

She stirred as they stepped through the doorframe. “I should go to my own room. I’m not good company at the moment.”

Like hell
. But Rawls kept the thought to himself.

There was no way he was letting her suffer through the night alone. Whether she wanted it or not, she needed company. A warm body to remind her there was more than death in this world. A warm body to remind her that life was still there for the living.

“Let’s get you in the shower and warmed up,” he said, ignoring her comment.

“Okay.” She stared up at him with the saddest, most exhausted eyes he’d ever seen. But then her gaze dropped to his bicep and the beginnings of a frown knit her brow. “How’s your side and abdomen? Maybe you should go see the doctor.”

“The wounds are gone,” Rawls assured her. “One Bird is almost as good as Kait.”

In fact, he felt amazingly good. The ringing in his ears and aches and pains from hitting the ground had been vanquished along with the bullet holes. He stared down at her paint-streaked face and red-rimmed eyes as he tugged the T-shirt over her head. After returning to the chopper, he’d soaked a rag in water to wash her face. The effort had smeared rather than removed the paint, giving her the definitive raccoon look.

She didn’t protest when he started undressing her; instead she stood there, docile, while he unzipped and unbuttoned.

“I had thought we’d get there in time,” she said softly, anguish thickening her voice. She absently lifted one foot and then the other so he could remove her shoes. “I thought we’d have more time.”

Naked, her skin looked translucent beneath the harsh white light. Fragile. She was so thin he could clearly see the rise and fall of each rib and the points of her pelvis and collarbones.

“What happened was not your fault,” he said, in case she was suffering from survivors’ guilt, although from experience he knew the reassurance wouldn’t sink in right away—if it ever did.

He stripped his own clothes off and then urged her into the bathroom. After adjusting the taps until the water ran two steps below hot, he eased her under the spray. She flinched slightly as the water hit.

“Too hot?” he asked, keeping his voice soft and unobtrusive.

“No.” The word emerged on a sigh.

Although he wasn’t within the spray zone, the steam built steadily until they were surrounded by heat and humidity.

She tilted her face up and stood there, still, while the spray hit her full in the face. He didn’t realize she was shaking until he picked up the bar of soap and turned toward her.

Ah hell . . .

Dropping the soap back on the shelf, he dragged Faith into his arms and held her tight. She shuddered and pressed against him, her hot, wet face nestled in the hollow of his throat.

The shake to her shoulders was his first indication she was crying. But the tears were falling silently. The hurt so vast she couldn’t give voice to it. Somehow that made her pain even harder to witness.

“There you go. Let it out,” he whispered, running his hands up and down her slick back.

He ignored his own aching, a very physical one, as the wet, warm woman in his arms pressed fully against him. His dick signaled its approval with a steady increase in breadth and length, at least until Rawls mentally squashed its excitement.

Sweet Mary and Joseph . . .

She didn’t need lovemaking, not at the moment. She needed comforting, she needed caring for. No matter how badly certain regions of his anatomy wanted to do more
. . .
a lot more.

“I can’t believe he’s gone.” The words were a mumble against his chest.

“Who?” he asked gently, stroking his palms up and down her spine.

He tried to keep his caresses soothing, although the warm, satin glide of her naked flesh beneath his hands was anything but relaxing on his end. He wrapped a choke chain around his libido and wrestled it under control.

“Gil
—
” she whispered, her voice breaking. “It doesn’t feel real. None of this seems real.”

He tightened his arms around her, still stroking her back, wishing he could absorb her pain.

Eventually the water cooled, so he pulled back to find the soap and washrag. He lathered her up and rinsed her off and started in on washing her hair. She sighed, resting against him, as he massaged her scalp. Once her hair had been washed, conditioned, and rinsed, he turned the water off and wrapped her in a towel. The towel wasn’t a particularly large one, yet it swallowed her fragile frame.

Concern rose as he dried her off, his touch gentle against the frailty beneath his hands. She was too damn thin. He should have taken her to the cafeteria before taking her to his bed.