Freefall (27 page)
Authors: Joann Ross
Tags: #Contemporary, #Military, #Romance Suspense, #Mystery Romantic Suspense
Sabrina was admittedly surprised at how well she and Zach worked together. Of course, during the day he was the ultimate professional, running his crew with almost military precision. Which wasn't surprising, she supposed. Given his SEAL background.
They also fit well together in so many other ways. And not just in bed. They were comfortable in each other's space, he could make her laugh, and their evening walks on the beach and moonlight swims were becoming her favorite parts of the day.
A week after she'd gone to the bank, she was standing in what had for nearly two hundred years been a garden, getting her picture taken for the
Trumpet
with Zach, John Tremayne, Line, Titania, and, of course, Jeremy Macon, who was making sure to get a plug in for his bank, which was only fair, since he was providing the financing.
According to Line's records, Swann Tea had the funds to finance the construction, but as Sabrina had learned, it was always preferable to use someone else's money.
In addition to those involved in the project, Harlan, and Lillian, and even Nate had shown up. As had reporters from Somersett, Beaufort, and other towns scattered throughout the Lowcountry, who, unsurprisingly, were proving far more interested in the Swann Island Slasher than the prospect of yet another Southern tearoom.
There were tourists, perhaps, attracted, by the crowd.
And, for some reason, though about as welcome as ants at a Memorial Day picnic, Brad Sumner was also in attendance.
"Okay, Ms. Swann," David Henley, the
Trumpet's
new editor and, it appeared, chief photographer, said. "If you could put your foot on the shovel."
He fiddled with the focus some more while the smile grew stiff on Sabrina's face.
"That's perfect. Now, Mr. Tremayne, Zach, if you could scoot in a little closer—"
"No problem," Zach said, putting an arm around Sabrina's waist and leaning in so he could murmur in her ear. "In fact I have plans to get a helluva lot closer this evening."
She laughed, not so much because of what he'd said, but because of how the prospect made her feel.
She was still insisting on at least keeping up appearances, which meant that he hadn't yet spent the entire night, but he might as well have, because he usually left her bed at dawn, then returned to Swannsea at eight with the crew that had begun setting the stakes for the new foundation.
"Perfect," Henley said with satisfaction. The camera clicked.
"May I have a few moments, Ms. Swann?" he asked as he pulled out a long, slender notepad. "I'd like to ask you a few questions for the paper."
She sighed inwardly. In her previous job, she'd always been available to talk with the press. She hadn't necessarily enjoyed the experience, but neither had she disliked it.
Promotion, which was what all interviews really were, after all, had been just one more aspect of the job, and occasionally—such as when that Australian hip-hop group had gotten drunk in the lobby bar and decided to crash a wedding reception at the hotel in Melbourne—it could provide a valuable opportunity to spin a negative story in as positive a light as possible.
"I always enjoy talking about Swann Tea," she said with a smile, as Zach went off to speak to the bulldozer operator, who was waiting to break ground.
"I was hoping we could discuss your experience in Florence."
Wasn't that exactly what she'd feared? Especially from the newspaper editor who she suspected was sensationalizing the murders to earn himself national recognition.
"Really?" She feigned surprise. "But that's such old news."
"I thought we'd cover it as more a personality-profile piece. You know, local girl goes off to seek her fortune, gets attacked by terrorists, and escapes the rat race to return to her hometown."
"Well, I suppose that's the
TV Guide
program description version," she allowed with a smile as fake as her surprise. "But it's a bit more complicated than that."
"Now, see, that's exactly what I want to get into." He pressed on. "The complexities of your decision. I believe the
Trumpet's
readers would like the paper to peel away the many layers of Sabrina Swann. To get down to the inner woman. The survivor who has overcome so many challenges in her life."
"I don't believe I've faced that many challenges," she said mildly. "Certainly no more than anyone else."
"You lost both your parents, who, from what I've read, weren't exactly the most stable of individuals. You were sent to boarding schools around the world—"
"My parents were artists," she said. "I suspect that made them a bit more emotional than, say, an accountant. Or a hotel manager. Or even," she added with a forced smile, "a newspaper editor. And I was fortunate to receive an excellent education."
Sensing that he was going to turn this into a poor little rich girl story, which hers so wasn't, she glanced desperately over toward Zach, but he was busy talking with his father and the crew, so there wouldn't be any help coming from him.
Nor from Harlan. After giving her a brief wave and a sympathetic lift of his eyebrows, he began pushing Lillian back to their wheelchair-accessible van.
"I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which doesn't make me much of a story."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" Henley suggested. "I realize there are other members of the press who'd only be wanting some puff PR stuff from you, but I really want to go deeper.
"Is there somewhere we can conduct this interview in private? Perhaps over dinner? My wife doesn't know that many people here yet and she misses entertaining."
"I suspect having a husband show up with an unexpected guest isn't a wife's favorite thing in the world," Sabrina replied, dodging the unexpected dinner invitation. "As for the interview—"
"Oh, isn't this too, too fabulous!" As if conjured up from her wildest wishes, Titania suddenly appeared, gave Sabrina a huge hug, and turned her million-watt smile on the editor.
"This is definitely a red-letter day for Swarm Island," she gushed. "I do hope you got lots and lots of photographs for your paper."
"I believe I have enough. I was just discussing with Ms. Swann—"
"Oh, darling, now, you needn't be so formal." She ran a glossy coral fingernail down the front of his rumpled sport coat. "We're very casual here on the island. I'm sure Sabrina wouldn't mind if you called her by her first name. Would you, Sabrina?" she asked.
"Not at all. And as much as I'd love to discuss the exciting new plans for Swannsea, there's really something I need to talk to my contractor about."
"Oh, you go right ahead and take care of business." Titania wagged her hand, then linked arms with Henley. "I'll be pleased as punch to fill David in on all the details. Have you tried the chocolate mint brownies, sugar? We've got a table set up on the back veranda for friends and family, and, of course, our favorite members of the press, to celebrate this auspicious occasion.
"The brownies are one of my personal favorite recipes that we're going to be featuring at the Swannsea Tearoom. Of course we use our own mint tea in the recipe, and, I swear, they are to die for…
"Where did I hear you're from, darlin'? New York, or Philadelphia, or some such place?"
"Washington," Sabrina heard Henley say as Titania dragged him away.
Not that it took much effort. Sabrina had grown up watching men become pixilated by her stunningly beautiful, animated best friend.
"I knew it was one of those Yankee cities," Titania said.
"Quite a wingman you've got there," Zach said. He'd left the crew and met Sabrina as she was coming over to him.
"I owe her. She rescued me from an interview about the bombing."
"You'd think that'd be old news."
They both watched as the couple disappeared around the side of the house.
"That's what I thought, too," Sabrina said. "But he said he wanted to get to know the real me. Peel away the layers, so to speak."
"That's my job. Anyone else goes peeling on you, I'll have to break their hands."
He was standing a respectable distance away, hands safely in the pocket of work jeans that, while faded, were not as raggedy as the ones he usually wore, making Sabrina think he'd made the effort for her special day.
He was wearing sunglasses, which kept her from seeing his eyes, but from the way his baritone voice roughened, she knew he was thinking back on that dress she'd bought to wear out to last night's dinner in Somersett. The snug, peach-hued dress that he'd had to literally peel off her body.
Which had been precisely her intention when she'd bought it.
"You're bad."
"Just the way you like me."
"Absolutely the way I like you."
"You know I didn't mean it, right?"
"Mean what?"
It was happening again. That mind-stealing pheromone cloud that always seemed to surround them whenever they were together.
"What I said. About breaking his hands."
"Well, of course I know that." She blew out a breath.
"I wanted to make sure. After what Sumner told you."
"Oh, forget about him."
She glanced over at where he'd been standing, but apparently he'd left. "He only said that about you to try to get me to sell Swannsea."
"Which didn't work, so what the hell was the guy doing here today?"
"Maybe he was hoping I'd change my mind at the last minute."
His grunt suggested he wasn't all that willing to take anything about Brad Sumner at face value.
Supposing that looking for hidden motives was part and parcel of being a SEAL, she patted his arm.
"I have to go circulate," she said. "How about we stay in tonight? Fix ourselves a Lowcountry boil, drink some wine, watch a DVD, make love—"
"Change the order around to making love while supper boils and, hey, what the hell, after the movie, too, and you've got yourself a date, sugar."
She laughed. "Men are so easy."
"You're damn right I am. Where you're concerned, anyway." Because they both knew his crew was watching, he skimmed a finger down the slope of her nose. "See you later."
"Later," she agreed, wondering why such a light, non-sexual caress could have her nearly melting into a hot puddle of need.
She enjoyed watching his tight butt in those faded jeans as he walked back to where they'd already begun digging up Lucie's old garden plot.
Halfway there, he turned. "What DVD did you have in mind?"
"I picked up an oldie but goodie yesterday at the Video Express. What would you say to
Goldfinger
?"
"I'd say it's the best Bond movie ever and the reason Connery owns 007." His grin suggested he'd been expecting a chick-flick romance. "Lowcountry boil and Bond. I don't suppose you'd marry me? Have my children?"
"I'm a little busy today." It was a joke. That's all. So why did that foolish question make her nerves spike? "But I'll take it under advisement."
"I'll have to see what I can do to convince you," he said with a laugh.
See
? Sabrina told herself.
It's only a stupid joke
.
The man operating the heavy yellow bulldozer impressed Sabrina with his ability to seemingly turn the machine on a dime. She observed him for a moment, always impressed by anyone who could do any job well.
It was one of the things that had made her a good hotel manager. From the busboys sweeping the crumbs off the tablecloths between courses without unduly disturbing the diners, to the way the valet parking attendants always remembered what guest belonged with which car, to the classical music the housekeeping staff tuned the radio to after cleaning a room, she'd always tried never to miss a detail.
Which was why, when she took in the U.S. Marine Corps cap the bulldozer operator was wearing, she wondered if he had learned to operate construction machinery in the service. She'd never given it all that much thought before the war, but surely someone had to put up all those tents and build all those camps.
As she continued on around to the back veranda, she made a mental note to remember to thank Zach, or his father, for assigning such a professional to her job.
It was cold. As cold as Zach, who was currently hunkered down behind a dead donkey that had the misfortune to become a casualty of war, had ever felt it.
Not helping was the wind that was whipping off the mountain, freezing his skin even through the PCU
—
protective combat uniform
—
he was wearing
.
He was going to call in air support and, although it had gotten light enough to take off his NVGs, he would also try for another helo so they could get the hell off the mountain.
Because obviously this mission was going to have to be scrubbed.
If the terrorist they'd been sent to find didn't know they were on the ground, by the number of signal lights that had begun glowing on the mountain, he damn well would by the time they could reach his bat cave.
The radio, about the size of a cell phone, was delicate at any time, even more so in extreme temperatures. When the batteries got cold, it could either not work or malfunction, something you didn't want when you were calling in jets to start bombing tangos. He pulled out the batteries and stuck them inside the PCU under his armpit to warm them up.
The old military cliche that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy was definitely proving true in this case.
One problem
—
okay, they had a lot of problems, but one of the worst was that Zach didn't need to check his handy-dandy J-Fire reference guide to know that they were too near the enemy for close air support. No way was command going to risk a friendly-fire incident.
Which was a good thing. Unless said tangos happened to be whipping your ass, which, Zach told the men hunkered down with him, meant that you had three choices: (1) die by enemy fire, (2) die by friendly fire, or (3) get rid of the damn enemy fire.
"Looks like door number three," Zach said as the Kalashnikovs' muzzles flashed from the bunker. He put the batteries back in the radio.
"The only choice," Quinn agreed, brushing away enough of the snowdrift with a gloved hand to allow him to kneel on the rocky ground.
Lifted his rifle and shot off two rounds before the rifle jammed.
From the bunker, the enemy began firing more rounds.
"Damn!"
As Quinn worked to clear his weapon, Zach, Shane, who'd picked up a rifle from a fallen Ranger, and a Marine sniper who'd joined them behind the donkey, began returning fire.
"Oo-rah!" the Marine shouted as he picked off a tango who'd made the mistake of lifting his head.
One shot. One kill.
The kid had learned his lesson well
.
"Good shot," Zach said.
"Used to shoot squirrels back home." The Marine's grin lit up his freckled Opie Taylor face. "But this is a lot more fun."
Fun?
Christ, Zach thought, had he ever been that young
?
He also hoped to hell the kid would still think so once this day was over.
One of the guerrillas popped up like a jack-in-the-box; putting the red laser dot in the center of his chest, Zach squeezed the trigger, sending the fighter tumbling back into the bunker.
Which earned another fusillade of fire that shredded trees and made holes in the snow all around them.
Lucky for us the assholes are all such bad shots.
The thought had no sooner popped into Zach's head than another tango rose and got a off a round that flew about a mile over their heads.
"My turn," Shane said. Lying on his stomach, with his bad leg stretched out behind him, he fired.
Two down.
The bunker was turning out to be like a damn clown car. When another terrorist leaped out and started running toward them, Quinn, his gun now unjammed, called dibs.
With a preternatural calm that told Zach he'd gone into his spooky sniper zone, ignoring the RPG that suddenly zoomed over their heads, he picked the runner off with a single shot.
Then, the muzzle of his M4 barking its resistance inches from Zach's head
—
which would leave him deaf in his right ear for the next three months
—
he nailed the next two with practiced ease
.
"We've got them on the run now!" Opie shouted, enthusiastically firing off another round at the bunker.
Fuck. Quinn and Zach exchanged a look.
Shane cursed.
Now the kid had done it.
Didn't the Marines teach their jarheads about the fate thing?
About the
Titanic
moment
?
During his first year in the navy, Zach had been dragged to that flick by a woman whose pants he was intending to get into at the end of the evening.
As soon as the captain had assured a lushly curvaceous Kate Winslet
—
who in Zach's mind had been the only reason to watch the movie
—
that the gigantic ship couldn't sink, even if Zach hadn't known the story ahead of time, he would've recognized the exact moment of hubris when all those passengers became, well, sunk
.
Do. Not. Fuck. With. Fate.
Sure enough, right on cue, a belt-fed machine gun suddenly appeared from beneath some piled-up branches and dark-colored tarpaulins and began splitting the air with a murderous hail of bullets that took out a clutch of Rangers who'd been hunkered beneath a rock outcropping.
"Hell with this," Zach said. "I'm gonna frag 'em."
As so often happened when adrenaline was surging, time slowed to frame-by-frame moments.
While the Marine and Quinn continued to blast away at the bunker, Zach fired a fragmentation grenade that hit the trap, bounced back into a deep drift of snow, and exploded without doing any damage. He fired another that flew through the branches of the remaining tree beside the bunker and, again, detonated harmlessly.
Okay. He had three left.
After the third went wide, he loaded a fourth, aimed at the machine gun's muzzle flash, then pulled the trigger.
The grenade hit the snow right below the muzzle. And, dammit all to hell, didn't go off.
"This Isn't working," he told Quinn.
"And your first clue was?" Quinn asked as he blasted off another round.
Hot brass from the spent cartridges was flying wildly around in the air. One of them hit Zach in the face and burned his cheek even through the insulated balaclava he was wearing.
Fun?
He didn't think so.
While SEALs might be more loosey-goosey when it came to the chain of command than other units, with the LT dead, Zach was officially in charge of whatever mission he could manage to cobble together here.
As things stood, they were sitting ducks.
The helo hadn't blown yet, but it would, which would probably take out whatever Rangers and Marines hunkered beneath it.
Meanwhile, hands and arms kept reaching up and shooting without aiming, pointing guns and hoping for the best. Depending on how much ammo the enemy in the bunker had
—
and Zach suspected it was a lot—they could keep shooting all day
.
He knew a lot of guys thought of the enemy as nothing but a bunch of insane religious fanatic goatherders, but having aced a training course in the military and geopolitical history of this region, Zach knew better.
These were the same people
—
well, not the actual individuals but countrymen with the same ambitions
—
who'd beaten the British army's butts in the eighteen hundreds, fought for and won their independence in the early nineteen hundreds, and after years of brutal warfare, sent the Russians packing in the late part of the last century
.
They were tough, ruthless, and driven.
And today they were trying to kill not just him but the members of his team.
Which meant they had to go.
Now.
The only possible answer was an assault on the bunker.
It was risky, but unless they did something soon, no one was going to get off this mountain.
And meanwhile, the snow around Shane's leg was beginning to look like a frozen strawberry margarita.
"Okay, this is what we're going to do," Zach announced. "See that ledge over there?" he asked Quinn, pointing toward an outcropping of rock behind and about five feet above the bunker.
"Yeah."
"We're going to give you cover, while you go around and climb up on it. Then you're going to fire point-blank down on those sons of bitches."
Quinn's teeth flashed a feral smile in the mouth opening of the black balaclava, "Roger that, Chief."
Without hesitation, he began rolling across the snow while Zach, Shane, and Opie opened fire.
As the machine gun kept blasting away, more guys popped up, playing cat-and-mouse, with those damn AK-47s the Russians had left behind. The red tracers hitting all around the six-foot-five-inch SEAL looked like an outbreak of measles on the white snow.
"Damn," the Marine said admiringly as he risked a glance at Quinn while continuing to blast away. "That is one crazy dude."
"That's a no-shitter."
But weren't they all at least partly nuts? Because when you came right down to it, what sane person would join a circus where you were guaranteed to always be cold, wet, hungry, and exhausted, and where, if you screwed up, you, and/or the guys around you could get turned into pink vapor?
And that was on a good day.
The other Marines and Rangers, hunkered together around the downed bird, figured out what was going on and began throwing grenades and firing at the bunker, all the guns sounding like gigantic plastic packing bubbles popping as snow flew and more trees splintered.
Damned if Quinn hadn't made it.
Zach watched as the sniper scaled the rocks, stood up on the ledge like John Fucking Wayne, and began blasting away.
It could have been seconds. Minutes. Hell, hours for all Zach knew, but finally the sniper lifted his weapon and stopped shooting.
Hundreds of spent brass rounds and empty magazines littered the once pristine snow.
And suddenly the mountainside went as blessedly still as a church on Monday morning.
"Shit!" A scream shattered the silence. "I'm hit."
Sabrina was back on the island of Lido—a quaint, seven-mile strip of land separating the Venetian lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. Going European, which was something she'd never before had the nerve to do, she was clad solely in a skimpy thong bikini bottom, soaking up the golden rays of the sun while a movie-star-sexy carpenter rubbed sunblock all over her body.
She sighed as his wickedly clever hands, roughened from swinging a heavy hammer all day, stroked their way across her shoulders, down her back, over her bared bottom, along the inside of her thighs, spreading oil and sensual warmth everywhere he touched.
When he turned her in his arms, a lock of dark hair fell across his mahogany forehead. As Sabrina reached up to brush it away, she drank in the tropical scent of coconuts, heard the ebb and flow of the tide, the soft sigh of the salt-tinged breeze, the sudden shout that jerked her from sleep.
Disoriented and afraid, she leaped out of bed and rushed for the light switch by the bedroom door, her heart hammering so hard and so fast she feared that if the Swann Island Slasher didn't kill her, a heart attack might.
The light from the white cottage-style chandelier overhead revealed Zach, sitting bolt upright in the canopied bed that she hadn't yet gotten around to replacing.
"Zach?" She returned to the bed and touched his shoulder.
He was soaking wet. And shaking. His eyes were wide open, but she knew that he was not seeing the ballet-slipper-pink walls or the teenage memorabilia she'd been too busy to put away.
"It's okay." The mattress sighed as she sat down beside him and put an arm around his stiff body while brushing his damp hair back from his forehead with her free hand. "You're here. With me. On Swann Island."
His skin was so cold. And as rapidly as her own heart was beating, his, which she could feel against her breasts, was pounding at least three times as fast.
"Sabrina?"
His eyes focused slowly. As she stroked his back with a soothing touch, she watched him gradually return from whatever horrific place he'd been. Back to Swannsea.
And her.
"Hell." He dragged an unsteady hand through the hair she'd smoothed. "I'm sorry. I must've scared you to death."
"It was quite a wake-up call," she admitted, skimming a finger over his tight, frowning lips. "For a minute I thought maybe the Slasher—never mind, you don't need to hear about that. I'm more concerned about you."
He jerked a shoulder. "I'm fine."
Her heart wrung with sympathy. Sabrina suspected he was embarrassed. In his manly world of poker, pickups, and guns—big ones that shot nails
and
bullets—the guy was supposed to be the strong one.
He was not supposed to be the one screaming with night terrors.
"No, you're not fine at all."
She wanted to press his head against her breast, to comfort him, to protect him from whatever ghosts still haunted his sleep.
But understanding that that wasn't what he needed, Sabrina forced herself to back away and play the scene cool.
