by Cindy Dees
Spencer nodded. “Photograph the corpse, police the area for any evidence that would lead back to you, and leave him. He’s their problem to deal with… assuming they don’t leave their own behind. Then you guys get out of here. We’ll deal with this gentleman.”
Drago had already hog-tied the prisoner with ropes he couldn’t possibly wiggle in, let alone escape from.
Gunner nodded and quickly packed his and Chas’s stuff and stowed it in the car. He came back for Poppy’s stuff and efficiently tucked her gear into the baby bag and slung its cloth strap over his shoulder.
“That’s a good look on you,” Drago commented.
Gunner looked up, startled. The guy didn’t sound like he was being sarcastic, and a genuine smile lit Drago’s face.
“If they made these things in camo cloth, I’d like them better. The pink is a little loud for my taste,” he replied wryly.
Spencer and Drago grinned as he ducked outside for the last time.
Gunner was just closing up the car when the motel manager came outside, looking suspicious. The guy demanded, “I heard noise out here. You boys causing trouble?”
“No, sir. I thought I heard some folks hunting in the woods, though. Gunshots woke me up. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided I’d go ahead and pack the car so we can get an early start in the morning.”
“Don’t forget to turn in the key when you check out,” the guy grumbled.
“You bet. Good night, now.”
The manager wandered back inside, and Gunner sighed in relief. He jogged around the end of the motel and headed up the hillside toward where he’d stashed Chas. Poor guy must be losing his mind after hearing all that gunfire.
It had been a hell of a night. First the emotional roller coaster of epic sex with Chas, and then a hunt in the woods and the unexpected shock of killing a guy. Even if it was the dead man’s fault and a total accident, it was still stressful.
He could really use a hug from Chas right about now.
Which shocked the ever-loving hell out of him.
Chapter Fifteen
IT WAS official. He’d had a full nervous breakdown. Lying under this stupid boulder had not only chilled him to the bone but stretched his nerves until they’d totally snapped. Every noise made him jump, every rustle of breeze rattling through the branches sent him into a new panic.
His cell phone said he’d only been out here about a half hour, but it felt like several lifetimes. How in the heck did Gunner stand living with this kind of tension all the time? How was the guy not a complete wreck? A whole new level of respect for Gunner’s training and guts came over him. He’d had no idea how rough a job this was.
As the clock continued to tick, he had way too much time to reflect on Gunner’s chosen profession. The guy did this all the time. This was a normal workday for him. Hunting other human beings was his career.
Chas despised that with every fiber in his being.
It couldn’t possibly be good for Gunner to live as a killer, to think as a killer, to be a killer. How did any human soul walk away unscathed from the knowledge that they’d taken the lives of others?
He had to find a way to talk Gunner out of doing work like this anymore—while Gunner still had a little soul left to save. Urgency to get him to quit the security field and find something, anything, less violent to do raged through him.
As soon as they made it off this hillside—if they made it off this hillside—he was going to have a talk with Gunner about it. While he waited to find out if they even got to have the conversation, he began to figure out his plan of attack.
Something was moving on the hillside below him. Oh God. It was big and dark. A person. He froze, feeling more trapped and exposed and vulnerable than he ever had in his life. It was awful. He was going to die and he was never going to get to tell Gunner he lov—
He spied the face of his killer.
Gunner.
Oh, thank God.
As Gunner’s familiar form neared the big boulder and bent down to pull back the camo tarp, Chas burst out of the hidey-hole, rolled clear of the overhang, gained his feet, and practically leaped on Gunner.
“Sweet baby Jesus. I was sure you’d been killed when you didn’t come back for me,” Chas murmured against his neck.
“It just took a while to clear the area. I’m fine.”
Gunner squeezed the stuffing out of Chas, and right now, he loved feeling those big, strong arms around him better than just about anything else on earth. “You sure you’re okay?” Chas asked. “I heard gunfire. A lot of it. I thought you were dead—”
A warm mouth pressed firmly against his, stilling the stored-up babble of terror that had come spilling out. Distracted by the kiss, he fell silent, kissing Gunner back enthusiastically.
“Better?” Gunner murmured when the worst of his panic had subsided.
“Yeah,” he sighed. Lord, he was a mess. “Are you okay?” He took a small step back and commenced running his hands up and down Gunner’s arms, across his shoulders, down his ribs.
“Really, Chas, I’m fine. But I do need you to stay here a couple more minutes while I take care of one last piece of business. Then I’ll be ready to head out.”
And just like that, the panic roared back. “Oh no, you don’t. You’re not leaving me alone again!”
“I would really rather you stayed here.”
“No. Effing. Way.”
Gunner huffed. “I have to go photograph and search a body. You don’t want to see that.”
“A dead—” Chas broke off, too shocked to finish. Oh God. It was as bad as he’d feared. Gunner was standing there, talking as calmly about death as if they were discussing the weather. “What on earth happened out here?”
“It was an accident. The guy did something super stupid and broke his neck. I couldn’t let go fast enough.”
“You killed him?” Chas gasped.
“No. He broke his own neck in a dumbass attempt to slip the grip I had on him. Assuming he wasn’t trying to actually kill himself. Which is also possible.”
“And you’re not completely freaked-out?” Chas demanded.
“Chasten. I’m United States Navy SEAL.”
“I know. But… someone died. You’re so calm. Too calm.”
“Death comes with the job. We’re trained to be calm about it. And honestly, this guy was colossally stupid or suicidal. Either way, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. He moved too abruptly for me to react and turn him loose.” Gunner shrugged, and Chas stared at him in horror.
“How can you be so… casual… about this?”
“Death is never casual,” Gunner snapped.
Chas’s eyes widened. Okay. So Gunner wasn’t completely soulless about having killed some guy. That was a hopeful sign. “You seem so relaxed out here. How is that possible? Bad guys were running around trying to kill you—kill us—and you’re all Mr. Chill. You’re so… in your element.”
Gunner glanced around. “Welcome to my office.”
Chas took a deep breath. Through the haze of his outrage and residual panic, he still sensed what an intimate thing it was for Gunner to share this side of himself with anyone who wasn’t a SEAL. Not that he hated any of it one bit less.
He asked in resignation, “So, where’s this body you have to photograph?”
“A hundred yards or so along the ridge above us. We’ll have to go around the ridge in the opposite direction, which is a bit of a hike up the cliff to the top. It’s a nasty free climb. Not long, but tricky. It’s about a half mile to go around, so we’d better get going.”
Chas volunteered reluctantly, “I used to rock climb. It probably won’t be that big a challenge for me if you want to go straight up.”
“You did?” Gunner blurted.
“I’m not a total couch potato.”
“I took you for more the ballroom dancing type.”
Chas grinned. “Oh, I’ve done that too.”
Gunner rolled his eyes. “I hate dancing.”
&
nbsp; “That’s because you’ve never done it with me.”
They reached the ridge, and Gunner showed him where he’d climbed the cliff face. A quick scan with a red-lensed flashlight showed an easier section of rock off to the left a bit, and they chose to scale the wall there instead.
“You go first,” Gunner said. “Be careful of loose rock. This shale cracks off super easily. But I’ll be right behind you.”
“So you can spot me from behind? Or ogle my epic glutes?”
The white flash of Gunner’s teeth indicated that he’d smiled.
“But what if I’m the better climber? Then I should be spotting you,” Chas asked seriously.
Gunner snorted. “You couldn’t catch me if you tried. I weigh half again what you do.”
“I know. I’ve had sex with you, remember?”
And just liked that, the air around them took on a charge that made it crackle and snap across his skin.
Chas mapped his route up the wall and started the climb. It was significantly easier than the walls inside climbing facilities and provided plentiful foot- and handholds. The only difference out here was that he had to carefully test each ledge to make sure no loose rock gave way before he put his weight on it.
In short order, they stood atop the ridge. Chas breathed a little hard, but Gunner was huffing too. Hah. He’d kept up with a SEAL for a couple of minutes.
“Lead on,” Chas murmured.
Gunner pulled down the eyepiece thingy mounted on top of his helmet and took off confidently into the trees. Chas stayed close on his heels, amazed at how silently Gunner slid through the forest, ghostlike. He had to admit, it was sexy seeing him in his native environment like this. It was the difference between a racehorse standing in a stall and the same racehorse flying around a track at forty miles per hour—the former was pretty, but the latter was impressive.
Gunner stopped abruptly. “Stay here.”
The reason they were up here slammed home. A man had died near here. Chas thought he smelled something. Whether it was blood or urine or both, he didn’t know and couldn’t tell. He was probably just being hypersensitive or imagining it altogether. But God, he hated this.
He waited while Gunner moved forward toward a hump on the ground. It appeared that he frisked the body, probably looking for identification. Several bright flashes indicated that he had photographed the dead man too.
In each brief flash of light, Chas caught a silhouette of a nose or the angle of a shoulder. That had been a human being. The dead man had a family. Friends. Hopes and dreams for his future. And he’d died at Gunner’s hands.
Chas didn’t understand the nuances of some guy breaking his own neck versus Gunner doing it for him, but he didn’t much care about the distinction. Gunner had been fighting with the guy violently enough that the guy died, and Gunner had barely batted an eyelash when telling Chas about it.
He watched grimly as Gunner moved in expanding circles around the corpse, staring intently at the ground. Now and then Gunner stopped and dug at something or moved a few leaves around. Eventually he backed away from the corpse, dragging a stick with some dead leaves still attached to it like a broom.
“Okay. Let’s go,” Gunner said.
“Aren’t we going to bury him?”
“His guys ought to come back for him. That way his family can bury him properly.”
“But what if somebody else finds the body? Won’t the police get involved? You could get in serious trouble.”
“I made damned sure I left no evidence behind for law enforcement to find. I’m in the clear.”
Chas’s teeth ground together at how casually Gunner said that. No big. I got away with murder. It’s fine.
Gunner was speaking. “…is a courtesy of war. You let the other side collect their dead and give them burial rites.”
“There’s an etiquette about these things?” Chas exclaimed, appalled.
“Keep your voice down. We don’t want the guy in the motel room to know we’re still out here.”
“What guy in what motel room?”
“The dead guy’s buddy. I captured him and handed him over to Spencer and Drago. They’re undoubtedly stuffing him into the back of their SUV as we speak and taking him someplace else where they can have a little conversation.”
And his panic was back.
He was surprised when Gunner led him along the ridge, hopped off it when it was no more than three feet above the level of the motel parking lot, and led him directly to their car. “What about all our stuff?”
“I already packed everything. We need to roll before the other hostiles work up enough courage to come back looking for their friends.”
SHOCKINGLY, CHAS managed to fall asleep and only woke when the sun rose behind them, flooding the interior of the car with bright light. With morning came a little emotional distance from the night’s events. He was less freaked-out today about a guy having died. He’d known Gunner practically his whole life. He would never kill anyone whom he didn’t absolutely have to.
He also believed Gunner’s version of events. The bad guy had done something boneheaded to break his own neck before Gunner could let go of him. Gunner had never been able to lie to him, and he hadn’t been lying last night.
Chas might not like the fact that a man had died, but it was a far sight better than Poppy dying—or Gunner, or himself.
They were driving along a two-lane westbound road. Rolling farmland and forest surrounded them. Gunner looked beat. “Where are we?” Chas mumbled.
“Central Missouri.”
“Can I take a turn at the wheel?” Chas offered.
“Nah.”
“C’mon. Let me help. You don’t have to be a superhero all the time. You haven’t been getting nearly enough sleep the past several days.”
“Well now, whose fault would that be?”
Chas grinned. “My point exactly. It’s only right that I drive a bit while you catch a nap.”
Gunner relented and pulled over for them to swap seats.
And so it went through the day, with them taking turns driving while the other napped.
At least a dozen times, Chas started to bring up the subject of Gunner calling a halt to the violence of his life, but every time, he chickened out. Gunner seemed to have fully hit his stride after last night and was in full-on badass mode. Now was probably not the moment to ask him to walk away from the job and never look back.
But soon. Soon he would have to tell Gunner that he couldn’t live with knowing his lover was a professional killer.
They made good time and drove through the day and late into the night before Gunner finally called a stop. Chas’s whole body felt beat-up from sitting in a moving vehicle for so long, sleeping in cramped positions, and from the forced inactivity. He hated to think how Gunner’s back felt.
But they’d put nearly a thousand miles between themselves and that nightmare in Kentucky. The Rocky Mountains rose in front of them, hulking black shadows against the night sky, more an absence of stars in the dark than physical shapes.
Gunner murmured, “Let’s wait until daylight to take on driving through the Rockies. Particularly since we won’t be taking main roads.”
Given that the idea of driving off a cliff scared the hell out of him, Chas agreed quickly. They were somewhere between Colorado Springs and Denver, just entering the Front Range, when Gunner pulled into a state park and followed the signs to a camping area. It was deserted at this time of year, and the ranger at the front gate told them to take whatever camping space they wanted.
“Camping?” Chas exclaimed. “What happened to hotels with running water and, oh, flush toilets?”
“We’re roughing it tonight. Staying off the grid.”
“You may like ‘roughing it,’ mister, but I am a huge fan of my creature comforts, thank you very much,” Chas declared.
“We’ll have all the comforts of home,” Gunner argued. “Roughing it is when you’re getting snowed on without any cover, sl
eeping directly on frozen ground, have to pee into a bottle, and don’t take a shower for a month.”
Chas stared at him in open horror. “No amount of money on earth could entice me to do something like that.”
“How about a choice between life and death?” Gunner responded practically.
“Well, if I was going to die, I might do all that. But—” He broke off. “Are we in life-or-death danger?”
Gunner shrugged as he pulled out a flimsy-looking gray-green tent and started putting it up.
“Don’t you shrug at me, Gunner Vance. I want to know. Exactly how much danger are we in?”
“I’ll let you know when I talk with Spencer and Drago and find out what the guy I captured had to say.”
“And when is that going to happen?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s talked by now. Obviously Spencer and Drago are still tracking down information or they would’ve already called us.”
“How can you be so patient about all this stuff? Don’t you want to know who’s got it in for Poppy and why?”
Gunner pounded in the last stake with a rock and looked up grimly. “Yeah. I do,” he answered flatly. “Grab that pole and lift it when I tell you to.”
In a few seconds, the tent went from being a bunch of nylon on the ground to a fully erected shelter. It barely came up to Chas’s waist, though. Appalled, he watched Gunner crawl in.
“Pass me the sleeping bags, will you?” Gunner called from inside. “They’re the black cylinders about the length of my forearm.”
“You mean these hard pillow things?”
“That’s them.”
Chas passed in the sleeping bags, which appeared to explode from their storage bags.
From inside the tent, Gunner said, “If you’re nice to me, I’ll tell you what all the noises you hear tonight are. Otherwise you get to spend the night wondering.”
“What noises?”
“You’ll see,” Gunner answered cryptically.
They ate sandwiches they’d bought during a fuel stop a few hours back, and Gunner tossed Chas an apple that he commenced munching. With intense distaste, Chas relieved himself against a tree as if he was eight years old again, and then crawled into the tent—on his hands and knees, for crying out loud.
