Escape with the Navy SEAL

by Regan Black

  She’d survive. It was like taking his first breath after a long dive. One way or another, she would get off this blighted island and resume the life she was meant to have, the work she was meant to give.

  Eaton turned, knife raised high over his head as if he was auditioning for a remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Charlotte screamed. Mark focused.

  Dodging to the side, he used Eaton’s power against him, driving the blade deep into the man’s thigh. Shocked, mouth open, eyes glazed with pain, Eaton fell forward into the surf.

  Gripping fistfuls of Eaton’s shirt, Mark hauled him deeper into the water. The whole way, the man continued tossing out dire threats against all Rileys. Despite everything he’d done, with Charlotte watching from the beach, Mark might have been compelled to grant mercy if Eaton had asked. Thankfully he didn’t.

  Mark walked out farther, still dragging the man who’d put his family through so much fear and grief in recent months. The surf swirled around Mark’s knees, buoying more of Eaton’s body. The ocean was Mark’s element, soothing and centering, even as the salt water illuminated every open wound.

  Though Eaton thrashed, Mark held on, dragging him deeper. The man tugged to free the weapon from his leg. Blood tinted the water—his or Eaton’s, Mark didn’t care. He started shouting more nonsense and threats. Mark shoved his head under the water and waited. Eaton came up sputtering and cursing.

  With both hands, Mark shoved him hard in the chest. Eaton stumbled backward as the surf moved over the sand. For the first time in days, Mark was grateful for the thin scrubs and his bare feet. Eaton’s heavy boots and clothing were waterlogged, making it impossible for him to fight the ocean’s pull.

  Now, it would be man versus nature. Mark watched with detached curiosity to see who won.

  Eaton flailed in the next wave and went under the surface.

  Mark kept his eyes on the spot as the surf flowed out from under him and he let the rollers buoy him onto the beach, away from the blood trail flowing out of Eaton.

  The man’s head didn’t clear the water again.

  Nature had won this battle.

  He hoped a shark wouldn’t be injured by the knife in the man’s leg.

  * * *

  Watching Mark in the gently rolling surf, Charlotte held her position just out of reach of the groggy Quick-Punch Kid. She’d trussed him up, using the cord of his survival bracelet to bind his hands together behind his back. She’d cinched his ankles together with his belt. He didn’t put up much of a fight, either due to the head injury or simply the realization that he couldn’t get out of this, she wasn’t sure. He was too heavy for her to move him to a shady spot. She assumed after the coast guard arrived, sunburn would be the least of his worries.

  She had control of the gun now, as well as the radio. While Mark had wrestled Eaton, she’d considered shooting their tormentor, but held back, afraid she’d hit Mark by accident.

  Her hero, she thought, her heart swelling with pride and love as Mark rode the waves back to shore. Alone. Gripping one item in each hand, she held her ground, waiting for a signal from Mark that it was safe. She assumed Eaton was dead. Remorse didn’t even flit through her mind.

  She focused instead on Mark. He exhibited an ease in the water she’d always admired. She took a halting step toward the water. A swim might do them both some good, but she’d prefer to find a place where Eaton’s body wasn’t lurking under the waves.

  Suddenly it was as if everything caught up with her. Her knees felt stiff, her feet sore and her entire body begged for a warm soaking bath, fragrant soaps and a head-to-toe massage. Her hands ached with the stress of staying out of Mark’s fight with Eaton. Her pulse pinged oddly and her stomach clenched as if she might be sick. After everything they’d endured, this seemed like the wrong time for her body to stop cooperating. Shouldn’t they be celebrating?

  Forcing herself forward on wobbling knees, she went down to the tide line to meet Mark, staying clear of the bloody ruts in the sand. “Mark? Are you okay?”

  “I am now.”

  Now she could see his shirt had been sliced and blood seeped from a long thin cut across his shoulder blade. That would leave a big scar across those perfect muscles as it healed. She didn’t mind the potential imperfection. No, she struggled against the idea of another woman seeing it years from now. They’d faced impossible odds and survived. They had a shared history of sorts as family friends and they’d certainly explored a passion that had both startled them and saved them during the crisis.

  She’d told Mark she loved him, but still she couldn’t seem to find the courage to ask for what she really wanted. Forever had been a clear and tangible end point when Eaton was in control. Now it seemed like a wisp of something she couldn’t grasp.

  Life and freedom. They had both now. The wide-open possibilities of the future created a new kind of fear in her heart. Fear that these were her last moments with Mark. Her breath caught as the incoming tide swirled between her toes.

  The urgent need to tell him what she hoped for most faded much as the foam skittered away to rejoin the ocean. He’d been through enough, saving them both. She wouldn’t take the risk that he might see her feelings as yet another burden.

  Offering only comfort, she rested her hand on the top of his shoulder, well away from the injury. “This needs stitches.”

  “If you say so. You can see it better than I can.” He tilted his head up, blocking the sun with a hand. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  “Dumb time to lose it, I know,” she said.

  His long fingers circled her wrist and a new shiver went through her at the touch. He tugged her down beside him in the sand and pried the radio from her grasp. “And the gun,” he said, holding his palm open.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Unless he had oxygen tanks tethered right where I dropped him.”

  After what she’d seen, she wouldn’t put it past him. “You’re not serious?”

  “No. Logically, he’s fish food.” Mark cocked his head, his gaze on the soft rollers rising and breaking. “Although I wouldn’t have minded watching a shark frenzy in this particular instance.”

  “He didn’t deserve the fanfare,” she said.

  Mark chuckled. “I do like this bloodthirsty side of you.”

  Relief and need overwhelmed her. She climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs. Gently, gently, knowing he was sore and there were likely plenty of injuries she couldn’t see, she took his face into her hands.

  She was about as useless as could be with survival and fighting, but she knew how to bare her soul, to open that window and give back the beauty she saw in the world. With every heartbeat, she willed him to accept everything she offered, whether or not he could reciprocate.

  Right now, she only wanted him to feel this astounding awareness that life was new again, all options open. Where there had been terror and fear, she would have him embrace hope and love.

  When her mouth met his, when his hands cruised up and over her hips and stroked heat up the length of her spine, she started to believe the worst was done. Fresh need spiked her system and bright energy sparkled along her skin at every place their bodies touched.

  “I called for help,” she said as his lips and tongue glided down her throat. “On the emergency frequency.”

  “I heard. I knew you could do it.” His voice rumbled against her skin and she trembled. “How long do we have?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t care. Her hips rocked against his arousal. Yes, adrenaline was a contributor here, but it wasn’t the only factor. She needed all the physical affirmation she could get that they’d made it.

  His hands stilled her hips, holding fast when she tried to move.

  “You didn’t get an answer to the Mayday?”

  “I did.” His grip eased. “The coast guard answered. I told them what we know of our posit
ion.” She dropped her head to his shoulder and just breathed in the scent of him. If this was all he could give, she’d savor it. “I described the cabin cruiser and Muscle.”

  “What did they say?” he asked. “Exactly.”

  “Someone saw smoke from the fire we set. Help was coming since this is supposed to be an uninhabited island.” She would paint the feelings of this moment and their ordeal for years to come. All the ugliness they’d endured and the glorious passion they’d shared was imprinted on her mind, body and soul. Already she knew her brush would touch the canvas differently. She could hardly wait to explore the new facets this experience revealed.

  “Anything else?”

  Tears burned behind her closed eyelids. She could cry later. When she was home and Mark was gone, out of her day-to-day life. “I don’t know. You were fighting and I...I...” She just couldn’t put her deepest fear into words. Not even with Eaton gone.

  Mark had said she was light and joy and he was too dark, too jaded for her. Should she try again to explain the essential compatibility of light and shadow? As her first professor in Paris had said at the end of her time there, this interlude is at an end, but the memories would carry her as she reached for new stars.

  For once it would be nice if the journey toward new stars didn’t feel so lonely.

  “Shh, it’s all good.” Mark smoothed a hand over her hair. “You’re amazing. Just amazing, Lottie.” He shifted her to sit beside him again and then seemed to melt into the warm, damp sand. “Let’s just breathe here for a minute.”

  “You need water. First aid.”

  “Later. Just be here with me.”

  She stared into his face, still handsome under the mosaic of cuts and bruises Eaton had dished out. “You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

  “Now I know you’ve had a heatstroke.” His lips twitched in a faint echo of the teasing smirk he used to flash all the time. His eyes flew open, alert and ready once more. “Or hit your head. Did Quick-Punch Kid hurt you?”

  “Easy,” she soothed him this time. “I’m fine.” Especially now that she knew he was mostly okay. “You’re the one still bleeding.”

  He’d taken the brunt of Eaton’s vengeance since that first moment in the alley behind the gallery. It seemed a lifetime ago.

  “A scratch,” he insisted.

  “If you’re sure.”

  He reached up and cupped her neck, bringing her face close for a kiss. She lost herself in the gentle affection and now-familiar heat of desire. Until she recognized the bone-deep weariness that echoed her own.

  Lifting her head, she bumped her nose to his, then rolled to her back. Her hand found his and they stared up at the impossibly blue sky. “We’ll rest and breathe until the coast guard arrives.”

  It was the best plan they’d made in recent days.

  Hours or minutes passed. Quick-Punch Kid shouted and was summarily ignored. The shadows from the trees shifted as the sun moved higher into the sky. And the two of them rested, breathing it all in until at last the radio crackled to life and the commanding voice of General Riley asked for confirmation of their position.

  Mark handled that call while Charlotte tried not to cry.

  At the unmistakable sound of a helicopter rotor, she sat up and waved at the orange coast guard rescue helicopter overhead. A few minutes later a coast guard cutter came into view, trailed closely by the Rileys’ sailboat. Her emotions simply overflowed and she was laughing and crying with relief and joy as Mark pulled her to her feet and held her close, keeping her steady.

  Rescued! They could finally rest easy, completely safe for the first time in far too long.

  If only she didn’t feel as if her first steps toward rescue and freedom meant walking away from loving Mark.

  Chapter 14

  Mark watched Charlotte’s parents hustle her away, toward a guest cabin on the ship where she could clean up and a doctor would tend to any wounds. With each bit of distance, the ordeal they’d survived pressed heavier on his shoulders. He thought it would have been the opposite.

  When she was out of sight, his breath just stalled in his chest. This wasn’t how things were supposed to end. He didn’t want to be apart from her; he’d grown too close during their ordeal. Why now, when she was out of reach, did he finally have the courage to give her the words? As if tethered by some invisible bond, he lurched after her.

  His dad clapped him on the shoulder, steered him down a passage and into another room. “Clean up. Let the medic deal with the mess you’re in while we talk.”

  He didn’t want to talk. Not to his parents and not about the man he’d hauled into the ocean to die. He wanted Charlotte all to himself for a month in Fiji. Even in his mind, he sounded petulant.

  Alone in the shower, he indulged in a fantasy of Charlotte in a skimpy bikini the same color as her eyes, reclining next to an infinity pool. She’d give him that slow smile and joke that any shot at fame had been wrecked by the rescue.

  His hand trembled as he reached for the soap dispenser. If she was here with him, where she belonged, she’d take his trembling hand in hers and steady him. The woman was a rock. Through it all, she’d been his touchstone, his focal point. Keeping him grounded and boosting his determination.

  He wondered if she felt as lost without him.

  Clean up now. Break down later. He showered off the days of grime, watching blood and dirt and sand swirl around and down the drain. He toweled off, regretting the streaks of blood his wounds left on the white terry cloth towel. He avoided the mirror as he brushed his teeth. There was no need for a visual to know where the bruises were. He trimmed his beard, careful around the tender spots on his jaw. His ribs would ache for another week at least.

  With the towel wrapped around his waist, he stepped out of the bathroom. His father and a medic were waiting in the cabin.

  “Feel any better?” his dad asked.

  “Ask me again after you give me a beer.”

  Ben laughed. The medic directed him to a chair and worked swiftly, taking a quick inventory of his wounds and treating each in turn.

  “You did well, son.”

  Well. Not the word he’d put to it. He’d killed a man, a former soldier, on American soil. He couldn’t work up an ounce of sympathy for John Eaton. However the man had started his military career, he’d lost his way and turned into a monster.

  “How’d you get to us so quickly?”

  “Your mom insisted we leave a half day earlier than Hank suggested. We were cruising up and down the shoreline, looking for likely hiding places when the coast guard arrived and organized the full search.”

  “Eaton chose a good one.” Mark winced as the medic prodded the knife wound that creased his shoulder blade. “It didn’t hurt that bad in the shower.”

  The medic game him an unconvinced hum. “Needs stitches.” Of course it did; Charlotte had told him so.

  “Is that really necessary?” Mark argued. “Won’t glue do it?”

  “Too deep,” the medic replied.

  Mark grunted his assent.

  “Hank moved on the compound Eaton built in Arizona,” his father said. “We should have an update in a few minutes.”

  “We’re a long way from Arizona.”

  Ben agreed with a slow nod. “Each layer we pull back proves the man had quite a reach.”

  Footsteps in the hallway rushed closer, followed by a rapid knocking on the cabin door. “Ben? Mark?”

  Mark caught the worry in his father’s gaze as he opened the door to Patricia. “He’s fine,” Ben said.

  “Good.” She peered around Ben. “You’re good?” At Mark’s nod, she looked back to her husband. “It’s Hank.”

  Mark jerked at the pain in her voice and the medic grumbled as the movement tugged on the stitches he was trying to finish.

  “Easy,” the medi
c said.

  “Wrap it up,” Mark ordered. His mother hadn’t uttered another word, collapsing into his father’s embrace. The rare display of emotion and despair rattled him.

  “What happened?” Ben asked, holding her close.

  “He was shot.” The words were muffled in Ben’s chest.

  Mark’s stomach twisted.

  “I don’t know how badly yet.” She leaned back a little and fanned her face. “He didn’t make the call. One of the other investigators did.”

  Ben glanced at Mark over her head.

  “Go,” Mark said. “I’ll find you as soon as this is done.”

  It seemed to take forever for the medic to wrap things up. When the young man started to give him directions on wound care and pain relief, Mark shooed him out of the cabin.

  Dressing swiftly in shorts, a loose T-shirt and the deck shoes his mother had brought along, he bounded up to the cutter’s bridge to find his parents and get the facts on Hank. His heart rate steadied when he recognized Hank’s voice, tight with pain and temper, on the other end of the radio.

  “It will take us weeks to sort through this material,” Hank was saying.

  Mark went to flank his mom, who was still leaning heavily on his dad.

  Their bond was remarkable. Whether they were standing side by side or with half a world between them, their unity was a tangible force. Mark had taken their commitment to each other and to family for granted growing up. It was only after being out on his own that he’d realized not only the treasure of his parents’ bond but the beauty of it.

  He’d given up on finding a woman worth the effort and commitment, until he’d looked at Charlotte differently. Until, in the middle of the unimaginable, she’d given him a priceless gift. Now he couldn’t shake the idea that she could be that partner for him.

  Distracted with thoughts of how he might become the man she needed, he only caught bits and pieces of Hank’s report on Eaton’s compound.

  “In the meantime,” Hank continued, “Luke, Jolene and I can’t let down our guard.”