Out of Time

by Monica McCarty

  There was something in his voice that made her think he wasn’t talking about his defensive—or offensive, in his case—skills, but she pretended not to hear it. Her eyes raked over him. “Have you looked in the mirror lately? You’ll terrify her.”

  “Not up for negotiation, sweetheart.”

  She bristled at the endearment, but she wasn’t going to let him get under her skin. That was exactly what he was trying to do. “Fine. But stand to the side and let me do the talking.” She looked him up and down. “And try to smile or something. Don’t be so threatening.”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You don’t need to do anything. Just standing there you look dangerous. It’s your superpower.”

  He smiled, which made her immediately regret asking for him to do so. Colt’s smiles were so rare they always made her heart do silly things.

  The smile came with a knowing look. “That isn’t my superpower.”

  She was about to ask what was and snapped her mouth shut. If the way that look was making her body heat was any indication, she didn’t want to know.

  She did know.

  Damn him! She turned and started—stomped—up the path. The address belonged to an apartment building in what might be nicely called a “transitional” neighborhood. Joelle was in number twelve, which was on the second floor.

  Kate knocked, but no one answered. As it was almost nine o’clock, she had hoped to find her home. That was why she’d traveled tonight rather than waiting until morning.

  “What now?” Colt said. “You want to wait her out?”

  Kate didn’t get a chance to reply. A door opened next door and a head popped out. It belonged to a heavyset woman in her early to mid-forties with pale, freckled skin and dyed red hair who looked as if she’d just woken up. “What’s all this racket out here?”

  “We’re sorry to disturb you,” Kate said, coming around to stand in front of Colt. Although from the way the woman was eyeing him appreciatively, she probably hadn’t needed to worry. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one in the place with a looks-like-a-gunslinger attraction problem. “We’re looking for Joelle.”

  “She ain’t here.”

  Kate tried to hide her disappointment. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “It’s important,” Colt said. “We’d really appreciate it.”

  It wasn’t flirtatious . . . exactly. But it didn’t need to be. Kate had been on the receiving end of enough of those dark, penetrating stares to know the raw, masculine magnetism that went along with them.

  The woman looked at Colt and her gaze went back to Kate, taking in the heels, silk blouse, skirt, and pearls. Kate didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. They didn’t go together. They never had. If only she’d accepted it sooner.

  “She’s at the hospital,” the woman finally said. “The ambulance took her away earlier.”

  Colt swore. “What happened?”

  The woman shrugged. “Dunno. I was trying to sleep. I work nights.”

  Kate and Colt looked at each other, obviously both fearing the same thing. Had the men who’d killed Travis gotten to her, too?

  * * *

  • • •

  Kate’s fear turned out to be unwarranted. It wasn’t the guys who’d killed Travis who were responsible for putting Joelle in the hospital; it was her pregnancy.

  They’d arrived at the hospital after visiting hours, but Kate’s CIA badge got them the access they needed. As this wasn’t exactly a sanctioned operation, using her credentials was a risk, but the woman barely glanced at it before waving them toward Joelle’s room. A glance at Joelle’s chart showed that she’d been admitted for early contractions. The doctors had given her terbutaline and the contractions appeared to be under control. Joelle was scheduled to be discharged tomorrow.

  She was sleeping when they came in. There was another bed, but Colt looked around the curtain to check and shook his head. No one was there.

  Kate’s first impressions were that Joelle looked young and vulnerable. Except for the big bulge of her stomach there wasn’t much to her. She was slight of figure and of features, with wispy, dirty blond hair, pale skin, and a small turned-up nose. She couldn’t be more than an inch or two above five feet.

  Her eyes when she opened them were green and definitely her best feature. They were striking.

  Fortunately Colt was out of eyesight when Joelle woke—she was startled enough by Kate. But she took in her businesslike appearance and relaxed. Until she saw Colt.

  She tensed, her knuckles white as she gripped the sheets. Her eyes widened with fear. “Who are you? What are you doing in my room?”

  Kate moved to calm her down, putting a gentle hand on the foot of her bed. “I’m Kate. This is my . . . uh . . .” She settled on what she thought would relax the other woman. “Husband, Colt.”

  Joelle couldn’t hide her surprise. “You two are married?” She looked back and forth between them. “For real?”

  It wasn’t the first time their being married had provoked that reaction.

  Colt appeared to be taking Kate’s “try not to be threatening” advice because he sat down in a chair. “Believe me. I don’t know what she ever saw in me, either.”

  He said it with a wry smile that was directed at Joelle, but his eyes were all for Kate.

  She felt a fresh stab in her chest and pushed it away. Damn him. She wasn’t going to let him do this to her.

  But he always did this to her.

  Turning back to Joelle, Kate could see from the conspiratorial lift of her brows that she knew exactly what Kate had seen in him. Even looking like hell, Colt was hot. Bad boy, “I’m going to break your heart” hot, but undeniably hot. Six foot four, two-twenty—95 percent of that heavily stacked muscle—dark hair, green eyes, with a face that belonged on a movie screen, there wasn’t a lot not to like.

  Except the attitude. Remember the attitude.

  “Whaddaya two want then?” Joelle asked with a Mississippi accent that was every bit as heavy as Travis’s had been.

  Kate had met the young SEAL only a few times, but he’d been a good kid with simple but strong values: God, country, family. In that order.

  She inched a little closer to Joelle and rested her hand on the bed rail. “We wanted to talk to you about Travis Hart.”

  Any friendliness in Joelle’s expression was immediately replaced by wariness and defensiveness. “It was you! You’re the one who called me!” Tears filled her pretty eyes. “You’re going to tell me he’s dead, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here?”

  The girl—for Kate was guessing she couldn’t be much older than twenty—was instantly distressed. Kate tried to calm her, glancing anxiously at the monitors. She wasn’t sure how to read them, but she knew the jump in activity and beeping couldn’t be good. “Relax,” Kate said. “Breathe deeply. We aren’t here to upset you—or your baby.”

  Was that what had landed her in here in the first place? Kate hoped it hadn’t been her phone call, but she suspected it was.

  She felt a twist of guilt and was relieved when the sounds and activity on the monitors started to abate.

  Joelle was crying and gripping Kate’s hand something fierce, but the deep, even breaths were helping.

  “He’s really dead, isn’t he?” She was watching Kate when her gaze flicked to Colt. “I heard about the training accident, but it sounded like some kind of government cover-up so I was hoping that . . .” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “But I knew. He would have called me back if he was alive. He swore he’d take care of me if I went through with it.”

  Colt gave Kate a nod, but she would have told Joelle anyway. This girl and her baby deserved an answer, and she wasn’t going to lie to her and give her false hope. Kate nodded. “I’m sorry.”

&nbs
p; Surprisingly, the news seemed to calm the girl. The tears were still flowing down her cheeks, but her grip on Kate’s hand relaxed. “I knew it. Travis was a good guy. He would never have left me high and dry like this. He would have kept his word. What happened?” She glanced back at Colt. “You worked with him, didn’t you? You are a SEAL, too.”

  Kate was surprised the girl had made the connection, but maybe she shouldn’t have been. There was a look to guys like Colt, and if you’d been around it, you would recognize it. Maybe it wasn’t all bad that he was here with her. Joelle seemed to trust him.

  Colt nodded. “I worked with him a few years back for a little while. He was killed in a bar fight in Alaska.”

  “Bar fight? That doesn’t sound like Travis. Are you sure it wasn’t on a mission?”

  “It wasn’t,” Kate assured her. “Can you tell me the last time you heard from him?”

  “It was a few months ago. He said he would be out of contact for a while, but he would send me more money when he got back.”

  “For the baby?” Colt asked.

  She nodded.

  “Were you and he planning to raise the child together?” Kate asked.

  “Raise it?” Joelle repeated the words as if they terrified her. “No way! I didn’t want the baby. Travis and I used to go out in high school a little, but we just messed around one night when he was visiting a friend and . . .” Her voice dropped off. “Who gets pregnant when on birth control?”

  Kate felt a twisting stab low in her gut but pushed it aside. Me.

  The girl didn’t wait for anyone to answer. “When I told Travis that I was pregnant it was to tell him that I was going to get an abortion.” Neither Kate nor Colt gave any reaction—nor would Kate have judged—but Joelle became defensive. “I know it makes me sound horrible, but you don’t understand. I have to get out of this place. I worked two jobs to go to community college, and I’d just found out that I’d been accepted to Ole Miss on a scholarship when I found out about the baby.”

  “How old are you?” Colt asked.

  “Twenty-one,” Joelle said. “Travis was a senior when I was a sophomore,” she added, explaining the age discrepancy.

  “But you decided to keep the baby?” Kate asked.

  Joelle shook her head. “Travis convinced me not to put it up for adoption. I put my scholarship on hold for a semester, and he agreed to pay for all my living and medical costs to have the baby. I had some problems a few months ago—high blood pressure—and had to be hospitalized. I called him and left a message but he never got back to me. I knew he had to be dead. But no one would tell me anything.” She looked at Colt as if he’d said something. “I know I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about him being a SEAL and everything, but I called the base in Honolulu and they wouldn’t tell me anything. I was getting desperate. When the money showed up, I thought maybe I was wrong about Travis being dead and all. But I should have known it wasn’t Travis. He was too decent to pay me off. He would have called.”

  Kate exchanged a look with Colt. They didn’t need to tell the girl that it indeed had been Travis, and it was his decency in sending the money that had gotten him killed.

  “What can you tell us about the money?” Colt asked.

  “Nothing. It just showed up in my bank account one day. But the text said if I wanted more, I needed to stop talking to the press.”

  “There was a text?” Kate asked.

  Joelle nodded.

  “Can I look at your phone?”

  She nodded again and motioned to the stack of clothes in the bathroom. “It’s in my jeans.”

  While Kate went through the phone log, Joelle turned to Colt. “What am I going to do? How am I going to pay for all this? I’ll have to get a job, and I’ll lose my scholarship. We had a deal!”

  Kate looked up when she heard the sound on the monitor. The girl was obviously getting agitated again. She would have gone to her, but surprisingly Colt had already done so. He’d taken Kate’s place by her bed—and her hand. Something about that hand made Kate’s insides burn. It was a small gesture, easily given.

  To a pregnant woman.

  It should have been me.

  “You don’t need to worry about anything,” he said. “You and your baby will be fine. Travis had some savings. I’m sure the baby will have some claim to that. I’ll see that you get whatever you need until it can be all worked out.”

  “You will?” Joelle asked.

  She seemed surprised, but Kate wasn’t. Colt always took care of his guys.

  It was his wife he’d neglected.

  By the time they left Joelle, she was looking at Colt as if he hung the moon, and Kate had what she needed from the phone. The text had come from the burner that Travis had been using. But it was the resentment that she was struggling not to show.

  It wasn’t fair. First Scott’s maybe-baby news, and now this young girl was having a baby she didn’t want, when Kate had wanted her baby more than anything in the world. She would give anything to change places with the twenty-one-year-old.

  And Colt! Where had all that compassion been when she needed it? Her ex-husband had just shown this young girl—this stranger—more kindness and understanding than he had his wife. His wife who’d almost died, who’d just lost their baby, and who had loved him with every inch of her being.

  Her eyes blurred as the heat rose up in her throat. Where was the justice in that? Where was the justice in any of this?

  And what made her think she deserved justice?

  Fourteen

  Scott heard the back door slam and thought about going after her. But he glanced out the bedroom window and saw the light go on in the barn. A moment later he heard the music through the cracked open window. Blasting angry-chick music wasn’t very subtle.

  Natalie was pissed. So was he. Although he wasn’t sure who at more—her or himself.

  Still, Scott hadn’t taken her for an Alanis Morissette fan. Rock was more his thing. She’d always had the radio on some kind of pop station. Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, that kind of stuff—i.e., not his favorite.

  Figuring she was sanding down the doors that he’d helped her move out there yesterday—and that they both needed time to cool off—Scott sat down to make some calls.

  It took a while to get ahold of Colt, but he touched base with the rest of the guys in between attempts and gave them the difficult news about Travis.

  It didn’t get any easier with retelling. Like him, Baylor, Donovan, Spivak, and Ruiz were devastated and shaken up by the loss. To have escaped the missile attack and then to be killed in their own backyard—alone—was a bitter pill to swallow. Next to Scott, Baylor took Travis’s death the worst. Tex—Baylor’s call sign—might not be a commissioned officer, but as senior chief, he had the same sense of responsibility and duty toward the team.

  But, as Scott told him, if the kid’s death was on anyone, it was on him. Scott was the one who’d made the decision for them to scatter and go dark. When you were an officer, you were responsible. You had to learn to deal with that or you wouldn’t be around long. But this one was different. The six survivors had shared a special bond and losing one of them . . . it hurt. Badly.

  Scott didn’t want to think that the kid had disobeyed his orders and contacted his ex-girlfriend, but given how things had been going for the rest of them—Baylor, Donovan, and himself—he knew that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded to stay in the dark where women were concerned.

  In between calls to Donovan and Spivak, Scott reached Colt, who had just gotten back to DC from Alaska. It was still strange to talk to his former friend after three years of being hated for something he didn’t do. But maybe as a guy, Scott could understand Colt’s side of things a little better than Kate did. What Colt had seen between Scott and Kate had been innocent, but he could see how it might not have looked like it. He’d wanted to tell Colt
the truth, but Kate had been adamant. It wasn’t just about her mom finding out. Kate had wanted Colt to trust her on his own. But trust for a hardened, jaded guy like Colt didn’t come blind. No matter how much she might want it to.

  But strange to talk to him or not, when it came to Kate, he and Colt were of one mind. Scott didn’t need to ask; Colt volunteered to go with her on his own. Although “volunteered” was a nice way of summarizing the “what the fuck does she think she is doing?” response Colt had had.

  Confident that Colt would track Kate down and that she would be in good hands, Scott finished up his calls and glanced out the window. The lights were still on and the music was blaring—Natalie had moved on to Gwen Stefani and No Doubt. Still pissed. Apparently, she needed more time. He decided to jump in the shower before talking to her.

  He’d cooled down, but a cold shower would take care of any lingering . . . hot spots.

  He wished that his other issues could be so easily washed away.

  When Natalie had put her hand on his chest, he’d looked down and his chest had filled with such longing, it had nearly made him forget everything else—including her part in all of this.

  He’d wanted her comfort. He’d wanted to hold her in his arms and love her again. And the intensity of that desire had taken him aback. Which was a nice way of saying it had scared the shit out of him.

  He’d been angry at her for making him feel this way and at himself for his weakness. Especially after the blow he’d just taken. Travis’s death seemed a brutal reminder of what she’d done. He was mad at himself for kissing her and even madder at himself for the feelings that had come after. So he’d lashed out.

  Wrongly, he admitted.

  She hadn’t been trying to seduce him. But with Natalie somehow it got all twisted together.

  How could he still want someone who had lied to him? Spied on him? Betrayed him and had probably been responsible—intentional or not—for leaking the information about their mission to the Russians that had seen eight—now nine—of his men killed?