by Cindy Dees
“If you can finish Torsten’s twenty-mile sprint from hell carrying a forty-pound pack, you can damned well walk to the rail of this ship and jump overboard,” he said forcefully.
“Point taken,” she said a little more strongly.
He led her into the hallway and down two flights of stairs to the nearest deck that had exterior access. It should be two decks above where Al Dhib’s men had set up shop and were shooting the crap out of Torsten and the others.
Tessa staggered and paused a few steps behind him, eyes closed tightly. She looked ready to puke. He bit out, “Barf if you need to. But dig deep. We’re almost there.”
She nodded faintly, lurching forward once more. Thank God. He really couldn’t carry her and cover them both.
He spotted what he’d been looking for. An exterior door. He waved Tessa down the hall behind him and cleared the deck as best he could through the tiny, awkward porthole.
“Got a spare piece?” she asked from behind him, sounding a bit more alert.
He passed her his pistol and its two spare magazines, and then swung right. Tessa would know to swing left behind him, and they would defend each other, back to back.
She fired twice, quickly behind him. “Man down,” she mumbled.
“Clear,” he reported.
A fiberglass window blocked their access to the water here, and he murmured, “Move aft. Keep your back to mine.”
“Roger.”
They scuttled aft like a human crab, her facing forward and him facing aft. As they followed the curve of the ship, a man came into sight, pointing an AK-47 down at the water. Bastard was shooting at a diver. At one of his teammates.
Beau hit the trigger and sent a burst of lead into the shooter, who toppled headfirst into the water. A black shape surfaced briefly beside the fallen hostile, and Beau knew a knife had been drawn across the guy’s jugular. The black shape disappeared into the water once more.
A new sound intruded into the sporadic gunfire. An engine starting. And then the distinctive whine of a helicopter rotor revving up.
“He’s getting away,” Tessa cried out. “We have to blow the ship while he’s still on it.”
“Yeah, but so are we!” Beau called back.
She turned behind him and he did the same, facing her in the shadows. “It’s our job. His weapons will kill hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent people if we don’t stop him now. We’ll never get another shot at him like this. I’m willing if you are,” she shouted over the helicopter’s noise.
He looked her in the eye. They’d only just found each other. They were both too young to die. But maybe it was for the best this way. They would never be allowed to have their careers and have each other. At least this way they would be together when they died.
He’d always known his number would come up someday. He just hadn’t expected it to be now, or with this woman. “All right. Let’s do it.”
He leaned down to shout into her necklace, “Everybody pull back ASAP. We’re going to blow the ship. Get your ears out of the water so we don’t scramble your brains.”
That was all he had time for. He just had to hope their teammates heard the warning and heeded it.
Beau grabbed Tessa’s hand. “C’mon! We’ve got one shot to make it off this ship, and I’m damned well taking it. Even if it is one in a million!”
He took off running aft to where the deck opened up to the night air. He dragged Tessa along beside him. Her steps gained strength and speed beside his, and by the time they reached the end of the deck, she was matching him step for step. It might as well have been that day on the beach when she raced him and he realized he was a little bit in love with her.
“Push the button, Tessa! Now!”
They leaped off the deck, flying out into space, hands and hearts linked in one last moment of glory before the end. Together.
Chapter 21
Tessa smashed the button through her trousers and everything slowed around her to a fraction of its usual speed. She and Beau sailed wide of the ship, out into space, flying as one. Like birds. She felt weightless. Free.
And then, from behind them, a blinding flash of light and searing heat slammed into her, a physical blow that might as well have been a baseball bat swung by the homerun champ into her and Beau.
Oddly, she never lost her grasp on him, nor he on her. Their fingers remained tightly twined together as they flew up and out, propelled by the blast wave impossibly far from the ship.
And then they were falling. Falling forever.
It took long enough for her to register that from this height, hitting the water was going to hurt like a bitch, assuming it didn’t kill them both.
“Tuck your chin!” Beau yelled at her.
Right. Her training kicked in. She turned her head to the side and plastered her chin on her shoulder to protect her neck from breaking upon impact with the water.
Beau’s arms went around her and yanked her close. She grabbed on to his waist with all her strength. If she was going to die, at least she was going to do it in the arms of the man she loved.
And then they hit.
The impact with the water was every bit as violent as the impact from the explosion.
They landed on Beau’s back and skipped like a rock, bouncing on the water’s surface, sailing several more yards, and hitting again. They bounced two more times before they finally broke through, plunging, down, down into the icy cold.
Blackness. Unbearable pressure on her ears and eyelids. The shock of submerging in an ice bath—made worse after the unbearable heat of the explosion.
Panic. Oh, God. Disoriented.
Which way was up?
Her lungs screamed for air.
She kicked for all she was worth, but she didn’t move.
She didn’t move! She was going to drown!
Then she panicked for real, her mind going blank and her most primitive instincts kicking in.
Something shoved at her mouth, and she screwed her lips shut against it. Must not breathe. One lungful of water, and she was done.
The thing at her mouth shoved more forcefully, and water and metal broke through her resistance, flooding into her mouth.
And then it dawned on her. That was a scuba regulator.
Belatedly, she exhaled the meager breath she had left in her lungs, blowing out hard and clearing her mouth. She clamped down frantically on the mouthpiece and dragged in a desperate breath. Another.
A tug at the mouthpiece.
She didn’t want to let it go!
And then her brain finally kicked into gear, and it dawned on her very belatedly what was happening.
Beau was trying to buddy breathe with her. He’d been wearing a full scuba suit when he boarded the ship, and his tanks must have survived the impact with the water. His weight belts were holding them both down, and they were going to have to take turns breathing out of his tank.
One of his legs kicked against hers, setting up a steady rhythm. He was swimming. Why wasn’t he using both legs? She concentrated and felt one of his legs hanging completely useless. That couldn’t be good. But it wasn’t like they had the luxury of doing anything about it right now.
She kicked, too, shifting her hips to one side so she wouldn’t kick his bad leg. She hung on to his waist with both arms, while he used one arm to paddle and the other to pass the mouthpiece back and forth between them.
Gradually, she became aware of light overhead. They were coming up toward the surface. Beau swam them up until their faces just broke through to air. She looked around quickly. Burning wreckage littered the water as far as she could see.
Beau spit out the mouthpiece and transmitted over his throat mike, “We’re alive. I’ve got Tessa. We’re in the water.”
She was so close to Beau, her cheek plastered to his neck, that she heard Torsten answer, “Roger.
Hold your position. We have your GPS signals. We’ll come to you.”
Beau unbuckled his weight belt and dropped it, and the two of them were able to tread water more easily. They swam over to what looked like part of a tabletop, and they threw their arms across the broad wooden plank.
Silence fell around them and they bobbed up and down gently on the swells.
“You okay?” Beau rasped.
“Peachy keen. You?”
He grimaced beside her. “I did something to my knee when we hit the water. I can’t feel my foot at all.”
“I don’t care if your whole leg fell off. You’re alive. And that’s all that matters,” she declared stoutly, echoing his earlier statement.
“I love you, Tessa.”
“I love you, too, Beau.”
He snorted and she looked at him in surprise.
He explained sheepishly, “Your camera’s still transmitting audio and video. Torsten told us lovebirds to engage in hanky-panky on our own time.”
“Do you mean to say the whole team just heard us?” she asked in dismay.
“’Fraid so.”
“Ohmigod. Kill me now,” she groaned.
“Yeah. That,” he agreed drily.
“We’re never going to live this down, are we?” she asked him, wincing.
“Nope. Never.” He reached over to squeeze her hand. “But at least we’re alive to be humiliated on an ongoing basis.”
“Oh, joy,” she responded sarcastically.
“Don’t knock it. I thought we were dead when we jumped off that ship.”
She waxed serious. “Me, too.”
The sound of a motor became audible, and the team’s boat came into sight. Webster and Neville hung over the side, shoving away debris as the vessel made its way to them.
The men reached down, took her by the arms and hauled her aboard. As she flopped onto the floor, she gasped, “Take it easy with Beau. His leg’s hurt.”
Beau was eased aboard and she moved aside to make room for him. But then Marco pushed her out of the way.
She opened her mouth to protest, but Torsten caught her frantic gaze. “Marco’s a medic. Let him do his job.”
She nodded as Webster wrapped a Mylar blanket around her. Funny, but she wasn’t cold until he wrapped her up like a silver plastic burrito. Then the shivering set in, and it was a long, miserable ride to shore.
The remainder of the night passed in a blur. They loaded up in a step van and headed up the coast to Casablanca, debriefing along the way as a team. A British naval vessel waited for them there—a sleek cigar boat that flew north to Gibraltar at nearly a hundred miles per hour.
Beau was whisked off to a hospital in an ambulance, and she was taken to a police station. Torsten was apologetic, but she needed to record an after-action report of her entire meeting with Hassan Al Dhib while it was still fresh in her mind for legal purposes.
She was surprised at how long it took. Torsten interjected occasionally to ask questions or ask for clarifications. But eventually, the debrief from hell ended.
“Can I go see Beau now?” she asked her boss.
“I’ll take you. I got a text about a half hour ago that he’s out of surgery to repair his knee. He should be coming around by now. And I need to speak with both of you, anyway.”
She ought to wince. Ought to be embarrassed that Gun and the others had heard her and Beau declare their love for each other. But she couldn’t be sorry for telling Beau how she felt.
They had both just cheated death in a big way. Turned out that had a way of stripping life down to the bare essentials: friends and family, laughter and love.
She rode beside Torsten in the back of a British staff car to a pretty little hospital situated high on the side of the Rock of Gibraltar. The waiting room was full of big male bodies, and all the guys rose as one when she and Torsten walked in.
“Report,” he ordered.
Webster answered, “Beau’s right knee is trashed. It buckled when it hit the water and ripped pretty much everything. The doc has no idea how he and Tessa survived hitting the water as hard as they did. Says the scuba tanks saved his life. Lambo reports twisting in midair with the intent of hitting on his back to protect Tessa, but his leg got caught underneath him.”
He’d turned to protect her. He’d sacrificed his body to save her. She knew it as surely as she was standing here.
Webster continued, “Anyway, it’s not looking good for his knee. The surgeons put it back together as best they could. They think he may walk on it again, but that’s about it.”
“That’s what they said the last time,” Torsten commented.
Marco interjected, “I’ve seen the MRI. They mean it this time. He’s done. He wrecked pretty much everything that can be wrecked in a knee joint.”
Oh, no.
He’d fought so hard to come back from his last knee injury. It had meant the world to him to make it back to his team. She knew now why he loved this life so much. Why he loved these men more than blood family.
Agony on his behalf ripped through Tessa, and she choked out past a giant lump in her throat, “Can I see him?”
Marco answered gently, “He’s asking for you.”
She looked up at Torsten. “Can we have a minute alone first?”
His chin dipped in a nod. But he did follow her and Marco down the hallway. The two men parked outside Beau’s door while she pushed it open and stepped inside.
His eyes flew open when she murmured down at him, “Hey, handsome.”
“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured.
“I hear you were a big hero and intentionally took the hit for me when we landed in the water earlier.”
He shrugged, but she saw confirmation in his eyes.
“It cost you too much, Beau.” She gestured helplessly at the heavy bandages encasing his leg, which was propped up on pillows. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
He answered reluctantly, “I would do anything for you, Tessa. I was happy to sacrifice myself to protect you.”
She leaned down and kissed him gently.
His hand came up around the back of her head, deepening their kiss. He met her halfway, and their tongues swirled around each other, their lips moving restlessly, their breath mingling as they came together hungrily.
They were both alive. Not unscathed, but alive. It was a minor miracle, and they both reveled in the knowledge of it.
She came up for air, gasping. “I can’t ever get enough of you.”
“Me, neither,” he murmured against her lips. “I don’t care if I have to leave the teams. I won’t give you up.”
“About that—” she started.
The door opened behind her and she straightened abruptly. But Beau didn’t let go of her hand. She caught the defiant glare he shot toward his boss.
“Hey, Lambo.”
“Hey, Gun.” Beau held up his free hand to stop Torsten when he opened his mouth to speak. “Me first, boss.”
“Okay.” Torsten crossed his arms.
“You offered me and Tessa a choice before this op. Us or the teams. Well, I’ve made my choice. I choose her. Consider this my resignation notice.”
She stared down at Beau, open-mouthed. “Beau. You would do that for me?”
“In a heartbeat. Nothing—nothing—in this world matters to me as much as you.”
Joy broke across her entire being like the sun rising outside the window in shades of pink and orange bliss.
Torsten nodded slowly and then nailed her with a stare. “What about you, Wilkes?”
She frowned. “If Beau leaves the teams, does that mean I can stay?”
“If you’d like.”
“Can I have an off-duty relationship with him?”
“You two can do anything you’d like on your own time if you’re n
ot on the same team,” Torsten answered. “But about that—”
She and Beau stared at him expectantly.
“I’ve got a few more women coming into the pipeline that I think are going to make it to the Medusas. I’m going to need someone intimately familiar with the capabilities of women operators to act as their operations supervisor. I was thinking you’d be perfect for the job, Beau. What do you say?”
“What if Tessa has to work an op I’m running?”
Torsten shrugged. “I’ll take over in those instances. I don’t want to lose either of you. You’re both valuable assets.”
Tessa smiled down at Beau. “Hey. I’m an asset now.”
“Honey, you’re a Medusa, through and through.”
“I’m your Medusa,” she replied. “And you’re mine.”
“Damn straight,” he retorted.
“God save us all from you lovebirds,” Torsten groused.
Beau and Tessa’s laughter mingled together and chased Torsten out of the room.
Beau moved over carefully, and Tessa climbed into the bed beside him, taking her place at his side. And she was never leaving that spot again. Ever.
Even if missions carried her half a world away, her heart would always be right here. With him.
Epilogue
Tessa tipped her face up to accept a kiss as Beau handed her a paper plate loaded with more food than she could eat in two meals. “I love you, Beau, but you have a very warped sense of what a normal human being can actually eat in one sitting.”
“Ahh, but you’re not a normal human being.”
Laughter and conversation flowed around them as the two newest recruits to the Medusas, Piper Ford and Rebel McQueen, plus Torsten’s teammates and their various significant others enjoyed a backyard barbecue to christen Beau and Tessa’s new house. They’d pooled their savings, which were considerable given that neither of them had ever slowed down for long enough to have actual lives before they’d found each other, and they’d bought a cute little bungalow a few blocks from the beach near Camp Davis.
It allowed Beau to walk down to the beach and swim, which was good therapy for his knee. It also allowed him to watch the women Medusa trainees and learn their individual strengths and weaknesses before he sent them on actual missions.
