by Zoe York
But there wasn’t any chance she’d have fun when the standoff over the helicopter was being broadcast on YouTube and rehashed from every angle on BBC World and CNN International. All the footage was coming from the insurgents, and it made her sick to think that they were spinning the story to suit their own purposes.
The news reported that no further Americans had been killed, and while she’d shed more than a few silent tears for the one brave man who’d died, she was grateful it wasn’t Miles.
Please stay safe, she willed.
When dawn broke in the Middle East, and the analysts said nothing else would happen until after the next round of scheduled diplomatic talks, she finally dragged herself to bed.
Sleep was elusive, but at some point between worrying about where he might be right now and imagining how good it would be to hug him when he got back to the States, she fell into an unconscious—if not restful—state, and stayed there for a few hours.
— —
“This is fu—”
Jared shot Vince a hard look. The three of them were sitting together behind a built-up half-destroyed wall, but they weren’t alone. The temporary command unit and headquarters group was within hearing distance.
Miles laughed as Vince rolled his eyes and started again. “This is futile.”
“Better,” Jared grumbled under his breath.
“When did you turn into such an old man?” Vince pulled out a cigarette and offered the pack to Miles, who waved him off. He didn’t offer one to Jared, which only made Miles laugh harder.
“Maybe when I found out I was going to have a kid.”
“Seriously, you’re so square sometimes.”
“I’m one hundred percent fine with that, you loser.” Jared kicked at Vince’s leg. “I’d like you to make it through the last few months of service without being hauled up on charges or discharged or killed.”
“Pretty sure that none of those will happen if I swear in the middle of a fucking war zone.”
“Whatever.” Jared sighed and tipped his head back. “I don’t know why I’m picking on you. This is fucked.”
When one of the officers looked up, the SEALs all started giggling like little girls.
“Fucked indeed,” Miles muttered before guffawing again. It wasn’t that funny, but they’d been under intense pressure for two days. Something had to break, and apparently it was their sanity.
Just for a minute. They were the spec ops guys. They’d pull it together and do their best to save the day, but right here? Just the three of them? They could admit to each other that this was an un-winnable battle in a possibly un-winnable war. And that was, as they had definitively ascertained, fucked.
“What are you guys laughing about?” Johannson asked as he ambled over.
“How long it takes you take a piss,” Nash drawled at him, and the other man swiped at him, but their good-natured tussling froze as a familiar thwack thwack thwack sounded outside.
Fucking gunshots. They all scrambled into position.
They were five hundred meters from the front. There were checkpoints and guards between them and the insurgents. Unless it wasn’t a full-on attack. If it was an infiltration…
“Nash. Status report.” Jared bit out the demand under his breath.
From his higher vantage point, Vince shook his head. “No visual. May have come from our twelve o’clock, two-story building. That’s got a rear entrance. Guarded, but if they took those guys out…”
“Yeah.” Jared pressed the speaker button on his headset. “Tango Team Leader to HQ, over.”
“This is HQ comms, go ahead Tango Team Leader.”
“Permission requested to move out and engage.”
The voice at the other end of the line changed, and while they couldn’t see the command team—HQ would have pulled back into the more fortified building behind this one—they all recognized the area commander’s voice. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, Tango Team Leader.”
“That’s precisely why we need to press forward, sir.”
“Use extreme caution, Sutter. This is not our war yet.”
One of the many reasons the situation was fucked. Jared nodded, even though the commander couldn’t see them. “Yes, sir.”
“Echo Team is moving to neutralize the technology concern.” Meaning the helicopter would blow up soon and they shouldn’t be surprised.
“Understood, sir.”
Jared set the objective: find the shooters and neutralize the threat. Preferably without shots fired, but none of them were betting hard on that being maintained.
“Nash, you and Johannson get across to that two-story building. Dumbrowski, you cover him and stay here. If we push them out into the open, use your tear gas or shoot them. I don’t really care at this point, you got it? I’m going onto the roof. Wait for my signal, then radio silence unless you’re the one making the all-clear.”
Miles nodded. They all did a quick re-check of their gear as Jared disappeared. Twenty seconds later, Jared told them the street was wide open, no sign of anyone at the windows—or what remained of the windows—across the way.
He closed his eyes and thought of Piper for a split second. He had a date to keep.
Swinging the door open, he tossed a brick into the middle of the street. Nothing. No scramble, no shots. “Clear, clear, clear. Go, go, go!”
With speed that always surprised him, given how much gear they were wearing and carrying, Nash and Johannson made it across the street and disappeared into the shadows. Miles swept his gaze over the street, looking for…anything. A weird movement, a too-still shadow. Any sign of something that was different than how it had been two hours earlier when they’d wearily walked back for a break, switching out their post at the front with Echo Team.
Inside the buildings to his left and right were American and other NATO forces. All hunkered down, waiting for more shots.
Nobody ever talked about the waiting game of war.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
When the explosion came, the street stayed silent for a minute, and then the fighting began—delayed reaction in the extreme. At first the fighting seemed to be closer to the front.
Miles could see, though, from his vantage point, that the good guys were in retreat, and with horror, he realized why—advancing toward them from what used to be their checkpoint was a shocking number of men, all in black.
It was the worst-case scenario.
All bets were off.
He hunkered down behind his rifle. Other NATO forces would close in behind—this wasn’t going to work in the long run. The insurgents may have amassed a small army, but they were going up against pros. This would be bloody and bad, but Miles couldn’t lose his cool—and he had to trust that his colleagues would act the same.
His job was to hold this building, and he’d fucking do it.
Almost too late, he saw the grenade lobbed in his direction.
“Almost” doesn’t count, motherfuckers. He slammed his back against the wall, dust and debris raining down on him as the grenade fragged the outside of the storefront. The wall shook behind him, and at first he thought he was fine—until he turned and fell over.
Ears ringing, vision bouncing around like a fucking ping-pong ball, Miles scrambled backwards to an interior doorway, taking cover deeper inside the demolished building. All around him a firefight raged full strength now and in the distance burned an actual fire. The helicopter was no more.
Deep breath. One, two, three. Another inhale, another controlled exhale. Pull yourself together. Status assessment… He crawled back to the front of the building and peered out the window. At least two combatants outside, close. Probably more. He listened to the return of fire. There were people at both ends of the building—between him and his team.
Nash, you asshole, you better be alive. The bastard was on his last tour.
Miles inched back up to the window. Fuck, his cheek burned. He didn’t need to swipe it to know he was bleeding. Had so
me fragments come into the building? Was he hit elsewhere? He didn’t feel injured but with the adrenaline pumping through his body, pain might not register.
He couldn’t see for shit. Had no idea who was in the street and who’d taken cover. Where had all these guys come from?
He could retreat to the command station—he had an open sightline down the hallway to the building behind. But that would leave this storefront unprotected, and that wasn’t an option. Not with Jared on the roof and Nash and Johannson still across the way. On the other side of hell.
Just another day at the office.
He needed his eyes to focus long enough to get a clear picture of who was outside. Fuck it all. He closed his eyes again and counted to ten as he pulled a tear gas canister out of his webbing and pitched it outside, making sure it skipped hard along the ground. He wanted to do two things—disorient as many of them as possible and drag some of them into the storefront.
Crab-crawling backwards, because he couldn’t handle the thought of standing up just yet, he made it to the staircase just as the first fighters came through the door.
This time it was a grenade he palmed. No mercy. Just before scrambling up to the second floor, he pulled the pin and whipped it around the corner. Then he dragged himself to the landing, propped his back against the wall, and aimed his rifle down the stairwell.
Bring it on.
— FOURTEEN —
It was hard to explain the feeling of a grenade exploding beneath you. Boom didn’t quite cover it. More of a bone-shaking thud.
Chaos followed, complete with screaming and what Miles could only assume was swearing in Arabic—his knowledge of the language didn’t cover the words flowing fast and loose beneath him.
Sweat rolling down his face, his head still ringing like a bell, he tightened his grip on his rifle and waited to pick off anyone who climbed the stairs. His earpiece crackled to life.
“Well, so much for fucking radio silence,” Jared drawled.
Miles just listened, waiting to see if Nash would respond. It didn’t take long.
“Jesus, this is going to be a blood bath,” Vince responded from across the street. “Johannson’s showing off his sniper skills, though. We’ve got a good spot up here.”
“I’m one floor up from Dumbrowski,” Jared said. “I’m pretty sure he can’t respond right now because he doesn’t want to be heard, but I’ve got his back. We’re going to push these motherfuckers out of this building in a minute, you ready to pick them off as they flee?”
“You know it, boss.”
And then Jared was beside him, quiet like a church mouse as he crept down the stairs from the top floor.
Using sign language, Miles conveyed that he had a concussion and was having trouble walking. Jared signed that he’d go first, Miles keeping to his six.
Before they could say anything else, the first shadow stretched up the wall in front of them. Jared flattened himself against the stairwell, sliding his weapon forward until he had a clear shot. He took it. Using that downed fighter as a human shield, Jared led the way.
Miles scrambled behind his teammate, ignoring how the world tilted sideways. Three pops. Three enemy down. Jared veered right and Miles took the last two combatants down with a double tap to their center of mass. One. Two. Done.
Jared dropped his body shield and assessed the situation out the window while Miles kept a wary eye on the bodies lying in the room.
“We clear in all directions now, Nash?”
“Hells ya, brother.”
Jared tapped Miles on his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go.”
Miles made it three feet out the door before he collapsed.
— —
Five agonizing hours had passed since CNN first showed footage of an explosion of the American helicopter. The looping video ended with the English-accented spokesperson boasting that the town they were in would soon be reclaimed. The chilling end of the video showed a bleeding soldier from the unidentified checkpoint.
Terse statements from the White House Press Secretary and the Secretary of Defense didn’t mean anything.
Helpless, Piper curled up on the couch in the hostel, ignoring her phone ringing every twenty minutes from her parents. Her own fault for answering once in tears. She’d told them she was fine. And if Miles would just call, she would be.
So every time it vibrated, she still looked at the screen, just in case…
“Do you know a soldier?” asked Ingrid, a backpacker from Sweden.
Piper just nodded, her lips numb and her brain too swollen to compose more of a response.
There was no reason for her to assume that Miles was there, but she just knew he was. I’m gonna be out of comms range for a little while. It was the way he’d said it, like he was trying to tell her without saying a word that he was going somewhere extra-dangerous. And from the ridiculous mess of information scrolling across the television screen, she didn’t think there was anywhere hotter than that particular front right now.
“I need to take a shower,” she muttered. Really what she needed was the dull roar of running water and a break from the constant stream of non-news.
She dragged her shower bag into the women’s bathroom, stripped down, washed up…then stood there.
Thinking.
Trying hard not to go to the dark places in her mind.
He’s big and brave and probably well-trained. She shut off the water and grabbed her towel from the bench outside the stall. As she lifted it into the air, her phone lit up beneath it.
Go away, Mom. As soon as she thought it, she regretted the rudeness, and she grabbed at the phone, swiping to accept the call. “I promise, I’m fine, stop worrying.”
“Piper Harrington?” The masculine, no-nonsense voice that spilled into her ear was not her mother’s. Ice-cold fear flooded her core and sluiced through her veins.
With a stupid nod he couldn’t see, she answered affirmatively.
“My name is Vincent Nash. I work with Miles Dumbrowski, and he’s talked about you many times over the last month. He gave me your contact information. He’s currently on his way to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany…”
Wrapping her towel around her body, she snagged her shower bag and sprinted for her room.
As the man on the other end of the line kept talking, she roughly pulled on clothes and starting shoving stuff in her bags.
“Do you have any questions?”
“Just one,” she said, catching her breath. “What do I have to do to see him when I get there?”
— —
“You can’t go in there, ma’am.”
“I was summoned by one of his colleagues to meet him here, and the chaplain at the desk didn’t have a problem with it. I showed my ID and—”
“I realize that, ma’am but he’s—”
Naked. Miles had just shooed that same nurse out of the room so he could get changed. He chuckled to himself, ignoring the pounding in his head. Damn, it hurt to laugh. That sucked. It would probably hurt when Piper launched herself through that door any second and tumbled into his arms.
He’d have to brace himself.
Reaching for the door, he gingerly pulled it open. “I’m done getting dressed.” Piper gawked at him. “Well, hell. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
— FIFTEEN —
“You’re okay,” Piper breathed, her heart pounding in her throat. Four feet separated them and she was frozen to the ground. His face was bruised and he had stitches on his left temple. A grey t-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and fluttered loose over his lean mid-section to a matching pair of nondescript grey sweatpants. As her panicked gaze randomly catalogued him, she thought he looked pretty damn good for someone injured on a battlefield. She’d expected a hospital gown—they were in a neurosurgery ward, for heaven’s sake. But this was good. Better than good. He was standing and breathing and looking almost flirty.
“Okay is a relative term, but yeah.” Miles winced as
he lifted one shoulder, but it couldn’t stop a wide grin from flashing. For the first time ever, she was seeing him with stubble. Not the time to obsess over how sexy he is, Piper. But he was looking her over, too, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and earnest. “And now you’re here. So I’m even better.”
“They told me you were going for a CT scan.” She stepped closer to him, her palms itching to touch him and feel his stable, steady pulse for herself. To kiss him and hold him and—
“Had one already. Will have some more testing soon.” He swayed in front of her and she was hip-checked out of the way as the nurse charged to his side. “Nope, I’m fine,” he said, waving off the help. “But I think we need to sit.”
Nodding dumbly, Piper followed as he turned ever so slowly, his outstretched hand always touching something for support. He gave the nurse a look and she muttered something under her breath about operators being terrible patients before closing the door and giving them some privacy.
She glanced around for a chair to pull close to the bed. There was one on the far side of the bed, squished under the window, but Miles was sitting sideways on the mattress, his back to the window, and she wasn’t sure she could move it around to this side.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked gruffly, lifting his head to look at her again, the heat now undisguised.
“Um, I was just thinking of bringing that chair over here,” she whispered inanely, because what she really wanted was to touch him and hold him—and never let him go.
“If you think I’m going to let you sit anywhere other than right here on this bed with me, you’ve got a surprise coming.” He crooked his finger at her and she fought back tears as she shifted closer.
As soon as she was within snagging range, he wrapped his hand around her wrist, pulling her close to stand between his legs. As his fingers slid against her skin, the dam broke and her tears started falling
