by Zoe Dawson
“Yeah, and I don’t have a Pikachu on my shoulder.”
The boy giggled. “True. Too bad. Pikachu is my favorite.”
Ariane was reaching for a small pink coat on the rack in the hall. She walked to her daughter and slipped it on her. “Come on, you two. Let’s get you to school. It was a pleasure to meet you, Ashe with an ‘e,’ even if you don’t have a Pikachu.” She smiled.
He chuckled. “Same.”
“Bye, Paige. Keep that man in line.”
“I will. Have a great day.”
They piled out the door after Ariane donned her own stylish coat.
“Was she talking about me?”
“No, she was talking about Cris, but I guess it could apply to you,” she chided with a nudge to his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, pulling a lock of her hair.
She gave him a sidelong look. “Pokémon and Pikachu. You really are impressing me.”
“I told you. I have nieces and, for your information, I’m their favorite uncle.”
“You’re their only uncle.” There was an undertone of amusement in her tone. “Cris is in the kitchen.”
“Semantics.” Ashe followed her through the well-kept, cozy cottage to the warm kitchen, the smells would have made his mouth water if he hadn’t already eaten.
The smile on his face faded when he walked into the room. There was a subtle tension in the man who was working on buttoning his cuff. His hands weren’t steady. Maybe he’d had a fight with his wife, but Ariane hadn’t looked at all hassled except for the usual mommy chaos. There was a feeling he got when he would meet one of the Team’s in-country escorts for an op. A sixth sense that had been honed over his years on the teams. Fidgety, tension lines around the mouth, anxiety in the eyes.
“Here, let me help you with that,” Paige said softly, affection in her voice as she took the cuff out of his hand and did up the button. She might be a seasoned agent, but she had taken care of her father and brothers and some of that nurturing responsibility spilled over here. She glanced at Kid, concern in the depths of her eyes. Cris looked up at them and forced a smile, but it didn’t rise all the way to his eyes like Ashe had seen in the past. There were now dark circles under his eyes and a darkening bruise on his jaw.
It looked like Cris had been mugged.
Keeping his voice relaxed, and capturing Cris’s eyes, Kid said, “You doing okay, compadre?” In the bright cheery light in the kitchen, Cris’s hair had the same sheen as polished pewter, the silver shade contrasting sharply with his weathered tan and the dark fabric of his shirt. Cris nodded and turned away from them, pouring a cup of coffee from the carafe, his hands still unsteady.
Working to school his features, Cris quickly asked, “What brings you here?”
They told him their idea. Something like desperate hope blossomed in his eyes. “I think that’s an excellent plan! I have been nagging you to take the trip, Paige.” He went to a board filled with keys. “Take the Range Rover. I won’t need it.” He tossed the keys toward Paige.
She deftly caught them and said, “Are you sure?”
He nodded vigorously. “Yeah, it’s got a hitch for the trailer for the all-terrain vehicles. Stop by the office and grab a couple ATVs and some camping gear, just in case. Make sure you bring a first aid kit. There’s a rack on the vehicle.”
“Will do.”
“I think you’d find the Incachaca and Tunari mountain range very interesting. Just watch your backs, predators out there. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
They drove for half an hour before he finally asked, “You know him better than I do, but did Cris seem…off to you?”
“What do you mean?” Her casual tone was belied by a quick swallow and the way her hands flexed on the steering wheel.
“I have this sixth sense. When we hook up with in-country guides, I get a vibe off them. If it’s edgy and anxious, we’re more on guard. Could be a sign of someone who’s only pretending to be okay with working with Navy SEALs when they’re exactly the opposite.”
She tensed further, and he could see her wage her own internal battle “And, you feel Cris is only pretending to be okay?”
“I got a vibe off him. He was agitated, his hands were shaking. It couldn’t have been a fight with his wife, she didn’t have that pinchy, disapproving woman look on her face.”
“That what…pinchy?” She glanced at him, then shifted her gaze firmly back to the winding mountain road.
“Yeah, you’ve got it down pat.”
It took a moment for his words to register, then she snorted. “Ooh, you should be glad I’m driving right now. Go on.”
He grinned, then sobered. “He seemed eager for us to go on this trip.”
“I told you. It’s a possible new route. He would be excited.”
“Maybe. But he wasn’t excited. He was tired, worried and I just think we should be more vigilant.”
She didn’t respond at first, keeping her gaze on the road. “All right.” She glanced at him again. “This is how you think all the time, looking for danger?”
“Mostly when I’m deployed. It’s weird. One day you’re home and you go grocery shopping, play b-ball with the guys, go to the gym. Do your routine, then you get that phone call and the next thing you know, you’re jumping out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet, oxygen mask, black jumpsuit. You’re stealthing into enemy territory, and guys are shooting at you.”
“How do you deal with that when you’re stateside?”
He sighed. “The honest truth?”
“Of course.”
“Lots of sex, pumping iron, and more…ah…sex. Sometimes mixed with alcohol.”
“Wow. That is honest.”
“I’m kidding.”
She punched him in the arm. “Ashe, c’mon.”
“My day is usually decided by assholes.”
“What does that mean?”
“No two days are alike. Every day and every week of every year varies according to the current world situation—hence, assholes who decide to do something that pisses us off. When we get pissed off, we go over to where they are and do something about it. Every day I get out of bed, I put on my ass-kicking boots and kick ass. The trick is being able to ramp up aggression or cool your jets. It’s clear cut.”
“And you love it. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I love it, hoo-yah. It’s all about the cycle a particular team is in—for example, deployed on a mission, pre-deployment, post deployment, Team training, Special Skills training or leave. Right now, I am supposed to be on leave, but some gorgeous NCIS agent roped me into her undercover op and enticed me into her bed.”
“And you’re okay with that, aren’t you?”
After emerging from one particularly long curve, they were about halfway up a high mountain with wave after wave of soaring peaks, some of them dusted with glistening snow and dotted with sparse vegetation. She smiled. “One-hundred percent. I do the jobs that need to be done when they need to be done. Period.”
“And with the stuff with your dad? How are you doing with that? You seemed pretty upset last night.”
He stiffened, then relaxed. After waking up with Paige against him, his face still sore, he’d gone to the kitchen to apply ice to it and search for a painkiller. But the tablets he found might have taken care of his physical pain, but it couldn’t touch the pain that always revolved around his father. He’d taken to heart what Paige had said about being under his dad’s shadow. Maybe he hadn’t realized how in the dark he’d been, that stepping into the light was his right and the last vestiges of the fear he’d kept concealed deep down inside him were unfounded. Every step of the way he knew he was going to make it through the SEALs because he came from the same stock. The shame of not making it would have been too much to bear, so determination was baked into his bones, into every inch of his body, sunk deep into his heart.
He realized he’d chosen women in his life who didn’t challenge him for a reason. He didn’t have
to be vulnerable with them. They wouldn’t ask the tough questions or give him the kind of tough butt-whooping that he needed. But Paige was what he needed. He knew they wouldn’t stick around, and he didn’t have to feel guilty about loving what he did for a living, knowing the pain, the havoc it played with the people that were left behind to handle the deployments, the danger he dealt with as easily as breathing, and who would mourn his loss hard if something were to happen.
His throat got a little tight, and he looked out at the landscape trying to hold it back, but then realized that he was safe with her. She would catch him if he stumbled. If he fell, she would pick him up. “I had to look a little deeper because you challenged me to. I had a lot of guilt deciding to do what my father died doing, especially when it came to my family, especially my mom and sister. My sister was pretty mad at me for a while.”
“That doesn’t diminish the courage you had to go the path you wanted to follow.”
That’s just it, he thought. Was I the one to choose the path or had the path already been chosen for me just by virtue of my father’s legacy?
“And your mom?”
“She’s a rock. She was worried, but she supported me. So, I’m still working through all that stuff, but better,” he said, taking her hand and holding it. “You were pretty great last night.”
“You were, too.”
This conversation had gotten much too serious. He set his hand on her thigh and smoothed his palm to her knee. “Twice last night and twice this morning, if my count is accurate.”
“It’s right on the money.” She glanced down at his hand as it traveled back up her leg. “If you don’t want to end up in a ditch or even worse off the edge of a cliff, you’d better rethink that hand, Kid.”
A frisson of heat crawled up his spine. “Hmmm.” He scooched over and nuzzled her neck. “I like it when you call me Kid.”
“Kid…Ashe. Driving here.”
He went back over to his side of the car and whined. “Are we there yet?” Just as she slowed down, he glanced out the windshield to find—llamas and sheep, a ton of them were crossing the road driven by a young boy.
“Don’t look now, but you have a friend over there.”
Kid turned his head to find a pure white llama looking curiously at him through the glass. On impulse, he rolled the window down and reached out. The animal didn’t shy away from him, but sniffed him. “Hey, buddy.” He slowly petted his neck. The boy did a clicking call to it, and it turned its head. Looking back at him, it made a soft humming noise, then trotted off after the herd.
“You even charm llamas, it seems. They might be curious about strangers, but petting one and getting it to hum at you. Yeah, that takes chemistry.”
“I got it in spades, babe,” he flashed her a grin. She put the Rover in park and scooted across the seat.
She grabbed his jaw and planted one hard, knee-melting kiss on him. She leaned back and said, “Yeah, you do.”
A half an hour after they encountered the llama and sheep herd, the Rover whined at its struggle up a steep hill, and when they descended, wisps of white smoke engulfed them. They had reached the cloudforest, shortly after the fog cleared to reveal moss-strewn jungle lowlands. The forest around them was a blanket of green so dense he could barely see a few feet beyond the road. They’d passed a small village a few miles back and had stopped to stretch their legs and answer the call of nature. Kid was used to roughing it so he didn’t bat an eyelash when they were told to go out back. The ladies went to the right and the gentlemen to the left. “Talk about answering the call of nature in nature,” she’d groused, then walked to the right. He, nothing like a gentleman at all, laughed.
The rest of the trip to Colomi was a study in driving over some paved and some rutted roads. Then they went further until they came into another small village. Paige parked the Range Rover behind some houses and they unloaded the ATVs and grabbed their packs.
Paige pulled out a map that Cris had drawn for her. She looked off in the distance. “The Incachaca is in this direction.” She tucked the map into her jacket pocket, then shed the garment as he did the same. It was easily fifteen degrees warmer down here and heading toward noon.
They took off and entered the jungle, a worn walking path empty of tourists or locals. After driving for about half an hour, they came upon a small village even smaller than the one where they’d parked the Rover.
His gaze went over the village, and he recognized the sudden tension in the air, most of it from a young boy about ten curled in a doorway of a house, barefoot and dirty. His big eyes watched him as he and Paige sat on the outskirts. Once, Kid had a boy like this in his scope. He’d been touting a weapon, and he’d done what was necessary to protect his team. But this one was unarmed and scared.
He touched Paige’s arm when she went to get off the vehicle. Following the kid’s gaze, he noticed the street was empty. His attention flashed to the homes, a couple of people he could see. They peered from behind curtains, taking cover in flimsy homes. Then he heard the rowdy Russian voices before he saw several men walk into the thoroughfare with automatic weapons. He knew that dialect and his blood ran cold. Kirikhan rebels in Bolivia? WTF? What kind of hornet’s nest had they just walked into?
12
“What is going on?” Paige whispered.
“A royal cluster fuck from where I’m sitting. Those are Kirikhan rebels.”
“How do you know that?”
“The Russian dialect.”
“You speak Russian?”
“Yeah, and several other languages.” He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “Don’t tell me you only speak Spanish?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” she bit out. “What do you think they’re doing here?”
“I haven’t a clue, but if they’re here, you can bet it’s in support of the revolution. They work for a really bad duo, in fact they’re on our list of HVTs.”
“High-value targets,” she said, nodding.
“Boris and Natasha Golovkin.”
“Boris and Natasha? Like, ‘How do we kill moose and squirrel’ villians? Is that a joke?”
“Believe me, it’s not a joke, Rocky and Bullwinkle aside.”
“I’m sorry, but they’re not on my radar or NCIS as far as I know.” She reached back for her weapon. “What do you want to do about this?”
“My gut says that it might have something to do with the guns, but I don’t know for sure. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Cris sent us here, Paige.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“Why would he knowingly send us into danger blind?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not like him at all. If you’re right and he is under stress, it probably has to do with Anderson.”
“Then does Anderson know who you are?”
“You think my cover is blown?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking they got tipped off the night at the warehouse and are, at the very least, suspicious of us. Let’s push these further down the road and hide them in the cover of the jungle. We’re going to need to do some recon.”
“Is that what you do on the Team?”
“Yeah, point man, sniper, sneaky bastard.”
The thick jungle closed around him, blocking sunlight, and the cooler temperatures created a thick rolling mist over the forest floor. The beauty of it escaped him, his steps slower because he couldn’t see the ground well.
They were about thirty yards into the forest when the first shot came.
He went still and sighed. His inclination was to head toward it. It didn’t matter that he was only toting a knife. She put her hand on his arm. “Ashe, we can’t.”
“Sure we can.”
She shook her head. “It’s better if we check it out first before we start killing people pell-mell.”
“It would be controlled chaos,” he said, completely serious.
They found a good place to stash the vehicles just as the sound of someone running through the forest shifting d
ebris and displacing foliage. When he peered out, he saw it was the kid from the village. The boy would never outrun whoever was behind him, and Kid caught up with him, snatching him off the ground and covering his mouth with his hand as he backed into a darkened area off the path. The boy squirmed and Kid kept him tight in his arms, grunting when the kid bit him.
He forced the boy to look him in the eyes, and gave him a stare he reserved for terrorists. For a second, he thought the kid would faint. Then his frightened eyes went to Paige, and her projected calm soothed him. He nodded, relaxed and Kid released his hand. The boy opened his mouth to speak, and Kid covered it.
“Not a word,” he warned in Spanish.
He released him and the skinny kid folded to the ground. Kid motioned him to hide behind him in a burrow of vines and the boy quickly obeyed. Kid slid forward, his knife drawn as he watched the rebels strut along the path. They were overconfident, laughing about scaring the villagers, and while Kid wanted to teach them a lesson about being bullies, he couldn’t afford to reveal their location. The trio moved deeper into the valley, and he let them pass, then motioned to Paige and the boy.
“What’s your name?”
“Jorge.”
“Nice to meet you.” He didn’t offer their names.
“They were looking for you two.”
Most likely not, Kid thought. “Why are they here?”
“They don’t say. They just keep going into the jungle and at night we hear helicopters. They don’t like strangers here.”
That Kid could believe. Clear out the untrustworthy, threaten the locals and you’ve got your bases covered since it the police were scattered thinly in these outlying parts.
The reason they were here had to be tied to those weapons. Had they somehow gotten wind of the mishap?
Then he saw him, striding confidently with two more rebels. Dean Norris. Anderson’s shadow, his tattoos visible down his arms. He nudged Paige who was looking the boy over for injuries. She turned to look and her mouth tightened.
He bent down and whispered to the boy once Norris was safely past. “Get your butt back home.”
