by Lora Leigh
Admiral Holloran sighed wearily and stared back at him.
“Last chance, son,” he said softly. “Let us call your wife. Send someone for her.”
He bared his teeth in fury. “No, sir.” The “sir” was habitual, the growling rage in his voice wasn’t. It was pumping through him, numbing his mind, filling his senses with the echoed images of his nightmares.
“Enough.” Jordan spoke into the silence. “I warned you he wouldn’t change his mind.”
“Your respect has gone to hell, Jordan,” Holloran snapped.
“So has my patience,” Jordan bit out. “I was given complete control of this unit, Admiral, and that supersedes even your rank.”
“If he changes his mind then he can’t go back,” the admiral argued. “Is that what you want for your nephew, Jordan?”
“If he changes his mind then that decision is mine to make, not yours or anyone else’s.” There was a hardness to Jordan, a bleak anger Nathan had never seen in him before. “He’ll be transferred to the command center tomorrow and the doctors there will work him with the others.”
“You haven’t even asked him if he’s willing!” The admiral was in Jordan’s face now. The two men nose to nose, two incredible wills clashing. It would have been amusing if Nathan had been in the mood for it.
He wasn’t.
He rose to his feet and headed to the door.
“Nathan.”
Nathan paused before turning back to face his uncle. Jordan had once been not just family, but a superior officer, when they had both been SEALs, when Nathan had been a man rather than the animal he had turned into.
He stared back at Jordan. “Make it quick. I have exercises to finish this evening.”
Jordan got to his feet. “There are other options than the SEALs.”
“Oh yeah?” Nathan arched his brows. “What’s better than the SEALs, Uncle? Hell? Been there, still take trips.”
Jordan nodded slowly. His brilliant blue eyes, wild Irish eyes, his grandpop had called them, stared back at him. “There are other options, Nathan.”
“Really?” Nathan stared between Jordan and the admiral.
“Yeah.” Jordan nodded. “You walk out of here as a SEAL and you walk out as Nathan Malone. You walk out with me, and Nathan Malone ceases to exist.”
The admiral moved from his chair with a jerky movement and paced to the other side of the room.
“You leave with him and the SEALs won’t exist for you anymore, Nathan. The only men you’ll have contact with are those in your old team under Commander Chavez, to retrain. You’ll be dead forever. Nathan Malone will no longer exist. Not for you. And not for your wife.”
Nathan stared back at him, but it was Bella he saw. She hated a broken nail, she worried about wrinkles. How would she handle a husband who was little more than a monster?
He turned to Jordan. “So where do I sign up?”
Three years later
Jordan Malone stood in his office and stared through the privacy glass at the exercise room. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face as he watched his nephew.
Nathan, now known as Noah Blake to the world, was only five years younger than he was. Jordan had been a surprise to his parents, a shock to his older siblings. And he had been more like a brother to the man pouring with sweat beneath the weights in the other room. The change in Nathan over the past years was nothing short of miraculous. Hell, the first six months, the very fact that he had survived had been miraculous. It had been the first three years that had been the hardest though. The nightmares and effects of the whore’s dust in his system had nearly driven Noah insane.
But had he survived? Sometimes, Jordan wondered if the man who had taken that final SEAL assignment was the same one he was staring at now.
His face was different. The plastic surgery had made it leaner, the bone and muscle more defined. Fuentes had done a job on Nathan’s face while he was a captive. Bones had been shattered, the repairs had been extensive. The change drastic. No one who knew Nathan Malone before would guess at his identity now. His build was different. His body was leaner but more powerful, rock hard, and his will was steel. He was a cold, icy-eyed killer.
He wasn’t Nathan Malone anymore. He was truly Noah Blake, because Noah had made certain nothing of Nathan existed.
Noah’s training with Reno Chavez’s unit in the past years had worried Jordan. Where once the Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had pulled his punches and killed only when he had to, now … Jordan shook his head. Noah killed with deadly, silent efficiency.
Jordan remembered the night they had rescued the man who had been Nathan from Fuentes’s hold. Nearly every bone in his body had been broken at some point. He had been wasted away, nearly starved, and pumped so high on whore’s dust his eyes had glowed like a demon’s. And he had fought. He had fought not to rape the girl locked in the cell with him, he had fought to protect her. And he had fought to walk out rather than be carried out.
Jordan had been certain his nephew would never survive the withdrawal of the drug and the effects to his brain. He’d never imagined Nathan would come back, stronger than ever rather than broken. Darker than ever, and so different that his identity change rarely blipped Jordan’s radar anymore.
“He’s never going to be the same, is he?” Lieutenant Ian Richards said somberly, admitting what none of them had dared say aloud over the years. Ian was part of that SEAL team, had stood with the other men who had spent the past years with the man they called Noah.
It had been harder on Ian in some ways, because he had been closer to Nathan than even Jordan had been. Nathan had only been ten when he heard young Ian’s screams echoing through the desert landscape of their ranch. He had awakened his father, harassed that mean-assed Grant Malone out of the house, and found the young boy whose mother was dying in his arms.
Grant, in a surprising display of compassion, had helped the young woman and her child. Grant had his moments, Jordan thought, they were just few and far between.
“No, he’s never going to be same.” He admitted the truth to Ian, as well as to himself. “This man isn’t Nathan Malone anymore, Ian. He’s truly Noah Blake. We may as well accept that.”
“He’s a machine now,” Ian stated heavily, his expression saddened as he watched Nathan work out. “He’s the best damned killer I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Silent as a thought.”
Jordan turned to Reno Chavez, the commander of the group.
Reno shook his black head. “He’s not a SEAL any longer. He questions orders continuously, lays in backup plans out the ass, and always has a plan if that one goes bad. If he feels he needs to deviate, then he deviates. He’s not insubordinate, but he’s a leader now. He won’t follow easily unless he’s assured the plan is the only way to go. He’s a wild card, Jordan, but he’s a damned efficient one. Like a shark. Cold-blooded. Focused. And deadly.”
Jordan nodded. “Thank you, Reno. I appreciate the report.”
“You have my written report as well.” Reno nodded to the file that had been laid on Jordan’s desk.
The monthly reports hadn’t deviated in years. Nathan was barely a man any longer. He often reminded Jordan of a robot, little more.
“Jordan, he’s not going to survive like this,” Ian said quietly, turning back to the window, watching the man that had once been his friend. “He’ll self-destruct. One of these days, he’ll put a bullet in his own head.”
As though Noah had heard him, sensed him, he sat up on the weight bench and grabbed a towel. His gaze sliced past the two-way mirror and stared back at them. His eyes were darker, wilder than Nathan Malone’s had been. Searing navy blue in a dark, sharply defined face. His black hair was thick, long, nearly to his shoulders now. He refused to cut it. As he turned his back Jordan glimpsed the black sun pierced by a red sword that had been tattooed on the left shoulder blade of Noah’s back.
The emblem of the Elite Operational Unit was another reminder of how Noah had shed his p
ast as Nathan Malone. He had signed his life over to a unit that at times could be little more than a suicide mission.
“He’ll survive.” Jordan kept his response cool, but what he felt inside was anything but cool. “He’s not finished yet. He just thinks he is.” Nathan hadn’t returned to his wife yet, and Noah, the man he was, hadn’t forgotten that woman. He wouldn’t find himself until he did.
Jordan had pulled his nephew into this unit because he knew the man he loved like a brother would have never survived intact if he’d had to face the world after his release from the clinic. Or if he’d had to face his wife.
The psychologist had agreed. Nathan would have taken a walk one day and just never returned. He hadn’t been ready. Noah might still not be ready either. But Jordan was going to end up testing him anyway.
Three years later
“It won’t be easy to get him to agree to it,” Ian Richards warned Jordan as they watched the six-man unit of the Elite Ops working out in the gym through the two-way mirror that looked into it.
Noah was stronger than ever. Lean. Powerful. Cold.
“He’ll go,” Jordan said softly. “He’ll not let her remain in danger.”
Ian blew out a hard breath as they stared at the man they all knew as Noah now.
“Would she want him back like this?” he asked.
Jordan had questioned that one himself. For six years Sabella Malone had been without her husband. In the past three years, she had finally begun living again. Dating again. There was a chance Noah could lose the wife he never admitted he had, very soon, to another man’s arms.
“We’ll find out, won’t we,” Jordan mused.
“We’ll be your backup in the Alpine mission,” Reno told him then. This small group of men had been assigned to the Elite Ops; partly privately funded, partly government backed, the unit was a test unit, a group of dead men, of rogues. In the past years they had become a highly advanced, specialized unit dealing in operations that other agencies couldn’t touch either because of political sensitivity, or the level of danger involved.
Jordan nodded slowly before watching Noah once more.
“We’ll meet up at the command center set up in Big Bend National Park,” he told them. “You’ll receive your orders within the next day or so.”
Ian and Reno nodded and left quickly, heading out to prepare for the coming operation. All that was left was getting Noah Blake to go along with it.
Jordan sat down at his desk, picked up the file he had on the mission, and called Noah into his office.
Noah made him wait. When he walked into Jordan’s office, his hair was still damp from his shower, his blue eyes cold, no emotion, no life flickering within them.
“Are we ready?” Noah took the seat in front of the desk that Jordan indicated.
“Almost.” Jordan nodded. “Command center will be broken down tonight and flown to the new location. We should be set up within forty-eight hours.”
Noah didn’t say anything, he just stared back at Jordan, waiting. His patience was seemingly endless now. But when he erupted into action there was no one faster. No one deadlier.
“You’re delaying,” Noah finally drawled, that ruined voice scraping.
That voice had once been flowing, deep. Now, it was guttural, almost raw.
“First mission is in Texas,” Jordan stated.
Noah didn’t respond. His gaze didn’t even flicker. As though nothing in Texas concerned him. No family, no grandfather, brother, or father. No wife.
“Command center will based forty miles out of Alpine.”
“No.” Noah’s tone was icy.
Jordan lifted the file and slapped it down in front of him. “Read the file. You don’t want the mission, then the hell with it. You can head to Siberia for all I give a damn and babysit that scientist they had us kidnap last month, in the cold. But you will read the file first.”
Jordan stomped from the office, slammed the door behind him, and left Noah to the information they had gathered.
Noah, he never thought of himself as Nathan anymore, stared at the file as though it were a rattler. He didn’t want to read it. He didn’t want to know. Siberia suited him just fine. Hell, that scientist was a quiet little thing, she just liked working on her projects, she didn’t like company. She would do.
He got to his feet, then stopped. He stared at the file and almost turned away. Almost. A picture had slid from just inside the file, and he knew that chin.
He picked it up slowly. The center of his chest was a hard, searing knot of agony as he pulled the picture free and frowned.
And there it was. That familiar curve of the brow, those pretty, soft gray eyes. But he’d be damned if he knew the woman they belonged to.
She looked like Sabella. His Sabella. It was his Sabella. But she was so different.
Her sun-streaked blond tresses were darker, almost brown in some places. And her hair was longer now. Well past her shoulders, thick and heavy. Her face was thinner, her expression was quieter.
There was no smile on her lips.
Unless she was angry, Nathan had never seen Sabella without a smile. The thought of her smiles, her laughter, her joy, followed him into his dreams sometimes. Sometimes, they held the nightmares at bay. What would he hold on to now that he saw that smile was gone?
He held the picture in one hand, staring at her. He had refused to read any of the reports he knew Jordan kept on her. Refused to hear anything about her in the past six years.
He had only two questions if her name came up.
Was she alive?
Was she safe?
Jordan had always nodded, and Noah had always walked away.
He opened the mission file.
It didn’t take long to read it. Even less time for him to have to fight the howl of pure rage that burned in his throat.
Sabella was smack in the middle of an operation that had already killed three FBI agents and the wife of a prominent politician.
Son of a bitch. He’d asked his father for one thing in his entire life. If anything ever happened to him, to watch out for Sabella, and that lying bastard had sworn he would. But he hadn’t. Sabella was undefended.
Only his bastard half brother was trying to help at this point.
The mission file was peppered with information on Sabella, his half brother, Rory, his grandfather, Riordan, and the father he could feel himself beginning to hate now.
And it was filled with danger. That danger could touch Sabella. He could see it. He could see the threads that, if pulled just the right way, would tighten around his wife’s neck and put her in harm’s way.
Nathan’s wife, he reminded himself bitterly, not Noah’s. Noah Blake had no wife. But he couldn’t erase the past that had once belonged to him, or the dreams of a wife that had been his, no matter how hard he tried.
And now she was in danger.
Because he hadn’t watched out for her.
He sat down and stared at the picture. It was bad enough the man she had loved had died, but the haunted shell that was left hadn’t even been able to watch out for her.
He ran his finger over the picture, down the curve of her cheek, as he closed his eyes and remembered her smile. Remembered touching her. As he let himself remember, outside his dreams, of loving her.
“Go síoraí,” he whispered, breathing in the scent of those memories. “Forever, Sabella. I’ll love you forever.”
And the first crack in Noah Blake’s shell appeared.
“Nathan.” His name was breathed into the darkness as Sabella came awake. As though the past six years had never happened, as though she had never lost him. She heard his voice in the darkness. Those words. The ones she had never asked the meaning of. Go síoraí.
She stared into the dimly lit room. No Nathan. Nathan wasn’t there. Dry eyed, aching, she lay back down and closed her eyes. “Goodbye, Nathan,” she whispered back, wishing she could still cry. Wishing the pain could be shed so easily. “I miss you.”<
br />
CHAPTER TWO
The little shack that sat in the middle of the sprawling Rocking M Ranch looked just as weathered, just as faded and familiar, as it ever had even in the dark, beneath a bleak, black night.
Noah moved through the darkness like a wraith. He jumped the little wrought-iron fence and moved to his grandmother’s grave.
Erin Malone. Go síoraí. Forever. They were the only words on her granite tombstone. His grandfather had chiseled them in himself.
Kneeling by the tombstone, Noah stretched out his left hand, touched the stone, and lowered his head. His grandfather had always paid homage to their grandmother in this fashion. All her children had except Grant Malone. And Noah did now. He wondered if his brother Rory did as well.
He lifted his head and stared at the shack. It was dark, shadowed, but he knew his half brother was there.
He eased back from the grave then and bounded back over the fence before moving to the cabin.
Rory was quick. He was suspicious. He had known throughout the day that someone was watching the cabin, but Noah hadn’t tried to hide it.
He moved around the shack on silent feet. He flowed with the shadows, became a part of them, used them to his advantage until he stood at the end of the back porch and stared at the young man who sat in the aged rocker.
Rory was twenty-five, a man grown, and he looked too much like Nathan had at that age. He was broader in the shoulders and his muscles were heavier, but not as effective.
Rory sat silently, his rifle resting across his thighs, his body tense.
“I know you’re here,” his brother muttered. “If I haven’t scoped you by now, I’m not going to. You might as well take the shot.” Disgust lined his voice, filled his expression as his head lifted.
Rory thought he was dead, just as everyone else did. And Noah needed to ensure no one else suspected. Except Rory. Nathan would need his help.
As silent as moonlight he was over the banister of the porch, the rifle pulled from Rory’s grip, the barrel across his brother’s neck as the rocker tilted back to the wall.
It wasn’t a harsh grip, it was a warning one. He didn’t want to wake the old man. He didn’t want to add to Rory’s grief, or to his own shame.
