She was trouble.
“I know what happened that night, on your mission,” she told him. “Aaron wrote down more than your name. He’s got a whole report. He called it a Situation Report.”
Damn, that couldn’t be good. What had Aaron been thinking, writing up a SITREP?
This had gone from being a favor for a dead man to something much different. “If you’ve got the whole story, why am I here?”
“For your side of things. I want to fill in the gaps, to know what Aaron really did for you. Please.”
Whether or not Aaron had deserted, a plea from a widow couldn’t be ignored. Nick could tell her the story without telling her the whole story.
There are such things as false truths and honest lies, his dad would say.
He shifted away from her and began to walk slowly toward a small playground beyond the apartment buildings—mostly grass, with a swing set in the middle of the area. And he laid down, flat on his back, arms folded behind his head, and stared up at the night sky and wondered why the hell all this chose to come down on him now, after all this time.
He closed his eyes and tried to recall his memories from that night, pulling it into sharp focus.
Six years ago, he’d been Petty Officer Third-Class Devane, twenty-one years old and on his first mission with his original SEAL team. And members of the militant militia group he’d been sent to recon in the Congo were trying to kill him.
Near death had happened to him before, mainly when he was younger and was not expected to live past his first, second, third birthdays, and he’d honestly never thought he’d make it to legal age.
But still, lying there, just beyond the row of tin-roofed, pastel-colored houses in a small town on the outskirts of Kisangani, he’d been going down hard, and he remembered how badly it had pissed him off.
“That mission was supposed to take under six hours from start to finish,” he said finally, more to himself than to her. In at dark, out before the dawn.
“American helo arrived in the DRC at 2200, just outside Kisangani,” she said, and she was speaking from memory rather than from paper.
She’d lain down on the grass next to him, despite the fact that the air was chilled and the ground even colder. Like him, she stared up at the sky when she spoke.
He’d always made it his practice to not look backward, to keep moving forward and to try not to make the same mistakes twice. Apparently, that wasn’t in Kaylee’s plan.
You owe this to Aaron, he told himself, because he understood what it was like to not want to be found, even as the other half of his brain told him that he didn’t owe anybody shit beyond what he’d promised. And he’d kept that promise by handing over the patch to Aaron’s girl.
He didn’t like thinking about Kaylee asAaron’s girl .
“Six men inserted into the LZ,” she continued. “Blue on Red fire began immediately, forcing the group to split. Blue on Red means you took on enemy fire, right?”
He nodded in agreement. Six SEALs from his team were prepared to insert just below their intended target for recon of a potential new terrorist cell that utilized monies and resources from the militant militia. A completely classified, locked-down mission with the highest priority.
The helo had traveled up the Lualaba River toward Isangi—a small town outside Kisangani and their ultimate destination—would drop them over ten miles away along a deserted part of the river and far away from any checkpoints and towns, save for the smaller villages.
As soon as the last man, Wolf, had fast-roped down to the ground and their ride left, the team had begun taking on enemy fire.
The shadows seemed to surround them from everywhere and anywhere, their howls echoing through the jungles, to start a chain of events that would spiral quickly out of control. An ambush of goatfuck proportions.
The militia wanted nothing more than to make examples of more American soldiers, the more elite, the better.
Nick remembered Wolf radioing for a Quick Action Force, remembered Brice and Jerry and Tim going east to try to get behind the enemy.
Nick had split west behind Joe and Wolf, covering their six as the rapid fire of AK-47s rang over their head.
Divide and conquer, Wolf had said.
“Man number six caught artillery fire to the chest after killing two militia and launching a grenade to push back the enemy.” Kaylee’s words echoed in his ear and he could hear the sharp impact of the shots echoing in the night—the bullets that tore through his shoulder had taken him down briefly.
Joe had already gone down—a shot to the thigh that had him cursing and still firing as Wolf had been dragging him to safety, while Nick had been trying anything to buy them some time.
“Man number six is separated from his team.”
When the bullets hit, Nick had been knocked backward and unconscious—woke seeing stars, but he’d still been able to feel, and move, fingers and toes and he’d known that there had to be a reason he wasn’t moving. Because the sound of renewed automatic machine-gun fire in his general direction had been as real a wake-up call as he was going to get.
Fight or flight had been ingrained in him from the time he could walk—that response wouldn’t desert him now without a damned good reason.
He raised his head slowly off the dusty ground, a bare-bones movement that sent a shot of pain through his skull and nearly knocked him out again. By the time he put his head back down, he had his answer.
The damned good reason was a loose wire attached to a claymore that he’d fallen on when he’d passed out. If it had been a tight wire, he wouldn’t have had a shot in hell. As itwas, the mine was less than twenty-five meters from him and it was live, lethal—and tangled in his gear.
So fight or flight had now become be still or die.
Fucking motherfucking clusterfuck.
His radio was long gone—smashed when he’d slammed to the ground. His only way out right now was himself.
He kept his breathing shallow, by design more than choice, given the wounds he’d sustained. They were closer to his shoulder than his chest—at least that’s what he kept telling himself, but he couldn’t be sure of anything. The fact that he was conscious and breathing was the best sign.
He closed his eyes and listened to the quiet surrounding him, searching out any scrap of intel.
This is the best adrenaline rush you’ll get this side of legal,his old CO had boasted during training .
Yeah, this was a real fucking adrenaline rush. Complete with the dizziness and dry mouth, life flashing before his eyes. His body was too far gone to feel much pain—his nerve sensors were pretty much destroyed, so much so that in order to feel any physical pain, he’d have to be hit pretty damned hard.
He’d been hit pretty damned hard.
Carefully with his right hand he reached into one of the utility pockets for his Ka-Bar knife—once he had it firmly in his palm, he cut the loose wire on the right side. It probably took less than five seconds but it felt like he’d been swimming through oil to get the job done.
He transferred the knife to his left hand and prepared to cut that wire, when he realized that someone had come behind him—someone as covert as he’d been trained to be, and that was the only reason his senses went on alert.
Friend or foe might not even matter, not if he couldn’t cutthe other end of that loose wire. The wire was designed to be a closed loop—if he didn’t cut the wire on both sides, the claymore would still be live.
“Man number six is wounded and is found lying on a loose wire attached to a live mine.” Kaylee’s words were soft, a relief against the harshness of the memories. His chest grew tight, the way it had been that night—from fear, from pain, from the will to get the hell out of there alive and intact.
“That’s when Aaron came through the brush to help me,” he told her.
“Don’t move,” the guy said with a small smile and Nick closed his eyes and fought the urge to curse. But when the guy cut the other side of the wire a
nd said, “All clear,” Nick wished he could shake the guy’s hand.
Instead, he’d begun a rough crawl toward the device.
“Hey, man, what are you doing?” the guy asked, put a hand on his arm.
“I’d feel better if you’d let me disarm it completely,” he muttered.
“I’d feel better if I could stop you from bleeding out first.”
“That might work too. Who the fuck are you?” Nick asked as the guy quickly assessed his injuries, told him he had two exit wounds and put some pressure on them with a towel first and then a bandage.
“I’m Aaron. Aaron Smith. You and your men were ambushed,” the guy finally said in answer to Nick’s question.
Aaron was dressed for combat, jungle greens, but so was everyone in this godforsaken place. You couldn’t tell good from bad, because it had nothing to do with color. “I saw it happen,” Aaron said.
“Because you planned it?”
The guy gave a short laugh as he began to search in the black bag Nick recognized as a medic’s kit and pulled out a syringe. “Wasn’t me. But someone sure as hell knew you guys were coming in here.”
Nick held a hand up to refuse the injection. “I’m allergic.”
“To what?”
“To pretty much everything you’ve got in that bag.” He closed his eyes when he heard the man sigh.
“So you’re just going to tough it out, then?”
“No other choice.”
“You’ll live,” Aaron said and for the first time Nick opened his eyes and realized that, yes, he would. It was just going to hurt.
Pain is just weakness leaving the body, Devane. You’ve always known that.
“Man number six got up on his own volition to head to the next safe area, collecting a wounded teammate along the way,” Kaylee continued.
It sounded so much better than the reality had been. Different than the smoke and blood and the overall sense of fucking doom that pervaded that night.
He reached for Joe’s radio—his teammate had been hit hard, had lost enough blood to keep him passing out every few minutes, and Nick wasn’t going to bother to wake the guy until it was time to make a break for it.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked.
“I’ve got to transmit.”
Aaron put a hand over his. “That’s how they got you in the first place. They’ve known Americans were coming in. All they had to do was tune into your frequency.”
“Our source sold us down the river,” Nick muttered.
“We’re going to need some FM,” Joe muttered back, and yes, fucking magic was right.
“I want to see your scars from that night,” Kaylee said.
“That doesn’t sound like official report-speak to me,” he said, but he shrugged out of his jacket and began to unbutton his shirt.
She leaned over him, her hair brushing along his bare chest as she studied the two scars that were nearly side by side. He’d ended up with an infection, a delayed pneu-mothorax that presented late and a bruised lung, but he’d been lucky. He’d recovered quickly, was back with his team after two months.
“How much did that hurt?” Kaylee asked him quietly as she put her hands on him and he tried not to jump. But her touch was firm, not soft, and that helped moderately.
“Not much.” At the time, that hadn’t been a concern. Getting the hell out of Clusterfuck City was.
“We’re out of here,” Aaron said as gunfire resumed. “You’re going to have to take the Alternate Supply Route if you want out. And you’re going to have to do it soon—you’re losing blood, no matter how much I’ve packed your wound.”
“You’re a merc,” Nick said as Aaron began to load up his bag and reload his own AK-47.
“I’m nobody. I’m AWOL,” Aaron said.
“How long?”
“Long enough that there’s no way back.” Aaron smiled, but it didn’t reach to his eyes. “I’ve lost everything, including my girl.”
“Jesus, man, it’s never too late.” And for the first time in his life, Nick actually believed that.
He leaned back against the rock and loaded more ammo. Joe was passed out again and there was no sign of his other three team members. “Tell me what I can do—saving my ass is going to go a long way in front of the board if you come back with us.”
“Give me your name,” Aaron interrupted. “I’ve been keeping a list—men I’ve helped. I know she doesn’t love me anymore, but I need her to know that I tried to get out.”
“Get out of what?”
“Your name, man. That’s all I want, your name.”
Nick grabbed a pen from his pocket and wrote it quickly on the guy’s hand, because fuck, he owed him that.
Aaron reached into his pocket and handed Nick a worn patch, pressed it into his hand. “Give it to her.”
“To who? Your girl?”
“She’s not my girl anymore. But yeah. When she calls you, just give this to her. That’s all you’ve got to do.”
That’s all you’ve got to do…
“Helo approached area of enemy fire at 2400.”
He’d turned to tell Aaron to get onto the helo and face the consequences, to get out of this godforsaken country.
But Aaron had been long gone—and what the man had left behind still made Nick’s blood run cold, so much so that Nick knew he wouldn’t mention it to Kaylee if Aaron hadn’t. At the time, Nick had clutched the patch tightly for a second before he’d shoved it into his pocket, dragged Joe up over his shoulders and ran for the safety of the helo.
“Helo liftoff with all six men at 2404,” she finished.
But it wasn’t finished, not in the way he’d thought it would be when this day had finally come. There was no full circle, no closure—only more questions. And her hand was still on his chest, her palm covering the old scars, white with age and slightly raised. There were more than that, but he barely noticed the others.
These two he took note of daily. A reminder, like the one on his throat that still tingled whenever he felt danger lurking nearby.
Her warm palm on his skin was also a reminder that he was supposed to be out tonight looking for something different—an outlet. A beautiful woman who wasn’t bringing up his old baggage … or bringing some of her own.
He sat up abruptly, and her hand fell away. “Aaron was definitely AWOL, Kaylee. He told me so himself. So I don’t know why the Army reported him as KIA.”
She frowned, her hands rubbing together as he lightly rubbed the old tracheotomy scar on his neck, mentally cursing the tingling that had just begun.
“I’m still getting his benefits,” she said.
“What do you really want to know? What do you want from me?” he demanded. He pushed himself up off the ground and she followed suit quickly, standing right in front of him. So close. Too close, and normally he’d step backward in order to reclaim his own personal space.
This time, he didn’t. He could still feel where her hand had been on him.
“I want to know why the Army has him listed as dead for a full two years before he saved you. I want to know why he went AWOL. I want to hire you to help me find all that out.”
“I’m not for sale.”
“I can pay you well.”
“I don’t need your money. I’m not a hired gun, I’m a military man. They point, I go. End of story.”
“The Army won’t help me. The DoD won’t either.”
“Neither can I. I held up my end of the bargain… what I promised Aaron I’d do.”
“You wouldn’t have to do anything, you could just take me to the last place you saw Aaron—”
“That’s classified.”
“—and make sure that I’m safe …”
“I’m nobody’s bodyguard. If I protect someone, it’s called PSD—Protective Service Detail—and it’s ordered. Officially.” Okay, that wasn’t exactly true—he’d done plenty of Black and Gray Ops, things the military didn’t sanction, and he’d even worked with a group of me
rcs in Africa as recently as last year. But he certainly wasn’t telling this woman that. He barely admitted it to his brothers.
“And suppose I go to your superiors and tell them that I know where that mission took place. Exact coordinates. What then?”
A chill went up his spine as her hand figuratively wrapped around his balls and squeezed.
Shut it down, Devane. “Is that why you called me out here, to blackmail me?”
“If I have to. I need to know how he died. Where he died. You’re the key to that.”
“I’m not the only man who Aaron saved—you said so yourself. Try one of them instead. I paid my debt to Aaron. I’m done.”
“So you came here just to shove this patch at me, pat me on the head and send me on my way? You’ve done what Aaron asked and now your conscience is clean?”
“My conscience has never been clean, Kaylee. It’s never going to be either, so don’t you worry about that.”
“I need to know more—about what happened that night,” she told him. “You might’ve been the last one to see him alive.”
“I thought you said he was still alive.”
“It sounded just like him. He knew it was my birthday.”
“So can anyone with a computer and common sense,” he pointed out.
“Except for you. No one could find you.”
“Keep that in mind.”
“You’re here now, aren’t you?” She fronted big, but when push came to shove, he had no doubt she’d back down.
He leaned in toward her. “You’ve got nothing, little girl. You want to run with the big dogs, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better.”
Her soft laugh echoed in his ears long after he’d left her standing on the playground.
CHAPTER 3
Kaylee waited a beat after watching Nick walk into the bar across the street before turning back toward the diner’s parking lot.
She’d been wondering what kind of man survived that kind of hell on a constant basis, thought she knew and realized now that she’d never had a clue.
Too Hot to Hold Page 2
