Code Name: Kayla's Fire

by Natasza Waters

  “It meant fuck all, lady. I have lain in a goddamn ditch for days without moving, went a week without food. Staggered around in swamps with blood suckers and bullets scraping my bones, but the hardest thing I have ever done in my career was having to spread your legs, and break the only vow that has ever meant anything to me, and to the woman I love. It was her I saw in my mind, not you.”

  Zara reached her slim hand toward him, and he blocked it. “You’re upset. We went through a harrowing experience, but I know you felt it as deeply as I did. We shared that moment. You were looking at me, making love to me.”

  “Princess, get the hell out of my room.” He gritted his teeth sitting up. “Pat, get us a transport out of here.”

  “You’re in pain. I’ll get the nurse,” Zara said straightening.

  “I don’t want drugs. I want you gone. Pat—” He swung his legs over the bed.

  “Lie down before you fall down, old man,” Pat ordered.

  “I need a phone. I need to talk to Kayla.”

  Pat shifted in his chair. “I think you better leave, Princess.”

  Zara hovered close to his side, refusing to go. “Thane, Kayla is a noble woman. When I explained to her what we mean to each other, she graciously stepped away. She wants the best for you, and she knows that it is I.”

  Zara leaned over as if to kiss him, and he thrust a hand to her shoulder, stopping her. “You have your life. Keegan doesn’t have your country’s secrets, but I am going home to make the woman I love—my wife, and raise my daughter. With all due respect, you don’t mean a damn thing to me—Princess. Now hit the road.”

  When she left, he lay back with a groan. “Holy shit.” Kayla knew what he’d done. No choice, he’d had no choice, no other way. How was he going to explain this? How was he ever going to make Kayla believe what he’d done was a tactical maneuver, and nothing more. A means to survival. When the door closed, he turned his anger on his lieutenant. “What’s the matter with you, get me a fucking phone.” When Pat shook his head, he nearly lost it. “Why not?”

  Pat was silent for too long. “Because Kayla’s already gone missing, Thane. She landed two hours ago. I spoke to Law myself. She got off the plane, they had a visual on her, and then she disappeared.”

  “What?” His heart stopped mid-stroke. “Get my clothes. I want to be on the next plane out of here. I’ll find her.”

  Pat bowed his head, a jerk of his shoulders chilled him to the bone. When Pat raised his eyes, he saw the remorse already telling him what he didn’t want to hear. “I’m sorry, Thane. They found her luggage, her purse, but they didn’t find her. We don’t know how, but the Shark was waiting for her.”

  “No…no…goddammit, no!” A white rage gripped him, so hot it nearly shattered his sanity. His body trembled with the first lash of grief. He didn’t even hear the door open, but when his hands slid from his face, the squad surrounded the end of his bed. Nina’s eyes were red and puffy from crying, and she took one look at him and started all over again. “Fox, Tinman,” his voice raspy, “Go home. Find her. Please find her. She’s not dead. I’d know it.”

  “Captain.” Fox whisked an arm across his eyes. “This is not your fault. You did everything you could to protect her. We can’t win every battle. Sometimes we have to fall to remember we’re not superhuman, simply men that won’t quit. We’re only blood and bone.”

  “Like fuck it isn’t my fault,” he yelled. “I should have taken the bullet. Instead a princess is walking free and my Kayla’s…” No way was he going to accept the Shark had her. “Oh, Jesus, oh, sweet Jesus, protect her.” He lost himself in his grief, barely acknowledging the hands of the team as they clustered around him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nina glanced at the video feed showing a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc of the front of Base Command. A bundle of reports near her elbow needed processing, but not with great urgency. She poked one of the buttons on the speed dial of her phone with her pen. As it had for the last month and a half, it rang without answer. She worried her lip.

  “Still not answering his cell, huh?” Gord said, rolling up to her in his chair.

  She twined a red wisp of hair around her finger and shook her head.

  “Nina—maybe it’s time you—”

  Her hand jumped in the air signaling him to stop talking, and gave him a cold look. “How can you say that?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to say anything.”

  “Yeah, but I know what you want to say, and its bullshit. We both know that.” Tears pressed at the back of her eyes. “Kayla is alive,” she said, her words stronger today than in the past two months which had been the best and worst of her life.

  The door to the anteroom cracked and they both looked around. Gord gave her a half smile and moved off to make himself busy across the room.

  “Hey, babe.” The man of her dreams knelt down balancing on his toes, and slid a white cardboard container in front of her. Mace stared into her eyes with his amazing blue ones. Wearing his beige uniform, the cloth taut against a marvel of strength that her fingers had explored in-depth.

  “I see you’ve been cooking again,” she said, but didn’t dive into the food. Hunger was the last thing on her list these days.

  Mace cranked a quick look over his shoulder, and then had her mind spinning and sparking with a deep soulful kiss. He backed away and laid a hand on her thigh.

  “How was your physio?”

  “Good. It’s coming.” His eyes skittered across her face. never failing to make her heart race.

  Mace had been taken off combat duty as a SEAL, and reassigned to the training department until he could pass his Physicals. Secretly, she wished he would fail, but she knew he was chomping at the bit to be out with his squad, killing terrorists and saving the world.

  He’d infiltrated her heart so fast it made her head spin. Gabby loved him already. They’d traveled back to Victoria three times, and it only took her precocious daughter a few minutes of analyzing to decide Mace was a cool guy.

  Mace was a natural with kids, and although he hadn’t pushed it, his warmth and all-encompassing good nature had her daughter clambering onto his lap, hooking her arm around his strong neck and declaring, “I like you. I just got a new hockey net, you wanna play?”

  Mace melted on the spot. He grabbed her carefully in his muscled arms, and swung her into the air with a screech of joy, and that had been it. Mace carried her everywhere they went, and Gabby didn’t want to be anywhere else. She even wanted to eat dinner on his lap, to which Nina put her foot down, causing her admittedly spoiled little red-mopped daughter to pitch a fit that Mace easily rectified with a few words.

  When they’d showed up at her parents the first time, her older sister Dawn had been visiting and she’d taken one look at Mace. and started to ooze with come-hither looks. Her sister was a slut, although she didn’t hold that against her; she reached in the kitchen drawer and pulled out her mom’s kitchen scissors, snipping them loudly in the air.

  She unconsciously poked the speed dial again, but the same nasally voice said, “This customer is unavailable.”

  Mace’s jaw clenched. “I’ve been trying too, but the Captain isn’t talking to anyone but Redding. He calls him once a week.”

  Everyone did their best to keep clear of Redding. He wasn’t the grandfatherly, patient man Kayla had described, since the day she disappeared. On one of only two occasions that she’d seen Thane appear, she’d been walking by their office door. She hadn’t recognized Redding, he sounded so different. He was angry, and giving the Captain a dressing down like he was talking to a junior seaman. She understood grief, because she was in a world of it herself, not wanting to believe the Shark had taken Kayla.

  God must have been listening to her today because she shot out of her chair, seeing Captain Austen out of the corner of her eye.

  “He looks like shit,” Mace mumbled.

  “Gord…”

  “Yeah, yeah I got everything here, go
ahead.”

  She dashed for the door with Mace close behind. The Captain had barely settled in his chair when she swung into the room.

  “Ms. Samson,” Captain Redding said, switching concerned eyes from Thane who hardly looked like the same man.

  He’d lost so much weight his uniform draped on his shoulders, his cheeks were drawn in and his eyes cast with shadow.

  “Anything, sir,” she asked, walking across the room while Mace hovered at the door.

  Thane lifted his gaze to hers. “Do you think I’d be here if I’d found her?” he said, his voice a week echo of what it used to sound like. She sat down without being invited, and he glared at her.

  “Sir, I talked with Lieutenant Manchester two days ago. I’ve been trying to call you, but your cell isn’t on.”

  “It’s on,” he said darkly. Meaning he didn’t want to talk with anyone. He’d taken on the task of finding Kayla on his own. She watched as he logged into his computer.

  “Sir?” She waited until he turned his haunted eyes toward her. “I remembered something.”

  Captain Austen sat forward.

  “I called Lieutenant Manchester, and asked him how much money was in her purse.” The Captain’s attention was pinned. They needed something. Although not an answer to where Kayla was, a pinhole of hope she was still alive might exist. “Sir, he said there was a hundred and fifty dollars in her purse.”

  Thane said, “What does that have to do with anything. Her belongings were left behind, her purse included.”

  “I asked the lieutenant if I could look for myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Kayla was always prepared, I guess because she always relied on herself.”

  He nodded.

  “Sir, she always, always had emergency money she carried in a separate place in her purse. She told me once that five hundred dollars could get anyone through an emergency. I went to the CSI headquarters and looked for myself. Sir, the money wasn’t there.”

  The Captain sat slowly back in his chair and his eyes fluttered toward the window, considering her words.

  Captain Redding had risen and come to stand beside her. “She could have changed purses or used it.”

  Nina shook her head vehemently. “Never. Kayla was adamant about it. The Shark wouldn’t have had time to find it.” Her eyes darted back to the Captain’s. “She’s out there somewhere, but not with the Shark.”

  Captain Austen stood up abruptly, his troubled features lightening. “I know she’s alive,” he said, sharing a look with Redding. “She has to be.”

  Nina saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. The man was on the edge of breaking down. He’d driven himself from the day they’d returned. He was only a shell of the man she’d barely known before his deployment, but she remembered the night at the ranch. His disclosure and the overwhelming love in his eyes when he looked at her friend fed his determination.

  “Sir?” He nodded, but didn’t look at her. “Kayla, although she doesn’t really talk about it a lot, is half native. She grew up on tribal lands, and knows how to survive without the trappings of a city. She once told me, whenever she felt like she was losing ground to her demons, she could find her center again with nature.”

  “Walk, listen, see,” he murmured.

  “I don’t think she’s in the city. I think Kayla would have gone to the only place that would give her peace, where she could be happy again.”

  The Captain’s tall frame turned slowly. “Happy,” he said, his gaze skittering across the ground. Then like a rocket lifting off from its pad, the Captain thrust his head up looking at all of them. “I know where she is.”

  Redding took a step forward. “Go. Bring her home.” His words were stern, but hope dangled somewhere in the sentence.

  Nina had been racking her brain trying to figure it out, but the Captain thought he had. “Wait,” she said, digging in her back pocket and bringing out a note. “Give this to her when you find her.”

  Captain Austen took it and nodded. “I will, Nina.”

  Mace stepped up beside her. “Sir, I want to go with you.”

  He shook his head. “I know you mean a lot to her, Mace, but it’s me she’s running away from, and it’s me who has to find her.”

  Thane drove like a sane man, but he felt like the demons of hell were behind him. If Nina was right, and God he hoped she was, he knew where Kayla was hiding. She was six months pregnant, and living a solitary life in the backcountry of California. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. All this time he’d searched for her, but he didn’t forget that the Shark was probably watching him.

  He drove around for an hour, onto the I-5 and then doubled back fifty miles, taking two exits and then doubling back again, arriving at his sister’s place and swapping vehicles.

  It would take two hours to get there, somewhere around noon. Glancing in the mirror he looked back at eyes he barely recognized as his own. He’d driven himself hard, without sleep or food some days, trying to pick up her trail. He’d talked to literally thousands of people showing her picture. With every shake of their head, he died a little more inside.

  Two hours swept by in deep thought. He turned off the old highway, and onto the graveled approach to the Cobbs’ ranch. He might be dreaming, he might be half-insane, but his inner voice told him she was close.

  He rolled to a stop and got out. The mountain wind gusted with cool fingers, and the sun argued, splashing down on his shoulders with the late June mid-day heat. Scanning, he looked for signs. Reaching the ranch house, two long strides got him up the stairs. His hand shook as it hovered over the doorknob. He closed his eyes, gripped the old metal ball and turned, as the door gave way so did his heart, cracking open, letting all the poison that had tempted him to give in—out. Kayla was alive.

  * * * *

  Kayla wandered along the lake. She picked her way onto an outcropping of rocks. Four months ago, it had been very different, the ranch teaming with SEALs and their families. The weeks had passed quickly since she’d left Thane in Zara’s care.

  Knowing there would be someone watching for her when she landed in San Diego, she left everything behind at the airport then thumbed a ride most of the way, and walked the last five miles to the ranch house. No team of swinging SEALs had breached her doors or windows yet. She spent her days walking, reading and she slept a lot. It was peaceful here, and just like when she was young, she found the solace she needed in nature.

  Her stomach swelled. Six months pregnant, and she hadn’t even seen a doctor yet. Nature would have to pull its weight. If the human race survived for thousands of years without an OB-GYN, she could surely do without one. Closing her eyes, she listened to the birds singing to each other, and breathed deeply, smelling the pine and cypress surrounding the lake.

  Soon, she’d have to move on. Going home to Canada was a safe bet, but getting across the border would be difficult. Somehow, she’d have to find a new passport without leaving a trail. Silence interrupted her thoughts. The birds stopped singing, although the bugs didn’t sense a threat and kept a steady buzz in the background. Sitting up, she panned the entire shore of the lake. Her senses pinged like sonar, telling her she wasn’t alone. The snap of a twig behind her startled her to her knees, ready to run, as well as she could with a huge water balloon attached to her stomach.

  A man stepped from the bush line, and her heart pumped madly. Impossible!

  They gazed at one another. His shoulders drooped as if he’d run a great race, and had finally reached the end. Even being separated by several yards, she could see how tired he was, how ragged he looked. He raised his hands to his face, and combed them through his hair.

  “Captain?” He shook his head sharply, but didn’t move. Slowly, she walked toward him. “What are you doing here?” Fear peppered her blood. The closer she came, she saw the torment in his expression. He’d lost a lot of weight. Thane took a hesitant step, and then another until they were within reach, and when he tried to take the last
step, she backed away.

  His brow creased tight. “I knew you weren’t dead,” he choked.

  Her heart thumped hard in her throat. “How did you find me?”

  “I’ve been looking for weeks. This morning Nina reminded me of something, and it was so clear where you would go.” His voice strained as if each word were a hardship. “The last place you felt happy, the last place we were happy.”

  Six feet separated them, but the distance seemed much greater. “I’m fine, Captain, you shouldn’t have wasted your time.”

  A maze of deep lines creased the edges of his eyes, and covered his brow. “The squad told me you flew to Germany, but you weren’t there when I woke up. Why did you leave?”

  “You were being cared for. I left.”

  “You left before letting anyone explain. With half a story, you assumed and retreated.”

  “I don’t need to hear it,” she said, turning away from him. “Let it be.”

  “You have to listen—to all of it. Whether you condemn me or not, and I’m sure you already have, I still need you to hear what happened—once.” His voice wavered, his strong timbre gone.

  Anger had been the last thing she felt these long weeks, but it reared up on its front legs. “I don’t want to hear it, Captain. I don’t need an explanation.” She took another step away from him as if that would do any good. “I’m alive, now leave,” she said, but the bitterness in her tone really spoke for her.

  “Kayla, please. Let’s go up to the house.”

  Maybe things hadn’t worked out with the princess, and he thought he’d find everything the way he left it when he came home. She glared up at him. “I guess I’m not being clear. Leave—Me—Alone.”

  Thane shook his head, his expression turning severe. “Not until you listen to what I have to say.” Taking a step toward her, she backed away. “Kayla, for Christ’s sake, give me five minutes.”

  Listening wouldn’t change her mind. She’d come to a decision, hers and the baby’s. “Fine, but then you’re gone or I am.”