Beyond Limits

by Laura Griffin

  But this was surreal. She wanted him to help her? He was one of the most fucked-up people he knew.

  Her gaze locked on his, and there was so much hope in it, so much expectation. She was really lost. And he was about the last person on earth who was qualified to help her. The mere idea terrified him.

  You’ve been there, and you know.

  He did know. He’d seen some horrific shit over the years. Guys who’d been turned into a pink mist before his eyes. He’d seen men with limbs blown off and head wounds—men he knew—and he’d spent countless hours crouching in the dirt, frantically trying to stanch the bleeding and stave off death.

  But rape? He looked down into her haunted eyes, and he knew it didn’t matter where he’d been or what he’d seen—he was totally out of his league here.

  He cleared his throat. “The thing is, Hailey, I’m not really a doctor. I mean, I’m a medic, yeah, but it’s totally different. I didn’t go to medical school, and I’m not really qualified—”

  “I’ve got a doctor,” she said sharply. “He has white hair and a potbelly, and he went to Harvard. And I know he’s never set foot in a war zone.”

  Tension snapped between them. She looked pissed off, and he didn’t blame her.

  But then she gazed out at the water, and her face softened. “I can’t talk to my doctor right now. Or my parents. Or Ana’s parents. I need to talk to someone who understands.” She looked up at him, and he knew he had to get away from her before he did something truly stupid. “Please?”

  Jesus. What could he possibly say to that?

  He didn’t say anything, just turned to look at the surf. And then he said the only thing he could think of, the same thing he said whenever Derek or Mike or Cole called him up after a mission and needed to get his head right.

  “You want to go get a drink?”

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Elizabeth threw in the towel on her train wreck of a day, it was already tomorrow. The night air was heavy with humidity as she crossed the mall parking lot and started searching for her car. A pickup rolled to a stop beside her, and the passenger window slid down.

  “Get in,” Derek said.

  She stared at him. He was in the same clothes he’d had on three hours ago, and his face looked just as grim. Those brown eyes drilled into her, and she knew it was pointless to argue.

  She climbed into the truck. It had a king cab and plenty of legroom. Glancing around, she realized it was the first time she’d actually been in a space that belonged to him. How many hours had she spent thinking about this man, and yet she knew so little about him?

  He exited the lot onto a street that was nearly deserted. He didn’t seem to want to talk or tell her where they were going, and she didn’t feel like asking.

  She stared out the window, watching the parking lots and storefronts whisk by. The area seemed eerily calm compared with a few hours ago, when it had been swarming with emergency vehicles. Even the news vans had gone home, because they still hadn’t figured out that tonight’s suicide jumper was an international terrorist. It was a stroke of luck that would run out at some point, probably by morning. ME offices were known for leaks, and the Bureau’s interest in the autopsy had surely attracted attention.

  Derek drove a few blocks and pulled into Finnegan’s. The place wasn’t crowded, and he had no trouble finding a space for his big pickup.

  Elizabeth sat in silence for a moment, gazing at the neon beer signs, feeling numb. She flipped down the visor and checked the mirror, but her appearance was beyond help. Her makeup was smudged. Her shredded blazer was in a trash bin at the urgent-care center, and she was down to a bloodstained white blouse that did nothing to conceal her bandage, not to mention her gun.

  Derek opened her door and held out his leather jacket, obviously reading her mind. She slid from the truck and slipped into it. It was warm and heavy and smelled so much like him it was like being wrapped in his arms.

  What was she doing here?

  He led her to the door and held it open. The place was busy but not packed. She’d expected him to want one of the cozy dark booths, but he took her to the bar instead. Her mind flashed back to a pub in San Francisco.

  “This feels familiar,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “You planning to get me drunk again?”

  “Maybe.”

  She cut him a look as she slid onto a stool. A curvy blond bartender walked up and beamed a smile in his direction.

  “Hi. What can I get y’all?” The smile was for Derek, but she aimed the question at Elizabeth.

  Her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted to drink.

  “Martini?” Derek prompted.

  “God, no.” She shuddered. “I’ll have a bourbon and Coke.”

  Derek ordered bourbon on ice, and for a while they simply sat there, not talking, staring at the TV above the bar. Tension radiated from his body. He was still ticked off about Ameen, but she wouldn’t apologize for that. She’d offered to give him a tip, not a daily briefing.

  “How’s your arm?”

  She glanced at him, startled. “Fine.”

  “How many stitches?”

  “Twelve.”

  His jaw twitched, and he glanced up at the TV. “Does it hurt?”

  “They numbed it at the clinic.”

  He looked at her. “That’s not what I asked.”

  “It’s fine.”

  But he watched her steadily, and she could see he knew she was lying.

  The bartender slid their drinks in front of them. Elizabeth took a sip. It felt cool going down but immediately warmed her stomach.

  “You never told me about Ameen.” Derek tipped his glass back.

  “That’s right.”

  He watched her, waiting for an explanation.

  “There are a lot of things I never told you about. You’re not on the task force. I’m surprised Gordon even let you into the room tonight. What were you doing there?”

  “Looking for the phone.”

  The phone. Gordon was obsessed with it. When Derek had first entered the mall, he’d seen Rasheed talking on a cell phone. But when he did the pat-down on the rooftop, no phone. Nothing had turned up at the morgue, either, which meant Rasheed had ditched it somewhere.

  Derek was watching her now, clearly wanting an update.

  “We still haven’t recovered it,” she told him. “We’ve got an evidence response team at the mall, searching trash cans. In the meantime, we’re combing through security footage. Whoever he was meeting is probably on there. Possibly Ameen.”

  “You have a recent picture of him?”

  “In my files.”

  “I’d like to see it,” he said, “although I doubt it was him today.”

  She sipped her drink. “You mean because of the red cap?”

  “I think it’s someone Rasheed doesn’t know,” Derek said. “But whoever it was, he was in disguise, believe me. These guys know all about facial-ID software.”

  “It’s worth a shot. Interpol’s got a new software system that’s much more advanced. It can match people based on only a profile. Potter’s trying to get someone over there to analyze some footage for us.”

  His expression hardened at the mention of Potter.

  “Don’t look like that.” She stirred her drink with the slender red straw. “He’s not all bad, you know. You guys are just different.”

  She could tell he didn’t like even being mentioned in the same sentence with Potter. As Derek had pointed out earlier, the man wasn’t a field agent. He wasn’t a man of action. To Potter, gathering intelligence was something you did at a desk.

  Derek was action personified. He was constantly moving, maneuvering, seeking out a tactical advantage.

  Elizabeth checked her watch and felt a pang of guilt. It was well after midnight, and the evidence team was probably still scouring that mall—all for the sake of a phone, which was now their most promising lead, even though it was most likely a burner
that wouldn’t yield any useful clues. Only hours ago, they’d had Rasheed in custody—an actual person who could have revealed an entire terrorist plot targeting hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Rasheed had been their best hope of heading off the attack, and now he was dead.

  Pain pounded behind her eyes. She rested her elbow on the bar and rubbed her forehead. “What a screw-up.”

  “What is?”

  “Today.” She looked at him. “We could have all of them under surveillance right now, do you realize that? We could have agents surrounding some apartment somewhere, preparing to take down the entire cell. And what do we have? Nothing. God, why did I let him see me? It was the weirdest thing. I wasn’t anywhere near him, and he turned and looked right at me.”

  “It happens.”

  “It didn’t happen to you.”

  “I’m a frogman. I’ve had slightly more training at being invisible.”

  She watched him, picturing him creeping down some dark alley, armed to the teeth and wearing night-vision goggles. She didn’t like to picture him working, because she hated to think about the dangers of what he did.

  “It goes back to biology,” he told her. “Predator versus prey. Animals in the wild know when they’re being hunted. They have a sixth sense about it. They get itchy.”

  “You’re saying I walked into the mall and made him itchy?”

  “No, you walked into the mall and you looked right at him. Never do that. They teach you that in sniper school. When you’re pursuing a target, don’t stare at it, don’t arouse that sixth sense, especially someone like Rasheed. People spend years in a war zone, their instincts get honed. They sense when they’re in the crosshairs.”

  “Predator and prey. That’s good. Think I missed that at the Academy. Maybe we spent a little too much time on check fraud.”

  “Hey, honey, stick with me.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I can teach you a lot.”

  She ignored the innuendo and picked up her drink. She swilled the rest and plunked the glass onto the counter.

  “The day wasn’t a total loss,” Derek said. “One’s been eliminated, at least. Rasheed’s been on the watch list for years.”

  “What do you think the chances are they’ll decide to abort the mission, whatever it is, and go home?”

  His silence answered her question. The chances were nonexistent. They’d gone to a great deal of time and effort to get their people in place, which meant they’d prepared for contingencies. Rasheed had chosen to die rather than reveal his mission, so it was safe to assume the mission was still a go.

  And—in Rasheed’s mind, at least—it was a mission worth dying for.

  The bartender was back with a smile, and Elizabeth could have sworn she’d undone another button on her blouse. Derek ordered another round.

  Elizabeth turned away, distracting herself by scanning the faces around the room. It was mostly couples tonight, people drinking and flirting and probably planning to go home together. She shouldn’t be here. She knew that. She couldn’t sit in a bar with this man and not think about going home with him. And where would that leave her? She’d spent almost a year tied up in knots over him, and they hadn’t even had sex. What was she doing to herself? He was going back to San Diego in a matter of days and then off to some violent hot spot.

  From the moment he’d burst into her life last summer, she’d been mesmerized by him—his looks, his voice, the relentless way he pursued everything he wanted, including her. But when she took a step back and looked at it objectively, she knew nothing could ever work. He was a SEAL through and through and didn’t have room in his life for anything else.

  She felt his gaze on her and turned to face him. He had that simmering look in his eyes, that look she’d seen before, the look that made her nervous and hopeful at the same time. For so long, she’d resisted him, because she didn’t want to get her heart pulverized. But maybe she should leave her heart out of it. Maybe for one night, she should let herself go and let herself feel things without any inhibitions, and it didn’t matter where he jetted off to tomorrow. It could just be what it was, nothing more and nothing less.

  She brushed her bangs from her forehead, and his attention drifted to her scar. He reached out and traced his finger over her sleeve. His eyes locked onto hers.

  “Can I ask you something personal?”

  * * *

  She looked surprised by his question. Then she looked wary.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What’d your family say? About what happened to you in the spring?”

  She scoffed. “What family?” She stirred her drink, and Derek could tell she wanted to take the words back.

  “It’s just my mom now,” she elaborated. “I mean, there’s my stepdad, yeah. But I don’t have any brothers or sisters.” She looked at him. “I always wanted a brother.”

  So she didn’t want to talk about her parents. He sensed there was a story there, but he let her change the subject.

  “I grew up surrounded by women,” he told her. “Nail polish, hair spray, curling irons. They like to say I ran off and joined the Navy just to have some male companionship.” He rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “Could be some truth to that. The guys in the teams, they’re like brothers to me.”

  He drank his bourbon. What a shit day it had been. He thought about Potter and Rasheed and the clusterfuck on that rooftop. He wasn’t sorry the guy was dead. Not at all. Anyone who had seen that execution video wouldn’t be sorry Rasheed had jumped off that roof. Derek would have gladly pushed him off and not lost a wink of sleep over it.

  Still, he recognized the lost opportunity. But SEALs were adaptable. They looked for new opportunities, and there were plenty left, such as the missing phone, or the contact who’d probably been captured on film entering the mall, or the Chevy Cavalier that was now at some crime lab somewhere being scoured top to bottom for evidence.

  Yes, it had been a shit day, but at least it was improving. He glanced at the woman beside him, the woman he’d been thinking about for months, the woman who had been the star of so many lust-soaked fantasies he couldn’t even count. She was on her second drink now, and instead of looking all crisp and buttoned-up like she usually did, she had that messy, disheveled thing happening that made him want to eat her alive.

  She was watching him now. She reached out and put her hand over his.

  “You’re thinking about Sean, aren’t you?”

  Sean. She thought he was thinking about his lost brother.

  No, I’m thinking about how badly I want to get you out of those clothes.

  “I’m thinking about you,” he said, only partly lying. “You ever considered getting a desk job?”

  She looked startled. “No.”

  He eyed her scar again. “You know, when I was thinking about you back here at home, I never pictured you getting pistol-whipped. It’s a tough image to get out of my head.”

  Tough was an understatement. It was impossible. And he knew she hadn’t told him the full story. She’d told him she’d been beaten and taken hostage. Had she been sexually assaulted, too? The thought of it made him want to kill someone, the same way he’d felt when he’d sprinted up that stairwell and seen the blood trail.

  She tipped her head to the side and looked at him. “You know, the FBI Academy—it’s really hard to get into. And the training itself is very rigorous. Not like BUD/S or anything, but it was challenging for me. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done.” She sipped her drink and rested it on the bar. “So, no, I wouldn’t consider a desk job. What about you?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation.

  “Don’t want to stop chasing bad guys and jumping out of airplanes?”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The bartender reappeared, which seemed to annoy Elizabeth. “Last call,” the woman chirped.

  Elizabeth looked at him. “I should get back.”

  Derek paid for the
drinks and refused the money she tried to give him. Back in the parking lot, the air was like a sauna, but she kept his leather jacket on as she slid into the truck. She stared out the window as he pulled out. Obviously, his attempt at career advice had pissed her off. She’d shifted to defensive mode, and now it was going to be an uphill battle getting her to loosen up again.

  She kept her attention directed out the window as he navigated the after-hours traffic.

  “So where’s this file you have?”

  She looked at him. “Which file?”

  “Ameen’s picture.”

  “Back at my hotel.” She paused. “You can drop me off there if you need it tonight.”

  “I do.”

  It was something. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he planned to find out. He got onto the freeway and buzzed the windows down as they drove, thinking maybe some fresh air would relax her.

  Because, yes, she’d been right before—he had a one-track mind. And even though it had been a shit day and she was injured and tired and probably emotionally wasted, he was still dying to take her to bed.

  While he was overseas, especially after she’d ignored his phone calls, the prospect of sleeping with her had seemed like a fantasy. She lived and worked in San Antonio. He lived and worked wherever Spec War Command sent him. But now she was here, right beside him, and he’d be damned if he was going to let her slip away again, not if there was even a chance in hell she’d say yes. He had no desire to spend another eleven months burning up with frustration.

  The Home Suites parking lot was full, and he counted half a dozen dark sedans that had to belong to feds. He found a space not far from her room and noticed her glance around cautiously before she got out.

  She slid a keycard from her purse and briskly opened the door. As she stepped inside, she shrugged out of his jacket and held it out to him.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  He pulled the door shut behind him. The room smelled like her, probably her lotion or her perfume or something she’d put in her hair that morning. A rolling suitcase was parked beside the closet. A dark suit hung inside, along with several crisp white blouses. His gaze drifted to the white lace bra dangling from the door handle.