by Sandra Owens
“Kiss me, Charlene.”
They kissed and petted and kissed some more under the moonlit night and the stars twinkling above. With him holding her close, she thought she could spend all night there in the Gulf of Mexico, doing nothing but loving him.
When the cold finally penetrated her skin and she shivered, he carried her out of the water and up to the dune where he had spread the blanket. With his large body covering hers, warming her again, he made love to her there on the sand, which was still heated from the daytime sun. His touches and kisses were tender, and as he whispered her name softly into her ear, she felt cherished. She squeezed her eyes shut against the tears burning in them and loved him back.
It was the most beautiful night Charlie had ever known.
Charlie walked alongside Ryan, their fingers laced together, as they approached airport security. Surprising her, he had insisted she come see him off. Ahead, Jake and Maria stood waiting for them. Jake had his wife tucked under his arm and was idly twirling a strand of her hair around his fingers. Charlie wondered whether Ryan would someday play with her hair like that, if she let hers grow.
Before they were noticed, Ryan pulled her off to the side. He turned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. “I’ll call you if I can, but if you don’t hear from me, it doesn’t mean anything. You understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded, her nose rubbing over his shirt as she breathed him in, memorizing his scent. “No news is good news.”
“Right. Take care of Mr. Bunny while I’m gone, and don’t go and be getting him drunk, okay?”
She laughed when all she really wanted to do was grab his hand and drag him back home where he would be safe. “Mr. Bunny told me to tell you that you’re no fun.”
The arms he had around her tightened. “I don’t know what this thing is between us, cherub, but I do know it’s something I want to explore. I’m counting on you to be here when I get back.”
As if he had to ask. “I’ll be here.”
He leaned away and peered down at her. “As much as I want to, I know better than to tell you not to set foot in a plane until we figure out who’s playing games with you. Deadly games,” he added. “I’ll be really pissed if I come home only to find out . . .”
That he couldn’t bring himself to say the rest told her she really did mean something to him. She laid her head on his chest, right over his heart, so she could hear it beat. “I’ll be here,” she said again.
“If you need anything, call Maria. Even if you don’t need anything but just want to talk to someone, call Maria. She’ll know where I am, what’s happening.”
That was good to know, and she would definitely be calling Maria.
He put his finger under her chin, lifted her face, and stared down at her for a few seconds before he lowered his mouth to hers. Somehow, the man had slipped in on sneaky feet and stolen her heart the moment he had opened his door to her with a rabbit nestled in his arm.
I love you, she told him silently. Aloud, she said, “No bullet holes in your ass. Got that, Hot Guy?”
“Got it.” Taking her hand, he walked them to Jake and Maria. Too soon, she watched him go through the security check, then she kept her eyes trained on him until the two men disappeared from sight.
“This is the hardest thing for me, watching the man I love head off on a mission, knowing I might never see him again,” Maria said.
Charlie took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. If she never saw Hot Guy alive again, it would put a hurt on her she might never get over. She slipped her hand into Maria’s and squeezed. “Ryan said if I needed to talk to anyone while he was gone, that you were the one to call. Wanna go with me to some bar, I don’t care where, just someplace we both can cry into our beer?”
Maria laughed. “It’s nine in the morning.”
“Your point is?”
Her new friend grinned. “Don’t have one. Let’s go get drunk and cry in our beer.”
They ended up at a pancake house where they both cried into their coffee.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Because the opportunity presented itself, Ryan pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Charlie. “Just checking to make sure you’re not getting my rabbit drunk,” he said when she answered. She had argued against staying at his place while he was gone, claiming she didn’t want to impose on him. Silly woman.
He had used the most potent weapon in his arsenal—a fucking rabbit—to keep her at his place, hidden from whoever wanted to hurt her. Mr. Bunny would get an overflowing bowl of Cheerios when Ryan got back; he wouldn’t understand why he was getting the reward, and wouldn’t care as he swallowed the treats whole.
She faked a very bad hiccup. “Well dang, I knew there was something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.” She made a tsk, tsk sound. “Mr. Bunny, give me back that glass of wine.”
He smiled into the phone as he pictured her sitting on his sofa with his rabbit in her lap. He liked that image. It felt as if she was where she was supposed to be. “I miss you, Charlene,” he said. The line went silent, and he wondered if he’d just said something she wished he hadn’t.
Then he heard her exhale. “Miss you, too, Ryan. More than I should.”
Before Ryan could respond, Jake lifted from the rock he’d been sitting on and walked to the edge of the water. Ryan’s gaze followed his team leader’s. As quiet as a cat sneaking through the night, a low-slung boat appeared just yards from the shore, as if by magic. “Gotta go,” he said and clicked off. Not a good time to have his attention sidetracked by a woman, even if she was on his mind twenty-four seven.
He joined Jake and neither man gave way as the sleek, metal-gray boat slid its nose up the shore, stopping inches from them. “Nice toy,” Ryan said.
Jake grunted. “I want one.”
“Of course you do.” It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if one showed up at K2 in the near future. Kincaid was also fond of toys, the badder the better.
The hatch opened and the top of a head emerged. Then a face Ryan hadn’t seen in over a year appeared, a shit-eating grin stretching from ear to ear.
“Damn Kincaid and his surprises,” Jake muttered before walking into the water.
Ryan followed, a wide grin on his own face.
“Dog, my man,” Jake said. “Where the hell you been hiding your ugly ass?”
One of the deadliest—and probably craziest—snipers the SEALs had ever known hopped over the side, landing gracefully in front of them. He turned, dropped his pants, and bent over. “You calling that ugly, Romeo?” he said, talking between his legs. “That hurts, man.”
Ryan put his hands over his eyes. “Christ, Dog, I’ll never be able to unsee that.” The stunt was typical of Cody Roberts, master sniper and dog whisperer. Of them all, he thrived the most from living on the edge, and got off on shocking anyone dumb enough to invade his space. There had been times when he’d gone too far with his antics, but the others on the team understood what it could do to a man to look through the sights of a scope and put a bullet through the heart of an endless line of bad guys. So they made allowances where their sniper was concerned.
The man laughed, pulled up his pants, and turned back to them. “Surprise!”
“How the hell did you get your hands on this beauty?” Jake asked as he reverently slid his palm over the curves of the stealth boat.
Jake was so focused on the new toy he was making love to with his hand that Ryan was sure he missed the flash of pain—there, then gone—in Cody’s eyes.
“You know I opted out not long after you two, right?”
Ryan nodded. He’d heard that, although at the time he’d been dealing with his own demons. Their team had been a close one, but they’d also paired off in a way. Evan Prescott and the boss, Romeo and Saint, Doc and Dog. A stab of guilt struck him that he’d been too wrapped up in losing Kathleen and trying to deal with her betrayal to be there for his friend.
Cody kicked at the
water, sending a spray up Ryan’s legs. “Kincaid showed up at my door not long after, offering me a job.” He glanced at Jake, now with his body bent over the side of the boat as he practically drooled. Cody turned his back on Jake, his gaze settling on Ryan.
“Wasn’t ready. Told him that. Next thing I knew, he’d pulled strings and I was in a secret location, learning all the ins and outs of a boat nobody had ever heard of.” He leaned his back against the gray metal of a craft Ryan hadn’t seen coming at them until it was less than a yard away. “I was a day or two away from putting my gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger.”
That was Cody, saying shit that could knock you on your ass. Ryan was sure he was expected to be shocked. He was. “If you had done that, you fucking asshole, I would have dug you up and put another bullet in your stupid head.”
“Save your bullet for the bad guys, Doc. I’m here, alive and breathing.”
“So you are. It’s great to see you.” Ryan stepped over to his friend and gave him a man hug, and after a few hard slaps on the back by both of them, he hooked a leg around Cody’s and pulled his feet out from under him. The man roared up out of the water and tackled Ryan. Damn, it was good to be together again, he thought as they tried to drown each other.
“Girls, you’re getting me wet.” Jake hauled them both up by their collars.
Soaked, water dripping from their faces, they exchanged a glance, the message between them understood. With the same precision of movements, they took their team leader down.
“I will get you both back,” Jake said as the boat raced silently through the night.
Ryan, sitting behind the other two, grinned. “When we least expect it, of course.”
“Of course. Damn, this baby’s sweet.”
“Stop fondling her.” Cody slapped at the hand Jake was rubbing over the controls.
“But I love her so much I could just drool all over her.”
“You do that, Romeo, and I’ll kill you. You know I will.”
“Didn’t you get the memo, Dog Man? I’m not Romeo anymore.”
“He’s Tiger now. He went and got married and got respectable,” Ryan said, then sat back, listening to their quibbling. The two of them had always been like that with each other, bickering like an old married couple.
As they continued toward the Russian coast—a test run to not only verify the time they had calculated to cross the Gulf of Finland, but to poke at the Russians and see if they got noticed—Ryan’s thoughts turned to Charlie. He had asked her to wait for him. It was what he wanted, but after that, he didn’t know. She said she would be there for him, and that was good enough for now. When he got home, they could spend time together, figure out what they wanted from each other.
Cody thumped a fist to the ceiling. “Heads up.”
Ryan leaned over the back of Jake’s seat and watched the video feed from the high-tech night-vision camera mounted outside the boat. Actually, there were four cameras pointed in different directions, he realized at seeing the screen split into four squares, a different scene in each. His gaze narrowed in on the one pointed at the Russian coast.
“There’s the little cove I’ll nose into to let you off,” Cody said, tapping a finger on the bottom left of the screen.
The boat made a few circles so the cameras could record the area from all angles before turning back toward the coast of Finland. There had been no sign of Russian boats patrolling the area, which confirmed their intel. That eased Ryan’s mind. The last thing they needed was a confrontation with the Russian navy. Although with the stealth boat, they could not only outrun anything that came after them, but easily hide as well. A little distance between their pursuers—if it came to that—and the Sealion, and they could disappear as if by magic.
Cody dialed in the preset coordinates for their hideaway, then said, “Prepare for liftoff.” He gave a maniacal laugh as he pushed the throttle to its max.
Ryan was thrown back onto his seat, and he laughed along with the other two as they seemed to take flight. It felt great to be back in action. He’d not realized just how much he’d missed being Doc and being a part of a well-oiled team. Kathleen would have hated his new job, though. Their partings had always been emotional, her in tears and him feeling guilty for leaving her.
“It’s the not knowing if I’ll ever see you again,” she’d once said, tears streaming down her face.
Their worry had been misplaced. They should have been worrying about her. How could either of them have guessed he would be the one to warrior his way through all his deployments with no more than a few minor scratches, but it would be her little corner of the world—one they thought safe—where death came calling?
Charlie defied death every time she set foot in her stunt plane and tested her skills and the aircraft to the max. Somehow, that put her on more equal footing with him than Kathleen had ever been. Instead of them both worrying about him, they could worry about each other.
“So you married Kincaid’s sister and you’re not dead. How’d you manage that?”
The conversation going on between Jake and Cody caught Ryan’s attention, and he waited to hear what Jake had to say.
Jake laughed. “Very carefully.”
Their speed slowed, and Cody eased the boat alongside a dock, then into a boathouse in the middle of nowhere. No houses dotted the shore; no lights from cars or anything else shone in the night.
“How’d Kincaid find this place?” Ryan asked.
Jake snorted. “He didn’t find it. He had it built. There’s probably sawdust still on the dock.”
The boss was like some kind of magician. Want a boat only whispered about? Poof, you got it. Want a boathouse to hide it in? Poof. There it was, easy as pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Ryan wondered if Mr. Bunny missed him.
“I promise, he’ll be back soon,” Charlie said to the rabbit that had spent the last two days staring at the front door. Other than the one phone call, she hadn’t heard from Ryan. She had resisted the urge to call Maria to ask if there was news of the guys. Her new friend probably knew where they were, what they were doing, and if all was proceeding as planned. None of which Maria would be able to share with her.
A part of her wanted to be hurt that Ryan hadn’t found a way to call, if only to be sure there hadn’t been any more incidents with her plane. The little, insecure voice in her head mocked her, and tried to make her believe he didn’t care enough to bother. She ignored that voice as best she could. If he was on a dangerous mission—and she believed he was—he was probably under some kind of blackout order. Was that what they called it when they went undercover? She’d have to ask him.
“Mr. Bunny, I miss him, too, but I have to go to work.” She picked up the rabbit and carried him to his little bed in the kitchen. She’d already changed the water in his bowl and measured out his allotment of food. Grabbing her purse, she ran for the door, managing to get it closed before Ryan’s pet could follow her out.
As she drove to the airport, she considered the meeting she’d arranged for that afternoon. The last thing she wanted to do was visit her stepfather in prison, but she needed to look him in the eyes when she asked if he’d hired someone to try and kill her. Her request for a visit had almost immediately come back approved. No surprise there. The man undoubtedly thought she was finally coming around.
Ha! He was the one in for a surprise. The creep should have gotten the message when she showed up to object at his parole hearing, but his monthly letters still arrived like clockwork. He’d even said in the first one after the hearing that he forgave her. There was nothing to forgive her for, and she’d stopped reading them.
“Dammit, David,” she yelled when she turned into the parking lot and saw her aerobatic plane tied down on the tarmac instead of safe inside the hangar. Fuming, she went looking for her boss.
“I had to move it,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest when he saw her coming at him. “And don’t start poking at me. We had a Gulfstrea
m come in last night and I had to make room for it.”
For good measure, she poked a finger right into the middle of his chest, then pinched him.
“Ouch! Stop that, Charlie.” He backed away.
Unable to argue that a paying customer outranked her, she spun and headed for her plane. “There better not be a scratch on her,” she tossed over her shoulder as she left.
Circling the Citabria, she checked every nut and bolt, the tire pressure, the wings and struts, the aileron, and so on—taking her time going through the checklist. When satisfied all was as it should be, she tested her fuel. With an aircraft-fuel-testing cup, she collected a sample and checked the color and smell to make sure there was no dirty-water contamination.
“Lucky you, David. You get to live for another day,” she said when finished. Normally, she preferred to practice in the early mornings before her first student arrived. Because she planned to fly her plane to an airport near the prison, she had instead decided to do a run-through of her upcoming performance on her way back to Pensacola.
Having cleared her afternoon schedule, the morning passed faster than she wished. As she made another check of the outside of her plane before leaving, her feet felt like blocks of cement were tied to them. She did not look forward to seeing her stepfather and began to list the reasons why the idea was a dumb one.
Stop being a coward, Charlie. Right, if she could perform death-defying stunts, she could certainly face one sorry excuse for a man. She climbed in, harnessed herself securely, made sure the cabin door and windows were closed, then worked her way down the preflight checklist.
“Let’s go flying, baby,” she said, patting the dash. The flight from Pensacola to Chipley, the closest she could land to Marianna, took a little under an hour. Many FBOs had courtesy cars, and Charlie had called ahead and reserved one of the two they kept available for pilots.
