Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 08 - Identity Unknown

by Suzanne Brockmann

  would've made any sailor envious, then searched through the man's pockets for the key. She held it up for Mitch to see when she'd found it, then stuffed it into her own jeans pocket.

  And then she was beside Mitch, hauling him up, nearly carrying him to the truck.

  His arm was starting to hurt, and the pain sent him spinning as she did everything short of throw him into the cab of the truck. He felt her fasten a seat belt around him.

  And then they were moving, bouncing, seemingly soaring across the rough land. His tunnel vision was getting worse, his world turning to shades of gray.

  "Stay with me, Mitch," Becca said, her voice tight. "Talk to me. Tell me what you remember. Do you remember everything? Childhood? First kiss? Senior prom? Where you spent last summer's vacation?"

  "I don't know," he said. "I think so, but..."

  "Tell me what a SEAL is."

  "We're good in the water." Lord, it was such a struggle even to speak. ' 'We go away a lot. Away on missions all the time. Do things I could never tell you about. Leave again, too soon. Not sure—as your friend—I can recommend you marry me."

  She laughed at that. "Do you come back?" she asked.

  "Always," he told her. "For you, I'd come back not just from hell, but from heaven, too."

  "I'm going to hold you to that. Dammit, don't you close your eyes!" She was crying. He hadn't meant to make her cry. "Mitch, we're almost there. I'm going to have the sheriff call for a medical chopper to take you into Santa Fe."

  "Admiral Jake Robinson," Mitch managed to say. "Call him for me?"

  "Admiral Jake Robinson," she repeated.

  "He's—"

  'Til find him," she promised.

  * 'Don't forget—"

  "Parker?" she finished for him. "I won't."

  "That I love you," he said.

  Her laughter sounded more like a sob.

  And there was shouting. Becca's voice, loud, calling for medical assistance. Hazel, shrill. The sheriff's deep bass.

  And Mitch gave in to the darkness.

  Becca raked her fingers through her hair as she hurried down the hospital corridor, trying to tame her curls.

  There had been no room for her in the medevac chopper, and she'd driven halfway to Santa Fe. She'd left the sheriff standing in the driveway with Casey Parker in custody, changed her sodden and bloodstained clothes, grabbed her cell phone and headed into the city.

  She'd connected with Mitch's Admiral Robinson on her first try. She'd actually called the Pentagon—it seemed like the best place to look for a U.S. Navy admiral. She'd been put on hold when she'd said she was trying to reach Robinson, put on hold again when she mentioned to the young but very efficient-sounding assistant who came on the line that she was calling on Mitch's behalf.

  And ten seconds later another man had picked up the phone. She'd spoken to him for close to a minute before she realized she was speaking to the admiral himself.

  She gave him the story in a nutshell—Mitch's gunshot wound to the head and the resulting amnesia. His search for his identity. Today's nearly fatal run-in with the real Casey Parker. She'd told him that Mitch had probably already arrived at the hospital in Santa Fe, that she was rushing over there now, via truck. She'd told him she was

  sorry, but she couldn't talk any longer, she had to call the hospital to make sure Mitch was all right, when he'd asked her the color of her truck and the route she was taking. He told her to watch the sky—he'd send an air force chopper to scoop her up ASAP.

  The chopper had landed right in the middle of the state road. She'd locked her truck and gotten to Santa Fe in minutes.

  The nurse in the E.R. hadn't given her any information on Mitch's condition over the phone and Becca was running by the time she reached his room and...

  She stopped short.

  The most gorgeous blond woman she'd ever seen was sitting on the edge of Mitch's bed and holding his hand.

  The most gorgeous blonde, nine-months-pregnant woman...

  Oh, God.

  She started to back away, trying to move silently, and ran into a very solid wall of a man.

  "Hey." He, too, was blond—although his hair was more sunstreaked—and nearly as gorgeous as the woman. He was one of the men who had been in the van outside the bus station in Wyatt City. "Are you Becca Keyes? Mitch's friend?"

  Mitch's friend. Becca nodded, unable to speak. It seemed that his marriage proposal had been a little hasty. Apparently he hadn't remembered everything.

  He held out his hand. "Lt. Luke O'Donlon, Alpha Squad. My friends call me Lucky. Although I may have to give the nickname back after the hell of the past few weeks, the fact that Zoe Robinson isn't hovering anxiously at my bedside, and the added injustice that I didn't manage to meet you first."

  He pushed her toward the door to Mitch's room.

  Suzanne Brochnann

  "Come on. We're all under strict orders to bring you right in if we see you."

  "But—" Zoe Robinson?

  "Ms. Rebecca Keyes," the man named Lucky announced loudly as if he were a very proper English butler.

  "Thanks, Jeeves," Mitch said dryly. He was smiling at her from his hospital bed. He still looked pale, but his arm was bandaged and he had an IV tube hooked into his hand.

  And as Becca watched, the pregnant blonde moved gracefully from the bed, crossing the room to stand beside a uniformed man who couldn't be anyone other than Admiral Robinson.

  But then Becca didn't look at anyone but Mitch. She crossed to his bed. "Are you all right?"

  He held out his hand for her, and she took it. He tugged her down, and then he had his good arm around her.

  "I needed a transfusion," he told her. "And afterwards, I felt so much better—"

  "He tried to talk me into taking him back to your ranch," the Admiral interjected. "I'm Jake R—"

  "Introductions later," his wife interrupted. "Everybody out."

  Mitch's hand was in her hair, and she knew from his eyes that he was only waiting for the door to close before he kissed her.

  But she didn't want to wait. She kissed him and kissed him, sweetly at first, then harder, deeper, infused with the fire his kisses always sparked.

  When she pulled back, he was breathing hard. ' 'I have to stay here overnight," he told her as if that were a total tragedy.

  "I can wait," she told him. "I'm good at waiting."

  She wasn't talking about just one night, and he knew it.

  "There are things you need to know about me," Mitch said. "It wasn't fair of me to ask you to marry me before you know—"

  "I know what I need to know." She pushed his hair back from his face. "You love me and I love you. Everything else is inconsequential." Becca laughed. "I never thought I'd get married, but..." She shrugged. "That was before I met you and discovered maybe true love isn't a myth."

  He smiled at that, but his smile quickly dimmed. "I don't want to make you unhappy." He was so quietly serious, so intense.

  "Good," she said. "Because it would make me really unhappy not to marry you. You know when I walked in here and saw what's her name? Zoe? I thought she was your wife."

  He shook his head at that. "I told you, I knew I wasn't married."

  "Yeah, but you also told me that you were this terrible criminal, and you'd spent time in jail and—"

  "I did spend time in jail." He smiled at the look on her face. "It was part of a sting operation. I was trying to get close to the brother of a survivalist group leader. I was inside for nearly a month." His smile faded again. "See, these are the kinds of things that I do."

  "Think," she said, "what fun it would have been knowing that I was there, waiting for you when you got out."

  Mitch laughed. "I'm not sure fun is quite the right word."

  "Yes," she said, "it is."

  She kissed him to prove her point.

  "We can make this work," she murmured. "I know we can. I've got forever—how about you?"

  Mitch surrendered and kissed her. It was d
efinitely worth a try. Because he loved her and she loved him. And like the lady said, everything else was inconsequential.