by Linda Barlow
I’d wondered where the old gods of Mexico were, and they had given me their answer. The earth had moved, granting me the chance to twist away and scream. Shane had come for me. He had come when I’d needed him most.
They would have killed me when they were done using me like a hole to be filled. At least, Biceps would have killed me. As for the other guy, Cub, he was young but I didn’t feel sorry for him. He’d done what he was told without a single murmur of protest. All I’d been to him was a piece of meat to be consumed so he could enter some club full of creeps who treated women like toilet paper to be soiled and thrown away.
I hated them both. I was glad they were dead.
Still, I had a flash of the knives, the blood, the crunch of bone. Shane had killed them. He’d put them down without any hesitation at all.
Tears filled my eyes. I wasn’t crying for the dead bikers, though. I was thinking of Shane when I’d asked him that night why he’d become a SEAL. “To kill people,” he’d said in that dry mocking tone. That was what so many people believed about SEALs and other special forces—that they were trained to be killing machines. Warriors who killed when they had to—perfectly, precisely. Some of them might even enjoy the killing.
But Shane was not like that. He was a corpsman, an EMT, whose role was to keep his men alive. I’d seen him in action in the desert and here, in the camp when he’d saved Metzli. Saving lives was what he’d devoted himself to. Not taking them.
He was highly skilled at all the arts of war. But he was a healer, not an avenger. Could he be both? What did I know about these things? I’d never been in combat; I’d rarely even lived rough. I’d never lived my life as close to the edge as I had the past week.
Some things should stay mysteries, Metzli had said.
Shane moved and I realized he had woken up. “Shane,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I had to pee. I shouldn’t have gone alone. I don’t know where those guys came from or why they were here.”
“Looked like they were setting up to attack the camp. They had guns. Must have bought them here in Mexico. They had drugs, too.” He spoke calmly. “They weren’t just a couple of asshole bikers touring Baja. They were probably hooked up with some local crime ring. They would have killed us all. But they wanted to have a little fun with you first.”
I shuddered again. “Thanks for stopping their fun. Bastards.”
It seemed to me that he shuddered a little, too. “I can’t even stand to think about it…God…if they had hurt you…”
“I’m okay,” I assured him. “I mean, I’m shaken up but I’ll be fine.” I laughed a little. “This had been some week, hasn’t it?”
He slid a hand into my hair and held my face still. “I love it that you can still smile even when all the shit in the world is going down.”
Whoa. He had never said anything that sweet to me before. I pulled his face down to mine. We both went for the kiss, and it tasted just right. Desire flared in me, and I welcomed it. I pressed deeper into him.
“Is this okay?” he asked as he began touching me, courting me.
“Oh yes. Yes, please.”
I was thankful for the way my body reacted. It could have been different. I had friends who had been assaulted or raped and for some, no matter how loving their boyfriends behaved afterwards, they just couldn’t get back into sex.
For me, though, it was as if sex with Shane somehow washed all the filth of those two men away. His hands erased their touch, his mouth sent his warmth, his breath into me, his cock, when it finally slid inside me, was healing. As if he’d given me a lifeline. As if he’d revived me and held me back from the black precipice that had loomed before me.
I expected him to get up the way he always did after we finished having sex. I figured he’d come into my tent after the attack because he must have known how freaked out I’d been. But now that I was well enough to fuck, he’d leave me, right?
But he didn’t. He turned me on my side and cuddled me close again. Maybe he was just trying to help me get to sleep again? As soon as I was still, he would creep away and return to his own territory, his own bed. After all, I wasn’t allowed any kind of intimacy with him, any kind of closeness.
Okay. Okay, fine. I was too weary and confused to worry about that now. I had to live in the present, because in the future, Shane would be gone.
So I was amazed when I woke up in the morning light and found Shane asleep beside me, his arm still around me and one of his legs draped possessively over mine.
I felt something slide together in me, deep down in my chest, slide and click and take shape in a new and different way. With it came comfort and peace and happiness. He was with me. Beside me, holding me. Shane was part of me and he was still here.
I could feel my lips curve up in one of those smiles he’d talked about. It grew wider until I wanted to laugh out loud. But if I did that, I might wake him, and he needed to rest.
Carefully, so as not to disturb him, I pushed up on one elbow and looked at his body in the weak morning light. His high forehead, his strong jaw, his firm sensuous lips, the curve of his throat. His body and his muscles I already knew so well, but now I considered his face. It was a nice face. Strong, Dependable. Trustworthy. Honorable. It was a face I could look at for the rest of my life.
In that place deep inside me, something began to glow. Shane Tyler. I wanted him, but it was more than that. Somehow it had become so much more.
I was falling in love with him. With my future stepbrother.
How crazy was that? He was the one man I could never have…not for love. Not to keep.
He didn’t love me. Why should he? I’d done nothing but challenge him and argue with him and cause trouble for him all week. He’d just had to kill two guys because of my stupidity. He wanted to get to Cabo, grit his teeth through the wedding, and say goodbye. He’d made that clear all along. He didn’t have relationships. He just fucked.
As for spending the night in my bed, he’d been in a fight and killed a couple of bad guys. He was probably exhausted. It didn’t change anything. He wanted me gone.
And that was fine, right? Because I didn’t do relationships, either. The thought of being dependent on another person gave me the shudders. I’d needed my mom, and she’d died. Shane had a dangerous job. He could get killed anytime. Even if he’d wanted me, how could I ever have dealt with that?
I wouldn’t allow myself to think crazy impossible thoughts. We’d taken this road trip to have some fun. We’d had it. We’d gone through a lot of other things, too, but that just proved you couldn’t count on life working out the way you planned it. Being with Shane was one unplanned mess from beginning to end. Getting far, far away from him would be the smartest move I could ever make.
Resolved, I slid out from under his leg and away from his warm body. He’d been right—it had been a really bad idea to sleep in his arms.
Chapter 43—Shane
Cassie was gone from the tent when I woke up.
I sat up with a jerk, feeling as if a fist was around my heart. It was morning. I couldn’t believe I had slept right through to the dawn.
I stank. There was still blood on me from the two men I’d killed. I had fucked Cassie with their blood on me. No wonder she had fled from the tent.
I pulled on a shirt and hurried outside, looking for her. I felt intense relief when I saw her crouching at the entrance to Metzli’s hut and heard her steady voice talking to him. They were both alive. They were okay. I checked around the camp, still feeling tense and edgy. There were no other bikers. Those two had been alone. But I shouldn’t have let myself sleep. I should have stood guard. The fuckers might have friends in Mexico. Or other members of their club who might be looking for them.
I hadn’t even gotten rid of the evidence. That was a task I was going to have to attend to right away.
I had to get into the water, first though. The smell of their blood was making my stomach queasy. Must be that. It wasn’t like I’d never killed a man bef
ore. Hell, I was a SEAL, a fucking death-dealing machine, right?
I nodded to Cassie as I passed, indicating that I was going for a swim. From the looks of her wet hair, she had already done the same thing. Probably cleansing herself of the blood I’d transferred to her body from mine. “How’s Metzli?” I grunted as I passed. I ought to check on him before going into the water. But I couldn’t stand my own stench.
“He’s good. Better.”
It was enough. I passed the hut and flung my body into the sea.
I was shivering when I got out, despite a rough scrub down and a fast-paced swim. It was winter; the water was probably about 60 degrees. I could handle chilly swims, not a problem for a SEAL. No, the coldness came from somewhere deep inside.
Cassie was preparing breakfast when I walked back up the beach to the camp. Metzli had emerged from his hut and was crouching beside the fire with her. They were drinking some of his herbal tea or whatever that stuff was.
I checked him out. Vital signs were fine. He had more color in his cheeks today. In fact, he looked surprisingly good for a guy who’d seemed frail yesterday. When I asked him how his legs felt, he answered, “The gods provide.” I guess that meant he felt better.
I wasn’t sure about Cassie, though. She was uncharacteristically quiet and she looked pale. She passed me a wood bowl with some sort of hot mush in it. There were berries I couldn’t identify on top of the mush. When I looked askance at the stuff, Metzli said,
“Eat. The fruits of the earth will sustain your flesh just as the sea washes clean your spirit.”
Right. Whatever the fuck that meant.
The three of us ate in silence. I was thinking about the bodies. Cassie had her back to the place where she had been attacked. Where the dead guys lay. Just as well. I had to take care of that as soon I got the mush into me. They’d be attracting flies and I didn’t even want to think about what else.
When we all finished eating, I looked at Cassie. There were things she didn’t need to hear, didn’t need to see. “I’d like you to go back in your tent now. Read your Kindle or something, if its battery is still alive. I’ll tell you when you can come out.”
Her face was expressionless. But she understood me. She said quietly, “I can help, Shane.”
No way I was allowing that. “No you can’t. Can’t you just follow instructions for once?”
She colored slightly and I thought she was going to argue. I wasn’t even playing fair with her. I knew that. She had followed my orders surprisingly well the whole trip.
She just nodded. Then she rose and walked slowly to the tent, bent down, and crawled inside.
“That is well done,” Metzli said in his hollow voice. “That one, she bends like the grasses with the wind. But the iron devils tried to crush her.”
“Yeah, well, I crushed them instead.”
“Take care you do not crush your own heart.”
I stiffened. What the fuck? “I did what I had to do,” I said, rising.
“The hand of the god was upon you,” he agreed, making some sort of strange gesture with his fingers. “He sent you to me as defender. And to her,” he nodded toward the tent. “But his can be a terrible hold. No man can endure his touch too often in his life.”
Truth, I thought, thinking of some of my fellow SEALs. I could kill when I had to. Obviously. But it always scared me how easy it was. They said it got even easier, the more you did it. I didn’t like that idea. I didn’t like how easy it had been to stop that young kid last night from firing his gun. To stop his heart, his breath, his future all in a split second. He couldn't have been more then 18 or 19. A lawless thug and fuck-up, but I’d been something of a fuck-up myself when I was young. This kid had never had a chance.
Don’t fucking think about that.
“Have you got a shovel?”
Metzli pointed to the smaller hut where he kept a variety of strange things. Junk mostly, it looked like. Scavenged perhaps. “You will find the tools you seek there.” He stood, leaning on his cane. “Come. I will show you a place where they will lie undisturbed.”
I assured him that was unnecessary, but he insisted on walking a distance that I would have thought was too far for a wounded old man. He seemed spry, though, and calm. He led me to a place where the soil was soft but not too wet, behind some rocks, under some trees. “The gods alone will know their resting place,” he told me solemnly.
I guess that meant he wouldn’t be telling anybody that I’d killed two men last night. I wouldn’t be telling anyone, either.
I worked hard and fast and got the messy task done before the sun got too hot. Metzli squatted in the shade and offered suggestions, most of which I followed. Cassie stayed in her tent.
“Your woman has a full heart,” Metzli commented as I stamped down the last of the dirt covering the two graves.
“I told you. She’s not my woman.”
He looked at me skeptically. He was right to. She is my woman, a voice inside me said. But what I said aloud was, “It’s just a temporary thing.”
Metzli’s old face crinkled in a smile. “You are like beans and corn. Different, but together you are stronger.”
“I don’t need a woman to make me strong.”
“She will nourish your spirit.”
I liked the old guy, but his claptrap was beginning to irritate me. My spirit, if I had one, didn’t need any fucking nourishing.
“She has not seen men die in violence before. Not as you have. She will need tenderness.” His voice was sharper as he said this, as if he needed to be sure I heard him. He was probably right, but I wondered how he knew what Cassie had or hadn’t seen before. Or what I had, for that matter.
Tenderness. That wasn’t a quality I was well acquainted with. Well. Soon we would be in Cabo, I hoped. She could get all the tenderness she needed at the wedding. I was pretty sure her dad and even my Mom would have plenty of that shit to offer her. Good. She couldn’t expect tenderness from a killer.
I planned to strip the dead guys’ motorcycles for parts so I could get my own fixed up and running again. That was my task for the afternoon. With any luck at all, we could get back on our way tomorrow.
I helped the old man back to his hut and called out to Cassie that she could come out now if she wanted. She didn’t answer me. When I went to check on her, I found her sleeping, her red hair wild around her face and her breath coming fast, as if she were having a vivid dream.
Something inside me clenched at the thought that she’d have been dead if I hadn’t made it to her in time last night. I felt a moment of vertigo at the thought. What if it had been Cassie going into the ground, her bright hair, her laughing eyes and her quick smile extinguished forever?
No. I couldn’t think about that. I wouldn’t.
I slammed back out of the tent and sprinted down to the water. I needed another hard swim.
Chapter 44—Cassie
There was something different about Shane when he came over to me after working on his Harley. His face looked grim, his eyes worried.
“What’s the matter? Can’t you fix it?”
“No, I got it working. Engine sounds good now. We should be fine the rest of the way to Cabo. Assuming the main road, once we get back on it, hasn’t been too torn up by the quake.”
I knew him a lot better now. We had been together 24/7, and we’d been through a lot. I could tell he was edgy about something. “So we’re leaving? How is Metzli? Can he stay here alone?”
“He is better, and he insists he can manage. He says fate is whistling for us up the road and that we must heed its call.” He said this with that sarcastic smirk that I had grown to know well by now.
“I hope he’ll be okay.” I was worried about Metzli. He was so old. But this was the life he had chosen, and he loved it here.
“Me, too,” said Shane. “Cassie—” he hesitated.
“What are you not telling me?”
He nodded, as if he’d knew I’d call him out on this. “I’ll
tell you. I just don’t want you to freak out, okay?”
I immediately started to freak out, but I kept it inside. “What? Is it my father? Did you find out something about my—our parents from your military contacts?”
“I asked one of my friends to check on your father’s boat. There’s a lot of craziness down here in Mexico right now, so it’s not easy to find out anything, but with military connections and all—“
“What did they find out? Where are our parents?”
“No one is sure. Hopefully they are fine. But there was a call after the earthquake. Your dad was having some trouble with his communications equipment. Not a shock because everyone was. We think that’s all he was reporting and that it wasn’t a distress call, but there were heavy seas, so the authorities are checking it out. They haven’t heard from him again, you see. They’re looking for the boat now.”
My belly had dropped out of me. For a moment I felt as if I was going to throw up. My dad had to be okay. He had to be.
“So no one has been able to contact my father’s boat since the earthquake?”
“Cassie, no one has been able to contact anyone since the earthquake. It took down the internet, the cell towers and most other forms of communications for the entire Baja peninsula.”
“He has a satellite phone.”
“So did we. They’ve made the damn things a lot smaller and they’re easier to break. And if they get wet—forget it—they can’t be fixed. Water destroys the inside, salt water especially.”
I could hear the stress in his voice. It wasn’t just my father we were talking about, but his mother as well. I reached for him, gripping his hand hard. He squeezed my fingers back, and then he pulled me into his arms. As I pressed against his chest, I could feel his heart beating faster than usual. He was always so calm, so cool, so good in an emergency. But he must be feeling just as frantic with worry as I was.
