SEAL with a Past

by Paige Tyler

  “We’re clear!” Nash shouted. “Head for the ridgeline just east of the bird. We’ll cover you from there.”

  “Go!” Dalton shouted at Wes. “I’m right behind you.”

  As Wes took off for the plane, Dalton turned and emptied an entire clip at the soldiers behind him, hoping to slow the pursuit. Hesitating long enough to slap in his last fresh magazine, he turned to follow his teammate as the rocky ground around him erupted in a hail of gunfire. Running over rough ground in night vision goggles was never fun, but he ducked and kept moving anyway. When someone was shooting at you, it was amazing how fast you could move.

  Dalton spotted the F-35 the moment he crested the last outcropping of rock. Wes was well ahead of him, already climbing the far slope and the safety of the ridgeline.

  “Almost there!” he shouted.

  A dozen rounds slammed into the rocks to his left, cutting a line straight to him. Dalton launched himself forward, hitting the ground hard and rolling behind one of the plane’s landing gears. He came up fast on one knee, returning fire while he tried to get a bead on who the hell had caught up with him. He wasn’t shocked when he realized it was the leader.

  The guy had stopped shooting, but most likely only because he didn’t want to hit the plane. But that wasn’t going to keep Dalton’s ass out of the fire for long. Soon enough, more Chinese would arrive. They’d rush him and he’d be done.

  Dalton abruptly caught a flicker of movement to his right. He glanced over to discover he was kneeling beside a strand of detonating cord that was hanging down from the plane. He followed the explosive line up to the six blocks of C4 that were taped together and stuck to the belly of the F-35 above his head.

  That was just what he needed, to be surrounded by explosives at a time like this.

  “Dalton, you need to get the hell out of there!” Holden called over the radio. “Our boys upstairs are getting a little antsy. Their thermal scanners show that the area is close to being overrun. We need to blow this sucker or they’re going to.”

  Dalton peeked out from behind the landing gear and realized that the Chinese spec ops team leader was staring right back at him. They locked gazes through their NVGs for a few brief seconds and Dalton absently wondered if he’d recognize the guy if he ever passed him on the street.

  With the NVGs the guy was wearing and the camo paint on his face? Probably not.

  Other soldiers arrived behind the team leader. Time was up. He had to move.

  Taking a deep breath, Dalton emptied the rest of his magazine at the Chinese then jumped to his feet and ran.

  Bullets riddled the ground around him, but he didn’t stop. Not even when a round slammed into the ceramic back plate of his tactical vest and shoved him forward like he’d been punched by a gorilla. He stumbled. He gasped for air that suddenly seemed way too thin. But he didn’t stop.

  His teammates were on top of the slope, laying down a wall of protective fire that only missed the top of his head by inches. It was hard not to duck as the rounds zipped over his helmet, but he trusted them. They wouldn’t hit him.

  He was ten feet from the crest of the ridge when he saw Holden thumb the button on the remote firing device. There was a sharp crack behind him, then he was being thrown the last few feet through the air toward the safety of the ridgeline.

  Nash caught him and dragged him to the ground as the multi-million-dollar aircraft blew into a million pieces, flame and metal flying everywhere.

  Dalton heard Holden shouting into the radio, calling off the air strike and telling the antsy boys upstairs that the target had been destroyed. He peeked over the ridgeline to see bodies strewn on the ground around the F-35.

  Then he caught a glimpse of movement at the top of the far ridge. In the distance, a man he was sure was the leader of the Chinese team slipped over the crest and disappeared from sight. Damn, that was one slippery dude.

  Beside Dalton, Nash and Wes fist bumped.

  “Man, that had to be the most expensive thing the Navy has ever let us blow up,” Nash said with a laugh. “An F-35 has to cost what, a hundred million?”

  Dalton chuckled, too spent to do more than that. The adrenaline rush was fading, leaving him feeling wrung out.

  “We didn’t blow up an F-35. We were never here and neither was that plane,” Holden said, moving to the head to the stretcher holding the unconscious pilot. “So, stop your laughing and save your breath. We have to carry the pilot back for five miles through this hard-ass terrain.”

  Nash and Wes exchanged looks but didn’t say anything as they walked over to take positions at the back of the litter. Dalton moved up to take the side opposite Holden.

  “Party pooper,” he muttered loud enough for Holden to hear, then he grabbed his corner of the stretcher. They had a long way to go and his frigging toes were frozen.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WES, COVER MY left flank!” Dalton shouted, his heart thumping as he kicked in the door and moved into the dimly lit room. “Holden, watch our six, dammit. Without Nash, we’re heavily outnumbered. If we don’t do this right, we’re never gonna make it out of Morg alive.”

  “I got movement in the darkness behind us,” Holden announced. “I can’t frigging believe Nash ditched us at a time like this. I thought we were supposed to be a team.”

  “Keep your head in the game, Holden,” Dalton said as something big and ugly stepped out of the shadows ahead of him and into the dim moonlight seeping through the skylight. “Nash made his choice. If he’d rather spend the weekend hanging out with Bristol than help us, that’s his call. We’re gonna have to pull together and pick up the slack.”

  Secretly, Dalton wasn’t shocked Nash had bailed on them. They’d just gotten back two days ago from their deployment and had put in very little effort prepping for this mission. At the best of times, trying to go into a situation like this was tough, but without advanced planning, it was nearly suicidal. Nash had decided he’d rather spend his time with a sexy woman rather than dying some godawful horrible death with them.

  Dalton couldn’t blame his friend.

  But he didn’t have to like it either.

  Especially when that big, slow-moving thing in front of him turned out to have about twenty friends moaning, groaning, and hungry for blood.

  Rare thunder boomed in the background and the sound of rain beating on the windows of his apartment reminded Dalton that at least they were inside. “All right, guys. This is it. I’m going straight at these damn things. Cover me.”

  Jumping high into the air, he bounced off the metal catwalk above him, then came down right in the middle of the crowd of mindless killers and started roasting zombies with his flamethrower. All around him, bullets started spraying as his teammates tried to cover his aggressive move. It was a risky attack, but they were one man down and out of better options.

  Then someone knocked on the door of his apartment, distracting the crap out of him and almost causing him to toast Wes’s avatar by mistake.

  “Ignore that!” Wes yelled, moving to the side and reloading. “Stay on target.”

  A few seconds later, the knocking came again. Dalton yanked his headset off and tossed it on the coffee table with his laptop. “Pause the game.”

  “We can keep going without you,” Holden said. “You can catch up.”

  “Yeah, just like last time, right?” Dalton snorted as he got up and headed for the door. “When you got your ass whacked in twenty seconds without me.”

  Dalton didn’t bother looking over his shoulder to see if Wes and Holden were going to do the smart thing, but he heard them groan in acquiescence. Hopefully, he could get rid of whoever was at the door and get back to the game. After coming back from deployment, their chief had put all of them on a four-day pass, saying they needed a break. Dalton wasn’t sure about that but Call of Duty: Black Ops III was definitely a good way to burn through a few down days, especially since the weather was so crappy.

  He cursed as whoever was at the door knocked
again, more insistently this time. If it turned out to be the old man from across the hall complaining about the noise, Dalton swore he was going to do something violent.

  He jerked open the door, ready to roast whoever the hell was out there, but stopped when he found a beautiful woman with long, blond hair standing there staring at him. She was soaking wet, proof that the rain out there was as bad as it sounded.

  On the bright side, the rain had plastered the woman’s T-shirt to her skin, revealing more curves than a San Francisco street map. Damn, what a body.

  That was when he realized he recognized those curves.

  He lifted his gaze to the woman’s face. Even though it carried more cares and concerns than he remembered, there was no doubt who the hell was standing on his doorstep.

  His traitorous frigging heart actually tightened in his chest.

  Fucking hell.

  “Kimber?” he said slowly, hoping he was wrong.

  He’d heard once that every person in the world had a doppelganger out there, someone who looked exactly like them. And after that insane mission down in Mexico when Nash had been able to play the role of an international arms dealer simply because he’d been a dead ringer for the guy, Dalton was ready to accept the possibility.

  When she nodded, Dalton had to face reality. Kimber Grant, the woman who’d dumped his ass five years ago, was standing outside his apartment dripping rainwater all over the carpeted floor in the hallway.

  “Hey, Dalton.”

  He didn’t miss the fact that she still had the same incredible sultry voice she’d had back when they’d been together. Her voice. That had been the first thing to attract his attention all the way across that crowded bar so many years ago. There was something about it that connected directly with his soul. And if he was going to be truthful with himself, other parts of his anatomy as well.

  As they both stood there staring at each other, Dalton absently wondered if his face gave away the bewildering array of emotions he was experiencing. Hell, he couldn’t imagine how it wasn’t since even he was having a hard time identifying all the different things he was feeling.

  There was shock for sure. He and Kimber had been dating seriously for months before she’d left. He thought it had been going well between them. He’d even started thinking their relationship could turn into something real. But then he’d come back from a mission and found her gone, with nothing more than a curt goodbye message waiting for him on his voice mail.

  Despite all that, he couldn’t deny there was a little twinge of happiness at seeing her again. But there was anger, too. He was furious that a woman who’d walked away from him without bothering to tell him why thought she could just show up at his door like nothing had happened.

  Regardless, he couldn’t stand there staring at her all day while she dripped puddles of water all over the place.

  “Do you want to come in?” he asked. “I can get you a towel or something.”

  He could have sworn he saw see tears shimmering in her eyes, but she blinked them away before he could be sure.

  “Thanks,” she said softly. “I guess I could use a towel. I didn’t bring an umbrella with me. I didn’t expect it to be raining in San Diego.”

  Dalton stepped aside and motioned her inside. There was a sudden rush of movement behind him. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know Wes and Holden had been standing there listening in on the conversation. By the time he turned around, they were both back on the couch, trying their best to look disinterested and failing horribly.

  “Kimber Grant, Wes Marshall and Holden Lockwood, two of my teammates,” Dalton introduced.

  He would have said more, but realized he had no clue what to say. Kimber and the guys were regarding him with expectant looks on their faces.

  “She needs a towel,” he said lamely.

  Wes and Holden both frowned at that. He ignored them and headed for the bathroom in the hallway. Grabbing a towel off the rack, he gave it a quick sniff to make sure it was fresh, then brought it out to Kimber. She was standing to one side of the living room, probably so she wouldn’t drip on the area rug that occupied the middle of the space. He was glad, he guessed. He’d picked the brown rug up at a yard sale for ten bucks. It was nice, though.

  Kimber murmured a soft thank you as she took the towel, but then eyed it curiously for a second. He winced, worried that the thing did stink regardless of what his nose had told him. He wouldn’t be surprised. His nose was pure crap.

  “You know the Chargers don’t play in San Diego anymore, right?” she asked before running the NFL logo towel all over her upper body, trying to squeeze the worst of the water out of her shirt. Dalton did his best not to stare, but it was difficult. Kimber had one hell of a body and he couldn’t help but envy the towel.

  “They were here when I bought the towel,” he pointed out, only vaguely remembering the Chargers were supposed to move to LA. Apparently, he’d missed moving day.

  “Yeah, I know they were when you got it,” she said, a little smile touching her lips. “I was there, remember? You bought a matching set of these towels when we went to Del Mar Shores on the spur of the moment and had to stop at that strip mall to buy beach gear.”

  The moment Kimber mentioned the beach at Del Mar, Dalton remembered the day. He’d just gotten back from a grueling two-week training mission in South America and had been eager to spend some time with his beautiful girlfriend. From the moment she’d picked him up from the base on Coronado, during the impulsive stop at the beach, a picnic dinner of pizza and wings on the grass of Bayview Park, then right up until they’d fallen asleep up on the roof of his apartment complex gazing at the stars, the whole day had been completely unplanned. And amazing.

  Based on the way Wes and Holden were looking at him after he’d managed to jerk himself out of the long-buried memory, he was probably grinning like an idiot. Or possibly drooling since there had been a long, sexy shower somewhere in there right before they’d gone up to the rooftop.

  He reached out and touched that place of anger living right alongside every fond memory he had of Kimber and used it to wipe any trace of a smile off his face.

  “Are you just dropping by for old time’s sake or did you forget something the last time you were here? You did get the hell out of San Diego in a rush.”

  The words came out a bit more brusque than he’d intended. But it was too late to take them back now. Not that he would, even if he could.

  Kimber didn’t say anything, instead focusing her attention on squeezing water from her long, perfect hair, tears welling up in her eyes again. When she was done, she draped the towel over the back of a chair, then took a deep breath, like she was trying to gather herself. She glanced at Holden and Wes, then looked at Dalton.

  “Can we talk in private?” she finally said.

  Part of him wanted to tell her no, that anything she had to say she could say in front of Holden and Wes. Or better yet, she should leave. The time to say something was five years ago, preferably before bailing on him.

  But then he saw the desperation on Kimber’s face. It was a look he’d never seen there before.

  “Okay,” he said. “We can go into the bedroom.”

  Kimber led the way, reminding him of the fact that she knew it quite well. Dalton followed, flicking on the light switch and closing the door behind them.

  “You haven’t changed much in here,” she said softly, her gaze sweeping the room before settling on the king-size bed that dominated the room. “The comforter is the same one you had five years ago.”

  He shrugged, his eyes never leaving her. “It still works. But I doubt you’re here to talk about my choice of home decor. So, let’s cut the chit-chat and get to the point.”

  He knew he was being a jackass but being so close to Kimber reminded him that he’d never really gotten her out of his system. And that pissed him off for some stupid reason.

  His words didn’t seem to bother her. Hell, it was like she hadn’t eve
n heard him. Instead, she continued to fixate on the blue comforter on his bed like it was important. That’s when it hit him. This wasn’t some kind of strange social call. Something was wrong.

  “Kimber, what’s going on?”

  She blinked a few times like she was trying to hold back tears, then reached into the small purse hanging across her body and pulled out a small photo. She gazed at it for a moment, then held it out to him.

  “Someone has kidnapped our daughter.”

  Dalton stared at the photo in Kimber’s hand, but didn’t take it. No way could he have heard her right. “What did you say?”

  Taking a step closer, Kimber took his hand and placed the photo in his palm. “You have a daughter. Her name is Emma, she’s five years old, and she’s in terrible danger.”

  Daughter.

  The word barely registered, much less made any sense. How could he have a daughter and not know it? This had to be some kind of trick. A lie. Though to what end, he wasn’t sure.

  He glanced at the picture of a smiling little girl with dimples, enormous brown eyes, and blond hair done up in two floppy pigtails. As insane as it was, some instinct he’d never felt before told him she was indeed his daughter.

  “How is this even possible?” he asked softly, looking at the photo more closely. He’d swear the little girl had his eyes. He dragged himself away from the picture to look at Kimber. “When did you get pregnant?”

  She wet her lips. “That day you got back from South America. The one when we went to the beach at Del Mar.”

  “But we always used protection.”

  The moment the words left his mouth he knew that wasn’t true. There was one time when the moment had gotten away from them and they hadn’t used a condom.

  “We were in the shower, getting cleaned up after we got home from the beach,” she said, confirming what he already knew. “I wasn’t really worried at the time because of where I was in my cycle, but…well…it happened anyway.”