Protecting his Witness: A HERO Force Novel

by Amy Gamet

  She watched him work in silence. When she’d first read the newspaper article about HERO Force, she’d made a handful of assumptions about these men that she now knew weren’t true. They didn’t have God complexes. They were highly skilled former soldiers, here to help people like her. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “The men of HERO Force all seem to have…” She struggled for the right word. “Problems.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Like what?”

  “Uh, well, I noticed one gentleman with a prosthetic arm, and another with a noticeable scar on his cheek, and a whole bunch of smaller ones.” She was already sorry she’d brought it up. Razorback had an intense look on his face like he’d just realized she wasn’t on his side, after all. She persevered, unsure as she did if it was wise to do so. “And there was another man in a wheelchair, which seemed odd on a helicopter, but I guess really why would that seem strange—”

  “What are you trying to say? We’re not good enough for you?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, no! That’s not what I meant at all.”

  He laughed, a rich belly laugh that surprised her. He pointed at her face. “I had you for a minute there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You jerk. Do you know how bad you made me feel for asking?”

  “I couldn’t resist. You should see your face.”

  Relieved, she shook her head. “So I’m not imagining it.”

  “No, it’s a real thing. We’re shattered SEALs. Each of us with our own story, each of us with our own scars. Mine are just more visible than some.”

  “How did you all get together?”

  “We were recruited by Mac, though I dare you to try to get a straight answer out of him as to why he did it. Guilt, maybe. I’m really not sure. But I can tell you one thing. This job has given me my life back.”

  “How so?”

  “I acted like losing my face was the same thing as losing my life. I’m a doctor and I wasn’t even practicing. A soldier with nothing to guard. It’s like I was sitting in my own pool of vomit, waiting for things to get better. They never did.”

  Luke was part of this team of broken men, yet he had no scars on the outside that she could see. She opened her mouth and closed it again.

  Don’t ask an honest question if you don’t want an honest answer.

  But she did want to know, even if it was difficult to hear. Luke had endeared himself to her greatly. If he was hurting, she wanted to know why. “What’s wrong with Luke?”

  “Can’t say as I know. I heard him and Mac talking once about Afghanistan. It was Wiseman’s last tour. Whatever it was that got him, that was where it happened. But you should probably ask him yourself if you really want to know.”

  “My brother was on that tour with him. Edward didn’t come back.” She shook her head. So much damage, so much loss. Luke seemed so strong, so self-assured, it was hard to imagine he was struggling with his own demons. “You’re sure there’s something? There aren’t any healthy, well-adjusted men around here?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s like every guy on the force is carrying fifty invisible rocks on his back, and once you get to know him, he’ll show you every last one.”

  She liked this man, liked his genuine nature and his pragmatic ways. “What’s your real name?”

  He held out his hand. “Ian Rhodes.”

  She shook it, noting the uneven texture of his skin beneath her fingers.

  “Can I give you a word of advice, Summer?”

  “Sure.”

  “You can’t fix him.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not saying he can’t be fixed, just that you can’t do it for him.”

  She frowned. “I wasn’t planning on fixing anybody.”

  He smiled, those eyes radiating a platonic warmth. “Sure you were. That’s human nature, too. Wanting to help. Wanting to make things better for the people we care about.” He zipped up his medical bag. “But the only person who can fix Luke, is Luke.”

  He opened the door, flurries dancing in on the breeze, and closed it behind him.

  The people we care about.

  Were her feelings that obvious to those around her? Her eyes followed a snowflake to the floor, watching as it seemed to disappear, melting into a tiny speck of water.

  She loved him. She could see that now. Maybe she’d loved him for years, since he’d first made her smile and shared his quirky sense of humor from the other side of the world.

  It wasn’t the kind of love that meant they were supposed to be together, but that made it shine brighter still. Luke was like a ray of light that crossed her own in the darkness. They might not be focused on the same things, but she would embrace his gentle heart for as long as she might have him.

  18

  Luke stood in the clearing outside the HERO Force chopper, clear black skies revealing bright stars. He was shivering despite the coat he’d thrown on, the smell of Mac’s cigar bringing back memories. He had smelled that damn thing at some of the worst moments in his life, and it was a mind fuck to be smelling it now, when all that shit was supposed to be behind him.

  He stared at the chopper. Summer was inside getting the once-over from Razorback, and all Luke wanted to do was hold her in his arms and make sure she was okay.

  He couldn’t forget the look in that bastard Walsh’s eyes when he was on top of her, Summer barely conscious on the ground. Luke had been overcome by rage, the protective, vicious kind of anger that took over where judgment and righteousness collide.

  “Sloan’s got some bourbon,” said Mac.

  “Nah.”

  “You’ve got to calm the fuck down.”

  “Don’t think I can.”

  Mac’s cigar end glowed red. “That’s why you’ve got to. Right now you’re feeling like that woman is the only thing that can save you from yourself. But she just might be your downfall.”

  “Are you giving me advice about women?”

  “Why, because mine’s long gone? Only thing you’ve got on me right now is timing. My wife left me because I couldn’t handle life after the military. That woman is going to leave you because of your life in it. Difference is, she don’t know it yet, and you do.”

  He clenched his jaw. He wanted to tell Mac he was wrong, that it didn’t have to be that way. That maybe there was hope for him and Summer yet. But what was there to say? That maybe he’d never tell her the truth? That maybe she would forgive him for what he had done?

  He couldn’t keep silent forever, and she sure as hell wouldn’t forgive.

  Goddamn son of a bitch was right. Luke should walk away, get in the van with the others who were heading back to headquarters tonight. Let someone else be this woman’s protector and set her free.

  But he didn’t want to do that. Try as he might, tell himself what he may, all he wanted to do was take her in his arms—if she would have him—tomorrow be damned. Make love to her like he’d wanted to do since he first saw her face.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Mac.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck if you do.” He walked the fifty feet to the chopper, Razorback stepping outside as Luke approached. “How is she?” Luke asked.

  “I don’t think anything’s broken, but she’s going to be sore for a while.”

  “Thanks, man.” Luke moved to the door of the chopper and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  It was toasty inside, but it was her smile that warmed him. Just to be in her presence made him feel better. He took in the bruises on her face and longed to kiss them away. He didn’t want to stare when the rest of the team was here, but now he couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. Some bruises, a minor concussion. Nothing that won’t heal.”

  He sat across from her, bracing himself on his knees. She was battered and beat up and his heart wrenched at the sight. She’d put up quite a fight. She was something else, strong and capable under pressure, not
weak or frightened as so many others would be. And he admired her, looked up to her for her courage in the face of danger.

  But that wasn’t all.

  She was beautiful and soft, feminine and pretty, possessing that simple grace he found humbling. The two sides of Summer together made an intriguing twist that had his pulse racing and his cock tightening in his shorts.

  He had to get this straightened out. Had to figure out exactly what she wanted and exactly what he could give her. Straighten out his own damned head without damaging hers. “Most of the guys are going back to New York tonight,” he said.

  “But we haven’t found the brancium.”

  “I know. And if you want to keep looking, someone will stay to help you and keep you safe.”

  “Not you?”

  “No. I mean, maybe.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not explaining this very well.” He laughed without humor, a pulse throbbing in his groin. “I will stay if you want me to, but I don’t just want to protect you, Summer. I don’t want to sleep in adjoining rooms and wonder what you’re doing over there, and I don’t want to pretend watching Jeopardy is the end of a nice evening. I’m getting my signals crossed. Looking at lines in the sand and thinking about running roughshod right over them. Lines that I damn sure better not cross.”

  “What if I want you to cross them?”

  “There are things in my past. Things you would hate me for if you knew.”

  “Things you did as a soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every soldier could say as much.”

  “Not like this.”

  She was quiet, and even as he waited for her to consider her answer, he knew it wasn’t a fair question. Hell, he hadn’t asked, but they both knew what they were talking about. Trouble was, he was the only one with all the information she needed to make a good decision.

  “I’ve been living in the past for too long,” she said. “Struggling with hate.” She offered him her hand, twining her fingers with his. “I want to leave the past behind, at least for as long as we can.”

  She felt so good, and he swallowed against a knot that had formed in his throat.

  Could he let her overlook the past if she didn’t know what was in it?

  19

  Summer was nervous. Luke had barely spoken on the ride to the hotel, and she imagined he had changed his mind or, worse yet, had not but was already regretting what they were about to do. As they walked down the hallway to their room, every step felt more wrong than the one before it.

  They reached the door and he moved to open it, her hand on the back of his, stilling the movement. “Wait.”

  What was happening here? And how had she gone from so certain she wanted — no, needed — to be with this man to so confused in such a short period of time? She cocked her head. “You have two room keys.”

  “We need to talk.”

  The distance she’d imagined was real. This wasn’t going to be the romantic night she’d been expecting, and her nerves turned to pure anxiety. He’d been struggling with telling her something she was certain she didn’t want to know. He opened the door, the sterile hallway stretching before her like an unpleasant choice.

  “I thought you wanted to be with me,” she whispered, her embarrassment over being rejected again paling in comparison to whatever awaited her in that room. This was about Edward, she knew it was, and her heart still had a gaping wound where her brother was concerned.

  “I do, but I can’t. Not until you know the truth.” He gestured for her to enter and her feet moved of their own accord. This room was too bright for sex, too white and smelling of new carpet. How could she have expected he would love her?

  “I don’t think I want to hear it.”

  “No. You probably don’t.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed, her heart hammering. What could he possibly have to tell her?

  “Edward’s death was an accident.” He perched a hip on the desk, unusually still.

  She flashed back in time, her father breaking down as he told her the few details they knew about her brother’s death, and she realized Luke’s story would be different than that one. “Go on.”

  “War is a numbers game. How many of you versus how many of them. How many weapons. How much ammo. Who has the most skill, the most powerful explosives. Add them all together and you come up with an answer, like an equation. This is what I think of when they say war is the great equalizer.”

  He was staring straight ahead now, and she wondered if he even saw her, so engrossed was he in the past.

  “People, troops, you know you’re just a number. One more guy on the side of right versus wrong. But there’s something they don’t teach you in SEAL training. Hell no. They don’t teach you about acceptable loss. That sometimes to get those numbers to come out as a win, you have to trade people for points like some twisted kind of algebra.”

  This is what broke him.

  Razorback wore his scars on the outside, but Luke held his inside. He was peeling back the layers and showing her what lay beneath, and it had something to do with her brother. Just hours earlier, she’d wanted to know what horrors weighed him down, but now she would do almost anything to stop it.

  I don’t want to know.

  The words rang through her mind like the tolling of a bell, but she didn’t speak them, torn between what she was able to digest and what Luke needed to say.

  “A hundred of our men were in the valley, maybe more, and only fourteen of us at the outpost that led to it. That day was cool, and we were all grateful for the reprieve. But then they started coming over the mountain.” He shook his head. “Hundreds of them. Buckeye said they were like ants marching to a sugar bowl, and they just kept coming.”

  He met her eyes. “I laid the charges in the building and the storage units. We knew we’d have to sacrifice the outpost to save the men in the valley. So we hid a couple of hundred feet away surrounded by sandbags and supplies and hoped to hell they’d take the outpost first, and they did.”

  He dropped his head, letting it hang for a moment before inhaling sharply and raising it again. “We couldn’t find Zeke, not since the night before. But when the insurgents got there, we heard the barking.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Buckeye was so attached to him. He loved that damn dog.” This time when he opened them, she could see they were red and full of tears.

  “He called out for us to hold our fire. Mac tried to stop him but he went anyway, running for the storage unit where Zeke was trapped. The dog must have gotten locked in there the night before, but he hadn’t barked until then. Maybe he ate something that made him sick, I don’t know. I was just huddling behind this stack of sandbags waiting for Buckeye to come back so I could detonate the charges.”

  She closed her eyes. This was sacred territory, the place and time when her brother passed on, the retelling she’d so desperately wanted to hear since that day. She took Luke’s hand, but he pulled it away.

  “That’s when everything changed in the blink of an eye. The insurgents had spotted us. We were taking heavy fire. The guy next to me went down. Mac was hit. We were all that was standing between a hundred troops and death, and through it all I’m watching for Edward just praying and screaming in my mind for him to hurry the fuck up, but he doesn’t. There’s no sign of him and a bullet grazed my head and I knew I only had a moment to decide or I’d be dead and gone, and the guys who were left would be fucked.”

  Her mouth opened, her bottom lip trembling. “No.”

  “There was a movement beside the shed and I thought he was coming out, but my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was just Zeke. And in that moment I was so confused and lost and torn between the hundred men in the valley and the one who hadn’t come out…”

  She covered her mouth with her hand.

  A tear raced down his cheek. “I detonated the bombs.”

  She could feel it as if she’d been there, the blast wave going through her.

  “The explosion
s expanded outward and I ran as fast as I could to where I’d seen him last, hoping he was on the ground and I could pull him to safety. But he wasn’t there. He was still in the building. I couldn’t save him, Summer.”

  She closed her eyes, hot tears running down her face. She could see her brother standing there, the room exploding around him as he searched for his beloved dog, his teammate giving up on his life. “A few more seconds.”

  “Yes.”

  He killed my brother.

  His still body and lifeless eyes infuriated her. She beat his chest. “A few more seconds! He was counting on you to be on his six. Isn’t that what you call it? Depending on you to save him.”

  Luke didn’t fight back, his hands limp at his sides as she attacked.

  “Never leave a man behind, but you let him die in there like he didn’t even matter. But he mattered to me.” Her voice cracked, great sobs of grief racking her body. “He must have been so scared and in so much pain. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  “No. He did not.”

  Her face crumpled up like a piece of discarded paper. “He loved you and you let him die.”

  Luke’s voice was little more than a whisper. “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me. You let me believe it was an accident this whole time. I picked you out from the group and you just let me do it. You kissed me and you held me like you cared about me—”

  “I do.”

  “Fuck you.”

  There was a knock at the door. Luke didn’t move, so she opened it to find Sloan standing on the other side. “I’m here to protect you tonight, Miss Daniels.”

  She turned back to Luke. “You prepared your exit ahead of time.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t want me here.”

  “You’re right. Get out. Get the hell out.”

  He walked to the door. When he was directly in front of her, she screamed in his ear. “Get the hell out!”