Undaunted

by Joss Wood

  “Fuck,” Axl muttered.

  “I exited the trailer. I ran around but I couldn’t break the window to Coe’s room, it was too high. Long story short, I went back in, went through the fire, grabbed Coe, and kicked out his bedroom window, and we exited out that way.” She’d lowered Coe to the ground and she’d been about to climb out the window when Coe had reminded her about his bear. God, she couldn’t tell Axl that she’d plunged back inside the burning trailer, had put herself in danger to rescue a kid’s soft toy.

  That would be a secret she took to the grave. Stupidity didn’t need to be shared.

  “Then what?” Axl barked the question.

  Reagan frowned, mentally rewinding to find out where she stopped in her explanation. “I got out.”

  Axl was silent for so long that she wasn’t sure whether they were still connected. Reagan looked back at the soaking wet but still smoking trailer and shuddered.

  “God,” Axl eventually muttered. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Sore throat, bumps, bruises. I’ll live.” Reagan heard the wobble in her voice and pushed her wet-with-sweat hair back from her face. She cleared her throat, and when she spoke again she was happy to hear that she sounded more in control. “Can you call Sawyer and give him the story?”

  “Yeah, sure. Are you sure you are okay?”

  “Axl, I’m fine,” Reagan insisted, knowing it was the truth. Now that she’d spoken to him Reagan felt stronger, more in control. Axl had a way of doing that, she realized. As irritating as he was, whenever she felt out of her depth, he always seemed to pass on some of his strength. Axl was the most capable, resourceful, badass man she knew.

  He was also rude, annoying, and tactless, and the fact that she thought him to be the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes was, frankly, a pain in her ass.

  “I’ll call him,” Axl replied. “Did you see the arsonist?”

  “Fleeting glance, when I dropped Coe to the ground. Dressed in black, hoodie concealing his face. I wanted to chase him down but I couldn’t leave Coe . . .” And she’d chosen to rescue the bear instead. The bear that was Coe’s last gift from his mom, a tangible link to her. She’d lost her mom when she was young and she had nothing of hers, nothing she could hold that her mom had worn, touched, held. Her dad wasn’t the sentimental type.

  Reagan stared down at her multicolored trainers. Her throat was on fire and it hurt to talk.

  “I need to get Knox and Coe out of here as soon as possible. Thank God he isn’t needed on set anymore. But even if he was, he’s not the type of guy to put his career above the safety of his kid.”

  Over the past few months they’d spent hours together and they’d become friends. Just friends. Knox still wasn’t over the death of his wife, the much beloved A-list actress Sula. Besides, Reagan never had personal relationships with her principals.

  She never had personal relationships with anyone.

  “If this UNSUB was prepared to firebomb a trailer, then who knows what he’ll do next,” Axl stated, the intensity in his voice reaching inside her and shoring up her wobbly bits. Like her spine. And her knees.

  Reagan rubbed the back of her neck and watched the fire chief approach with her water. Speaking quickly, she snapped her words out. “I need to get Knox and Coe far away from here, and from LA. There’s a farmhouse in Mercy that I heard is rented out . . . the Freedman estate? If I can get the Callow family back to Mercy, can any Cas employees who are around and not on assignment help guard Knox and Coe?”

  “I’ll talk to Sawyer about that.”

  “I also need someone to start ripping Knox’s life apart to find out who is behind the attempted murder of a little boy. Can you also ask Sawyer to get working on that?”

  “Yep,” Axl replied.

  “I’ve got to go; fire chief wants to talk to me. Call Sawyer.”

  “Wait!” Reagan heard the worry in Axl’s voice and held up her finger to ask the fire chief to give her a minute. Damn, she really needed that water.

  “What, Axl?”

  “I’m in Mercy, staying at Kai’s, and I’ll text the pilot to get the plane ready and to file a flight plan. I should be with you in five or so hours.”

  Reagan dropped her hand, looked at the screen, utterly puzzled. She lifted the phone back up to her ear. “Why would you do that?”

  “You don’t need to do this alone. I can help you through it.”

  God, having Axl here would be wonderful. He could take charge and do what needed to be done. A natural, obvious leader, he’d get things done in twice the time she would. She could take a step back and she could stop second-guessing herself. And because she wanted that more than she wanted to breathe, a wave of anger rolled over her. She did not need a man to take charge. She was perfectly capable of looking after her principal, in her way.

  “You’re a Hudson, Michael, and I have high expectations of you. You are morally obligated to be the best, to take charge, to make a difference.”

  “But Reagan is also a Hudson, Dad.”

  “She’s a female.”

  Being the female child meant that she wasn’t listened to, unworthy of notice or attention. While Mike had an over-interested father, she didn’t have one at all. As a result Reagan knew she was too proud, too closed off, too independent. Relationships hurt, so it was easy to keep her distance from people.

  She couldn’t bear anyone—especially Axl, Spec Ops legend—seeing her as anything other than competent and in control. Pride shoved a steel rod up her spine. “I am fine, my principal and his kid are fine, and there’s nothing that you can do.”

  “But—”

  “All I need you to do is to update Sawyer,” Reagan told him.

  “I still think—”

  “Would you fly out to help out any other of the Caswallawn PPOs in this situation?” Reagan demanded.

  Axl’s silence was his answer.

  “Exactly,” Reagan replied, now feeling weary. “This is why we argue, Axl. You refuse to treat me like I’m capable, like I can do my job. It’s got to stop. You’ve got to start respecting my capabilities, what I am and what I can do.”

  “And maybe you could accept a little help now and again!” Axl retaliated, his voice coated with frustration. “You’ve had a shitty night. Why do you have to play the tough girl trying to keep everything together?”

  “Because I am a tough girl! And, unlike the other women who drop in and out of your life, Rhodes, I don’t need you to rescue me!”

  Reagan disconnected the call, shoved her cell into her jeans pocket, and grabbed the bottle of water, cracked the lid, and downed the bottle. She reached for the second and, after opening that one, swallowed more slowly, enjoying the cool liquid.

  Damn straight she was a tough girl. As a Caswallawn Personal Protection Officer, as Mike Hudson’s sister, Gunnery Sergeant Micah Hudson’s daughter, she had to be. Being anything else had never been an option.

  ***

  He’d spent more time in Mercy, Virginia, in the last three months than he had since he, Sawyer, and Kai established Caswallawn, Axl Rhodes thought as he walked into the Smirking Fox. He shrugged out of his coat, hung it on a peg alongside a dozen more, and, as he stepped away from the door, felt his cell vibrate. Hoping that it was Reagan telling him that she’d had landed safely in Mercy, he yanked it out of the front pocket of his pants and touched the screen. It wasn’t Reagan. God forbid she’d throw him that bone.

  Bit short this month. Any chance you can send me a couple hundred to tide me over?

  Axl looked at the sender and saw that it was a text from his half sister. If he never looked at a calendar again, he’d always be able to tell when the month was coming to an end by the text messages from his family. They never failed to disappoint.

  Axl ignored the message—he’d send Moon some money later—and headed to the bar. This was why he�
��d liked living in London. He’d loved having the Atlantic Ocean separating him from his demanding and frequently batshit family. In Mercy he had only the Blue Ridge range and an hour’s drive between them, and that was about ten thousand miles too close. God help him when they found out that he was in the area. They would descend on him like a bunch of leeches and suck him, and his bank account, dry.

  At least in London he could pretend, if he ignored the constant texts and emails and phone calls he received from them, that he was only responsible for himself. Yeah, he would never be that lucky.

  He hadn’t been that lucky since he was fifteen years old, though it had to be said he had had a break from them when he was in the SEALs. Those long, drawn-out operations in shitty countries, being unavailable for weeks, sometimes months, had been a vacation from the “Axl, I need . . .” or “Axl, do you think . . .” or “Axl, can you . . .” calls that he routinely received from his immediate family.

  He was their source of advice they never took, their secretary, their shrink, and their source of additional, and sometimes only, income.

  A part of him knew that he should feel grateful for the fact that he could help them financially, but a bigger part of him wished they would just get their shit together. He wanted to see a call on his phone and not feel his heart sink, not knowing what the next request would be. The day one of his family members, with the exception of his adopted brother Aiden, just called him to check up on him, to see how he was, what was happening in his life, without asking for anything, he’d hit the ground in shock.

  He was sick of it, sick of them and their ultra-stupid decision-making processes, but this was his family, this was his life. It was his burden to be responsible for a bunch of child-people.

  Axl slipped onto a stool and nodded when Jack, the Fox’s owner, lifted an eyebrow and a bottle of beer in his direction. Axl rested his foot on the railing at the bottom of the bar and looked around the room. The Smirking Fox was more English pub than a bar, a place where the residents of Mercy could meet at the end of the day, catch up on some gossip, and wind down. As the night progressed, the family men left and the singles and the dating came in, or those who just wanted to hook up. Some were there just to get slammed.

  Axl noticed an argument brewing in the corner between a man wearing jeans halfway down his hips and a girl who was wearing little more than a handkerchief for a skirt. Pants-falling-down was pointing his finger in the girl’s face—she had to be legal or else Jack would never let her in here—and her eyes were big, wide, and frightened. She was turning her wrist within her hand in the way women did to rub away the pain of a too-tight grip. Axl straightened, his protective instincts revving, and his hands gripped the bar counter.

  Not your circus, not your monkeys. Not your circus, not your . . . Great, Jack had noticed the fracas and, after sliding his beer down the bar in Axl’s direction, ducked under the bar to head in that direction.

  Good man, Jack.

  Axl picked up his bottle of beer and took a long sip. Six months ago he’d be across that bar like a bullet, his arms across the guy’s larynx, giving him a dose of what it felt like to be scared. Axl loathed bullies, but he was, finally, starting to realize that it wasn’t his job to save the weak and the downtrodden. Dispensing a little tit for tat always felt good, but after sitting in jail on assault charges—he’d stopped a man from punching a woman and then they both laid assault charges against him—he was trying to pick his fights.

  After a series of crazy relationship with women with weird problems, he’d finally realized that it wasn’t his job to sort out the life of every screwed-up woman who crossed his path. They were always gorgeous, always hot, but jeez, they were, generally, nuts. He’d had enough. He’d decided that a relationship just wasn’t worth the hassle, and the responsibility. He didn’t need to bring trouble, and other people’s problems, into his bed, home, or life.

  His family provided enough of that shit.

  He was sticking to short-term affairs with women who didn’t need anything from him but some hot sex.

  Hot sex he could handle, crazy he couldn’t.

  Axl rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his head, trying to relieve the tension of his too-tight muscles. He had knots in his neck, courtesy of I-can-handle-anything Hudson, and he knew that they weren’t going to go away anytime soon. She’d sounded blasé last night but he’d heard the fear underneath her tart voice. She tried so hard to be tough but he wished that she would realize that she didn’t have to be. She was too proud and too stubborn to show fear. Axl wished someone would knock it into her thick head that she was allowed to feel scared, that everybody did. If they didn’t they were either lying to themselves or stupid. As long as it didn’t paralyze you, fear and trepidation were healthy, life-preserving emotions.

  She’d leopard crawled through a burning trailer, and Axl knew that she would’ve been half blinded by the smoke and struggling to breathe. She would’ve felt the licks of ferocious heat, would’ve felt the temperature rising degree by degree until she thought she might scream. She would’ve wanted to panic, to turn tail and get the hell out of there, but she’d pushed forward, found the kid, and kicked out a window. She’d kept her head and saved a life. After equally traumatic experiences, Axl had seen Special Forces soldiers sob like toddlers, but Reagan? She’d just pulled on her I-can-cope-with-anything attitude and sucked that emotion up. Or pushed it down. Whatever the hell she did with it, it was not healthy.

  Axl stared at the neck of his beer bottle, his thoughts a galaxy away from the emerald-colored bottle. Contrary to what Reagan thought, he wasn’t opposed to women acting as PPOs or agents or soldiers. He knew that having a mental and metaphorical set of balls wasn’t restricted to the bearded species. He’d met women who could kick his ass to Af-stan and back. Like his two partners, they were mentally tough, cool, emotionally detached.

  Reagan met all the physical requirements of being a PPO—she was an excellent marksman and had phenomenal hand-to-hand combat skills—but she wasn’t, and would never be, mentally detached. She took things hard, personally, and allowing emotion to influence her thinking was a good way to get dead.

  He knew this because Reagan was a female version of Mike: loyal and—they’d both deny this—sensitive. He knew the internal scars Mike had carried from living with an unable-to-impress father, and he’d been a competitive, high-achieving kid. Mike had been a good soldier but he hadn’t been a natural soldier: The guy should’ve been a history professor, but his father had never given him another option. He was expected to go into the military, and Mike hadn’t been strong enough to defy his hard-ass father.

  Axl was convinced Micah’s lack of interest in Reagan, his youngest child and a daughter, was behind her I-can-do-anything-you-do-better and I’d-rather-die-than-ask-for-help attitude. Her application to Caswallawn to qualify as a personal protection officer, just a week after she’d graduated college, was to show Micah, and herself, that she wouldn’t be dismissed and that she could successfully and effectively operate in the testosterone-fueled world they’d created.

  He wished he could ask her if he was right but that would mean her snapping his head off and using it as a bowling ball. He and Reagan didn’t talk, they argued.

  All the friggin’ time. He couldn’t understand it; they could talk about the color of the grass and it would turn into a fight. It was the craziest thing. Then again, fighting with her always stopped him from grabbing her hips, yanking her into him, stripping her naked, and taking her on the nearest linear surface. Or up against a wall, door, on the floor. Anywhere he could get her . . .

  It didn’t help that she had a face that could grace any fashion magazine: long blond hair, a heart-shaped face, brown eyes that flirted with being black, high cheekbones, and a mouth created to sin. Her body was long and lean, finely muscled and capable of inflicting a great deal of pain. She was, despite her propensity to wear black
, as sexy as hell.

  It pissed him off.

  It was damned inconvenient being fiercely, stupidly, ridiculously attracted to your best friend’s baby sister, constantly wanting to see the woman you’d promised to protect naked. He hated the fact that she could step into a room and his dick would sit up and pay attention, that the moisture in his mouth would disappear, that his hands itched to touch her.

  In fact, it annoyed him so much that he invariably ended up saying something that would cause a fight . . .

  He couldn’t have an affair with her . . . Mike would come back and haunt him. He was also technically her employer. And, most importantly, if he made a move on her, there was a slight chance that he’d end up with his balls in his throat.

  Axl looked away from the corner as Sawyer slid onto the stool next to him. Sawyer signaled for a beer, raked his hand through his blond hair, and sent him a tired smile. “Spending a lot of time in Mercy, aren’t you?”

  He’d already gone down that mental path. “Partners meeting tomorrow. I thought I’d fly in a day early.”

  “Are you bunking at my place?”

  “Kai’s. He texted me to tell me that he’s staying over at Flick’s tonight. Something about giving Rufus some undivided attention. Rufus is who again?”

  Sawyer smiled. “Her shit-for-brains dog. Huge, hairy, slobbery, and like Flick, absolutely loopy for Kai.” Axl grinned. “There’s simply no accounting for taste.”

  “And she shares a house with Pippa, her cousin?” Axl asked. With such infrequent visits to Mercy, he was still trying to work out who was who in the zoo.

  Sawyer thanked the barmaid for his beer, took a long sip, and scratched the side of his neck. “Flick and Jack are siblings, Pippa is their cousin. Pippa has two brothers, Jason is the new fire chief, and Rogan, well, none of us is sure what Rogan does. Or even where Rogan is.”