MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance)

by Claire Branson

  The general sent him the promised photo, which appeared on Liam’s phone display. The young, tall California blonde with Pacific blue eyes stood in a wet suit by the surf. She had a board tucked under her arm, but she didn’t smile. Liam wondered if the shot had been taken the summer after her mother had died of cancer. Frank had stopped smiling that year, too.

  “Buck?” Liam’s oldest brother Ethan came into the kitchen holding a bloody bandana to his head.

  “He went to the farmer’s market.” Liam took down the first aid kit. “Pete do this?”

  “No, I did, getting out of his way. The farrier’s here, and Pete still comes out of his stall like a rocket.” Ethan sat down at their cook’s work table. “Jessa thinks he’s been abused, but I’m thinking he’s just born ornery.” He grimaced as Liam inspected his head wound. “How bad is it?”

  He gently cleaned away the blood with gauze and antiseptic. “Well, here’s the good news. You won’t need stitches.”

  Ethan squinted up at him. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I need to head out for a week or two.” Liam got some antibiotic cream from the kit. “Frank Merlin, my old CO, called from Fort Irwin. His daughter is camping out by Ghost Lake, and he wants me to keep an eye on her.”

  “Why not invite to her to stay at the house?” his brother suggested. “We’ve got plenty of room, and she’ll be safe here.”

  With a swab Liam coated the wound with the cream. “She’s not camping for pleasure. She’s trying to find more of The Reaper’s victims.”

  “What for?” Ethan frowned. “Didn’t they hang that sick bastard back in nineteen-oh-one?”

  “More like an angry mob lynched him.” Liam applied a butterfly bandage to the laceration. “Frank’s girl is a forensic archaeologist. Somebody writing a book about the murders hired her to come up here and dig for bones. Seems they never found all the bodies of the women he killed, or any real proof that he murdered them.”

  Ethan sighed. “How do you play into this?”

  “She’s been getting some anonymous threats, hate mail, hang-up phone calls, that kind of thing. She’s paid no mind to it, but Frank thinks she has a stalker.” Liam saw how his brother was looking at him and held up a hand. “Look, I know with Chris handling things at the Carson ranch, and Tom setting up shop in town you need me here—”

  “You never take any time off. We’ll manage.” His older brother’s whiskey-brown eyes darkened. “But you’re not in the Army anymore, William.”

  “Frank is the reason I’m here,” Liam said simply. “He sent a team in to retrieve me when I got cut off from the battalion in Kabul. I’d walk into hell for him.”

  “All right,” Ethan said. “Does the daughter know you’ll be watching out for her?”

  Now Liam sighed. “Not exactly.”

  #

  “Dad, please. Don’t do this to me.” Cat Merlin listened to her father’s calm, cool voice for another minute before she closed her eyes. “Listen, I know how important your men are to you. I appreciate their loyalty to you, too. But what the heck am I going to do with an ex-Army ranger on a dig?”

  Ten minutes later Cat shut off her phone and walked out of her tent. Her team had already assembled at the big, battered picnic table where they would be eating, working and planning for the next two weeks. She sat down with them and tried to think of how to spin her father’s request.

  “Did the book guy yank our funding?” Jason Sanders, Cat’s new research assistant, asked as he popped a stick of gum in his mouth. Although he was small and rather pudgy, he had a brilliant mind. Jason had also put together a huge database on the Reaper that rivalled that of the author underwriting the dig.

  “No, actually, we’re going to have a local resident joining the team.” She checked her watch. “In about fifteen minutes. He’s lived here all his life, so he should provide some valuable input. His name is William Boone.”

  “Call me Liam,” a deep voice said.

  Cat turned around to see a tall broad-shouldered man dressed like a ranch hand walking into camp. He wore his dark hair military-short under a black and red UMW Bulldogs cap. His intensely blue eyes reminded Cat of the dark glacier ice, and his expression seemed just as cold.

  For all that coolness something about him sent a slow surge of heat between her thighs. “You’re early.”

  His mouth hitched. “Old habits.”

  She eyed his duffle and sleeping bag. Was he homeless? Her father hadn’t mentioned that. “I see you came prepared to stay at the site, too.”

  “That’s the plan.” Liam nodded to her team. “Where should I stow my gear?”

  Before Cat could reply, Jason asked, “You’re letting this guy stay here alone with you? At night?” He snapped his gum nervously as he glanced at Liam. “I mean, well, he could be anybody.”

  Cat felt like telling her assistant that Liam might be the one in trouble. “Boone served in the Army with my father, Jason. He’s completely trustworthy.”

  “Oh.” The research assistant’s face turned a bright pink. “Sorry. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Liam said. “And never apologize for looking out for the women, Jason.”

  The research assistant preened a little, while the two female interns on Cat’s team both uttered dreamy sighs.

  “This way.” Cat led him over to the pair of tents she had set up by their equipment pile. Once they were out of earshot, she said, “Have you ever been on an archaeological site before today, Boone?”

  “No, ma’am.” He stopped outside the tents.

  “We’re here looking for human remains. Victims of a nineteenth-century serial killer called The Reaper,” she told him. “Ten women went missing while he lived in Crystal Valley, and their bodies have never been recovered. We’re also hoping to find evidence proving he was the killer.”

  “Sounds ambitious,” he said.

  “It is. There are some restrictions involved, however. We can excavate and photograph and take some test samples, but under Montana law we can’t remove any remains or artifacts we find from the site.” She made a sweep with her arm to encompass the camp. “Bottom line, everything stays here, exactly where we found it.”

  He nodded. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Please don’t touch anything with a plug,” Cat said bluntly. “Also, watch your step. What looks like a hole in the ground to you is a lot more to me.” She waited for him to make a comment. “No objections? Smart ass remarks? Contemptuous sniffs?”

  “I know your dad asked you to give me this job,” Liam said. “I appreciate the work. I won’t screw it up.”

  Cat felt her heart melt a little, and tried to harden it. “You’re Army, so I assume you can handle camp duties. We take turns cooking, washing up, and making supply runs. Our work day begins at dawn and ends at dusk. You need something to do, you see me. Any questions?”

  “You’ll need firewood for tonight.” Liam tossed his duffle inside the tent. “Got an ax?”

  Chapter Two

  “Based on my analysis of the historic records, we should find at least nine more graves,” Jason said as he trotted to keep up with Cat and Liam. “We’ve been searching for a week and have turned up nothing.” He popped a piece of gum in his mouth. “Maybe you should seriously reconsider my suggestion to move north.”

  “We know The Reaper took his final known victim from a chicken farm in Crystal Valley,” Cat told him. “He also spent his final winter in this immediate area. He’d have no reason to lug the bodies north before he buried them. The ground freezes here, you know.”

  “My family is from Montana,” Jason told her with great dignity. “In fact, my great-grandfather used to own a pig farm not five miles from here. So yes, I do know.”

  “Then you should know back then it was virtually impossible to bury anyone during the winter,” Cat said. “He would have kept them and waited until the spring thaw to dig the graves. Can you put it here, please, Boone?”

  Liam careful
ly set down the big case with the portable ground penetrating radar unit.

  “Jason, would you run back to camp and see if Nina and Sally finished excavating grid six? If they have, help them set up grid seven. Thanks.” She crouched down to open the case.

  Liam watched the small man stalk off before he began clearing dead brush from the patch of ground inside the flagged stakes.

  “You think I hurt his feelings,” Cat said as she came to help him. “Don’t you?”

  “Can’t say. They’re his feelings, not mine.” Although her hands were almost as callused as his, Liam took out his spare work gloves and offered them to her. When she scowled at him, he said, “Snakes don’t care how tough you are, Doc.”

  She took the gloves and pulled them on. “But you do think I’m mean to Jason.”

  “You’re meaner to me,” he pointed out.

  Instead of laughing Cat walked a short distance away and then came back at him. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a woman working in male-dominated field?”

  Liam studied Cat’s face. “I bet I will in a minute.”

  “Don’t be cute, Boone.” She picked up some fallen branches and lugged them outside the stakes. “When Jason looks at me, he doesn’t see my PhD. He sees my blonde hair, pretty face, and nice body. No matter how many successful digs I run, or ground-breaking papers I publish, that’s all any man ever sees, Boone.”

  Not all. Whenever she got angry her skin turned rosy, and her eyes gleamed like dark sapphires. Sometimes, like now, it made Liam want to pull her close, and smell her skin, and kiss her mouth until she sighed into his.

  Instead of doing any of that, he shrugged. “Jason’s a kid.”

  “Excuse me? He’s almost thirty,” she countered, and helped him pick up a huge branch. “Every other guy on the team feels the same way. You’ve seen how they talk to my breasts – except you. You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  Liam straightened and frowned at her. “What? Why would you think that?”

  “Because you behave like someone who dislikes me – or is it my father?” She took a step closer to him as she studied his face. “Did the general slap a no-trespassing sign on me, Boone?”

  Liam pushed back his ball cap. “Of course he didn’t.” He’d done that himself.

  Cat made a frustrated sound. “So what is it? Why do you treat me like I have a contagion?”

  He could blame how much he wanted her. How he lay awake at night just to listen to her breathe. How tough it was getting to keep his hands off her. But if he did, she’d boot him off the site.

  “You don’t like Jason or the other guys dogging you, but you’re mad at me ‘cause I don’t?” He shook his head. “Can’t have it both ways, Doc.”

  She turned her back on him. “Maybe you should go back to camp, too.”

  “And leave you alone with the snakes?” Liam made a negative sound. He stepped back to survey the area they’d cleared. “Why are you digging out here anyway?”

  “Unmarked graves change the chemical composition of the soil. Disturbing the ground can also significantly alter the growth patterns of native plants. Look around at the botanical development.” She made a sweeping gesture. “Plenty of mature trees and bushes with deep root systems.” She nodded toward the long rectangle of now-bare ground. “Except here.”

  Liam smiled a little. She might be pretty, but Cat Merlin had earned that PhD. “How did you spot it?”

  “With my big baby blues, while I was out walking this morning.” Cat went to retrieve the portable scanner from the ground penetrating radar cart. “You’ve got a good eye. Will you watch the monitor and describe what you see?”

  Liam nodded and went over to turn on the viewer. As Cat slowly moved the scanner wand over the soil, opaque images began to appear on the monitor.

  “Looks like rocks,” he called out to her. “Dirt. Roots. More dirt.”

  She skirted the rectangle as she continued scanning and muttered under her breath when she stumbled. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Liam waited for the monitor’s jumbling images to settle down. “Dancing rocks. Jumping dirt. Roots playing Twister. Wait, something else.” He leaned closer to peer at the long object. He would have called it a buried branch, if not for the distinct, knobbed ends. “Femur.”

  #

  That night after Cat sat at the camp work table going over her notes and planning her next step. Since she’d discovered the century-old grave Jason had been sulking and had left for the motel early. Sending him in the morning to the county coroner’s office to file the remains discovery report would be salve for his wounded pride. The rest of the team were scheduled for a much-needed day off, so she’d have to draft Boone to help her survey the area around the grave.

  A long shadow fell over her map. “We scouting for more burials tomorrow, Doc?”

  She nodded and showed him the section she’d marked on the map. “The Reaper always buried his victims close to each other. If this was his work, there will be others out there.” On impulse, she asked, “Why do you call me Doc? I’ve told you at least a hundred times to call me Cat.”

  He gave her a narrow look. “Same reason you call me Boone instead of Liam, I expect. Because we like each other so much.”

  “One of these days, Boone.” Her phone rang, but when she checked the display, it showed the caller as unknown. Cat set it on the table and answered it one speaker. “This is Dr. Merlin.”

  “You bitch,” a woman shrieked, along with a string of obscenities, and then the line clicked.

  Liam took the phone and tried to reverse call the number. He shut it off a moment later. “Automated voice mail. Probably a throwaway.”

  “Do you mind?” Cat took her phone from him and stuck it in her back pocket. “This is none of your business.”

  “Then why did you put the call on speaker?” he countered. When she didn’t reply, he asked, “This isn’t the first time she’s called you, is it? Who is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Cat told him as she collected her notes. The shrieking voice seemed to echo in her head. “At first when I answered, she’d just hang up one me. Now she calls me names and swears at me. I don’t even know how she’s getting my number. I’ve changed it three times.”

  “You need to talk to the police,” Liam said.

  “And tell them what?” Cat demanded. “Calling someone a bitch isn’t against the law, Boone. Neither is cursing.”

  “Stalking is.” He followed her back to her tent. “Doc. Cat.”

  “I’m going to bed, Liam,” she told him, and zipped the tent flap shut. “Good-night.”

  She dropped onto her camp bed, and watched his shadow until it retreated. The light in his tent went out a few minutes later, and she reached over to switch off her own.

  Thinking about the angry phone call kept her awake for the next hour. Finally Cat rose and slipped out of the tent. Liam had warned her not to wander around alone at night, but she now knew the site as well as her backyard in Barstow. She also needed to walk off her restless nerves, or she’d be completely useless tomorrow.

  Her feet led her back to the newly-discovered grave, which she had carefully covered with a waterproof tarp tied to the perimeter stakes. If the woman buried six feet beneath the surface had been one of The Reaper’s victims, she had likely been young, attractive, blonde, and unmarried. She would, like all the others, be found with the rope he used to hang her tied around her neck. The author funding the dig theorized that The Reaper had hated all women, but Cat wasn’t so sure. It all seemed too specific for a murderous misogynist.

  Something rustled in the brush to her left, and she saw a shadow too big to be a critter move through the brush.

  “Boone, are you following me?” Determined to put a stop to his over-protective nonsense, Cat strode around the brush. “I told you, I’m—“

  A scream left her as the earth fell away and she plunged down. Wheeling her arms wildly, she grabbed onto a thick root and clamped h
er fingers around it, crying out again as the weight of her body wrenched her shoulder.

  “Cat.”

  Boone appeared at the edge of the pit, his face drawn and tight as he looked down at her.

  “Don’t move,” he told her and stretched out on his belly to reach down. “Okay, grab my hand.”

  Cat shook her head, and then gasped as the root began to slip through her fingers.

  “Take my hand, Catriona,” he said again, his tone soft and reassuring. “I won’t let you fall. I promise.”

  Cat shook all over as she slowly reached up, and then had to strain the last inch to touch his fingers. He took hold of her wrist a heartbeat before the root slid out of her other hand.

  “I’ve got you,” he told her, reaching down for the front of her shirt. He used it and his grip on her wrist to lift her up and drag her out, rolling away as he did so that she landed on top of him.

  For a long while all Cat did was lay there shuddering and listening to the hammering thud of his heart. “Liam, if you hadn’t followed me . . . thank you.”

  He lifted her up onto her knees, and examined her hands and shoulder before he helped her stand. “Let’s get back to camp.”

  “Wait.” Cat turned back to the pit, which was smaller than she’d thought, but very much deeper. She looked over the edge and saw something glitter at the bottom. “Do you have a light?”

  Boone clicked on his flashlight and directed the beam inside the pit. A large mound of brand-new razor wire glittered brightly in the light.

  Cat’s heart turned to ice as she slowly backed away. “If I’d fallen on that, would I have survived it?”

  “You didn’t. That’s all that matters,” he said, and tried to put his arm around her. When she resisted, he sighed. “Probably not.”

  Chapter Three

  Cat sat on the edge of Liam’s camp bed as he finished cleaning the abrasions on her palm. “Why did you follow me out there, anyway?”