Survive By The Team (Team Fear Book 3)

by Cindy Skaggs

  “You know you’re my best friend’s sister, right?”

  She rolled her eyes and refused to answer.

  “It’s only fair to warn you. I’m not a good guy.”

  “Spare me. First off, I’m not interested. Second off, that kind of statement is designed to get women all hot and bothered and you know it.”

  “Just keeping it real. I’ve killed before.”

  “You’re a soldier.” And again, that badass soldier thing was custom made for her weird quirks.

  “I’ll kill again before this mess is through. Today with Echo? The second I had the upper hand, I would have ended his life.”

  Her gut ached at the vehement tone as much as the words he spoke. “To save my life,” she answered quietly.

  He shook his head. “There you go again, giving everything a silver lining. Not every situation has one. When Danny asked me to watch out for you, he offered to do the same. To keep an eye on my girl.”

  “You have a girlfriend.” Those words doused the fire of her overactive libido. She would never—never—be the other woman.

  “We’d been together since high school. She put up with my nonsense and my military deployments. Had every right to expect more. The day I got the news about Danny…” He let his voice trail off. “I drove fifteen hours straight to break it off. Told her she was too small town. That I’d never loved her. Made sure she knew there was no way to save what she thought we had. Made sure she hated me. That’s not something a nice man does.”

  The silence ticked past without the rustle of the leaf in the heater to give them relief.

  She knew what he was trying to do, and honestly, she wasn’t interested, except... “Why did you break it off with the woman?”

  “Shelley?” The dashboard lights reflected in his dark eyes. Earlier in the day they were pine green, but tonight they were nearly black. He glanced at her briefly before turning his attention to the falling snow outside the windshield. “You know about Mad Dog, right?”

  She nodded. PFC Madigan had killed his wife and kid before turning the gun on himself. That’s when Danny’s paranoia had flared to life.

  “I figured that was a one-off situation. Until Danny. There was no hiding after that. No pretending that life could go back to normal. I made a vow that night. I wasn’t giving them a target. No one was dying because of me.”

  Holy deep-fried turkey. The man was a certified hero. And he thought breaking up with that girl to protect her was bad? What world did he live in? In Mandi’s world, that kind of gesture was romantic. But then again, what did Mandi know. The most romantic thing that had happened to her in the last few months was some crazy killer asking her out at a funeral. She needed to know there were good guys out there. That there was hope. “Tell me about her.”

  “Smart. Blond hair, blue eyes, all-American girl.”

  “Stop.” Basically a nightmare Mandi could never live up to. “If you tell me she was a cheerleader, I may have to vomit.”

  “No. Not a cheerleader.” He grinned. “She ran track. Had legs for miles.”

  And Mandi was a shrimp with stumps for legs. She was the antithesis of Stills’ girl back home. A short brunette with no special skills. No sports. No cheerleading. Heck, even her grades were nothing to write home about. Mandi sank back into the uncomfortable seat. Not that she was competing, but, well, she couldn’t stop comparing herself. And she fell short. Pun intended. “What made you fall in love with her? Aside from the legs.”

  “What do you mean besides the legs? Trust me, they were worthy.”

  “Tell me you didn’t fall in love with some girl because of her legs.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted.

  “You don’t know?” She’d started the line of questioning and couldn’t seem to stop running her mouth, but she was getting exasperated. For a man supposedly in love, he didn’t have a lot of concrete details. He mentioned her appearance, but that was superficial. Surely love went deeper than hair color?

  “I blocked this out a long time ago.” He drove for several miles before snapping his fingers. “She was the spitting image of her mother. Mrs. H. was amazing. The house was always clean, but not so clean you didn’t want to sit down. Mrs. H. was always home and had a smile for everyone. They played family game night after Sunday dinner. Every week. The parents went to all the kids’ games. Even mine.”

  “Nice people.” Mandi noticed that his tone was more animated when he talked about Shelley’s family. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, so she let it pass. “What sport did you play?”

  “Football.”

  “Obviously.” Could he be any further out of her league? She spared him a sideways glance. He was built like a linebacker, probably because he played high school football.

  “Senior year, I practically lived with Shelley’s family. Best part of the day was after school. Man, Mrs. H. made the best chocolate chip cookies.”

  It finally hit Mandi that he remembered more about the mom than he did Shelley. His voice was certainly more excited. “You fell in love with Shelley’s mother?” She couldn’t keep the edge from her tone, because that was... Odd.

  Stills looked mortified. “Of course not.” He frowned, deep in thought for another several miles. “Not exactly. Thinking back, I didn’t have much of a family. My mom died when I was a junior. Technically, my uncle became my guardian, but I didn’t want to move to Wyoming right before senior year, so I stayed with friends. Latched onto their families.” He shook his head. Cursed under his breath. “It was the whole family thing. I wanted what they had. Marrying Shelley would give me that same homey environment. Give me a real family.” He cursed some more before turning on Mandi. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?” She shrugged; eyes wide open. “I’m half-asleep from whatever you gave me.” It would take four of those pills to knock her out after that bomb.

  “What are you thinking?” he insisted.

  She was getting all gooey inside, and it wasn’t from homemade chocolate chip cookies. It was the story that triggered the attraction. The big, bad soldier had a rough exterior covering a very soft interior. He’d wanted a family. It was sad and sweet. Endearing. Mandi understood that deep desire for a connection. She’d been searching for the same, but always with the wrong man. “Remember when I told you about Maurice? How he was ‘protecting me’ by keeping our relationship secret.”

  “Doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “At the time, it made sense to me.” A cough interrupted. He handed her the water bottle and waited until the coughing fit passed. Then he handed her another lemon drop. All without saying a word. “What, did you invest in the entire cough drop factory?” she asked.

  He dug into the pocket of the hoodie and pulled out a handful to drop in the console between them. “I told you I could get two out of three: cough drops, pain meds, but—”

  “Not world peace. I remember now.” She sucked on the lemon-flavored drop for a minute in silence. She often wondered why she had such bad taste in men, and the only reason that made any sense was her lack of experience combined with the weight of her responsibilities. “What happened with Heather and Danny changed everything.”

  “But you stepped up.”

  “Of course I did, but we live in the kind of small town where they blamed Ellie’s health problems on Heather’s promiscuity.”

  “Small minds.”

  She sighed. A weight pulled at her scalp, like a balloon expanding inside her skull as the meds started working. “I guess I’m trying to rationalize what I did. I didn’t want people to talk. Gossip is so destructive and I’d seen how it affected Danny and Ellie. I didn’t want any part of it, but I didn’t want to be alone either. I’d known Maurice Montgomery since the first day of kindergarten. All through high school I watched him sleep his way through the girls in our class.”

  “You had a crush on him.”

  “After Danny joined the military, Maurice started coming around—offering to r
ake the leaves or shovel snow—I let him. Maybe I thought I was different than all those girls.”

  “You are.”

  “There you go again, being nice.” Her voice rose to a teasing lilt.

  “I take it Maurice didn’t grow up after high school?”

  “You guess right. We’d kept it quiet that we were seeing each other. It was his idea at first, but I convinced myself he was watching out for my reputation. I didn’t want to confuse Ellie and I didn’t want to be the target of gossip. Maurice hid me and I let him. Turns out he had a girlfriend he wasn’t hiding from the rest of the town.”

  “That’s not love,” Stills said when she finished.

  “No. It’s not. I romanticized it some. Thought he was protecting me. Protecting me,” she sniffed. “I was an idiot.”

  “You were naïve.”

  “Whatever I was, I learned my lesson. That’s how I know that what you did for your girl—Shelley—that wasn’t fake. An asshole wouldn’t care if she got caught in the crossfire.”

  She reached out to touch the arm he braced on the console. For a moment, she let his warmth soothe her pains. Then she sat back on her side of the car. “Nothing you say will convince me you and Maurice are not cut from the same cloth.” Not only were they cut from a different cloth. They had different designs. After God made Stills, he threw away the pattern.

  “Oh, hell, stop right there. Whatever you have going through your head along with the woo-woo drugs flowing through your veins needs to be cleared up right now. Because you know what I figured out? After months of moping around about my sacrifice? I didn’t sacrifice a damn thing. I never loved Shelley. Not enough. Not if I could walk away.”

  Mandi turned to face him, curling her feet up and resting her head on the rounded edge of the bucket seat. “I bet she was pretty, though. Right?”

  Stills chuckled as her words started to slur. She’d been all tight-lipped until the meds got her talking. “What makes you say that?”

  “Blond hair and long legs. Plus, just look at you.” She waved a hand in his direction, striking him in the gut.

  “I think that’s the drugs talking.”

  “You said they wouldn’t make me loopy.”

  “I also warned you not to trust me.”

  “Tricky.” Her facial expression turned dreamy. “What’s your first name?”

  “Dean.”

  “I like that. Suits you.”

  He really shouldn’t ask. “Why’s that?”

  “Because.” She patted the arm he used to lean against the center console. “You’re the rebel with a cause.”

  His skin tingled where she’d touched. He turned to respond, but her eyes closed and she started to snore softly, dead asleep sitting upright in the passenger seat. It was just as well. He was starting to enjoy their conversation, the soft timbre of her voice, and sharing secrets in the dark. Women were one of the few pleasures left in his world. He went out of his way to seek out willing and temporary women to bring him solace through the long nights he couldn’t sleep. After a while, all those women started to look the same, but not a one held a candle to blue-eyed Mandi with her low, sexy voice.

  When the flurries turned to a full-on blizzard, he flipped the wipers on high and kept his focus on the road.

  Mandi was naïve—the result of stepping up as caregiver at such a young age. Naïve and sweet, two things Stills knew to stay the hell away from. But as the night wore on, the smell of her skin tied him in knots. No matter what happened after this, he’d always know her sweet outdoorsy scent, and he’d be able to pick it out in a lineup without ever seeing her face.

  Mandi woke when the engine turned off, leaving only bitter cold and the whistle of blowing wind. She blinked sleep from her eyes but couldn’t see beyond the blowing snow in the headlights and the tail end of a semi. “Pit stop?” she croaked.

  “Not the kind you mean.” He handed her a lozenge for her scratchy throat. “Visibility is less than a quarter mile. Traffic stopped a few minutes ago.”

  “Please tell me we made it through the pass.”

  He shook his head. “Raton is up ahead.”

  Raton, New Mexico was one of the quickest passes to where they were going, but this time of year, the potential for blinding snow was high. “What if they close the pass?” A real possibility, one that had trapped her in the past, but right now, closing the highway would delay them for longer than they could afford. Panic filled her chest. She hadn’t meant to sleep. Especially when she couldn’t reach Miss Connie.

  The sudden panic started another coughing fit.

  “Take the cough drop,” he ordered.

  “Ordering me around makes me want to do the opposite.”

  “Okay. Don’t take the cough drop.”

  She smiled. Why did she have to like guys like this? Tall, broad, and unavailable. “The last medicine you told me to take put me to sleep.”

  “I warned you. I’m not a nice guy.”

  Like that kind of statement wasn’t an invitation. She sniffed in response. The wrapper crinkled as she freed the disk. The lemon and honey eased the tickle in her throat, but the rest of her ached from sitting too long.

  “It’s been long enough if you want to take another pain pill.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Your choice.”

  “Now it’s my choice,” she said doubtfully.

  “You needed the sleep.”

  “I’ll sleep when Ellie is safe.”

  “There is absolutely nothing you can do while we’re driving. Sleeping was the smart choice.”

  One he had made for her. Mandi sucked on her lozenge and pouted until the windows started to fog. “If they close the pass—”

  “Echo couldn’t get through either.”

  “Echo isn’t one man, right? How many men are there?”

  Stills ticked through him memory. “Each of the teams started with twelve men. We’ve eliminated several. There are more of than them at this point.”

  “One or more could have made it through the pass before it closed. Or already been there.” Someone could be hurting or scaring Ellie and Miss Connie. Mandi twisted the wrapper between her fingers.

  Outside, a metallic tapping sounded against the driver’s side window. Mandi jumped, but Stills simply restarted the engine and pressed the button to lower the window.

  “Evening.” A man in a uniform similar to Deputy Martin leaned into the opened window. “Semi jackknifed a couple miles ahead, blocking traffic. We closed the highway, but you folks got through before that happened.”

  “Does that mean we can get through once they clear the scene?” Mandi asked.

  “No, ma’am. We’re recommending everyone turn around. There’s a town a few miles back with a motel and a café. They’ll be the first to know when the pass opens.”

  Cold seeped in with his words. “But there has to be another way.”

  “Most of the alternate routes are already closed.” He stepped back and tightened a hood around his face to avoid the blistering winds. “Better hurry.” He used a flashlight to gesture down the highway where scores of cars and SUVs were lined up. “The motel fills up fast. They’ll open the high school for overflow, but you folks will be more comfortable in the motel.”

  The deputy stepped back to the next car in line. Stills powered up the window. Handed her a flat black phone. “As soon as you get signal, call ahead to the motel and get us a reservation.”

  “We can’t turn around.”

  He was already making a U-turn. “Not much choice. We can’t get around a jackknifed semi, and it will take hours to clear in this weather. We’ll run out of food, water, and heat before that happens.”

  “But...” Mandi shivered. “What about Ellie?”

  Stills focused on driving, going much slower than he had earlier in the day in deference to the weather. “As soon as we get cell signal, I’ll call the team. See if they got through.”

  Mandi’s panicked brain came up with all s
orts of problems with his suggestion. Ellie’s counselor called it catastrophic thinking, but Mandi called it survival. She had to know all the options. “The deputy said the alternate routes were closed.”

  “They’ll commandeer a snowplow if they have to.”

  “Don’t you mean acquire?”

  He smiled and looked at her for the first time since she’d woken. Her heart jumped. His smile wasn’t charming or devastating. It was wicked. “They only wish they were that cool.”

  “But—”

  “I’m teasing. They’ll get Ellie or die trying.”

  “They don’t even know her.”

  “They know your brother.”

  “But she doesn’t know them. She doesn’t like strangers.”

  “Only one or two of the guys are truly scary.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Wasn’t making a joke.” The SUV fishtailed and he twisted the wheel to keep them headed in the right direction. “Look, I’ll make sure they get Rose to go.” Stills cursed, and it didn’t seem to be in response to the road conditions.

  “Who is Rose?”

  “He’s as big as an ox and twice as ugly.”

  “Rose is a he?”

  Stills rubbed at his scabbed lip. “Yes, and despite the fact that he’d like to beat my face right now, he’s good with kids. He’s got sisters.”

  His words did nothing to reassure her. Mandi gripped the phone and watched the little bars for the slightest chance at a cell signal. When two bars popped up outside of town, Mandi dialed Miss Connie, but there was still no answer.

  “Try the motel,” Stills said. “And don’t try Miss Connie’s number again. I don’t want to compromise that phone.”

  She looked up the number of the motel and dialed, but they were already full and there was still a long line of vehicles flowing downhill and out of the storm.

  “I’ve slept in worse places than a high school gym,” Stills offered.

  Mandi ached from the crash. Sleeping in the car only aggravated already sore muscles. After hours in the car, what she really wanted was a hot shower and some space of her own. “Are you sure your team can get to Ellie?”