One Tough Marine

by Paula Graves

  Luke fell into step, deciding he liked Ross Langston after all. He seemed to be a solid, good-natured guy, and Luke believed him when he said that their secrets were safe with him, though he knew secrets always came out, one way or another.

  Like the truth about Stevie’s paternity.

  With that secret now out in the open, it would be a race against time to make sure that particular truth didn’t come back to haunt them all.

  Abby was sitting in the faded rocking chair on the front porch, waiting for them to return. She smiled as they headed up the porch steps, but the tension in her eyes belied her friendly expression. Luke wasn’t surprised when she told Ross to go on inside without her. “I need to talk to Luke in private.”

  Luke waited for Ross to close the door behind him before he settled into the matching rocker next to Abby. He didn’t turn his head to look at her. His stomach was in double knots.

  “You must be so angry at me,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I deserve everything you must have thought about me after you woke up alone that morning.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that I had no right to keep the truth about your son from you.”

  Hearing her say the words—your son—sent pain ripping through his chest. Somehow, from her lips, the words sounded so real, so final. No more pretending he didn’t know the truth.

  Stevie was his son.

  He bit his lip, fighting against the burning ache at the back of his eyes. “I understand why you kept it from me.”

  “I don’t want you to understand!” Abby rose from the rocking chair and turned to face him. “Why aren’t you angry at me? Do you even care that you have a son?”

  He rose swiftly, startling her so much that she almost lost her footing. He caught her around the waist to keep her from falling. “Of course I care!” He tightened his grip on her, overcome by a flood of yearning so hard and deep that he thought he might drown if he had to let go of her. “It’s everything I ever wanted but knew I’d never have.”

  In the yellow glow of the porch light, Abby’s face glistened with falling tears. “Knew you’d never have?”

  He forced himself to let go of her, not a bit surprised by the ripping sensation in his gut. It was an echo of the feeling that had overcome him that morning, almost three years ago, when he’d had to leave her bed and head for hell across the world.

  He’d known then he could never come back to her.

  Just as he knew, now, that what he had to tell her next would change everything between them forever.

  “I can’t be with you, Abby,” he said softly.

  “Is that what you think I want?” She lifted her chin, her eyes flashing with defiance. It would have been a convincing performance to almost anyone else in the world.

  But Luke knew her better than almost anyone else. He’d seen her build walls around herself, slowly but surely, as Matt’s distance and betrayals took their toll on her open, trusting soul. She’d gotten very good at pretending anger and indifference when she was hurting.

  He’d hurt her badly by leaving. He knew because leaving her had been agony for him, a pain he’d relived every day since. He’d never really understood the meaning of the word loneliness until he’d looked into the bleak depths of a long, immutable future without her.

  “I don’t know what you want,” he admitted. “I just know that no matter what I want, the outcome will always be the same. I can’t be with you. I can’t be Stevie’s father.”

  The first crack appeared in her carefully-controlled facade, a faint tremble of her lower lip. She caught the traitorous lip between her teeth, pain seeping into the defiance in her bright blue eyes.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment. “He doesn’t know any different anyway. He’ll be okay.”

  Luke felt gut-punched at the thought of Stevie growing up without him around to experience it. “Abby, I need you to understand—”

  “I understand,” she said bluntly, pushing past him toward the front door.

  He swung her around to face him. “No, you don’t.”

  “We didn’t make any promises,” she said with a smile so forced that it was painful to see. “I know that. And I don’t need child support or anything—”

  “I can’t acknowledge him because doing so would put a target on his back,” Luke interrupted.

  Her brow furrowed as his words worked their way past her mental defenses. “A target? You think those guys following us will be even more ruthless if they know he’s your son?”

  Luke shook his head, hating to admit what he had to tell her now. “Abby, they’re not the only people who are after us.”

  “Not the only—” She stopped short, her eyes darkening with understanding. “Oh, my God. The murder at the motel—that was someone else?” He nodded.

  “And they’re after us?”

  “Technically, after me,” he said. “Who? Why?”

  Luke felt her shiver beneath his touch. He didn’t think it was just from the cold night air. “Have you ever heard of Eladio Cordero?”

  The furrow in her brow deepened. “The drug guy?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s after you? Why?”

  “Because four years ago, I killed his son,” Luke answered.

  Chapter Eleven

  The chill November night couldn’t come close to matching the icy coldness that crept through Abby’s body at Luke’s confession.

  Four years ago, he’d killed the son of one of the most brutal, elusive drug lords in the world. The kind of man who would never forgive such an act—or forget it.

  And who had enough money and power to extend his brutal reach far beyond the confines of his hideout in the Sanselmo rain forest.

  “How did that happen?” she asked aloud.

  “It wasn’t long after the coup attempt. Cordero had heavily funded El Cambio rebels to foment unrest among the labor unions and the farmers, for his own purposes, since the Morales government had begun seriously cracking down on marijuana and coca production in the rural areas. His own cartel put heavy pressure on the government through targeted assassinations and other strong-arm tactics.”

  Abby nodded, a little impatiently, because she knew the basics of what had happened during the uprising. She’d always made a point of keeping up with the news whenever Matt and Luke had been off on an assignment, trying to read between the lines of the few tidbits of information either of them had been able to share with her about their top-secret missions. “Was it connected to the Voices for Villages investigation?”

  “We never found a direct connection between Cordero and the arms-for-drugs operation. But he does control a large segment of Sanselmo’s drug trade, so it’s possible.”

  “So maybe the people after us are connected to Cordero.”

  “Maybe. Except I think Cordero’s men may have killed one of the operatives sent to find us. Why would they have done that if both parties were working together?”

  She didn’t know. Nothing was making much sense at the moment. “How did you kill Cordero’s son?”

  “We were ambushed. Matt and several of the others got away immediately. I was cornered and had to fight my way out. The last person between me and the rest of my unit was Tomás Cordero. He was one of his father’s top lieutenants in the cartel. He’d been personally overseeing an attempt on the life of the president’s son. We stopped him from succeeding, that time, anyway.”

  A later assassination had killed the president’s eldest son, Abby remembered, another death added to the long list of assassinations and murders on Eladio Cordero’s tab.

  “You had to kill him to escape the ambush?” she asked.

  Luke nodded. “A day later, I learned Eladio Cordero had already discovered who I was. He knew my name, my rank, everything that could be gleaned by public means and a few things I don’t know how he learned without help from within our own government.”

  “A spy?” She stared at him, horrified. “In t
he Marines?”

  He shrugged. “In the Marines, maybe. I don’t want to think so, but you never know. Could also be in the armed services in general, or maybe even within the civilian government. Nobody’s been able to tell me.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “Money? I don’t know. The information leak seemed to be a onetime thing, or, at least, I thought so until the murder in Yuma. Cordero hasn’t bothered me or my family. Not since—” He stopped short, looking away from her suddenly.

  “Not since what?”

  He sounded reluctant when he spoke. “I’ve never been a hundred percent sure that Matt’s car crash was really an accident.”

  His words took a few seconds to sink in. When they did, Abby felt her dinner start to rise in her throat. She swallowed hard to combat the queasy sensation, trying to stay calm. “You think Cordero had Matt murdered? Why? Because Matt was your closest friend?”

  “Matt wasn’t my closest friend,” Luke said softly. “You were. Matt was driving your car, remember?”

  Abby sank into the rocking chair she’d vacated earlier, her legs too shaky to hold her. “You think it was an attempt on my life, not Matt’s?”

  “It could have been either, I suppose. Matt was a good driver. He wasn’t drunk or impaired. He should have been able to handle that curve, even at the rate of speed he was going, if something else hadn’t gone wrong.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your suspicions?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, just sank into the rocking chair beside her, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.

  “Oh, my God.” The events of those days after Matt’s accident clicked into focus. So much of Luke’s behavior that had confounded her at the time now made a horrible sort of sense. “That’s why you didn’t show up until the funeral.”

  “I was trying to find out more about the accident. I called in a lot of favors in order to be allowed to monitor the preliminary NCIS investigation.” He slanted a look at her. “I needed to know if what happened was connected to Cordero.”

  “What if it was supposed to be you?” Her voice came out in a strangled croak. “Anybody who knew anything about you knew that you and I were friends. Maybe we both were the targets.”

  “He doesn’t want to kill me,” Luke said quietly. “He wants to punish me.”

  He was right, she realized. Eladio Cordero would never be satisfied by simply killing Luke. It wasn’t his style, she knew. Some of her freelance translation work had involved a foundation dedicated to helping the victims of the Sanselmo drug wars. She’d heard tales of torment that had given her nightmares for weeks.

  Cordero was famous for embracing Old Testament justice—an eye for an eye. Killing Luke wouldn’t have seemed like fitting justice to a man like Eladio Cordero.

  He would go after people Luke loved instead. Ruthlessly and efficiently.

  “That’s why you haven’t been home in so long,” she murmured. It all made sense now.

  “The job kept me away for the first six years,” he said. “I was bucking for promotions, working my tail off to rise in the ranks. I never took any time off then. But the last four years—yeah. That was why I stayed away from my family.”

  “How did you know he wouldn’t go after them anyway?”

  “I didn’t. I tried to keep everybody out of it by just staying away, but Sam wouldn’t let the situation stand. He flew out here a while back and wormed it out of me.” Luke’s grim smile made Abby’s chest ache. “He started then and there keeping track of the latest information on Cordero—he had contacts inside the government and pulled every string he could find to stay informed. He had friends of his in the intelligence services keep an eye on Los Tiburones. That’s what Cordero calls his enforcers.”

  “I know.” She shuddered. She’d seen some of the scars that Los Tiburones had left on the bodies of their living victims.

  “Sam also decided to move back to Alabama with his daughter. Safety in numbers, I suppose. And he’s there to watch out for the family.” Luke passed a hand over his face. He looked as if he’d aged a decade in the past few minutes. “I don’t know how long that’s going to keep everyone safe. I’ve made such a mess of things.”

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “I should have tracked down Cordero before I ever left Sanselmo. I knew the kind of man he was. I knew he’d exact his revenge, one way or another.”

  “You’re not a murderer,” Abby said firmly.

  “Maybe I should have been, that one time.”

  She didn’t know how to argue against his point. If Cordero were dead, everything might be very different.

  “I never should have stayed with you that night,” Luke said bleakly. “I never should have dropped my guard and let things go so far between us. I knew better.”

  Because he’d already known about Cordero’s vow of vengeance by then, Abby finished his thought silently.

  Had that been the real reason he’d left without waking her? Why he’d stayed away since?

  Was the truth as simple—and awful—as that?

  She saw the answer in his eyes when she looked at him again. Something broke inside her, pouring equal parts pain and joy into her soul. “Oh, Luke.”

  “I’m sorry, Abby. I knew what I had to do would hurt you, but I didn’t know any other way to keep you safe.”

  “And if you’d known about Stevie?”

  “I’d have had twice the reason to stay away.”

  The bubble of joy she’d felt just moments earlier fled under the onslaught of dread. Stevie was Luke’s son. Luke had killed Cordero’s son.

  An eye for an eye.

  “Stevie,” she said, her heart in her throat. “If Cordero learns he’s your son—”

  “Nobody else can know Stevie is my son,” he growled.

  She nodded, understanding everything now. “I know.”

  He turned the rocking chair to face her, pulling her around so that their knees touched. He caught her hands, folding them between his own. “I’m sorry, Abby. About everything. I can’t tell you how sorry.”

  She pulled one of her hands free and lifted it to his face. His skin was cool, his unshaven beard beginning to grow thicker and longer. He looked tired and broken, and she didn’t know whether to cry or to hold him.

  She ended up doing both, pushing to her feet and pulling him up with her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his chest, blinking back the hot tears spilling down her cheeks. “You kept us safe. There are no words to say how thankful I am for that.”

  He stroked her hair, his heartbeat loud and quick against her ear. For a second, she could almost forget that even this small moment of comfort between them could be as dangerous as standing in the middle of a battlefield without a stitch of armor. Feeling his fingers in her hair, his body warm and strong against hers, brought back memories she thought she’d excised long before.

  “I missed you,” he whispered against her temple. “Every single day.”

  She tightened her arms around him, afraid he was going to pull away. “I missed you, too.”

  He cradled her face between his hands and made her look up at him. “When you weren’t cursing my name, that is.”

  She managed a smile. “Well, yeah. Except for then.”

  He stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and Cordero will get hit by a truck.”

  “Or the Sanselmano government will get lucky with one of their raids,” Abby suggested.

  “A heart attack would work, too.”

  She chuckled again, wishing this moment of rare closeness between them wouldn’t have to end.

  But it would. All too soon.

  “You’re shivering,” Luke said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close again. “We should go inside.”

  “I don’t want to,” she protested. Inside, he’d let her go and they might never be able to hold each other again.

  “We’re goin
g to go into hypothermia out here.”

  She released a little growl of frustration. “I’m not ready to let go yet.”

  “Just for a little while, Abs.” He rubbed her back gently.

  “You can’t promise that,” she whispered against his chest.

  He was quiet a moment, his hand still moving slowly, soothingly against her spine. He finally let go, stepping back. “I can’t promise anything. Except to do whatever I can to keep you and Stevie safe.”

  Even if that meant walking away, Abby thought.

  She loved him for it, but she kind of hated him, too.

  “Let’s go say good-night to everybody,” Luke suggested, giving her hand a gentle tug toward the door. “Then we’ll talk after everyone’s settled down for the night.”

  She tightened her grip on his hand, not budging. He turned back toward her, a quizzical look in his eyes.

  “Not yet,” she whispered, sliding her hand around the back of his neck and pulling him down to her until his mouth was inches away. Whether the fire coursing through her veins was born of the emotional roller coaster of the past few minutes or years of unrequited need, she didn’t care. If ever there was a time for abandon, surely this moment was it.

  She might never have the chance to touch him this way again. To say what needed to be said, so he’d know exactly where she stood. Where she’d always stood, even when she hadn’t been free to tell him.

  She slid her hand up to his jawline, running her thumb across his beautiful, tempting bottom lip. “I wasn’t that drunk that night, Luke. I knew exactly what I was doing and what I wanted. And even now, knowing everything that’s happened since, I don’t regret it.”

  Luke stared at her as if she were crazy. But she also saw answering hunger in the murky depths of his eyes as he lifted his hands and cradled her face, his movements rough and reckless. He whirled her around, pressing her back against the rough pine clapboard of the front wall. The ridges of wood pressed into her back, the slight pain of contact immediately overwhelmed by a flood of fire consuming her, inch by inch.

  She closed her fingers over his muscular forearms, holding him tightly just to keep from falling into a nerveless mass at his feet. Her breath caught in her lungs and burned there, making her feel light-headed.