by Dana Marton
Butcher Boy hurried into the next building, down a short hallway, then opened a door to stairs that led down. But he didn’t move forward. Instead, he swore and raised his gun.
Walker was quicker. He shot the bastard in the back of the head.
Then he ran forward, ready to jump over the body when he spotted Clara darting up the steps.
She was a bloody mess and nearly half-naked. But she was moving. Air rushed into his lungs. He could breathe again.
“How bad are you hurt?”
She had steel in her gaze as she dropped the knife she’d been holding, and grabbed the dead guy’s pistol. And shot him in the dick. Then she turned to Walker. “Nothing serious. I can make it.”
She was alive. Without life-threatening injuries. Thank you, God.
He reached for her hand. He needed to be touching her. “Time to get out of here.”
They ran down the hallway, and were at the door in less than a minute. Then they stepped out into an inferno.
“The Tamchén are attacking,” he shouted over the din, and darted around the building with her.
“What’s all the black smoke?”
“I set some tires on fire.”
Even in their mad rush, Clara took the time to flash him a withering look. “Do you know how bad that is for the environment? Why don’t you just stab a fork into a dolphin’s eye?”
God love a woman who could keep a sense of humor in a situation like this.
He grinned at her, but then his good mood dipped when they had to step over a lifeless body. A young girl. Aw, shit. He checked closer. “Rosita?”
She’d caught a half-dozen bullets in the back. Walker glanced at Clara, but Clara didn’t seem surprised to see the teenager there. She didn’t seem heartbroken either.
He shot a man running toward them, but he kept one eye on Clara. Her mission was toast.
He shot another guy who got too close. “Looks like Rosita’s recovery will be a body retrieval. I’m sorry.”
But instead of chagrin, a fierce expression sat on Clara’s face, a kind of fuck-the-bitch look. She moved forward, past the girl, without a backward glance. “How do we get out?”
He suspected there was a story there, but his questions would have to wait.
“Through the back.” He ran, spraying bullets.
She followed him without hesitation.
As they rounded the corner of the next building, he grabbed a discarded cement block and headed for a parked truck. “Stay here.”
He jumped into the cab, turned on the engine, aimed the truck at the wall, then dropped the cement block on the gas pedal. He made sure the truck would hit the wall, then jumped out at the last second, rolled, while the ground shook with the impact of the crash.
The wall didn’t exactly come down, but the top did collapse.
“Up!” he shouted to Clara.
They climbed the truck’s crumpled front. From the roof of the cab they could reach the top of the half-toppled wall. The barbwire had snapped, a definite bonus. One leap over the jumble of wires, then a jump down onto the other side. Then they were in the clear.
“Run as fast as you can.”
But even as they dashed forward, toward the houses, more Tamchén were moving in, arriving in the backs of pickup trucks.
“The jungle-camp crew, coming to provide reinforcements.”
Walker grabbed for Clara again and dragged her into the nearest doorway, kicked the door in, slammed it shut behind him.
Nobody in sight, but a kid was crying somewhere. The family was probably huddled in the pantry or basement. They’d seen turf wars before. They knew to run for cover the moment the first gunshots sounded.
Walker darted through the house with Clara, out the back, then ran through backyard after backyard, scaling fences. He didn’t have any specific destination in mind, so he simply ran in the opposite direction from the sounds of gunfire and explosions.
He only slowed when Clara could no longer keep up.
He picked her up and carried her through a gate, back out to the street, to the nearest car. He kicked in the driver’s side window, brushed the glass off the seat, then reached over and opened the passenger-side door for her. “Get in.”
By the time she limped around, he had the car hot-wired. “Do you need to go to a hospital?”
“A bottle of peroxide and some bandages will do.”
“Brunhilda will have that.”
“Brunhilda was hurt when I was taken.” She sounded a lot more stricken about that than she’d been about Rosita.
“Is that where they grabbed you? Why did you go back to Brunhilda’s?”
“Couldn’t take the Glock to the airport. I forgot to give it to you before you left.”
Shit. He should have remembered to ask for it.
He turned the car in Brunhilda’s direction. But then gunfire sounded somewhere ahead of them.
A building burned in the distance. Fighting had probably broken out all over town, gangs joining in on the sides of the cartels, his best-case scenario coming true.
He turned onto a quiet side street. “Forget Brunhilda. She’s tough enough to take care of herself. I’ll check on her later. We need to get you out of here.”
When they reached the end of town, he could see the drug factory in flames a few blocks away. Thank you, Jorge. But Walker felt little satisfaction. He just wanted Clara safe.
While he scanned the road ahead, Clara was watching him. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Her tone turned subdued, with a hint of shaky. Her adrenaline high was crashing. “This is what you came here to do. Did you get Santiago?”
He shook his head. “I’m taking you to the airport.”
For once, she didn’t protest. Her hands shook. She shoved them under her armpits. The move smeared more blood on her torso, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Seeing blood on her kept shorting out his brain. The shiner she was sporting didn’t help. Her face was bruised, as if she’d been punched in the face, maybe more than once.
They were out of immediate danger, but the tension in the car didn’t abate. He kept his eyes on the open road in front of them. He filled his lungs, and then he let himself think the thought that he hadn’t allowed himself to think while they’d been in the thick of the fighting.
Clara shot Butcher Boy in the crotch.
That seemed like a very specific shot.
The blood she had on her was mostly on her wrists, except that bright red line down the middle of her chest. And she’d had her jeans on when Walker had found her.
Yet that crotch shot…
He could think of no easy way to ask the question, so he asked it straight. “Were you raped?”
“I’m fine.” But her voice was too damn tight and suddenly brittle.
Cold fury spread through him. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. He wanted to turn the car around, go back, and pound those bastards into a bloody pulp with his bare fists.
“They had me tied naked to a table.” Her quiet words reached him through his fury, through the blood roaring in his ears.
Jesus. He couldn’t breathe.
Maybe he shouldn’t have asked. But if she wanted, needed, to talk about it, he would damn well listen. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
And then she told him the rest: Rosita, Butcher Boy, and their plans.
Walker pulled over, drew Clara into his arms, and held her as tightly as he could without hurting her. It was just as much for him as it was for her, maybe more. Butcher Boy had died way fucking easy. If Walker had known, he would have definitely spent more time on the sick bastard.
“Thank you, for coming for me,” Clara whispered into his neck.
He held on to her.
He never wanted to let her go.
But he knew he had to. He knew he did. Even if it was killing him.
Adrenaline still coursed through him, his body aroused from the fighting. He sported an impressive postbattle hard-on, a c
ommon male biological response to violence.
Except, an overload of testosterone filling his brain with images of her moving over onto his lap and stripping was the dead last thing she needed.
He held his body still.
But she kissed his cheek.
God, she had soft lips.
He turned his head to catch her gaze and talk her out of whatever she thought she was doing, but instead, their lips met. And held.
She deepened the kiss first.
But he let her.
And then he kissed her back. Not gently. Not nicely. He kissed her back like crazy.
She responded with instant heat.
Oh man.
He didn’t trust himself with her. He could not be trusted with her. Except, she didn’t seem to realize this.
Thank God for the blaring police sirens, for the half-dozen cop cars that zoomed by. The ear-busting noise brought them both back to sanity.
He pulled his lips from hers and buried his face into her soft neck so he wouldn’t kiss her again.
He held her for as long as he dared. Then he drew away and pulled the car back onto the road.
She had to leave so she would be safe.
He drove north through the night, stopping at a gas station only to gas up the car and buy a small first aid kit, along with food and water and a T-shirt for her. After they ate and he treated Clara’s wounds, they kept going.
He drove her straight to the airport. He didn’t walk her in. She had on a clean T-shirt, her wrists bandaged, but Walker was covered in blood. He stayed next to his car in the shadow of the parking garage, watched her walk away from him, into the light of the airport entrance.
Just over the line where the light and shadow met, she stopped and turned back to him.
“I want you to come with me,” she said instead of heading inside. She stepped back toward him. “Walker—”
She hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind and came all the way back.
He didn’t wrap his arms around her again so he wouldn’t dirty her clean shirt. But he wanted to feel her one last time. So he kissed her.
He kissed her so that if she forgot everything else about him, she would still remember their last kiss. He kissed her to brand himself on her brain, as she was already branded on his. He was so hard, wanted her so much, he probably would have lost it if her hands dropped and brushed against the bulge behind his zipper. To prevent just that, he gathered them and pressed them against his heart.
He held his lower body away from her, when all he wanted was to grind himself against her, to switch their positions and push her up against the car, hook her legs around his waist, and pump himself into her sweet heat.
Which was really fucking sick, because she’d just been traumatized. He had to stop reacting to her in a sexual way.
The shadows hid her bruises, but he knew they were there. And that knowledge ripped him to shreds.
He tore his mouth from hers and backed away.
“I’m never going to see you again, am I?” Her voice thickened. Her eyes filled with tears. “Come with me.”
He didn’t respond.
He loved her. So he had to let her go. So she would be safe.
What had happened to her at the compound only cemented his resolve. She’d gotten hurt because of the war he’d started. She’d almost become a casualty of that war.
He had a hard time living with that thought.
She searched his gaze. “Are you going after Santiago right now? Are you just going to head back into the fray?”
He nodded. And then he turned and moved away from her to the driver’s door, putting the car between them, because he needed a physical barrier to keep from reaching for her.
If he reached for her, he wasn’t going to be able let her go again.
“Please try to stay alive,” she said, because, of course, she was worried about him the Navy SEAL, not about herself, even while she was covered in bandages.
“Don’t punish yourself for Ben’s death,” she kept going, unstoppable. “Because, you know how guilty you feel about Ben’s death? That’s how guilty I’m going to feel about leaving you here alone if something happens to you. Do you want me to live my life like that?”
That nearly got him smiling. He shook his head. She was blackmailing him into being careful. God, he loved her.
“I’m not going to die here,” he promised. “I wouldn’t give these bastards the satisfaction.”
Her smile of relief wobbled toward the end. “Thank you.”
He didn’t trust himself to say anything.
What if he opened his mouth and all that came out was, “Please stay.”
He watched as she finally turned and walked into the bright lights surrounding the airport. He watched her until she passed through the doors and disappeared.
And suddenly, he felt like a ship that had lost its anchor. He was adrift. Waves of emotions he’d never felt before and couldn’t identify battered him. He reached up and rubbed his chest where a heavy pain spread with alarming speed.
He was never going to see her again.
The thought nearly dropped him to his knees.
He slammed his fist into the car’s doorframe and welcomed the pain.
Then he got behind the wheel and rode off to battle.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Five months later, Washington, DC
Clara watched from the kitchen door as her coworkers mingled around the Christmas brunch buffet her mother had set up on the kitchen island. Brunch at the general’s house Christmas morning was in its second year, on its way to becoming an office tradition. Not that they were having much of a party. Other than Clara, only three investigators could make it, everyone else overseas on various cases.
Milo Davis, Finn Carter, and Jackson Turner were talking with her father, analyzing a past case that had gone wrong and ended up with the recovery target’s death. At her mother’s slight frown, Clara’s father smoothly transitioned the topic to what everyone’s plans were for New Year’s Eve.
The three guys were packing away serious amounts of food while they talked, all three bachelors who normally existed on microwave dinners.
Milo strode off to grab a drink. He always cut a solitary figure somehow, even in the middle of a party. He had a kind of Lone Ranger vibe to him. Clara could see why Elaine Fisher, the office manager, would be attracted.
“When’s Jill coming home?” Finn asked Jackson, a twenty-nine-year-old ex-Marine.
Jackson flashed a sailor-on-shore-leave grin. “Tomorrow. Man, I can’t wait.”
Jill, Jackson’s girlfriend, was deployed in the Middle East with the Air Force.
“I guess we won’t be hanging out over the holidays.” Finn smirked.
Jackson flashed his pearly whites. “Don’t call. Don’t come over. No offense.”
Finn shook his head and almost smiled as he said, “Make sure you keep hydrated.”
Finn had his usual air of tragic mystery around him. He was in his midthirties, handsome enough for Hollywood, but could never act, because for that he would have to show emotion, and Finn’s emotions were locked down tighter than Fort Knox. And maybe that worked for him, because his success rate for target recoveries was phenomenal.
The rumors at the DOD had it that a decade or so ago, when he’d been a CIA spy, he’d spent some time in an Asian prison with the woman he loved. She’d been executed—death by firing squad. He’d been sent to labor camp, escaped, and eventually made it back to the US. A very different man than when he’d left.
Behind Finn and Jackson, Elaine, the office manager, was chatting with Grandma Lucy over Christmas-tree-shaped French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar.
While Grandma Lucy talked about making maple syrup when she’d been young, Elaine cast longing glances toward Milo, who, still oblivious to her feelings for him, was staring into his coffee. He didn’t like being between assignments. He would have traded Christmas for being in the fie
ld in a heartbeat.
Clara felt the sudden sensation of being watched and turned toward the living room, caught Bjorn, the department’s resident IT guru looking at her with an expression that resembled Elaine’s. He was a six-foot Viking with dirty blond hair and ice-blue eyes, in his late twenties, quick to joke, easy to smile. He was smiling at her now.
He’d been smiling at her quite a lot lately.
He was seriously hot. Smart. One of the good guys, the kind who would send flowers after a date. He’d been hinting for the past month or so that he was open to an office romance.
“Hey, want to go outside and make snow angels?” Bjorn asked with a playful glint in his eyes. A glint that said he wouldn’t mind a round of the ancient Viking game hide my war club either.
“Too cold.” Clara felt a pang of guilt at the undisguised disappointment on Bjorn’s face, so she tried to soften her words with a smile, but even she didn’t buy it.
He flashed her a look of, I like you and I don’t mind waiting.
Her next smile was more sincere, but she couldn’t make it encouraging.
What’s wrong with me?
A hundred out of a hundred other women would have jumped for joy at the thought of rolling around in the snow with Mr. Sexy Viking. He was a great guy in every possible way. Except for one major, crucial fault that Clara couldn’t get past.
He wasn’t Walker.
And she was in love with Walker. Which she’d realized too late, and now she couldn’t tell him, because she couldn’t find him. He’d disappeared off the face of the earth.
She turned back to the kitchen and forced herself to pick up a cookie, so her mother wouldn’t frown at her for being empty-handed. She didn’t need another you’re-not-eating-enough speech of motherly concern.
If she didn’t feel like eating, she didn’t feel like eating.
She swallowed a groan. God, she was like a lovesick teenager. She hated being this miserable, missing Walker still with every breath. She hated the longing that filled her up and wouldn’t let her sleep at night.
Walker had obviously gotten over her. He hadn’t called or emailed. He hadn’t tried to reach her once since they’d last seen each other at the airport in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. She only knew that he’d survived the cartel showdown because her father had told her. But even her father didn’t know more than that.