Yeah. He was an idiot.
“How’s Marcus?” he asked, because it seemed safer than anything else he could’ve said.
She lifted a shoulder. “He hasn’t been around. He went back to California to be there for Danny’s wife through the funeral and he hasn’t come back yet. Gabe told him to take as much time as he needs.”
“And Jean-Luc?”
She winced.
“What’s wrong with Jean-Luc?” The Cajun had needed a transfusion and some stitches, but his prognosis had been good. Jesse couldn’t imagine what had possibly happened to change that in the past weeks.
“He’s gone rogue.”
“Oh shit.”
“Uh-huh. He wanted to find Claire Oliver. Gabe and Quinn told him we didn’t have enough intel to go on and he shouldn’t be in the field until he was medically cleared, so he told them to do something anatomically impossible and took off. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since.”
“Jesus. That reckless bastard is goin’ to get himself killed.”
“That’s the general consensus, yes.”
More silence. They’d run out of the safe small talk.
Lanie took her hands out of her pockets, but then seemed to not know what to do with them and shoved them back in. “So,” she said after another beat. “I just left an interesting meeting with Tucker, Gabe, and Quinn. They said you suggested me for field commander. They offered me the job.”
His mouth twitched with a smile. “Did you accept?”
“I haven’t given them an answer yet. I…” She hesitated. “I need to ask you something first. Why did you suggest me?”
He finally closed the distance between them, catching her face in his palms before she could turn away. “I told them to consider you because I believe with all my heart you’re the best person for the job. And they must agree with me or else they wouldn’t have extended an offer.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips, then shied away. “I don’t want to be accused of sleeping my way into the position.”
Yeah, he figured. She was so sensitive to others’ perception of her. “I may have a bit of pull with Gabe and Quinn, but not with Tucker Quentin. The only person who influences Quentin is Quentin himself. So did you sleep with him?”
She reared back in shock. “What? No! Of course not. He’s not my type.”
“Then I don’t see how anyone could accuse you of sleepin’ your way to the top.” He traced a finger along the sharp line of her jaw. “They made the offer because you’re good at what you do. You’re a natural-born leader. You deserve this.”
Her hand came up and loosely circled his wrist. “What about you? They offered it to you first. Don’t you want it?”
“No.”
“You’re not just saying that because—”
He kissed her to both stop whatever question she’d been about to ask and because he just plain wanted to. It had been too long since he’d felt his lips against hers and he missed it. He missed her. “I’ve done a lot of thinkin’ these past weeks and I realized somethin’. I’m not cut out for this life. I’m not sure I ever was, and it’s been slowly eatin’ away at me. I live every day in fear of goin’ back to the darkest days of my life, and yet every op, I put myself in the same conditions that led to them the first time around. I can’t relive them. I won’t survive it a second time. I need to think about Connor.”
She drew back enough to gaze into his eyes. “What are you saying? You’re quitting?”
“Not yet. I won’t leave the guys without medical care. God knows this group needs me. I’ll go on ops when I’m needed, but I’ll start trainin’ a new medic. Jeremiah Wolfe has shown promise. Soon, though, I want to leave HORNET and go to medical school.”
He wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he’d expected from her, but her complete non-reaction wasn’t it. She withdrew from his embrace and crossed her arms in front of her. “So you’re quitting. Where does that leave us?”
He dropped his arms to his sides. “I hope in a better place than we were a few minutes ago. If I stay, you’d be my commander, and I wouldn’t be able take you to bed and do the kinds of things I want to do to you.”
She released a shaky breath and all the steel went out of her spine. “You still want me?”
“Oh, Lanie.” He again gathered her close and held her against his chest. She didn’t resist. Her arms wound around his waist and held on while he breathed in the scent of her shampoo. “Of course I do. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life wantin’ you. I’m sorry I kept you at arm’s length these last few weeks. Danny’s death…it woke me up. I needed to figure everything out before I brought you into my life. But I do want you in my life. I love you.”
She swallowed hard. “I won’t hurt you. I support whatever decision you make. If going to med school is what will make you happy, we’ll make it work. Whatever happens from here on out, I’m here for you. I stick.”
“I know.” He grinned. “Like a burr.”
“Hey!” She playfully smacked his chest, then fisted her hands in the front of his sweaty shirt. “I love you, cowboy.”
And she dragged him in for a kiss that knocked his Stetson off his head.
Epilogue
Sunday, August 30
8:00 a.m.
HORNET Headquarters, WY
“It’s not just reckless,” Gabe said and sat in the chair behind his huge desk. The leather squeaked as his big body settled back. “It’s dangerous.”
Dangerous? Jean-Luc snorted a laugh. “Since when has that stopped us?”
“Suicidal,” Jesse corrected. The cowboy took off his battered Stetson and dragged a hand though his dark hair. “Jesus, Cajun. You’re barely back on your feet.”
And languishing in bed had almost killed him as sure as the bullet that tore through his stomach last month. He’d hated the forced inactivity and the overwhelming sense of helplessness it had brought on. And then there had been the dreams. Crazy stuff, peppered with images of his mamere in her kitchen, whipping up her famous étouffée. She’d scolded him for being a selfish coullion, for never doing anything that didn’t benefit him in some way.
Mais, Mamere, I’m trying to do good.
For once in his life, he wanted to do the right thing and he was facing nothing but opposition for his trouble. He wished he could be as blasé about this as the rest of the team was. Some mornings, he’d wake up and tell himself Dr. Claire Oliver’s safety was technically none of his concern.
And then he’d go to bed the following night and dream of Claire. Of her blond hair tucked back in a neat little bun and a tongue as sharp as her eyes were blue. Of the fear in those eyes last time he saw her. Of the promise he’d made her to protect her friend…and hadn’t kept.
Which brought him back to the original reason for this meeting. “I know my intel’s good. Claire was spotted three weeks ago in Morocco, and again a few days later in Cote d’Ivoire.”
Lanie gave him an apologetic smile. “But we’ve also had reports of her from Tunisia, Croatia, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Myanmar… She’s not staying in any one place for more than a few days, sometimes only a few hours. Even if she was still in Cote d’Ivoire, she’d be long gone before we got to her.”
He couldn’t explain how he knew this time was different. Yes, Claire had been bouncing across the globe, just as he’d told her to. Every place they’d traced her to had been completely random. No rhyme or reason to her destinations, which had been smart of her, but now she was moving in a distinct direction. Croatia to Tunisia to Morocco to Côte d’Ivoire. She was on her way somewhere in Africa, and if he’d figured that much out, then so had Defion. Big money funded their hunt for her, and they weren’t idiot rent-a-soldiers. They were well-trained, battle-hardened operatives on a mission.
Aaaand there was that sense of helplessness again, winding around his chest like a boa, choking the air from his lungs. “She’s not safe.”
Lanie set a hand on his shoulder and light glinted off the simple whi
te-gold band on her ring finger. Jean-Luc looked down at it, then up at Jesse. Well, fuck him sideways. The slow-poke cowboy could move fast when he made up his mind about something. Smart man.
Lanie squeezed his shoulder, drawing his attention back. “We will find Dr. Oliver, but—”
“But going off half cocked on three-week-old intel won’t help,” Quinn finished, speaking for the first time since Jean-Luc walked into the office.
He shrugged off Lanie’s hand and paced to the big bay window overlooking the rolling Wyoming plains. In one direction was the training center, a blocky concrete building where their dwindling group of trainees were supposed to be learning how to pull off a successful op. Half a mile in the other direction, the frame of Gabe and Audrey’s new house was just about completed. Surrounding it all, the Tetons loomed in silent guard. Sometimes he wondered if the mountains were meant to keep bad guys out or to keep him in.
God, he missed Louisiana. He missed humidity so thick that breathing was more like slurping pudding. He missed the quiet of the bayou near his mamere’s house, and the pungent earthy scents of moss, peat, and brackish water, the symphony of cicadas lulling him to sleep every night. He missed the color and flash of New Orleans, too. The bayou had his soul, but that city had his heart. He was more than a little sick of this dusty, rugged place, where the nearest bar was a honky-tonk forty miles away in Idaho.
He spun back to the group. “It’s better than sitting here in Bum Fuck, Wyoming, with our thumbs up our asses.”
Quinn merely raised an eyebrow. “Explain how getting yourself killed somewhere in Bum Fuck, Africa, will save her?”
Merde. This convo was going nowhere. After leaving on his own intel-seeking mission last week, he shouldn’t have returned here. The moment he traced Claire to Africa, he should’ve hopped on a plane. Yeah, it was a big continent, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that if he didn’t start looking now, Defion would find her first. Hell, they might already know exactly where she was. He could already be too late.
Weird how that thought made his stomach ache.
He told himself it was the freshly healed bullet wound that hurt, nothing more.
“Why don’t you give the information you have to Harvard?” Lanie suggested after an uncomfortable silence. “See what he can find. Once we have more intel, we’ll come up with a plan. I promise you we won’t leave Claire out there unprotected, but we need to be smart about this. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened in Martinique.”
A fist closed around Jean-Luc’s throat at the reminder. They had never lost a man until Martinique, and, okay, yeah, he understood their need for caution. But Danny’s death, so close on the heels of his mamere’s passing, was precisely why he wanted to tell them all to fuck caution. He couldn’t take anyone else dying right now.
So, okay, he was being selfish. A tiger can’t change his stripes and all that.
He reined in his frustration. As annoying as it was, Lanie had a point. If Claire had left a trail, Harvard would find it, and that knowledge was the only thing keeping him from tearing out of here and jumping on the first plane to Africa. “Yeah, I’ll give what I have to Harvard.”
Jesse nodded, and if Jean-Luc wasn’t mistaken, the fleeting expression crossing the medic’s face was relief. “We’ll find her, pal.”
“Oui, I know.” As he turned to the door, he felt weirdly deflated, and more than a little exhausted. Maybe he wasn’t at full strength yet, but it didn’t matter how he felt. He wasn’t the one in danger of dying right now.
He stalked out of the office, his bad mood following like a storm cloud, charging the air around him. On the front porch, he paused and drew in a breath of the hot, dry summer air. It did nothing to ease the aching tightness in his chest.
He hated this.
Hated feeling useless. Hated the inactivity. Hated that he cared so fucking much about the welfare of a woman he’d had only one conversation with.
“They’re not telling you everything.”
Marcus’s voice caught him by surprise and he stumbled on the last step of the porch. He straightened and glared. “You scared the piss outta me. Warn a guy next time, yeah?”
A smile ghosted across Marcus’s lips as he stepped out of the shadows cast around the porch by the early morning sun. He didn’t smile as often or as brightly since Danny’s death, which was a real damn shame. Jean-Luc had been with enough people to say with certainty that Marcus Deangelo had the most beautiful smile of anyone he’d ever met, man or woman.
Another smile whispered through his memory. Claire’s. He’d spent their entire conversation at the poolside bar in Martinique trying to get her to smile. She never gave him a full one, but rather an uncertain twitch of her lips, like she hadn’t wanted to but couldn’t help it.
“Well, aren’t you Mary Sunshine this morning,” Marcus said.
“Okay, one, it’s morning. When have you ever known me to be a morning person?” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “Two, I haven’t been laid in over five months.”
“Still think you’re cursed, huh, Cajun?”
“I don’t think. I know. And three, I don’t like being lied to. What the fuck do you mean they’re not telling me everything?”
Marcus glanced over at the house, then tilted his head toward the training center, indicating they should walk. Jean-Luc fell into step beside him and waited impatiently for an answer. He didn’t get one. With every step they took, anxiety tightened its fist around his stomach. He slid a glance in Marcus’s direction. Guy wasn’t right, hadn’t been since they put Danny in the ground, but he was pretending all was A-okay. Walking beside him was a bit like standing next to a rumbling volcano. You didn’t know when it’d erupt, only that an eruption was coming.
Halfway across the field, Jean-Luc couldn’t take the silence. He stopped short. “Talk, mon ami.”
A few steps ahead, Marcus also stopped and turned back to face him. “They know where Claire is. Or at least have a better idea than they led you to believe.”
The words landed like a physical blow. All the air left his lungs in a huff. Questions spitfired through his mind—why would they lie? How long have they known? How could they betray him like this?—but the one that made it past his lips was the most important: “Where is she?”
Marcus reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out a piece of paper, and held it out.
Jean-Luc slowly took the page and opened it. It was a printout of a BBC news article about an outbreak of Hantavirus in Nigeria. Normally another virus outbreak in Africa didn’t make Western headlines until it reached epidemic level or killed off a few white people, but this one was apparently newsworthy because Hantavirus was a Euro-Asian virus and hadn’t ever been seen in humans in Africa before.
A thrill chased through him and he crushed the paper in his fist. “She’s there.” He didn’t know how he knew it, but he was as certain as he was of his own name. “She’s in Nigeria.” It made sense, given the southward trajectory of her recent travels.
Marcus nodded. “That’s what Jesse thinks.”
“How do you know?”
“Overheard him talking to Gabe and Quinn about it this morning. They all agreed to investigate it further, but not tell you until they had something more concrete. Jesse doesn’t think you’re ready for active duty yet.”
Betrayal left his mouth tasting bitter. “But here you are, telling me anyway. Don’t you think I’ll get myself killed over there?”
Marcus gazed out over the grounds. He was looking toward the training center, but Jean-Luc doubted he was actually seeing it. He had that thousand yard stare of a soldier who had seen too much. Oui, that explosion would happen, and probably sooner rather than later.
Then Marcus shook his head, drew a sharp breath. “Danny died trying to protect this woman and her research. The bosses are being overabundantly cautious and it’s making them slow to react. If Dr. Oliver dies before we get to her and her research falls into the wrong hands, t
hen Danny’s death was for nothing. I can’t—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “I told his wife his death meant something. Told her he helped save millions of people. It gave her some comfort, and I don’t want to be made a liar.” He met Jean-Luc’s gaze again, and his lashes were spiked with moisture. “So I’m coming with you and we’re going to make sure your woman stays alive.”
A quick spurt of panic sent his blood racing. “She’s not my—”
“Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that, buddy.” Marcus held out a hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Jean-Luc looked back toward the house. Jesse and Lanie were just leaving, climbing into Jesse’s old beater of a truck. “This might get us thrown off the team.”
Marcus didn’t even blink. “I don’t care.”
Neither did he. His only hesitation was Marcus—if not for the other man, Jean-Luc would already be on his way to the nearest international airport. But Marcus was a grown man. If he wanted to put himself in danger, that was his own choice.
Jean-Luc accepted the out-stretched hand. “Pack a bag, mon ami. We’re going to Nigeria.”
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Acknowledgments
I owe my thanks and maybe a box of chocolate to the following awesome people:
Elizabeth Thayer and Nicole MacDonald for helping me name this book.
Jackson D’Lynn for her blurb writing talents.
My editor, Heather, for her endless patience, and the entire Entangled team for all the work they do. You’re all superheroes.
And finally, The Boyfriend. You’re my rock. I wouldn’t have made it through the last crazy year without you, and this book certainly never would’ve been finished without your nagging—er, I mean, support. I love you.
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