Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3)

by Trish McCallan

  “He’s dead,” Rawls interrupted.

  Surprise swept Zane’s face and then it closed down like storm shutters during a hurricane. “When?”

  Rawls held his lieutenant commander’s icy green gaze. He’d known from the get-go that withholding the news of his father’s death and flying out alone for the funeral would eventually rouse confusion and ire with Zane and Cos. “Fixin’ on a year now.”

  “A year . . .” Zane shook his head, the ice turning brittle in his eyes. “Those two weeks you disappeared to visit some gal back east?”

  “I visited her while I was there.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. He had visited Alyssa, which had been every bit as uncomfortable as the memorial and the two weeks of funeral arrangements.

  “You’re full of surprises.”

  Zane’s flat, cold comment stung, but Rawls shook the bite off. He didn’t regret keeping his friends out of that personal and painful intrusion from his past life. His teammates, for all their closeness, didn’t know who Seth Rawlings was. Hell, they didn’t even know his real name. Shrugging off his old life had been the entire purpose of joining the navy, of qualifying for the teams, of convincing HQ1 to let him join a platoon as a corpsman, rather than sticking him in the bowels of some naval hospital removed from the action. He’d been determined to erase that clueless, pampered child, determined to make sure he’d never face such helplessness again, and he had developed the skills necessary for survival.

  If he’d told Zane and Cos about his dad’s death, they would have insisted on heading out to Columbia, South Carolina, with him, where they would have heard far too quickly about William Crosby Seth Rawlings—the self-absorbed son of one of South Carolina’s oldest families—and how his pathetic, ill-prepared, good-ol’-boy lifestyle had gotten his baby sister tortured and murdered.

  “Please, make them stop, Will. Make them stop.”

  He flinched at the memory. Forced it down into that pit of shame that never quite scabbed over.

  Sure, headquarters had known his full name, but they’d been as eager to bury his story as Rawls had been. He could just imagine the headlines if some enterprising reporter ferreted out the ugly details—Southern socialite rescued by US Special Forces, turns Special Forces himself. Of course SEALs weren’t Special Forces, but none of the original articles had gotten that little detail correct anyway.

  “Your brothers joinin’ your father at the camp?” Rawls asked, recognizing the irony in the question as soon as it hit the air.

  He knew everything about Zane—from his four brothers, right down to his quest for his life-mate, which he’d found in Beth. Zane on the other hand? Hell, his best friend didn’t even know Rawls had once had a sister.

  “Dane, Chance, and Webb are out on rotation, but Gray’s going to meet the bird and haul everyone out to Dad. God knows how long he’ll be able to stay.”

  Rawls simply nodded. Zane stared at him for a couple heartbeats too many, as if he was waiting for him to come clean, waiting for him to step back beneath the umbrella of team life and team camaraderie. When Rawls remained stoically silent, Zane swore beneath his breath and turned, heading for the door.

  “You know they have eyes on Amy’s kids. They’ll be waitin’ for her to pick those boys up. Y’all will be walkin’ into a trap,” Rawls said, raising his voice as Zane approached the door.

  “That’s the consensus,” Zane acknowledged, stopping with his back to Rawls.

  While he understood Amy’s urgency to collect her kids and get them to safety, moving too early gutted their most effective snatch-and-run strategy. The biggest advantage a SEAL team had was strike hard, strike fast, strike while the enemy was unprepared and unaware. Zero dark whenever was their closest ally.

  This mission, on the other hand, was going down in broad daylight with plenty of prior warning. A blueprint for casualties.

  All of which Mac, Zane, and Cos knew, but it never hurt to issue a reminder. “Why can’t this wait until midnight? Under cover of darkness.”

  “Because there’s too many damn civilians in the mix. Amy’s parents, her kids, her brother. And two of those civilians will be armed.” Frustration sharpened Zane’s voice. “Since we can’t shoot on sight, it leaves us and everyone in that house vulnerable.”

  Nor could they warn Amy’s family that they’d be coming. In all likelihood there were ears on that house.

  Rawls nodded his understanding, his unease increasing. “What about those handy-dandy premonitions of yours? You gettin’ anything?”

  Zane shook his head. “But hell, the visions don’t always kick in when I need them.”

  True. Zane’s psychic warning system was glitchy at best. Nothing you wanted to count on to cover your ass. “You’ll need the med kit. I—”

  “Wolf’s second has medical training. He’s bringing his kit,” Zane interrupted. “You know damn well we can’t bring you in on this. Not with your head in its current scramble.” He waited, one beat . . . three beats . . . five, and then rolled his shoulders. “When you’re ready to tell us what the fuck’s going on, you know where to find us.” Without looking back, Zane walked out the door.

  Dead silence blanketed the room. After a moment, Rawls turned back to the amber bottle sunning itself on the windowsill.

  “I’m no expert on you boys,” Pachico said, his voice a cross between dry and smug. “But sounds like he’s losing patience with you. I’ve got just the song to cheer you up, though. You ready to make that call? No? Five hundred bottles of beer on the wall—” Pachico’s voice broke into song as Rawls lifted the bottle of Tennessee Honey and twisted the cap. “Five hundred bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, four hundred and ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.”

  Rawls took a pull straight from the bottle, wishing the smooth, slightly sweet fire burning down his throat had more of a bite to it.

  Because sweet Jesus, he was looking at a long, long night.

  Faith waited until the helicopter carrying Amy Chastain and her self-appointed rescue squad took to the skies before turning to the kitchen counter and picking up the plastic-wrapped plate with its thick roast beef sandwich. She paused at the front entrance of the main lodge, letting the dust devils settle before thrusting open the door. Trotting down the plank stairs, she headed across the earthen courtyard toward the largest cabin. Originally the rustic bungalow had housed all four SEALs. But then Lieutenant Cosky had set up house with Kait Winchester, and Zane with his fiancée, Beth. These days, Lieutenant Rawlings shared the place with Commander Mackenzie, alone—which was reason enough for commiseration as far as Faith was concerned.

  From the discussion she’d eavesdropped on earlier, Zane had tracked Rawlings to his bedroom. With luck, he’d stayed put after his commanding officer had left. Waving away a swarm of mosquitoes, she hurried up the three plank steps and knocked hard on the rough-hewn door. Silence greeted her from within the cabin. She knocked again, hard enough to bruise her knuckles. More silence. If he was in there, he had no intention of admitting it. Sympathy stirred; she understood the need for solitude. Indeed, she’d often felt it herself while growing up. Sometimes you just needed to get away, to escape the fear in loved ones’ eyes—or in his case, his teammates’ eyes.

  There was nothing worse than knowing someone was worrying themselves sick over you. It hadn’t mattered how often she’d reminded herself that the situation wasn’t her fault, or how many times her therapists had told her that she wasn’t responsible for her parents’ fear—she’d still felt accountable for the deep crevices that constant worry had etched into their faces.

  The guilt had been bad enough prior to the first transplant, but when the initial heart had failed and she’d ended up back on the transplant list with diminishing chances of receiving a second heart in time . . . She flinched, shying away from the memories. The stress had killed what love remained between her parents—miring them in cold silence or endless arguments. The only reason they’d stayed together had been because of
her, because of the care she’d required.

  After the second heart transplant had returned her to health, she’d hoped they’d seek happiness for themselves, even if it meant being apart from one another. But by then they’d become so fixated on her health they’d let it define them and had hung her heart condition around her neck like some macabre charm meant to ward off death.

  She’d chosen a university clear across the country, and remained there after graduation, to escape their obsession over her mortality. After the lab explosion, when the medical examiner had released the news of her death, she’d thought long and hard about whether to contact them with a “Surprise! Look who’s on their fourth life!” But caution had stayed her hand. What if someone was monitoring her parents’ calls? What if her stalkers tracked her location through the phone records?

  In the end it hadn’t been fear of discovery that had stilled her fingers on the untraceable cell phone she’d picked up at the mini-mart around the corner. It had been imagining their reaction to finding out she was alive. That familiar guilt had settled thick as quicksand inside her. A reaction made stronger by the knowledge that her parents wouldn’t even be mad that she’d kept them in the dark so long. They’d be so overjoyed to find out she was alive they wouldn’t have room for anger. But eventually their relief would shift to fear, and they’d urge her to return to Augusta, Maine, and when she refused, they’d insist on moving out to the West Coast and that whole passive-aggressive obsession would start again.

  Frowning, she glared at the heavy wood door barring her entry. Obviously her quarry didn’t intend to respond to her knock. If she wanted to talk to him, she’d have to run him down herself, which meant ignoring protocol and letting herself into his current haven.

  Waving off another swarm of mosquitoes—heavens, the little beasts were thicker than water—she pushed open the door to Rawls’s cabin and invited herself across the threshold. Nerves tightened her belly and tiptoed up her spine one itchy tingle at a time. Like the cabin she shared with Amy, the front entrance opened into a moderately sized room with a sparse kitchenette tucked into the left corner. Thick planks of wood marched across the bare floor and up the bare walls. Tilting her head back, she studied the ceiling, unsurprised to find wood planks there as well. From the furniture choice to the pictures on the walls—or lack thereof—the cabin Rawls shared with Mac, as well as the one she shared with Amy, suffered from a man’s touch.

  The furniture, which consisted of a long, lumpy leather couch and two wide, lumpy leather recliners, was old and battered and grungy brown. The coffee table was simply a huge log that had been split in half, sanded smooth, and fitted with stubby log legs. Cheap plastic blinds covered the windows. Rather than rustic charm, the room screamed rural apathy.

  The bright sunlight and pine-scented fresh air that streamed through the open blinds and open windows were the cabin’s saving graces. It still surprised Faith how different the air smelled up here tucked, as they were, in the pristine foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Unspoiled. Crisp. It was the clean, pine-tinged scent that countless air freshener companies sought to replicate—with limited success.

  And if she allowed herself to spend any more time procrastinating, she’d still be standing here when the helicopter returned with Amy’s kids.

  She glanced down the shadowy hall to the right of the kitchenette. The place looked like a duplicate to her cabin, which meant Rawls’s bedroom was somewhere down that hall. His bedroom . . . with his bed . . . What if he’d lain down to take a nap? What if he slept naked? Or . . . what if Rawls had migrated to the bathroom to take a shower, and all those long, lean muscles were streaming with soap and water? An image of wet, soapy, tanned flesh took root in her mind. A prickle started in her scalp, marched down the nape of her neck, and infiltrated her arms.

  Heat flashed through her, raising her temperature at least a degree or two. A swollen, moist pressure settled between her thighs. She ignored her endocrine system’s exasperating flailing, something she’d become an expert at since finding herself cornered by a tall blond god in her lab six days earlier. Who would have guessed that the sexy stranger she’d been discreetly salivating over all those months ago at gate C-18 while waiting to board her flight to Hawaii would be the same man to drag her out from beneath Big Ben, and then step between her and her would-be kidnappers when the bullets started flying?

  Even in the midst of danger, her hypothalamus had enthusiastically signaled its attraction to the hot, hard muscles protecting her from danger. Good lord, her memories of that night revolved around butterflies, tingles, and chills—along with all the other renditions of sexual excitement. Any fear she felt had taken a backseat to lust, and God help her, that hormonal flooding worsened with every second she spent in his company.

  Thankfully, he hadn’t picked up on her intense sexual attraction. Or, his good-ol’-boy Southern manners were ignoring her hormonal meltdown out of politeness. The second possibility was all too real considering he was a Navy SEAL. From what she’d read, SEALs were ultra-observant. He should have picked up on her attraction to him.

  And here she was, procrastinating again. Shaking her head in disgust, she eased up to the kitchenette and hovered in the shadowy mouth of the hallway. “Lieutenant Rawlings?”

  Silence greeted her. She listened hard. Was that faint whisper the sound of water running behind a closed door, or the wind teasing plastic blinds?

  “Lieutenant Rawlings, I brought you lunch,” she said, lifting the plastic-wrapped plate in her hands as an offering, which was absolutely ridiculous considering he couldn’t see the movement.

  Okay, this was just silly. Squaring her shoulders, she headed down the hall.

  “Leave it on the kitchen counter,” he said from somewhere down the hall and to the left.

  She passed a small bathroom as his voice reached her, and she relaxed. At least she didn’t have to worry about stumbling in on him in all his naked glory—regardless of how much her endocrine system would have enjoyed the show. She followed his voice to the end of the hall and the open door on the left.

  “I brought you a sandwich,” she said, darting a quick look at the bed, with its bunched, tangled sleeping bag, before seeking out the bed’s current owner.

  He sat staring out the window, a clear warning in the rigid length of his spine that he didn’t want to be disturbed. She glanced at the empty glass and capped bottle of whiskey sitting on the windowsill in front of him. The golden liquid still climbed most of the bottle, so he’d abstained from drinking himself into a stupor. Thank goodness . . .

  “Just leave it on the table,” he said, his voice so polite there was no question he was masking some strong emotion—probably irritation at her unwelcome intrusion. But at least he harnessed his anger, rather than unloading it on the world like Commander Mackenzie did.

  Frowning, she shuffled her feet, trying to force her appeal out. Why was the request so difficult to make? It was a no-brainer, damn it. Her life depended on getting more of her meds. She couldn’t afford to procrastinate, yet here she was doing just that.

  He twisted in his chair, scanned her face, and slowly unfurled to his full height. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need some prescriptions filled.” The words burst out. “Can you help me with that?”

  The drawn flesh across his forehead knitted. He scanned her again, this time a full-body sweep. A quick up-and-down skim that took in everything from her hot face to the hands clenched around the edges of the plate. As his gaze lingered on her hands, she forced her fingers to relax their grip. Crossing the room, she carefully deposited the sandwich on the small table next to the bed.

  “What kind of prescriptions?” he asked, his blue eyes as intense as the laser beam in her lab.

  “Cyclosporine, mycophenolate, and Cordarone.”

  “Cyclosporine . . .” His voice trailed off. He scanned her again, longer this time, more intently, as though looking for symptoms. “Cyclosporine and mycophenolate are immu
ne-system suppressors. What condition are they treatin’?”

  Well, he knew his medications. The fact that he’d questioned why she was on the prescriptions was a clear indication he knew the drugs were used to treat many diseases, including psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, along with organ transplants.

  She hesitated before squaring her shoulders. He did need to know her medical history. Her heart condition could have a direct effect on him, as well as the rest of the people in this camp.

  “They’re suppressing an organ rejection.”

  Dead silence greeted that informational bomb.

  “What organ?” he finally asked in a far too quiet voice. A muscle started to twitch in his jaw.

  She considered sidestepping the question, after all, the precise organ wasn’t of importance.

  “Which organ?” he asked again, louder, the determination in his voice a clear indication the specific organ mattered to him.

  She hesitated before shrugging. “My heart.”

  “You’ve had a heart transplant and you didn’t reckon it was advisable to warn anyone about your condition?” His voice remained soft for all of three seconds before the lazy glide to his vowels hardened. “How long have you been off the suppressors?”

  “Since you dragged me from my lab and over to the Sierra Nevadas.” She forced herself to hold his disbelieving gaze. “If you’ll remember back, you guys didn’t give me a chance to grab my stuff from the motel.”

  Although that wasn’t quite fair. She hadn’t asked them to swing by her motel. At the time, she hadn’t been sure she could trust them, so she’d decided to keep her motel room quiet in case she needed to escape. She’d had her emergency stash of cash there, along with her meds, so that, if she needed to, she could go to ground for at least a couple of weeks.

  “A heart transplant, sweet Jesus, Faith.” He broke off and she could almost see him counting numbers off in his head. Exactly six seconds later he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You should have told me about this before now.”