"I'll be careful," he told her. "But..."
She looked at him in disbelief. "How can you dangle a 'but' off a promise to be careful?"
He wasn't even remotely amused. In fact, when he looked up at her again, his eyes seemed distant, his expression detached. “Whatever happens with Garvin—whoever's left standing when the smoke clears—it will mean only one thing to you. If he's the one who's still standing, then you've got to run and hide because you'll be next on his list. But I'm telling you right now that I'm going to do everything humanly possible to make sure that's not going to happen. By this time tomorrow, you're not going to have to worry about Garvin anymore."
Nell stood up, wiping the seat of her pants with her hands. "Good. Then let's make a date to have dinner tomorrow night when you come back from—"
"I won't be coming back," he said quietly.
She stared at him. "But you said—"
"There's no tomorrow night, Nell. Whatever happens with Garvin," he said again, "it won't change the fact that we have no future. / have no future. Even if I live, I won't come back."
Nell was aghast. Won't, he'd said, not can't. Even if he lived, he wouldn 't come back. He didn't want to come back for her. "Oh," she said, suddenly feeling very small.
He cursed. "You only wanted one more night, remember? It was sex, Nell. It was great sex, but it wasn't anything more than that. Don't you dare turn it into something that it's not."
She couldn't breathe. "I'm sorry," she somehow managed to say even though there wasn't any air left in her lungs. "I just..." She shook her head.
"I thought I'd made my feelings clear," he said tightly.
"You did," she whispered. He had. He'd been up-front and direct about the impossibility of a relationship right from the very beginning. "I guess I just let my imagination run away with me for a while."
He didn't look up from the work he was doing, building bombs that would allegedly protect him from a man who would go to great lengths to see him dead.
"You still have to promise that you'll be careful," she told him before she turned away.
The colorful lights of a Christmas tree shimmered through the side window of Blue McCoy's house. It was a nice house, quietly unassuming, rather like the man himself.
Crash had driven around the block four times but had seen no sign of surveillance vehicles. He'd finally parked on a different side street, cutting through a neighbor's yard to approach Blue's house from the back.
Blue was at home—he could see him passing back and forth in front of the kitchen window. Cooking dinner. Crash hadn't known that Blue could cook.
There was a lot he didn't know about Blue McCoy, he realized, crouched there between a pickup truck and a little subcompact car that were parked in the drive alongside the man's house.
He felt Nell shift beside him. "What are we waiting for?"
Good question.
He motioned for her to hang back as he approached the back door. He could tell from one quick glance that the door didn't open into the kitchen, but rather into a smaller area—a mud room.
The door was locked, but he had the tools to get through it in about fifteen seconds. It opened and he nodded to Nell, gesturing with his head for her to follow him.
He drew his sidearm and slipped inside the house.
Crash could smell the fragrant aroma of onions sauteing. Blue was standing at the counter, with his back to him, chopping green peppers on a cutting board.
He didn't turn around, didn't even stop chopping as he said in his deep Southern drawl, "We missed y'all at Harvard's wedding."
Crash held his weapon on the other man as he spoke from the shadows. "I sent my regrets. I was out of the country."
Blue set down his knife and turned around. His quiet gaze took Crash in from the top of his too-long hair to the tomato-juice stains on the knees of his black BDUs. He focused for about a millisecond on the barrel of Crash's sidearm, but then dismissed it. He knew as well as Crash did that the weapon was a formality. Crash was no more prepared to use it on Blue than he was likely to use it on himself or Nell.
"Ma'am." Blue nodded a greeting at Nell before he turned back to Crash. "Before I invite you in, Hawken, I've got to ask you just one question. Did you kill, or conspire to kill, Admiral Robinson?"
"No."
"Okay." The blond-haired SEAL nodded, turning back to stir the onions that were sizzling in a saucepan on the stove. "I was wondering when you were going to show up. Why don't you sit at the table? Stay low, the window's got no shade."
Crash didn't move.
"I'm guessing you're here because everyone and their dim-witted second cousin is watching Cowboy's place," Blue continued. He laughed as he added the chopped peppers to the pot and stirred the vegetables together. "Every time that boy goes anywhere, there's about four cars behind him. At first he thought it was funny, but now it's kind of getting on his nerves." He turned back to Crash. "So what can I do to help?"
"Wait a sec," Crash said. "Rewind. You ask me one question, and that's it? I say no, I didn't kill Jake, and you're satisfied?"
Blue considered that for a moment, then nodded. "That's right. I just wanted to hear you say what I already knew. Everyone in the Spec War business with half a brain can see as clear as day that you've been set up." He laughed in disgust. "Unfortunately it looks as if Alpha Squad is the only team with more than half a brain these days."
"You understand that by helping me, you'll be an accomplice."
"But you didn't do anything wrong. To believe that— and I do—and do nothing to help you...now, that would be a real crime." Blue lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Besides, I figure you wouldn't be here if you weren't close to catching whoever did kill the admiral. Am I right?"
Crash still didn't move. He didn't lower his weapon, he didn't do much more than breathe as Blue added several cans of whole tomatoes and some spices to the saucepan.
Blue glanced at him again. "I can understand how you might be a little paranoid right about now, so I won't take that weapon you're holding on me personally. But I have to tell you that—"
"You may not hold it personally, but I sure as hell do." There, in the door to the dining room, stood a pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a well-tailored pantsuit and holding an automatic pistol in her hand, aimed directly at Crash.
"Lucy will," Blue finished.
Crash hadn't heard her come in. He'd heard no cars approaching or pulling into the driveway. He hadn't heard the front door open or shut.
But of course, she'd been home all along. There'd been two cars in the drive when he'd approached. He'd made the mistake of assuming that simply because Blue was cooking dinner, his wife wasn't home.
That would teach him to make assumptions based on gender-role stereotypes in the future. Except he didn't have a future.
Crash lifted his sidearm higher, holding it on Blue. "Please put down your weapon, Mrs. McCoy."
The brunette's mouth tightened. "I'm going to count to three, and if you don't—"
Blue moved, crossing the kitchen in two very long steps, stepping directly in front of his wife's deadly-looking pistol.
"Everything's fine," he said to her, gently pushing the barrel down toward the floor. "You can put that away. Hawken's a friend of mine."
"Everything's not fine! There's a man in our kitchen holding a gun on you!"
"He'll put it away."
"I can't do that," Crash said tightly.
"It looks like he can't put his weapon away right now," Blue told his wife. "I'm not sure I'd be able to do it myself if I were in his shoes." He turned back to Crash. "Can you do me a favor and at least lower it?"
Crash nodded, his eyes never leaving Lucy's handgun.
As Lucy reholstered her weapon, he lowered his.
"Good." Blue kissed his wife gently on the lips before he went back to the stove. "Lucy, meet Crash Hawken. You've heard me talk of him plenty of times."
Lucy's brown eyes widene
d as she turned to look at Crash again. ''You're Lieutenant Hawken?"
"Crash, this is Lucy, my wife," Blue continued. "She's a detective with the Coronado police."
Crash swore softly.
"And you must be Nell Burns," Blue greeted Nell with a smile. "On the news, they're saying you were abducted. But it looks to me like you're here of your own free will."
Nell nodded. "Billy and I both thought that I'd be safer with him—after the second attempt was made on my life."
Blue lifted his eyebrows as he looked at Crash. "Billy, huh?"
"Look, we're just going to turn around and walk out of here," Crash said. Blue McCoy's wife was a police detective. His current streak of dismal luck was absolutely unending.
Blue turned to his wife. "Yankee, you better plug your ears, because I'm about to ask a suspected felon to join us for dinner."
"Actually, I'm long overdue for a soak in the tub," Lucy said. "And your friend looks like he's got someplace he needs to be in a hurry." She nodded to Nell and Crash. "Nice meeting you, Lieutenant. Or was it Captain? I'm sorry, I've never been very good with names. I've already forgotten yours."
As Crash watched, she disappeared into the darkness of the other room. He could hear the sound of her footsteps going up a flight of stairs.
He could sense Nell standing right beside him, her anxiety nearly palpable. He ached to reach out and slip his arm around her shoulder, to pull her in close for an embrace. But doing that would undermine everything he'd worked so hard to do this afternoon—telling her how he wouldn't come back, making it sound as if he had a choice when the real truth was he honestly didn't think he'd live to see another sunset.
And touching her would also undermine all that he'd done today to separate from the tornado of emotions that threatened to throw him into uncharted territory.
"Tell me what you need me to do," Blue said simply.
Crash glanced in the direction in which Lucy had disappeared.
"She's not calling the SWAT Team, I promise. She knows we're friends."
"Are we?"
Blue turned back to stir his tomato sauce. "I thought so."
Crash looked at Nell, and forced himself to detach even more completely than he had earlier that afternoon, after he'd allowed himself one more kiss. One last kiss. This was one of the most difficult decisions of his life, but he knew it had to be done. "I need a place for Nell to stay that's safe," he said, as ready as he'd ever be to put the one person he cared more about than anyone on the planet into another man's hands.
The blond-haired SEAL nodded as he turned back to meet his gaze. "I'll see to that."
Nell's throat felt tight. Just like that, Crash was handing her over. Just like that, he was going to walk out of the house, into the darkness. And just like that, she was never going to see him again.
"Are you set for supplies?" Blue asked. "Ammunition?"
"I could use an extra brick of C-4, if you've got any lying around."
Blue didn't blink. "You know we're not allowed to bring that stuff home."
"I know the rules. I also know that when a team is called out on an op in the middle of the night, there's not always time to go back to the base to pick up supplies."
Blue nodded. "I can spare half a block. But unless you're intending to take out more than a single house, that ought to be enough."
Nell couldn't believe what she had just heard. A half a block of C-4 could "take out" an entire house? Crash had already used at least three entire blocks, strategically planting the bombs he had made around the edges of the clearing surrounding the cabin. If a half a block could destroy all that, then surely he'd already used enough to blow up the entire mountainside.
She'd realized with icy-cold shock that she'd figured out Plan B.
Crash was prepared to blow himself up if necessary, in order to take down Commander Mark Garvin.
Chapter 16
The warm golden light of the kitchen seemed suddenly washed-out and much too bright. And Nell's ears were roaring so loudly, she almost couldn't hear as Blue said, "It's locked in the basement. I'll get it and be right back."
He vanished through the same door his wife had disappeared through earlier.
Nell fumbled for one of the kitchen chairs, nearly knocking it over in her haste to sit down. She actually had to put her head between her legs and close her eyes tightly to keep from falling over.
"Are you all right?"
Crash had crouched next to her. She could sense him, smell his familiar scent, hear the concern in his voice, but he didn't touch her. She didn't expect him to.
She shook her head no. "I'm in love with you." She opened her eyes and lifted her head slightly to find herself gazing directly into his eyes. Her words had shocked him.
Her blunt non sequitur had penetrated the emotional force field he'd set up around himself. "I've been in love with you ever since that night you made me go sledding. You remember that night, don't you?"
He stood up, moving away from her. "I'm sorry, I don't."
She sat up, indignation replacing dizziness. "How could someone who's such a bad liar specialize in covert ops?"
He shook his head. "Nell—"
"Let me refresh your memory," she told him. "That was the night you told me about Daisy coming to get you from that summer camp. Remember? That was the night you told me how it had felt to know, to really know that Daisy and Jake both wanted you around. You told me how strange it had felt to know that you were loved. Totally. Unconditionally."
He moved closer to the door, and she stood up, following him, angry and upset enough not to care any more that she was making him uncomfortable. This could well be the last time she ever spoke to him. If he had his way, it would be. Because—oh God!—he believed that in order to bring down Garvin, he was going to have to die.
"Well, guess what?" she said, stepping in front of him so that he was forced to look at her. "Jake and Daisy are gone, but I'm here to carry on. I love you unconditionally. And I want you to come back to me after this is over."
To her total shock, she saw that there were tears in his eyes. Tears, and absolute misery. "I didn't want this to happen. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid." He ran his hands down his face, trying hard to get back into control. "If you love me, then I'm going to hurt you. And God help me, Nell, I don't want to hurt you."
Back in control was the last place Nell wanted him to be. She couldn't believe she'd managed to break through his detachment as much as she already had. She pushed, trying to see more, to get more from him. "So don't hurt me. How are you going to hurt me?"
He lowered his voice. "The odds of my surviving this altercation are low. I've known that from the start. If you love me—and please, Nell, don't love me—then I'm going to hurt you the same way Daisy hurt Jake." He met her gaze and she knew at last that she had uncovered the truth. He was doing unto others the way he wished they would do unto him. He was so terrified of losing someone he loved, he tried to keep himself from loving, he tried to shut all his feelings down. And he'd tried to keep her from loving him, to prevent her from being hurt as well.
Nell reached for him, touching his arms, his shoulders. "Oh, my God, is that really what you think? That Daisy hurt Jake by dying?"
His voice was ragged. "I know she did. If Jake had lived, he still wouldn't be over her, he still would be in pain, missing her every day for the rest of his life."
"Yes, Daisy made Jake hurt. Yes, he missed her right up to the moment he drew his last breath, but think of all she gave him along with that pain. Think of all those years, all the laughter they shared. I've never known two people who were as happy as they were. Do you really, honestly believe that Jake would've traded all that joy simply to avoid the pain he felt at the end?"
Nell touched the unrelenting lines of his face. "I can tell you absolutely that he would not have traded even one single moment, because I wouldn't trade, either. If I could, I wouldn't choose to go back and keep myself
from falling in love with you. I don't care, even if you are hell-bent on killing yourself."
She stood on tiptoe, pulling his head down to kiss the grim line of his mouth. "There's one more kiss I'll always remember," she told him. She kissed him again, longer this time, lingering. "One more moment I'll cherish forever."
She kissed him a third time, and with a groan, he pulled her close, kissing her with all the passion and longing and sweet, sweet emotion he'd tried so hard to keep buried deep inside.
"Please," Nell whispered as he held her so tightly she could barely breathe. "Come back to me." She was begging again. This man had the power to force her to abandon her pride, force her to her knees. "Is avenging Jake's death really worth losing your own life?"
"Is that what you think I'm doing?" He pulled back to look at her, searching her eyes. "Don't you know I'm doing this for you?"
She shook her head, not understanding.
"Unless Garvin is in custody with absolute proof connecting him to his crimes, or unless he's dead, I'd never know for certain that you were safe."
She gripped his arms. "I'd be safe if you were with me."
An avalanche of emotions crossed his face. "I can't ask you to do that—to come away with me, to run and hide, to spend the rest of your life hiding."
"Try asking!"
"That's no way to live!"
She wanted to shake him. "Getting yourself killed isn't living either, in case you haven't noticed!"
He shook his head. "This way I'll know you're safe."
"So you're doing this for me?" She couldn't keep her eyes from brimming with tears. "You're telling me that you're willing to die. For me"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He kissed her and she knew that he was telling her why. He loved her. He couldn't say the words, but she knew it to be true.
"If you're willing to die for me," she asked him, her heart in her throat, "then why won't you live for me?"
He just looked at her for several long seconds as Nell prayed her words would make him stop the chain of events he'd already set in motion.
But then he shook his head, turning away. Following his gaze, Nell saw that Blue had come back into the kitchen.
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