Forged in Ember (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 4)

by Trish McCallan

  “Yes, we do.” Mac’s face gentled. He took a careful step forward. “You reacted only when my arms closed around you, when I pulled you to me and held you there. When I wasn’t touching you or I touched you only lightly, you were fine. Hell, you were as hot as I was.”

  Amy thought that over. Could he be right?

  She went over the embrace in her mind. She’d been fine during the kiss. Fine while her hands were up his back. Fine when their tongues had been doing the happy dance. But when his arms had slid around her waist and contracted—even the thought of his arms around her brought the whisper of unease.

  “You’re right,” she said slowly, much less satisfied with the realization than he was. So what if they’d identified what caused the reaction and the terrifying flood of memories? It wasn’t as if they could make love without him touching her, now was it?

  “Relax,” Mac said, looking annoyingly upbeat. “Now that we know the trigger, we can avoid it. There are plenty of ways to get . . . physical . . . that don’t include my arms around you.”

  “But—” Amy licked her dry lips.

  His gaze dropped, tracking the movement, and desire flickered across his face.

  “What if I want your arms around me? What if I want your touch?” she whispered hoarsely.

  His focus shifted back to her eyes, and the hunger on his face banked. He remained level and calm. “We’ll go slow and work up to it. We have the time. It will just take patience.”

  Go slow? Amy buried her irritation. He was trying to help. It wasn’t fair to unload her frustration on him. But seriously . . . patience?

  Between waiting for a cure for the boys and waiting for her mind to relax enough to enjoy these moments with Mac, patience was in short supply.

  She wasn’t sure how much she had left.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE SKY WAS boiling with thick black clouds that pounded their bodies, the boat, and their weapons with a constant swath of icy rain. Mac wiped the lenses of his NVDs—again—trying to clear his vision as their Zodiac powered through the heavy waves. There was no second boat beside them this time—or third behind them.

  They were alone on the choppy seas.

  Alone in the relentless rain.

  Christ, the Pacific Northwest could be a total bitch sometimes.

  They’d been lucky Neniiseti’ had loaned them the Eagle. Their experimental birds were more stable in iffy weather. A Black Hawk would have been grounded, which would have pushed the assault back a couple of days. Hell, they were lucky they had a full crew too. Without the magical hands of the Shadow Mountain healers, Zane wouldn’t have been fit for duty. A thigh hit during a ST7 mission would have laid him up for weeks, if not months.

  Since visibility was practically nil in the heavy deluge, they were relying on compasses and state-of-the-art GPS systems. As they’d done two nights before, Zane and Rawls were in front, Mac was in the middle, and Cosky worked the throttle.

  But unlike two nights before, there was obviously something wrong with Mac’s LC.

  Amid the constant stream of rain running down his helmet and blurring the NVD lenses, he saw Zane double over, hugging his abdomen. If it had been anyone else, he’d have suspected seasickness. Christ, the hard lift and bang of the boat and the endless bounce of the waves were bad enough to give anyone digestive distress. But this was Zane, and his LC had been on much rougher seas without hugging his belly and puking his guts out.

  Turning to Cosky, Mac drew his finger across his throat and waited for Cos to cut the engine. Once the boat sat silent, bouncing on the waves, he looked at Zane again.

  Rawls had already turned to his buddy and was busy taking his pulse. “Fast and thready,” Rawls said through the radio.

  Zane doubled over again, his grunted groan following Rawls’s voice into their helmets.

  Whatever was wrong had hit hard and suddenly. He’d been fine on the trip down in the Eagle. He’d been fine as the bird had dropped to the water and launched the skiff. Hell, he’d been fine as they’d taken their baths and swam over to the Hurricane. It wasn’t until they’d climbed aboard the boat and headed for Embray’s island that Zane had started to fidget and then doubled over.

  “What’s the deal? Appendix?” It was the only thing he could think of that would come on so fast.

  They were well into their mission, but they could call the chopper back. Airlift Zane out. While the chopper hightailed it to the nearest emergency room, the rest of them could continue the mission. They’d be down one man, but hell—Zane was useless to them now anyway.

  Fuck, he was a downright handicap.

  “Not me,” Zane grunted and followed it with a moment of rigid silence. “Beth. The baby.”

  It took a second for his explanation to register; when it did, an explosion of startled breaths hit their comm units.

  “Ah hell, Skipper,” Rawls said, his sympathy stumbling into silence.

  Ah fuck.

  Over the past few months they’d found a lot of humor in Zane mirroring Beth’s symptoms. His morning sickness, complaints of bloating, and swollen feet—hell, even his craving for pickled eggs and avocados had been funny as hell.

  Nobody was laughing now.

  Fuck, nobody had thought about what would happen if something went wrong with the pregnancy. Nobody had thought about what a handicap that link between Beth and Zane would be during a mission, when their lieutenant commander’s focus needed to be on the operation ahead.

  Nobody had considered that the link between the two could get them all killed.

  “Can you tell anything from what you’re getting?” Rawls asked, his worry clear.

  “Just that she’s in pain—” He broke off, and a hiss sounded through the comm units. “Terrified for the baby.”

  The raw grimness in his LC’s answer told Mac how much Zane hated knowing that she was in pain and fear, and that he couldn’t help her.

  As omens went, this one didn’t bode well for the success of their mission.

  The fucking storm, the fact that one of his men was in acute distress—any other operation would be called off at this point. Rescheduled.

  But they couldn’t reschedule this one. Not with Benji’s liver and kidneys failing and his chances of survival declining.

  No doubt Zane would kill to get back to Beth, but his life wasn’t in actual danger. No, they couldn’t rely on him, not in his current condition, but that was easy enough to solve. They could bench him, have him babysit the boat, while the rest of them carried out the mission. Link’s information had indicated there wasn’t much danger.

  They should be fine.

  He grimaced. Of course the fact that they should be fine almost always indicated they wouldn’t be.

  Still, they had to chance it.

  Cosky apparently read his thoughts. “It’s five hours back to Shadow Mountain. Another half an hour for evac and lift out. If we scrap this and scramble up, Zane won’t get to Beth’s side for six hours, give or take.

  “Embray’s maybe fifteen minutes away. We can be in and out of his compound in half an hour. An hour more. That’s what we’re looking at,” Cosky continued calmly.

  Tense silence claimed the boat. They all knew that anything could happen in that hour. People died in less than an hour every day. If things were that bad on Beth’s end, that hour could make all the difference to Zane.

  But if they did pack up and head home, Benji would almost certainly die. Damn it, they needed more information. How bad was Beth? Zane could just be picking up the beginnings of a stomach flu and his gal panicking.

  “Alpha One, Alpha One. Copy,” Mac said into the headset mic.

  “Alpha One, copy.” The chopper pilot sounded crystal clear in Mac’s ears.

  “Radio base. We need a status on Beth Brown ASAP.”

  “Copy.”

  The silence grew tenser and tenser as they waited for the pilot to report in. Finally a sputter surged over the line.

  “She’s in I
CU at the base clinic.”

  “Which doesn’t tell us jackshit,” Mac snapped, his frustration building. “Diagnosis? Prognosis?”

  “All I’m getting is that she’s in the clinic undergoing treatment,” the pilot responded coolly.

  “Fuck.” Mac closed his eyes. They were wasting time just sitting here. He had to make a decision.

  If he ordered the go-ahead and Beth died, Zane would never recover. Fuck, there was a really good chance that he’d lose both his best friends during this fucked-up night.

  From Cosky’s attitude, it was clear Kait hadn’t filled him in on the change in plans. She was playing her conversation with Mac close to her chest. She probably wouldn’t tell him until the bird landed at the compound.

  That explosion still loomed ahead.

  He looked at Zane, who’d doubled over again. “We’ll get in and out ASAP. Get you back on the chopper and back to Beth in record time.”

  Zane’s grim silence echoed through his radio.

  “Cosky, light her up.”

  Mac almost expected the engine to stall. Christ knew everything else that could go wrong was headed in that direction, but the engine immediately sputtered to life, and they were back on their way.

  Landing took fifteen minutes, as Cosky had predicted. They hopped off the boat and tied it off on one of the rocks jutting out of the beach. Unlike their last beach landing, jagged rocks, a steep hill, and torrential rain confronted them.

  “Stay with the boat,” Mac whispered into his mic, knowing everyone would recognize who the order was directed at. The fact Zane didn’t protest was proof of the shape he was in. Proof he knew he’d be a handicap during this upcoming snatch and fly.

  Cosky took point, Mac falling in behind him and Rawls on their six. They climbed the craggy hill bent double, each step a struggle against wind and rain. Once they crested the top of the hill, the lights of the compound lit up their NVDs. The original plan had called for Zane and Cosky to take the south entrance while Mac and Rawls took the door that led from the east courtyard directly into the master bedroom and Embray.

  With them down a man, one of them would have to breach their entry point solo.

  “Rawls, Cosky. Go south. I’ll take east,” Mac whispered.

  “Copy,” Cosky and Rawls said in unison.

  The south entry point was closer to the bedrooms where most of the crew would be sleeping. While his men swept the bedrooms and secured anyone they found, he’d cover Embray’s room. Once the bedrooms were cleared, Cos would sweep the rest of the house while Rawls marched their captives to Embray’s suite. Mac would sit on Embray. Make sure no one had the bright idea of taking him out once they knew the compound had been compromised.

  There would be no fucking repeat of what had happened at Link’s place.

  As he turned a corner along the brick wall, a pair of windows shining like a beacon came into view. A door stood between them, light filtering through it as well but not quite so intensely. He buddied up to the window, his back against the brick wall.

  “In position,” he whispered into his mic. He waited for his teammates to echo his readiness. Once they were all in position, Rawls would hit the electronics scrambler, taking out alarms, phones, and cameras.

  “We’re a go,” Rawls said quietly, all business.

  “Go,” Mac ordered.

  There was a momentary flicker in the light streaming through Embray’s bedroom window as though the disruption to the electronics had affected the lights as well.

  Whoever was in the room would have been distracted by the flicker and likely investigating the cause. Mac chanced a quick stretch and peek only to find the room empty. At least empty from his current viewpoint. Didn’t mean there wasn’t someone tucked in a corner he couldn’t see.

  Plus, it wasn’t technically empty. There was the still figure in the hospital bed and the thousand or so blinking machines surrounding it. Fuck, Rawls hadn’t been kidding when he’d said that Embray would be surrounded by a gazillion machines.

  Ducking below the window, he crept to the door and reached for the knob. Son of a bitch . . . it opened easily beneath his fingers. The sheer ease of accessing the room sent disquiet skating down his spine. Nothing ever came this easy, and when it did, there was hell to pay later.

  He entered the room fast and low, rifle out and sweeping.

  Nobody.

  He booked to what should be the bathroom according to the multiple maps Link had drawn, barreling in fast and low as he’d been taught as a plebe. Empty.

  Back out to the bedroom. This time he headed to the doorway that led to the rest of the house. He chanced a quick glance outside, exposing as little of himself as possible. Empty halls on both sides.

  Where the hell was the nurse? Someone was supposed to be on duty.

  He settled with his shoulder two feet from the left of the door, positioned so he could keep an eye on both doors as well as the windows.

  He listened as he waited, expecting screams, or gunfire, or a muffled shout. Clues his men were at work. But the place sat still and silent and forbidding as death. It felt like forever before Cosky’s voice came down the wire.

  “Alpha Two secure.”

  “Copy. Alpha Three secure,” Mac whispered. “But the night nurse is AWOL.”

  A soft snort traveled down the wire. “We got her.”

  No shit? What had she been doing in the bedrooms? Yeah, after a bit more thought that question answered itself.

  “The lambs are on the move,” Rawls said, but it was a few minutes or so later before Mac heard the shuffle of feet moving down the hallway. He stepped out to greet them, rifle up and ready—a silent threat in case anyone got the bright idea to run. With bound wrists, docile feet, and terrified faces, two women, followed by two men, trickled into Embray’s bedroom.

  “Everyone down on the ground, backs against the wall,” Mac ordered.

  “Now wait just one damn minute—” One of the men, a tall, balding guy with a condescending purse to his lips, squared off against him.

  Mac shoved him to the ground. The minute the bastard’s ass touched the floor, the rest of their captives followed suit, and Rawls went to work zip-tying their ankles together.

  Their four prisoners jelled with Link’s crew count during the night shift. But who the hell was who? An unexpected visitor would give them the same head count, but leave a crew member loose to cause trouble.

  “You identify them?” he asked Rawls.

  “The two women are the nurses. Meet the pilot.” He nodded at the guy he was zip-tying.

  Which left tall, bald, and patronizing as the doctor. Figured.

  “Which one’s the night nurse?” he asked Rawls, half-determined to light into her. Jesus Christ, the whole purpose of having a night nurse was to have someone on hand at night. Not raunching it up in bed.

  A terrified gasp and low moan from the short, curvy woman at his feet answered his question.

  “We’re secure. Call in the bird.” Cosky’s order traveled through his headset.

  Tensing, Mac radioed the pilot, giving him the green light. Shit was about to hit the fan. As Rawls continued zip-tying their prisoners, Mac took up guard duty. Once he’d finished binding the last set of ankles, Rawls stood, stretched, and headed toward the still figure in the bed.

  “Look,” the bald bastard with the thin lips said. “I’m Dr. Archibald. If you’re looking for money—”

  “We’re not,” Mac said to shut him up.

  “Well then, what is it you want?” Dr. Pretentious asked with a slight snip, as if he was annoyed they hadn’t prostrated themselves in awe over his awesome doctorness.

  “We want you to shut up,” Mac snapped, keeping his voice low and mean, which wasn’t a hardship since tension had tightened his throat, increasing its normal gravelly tone. He scanned the assembled men and women at his feet. “Sit there, shut up, don’t move, and you’ll be fine.”

  Rawls checked Embray’s pulse, studied the machines,
leaned over the bed to roll their target’s eye down, checking for . . . something.

  “That’s my patient,” Dr. Pretentious said possessively. “You’re not a doctor. You have no right—”

  Mac tuned him out as soon as Rawls straightened, and he turned to the blinking and beeping machines. The old plan—the one Cosky had insisted on—called for Rawls to unhook and detach Embray from the apparatuses so they could carry him to the helicopter, where Kait would attempt to bring him back from the dead. Their new plan—which his corpsman wasn’t aware of yet—called for him to leave Embray hooked up until Kait tried to heal him in the room.

  Christ, was that ever going to cause an explosion.

  “Rawls.” Mac waited for him to look over before giving him the finger across the throat. With a quick unsnap and yank, he pulled off his headgear. “Change of plans. Kait’s coming here.”

  Rawls froze, then tore off his own headgear. The face that emerged was soaked with sweat, or rain, or both, and full of shocked disbelief. “That isn’t what we decided.”

  “Kait and I adjusted the plan.”

  Rawls shook his head, then shook it again, as if the first time hadn’t been enough to get his message across. “Sweet Jesus, Mac. What the hell have you done?”

  “What I had to do,” Mac snapped back, pushing aside the creeping sense of remorse.

  Rawls swore softly beneath his breath. “You went behind his back and put Kaity in danger. He’ll never forgive you for this. You had to know that.”

  Yeah, he did. Regret stirred. He hardened his resolve. There was no other damn way.

  He’d do it again, damn it.

  “You better tell him to meet the chopper. If Kait hikes all the way over here by her lonesome, he’ll kill you before anyone can stop him.”

  Mac simply nodded. He’d already planned on alerting Cosky to the change in plans once the bird was in range. No sense in gutting their friendship any earlier than necessary.

  Minutes later he heard the rotors. He put his headgear back on and keyed the mic.

  After one long, shuddering moment of hesitation—there was still time to switch to plan A—he closed his eyes and set the course. “Alpha Three, head to evac point.”