“They’re in my truck,” she said and glanced at Riley. “You okay to travel?”
“Where you go, I go,” he said, eyeing Orion. Definitely.
She gave him the smallest of smiles, something almost of relief on her face.
And it made him wonder who got whom into trouble.
Riley could have lost his life. Protecting her.
Larke tried not to let the memory of him crouching over her, his jaw tight, his eyes in hers as he waited for a bullet, or more, to rip through his body.
Dying, for her. Because of her. Because she’d dragged him to her house call. And no, certainly she couldn’t have predicted that some lunatic might be lying in wait to ambush them, but…
What was it about her that made every man determined to throw himself between her and danger?
“Larke, are you okay?”
Riley’s voice swept her out of her thoughts, and she glanced at him, blinking. He held a bloody dishcloth to his shoulder, his jaw tight as she drove her truck, following Orion’s truck down the rutted road that led back to his place, even deeper in the woods than Alicia’s A-frame.
Orion Starr’s family had owned his homestead for the better part of a century, and the road might be rutted, but it was wider, the tracks deeper, balder. Orion drove a beat-up Ford Ranger, avoiding potholes, and she followed his exact trail. Mostly to keep Riley from moaning in pain.
Larke might be moaning enough for both of them, everything inside her bruised, from her bones to her stupid, too-easily-wooed heart.
She could not love Riley McCord.
“Larke?” Riley frowned. “You’re sort of freaking me out.”
Oh. She swallowed. “Sorry. I just keep thinking about—”
“I know. Just breathe. We’re okay. I’m sorry—I should have never let it get that far. I should have —”
“What? Tackled him? Because I remember him holding a gun on me, and frankly—” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Riley’s chest rose and fell hard as he stared out the window, clearly unsure if he should give her the silence she wanted.
Yeah, well it was silence or screaming.
He didn’t want to see screaming. Because if she started, she might not stop.
Again, she’d come perilously close to watching another man she…well, not loved, but okay, could love…die. Literally, in her arms.
At best, Riley was in terrible pain, given the way he grunted when the pickup jolted through a pothole. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said quietly, unable to stop herself.
He looked at her now. Frowned. She saw it out of her periphery.
“Done…what?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Larke—done what?” His voice turned low, carried a fine edge of worry.
“Jumped over me. Tried to protect me. You should have kept running.”
He made a funny noise, like a huff or a laugh, and she shot a look at him. “What?”
He wasn’t smiling. “You think I’d just leave you lying there in the dirt while some crazy man shot at you? Who do you think I am?”
She swallowed, looked back at the road. “I know who you are. A hero.”
He was shaking his head.
“But I can’t love another hero, Riley.” The truth issued from her so softly, she almost didn’t hear her own admission, but, “I can’t love another man who…who isn’t afraid to die.”
He said nothing, and for a long moment, she heard nothing but the shards of her heart jangling inside.
“Larke,” he said softly. “I’m as terrified as the next guy of dying.”
She closed her mouth, shot him a look. He was staring at her, wide-eyed. Shaking his head.
“Then—why do you run into danger?”
“Because I don’t think. Because I’m reckless, impulsive, and in that moment, I…I don’t think about the fear. I just react. That’s why…I’m not a hero. Because a hero sees the danger and does it anyway. I don’t. I just…do. There’s a difference. Believe me. I’m sitting here trying to keep myself from freaking out. Because I know how close we just came to ending up in that lake.”
“Freeman wasn’t afraid to die.”
“Yeah well, I’m not Freeman. I thought we’d established that. I’m not a soldier. I’m not my father. I’m just a guy who likes to live large, play large, and occasionally I end up doing the right thing.”
“Like throwing yourself over me to protect me from bullets with your body.”
“Yeah. Like that. Sometimes.” A tiny smile lifted then from the side of his mouth. “Now let’s touch on the other part of your sentence.”
She frowned.
“The fact you are in love with me?” He winked. “About time, sheesh.”
Her eyes widened. “What—that’s not—”
“Look out!”
Orion’s Ranger had slowed in front of her and she stomped the brakes. Riley caught himself on the dash with a bloodied hand.
“Sorry!”
Orion eased around a crater-sized pothole.
She took a breath.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No!” she snapped. “Listen. I’m not—” She sighed. “I’m not in love with you.”
“But you want to be.”
She glanced at him. He winked at her.
“Riley—”
“Calm down, Larke. I’m just causing trouble.”
She eased around the pothole. “You promised to keep me out of trouble.”
His smile fell. Oh, not the right thing to say. “You’re right.”
“Hey.” She touched his arm. “I’m kidding, too.”
“No, you’re right. My gut told me something wasn’t right about the place. I should have listened.”
“He took us by surprise. You couldn’t have known.”
His mouth tightened.
Silence, as the forest began to thin around them, and ahead Larke could make out the Starr family homestead.
Once upon a time it had started as a handcrafted, two-room cabin in the woods.
Not unlike her own home. In fact, her grandmother had helped birth many of the Starr children, including Orion.
Now, after years of upgrades, generations of Starrs had turned the house into a two-story, timber-framed house with a wraparound front porch, a loft, a beautiful great room, and a view of Denali.
“I might not have known, but seeing his hands on you, seeing him hit you—” Riley drew in a shaky breath. “Yes, I know you can handle yourself, Larke. But I can’t handle watching someone hurt you. I won’t. And if that means throwing my body over yours, well, get used to it.”
A muscle flickered in his jaw, his beautiful eyes on hers.
Oh.
And at that moment, she hadn’t a hope of not falling for him.
No. No…
Orion pulled his Ranger up to a massive barn. She parked beside him and glanced at Riley. “Let’s get you bandaged up, then—”
Orion opened her door. “Come inside. And bring your medical kit.”
She glanced at Riley, who was already reaching for the door.
She circled around the truck to the back to get her medic bag. Riley made to reach for it, but she gave him such a look he simply raised his hand in surrender.
Orion had already headed toward the house.
She hiked up the steps, following him, Riley behind her.
Orion pushed open the door, and she stepped inside.
His medical emergency lay on his leather sofa on a blanket, a wad of towels pressed to his bloodied shoulder. The blood saturated his orange shirt, even the green pants, and he looked bruised and beaten up, his face sooty, his short brown hair matted, and even from here, the odor of fire and blood radiated off him. He looked at her with pale blue eyes, cut a glance at Orion, and then his gaze fixed on Riley.
And instantly Larke knew something was wrong. Not just because of the tightening around the man’s eyes. Riley simply freaked ou
t. He’d clearly meant every single word he’d uttered in the truck, injury or not, because he grabbed her, jerking her hard behind him and pulled out a gun—where did he get that?—and pointed it at the man on the sofa.
“Stay back, dude!”
He flashed the gun at Orion, who raised his hands. “Easy there, pal.”
Then he turned the gun back at the man on the sofa. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it’s over.”
“Riley!” Larke said, trying to push past him.
But for a wounded man, he had a steel grip on her, his injured arm just barely shaking as he held her firm. “Stay there, Larke.” He glanced at her. “This man is named Logan Thorne. And he’s a fugitive from the law.”
“What?”
“He’s one of the escapees from the prison gang.”
She froze, glanced at Orion, whose jaw tightened.
“Yes, actually, he is,” Orion said quietly. “But he’s also a hero. A former SEAL and an old friend of mine. And he’s been shot.”
Riley didn’t move.
And that’s when the guy from the sofa sighed and said quietly, “And, Riley McCord, I knew your father. I promise you, I’m not looking for trouble. And, if you put the gun down, I’ll tell you how he died.”
7
“You’re lying.” The words simply scraped out of Riley, a guttural, instinctive response to the desperate negotiation of the fugitive—Thorne. “How could you possibly know my father?”
“I served with him,” Thorne said quietly. “In Afghanistan. I was on the raid that…well, it’s a long story.”
Riley tracked back to that moment only two days ago when he’d shared a few scant words with Thorne on the fire line. What had he told him? His name, maybe the fact his father had died.
The man could be making a giant leap.
Or—
“He’s telling the truth, McCord,” said Orion, who was lowering his hands. He glanced at Larke, still positioned behind Riley, where he had vise-gripped her wrist. Blood trickled down his arm. “Larke. Trust me. Thorne is not dangerous. He’s been shot, and he needs help.”
Riley’s gaze pinned back on Thorne. “Tell me where—”
“The Kunar province.” Thorne hadn’t moved from the sofa, from his grip on his bleeding arm. He looked every inch like he might be telling the truth, his quiet blue eyes holding Riley’s.
Yeah, Thorne reminded Riley—too much, frankly—of the kind of men his father had commanded.
“Why are you in prison? Why did you run?”
Now Thorne shot a look at Orion, and his jaw tightened. “Yeah, well, again, long story.”
“Sum up.”
Thorne sighed. “I boosted a car in Fairbanks. The wrong car. Taillight was out when I got pulled over in Copper Mountain. Problem was, the car was already stolen. Apparently, I have a knack for getting in trouble. I figured I’d been wiped from the system, so I threw them my name but…yeah that was probably a bad idea because when that US marshal showed up it started to sink in…”
Riley didn’t let his words, or empathy, loosen his grip on Larke or the gun. “What started to sink in?”
“If I didn’t get away, and someone started digging…they might find me, and it wouldn’t be long before a guy like me showed up to make sure I never made it home.”
A guy like him? Oh, Riley just knew it. But before his instincts could put Thorne on the ground, Larke asked softly, “Who might find you?”
Thorne’s jaw hardened. “The military. The CIA. The guys who erased me.”
“Why?” Riley said. “What did you do?”
Thorne’s jaw tightened just for a second before he sighed. “I lived.” Then he looked down, his expression almost defeated. “I lived, when I was supposed to die. And then…and then I ran.”
Riley put down the gun. Because he knew that expression, too. He’d seen it too often himself—the knowing that somehow you’d derailed your entire life and hadn’t a clue how to fix it.
His throat tightened.
No. Riley hadn’t derailed his life. He just took a different path—
“Why were you supposed to die?” Larke said. Riley had released his grip on her enough for her to push past him.
“Larke—”
She spun, gave him a look that could shut him down. “He’s hurt, Riley.”
Riley nodded, but his gaze went to Thorne, who looked up and met his eyes.
“Don’t…”
Thorne nodded, and as Larke sat beside him on the sofa, he let out a long, almost pained breath.
She removed the towels. A tiny bullet hole was embedded in the man’s shoulder.
“There’s no exit wound,” she said. “You need a hospital and a surgeon to get that bullet out.”
Thorne shook his head, and that’s when Orion piped up.
“That’s why we need you, Larke. We gotta take it out.”
She glanced up at him. “You’re more of a surgeon than I am.”
“No. You were a combat medic. I know you were trained to do field surgery when needed.”
Really? Riley raised an eyebrow.
Her mouth tightened. “Fine. Let’s get him on the table.”
Riley tucked the gun into his belt, then helped Orion clear the kitchen table, a long, rough-hewn trestle table, for, uh, surgery? “This is crazy. We need to take him to the hospital.”
“I’m not going to a hospital.” Thorne’s words ended on a swift, hard groan as Larke helped him off the sofa.
“Orion, you get him on the table and prepped. I need to take a look at Riley’s wound.” She advanced on Riley and grabbed his hand.
“I’m fine—”
“Sit down.” She kicked out a kitchen chair, as if angry.
He plopped down, and she donned some plastic gloves, then grabbed a pair of scissors from her bag.
“Hey—wait, wait—I like this shirt.”
She leaned back, her pale blue-green eyes rich with challenge. Yeah, she was really mad. “Okay, tough guy. Raise your arm over your head so I can—”
“Fine,” Riley snapped.
“I’ll get you a new shirt,” Orion said, and Riley glanced at him. He was helping Thorne climb onto the table. He’d laid a sheet down under him.
She snipped his shirt, up the arm, into the neckline, and the shirt fell off him. By her expression, he’d done real damage to his stitches. “You’ve torn out about half your stitches here. We’ll have to go back to the hospital—”
“If you can do surgery in the field, you can throw in a few stitches, can’t you?”
She sighed. “Always have to be the tough guy.”
“Look who’s talking.” He reached out and lightly caressed a bruise on her jaw, something she’d probably gotten when she tripped.
She sighed. “I have some medical adhesive—that should work.”
“Glue. Awesome. Paste me up, Doc.”
“Not a doctor—”
“Whatever.”
He caught the tiniest of grins as she found the tube and uncapped it.
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“The dead guy. When we pulled him back to the porch.” He’d voted for leaving him in the woods, but there was no stopping Orion. Riley had found the gun a few feet away from the body and tucked it into his belt.
And good thing— “Hey, easy there.”
“It’s glue. I need the skin to almost overlap.” She was pulling the skin together across his wound. A sweat broke out down his back, and he let out a long breath.
Thorne was watching him.
“What?”
“You’re like him. Younger, but he had your expression.”
“Distrust? Anger?”
“Determined. Fearless.”
Riley looked away. “Yeah, maybe. But that’s where the resemblance ends, trust me.”
Thorne made a sound, a hmm. “I don’t think so. He was exactly the kind of guy who’d show up bleeding and still try and be the hero. Just like you.”
> Riley’s gaze flickered back over to Thorne. “How did you say you knew my dad?”
“PreBud/S, in Great Lakes, and then a couple years later I worked under him while I was deployed. Quiet. Focused.”
Yeah, that was Master Chief Simon McCord.
“Not easily riled, but…”
Riley raised an eyebrow. Thorne met his eyes.
“Passionate about his men. That’s what got him killed.”
Larke glanced up at Riley, then back to his wound. She was rolling out a piece of sticky gauze to protect it.
Orion was cleaning Thorne’s wound, and one of Thorne’s eyes closed, his jaw tightening.
“All we got was ‘killed in action.’ No details,” Riley said.
“There wouldn’t be because all the SEAL operations are—were—classified. This one probably still is, but…” Thorne sighed. “It was an ambush. It was late in the season, before the snow was due to fall, and the CIA had heard about a group of Taliban digging in at a village in the Kunar Province. Good intel, or so they thought. We were supposed to—”
Orion put his hand on Thorne’s chest. Gave a little shake of his head.
Thorne glanced up at him. Gave a nod and turned back to Riley. “So, it was an ambush. They were waiting for us, and our team was driven back into some nearby caves. There were casualties, and the PJs were called in.” He glanced at Orion. “Then it all went south.”
“We were picked off while fast-roping down to the team,” Orion said quietly. “We x-filled through the caves—found a tunnel, but—”
“There was a cave-in, and the team was separated. Two of us were caught on the other side.” Thorne swallowed. “I was one of them. The other was a SEAL we called Roy.”
I lived, when I was supposed to die.
“You were taken by the Taliban.” Larke stood up, pulled off her gloves. It wasn’t a question, but Thorne nodded. “Except, the SEALs have a rule—no man left behind.”
He looked at Riley. “Your dad and a couple other SEALs came after us. Found where the Taliban had taken us and staged a rescue.”
Riley’s throat tightened.
“Problem was, it wasn’t authorized. The master chief did it under the radar, on his own, just him and a few of the guys from another team.”
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