Willing

by Lucy Monroe

  She just could not believe Nitro was going into partnership with her dad.

  Oh, sure, the two men had plenty in common. Both were consummate soldiers. Both were so self-sufficient they didn’t really need anyone else, least of all her. They were powerful, tough males with not an ounce of weakness in them. Still, it wasn’t fair that her dad would pick as his partner the one man destined to torment her with what she couldn’t have.

  She knew her dad was disappointed she hadn’t wanted to take a more active role in the training camp, just as he’d been disappointed when she’d opted for real missions over training others since reaching adulthood, but did he have to punish her by taking on Nitro as his partner?

  She sighed, acknowledging she wasn’t being fair to her dad.

  He knew nothing of her feelings for Nitro. In fact, she’d told him she didn’t like the man who made her throb in places she hadn’t known existed. Ignorant or not, her dad’s decision had her edgier than a deer scenting a bobcat.

  With a groan of frustration, she climbed out of bed and into her fatigues. Maybe a walk would clear her head enough to sleep.

  Forty-five minutes later, she had walked the entire perimeter of the camp and didn’t feel any closer to sleep. She hadn’t even had the satisfaction of moving undetected by her father’s pupils because there weren’t any.

  It was the usual two-week hiatus between training groups, and the camp was deserted except for her and her dad. Even the part-time teachers that helped her dad teach stuff he wasn’t so hot on, like computers and offensive driving, were gone. Not that most of them lived on site, but some stayed at the school during sessions.

  Giving up on getting any sort of peace with the walk, she started jogging back. Exercise was supposed to be the panacea for all ills.

  Suddenly, the ground shook, and a huge boom she recognized all too well rent the air. She fell to her knees, terrifying knowledge of just how devastating that magnitude of explosion could be slamming into her. Scrambling back to her feet, she saw orange flames licking toward the sky from the office section of the compound.

  She started to sprint, her legs moving with fear-based adrenaline pumping through them. Where was her dad? He had to have heard the explosion, but she didn’t see his big body silhouetted against the flames.

  She bypassed the office and the bedroom all the students thought he slept in to the back of the building and the windowless room he actually used. The wall looked seamless, but she knew he had an exit, and it didn’t take her any time at all to trigger the release on the hidden door.

  It swung outward, and she saw her father’s form sprawled across the bed outlined in the eerie light. The explosion had caused part of the wall to fall on him, and he was dangerously still. Heat blasted her as she ran toward the bed, the fire having reached the secret room through the decimated wall.

  She didn’t waste any time checking for a pulse, but started throwing debris off of him. When he was free, she dragged him out of the burning building, her muscles straining against his weight. They made it outside just as the wall collapsed with a whoosh of fire and a deafening crash. She kept moving until they were clear of it, relief flooding her as she saw his chest rise and fall with one choking breath after another.

  Running to the jeep parked away from the office, her own lungs heaved against the smoke billowing around her, and she brought her arm to her face, breathing into the crook of her elbow. She sent prayers of gratitude skyward for the jeep’s undamaged state as she drove to where her father lay.

  Her own small Justy was a goner, having taken a direct hit of fire-heated timber when the office exploded.

  It took more strength than she knew she had to get his unconscious weight into the passenger seat, but desperation sizzled through her muscles. With a flick of her wrist, she shoved the car into gear and started driving down the mountain as fast as she could without going off the track.

  Her dad stored explosives underground, with each component carefully separated from the others, but she wasn’t taking any chances on the initial explosion being followed by another. Her caution was justified as the ground rocked under the jeep, almost sending them sliding off the narrow track. She kept driving, the vehicle barely under control, her mind focused entirely on escape.

  They were more than halfway down the mountain when she used the jeep’s CB to call the explosion and possible forest fire in to the fire service. It had been a wet spring, and she had no doubt the water copters would have the fire under control before the forest surrounding the compound could be severely affected.

  She hit the coastal highway at a speed beyond legal limits and just kept going, making a split-second decision to head toward the major metropolitan hospital to the east rather than the small community hospital ten minutes closer and to the west.

  The instincts her dad had told her she would learn to live by were screaming at her that no carelessness on her father’s part had caused that explosion tonight. If someone was trying to hurt her dad, they’d have a better shot at him in the small coastal town than the more anonymous metropolitan area surrounding Portland.

  She drove without her lights until she hit the outskirts of civilization, glad for the three-quarter moon that lit the highway. Unless they were using night vision or radar, no one followed her. She made it to the nearest major hospital less than twenty minutes later, ignoring speed limits in the downtown district and pulling into the emergency parking lot with squealing tires and honking her horn.

  Tyler McCall had not moved so much as a muscle during the entire trip. Emergency room personnel came rushing out, and her dad was on a stretcher headed into ER within minutes.

  She spent the next half hour discretely securing the perimeter of her dad’s environment while the doctors examined him. She was leaning against the wall, surreptitiously watching the emergency room entrance, when a doctor in a white coat and with an energetic demeanor approached her.

  “Miss McCall?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Dr. Wells. I’ve been treating your father.”

  “And…”

  “He has a nasty hit to the head, but he’s regained consciousness.”

  Air escaped her lungs in a whoosh, and she sagged against the wall. “Can I see him?”

  “Yes, but I think there’s something you need to know.”

  “What?”

  “He’s experiencing a certain level of confusion, and I believe it’s brought on because his memory has been compromised by the blow he received.” His mouth tightened with exasperation. “Not that he will admit it.”

  That sounded like her dad, not to admit to weakness. It was a measure of the doctor’s powers of observation that he’d noticed anomalies in her dad’s behavior enough to make the diagnosis.

  “He has amnesia?”

  “Partial. He knows who he is, but avoided answering questions about where he had been or what he had been doing before the explosion.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t remember.”

  “I get that impression, but he wouldn’t tell me what day it is either. He knows the year, but it’s my guess there are some gaps in his memory, and without his cooperation, we have no way of determining what they are.”

  She almost wished the doctor good luck, but kept the facetious comment back. Her dad was stubborn and distrustful of authority. Apparently the doctor had already figured that out.

  “Will his memory come back?”

  “There’s no way of knowing, but in most cases, unless there is significant damage, the brain learns to rewire itself, going around the affected area and retrieving knowledge. Without a previous MRI to compare his current condition to, it’s hard to tell how widespread the impairment to brain tissue is. From what I can tell, it is limited to a small area in his left frontal lobe corresponding to a large external bump and gash.”

  Her dad wouldn’t like knowing they’d been taking pictures of the inside of his head. He was funny about stuff like that, and they’d gotten a
way with it only because he’d been out cold, but it didn’t bode well for his mood when she got to see him.

  “Anything else?”

  “He has some surface bruising, but no internal damage.” She’d hedged when asked what had caused his injuries and could sense the doctor’s curiosity now.

  “I’d like to see him.”

  The doctor frowned, but nodded. “That might be best. Maybe you can convince him to cooperate in his treatment.”

  That brought a cynical twist to her lips. “I can try.”

  A nurse led her back to a curtained cubicle. Her dad was sitting up in bed, his eyes obviously unfocused, but scanning the room for any signs of danger nevertheless. The consummate soldier in crisis.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Josie-girl.”

  She walked to stand beside the bed and laid her hand on his forearm. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “The doctor thinks you’ve got partial amnesia.”

  Her dad’s pale green eyes narrowed. “Damn impudence.”

  She smiled, the first glimmer of humor sparking inside her since the ground shook beneath her feet. “Are you saying you don’t?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  “No…” He put his hand to his head, his eyes closing, sweat breaking out on his brow. “There are gaps.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The doctor said it will probably all come back eventually.”

  “I suppose he thinks he knows because he used that fancy machine to look inside my brain.”

  So, he knew about that already. “He was just trying to assess the level of damage.”

  “If you say so.” But clearly her dad didn’t believe it.

  She sighed. She supposed for a man who considered being asked for his middle name a gross invasion of privacy, and who had refused to go to a doctor in the decade since, an MRI would be over the top of his comfort level.

  He opened his eyes and pinned her with a look he used for interrogation. “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember that either?”

  “No, but if it was serious enough to land me in this white prison, I think I should.”

  “There was an explosion.”

  “Where?”

  “The office and your mock room, but the fire was spreading fast when I pulled you out.”

  “You saved my life.”

  She shrugged.

  His jaw clenched. “I can’t remember what day of the week it is, and I sure as hell don’t know why someone tried to blow me up.”

  She didn’t bother denying the explosion had been planned. Her dad’s instincts were better than hers, and hers were screaming the same thing. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got your back.”

  He nodded and then winced, bringing his hand to his head again. “Damn, this hurts.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The next two hours were tense with Josie avoiding the probing questions of the ER staff and a duty officer who had been called in to try his luck when they were unsuccessful. She told them her dad had had a fall.

  They were bothered because that didn’t explain the condition of her clothes or his. She refused to enlighten them, having learned a long time ago that no answer was a better form of evasion than adding lies on top of the initial one. Finally, a nurse came in to say they would be moving her dad to a private room for observation.

  After the nurse left, her dad said, “Call Nitro.”

  She supposed his new partner deserved to know their school had been blown to smithereens. “I will in the morning.”

  “Now, Josie-girl.”

  She frowned. Dawn was less than an hour away, and she could call Nitro an hour or so after that. “Why now?”

  Confusion clouded her dad’s face. “I don’t know. Just do it.”

  He didn’t like weakness, and he’d always been a bear when he was sick, so she didn’t take issue with his general-in-command tone.

  “Okay, but if you don’t know why, then I don’t see how you’re going to tell him anything.”

  It sounded reasonable to her, but at his glare she gave in. Bending down, she kissed his cheek. “Fine. I’ll go call him right now, but don’t blame me if he doesn’t like being woken up before the roosters.”

  “He’s a soldier. He’s used to it.”

  When Nitro answered the phone with an instantly alert voice five minutes later, she had to concede her dad was right.

  “Nitro…It’s Josie.”

  “What’s up?”

  She’d gone outside to an isolated phone and made sure no one was in hearing distance, but still she spoke in a low tone. “There’s been an explosion at the Mercenary Training Camp. When I left it looked like most of the compound was gone.”

  “Are you all right?” The words whipped out like bullets.

  “I’m fine. I was out walking.”

  “What about Tyler?”

  She couldn’t help noticing he had asked about her first.

  It made her feel tingly inside, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with a feeling like that. “Dad was sleeping. He got hit by debris, and he’s in ER right now. They’ll be moving him to a private room shortly, and he wanted me to call you.”

  “What hospital?”

  She told him the name and grimaced at Nitro’s curse. “I wanted the anonymity of the city.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll take me an hour and a half to get there.”

  “We’re not going anywhere, not right now anyway.”

  “Tell your dad to stay put until I’m there, but here’s my cell phone number just in case he doesn’t listen.”

  She wrote down the number and rang off, her heart beating too fast for a simple telephone conversation with her dad’s partner.

  Chapter 2

  Josie had to go to the waiting room while her father was moved. The holes in his memory had become more apparent the longer they’d talked, and she was glad she’d brought him to a larger hospital for treatment as well as anonymity. A nurse came to tell her that her dad had been moved, but had requested she wait to come to the room until he got cleaned up.

  Josie took the time to talk to the doctor again, but the harried ER physician had little to add. So, she sat down and waited for a nurse to come and tell her she could go to her father’s room. After thirty minutes, she was pretty certain she’d been forgotten, and she went to the nurses’ station to inquire.

  “He’s in room 312. It’s just around that corner,” the young blond aide said as she waved her hand toward a corridor to her left.

  Josie found her father’s room, but the door was shut. Was he still indisposed? She knocked, but when no answer came a chill ran down her spine. She pushed the door open without knocking again and found an empty room. The bathroom door was closed. Her instincts were screaming at her that her father was not in there either. She pushed the door open to a dark cubicle and knew she was right.

  Going over the room in minute detail, her instincts on high alert, Josie looked for sign of a struggle, but there wasn’t one.

  The I.V. shunt he’d been wearing was in the waste basket, and his clothes were missing from the plastic bag that still sat on the floor of the tiny closet. The blanket was folded neatly at the bottom of the bed, and a piece of paper was sticking out from under one corner.

  She grabbed it, immediately recognizing her dad’s handwriting. The note read, Josie-girl. Read the journal in my private footlocker. Watch your back and don’t worry about me. The Viet-Kong couldn’t kill me and neither can these bastards. He’d signed it, Love Dad.

  She rushed out of the room, but knew before she talked to the nurse at the desk that no one had seen anything. Her dad was the best. He’d been a long range reconnaisance patrol in Vietnam and knew how to disappear too well. If she’d been expecting him to run, she might have been able to catch him, but she hadn’t and therefore held out little chance of finding the smallest clue to his whereabo
uts.

  It gave her no satisfaction to discover she was right.

  Daniel overestimated the time it would take to get to the hospital by fifteen minutes. His cell phone rang as he pulled into a parking spot.

  He flipped it open. “This is Daniel.”

  “Nitro, it’s Josie. Dad’s gone.” She made a sound of annoyance. “I mean he’s disappeared, not dead. How far away are you?”

  “I’m in the parking lot by the main entrance.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Hold on and I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay.” He flipped the phone shut and got out of the car to wait for her.

  She came jogging around the other side of the building looking as though she’d been fighting fires instead of escaping them.

  She stopped in front of him, her moss green eyes red from lack of sleep. “It would probably be better if we got in the car to talk.”

  He nodded, expecting her to get in the car immediately, but she didn’t. Instead, she stopped to stretch her arms above her head, small pops from her spine audible in the still morning air. “It’s been a long night.”

  She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t guess Dad would run.” She stretched again, this time bending over to touch the ground between her feet with her clasped hands.

  She wasn’t wearing panties either…unless she wore a thong. That possibility had sweat breaking out on his brow.

  She straightened and put her arms behind her back, clasping her hands again. “You’re awfully quiet this morning.”

  No. Definitely no bra. The tank top wasn’t all that opaque either. That, or she had very dark nipples. He wouldn’t mind finding out.

  Her hands dropped to her sides, and small points formed behind the thin fabric. The longer he looked, the more prominent they became.

  “Nitro?” Her voice sounded high and uncertain.

  He lifted his gaze to her face again.

  Her eyes had darkened, and her pink bow lips were parted on a breath that seemed to be suspended somewhere inside her.