Ten
Kelsey’s hands were still trembling as she scooped her last bit of clothing off the floor of the motel room and zipped it into her bag. That was it. She had everything. She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the note she’d written before her shower. She’d leave it on the pillow, where Gage would be sure to see it when he returned from the debriefing.
But one look at the bed they’d shared last night had her pulse racing—not from fear but something else. On second thought, she’d leave the note on the dresser. As she put it there, the door opened, and Gage stepped into the room.
She took in everything at once—the grimy clothes, the muddy boots, the line of dried blood down the side of his face. It trailed down from a nasty-looking knot on his head, a knot she was fairly sure he’d sustained when the force of his own bomb blast had thrown him to the floor of that tunnel.
The same bomb blast that had caused Kelsey’s heart to stop. And even after the dust had settled, and he’d come up from that hole and let loose a flood of curses, it still hadn’t started beating again. It wasn’t until hours later that her pulse finally returned to normal because she knew he was okay. Angry as hell, sure, but not dead.
Glaring at her now, he crossed the dumpy motel room and began stripping off his clothes.
“Going someplace?” He flung his T-shirt on the bed and glanced at the duffel slung over her shoulder.
“Thought I’d go back to the dig site, see if Mia needs a hand with anything.”
His expression hardened as he leaned over to unlace his boot. He threw it into the corner of the room with a thomp that made Kelsey jump a little. The other boot followed. And an instant later she had a giant, sweaty SEAL glowering down at her.
“Why are you shaking?” he demanded.
“It’s cold in here.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s been an emotional day. And night,” she added, glancing at the window where the neon glow of the VACANCY sign now seeped through the flimsy blinds. The ordeal at the tunnel and the ensuing chaos and questions and formal debriefings had dragged on for hours. And still she hadn’t managed to regain her equilibrium. Every time she looked at Gage she got the shakes all over again.
He could have died in that tunnel. He could have died because of her. And even without her, he could still die, on any day, for a thousand different reasons, and each one of them had to do with the fact that he was a soldier.
“You were going to take off, weren’t you?” His voice was low and dangerous, and Kelsey stepped back.
He took her elbow and jerked her to him. “Weren’t you?”
“I wrote you a note.”
Anger and something else—hurt? disappointment?—flashed in his eyes. “Do you have any idea how much you scared me today?” His grip tightened. “Do you have any idea how much I care about you?”
She gazed up at him, wide-eyed, and gave a tiny shake of her head.
He pulled her up to him and crushed his mouth down on hers. She opened hers up to him and finally, finally found a way to tell him everything she hadn’t been able to say in the note. She told him with her tongue, her teeth, her arms coiled around his neck as she clung to him. And he understood all of it, she knew, because he lifted her right off her feet and deposited her on the dresser, right on top of the note he didn’t want to read, all the while jerking her shirt up and over her head and pulling her bra off and attaching that hot, angry mouth of his to her breast.
She leaned back and wrapped herself around him and let him take all that anger out on her, one kiss at a time.
Kelsey awoke to find the sun casting stripes of light across the half-empty bed. Her heart gave a little lurch. She sat up and glanced around. She heard the low murmur of Gage’s voice on the other side of the motel room door.
Soon the door opened and he stepped inside, wearing only his faded blue jeans. His gaze locked on hers as he tucked the phone into his pocket and came to sit beside her on the bed.
“That was my CO.”
It took a moment to process. “You mean Joe?”
He nodded. “Our team’s going wheels up at twenty-one hundred.”
The numbers permeated her brain. She glanced at the clock. She looked up at his somber expression and knew he was talking about today. He lifted a hand to her face and brushed his fingers down her cheek, as if that would somehow soften the message.
“When do you . . . ?”
“I’ve got a flight leaving Midland in three hours.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said.
Then she got up from the bed, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door. She showered, dressed, and packed her duffel—again—all without the slightest sign of emotion. She thought of Joe, the man who’d raised her to know what stoicism was, and held it together the entire time. Even her hands were steady on the wheel of her Suburban as she neared the dusty town of Midland and the first airport sign came into view.
“Where are you going?” she finally asked, breaking an hour of silence as she exited the highway.
“I can’t tell you that.” He turned to face her and she saw her reflection in his sunglasses.
“Is this training or . . . ?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
Her chest squeezed. She focused her gaze on the road in front of her, concentrating on the little yellow stripes to keep from thinking about the emotions churning around inside her.
At last, the passenger drop-off area came into view and she pulled up to the curb.
“Kelsey.”
She turned to look at him. He’d removed the shades and those blue eyes held hers.
“I can’t tell you. Even if we were married, I couldn’t tell you. That’s the way it is in the teams.”
“I know.”
Married? The word put a giant lump in her throat. Why had he said that?
She glanced away and was proud to see her hands at least looked still on the steering wheel. He couldn’t see that her palms were sweating, that her pulse was racing, that a cold panic was seeping into her chest. She took a deep breath and fixed a smile on her face.
“Good luck,” she said, maybe a little too brightly.
He watched her as if he were trying to read her mind. She prayed that he couldn’t, that he had no idea how she felt right now, or that she was about one kind word away from losing it at the door of this airport.
He leaned closer. “Kelsey . . .”
“Bye.” She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and pulled back, putting the car in gear.
She waited, nearly biting a hole in her tongue as she gazed into those unreadable eyes. Finally he eased away and opened the door. He reached over and grabbed his bag from the backseat. “I’ll be in touch.”
She held her breath as the door slammed, as he hesitated beside the car, as he stepped to the curb. Then she pulled away. She drove past the waiting passengers, the loading and unloading cars and trucks. She drove past the sign for a rental car company, past the orange cones marking a construction zone, and even the sign for the upcoming Interstate 10 before she pulled over and let herself breathe again. And when she finally did, it felt like a thousand razors filling up her lungs, and she knew it was the ragged shards of her broken heart.
Gage jogged up to the Suburban that had stopped on the shoulder, and he knew before he even opened the door what he was going to find. But knowing it didn’t make it any less painful.
“Hey.” He climbed in and pulled her hands away from her face. She looked up at him with those soulful brown eyes and he felt like he’d taken a bullet in the chest.
“Come here,” he said, and pulled her over the console and into his lap, and she made a keening sound like an animal. “Hey.” He wiped the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t do that. Hey.”
“The thing is, I think I love you. And I can’t stop thinking about”—her breath hitched—“what happens when you come back. And what happens if you don’t.”
She bu
ried her face against his chest, and he held her head against his heart and wanted to absorb all that pain he’d seen in her face. He never wanted her to feel that. Ever. And especially not because of him.
His pulse was pounding now because of what she’d said.
He eased her back and lifted her chin with his finger, and he took another hit when he saw the anguish on her face.
“I love you, too,” he said. “Only I don’t think, I know.”
Hope flickered in her eyes, but he could tell she still didn’t believe him.
“And what happens when I come back is that I come see you. First thing. Because we’re going to have a lot of catching up to do.” He paused. “You up for me coming to Texas?”
She nodded.
“And what about San Diego? You up for coming to visit when I get leave?”
She squeezed his hand. “Will this work? Do people really do this?”
“It’s hard, but yeah, some people do it. I’ve never understood why. Until now.” He cupped his hand around her cheek. “I want to see you every chance I get. So don’t go forgetting about me or picking up with that guy Blake or finding someone else, all right?”
She looked startled now. “How did you know about Blake?”
“Call it a sixth sense.” He smiled. “Maybe because every time he looks at you or talks to you or gets within a hundred feet of you, I want to take his head off.”
“Is this just about jealousy?” She looked worried again. “Because that’s not love.”
“It’s not.” He kissed her. “Jealousy, I mean. This is . . . I don’t know, different than anything I’ve felt before.”
“Me, too,” she whispered, then she smiled up at him through her tears and he felt his own eyes filling up.
She laughed. “God, would you look at us? How did this happen?”
“Hell if I know. I think it happened for me when I first saw you out at that dig site, covered in dirt and bossing everyone around. Only I didn’t know it then.”
She laughed, but then her face grew serious. She glanced over her shoulder at the airport behind them as the reality of what he had to do came back into focus.
“Are we really going to try this?” she asked.
“Trying isn’t going to work.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. He hoped he could somehow make her understand. “If you want to do something really hard, you have to decide. And then make it happen. Are you up for that?”
She kissed him, and she was heat and sex and tenderness and Kelsey, and she was everything that had turned his world upside down and everything he’d come to care about, and she was the thing that had made his heart start working again when he’d thought it was dead.
And when she was done kissing him, he pulled back and looked down at her. “Is that a yes?”
She smiled. “That’s a yes.”
Turn the page for a sneak peek of
TWISTED
the next heart-stopping Tracers novel from
Laura Griffin
Coming in Spring 2012 from Pocket Star Books
Detective Allison Doyle knew better than to expect the whole night off. But she was an optimist at heart—and she was hungry—so she pulled into the parking lot of Sal’s Quick Stop, savoring the idea of a hot Meat Lover’s Supreme.
Everyone in the department had been working round the clock. Allison’s reward was going to be a junk-food dinner and a mindless night in front of the tube. She pulled open the freezer and selected a sausage-and-double-pepperoni pizza with extra-thick crust. She made a quick detour through the dry-goods section and approached the register.
The store owner’s gaze darted to her. His tense expression morphed into relief.
Allison’s skin prickled. Her attention snapped to the customer at the counter with his back to her. Greasy brown hair, oversize leather jacket, shoulders hunched up around his ears. His body moved back and forth with the agitated tic of a tweeker.
Holdup.
The flash of awareness was accompanied by a kick of dread, as she realized both her hands were full.
Always keep your gun hand free. Allison knew that. She’d had it drilled into her by every firearms instructor she’d ever met, and yet here she stood with an armed assailant, encumbered by a frozen pizza and a bag of kitten chow, her service weapon tucked neatly beneath her jacket. Panic threatened, but she tamped it down as she scrambled for a plan. If she dropped her groceries, she’d startle him—
The man whirled around, and she cursed her hesitation. She looked at his black pistol and widened her eyes in fake surprise.
“Step back!” He jabbed the gun at her with a shaking hand, then spun to Sal.
Allison scanned her surroundings. No other customers, thank God. Two cars in front, including hers. No getaway driver in the other vehicle, but the headlights glowed, hinting at a running engine. Why hadn’t she noticed it? She was 0-for-3 here, and she blamed a marathon workweek that had now culminated in a string of potentially deadly mistakes.
The situation worsened as another car turned into the lot. It pulled up to a gas pump, and she hoped they were going to pay outside.
The perp spun toward her again with another panicked look. White male, five-ten, one-forty. Dilated pupils. The tremor in his gun hand extended to his whole body, and he was clearly jacked up. Bad news for everyone. So was the fact that he’d made no effort to disguise himself and seemed oblivious to the security camera mounted behind the cash register. Even from ten feet away, Allison could smell the desperation on him.
“I said back, bitch!”
She stepped back obediently and tried to look meek.
He turned to the register. “The money!”
Sal reached for the cash drawer. It slid open with a ping, and Allison watched the store owner, noting all the details she’d missed at first glance. He didn’t just look tense, he looked frightened. But it was a fierce frightened, like a cornered animal. Sweat beaded at his temples as his angry gaze flashed to the man aiming the gun at him.
Allison eased forward. Sal glanced at her, and his defiant look had her pulse racing. She knew exactly what he thought of this two-bit meth fiend trying to rip off his business, and she hoped he wasn’t rash enough to do anything stupid before she got this under control.
Allison slid a glance at the gunman. His attention bounced nervously between Sal and her, and she prayed he wouldn’t notice the bulge beneath her blazer. She needed to get her hands free.
Sal took out another stack of bills, and his glare implored her to do something. The perp caught the look and thrust his gun at her.
“You! Over there!” He waved the pistol at the soft-drink station.
Damn it, she needed to get closer, not farther away. Her best chance was to disarm him at close range.
“Now, bitch!”
She took a baby step back.
“Now!” A burst of spittle accompanied the command.
Allison took several steps back, looking deep into those desperate eyes. It was the desperation that concerned her. He wasn’t thinking logically. He was capable of anything. Those wild eyes told her he’d shoot her as soon as look at her, and the knowledge made her chest squeeze. She’d thought about being shot in the line of duty, but she’d never envisioned having her life ended by some tweeker with rotten teeth.
He turned and grabbed at the bills with his free hand as Sal stacked them on the counter.
“Faster!”
A flutter of movement in the convex mirror near the ceiling caught her eye. She tried not to call attention to it. Meth Man turned around again, and she glanced up to see someone slipping from the corridor at the back of the store into the aisle closest to the door, which led straight to the register. Tall and dark-haired, the man wore a charcoal suit and looked remarkably like the defense attorney Allison had gone to war with in court just last week. But it wasn’t the attorney. This man was leaner and broad-shouldered and made a lot less noise.
“That’s it? That’s all you got?
” Meth Man snatched up the pile of twenties and waved them at Sal. “I want all of it!”
Sal grumbled a response as Allison cut a glance to her left. The businessman hunched low now behind a beer display. His gaze locked with hers, and his hard expression commanded her to stay put. Commanded, as in, he was used to giving orders.
Crap, just her luck. Don’t try to be a hero, she tried to tell him with her eyes, but his focus was on the confrontation now.
“Hand it over!” The perp was bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet—shrill and angry, but distracted.
Now was her chance.
She flung the pizza away like a Frisbee. In the next instant of confusion, she whipped out her gun and lunged for the man’s weapon.
His pistol tracked her. She registered the black barrel pointed at her face as a shoe came up and the gun cartwheeled out of the perp’s hand.
Allison thrust a heel into the side of his knee. He howled and crumpled to the floor. The man who’d kicked the gun away shoved Allison aside and flipped the robber onto his stomach. A Glock appeared from nowhere, and he jabbed it against the perp’s neck.
“Don’t move!”
Allison’s mouth fell open. The man turned and gave her a blistering look.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“You plan to arrest this guy?”
Her shock lasted maybe a second, and then she sprang into action, jerking a pair of handcuffs from her belt and elbowing the suit out of the way. “I got it,” she said, taking control of the prisoner by dropping a knee onto his back.
The robber squirmed and spewed obscenities as she yanked his wrists back and slapped on the cuffs. Allison’s back felt damp. She took a steadying breath and tried to regain composure as she conducted the pat down.
“You’re under arrest,” she said, with much more bravado than she felt at the moment. Her lips were dry, her hands clammy. She glanced up at Sal, who was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. “Tell them to send a cage car.”
Sal nodded.
“You got any other weapons on you?” she asked the perp. “Knives, needles, drug paraphernalia?”
Unstoppable Page 10