by Karen Anders
He chuckled. The woman had backbone and humor in a dire situation. Two weapons that would work for them. He thought immediately of DJ and his chest tightened. He could almost hear the man’s voice.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, LT. I’ll cut you some slack for the fever. But get your head out of your pants. Shade, water, shelter. Then, if you’re lucky, sex.
“I think our first priority would be to find shelter and then proceed at night, but we don’t have that luxury. We have assholes after us who want to kill us. Thank God we have enough water.”
He laughed again. She was a riot. She helped him over to a rock and lowered him down. Pulling the pack off her back, she pulled out three water bottles and handed him two. “Drink all of that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She unscrewed the cap off hers, brought the bottle to her lips and chugged the whole thing. He got caught up in watching her.
“Drink, Dex,” she prodded, taking one of the bottles and opening it. He could smell the water, groaning at the sudden damp feel of it on his lips and tongue, craving the hydration for his overheated body. He didn’t need any prodding to down the second one.
She shouldered the pack again and reached for the burka. She settled it over her head and turned to look at him. “I’m not going to let you die because I held you back. I’m never the weakest link. That’s a promise.”
She bent down enough to get her shoulder under the arm of his uninjured side and helped him to his feet. “Well, I’ll hold you to that campaign promise, ma’am. If I fall, do whatever you need to do to get me up. I also don’t want to hold us back.”
“That’s good, Dex. Because I really need you.” She nodded. “I’ll owe you dinner when we get back to the States,” she said. With a set look on her face she took the first step and he stumbled, his mind still reeling. She was there, steadying him.
He loved that she was already projecting into the future. This was a woman after his own warrior heart. Think ahead. Strategize. She was a gem. “Deal. I know this great place in DC.”
“All right. Less jawing and more walking,” she said.
He chuckled, then gasped as fire laced his side. It wasn’t that she wasn’t scared. That was evident. But courage could easily be described as doing what needed to be done in the face of that fear.
“Keep talking to me,” he said. “That will help me to focus.”
“How long have you been a navy SEAL?”
“I think I was born in combat gear.”
“That must have been hell on your mom.”
He laughed, lost his thread of the conversation as he was suddenly in a field of dead men, everywhere. He shook his head to clear his vision and Piper looked up at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are there dead bodies here?” he mumbled, swinging his head around, the faces of the dead grotesque.
“What?” She looked around and said, “No, just brush, rocks and dirt.” Her voice was hushed.
“Damn, I must be hallucinating. Don’t let me go running off if I lose it.”
“Don’t lose it, Dex. I’m only cracking jokes because I’m scared as hell.”
He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. Focus. “Keep talking.”
“Why do you say you were born in combat gear?”
“I come from a long line of military heroes. My dad is an admiral who served as a SEAL, working out of the Pentagon, and I have two retired uncles that also served as SEALs. War is in my blood.” She was so close to him, supporting his body, and he turned his head. His eyes focused on her mouth and even in the midst of running for their lives, the heat, the danger, the need for speed, he wanted to kiss her.
Yeah, his brain had checked out.
Except the thought kept rattling around. I want to kiss her lips. Drop on her like a battalion of marines and hold her down and kiss her.
“Right, and I already know about your sniper brother, Rock. He was the black sheep of the family, huh?” She looked up at him, her eyes behind the mesh hard to read, but he caught the glimpse of amber. He didn’t have to see her to know the delicate bone structure of her face.
“Yeah, he chose the marines over the Navy. He’s a pain in the butt. But I wouldn’t trade him for anyone.” He tried not to let the horrific landscape of dead men distract him, but he closed his eyes, trying to think around his dancing brain. Kiss me.
His eyes popped open and he tried to clear his head. Had he said that out loud? He studied her for a moment and realized that it had all been in his hot, horny head. “What about you? Ty hasn’t really talked much about his family.”
“Well, if war is in your blood, politics are in mine. I was born into a political family.”
“Right, that’s why we call Ty ‘Kennedy.’ Your family on that level?”
“Yes, my father, uncle and husband were all senators. My uncle, William Keighley, works for the assistant secretary of state for Diplomatic Security. He was former CIA, but he’d never admit to that. You already know my brother Edward is a DS special agent.”
“I’m surprised Edward didn’t come to Afghanistan instead of you. He’s a badass, I hear. A bit of a rogue who has to be reined in from time to time.”
“He has less flexibility than I do, and all that’s true.”
Dex squinted his eyes. Was that a...a snowstorm in the middle of the Afghan desert in July? He shivered, getting colder. Sweat was running down his face, down his body, and it was all he could do to keep from keeling over.
“He’s...unconventional and overprotective, often circumvents protocol while he’s negotiating domestically and globally, and he’s so damn shrewd.” She tightened her hold on him, feeling his shivering, no doubt.
“A regular smarty pants.”
The bodies were starting to pile around his feet. Every time he took a step, he’d trip over one and that would jar his side, sending more pain lashing at him. He gritted his teeth. In the distance he could see the tan, sandblasted walls of the village of Safid Darreh. Afsana and rest were there.
How could he be so cold? Now the bodies were covered in snow and frozen. It was like trying to walk through boulders.
“Through my uncle, Edward’s the one who pulled the strings to get me here.”
He stumbled badly, but Piper caught him and held on to him. “You should have stayed in DC,” he growled.
“But you couldn’t have saved me in DC,” she said, stopping as Dex drooped, his legs buckling.
“Dex!”
He fell to his knees. Damn, he couldn’t remember ever hurting like this. That wasn’t so good, but the blood...yeah, the blood was a problem. He’d lost too much. The quick patch he’d done was soaked through. He hadn’t dared stop long enough to really bind himself up, not with unknown armed men on their asses. He wanted to get up, but there were just so many bodies in his way.
“Get up. If I have to haul your ass the rest of the way, this could get ugly. You’d have to explain to your buddies why you got carried by a girl.”
He went to all fours, and even as he felt as if he was being swallowed whole, still shivering, aching like a son of a bitch, he burst into laughter.
Breathing hard, his brain ping-ponging around in his head, he turned to look at her.
She looked like a commando, even through the mesh.
“That’s the best you got? Trash talk.”
“It’s not trash talk if I say I carried you. Who’s to say I didn’t? You’re delirious and there are no witnesses... I see a book out of this, and with my political clout I’m sure I could get six figures. I can see the title now. How a Girl Saved a Navy SEAL—you do the math.”
That made him laugh again. “I bet you’re dynamite on the Hill, lady.”
“Can I sweet talk with the best of them? Damn straight I can.
Now on your feet, sailor, before I start to babble in terror. I might be a senator, but I’m leaving no man behind.”
“Give me a minute,” he rasped between groaning in pain and laughter. He was going to have to dig deep here. Deeper than he’d ever gone, deeper than that exhausting hell week during training. The week that had prepared him for this. He was past empty, past the fumes. He was running on sheer mental energy and guts. And he still wanted to kiss her, even more now.
“Let me at least put another bandage on your wound.”
“We can’t spare the time,” he said, not sure he wouldn’t pass out, and unlike the snow and the dead bodies, that was real. As real as dying here. If that happened, Piper might survive, but her odds were better with him than without him. And just for the record, he wasn’t ready to check out anytime soon. He was directing this shindig. Putting distance between them and their pursuers actually put them in charge of distance and with that came the next rule of combat. Their pursuers were reacting to them and their choices. Everything in Dex wanted to go on the offense, take these mothers down, but he wasn’t in any shape to do that, so it was lay low, heal up, fight another day.
Another one of his edicts: stand tall in the face of adversity.
He stood only with her help, but it cost him some more energy and the fever addling his brain made it difficult to think, to reason. “If I pass out, the name of the woman you’re looking for is Afsana Jamal. Her house is located in the courtyard beyond the side gate where we’re headed.”
“We can trust her?”
“With our lives. We’re halfway there,” he said. “You’re doing great.” That was a lie. She looked shell-shocked. He could imagine what was running through her mind, and none of it was good.
She held his gaze, and right before his eyes he watched her pull herself together. She nodded and with a monumental effort, a lot of grunting and pain, he got to his feet. Piper was right there to support him every agonizing step of the way. They started off again, the village now in view and closer with each step. As they approached the wall, the bodies were getting waist-high in his vision and dragging at his energy, and finally when they reached the closed side door, he felt his edges get a little blurry and start to turn black. Bodies began to pile up on him and even though he fought he couldn’t push them all off. He tried to remember to keep breathing...and forgot as the suffocating darkness engulfed him.
* * *
When Dex went down, he pulled her with him and she landed on the hard earth.
“Dex?” she whispered in his ear.
No movement.
She shook him.
Still nothing.
“Oh, God,” she huffed out.
She rolled him off her and put two fingers to his carotid artery on his neck. For a split second, she didn’t feel anything, then the steady beat of his heart.
Her breath rushed out of her. She’d been holding it and she deflated like a balloon. The relief was so intense tears clouded her eyes, but that was as far as they got. She didn’t have time for losing her cool. She rose and looked around. There was absolutely no one to help them. She would have to leave him here and go on alone. Afsana Jamal.
That was all she had to go by. Through the door, into the courtyard—her house was supposed to be just beyond the gate. She took a breath and reached for the door handle, her hand shaking.
Turning the knob, which squeaked loud in the still of the late afternoon, she pushed it open a crack and scanned the immediate area, her eyes darting, her body vibrating with tension. Other than a few goats milling around, she saw no movement. Again there was no one there. She could hear normal village sounds coming from beyond Afsana’s proposed house. She took one more look at Dex. His closed eyes, his dark lashes thick against his skin, pale beneath the tan. She’d supported him because she had to.
She wasn’t supposed to note the thick muscles of his back or the height of him, the sexy way his voice rasped, the stubble on his cheeks. Her heart did a little spin; her body seemed so alive around him. They’d connected so fast, so deeply, it scared her. In life and death, there was only the moment as it ticked by. She felt every roll of sweat, every beat of her heart.
Even when he was unconscious and helpless, he still felt dangerous to her heart.
She couldn’t let him die.
Sweat pooled at the base of her spine, at her temples, running down her cheeks. God, she hated this damn burka. The clamminess of her skin reeked of fear.
This was all about being on the run, and the fact that he had risked everything for her. She could do no less.
She might have talked a good game, but she was right on the verge of hysteria. Taking several deep cleansing breaths, she cautiously approached the house, hoping to God she got the right place.
She knocked lightly and heard footsteps from within the house. The door slowly opened to reveal...a man.
Bagram Airfield,
Parwan Province, Afghanistan
A black stealth chopper with Outcast stenciled on the side touched down without so much as a peep onto the pitted and ragged runway of Bagram. Raoul Markam, solidly built, with broad shoulders and an elegant, aristocratic face, formerly Senator Piper Jones’s DS agent, walked up to Carl Kruger, CEO of Outcast, a joint South African–British private security company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Carl was thin and ascetic, his clothes all black, his eyes ice blue. It was suddenly winter in July. “What the hell happened here? All this carnage to kill one unarmed woman and blow up a SEAL?” His thick British accent got thicker when he was angry.
“Two SEALs.”
“What?” The one word cracked between them like a gunshot.
“That unarmed woman was saved by a wounded SEAL.” Raoul handed him the medical file. “Lieutenant Dexter Kaczewski.” Carl scowled down at the service photo. “I’m going to need some more men. We’ve already cleared this area and taken care of the insurgents. But Jones and this SEAL disappeared.”
“Unbelievable! You said this was a cakewalk!” The shadowy man in the US who had hired them through Markam couldn’t be pleased, either. He hated screwups and he really hated wild cards like Kaczewski. Carl had built his company up from nothing after he’d gotten out of the military. A year after his birth, there was a shift in apartheid, but a man of mixed birth didn’t fit into either world. With that stigma, he was going to make everything he did all about him. The more money and power he accumulated, the more he could punch his own ticket. Now all that was being jeopardized by Kaczewski.
“It was a cakewalk! Tyler Keighley was flown out ahead of schedule to Landstuhl. I heard they nabbed a body from the SEAL ambush. That’s not good.”
“I’ll spin that and anyone who investigates that Mr. Carter left my service and went rogue. There’s going to be backlash and they’ll probably have boots on the ground within twenty-four hours. I’ll search from the air. You need to find that damn woman and whoever is helping her and put them down. Understood?”
“Yes, got it.”
“And Raoul...you screw up this time and I’ll freaking kill you myself.”
Headquarters, Naval Criminal Investigative Service,
San Diego, California
NCIS special agent Austin Beck said, “Lavender,” and tossed the Nerf basketball toward the small hoop attached by suction cups to the wall. It missed, went wide and Austin cursed softly, then chuckled as it hit fellow special agent Derrick Gunn in the head.
Derrick grunted from his desk and threw a sidelong glance at Special Agent Amber Dalton, rolling his eyes. “Boring, surfer boy.”
She laughed and eyed the two men. “You guys are no help at all.”
“What do we know about colors for a wedding? Derrick’s color blind.”
“I am not,” he said, snatching up the ball. He threw the spongy orange orb back at
Austin, who caught it, exploded from his desk chair and did a layup, as if these points would be the win for the last few seconds of a crucial NBA game.
“Score and game!” he said, walking around with his hands in the air. “The surfer boy is all about the pastels.”
Amber’s brows rose. “Pastels. Wow, good color vocab, Gunn.”
“Yeah, he’ll make someone a good little wife one day.” Amber’s eyes shot daggers and Derrick just shot that death stare at him. “Okay, I’m getting serious,” Austin said when he saw Amber’s long-suffering look. “How about a creamy yellow the same color as warm butter?” He stuck out his chin and spoke with an upper-crust British accent. “Since it’s an evening wedding, it would go with black.”
“Not bad actually, Austin.”
“What? The color or the accent?”
“Both,” Amber said.
“I’m sure your bridesmaids will look smashing in yellow.” Supervisory Special Agent in Charge Kai Talbot, Austin’s boss, breezed into the room and they all stiffened. “Gunn, Beck. SECNAV is waiting for you upstairs.”
SECNAV—better known as the secretary of the navy—only got involved for the big stuff. Austin got excited. Big cases meant he’d get into the thick of it, do what he was trained to do. He was well aware that Derrick thought he was lacking in abilities because he projected a laid-back surfer look, but there wasn’t anything laid-back about him when it came to carrying out his duty as an NCIS agent. They looked at her blankly for a moment. “Go.”
“You putting us in, coach?”
She grabbed a file off her desk and started for the stairs, giving Austin an indulgent but stern look. Okay, so something big was definitely up. He dashed after her, with Derrick bringing up the rear, shooting Amber a sorry-you’re-not-included look of sympathy.
As they entered the ready room, SECNAV Stewart Olsen was at his desk. When Kai, Derrick and Austin walked in and stood before the big screen, he got right to the point.