He would check on them later, but his first priority was to locate Trina. Night vision goggles pulled down around his neck, he moved around the clearing, which was brilliantly lit by the fire of the shed’s remains and a number of surrounding trees.
As he cleared the worst of the fires, he took off running, keying his mike every few seconds. No answer from Trina, dammit. He had a bad feeling in his gut that she was down. How he was so sure of it, he had no idea. But he didn’t question the intuition.
He kept a sharp lookout for any Kimballs upright and moving. The brush got thicker and he stopped, getting his bearings. He would never find her if he randomly bombed around out here in this thick vegetation. A plan. He needed a plan.
Panic at the idea of Trina being hurt or dying made his thoughts scattered, and he had to consciously push it aside to focus on the problem of finding her.
He thought back to just before the explosion. She likely would have been hidden behind the drums of chemicals after he warned her the Kimballs were coming. It was what he would have done and he would lay odds she had done the same.
The back of shed had the known claymore behind it, which meant she probably chose the end of the shed for her egress route, instead.
Once outside, she would have wanted to check on him. So, she’d likely veered toward the front of the building where he’d been. Then, she would have turned to run away from the clearing before detonating the charge. He looked around…which meant she would have headed for the nearest trees…over that way.
He pulled his NVG’s over his eyes and traced her probable route of egress, scanning the ground for heat signatures. As panicked as he was, he forced himself to move methodically, searching the area thoroughly.
Flashbacks of the night he’d blown out his knee rolled through his mind. It had been dark like this. Cold, though. Rocky terrain and not this thick vegetation. But men had been down, separated from the group by the blast of the IED their Jeep had hit. They’d been thrown in all directions and had run and crawled for cover as they’d taken heavy incoming fire. Communication links went down and men were deafened by the blast. It had been a mess.
He set up a back-and-forth search pattern by rote, grateful for long years of training that could take over when he was so freaked out at the prospect of Trina being hurt that he could hardly think.
There. A bright green, human-sized blob. He darted over and fell to his knees beside Trina’s prone form. He had to lift a heavy tree limb that lay across her shoulder blades to reach her and feel her neck urgently for a pulse. Abject gratitude flowed through him as he felt blood pulsing strongly beneath his fingers. His trauma medic training kicked in, and he ran his hands quickly over her limbs and down her spine to check for injuries. No warm, wet spots to indicate bleeding and no obviously broken bones.
Gently, he rolled her over. She groaned as he did so, and he sagged with relief beside her. “Open your eyes, Trina.”
Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. Not quite conscious, yet. He put his hands on her shoulders and spoke more urgently. “I need you to wake up, Trina.”
Nada. He leaned in close. “You’re scaring me, baby. Come back to me.”
Her eyes opened slowly and she smiled up at him. “Hi,” she rasped. Awareness entered her gaze all of a sudden and she lurched beneath his hands. “Easy,” he murmured. “Situation’s secure.”
“They were going to kill you,” she said urgently.
He nodded. “I expected as much.”
“Jimbo. He attacked me in the woods. I dropped him. He could’ve been down when the blast went off and survived it. He would be about fifteen yards off the front corner of the shed just inside the tree cover. Did you see him?”
Ford frowned. “No. I passed through there looking for you. I had night vision goggles on. I’d have seen him.”
She sat up to take a look around in the dark. “He’s out here, then—”
A gunshot rang out and Ford grunted as hot lead slammed into his right thigh. He threw himself on top of Trina instinctively.
“Roll off me and take the right quadrant. I’ll roll away from you and take the left field of fire,” she bit out from beneath him.
He nodded tersely and rolled off her into a prone firing position, bringing his weapon to bear as he scanned the darkness. Jimbo was out there somewhere. The bastard was sneaky and mean as a snake. Tension coiled in Ford’s gut, and he had to force himself to breathe slowly. To focus on the view through his site. He tried—and failed—to be icy cold.
Dammit, he had to focus for Trina. Her safety might very well depend on him keeping his head in the game.
And with that thought came the calm that had eluded him. He dropped into the zen state of a sniper, his entire being focused on finding Jimbo Kimball and blowing him to kingdom come. For Trina.
A single shot rang out from beside him.
“Got him,” Trina announced.
“Kill confirmed?” he asked tersely.
“On my way to do it, now.” She hopped up and took off running low in a zigzag pattern into the trees.
Normally, he would go with her and they would approach the downed target from multiple directions. But in a vaguely detached place in his mind, he registered that his leg was severely fucked up. A whole lot of his pant leg felt wet already.
He rolled onto his back to have a look at the damage. Entry and exit wounds. Thank God. The bullet hadn’t lodged in the femur, then. But it could’ve hit a decent-sized artery given the amount of blood he was losing. He took off his belt and grabbed a couple of gauze pads out of a belt pouch. Slapping them over the wounds, he tightened the belt to apply pressure to the wounds. Not enough to cut off his circulation, but enough to slow down the blood flow.
“He’s dead,” Trina announced in his ear bud. “Clean head shot if I do say so myself.”
She sounded matter of fact. Not freaked out that she’d just killed a man. Focused on business. She was a natural at this stuff. No triumph, no horror, just doing her job. In a few seconds, she returned to his side.
“Let’s get out of here before someone comes to investigate the explosion,” he ground out as he levered himself to his feet using a sapling beside him to hoist himself upright.
“You hurt?” she asked sharply.
“Bastard shot me in the leg. Bullet passed through. I already triaged it.”
She knelt down quickly to examine his injury. To her credit, she didn’t try to remove the pressure bandages. “You’re bleeding, Ford. Quite a bit.”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“Let’s get you back to the boat, big guy.”
He took a step away from the friendly sapling and his head spun alarmingly. Trina jumped under his right armpit with alacrity, draping his arm across her shoulders and guiding him toward their boat.
With each step, he got more light-headed. He remembered reaching the sugar cane field, but that was all he could manage. “I’m sorry, baby,” he sighed as he finally gave up the ghost and passed out.
Trina staggered as Ford’s full body weight abruptly sagged across her shoulders. She half-turned under his arm to sling him over her back in a modified fireman’s carry. And here was the nightmare the boys harbored regarding women in the SEALs. The complaint was always that the women would not be strong enough to carry out a comrade in trouble.
Yes, he was heavy. Yes, she struggled to move forward at anything more than a slow shuffle. She would hate to have to attempt a run or even a jog. But was she about to leave the man she loved behind? Hell, no.
Shock over the realization that she loved the unconscious man draped across her back was perhaps the best distraction she could have had from the difficulty of slogging through the spongy soil and razor sharp leaves of the sugar cane towering around her. She did her best to keep the leaves off Ford’s face but feared she failed more than she succeeded.
The cane field might only be a hundred yards deep, but it took her long, exhausting minutes to trudge across it with Ford
in tow. And with each passing second, he was losing more blood. This was not good.
She reached for the old anger to fuel her steps and lend her speed. But it wasn’t there. Shocked, she searched her heart for it more closely. Where had her rage at the unfairness of her life gone? The fear of being beat up and victimized? They were completely absent.
But in their place she found something else. Respect for Ford. Admiration. Love of teamwork with him. Willingness to lay down her life for him in the same way he’d already shown his willingness to sacrifice himself for her.
This was what it meant to be a SEAL. This was that magical, intangible quality that the men feared the women lacked. That they feared the men could not feel for female comrades. But she and Ford had done it. They’d forged the bond between them that made the brotherhood of SEALs damned near invincible.
Now, the two of them just had to live through the night to let Perriman know that they’d done it. That women could become legit SEALs and pull their weight. Or carry their teammate’s weight as the case might be.
She emerged into the clearing in front of the burning shed, staggered down to the Kimball’s dock, and dumped Ford awkwardly into the brothers’ airboat. No way was she paddling a canoe to medical help for him.
Frantically she climbed in the back, started the motor and pulled away from the islet. Using her night vision goggles, she headed into the bayou, which looked entirely different at night, lit in lime green. Crap. Where was their house?
Carefully, she backtracked the afternoon’s homing expedition, reconstructing landmarks in reverse as she eased through the swamp as much on intuition as actual knowledge of where she was going. Ford looked terrible. Even in the goggles, he looked a particularly ghastly shade of pale.
At long last, the familiar dock came into view ahead. She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she jumped ashore. Leaving Ford in the boat, she raced for the house and the crash kit stowed there. Finding the bulky first aid kit, she tore back to the dock with it.
She jumped into the boat and knelt beside him. “Don’t you die on me, Ford Alambeaux. I haven’t gotten to tell you I love you, dammit.”
Quickly, she examined the bandages on his leg. They were blood soaked but seemed to be doing their job of slowing down the blood loss. He needed a hospital, but she worried that he would not survive the half-hour or more journey to town. And she had O-positive blood…the universal donor’s blood.
She dug into the crash kit and found what she needed: surgical tubing, clamps, IV needles, and alcohol swabs. She cleaned off the inside of her elbow and his, and quickly inserted an intravenous needle in one of his bulging veins. She attached surgical tubing to it and clamped it off. Then, she poked a needle into a vein of her own, which was awkward as hell one-handed. It took several tries, but she kept stabbing herself grimly. Ford’s life was on the line.
Finally, she hit a vein and blood spurted from the needle. Quickly, she attached the surgical tubing and unclamped Ford’s end of the tube. Blood flowed from her arm into his. She had no idea what the flow rate was. She took a guess and counted off the seconds, monitoring herself for any signs of light-headedness or narrowing vision.
Time was up. She clamped off the tube, withdrew the needles, and pressed bandages over the sites until both of them stopped bleeding. Now for a hospital.
Chapter Thirteen
‡
Ford blinked awake in the telltale bright lights and beeping sounds of a hospital. His right thigh throbbed, and a quick check with his hand found a thick bandage swathing his leg. Well, hell. If his thigh was nuked after all he’d done to rehab his knee, he was really going to be pissed.
Abrupt memory of how he came to be injured slammed into him and he lurched upright. Trina. Where was she? Was she all right?
A woman in blue scrubs moved into his line of sight. She smiled when she spied him looking back at her. “There y’are, now, Mr. Alambeaux,” the nurse said in a thick southern drawl. “Your lady friend’s gonna be right glad to see you’re awake. She’s been raising holy hell over you. Lemme go get her.”
He waited impatiently for Trina to come, and in the mean time, snippets of the evening’s events returned to him. First a few random snap shots in his mind’s eye, and then more and more details filled in. Trina in trouble. Him distracting the Kimballs by standing up, giving away his hiding spot, and being prepared to sacrifice himself to save her. Dumbest thing he’d ever done on a mission.
And he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Nothing and nobody was hurting his Trina. He frowned. His Trina? Well, okay then. He let that revelation sink in as other memories flowed over him. The explosion. Being unable to find her. Spotting her down and unconscious under that tree. His utter panic that she might not get back up. A black hole had loomed in his heart so huge it nearly swallowed him whole at the idea of losing her.
And then Jimbo shooting him. Trina taking the bastard out. Blood. Lots of it coming from his leg. She’d helped him, then dragged him, then carried him outright to the boat. He idly fingered several long, thin cuts on his face left over from the cane field. They weren’t deep, but they stung.
He searched his memory for what came next, and was back to mere snippets. An interminable boat ride in the dark. His helpless horror at realizing she might not be able to find her way home in the swamp. But then thudding against a dock and a sob of relief escaping Trina’s throat. She’d come over to him. Said something important. Something he’d told himself to remember…
“Hey, good lookin’. Whatchya got cookin?” a familiar voice asked from the doorway.
He looked up. Smiled. “You look like hell, Zee.”
“Thanks. You look pretty crappy yourself.”
He grinned broadly, knowing it for the endearment it actually was. “They tell you anything about my leg?”
“Flesh wound. Round passed through cleanly. One artery had to be repaired and they topped you off with a pint or two of O-positive, but you’ll be fine.” Her lips twitched as she continued dryly, “They made me swear not to let you try to shoot a gun again. Apparently, you know nothing about firearm safety. Boneheaded move to shoot yourself in the leg like that, Lambo.”
“Shoot myself—” he started indignantly. Belatedly, he caught the twinkle in her light green eyes. “That’s the story, huh?”
“Yup, and I’m sticking to it,” she retorted drolly.
He grinned up at her. “Come here. I have a secret to tell you.”
She came to the side of the bed and bent down close. He reached up and gently cupped the back of her neck under her heavy, silky hair, drawing her even closer.
He put his mouth practically on her ear and whispered, “I heard what you said to me in the boat when we docked.”
She tugged at his hand as if she wanted to pull back to stare down at him, but he hung on and finished, “I love you, too.”
She did pull back then. And stared down at him. Her expression shone with such joy it almost hurt to look at. But then tears welled up in her beautiful eyes, making her gaze brighter than ever with unshed tears.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked quickly.
She dashed at her eyes impatiently. “SEALs aren’t supposed to cry, dang it.”
He said slowly, “I think it would be okay for a girl SEAL to cry now and then.” He added, “But only if she tells her teammate why.”
“I’m worried that Perriman will break us up if he ever finds out how we feel about each other.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said slowly. “I think Perriman might actually suspect that we’ll fall for each other.”
“Why would he make you my trainer then, and send us out here together all by ourselves for weeks on end?”
He stared up at her thoughtfully. “He said something once. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time. But he commented that the best way to keep the guys’ hands off a girl SEAL would be for her to be taken.”
She stared at him for a long time and then
asked in a hush, “Is that what I am? Taken?”
He did not hesitate for an instant to answer, “Honey, women don’t get any more taken than you. You’re mine. Period. End of discussion. As for working together or not, we’ve already proven we make a hell of a team. Both of us have a talent for shooting. Snipers and their spotters always operate in pairs. Why not you and me?”
“You’d go out in the field with me as my teammate?” she asked in a small voice. “You’re not just saying that because you want to get in my panties?”
He laughed under his breath. “I can get in those any time I want. I know what makes you tick, remember? As for calling you my teammate, I’d be honored. You’re a hell of an operator. Sure, you have a lot to learn, but that’s just technical stuff. You’ve got the heart of a SEAL.”
“Good thing, because it’s all yours, Ford.”
She leaned down to kiss him so passionately his toes actually curled in the sheets, gripping the cotton as tightly as she held his heart.
“This is going to be a hell of a ride,” he murmured.
“I can’t wait. Can you?”
“Nope. Can’t.” He smiled against her luscious lips. “I love you, my own sexy girl SEAL.”
“I love you too, my hot bayou SEAL.”
The End
About the Author
Cindy Dees is the two-time RITA winning and internationally bestselling author of fifty military romance, romantic suspense, and romantic thriller novels. She also writes epic fantasy with her writing partner Bill Flippin. She lives in Texas with her husband, daughter, and three dogs who all keep her very busy. When she’s not hard at work writing her next book, Cindy loves to read, garden, travel, and belly dance. She also loves to hear from readers at her Website and through her Newsletter.
Other Books by Cindy Dees
Hot Alpha SEALs: Military Romance Megaset Page 32