Hero (Navy SEALs Romance Book 2)

by Rachel Hanna

  Which had nothing to do with Hannah, he told himself.

  The paperwork didn't take more than half an hour, and Tanner left as soon as they finished. Knox sat in his truck, pulled out his phone and let his fingers decide.

  He called Hannah automatically.

  Hannah wasn't home.

  Chapter 6

  The first five miles were uphill. The majority of even serious runners would consider that a bitch.

  Hannah considered it – a bitch, she decided. She was breathing hard by the time the trail finally leveled out and she realized she'd parked somewhere new and headed in a different direction than the one she usually started in. She wasn't lost, exactly … she just didn't quite know where she was.

  That was OK. She had the sun to guide her, and the down side of the hill should lead her back. She was already putting out markers. Her fanny pack always held twenty small strips of bright pink florescent surveyor's tape. She'd keep track of the number and try to always collect them again and not leave anything cluttering up the landscape on her way back. It was like breadcrumbs, but less likely to be eaten by hungry birds.

  Meanwhile, now her track had leveled off and her breathing returned to normal, she was running easily, the sun hot on her skin, her footsteps sure, her heart light. It was too bad Knox had to miss this – she thought he liked the runs they took together for the runs themselves, not just for the together part – plus she missed him when he wasn't around. Jenna and Molly teased her mercilessly and even Alexa seemed to think Hannah was fooling herself with the whole running buddy thing.

  Didn't matter. Neither of them was involved with anyone else, and Hannah was enjoying all the new and exciting of a rugged, sexy man in her life without all the attendant OMG! New guy! Drama.

  It was nice.

  That was a lie.

  She felt every bit as butterfly-filled when she saw him as she ever had with a new and serious relationship. She wanted to be with him 24/7 and the only reason she'd come on this run was so she wouldn't sit home and mope when it turned out he couldn't run with her.

  He hadn't said anything about seeing her tonight.

  Her pace slowed a little. Actually, the only times they'd said anything about seeing each other at night was when they had long runs they were finishing up in the evening. Or when they ran after work. She had no idea what he did on Fridays and Saturdays, not that there'd been that many of them, but what did he do, go home and spend the evening explaining to his wife and kiddies that he'd been running with a friend?

  He'd have said something.

  You've seen his apartment, the voice of reason – always Jenna's voice – said clearly and Hannah nodded to herself and ran faster again.

  Not married. So what about a girlfriend?

  No. No, she had to stop this voice in her head. She was about fifteen miles in and planning another five before she'd turn around and run back, maybe a forty miler today, her watch showed she had plenty of time, but even at six miles an hour, that was another four hours she'd be out here running and she wasn't spending it worrying about her friend who didn't owe her any explanations for what he did when he wasn't with her. She hadn't asked before jumping into bed with him and –

  "Oh, shut up!" Hannah said aloud. She slowed. She'd free up her earbuds and listen to something loud until she drowned out the voice of unreason (which unfortunately always sounded just like Hannah herself).

  She reached for the stretchy phone cozy on her arm.

  And found it empty.

  For the first time in the run, Hannah staggered to a stop. The first thing she did was rip the band off her arm as if she were mistaken and the phone really was there. Which it wasn't. The next was to make certain there were no holes mysteriously in the pouch that held the phone when it was in the armband where it belonged, holes that might mean her phone had slipped out and was somewhere on her path where she could find it on her way back. There weren't.

  The third thing she did was sag, take a step or two off the trail and sit on a large rock conveniently there. While wild grasses tickled her legs, she closed her eyes and saw clearly the phone charging in the center console of the Jeep.

  "Shit."

  The trail behind her was nowhere near as intriguing as the trail in front of her. If she kept going forward, where she wanted to go, she added another five miles, ten both ways, and she'd end up right here again. She still wouldn't have her phone, and she'd have added ten miles to a run where she didn't have her phone.

  Hannah glared up at the sky. There were fat puffy clouds and nothing else. Perfect day. Perfect run so far. In the entire time she'd been running trails, five years now or so, she'd fallen all of once. There was no reason to expect just because she didn't have her phone with her she was going to injure herself on this run.

  No, there was, really – because she'd be more self aware and maybe move a little differently. If she just said –

  "Oh, fuck it," Hannah said, and ran anyway.

  The path wound up and around several more outcroppings of rocks and little protuberances of hills on the side of hills, making for bends in the road she couldn't see around before she started down the other side, aware that even though she probably was only at about eighteen miles, she probably should turn back here, not give herself another uphill section to move through on her way back. Because if she went downhill right now, and forward, she had to come uphill on her way back. If she turned now, the entire rest of the run would be downhill.

  But she wanted to see what was ahead. There was a song from her childhood, something her mother had played from time to time while Hannah was growing up and one day she had Googled it and discovered it was, as so many songs were, all about sex. But the lyrics in it ran, at one point, "Let's see how far this new road reaches," and times like these, it filled her head like a promise, a challenge.

  A goal.

  Hannah ran, over soft dirt through foliage that surrounded her like a dream, through sun and shadow, careful of her steps but not running any differently, making sure she knew where her next several steps would take her so she didn't go racing off the path like one of Knox's rescue victims.

  She didn't plunge off a cliff.

  She plunged out of the foliage into a clearing. Right where armed guards were standing, wearing camo that really did blend with the sun and shade of the underbrush and trees. One minute she was running, music in her head despite her lack of tunes, she hadn't changed paths since the last strip of purple she'd tied on, and she was thinking she'd go back if the foliage didn't open up soon, there was no view here and she was getting the tiniest bit spooked –

  And then there they were.

  Big guys. Knox big. SEAL big. Military and bodybuilder big. Stretched black t-shirts covering huge chests, shoulders and arms, blacker than black sunglasses.

  Enormous automatic weapons held over their shoulders like soldiers might. Side arms on their belts.

  Hannah stopped short. "Whoa!" Held up a hand. "Sorry! Chasing my dog! Seen a German shepherd running by?"

  Already backpedaling. "His name's Knox!" she shouted, first name in her head, had to come up with something, some reason she was running off, some reason she didn't stop and chat, some reason that clearly wasn't because she actually knew that, whatever she'd just run into, it was bad, bad news.

  They were behind her, too, so identical to the first two for a second she though they'd somehow managed to get behind her in the seconds it took to back up, turn and start to run again. But no, these were new guys. Equally buff. Equally armed. Equally silent.

  She didn't have time to do more than stop before they were upon her. One guy per arm.

  "You don't understand," she said, looking right and left, from one chiseled face to the other. "My dog! He's lost. He'll get hurt!"

  "No dog," said the one on her left. His partner just pulled her forward.

  "Please," Hannah said. "My dog. His name is – "

  "Shut up," the one on the right said, in a voice that scare
d her almost senseless.

  They dragged her back to where the others stood, spun her roughly in their grips so she faced the first two she'd come upon, still held by the two that had caught her, their positions now reversed for her.

  "What are you doing here?" demanded one of the first two. "Who sent you? Who's Knox?"

  "My dog," Hannah said, struggling "I was running with my dog! There isn't anyone else. My husband is at home – "

  "Search her," he said to the two holding her.

  For cat's sake, she was wearing running shorts, ankle socks, running shoes, a jog bra with a light tee. Where would she hide anything? "I have a fanny pack." Please, please.

  She found out quickly where they thought she might have hidden things. The pat down was impersonal and still a violation and scared her worse than lingering hands might have. If even one of them had copped a feel, they'd at least be human.

  These guys weren't.

  "Where's your phone?" the one asking the questions snapped at her.

  "I left it in my car. I didn't mean to."

  In one step he closed the distance between them. The openhanded blow was still hard enough to snap her head around. Her ears started to ring, high and loud. Her eyes filled with instant tears. Her face felt like it might explode.

  "Where the fuck is your phone?" Hard fingers grabbed the case on her arm, trying to drag it off without undoing it, not possible, and he finally dragged it down and off her arm one of her two captors briefly releasing her but not long enough for Hannah to even think about making a break for it. The guy on her left never let go of her. Plus every one of them might be wearing combat boots, but she had no doubt they had trained for running in them and despite her challenge to herself to match Knox's speed, endurance was still where she excelled when speed was what she'd need. There were four of these guys. No chance she was faster than all of them.

  The sunlight blinked out completely when they dragged her into the tent.

  Knox couldn't stop pacing.

  "Dude," Tanner protested. He ran a hand over his black hair, stood and planted both hands on his desk. "What?"

  "Hannah," Knox said. No artifice, no pretense. Not being able to reach her felt like panic.

  Tanner didn't make jokes, didn't hassle him. His teammate was upset, then he'd find out why and work with him to fix it. "It's five o'clock. Sun sets near seven." He looked closely at Knox.

  Who nodded. "She's in the foothills."

  "Running?"

  "Yeah." He smacked one fist into the other open palm. "She goes out on her own all the time. Real wilderness runs. Takes her phone, water, iodine tabs, carbs." Suddenly remembering the crushed peanut butter sandwich.

  "Gun?"

  "Pepper spray."

  Tanner nodded. "Your contribution." It wasn't a question.

  Knox made himself stop moving. "She left a voice mail. Didn't tell me her location. Probably didn't know yet. We were supposed to run a forty."

  Tanner blinked. "Miles?"

  Knox gave him a tight smile. "I can tell running's still your favorite thing."

  "Not crazy," Tanner said. "Lot of canyons and foothills out there. Can you narrow it down?"

  "Her friends probably could." He turned and stared at the door, wishing he knew where she was and how to get to her.

  "You know them?"

  Shook his head. "Never met. We've been friends. Just running buddies."

  Tanner didn't waste time with the obvious. This was something more. Even if it wasn't, Knox was concerned.

  "If she does this all the time, what's got you spun up about today?"

  Knox looked back at Tanner, raised his chin. "Her voice mail. Said she was headed out. I asked her to let more than one person know. She let me know because I was supposed to go with her."

  Tanner waited for more.

  Knox tightened his mouth. "I also asked her to check in on long runs. Forty miles takes her six to eight hours depending on terrain. She called before she left. Give her an hour's drive leaving when we were getting the people off that boat." He thumbed on his phone. "That was 7 a.m. Time for last minute details, leaves 7:15, gets there at 8, 8:30 latest." He was guessing, building up a scenario. "Even if she got to the trail as late as 9:00? Twenty miles one way, twenty miles out, even if it's steep, give her credit for five miles an hour. That's got her headed back at one."

  Tanner said calmly, "It's just after five. Turning back at one gets her back at five. Give her some wiggle room, stop to smell the roses, call of nature, looking at the views. Six o'clock doesn't seem unreasonable." He was watching Knox closely.

  Made sense. Because the scenario they'd just put together she could logically be calling at any minute. Except.

  "I asked her to check in every couple hours when she's doing a long run. Set up a text to me and probably the girl called Jenna. Hit it every ninety to one hundred twenty minutes with OK. Nothing more. Check in." He looked at the door again. His training was deserting him. He wanted to panic, run out the door and keep running like he could find her on foot from sheer desire alone.

  Tanner said carefully into Knox's growing restlessness, "You asked her all this. She's your running buddy. Theoretically you two meet and run and it's nice you want her safe, but – " He paused and considered his words. "She have any reason to answer to you like that?"

  The answer came as simply and calmly to Knox as nothing else was at the moment: "I'm in love with her."

  Chapter 7

  They hadn't hurt her, other than the guard who had slapped her. It was terror that drove her heartrate sky high. They'd cuffed Hannah to a table through simple expediency of one cuff on her wrist and one on the ring set deep into the wood. They'd given her a sealed bottle of water, left her pack with her, searched her again for a phone, and left her there.

  Soon as her breathing stopped hitching like she'd been sobbing for hours or running flat out where she couldn't breathe, Hannah started shouting.

  That got her one harassed guard who told her to shut the fuck up and someone would be in to talk to her in due course.

  She shut up. Pointless to shout. If they were going to deal with her, they would. If they weren't, they wouldn't. She was chained to a table. Shouting had no effect. If they all had dinner and went to bed and left her there, she'd start again.

  For the moment, she started cataloging everything she could. Where she was. She'd gone east and south of the city. She was definitely within the county and probably within city limits. Expensive homes dotted some of the canyons and rather rundown beach homes others. Depended on the canyon. Where she'd gone was mostly rural and far enough out she shouldn't have even had to worry overly about growers. Sometimes she'd run through crops, the many lovely leafed cannabis crops, and once even seen a grower, but contrary to beliefs that such people would shoot first and ask questions later, the one time she'd actually seen someone he'd seemed to accept she was a runner (or a weirdo maybe) and raised a lazy (and possibly stoned) hand to wave at her.

  Growers would have been so much better.

  East and south and through the warehouse and industrial dregs of city into the canyons, the less inhabited, more rural and overgrown. She'd left word on Knox's phone when she left the house and on Jenna's when she got to the trail. She'd told Jenna which way she'd gone.

  She hadn't told Knox.

  That hit her like a lightning bolt. Jenna slept in. Jenna sometimes didn't remember to turn her phone back on until late Saturday. Jenna thought Hannah was running with Knox.

  Breathe, she told herself. Now she needed to pay attention to where she was. Probably just about twenty miles up the canyon from the trailhead. She'd left her pink markers on the bushes, the last one just before she'd blundered around that last corner. That was one of the reasons it had been meant to be the last corner: she'd run out of pink surveyor's tape. So even though they'd searched her pack, they didn't know she'd done that.

  But Knox knew. Knox was the better chance. He didn't have her location – she'd l
eft that for Jenna –and he didn't know Jenna.

  Her heart started banging hard against her ribs.

  Keep thinking.

  Jenna eventually would turn her phone on if she hadn't already and discover Hannah had called in but she hadn't called back.

  Jenna didn't know Knox, either.

  She bit her lip, feeling tears gathering.

  Let her breath out. Jenna did know Knox worked search and rescue. Hannah had talked so much about him and told Molly, Alexa and Jenna so much, one of them would remember – probably all of them. And they'd call each other, too, and pool resources.

  For that matter, they'd probably call the Sheriff's Office, who could search trailheads. That would be a start. Then again, she'd left the Jeep deep in the overhang, not visible from the road.

  Damn it.

  Could Knox use GPS to get a fix on her phone? It would be the first good thing about having left it in the Jeep. Second, maybe – because not only could Knox maybe get a fix on it, but if she had it on her, the men in the camp might have destroyed it.

  She was still south and east of the city, and had gone east directly for several miles, only bearing south at the very end of the run. It didn't do her any good, but it helped to pinpoint it for herself. She knew the state route highway she'd been on and how long it had taken her from her house to there, how long she'd run and therefore roughly how many miles.

  For all that, she knew she was in deep shit. The men who had her were as American as she herself, not foreign and not some kind of foreign terrorist therefore. Maybe she was culturally stereotyping or profiling, if there was such a thing as cultural profiling, but she didn't think they were terrorists of the ISIS type – she thought they were those people that distrusted the American government even more than Hannah and other sane people did, to the point where they wanted to secede from the country and form their own, or overthrow the existing one. What were they called?

  Crazy people.

  Yeah, but.

  Survivalists.

  Right. Didn't help to name them. She thought Ruby Ridge had been about that and maybe the weird thing in Oregon, though that might have been grazing rights.