by Paige Tyler
Mac cuddled against Gage’s chest, running her fingers over the muscles and lightly tracing his tattoos. She’d never been into guys with tats, but he made them work. She’d seen the wolf-head SWAT tattoo during PT and when they’d made love the previous night. But she hadn’t gotten a good look at the other tattoo—the one he called his Ranger Scroll—until now. She traced her fingers along the black ribbon outline with its red inner line. Inside both lines were letters and numbers.
“Second Ranger, I get,” she said softly. “What’s BN stand for?”
It took Gage a minute to answer—he was pretty much comatose beneath her in his own post-orgasmic bliss. “Battalion. I was in the 2nd Ranger Battalion out of Fort Lewis.”
He said the words so quietly she wasn’t sure if she should ask him anything else about it. She remembered how he’d smiled in all the military pictures out on the wall, but looked almost somber in every photo after that. She wanted to know more about Gage, though. Hell, she wanted to know everything about him there was to know.
“I remember seeing in your public relations bio that you spent six years in the Army. Was all of it with the 2nd?”
“Not counting Basic and initial schooling, yeah, I was in the 2nd the whole time. I came in right after Desert Storm kicked off and was out by the middle of ’97.”
“I saw the pictures out on the wall. Were they your friends in the 2nd?”
Of course they’d been his friends—he’d taken pictures with them. But he seemed to understand what she was asking.
“They were more than that. They were like my family,” he said quietly. “First Platoon, First Rifle Squad. My brothers.”
Mac realized then that he’d never said a word about family until now, and when he did, it was in terms of the soldiers he’d served with.
“They sound like amazing guys. Do you stay in touch with them?”
Gage didn’t answer, and the silence stretched out until she lifted her head off his chest to look at him. His eyes were closed, and when they opened, she couldn’t miss the sadness in them.
“No,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
Crap. Why the hell had she asked that question? Couldn’t she have just left well enough alone?
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject.”
He gently twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. It was a long time ago anyway. It hurts to think about, but not like it used to.”
She rested her head on his chest again, furiously trying to think of something that would help change the topic of the conversation. But her mind was completely blank.
“It was back in August, 1996.”
Gage’s voice was soft and so full of sadness that she almost stopped him, but she didn’t. If he wanted to talk, she’d shut up and listen.
“We were supposed to be on a simple training rotation in Kuwait. You know, run around, shoot some blanks, cross-train with the Kuwaitis and Saudis. But for some reason, somebody with a star on his shoulder decided to send First Platoon up to the northern part of Iraq—the part that’s called Iraqi Kurdistan now—to conduct some goodwill development with the regional Kurd forces. My squad leader tried to point out it wasn’t even a Ranger job, but nobody really cared about that, so we were sent up there anyway.”
He fell silent for so long that Mac thought he was finished. But then she realized she could hear his heart beating fast beneath her ear.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. Kind of fun, actually,” he continued. “The platoon leader had each of the squads farmed out, working with a different part of the Kurdish militia. They certainly needed our help, so none of us minded. Then on the thirty-first, Saddam got a hair up his ass and decided to send his forces up to the town of Irbil for a little ethnic cleansing. Right where our squad was set up. Nine of us, stuck right in the middle of a place we really weren’t supposed to be, with no support and almost no ammo.”
Mac held her breath, waiting.
“As you can imagine it didn’t go well for us. We were fighting side by side with the Kurds, and we put up one hell of a defense, but they didn’t have much in the way of heavy equipment, and we didn’t have any. A whole lot of people died in a really short period of time, including every member of my squad but me. My squad leader died in my arms as I tried to drag him out.”
Mac was crying, and didn’t have a clue why. She hadn’t known those men. But Gage had, and their deaths had hurt him, so she hurt, too. “August of 1996,” she murmured. “Isn’t that what they called Desert Strike? I remember reading about it somewhere, but I don’t remember seeing anything about any US ground casualties. We just dropped a bunch of bombs and fired off some cruise missiles.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what they called it. But the bombing and cruise missiles happened in the days after the initial attack. Didn’t do us or the Kurds any good. My squad was wiped out by then and I just barely dragged my shot-up ass back to the extraction point in time to hook up with the rest of the platoon. They’d been pretty beat up, too, but nothing like my squad. The worst part? The official report reads that my squad members all died in a training accident down in Kuwait. No one wanted to admit the US even had ground forces up in the Kurdish region.”
Crap. “Is that why you decided to get out?”
He hesitated for a long time before answering. “That had a lot to do with it. I just couldn’t be part of the big machine anymore. They didn’t even care about us.”
Mac understood Gage a little better now than she had before. How he’d risen so fast through the Dallas PD ranks, why he’d taken over the SWAT team and rebuilt it in his image. They were an organization that took care of their own above all else.
His arm tightened around her. “Sorry I unloaded on you like that. I’m not sure why I did. It definitely doesn’t qualify as romantic pillow talk.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I get the feeling you’ve needed to tell somebody that story for a long time. I’m just glad it was me.”
“I guess you’re right.” He sighed. “I try not to think too much about that part of my past. I didn’t even realize it was weighing on me until I told you about it.”
She tilted her face up to kiss him. It was amazing how close she felt to him after that little peek into his past. It made her want to learn everything about him. “You can tell me anything.”
He gazed at her so deeply and thoughtfully she almost teared up again. “I might just take you up on that offer sometime.”
She rested her head on his chest again, smiling as she realized his heart was now beating in the strong, slow rhythm she was used to. “Anytime you’re ready.”
Chapter 10
Gage couldn’t help returning Mackenzie’s smile as he held open the door to the restaurant. “After you.”
He would have been quite happy hanging around her apartment again tonight, watching TV, talking, and making love like a couple of minks, which was what they’d been doing for the past two days, but she’d wanted to go out to dinner. And whatever Mackenzie wanted, Gage was ready to give her. She’d picked this place way out toward Bonham. He’d never heard of it, but she promised him it’d be worth the hour-plus drive to get out here. He didn’t care where she wanted to eat. As long as it was with him, he was game.
Across from him, Mackenzie scrunched up her nose as she studied the menu. He smiled. She looked so cute when she did that. He still couldn’t believe how well things had worked out. Last night—sometime between dinner at her place and making love on the couch in the living room—Mackenzie had told him she was dropping the whole SWAT-team-on-PEDs story. They both knew there’d never been a PED story, but that had been her way of saying she was done snooping around. His pack was safe.
But while he’d started out hoping to keep a nosy journalist from finding out his pack’s secret, somehow, he’d wound
up falling for Mackenzie and finding the one woman in this crazy world he clicked with. It was way too soon to say he was in love, but he was more serious about her than he’d ever been about any woman. And he liked to think she felt the same way about him.
“So, what do you feel like eating?” Mackenzie asked, still studying the menu.
When he didn’t answer, she gave him a quizzical look. She must have read his mind because she grinned. “On the menu, Gage. On the menu.”
He chuckled. “I’m feeling like a big cheeseburger with a huge pile of fries.”
“Sounds good to me. Make it two.” Mackenzie closed her menu and placed it on the table. “So, what were you asking me as we pulled in the parking lot?”
She was looking at him expectantly, her blue eyes dancing. Apparently, this was a test, and if he didn’t remember what they’d been talking about, she was going to seriously start thinking he was some kind of deviant who constantly thought about sex when he looked at her. Which was actually true, but he forced his mind back to their previous conversation. They’d been talking about his work schedule, then her schedule, then what she’d be working on next week. Yeah, that was it.
“I asked you what story you were going to work on next. Since the SWAT piece didn’t pan out.”
That sounded so smooth he almost patted himself on the back, but then he noticed she was grinning at him like she knew exactly how hard it’d been for him to remember. She didn’t call him on it, though.
“I wouldn’t say it was a complete waste of time.” She gave him a sultry look that made him wish they’d stayed at her place. “I’m not really sure what I’m going to work on. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”
Gage let the waiter set down their drinks and take their order before asking her something he’d wondered about more than once.
“How do you decide what story to go after? I know you mentioned your boss gives you a lot of leeway, but how do you even start? I mean, do you look at the news and wait until something grabs your attention?”
She stirred artificial sweetener into her iced tea. “Most of the time, yeah. I see something that’s just wrong—a person getting away with something everyone knows they did, someone lying about something important with a perfectly straight face, a group of bad people using the system to get away with hurting people over and over. I see things like that and I just have to do something about it.”
“You want to right wrongs then.”
She sipped her drink. “Unfortunately, I rarely get to right the things that are wrong. The most I can usually do is make sure the truth comes out.”
In his experience, truth could be one hell of a four-letter word. It was frequently held up as this amazing tonic that cured all ills, but it didn’t always work out that way.
The funny thing was, he’d been wondering all weekend—in between romps in the bedroom and intimate conversations on the sofa—if he should tell her that he was a werewolf. Not right away, but soon. There was just something about her that made him want to be completely, one hundred percent honest with her.
But this wasn’t just his secret, and that was what held him back every time he thought about opening his mouth.
“What about those situations where the truth coming out will only lead to more problems?” he asked.
She regarded him thoughtfully, as if she was wondering if he was just making conversation or whether this was one of those other secrets he had.
“It might cause some pain and suffering at first, but I tend to believe the world is a better place when all the secrets are out in the open,” she said.
Damn, sometimes it was hard not looking at her and assuming she could see right through him. But with that question, he’d just exposed the biggest difference between them. She’d seen the real world, but she was still an idealist. She lived in a place where honesty and truth always led to the best outcome. He’d seen the same real world, but lived in a place where lies and cover-ups kept people safe.
“What about secrets the world isn’t ready to handle yet?” he asked.
“Give the world more credit than that. People can handle more than you think.” She gave him a pointed look. “Besides, no one has the right to decide what secrets another person can and can’t handle.”
Yeah, Mackenzie had definitely figured out this wasn’t a theoretical discussion. Not surprising. She was a journalist after all.
But when the burgers showed up, she changed the subject and started talking about the last time she had a burger this big and how much she loved them.
Great. Now Gage felt like shit. She probably thought he was trying to work the courage up to tell her about something else that had happened when he was in the Army, and that he’d tell her when he was ready. She’d freak if he told her his biggest secret—that he hadn’t gotten out of the Army because he couldn’t deal with the death of his friends, but because he couldn’t deal with becoming a werewolf. No matter how well Mackenzie thought she could handle things, she wasn’t ready for that kind of secret. He wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that.
He shoved those thoughts aside and focused on his burger. At least that wouldn’t make him feel depressed.
He’d just drowned his fries in ketchup and taken the first bite of his burger when his phone rang.
Mackenzie looked at him, a French fry poised halfway to her mouth. “Guess you have to answer that, don’t you?”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out his damn phone. One weekend, that was all he’d been looking for. “Yeah, they wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.”
Of course, it might not be work… Gage glanced at the call display. It was Mike’s cell, not the main line at the compound. He thumbed the accept button.
“Yeah, Mike, what’s up?”
“Damn, I’m glad you picked up. I was worried you’d let it go to voice mail.”
The tone in Mike’s voice immediately made his inner werewolf go on alert, and all kinds of bad shit start running through his head. “What’s wrong?”
“I just got a call from a guy I know over in Customs and Border Protection at Dallas/Fort Worth International,” Mike said. “We’ve got trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Red flags have been coming in on nearly every flight inbound from Mexico and South America since 0900 this morning. We’re talking more than a dozen guys. All cartel connected and all well-known killers.”
That sinking feeling in his stomach just got worse. “Why are we only hearing about it now?”
“Federal district attorneys have a couple major drug cases going on right now and thought the guys were in town for a hit on one of their witnesses,” Mike said. “My guy called me from the freaking bathroom because he knew they weren’t coming in for any witness. Not when they figured out who brought these guys in.”
Gage swore. “Hardy.”
“Yeah, and he’s not even trying to cover his tracks. The son of a bitch had limos waiting for every one of these guys. According to cops and informants I know back from my days undercover, the word on the street is that these guys are here to take you and your girlfriend out. Soon.”
“Shit.”
On the other side of the table, Mackenzie had put down her burger and was looking at him with concern.
“Gage, the deputy chief is going to want to put the two of you in protective custody, you know that, right?” Mike asked.
“That sure as hell isn’t going to happen,” Gage growled.
“No shit,” Mike agreed. “Hardy has men on the inside. He’d know where you were going before you got there. What do you want to do?”
Gage hesitated. His first instinct was to protect Mackenzie. His second was to protect his pack. But the Pack could take care of themselves—and Mackenzie—if they were warned. And if they were together.
“Call everyone in and get
loaded up and ready. Mackenzie and I will be there within the hour. We’ll go from there.”
Mike didn’t argue. He didn’t comment about the fact that Gage’s visit to Hardy’s residence hadn’t had the desired effect, either. Damn it, he should have killed Hardy when he had the chance, badge be damned.
“What’s wrong?” Mackenzie asked when Gage hung up.
Gage didn’t have a clue what dinner cost, but he pulled fifty dollars out of his wallet and tossed it on the table. Then he stood and held out his hand to Mackenzie. “I’ll tell you on the way to the compound.”
Mackenzie didn’t demand answers, but just took his hand and let him lead her out of the restaurant. Even though she was the poster girl for calm, he could hear her heart pounding.
“Gage, you’re scaring me,” she said when he made her wait while he scanned the parking lot. “What’s going on?”
He hurried her across the lot, his nose taking in a hundred different scents, his eyes shifting just enough to sharpen his night vision without giving off that telltale glow. The sun was just going down, so it wasn’t completely dark out, but he still focused as he peered into the deepening shadows.
The parking lot was clear and he hustled Mackenzie in the car before he’d even thought about how to answer her question.
He seriously considered making something up. But he wouldn’t make her any safer by lying to her. In fact, he’d probably do the opposite. If she didn’t know the danger she was in, she might take a careless risk without even realizing it. So, as he spun out of the parking lot, he told her the truth.
“Hardy’s brought in a bunch of heavy cartel muscle from outside the country. They started arriving earlier today. And everyone who knows anyone has it on good authority that they’re here to kill me.” He slanted her a glance. “And my girlfriend.”
He sped down the road, checking every mirror in quick rotation as he waited for her to say something.
“Girlfriend, huh?”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Mackenzie had always struck him as a pretty cool character, but of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. “That’s the word on the street, according to Mike.”