Under Fire

by Scarlett Cole

  Reluctantly, she pulled out of his arms and squinted as she looked up at him. His hair looked even whiter in the sunshine, but she couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses.

  “I hate being around people, Six. I know this will make no sense to you, and I guess the fear of being kidnapped is awful for anyone, but couple that with the fear of being around any person is almost … I’m worried that it’s more than I can bear. There are obviously a number of people involved. If they need my help to re-create the sample, it will need to be in a lab, a cleanroom. And I can’t imagine I’ll be alone.”

  “You’re going to hate me for saying this because it sounds so trite, but I think you’ll find it’s pretty amazing what you can deal with when you really need to. Have you ever heard of BUD/S?” he asked, starting to walk down the beach. He placed his hand on her lower back and she shivered at the contact. With gentle pressure, he escorted her around the groups spread out on the sand and those headed toward them.

  Without thinking, she reached for his hand, wanting to continue the reassurance she felt in his arms, but he squeezed her fingers gently and then pulled away. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she took a step away from him.

  “Don’t read anything into that, Lou,” he said quietly, running his fingers through his hair. “I need my hands in case anything happens.”

  Of course he did. His comment made her feel even more stupid, and she shook her head. “It’s SEAL physical training, right?”

  “Yeah, although it’s much more than that. During the first phase is what’s called Hell Week. Crazy as all shit. They quite literally put you through hell. I remember being so exhausted that I fell asleep getting hosed by one instructor while another screamed in my ear.” He turned at her and grinned. “It’s physically grueling and pushes you to the very brink in an attempt to get you to ring out, to quit. But the truth is, it’s all mental. As soon as you get your head around the fact that it’s impossibly rare for someone to die during SEAL training and that your body is pretty much capable of whatever you can imagine, you realize the only thing forcing you to quit is your own head.”

  Louisa thought about his words, let them sink in rather than respond to them immediately. Would she rather be alive and surrounded by people than dead? Of course. Would it cripple her with fear? Possibly. Would she survive it?

  “Where’d you go, Lou?” he asked.

  “Just thinking about what you said. Even as I say my concerns aloud, I know how stupid they sound. I’d like to say that of course I’ll get through whatever happens. But you saw me that night before the presentation.”

  It was high tide, and the water forced them closer to the cliffs so they could scramble over the low rocks to stay out of the water. A man stood in the shallows doing what looked like yoga, his skin the color and texture of dark leather. Six nodded in his direction. “He’s here every day. I last lived in Encinitas eight years ago, but he was a fixture in that spot long before then. You ever try yoga?”

  “Once. Actually twice,” she said, watching her step as Six reached for her hand to help her down onto a wider stretch of sand. “Turns out I have the grace of a newborn giraffe.”

  Six laughed and led them to another wooden staircase. “I don’t buy that.”

  Louisa turned in the sand and looked at him. “And what does that mean?” she challenged.

  “With practice, I believe you can get good at anything.”

  “I call bullshit,” she said, lifting her bangs off her face. “See that?” she said, pointing to the jagged scar that ran from her hairline toward her crown. “Six stitches from hitting the coffee table says you are so wrong.”

  Six looked closely then raised his hands in surrender. “I stand corrected. But for the record, I’d be more than happy to help you learn how to do it properly without taking down inanimate furniture.”

  Louisa laughed. “Fine. Maybe I’ll give it another go.” The idea of a seminaked Six working on her flexibility provided all kinds of visual inspiration.

  “So, Ms. Biologist. What other alternative remedies have you ever tried? Hypnotherapy? Aromatherapy? Acupuncture? Meditation?”

  “A couple of them,” she said. “No real noticeable difference, except for breathing exercises.”

  They started the walk up the steep wooden stairs.

  “What, no argument about Eastern medicine being hocus-pocus?” he teased.

  They reached the top of the stairs, and Louisa would have answered if she hadn’t been completely out of breath. Six’s breathing hadn’t changed, probably because of all that working out he did on that frame in the garden. Perhaps she should get him to help her get into the kind of shape he was in. “None,” she said. “I’ll give anything a try if it will keep my mind off things.”

  “In that case,” he said, turning up a side street, “the meditation gardens are right here.” He took a left through a metal gate and pulled her to one side, carefully searching the road they’d turned up. “We’re not being followed,” he said. “Let’s go find a spot to sit.”

  The garden was beautiful and lushly planted, interspersed with stone benches and little alcoves for quiet contemplation. Everybody walked through in a way she could only describe as deliberate, taking a moment here and there to touch the plants. Or take in the view. A sense of tranquility washed over her as Six took her hand and led her to a nook with a small bench that overlooked the ocean.

  “Sit, Lou. And take a breath.”

  * * *

  So much for being outside!

  He’d thought, incorrectly, that being in a wide-open and public space with her would lessen the need to be with her, but it had heightened it. It started with a need to hold her hand, and he really didn’t care if it was politically incorrect, but he’d wanted all the assholes on the beach who’d looked at her more than once to know she was with him.

  Which she wasn’t. At his request. Which was noble … and fucked up.

  And now she sat primly an arm’s length away from him on the bench in one of his favorite places on earth, so stiff that it looked like she had a pole up her spine.

  “Relax,” he said, putting his arm along the back of the bench. Her hair tickled his skin, but he resisted the urge to grip her shoulder and pull her close to him. Instead, he focused on the blue of the ocean, and the green of the plants, and the pinkish red of the flowers. Colors he’d missed when deployed to dust bowls in Satan’s kitchen, where the landscape came in varying shades of beige and brown.

  “Am I supposed to have a mantra or something?” she asked. “Or say om?”

  “Funny, Lou. You ever hear about box breathing?”

  She tilted her head to look at him, and it took every ounce of his control not to lean forward and kiss her.

  “Is it like breathing in for eight and out for eight?”

  “Not quite. You breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four. Just focus on your breathing. Don’t think about anything else. If you find your thoughts drifting, just stop as soon as you realize it and go back to your breath.”

  “This is very New Age of you, Six,” she said quietly, eyes closed and a serene smile on her face despite her teasing.

  He watched as she followed his instructions and he found himself breathing in sync with her. “Yeah, well. You’d be surprised at the shit I know.”

  They sat in silence, but he couldn’t focus. Couldn’t help sneaking sideways glances in her direction. At the way her long eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, or the way she ran her tongue over her lips. Periodically, her chest would lift, highlighting the way her thin T-shirt hugged her breasts, and she’d release her breath in a long sigh that reminded him of the moment he’d slid inside her for the first time.

  You need to get laid. Of course he did. When he’d been back in Virginia, there’d been no shortage of women willing to spend time with him. And he’d had an ongoing understanding with a couple of women happy to receive the occasional booty call. So once in two weeks was al
most as bad as being deployed. Going out and finding someone would be no problem, except the idea that it wouldn’t be Louisa made his chest hurt. It would be empty, a word he’d never associated with women before.

  He felt it, the moment Louisa finally relaxed. She had an anxious, frenetic energy usually. Her shoulders slumped, rounded. And her head dropped forward. At first he thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she opened her eyes.

  “It’s hard to keep thoughts at bay, isn’t it?” she asked, linking her fingers.

  It sounded more like a statement than a question, and if he didn’t know better, he could have sworn she read his mind. “Yeah, it can be. But it gets easier over time.” He was clearly out of practice, even though it had been his nightly routine when he was deployed to clear shit he couldn’t unsee from his brain just long enough to grab a couple of hours of sleep.

  “How do you do it, Six?” She turned on the bench to face him and lifted her sunglasses, popping them onto the top of her head.

  For some reason it felt important that he do the same. To look her in the eye. “My mom teaches meditation, and my sister teaches yoga. I’ve been doing both since I was a kid.”

  Louisa smiled. “That’s a really sweet story,” she said. “And I want to hear more about little Sixton, the yogi. But I meant gear yourself up to put yourself in danger. You never seem bothered by it.”

  “If I thought for a second that it would help, I’d panic along with those I’m to defend.” He offered her his hand and marveled, when she accepted it, at how small hers seemed in his. “But, unfortunately, it doesn’t. Fear affects your ability to think straight, to make good decisions. In the toughest moments I’ve ever experienced, I’ve dug hard for the quietest place I can find inside myself. Try to get rid of all the noise, and crap, and panic, and focus on the little voice inside you that knows the answers.”

  “You do realize that sounds a little like Use the force, Luke?” She looked down at their joined hands, and he noticed she had a dimple in her left cheek that showed when she smiled broadly.

  “It takes a certain kind of person to be a SEAL. It’s hard to explain. Ask any of us and we’ll tell you there is a moment of absolute clarity as things play out in slow motion in front of you.”

  “I can’t imagine it. I mean, I’ve watched movies about SEALs, and you see images on TV, but it must be something else to be there in person. You’re a bona fide hero.”

  Six shrugged. “I don’t know about that. I think you’re way braver than I am. I can’t imagine what it must be like living in the shadow of such a debilitating disease.”

  Louisa let go of his hand and stood. She wandered to the railing that overlooked the water and turned back to face him. “It’s not debilitating. It’s deadly. Usually within fifteen to twenty years of the onset. But my dad didn’t die directly from the disease.” She pulled an elastic band from her wrist and pulled her hair up into a ponytail.

  He stood. “What happened?” he asked, and followed to lean on the railing next to her.

  “The most characteristic symptom of Huntington’s is the chorea, the jerky movements. My dad had already started to show some neuropsychiatric manifestations, but the medication he took for the chorea exacerbated it.” Her nose twitched and she looked upward, blinking tears away. “He went from anxiety and depression to suicide in a matter of months. I was the one who found him hanging in the garage.”

  “Oh, Lou,” he said as he stood. He scooped her into his arms and pulled her close to his chest. He kissed the top of her head.

  Once more she took a step back as she swallowed deeply, but thankfully she didn’t pull away from his arms, where, of course she shouldn’t be in the first place. But he didn’t give a damn.

  “He’d killed himself shortly after I left for school and my mom had gone to LA to visit a friend. By the time I found him, he’d been dead in our baking hot garage for nine hours.”

  Six thought about the way bodies decomposed in hot temperatures. The smell alone would have been enough to make her ill. And hanging. Christ. People occasionally lost their shit. Literally. Violent death was not something anyone should have to witness.

  “I’m sorry. That’s a horrible thing.”

  “Yeah. Well. Now you understand why it means so much to me. The meds that were supposed to help with his symptoms pushed him over the edge. That’s why I need to find something to help with this while others race for a cure for the disease as a whole. That might take a really long time because it doesn’t get the kind of funding that cancer does. So this feels like something I can do.”

  Unable to resist, he pulled her close again, and she went willingly. “We’re going to figure this out, Lou. I promise you. I don’t know how long it is going to take, but I promise you we will. And hopefully the CIA route will come through today so I don’t need to circumvent the police. They have due process, and warrants, and fewer means of making people talk. This contract will give us a different kind of latitude to get things done quickly. We’ll keep the police and the feebs, the FBI, posted every step, but we’ll do it our way.”

  “What happens now that some of the dust has settled?”

  He brushed the wisps of her bangs away from her face with his thumb. “We go back home and see what we’ve got. Line up all the pieces. And I’m going to put a tracker on your phone and one in your shoe. If for whatever reason they are able to get past us all—if they do get to you—I’ll be able to find you. They might take your phone, but they aren’t going to take your shoes.”

  Louisa nodded. “Agreed. Put as many as you want on me. It’ll make me feel safer. What about … never mind.”

  “No, go ahead. What about what?”

  “Nothing. Honestly,” she said. She slipped out of his arms, and he hated the loss of her. “I’m anxious to get home and get started.”

  She set off down the path they’d walked up without so much as a look backward.

  He had a feeling she had been about to ask about his own demons.

  And if she had, he might have told her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Victor Lemtov wasn’t a part of the Russian Mafia, which according to Six was a brilliant thing because organized crime had arms and legs and relationships with other families. So the threat’s reach wasn’t as far as it could have been, but this, too, was a double-edged sword. Lemtov was flying below the radar. Minor transgressions, usually involving shoddily organized henchmen, had set him back, but the localized dealing and death of minor dealers couldn’t be pinned on him, no matter how hard law enforcement tried. Kidnapping and abduction of non-drug-related targets seemed to be a bigger playing field than he was used to, and the FBI were interested in his ramped-up operations which was apparently causing a little pushy-shovey between Six’s CIA and feeb contacts over Eagle Securities’ involvement. But as Six had promised, his contact had come through, and now Eagle was officially acting with their consent.

  After their walk, they’d returned to Six’s house and he’d shown her how to load and fire one of his guns. He’d told her what make it was, but she couldn’t remember, only that it had felt cold and heavy in her hand. Then he’d resumed the protective-bodyguard thing, putting the distance back between them. It was driving her crazy because she could totally tell he’d checked her out occasionally during their time on the beach. And when he’d pulled her into his arms, she could have sworn his breath caught a little. Or maybe that was because she’d hugged him a touch too aggressively.

  Her itch for him was getting worse. How hard could it be to get him on board with going back to where they’d been when they’d fallen into bed together? For the first time in forever, she contemplated masturbating—something she’d never really needed before, but God, a woman could only cross her legs so many times before she internally imploded.

  In need of something cool, she picked up the green juice he’d bought for her at the store from the table on the covered patio and took a sip. A fan turned monotonously above her as she drank and tr
ied not to stare at the way Six was reclined in a rattan chair, feet up on the low coffee table, a laptop perched on his lap. He’d also convinced her to get a four-ounce juice shot with ginger and cayenne in it, which had tasted foul and burned her throat as she swallowed it, but he’d just chugged it back and laughed at her expression. Now, he was shirtless, obviously reading something through. He was as focused as she was distracted.

  She checked her phone. There were a number of messages from Aiden asking if everything was okay. It was rare for her to ever miss a day at the lab, so her absence was likely conspicuous. She tapped a quick reply that there had been some issues but she was safe.

  “So,” she said, knowing she was interrupting Six’s concentration. “What else do you have?”

  “Just reading through some stuff from Sherlock.”

  She waited for a moment for him to expand, but he didn’t. Perhaps he needed a moment to finish it. Not everybody was a speed reader like her. A few more minutes ticked by as the fan whirred above them. If this were her home, she’d replace the fan as quickly as she could. The whirring and creaking were driving her mad.

  Unable to wait any longer, she interrupted again. “What does it say?”

  Six shook his head and shrugged with looking at her. “Nothing much. More confirmation of what we still don’t know.”

  It was impossible to explain how, but deep down in her gut she knew Six was keeping something from her. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  “Lou,” he warned, but she continued.

  “You said Mac and Lite were following up on Lemtov. So either they suck in intelligence gathering or you know more than you are telling. You’ve given me zero from the cameras at Ivan’s house. Has he been to the lab? Has he seen his grandfather? Is the lab just carrying on as normal? And you said you have ones set up for Kovalenko and the guy you pulverized.” Six winced at this, but she bulldozed on. “Were they charged? Who did he phone? Are they out?”