Forged in Ash (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel)

by Trish McCallan

  “I’m okay,” she said, her voice quavering. “He didn’t hurt me.”

  Cosky felt her arms tighten around his waist. The bastard may not have hurt her, but he’d scared the living hell out of her. He felt a shiver shake her and forced down another surge of fury. Every instinct he possessed urged him to hunt that bastard down and put a bullet in his brain.

  “We need to get moving,” Zane reminded him from behind.

  Kait took a deep breath, her breasts rubbing against his chest, and a frizzle of heat teased the ice encasing him. Her arms loosened and she stepped back. Briskly she swung to the side, bent down, and picked up a suitcase.

  “I’m going to stay with a friend for a while,” she said, stepping into the hall and closing the apartment door behind her. “You really didn’t need to come. The security guard could have walked me to my car.”

  Uh…yeah…Cosky exchanged grim glances with Zane and ran a tense hand down his face. It was a good bet she wasn’t going to appreciate what he was about to tell her.

  “You can’t use your car, Kait.” He didn’t try to sugarcoat the news. “You’re in their sights now, and these guys are connected. They can track you through your car.”

  She took one step and froze. Slowly she pivoted to face him. “They? How many are there?”

  His hand started to rise, to brush her ashen cheek. He forced it back down. “We don’t know.”

  “Okay…” She didn’t argue, didn’t protest, just stood there with her brow furrowing. “Renting a car is out then. If they’re as connected as you say, they’d find out the rental info.”

  Zane’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a good bet.”

  Kait’s nod was decisive. “I can’t go to Demi, either. Not if there’s the slightest chance I could be followed.”

  “You’re coming back with us,” Cosky said flatly.

  She absently nodded, but the furrow in her forehead deepened. “If they can find me, they can find you.”

  True enough.

  There was little doubt in Cosky’s mind that those bastards had identified the condo months ago.

  Considering the effort and resources Russ’s bosses had expended in order to grab those mysterious passengers from flight 2077, it was likely they’d assigned eyes and ears to the men who’d scuttled the operation. They couldn’t afford not to. They’d need to make sure he, Zane, Rawls, and Mac weren’t about to tank their entire operation. They’d want to know exactly how much information Russ had let slip, and how much intel they’d gathered on their own.

  No doubt those bastards would have taken much stronger, permanent action if the media shitfest hadn’t swirled around the incident with the velocity of a tornado. To eliminate Cosky and his buddies now, while they were shouting conspiracy at the top of their lungs—yeah, that would have raised too many questions.

  So they were probably biding their time, watching from a distance, ready to strike instantly if need be. No doubt he, along with the rest of the men involved, would have unwelcome eyes and ears inside their homes too, if Radar hadn’t gotten his hands on the prototype of a combination audio jammer and high-tech electronic scrambler. Not only did the device jam both external and internal microphones, but it recognized and allowed authorized electronic signals to ring through. Like their cell phones. Thank Christ. Having to leave the house to make a call or check voice mail would have gotten old pretty damn fast.

  “We’re set up,” Cosky said simply. “You’re not. You’ll be safe with us.”

  As a unit, the three of them headed for the elevator.

  “I have a friend,” Kait said, the worry lines still creasing her forehead. “I’d be safe with him.”

  Him?

  Cosky stiffened. “You’ll be safer with us.”

  He caught Zane’s amused glance at his brusque tone. Kait, thank Christ, didn’t seem to notice it.

  She gave a ghost of a laugh, affection in the sound. “Believe me; I’ll be just as safe with Wolf.”

  Wolf?

  What the fuck kind of name was that?

  “You’re staying with us,” Cosky said through his teeth.

  Zane’s lips twitched, but he didn’t say a word, just held the elevator door open.

  Kait waited until the elevator doors slid shut before leveling a steady look on Cosky’s face. “Thank you. I’ll take you up on your generous offer—”

  Cosky relaxed.

  “—until Wolf comes to get me.”

  A strangled laugh escaped Zane. He tried to disguise it with a cough. Which didn’t fool either of them. Cosky shot him a murderous glare. Kait’s gaze held confusion.

  “I don’t think you understand the danger.” Cosky tried for a reasonable tone, but the words emerged gritty and hostile.

  A shadow darkened her eyes. She stiffened slightly, her face cooling. “Believe me; I’m well aware of the danger. Five minutes alone with your detective Pachico was all the lesson I needed.”

  Cosky winced, the memory of her white face and huge eyes flashed through his mind. She was right; she knew exactly how much danger she was in.

  So she must have a fuckload of faith in this friend, this Wolf, to put her life in his hands.

  The burning acidic rush that sank into his bones and blood shocked the hell out of him. It wasn’t his business how much faith Kait put in this guy. He was happy she had someone she could depend on. Someone she obviously trusted completely. It took the responsibility off his shoulders.

  Silence accompanied them down to the lobby.

  Halfway across the lobby, Kait seemed to notice that he was limping. Some of the chill vanished from her face. She slowed, matching her gait to his, and glanced around.

  “So the healing didn’t last?” she asked softly.

  Cosky glanced at her and shrugged. “It’s a hell of a lot stronger than it was before yesterday morning.”

  He hadn’t meant to remind her of those frenzied moments on her couch. But the comment did. It reminded both of them. The memory heated her dark gaze, and his blood responded—thickened and slowed, flushed with languid heat.

  It wasn’t hard to pinpoint when she remembered what had followed the sex. The arousal vanished from her eyes.

  He jerked his gaze away. He still needed to apologize for that, but before he had a chance to jump into it, Zane interrupted them.

  “Why don’t you take the front passenger seat? Cosky can stretch his leg across the backseat.”

  Damn. He’d actually forgotten Zane was with them. Talk about pathetic.

  As Kait climbed into the van, he caught her arm and her attention. She turned to face him, one leg in, one leg out of the vehicle, her face as smooth and expressionless as glass.

  “Thank you,” he said gruffly, indicating his knee with a sweep of his hand.

  Her gaze softened, but she simply nodded and turned away.

  Curiously off balance, Cosky climbed into the rear seat and settled back. Stretching his leg across the bench seat, he stared at the cool perfection of Kait’s profile.

  The urge to apologize grew stronger and stronger, but Zane—the bastard—was listening to every word they said. Apologizing would alert the asshole to the fact Cosky hadn’t been completely honest about what had taken place in Kait’s apartment the day before.

  The apology would have to wait until he had Kait alone.

  Kait tried to call her Wolf twice during the trip across town. It suited Cosky just fine that both calls went to voice mail. With luck the bastard wouldn’t call back until they reached the safety and electronic scrambling of the condo.

  “Looks like you have company,” Zane said, parking beside Russo’s Dodge Ram.

  Hollister’s and Trammel’s vehicles were in view as well. Which meant Taggart was probably on scene too, since Tram and Tag roomed together.

  They entered the condo to the rumble of Mac’s voice. Cosky was familiar with the tone and cadence—he’d spent hundreds of hours listening to it during mission briefings. He exchanged glances with Zane and
headed for the dining room. Something was in the wind.

  Jillian was still out like a light on the couch, the IV feeding fluids into her veins. But the dining room looked like central command. Maps, diagrams, and photographs were pinned to the drapes and walls.

  The six men in the dining room turned. Mac’s voice stalled as he caught sight of Cosky and Zane. He shot one irritated glare toward Kait and turned to Zane.

  “We’re setting a trap for the bastard,” Mac said.

  “How the hell did you manage all this?” Zane asked, closing in on the maps. “We weren’t gone even thirty minutes.”

  “The wonders of the Internet,” Rawls said, turning to Kait. “Glad to see you in one piece, darlin’.”

  Tag stepped forward, pulling her into a bear hug. “Good to see you, Kaity girl.”

  Cosky stiffened, his eyes narrowing. Their hug looked far too natural and…tight.

  Something had happened between Tag and Aiden, nobody knew exactly what it was—except maybe Tram, and the bastard wasn’t talking—but it had been bad enough to send Aiden packing. Had the rift been because of Kait?

  Wasn’t his business.

  Kait and Tag were adults, if they’d had a fling that was their affair.

  Too bad he couldn’t convince his fists of that.

  Mac interrupted the lovefest by grabbing Kait’s arm, thank Christ. “What did you tell that bastard while he was at your place?” Mac asked, dragging her from Tag’s arms. The look he shot Taggart held a clear warning.

  Releasing a breath he hadn’t even been aware of holding, Cosky relaxed.

  “Nothing,” Kait said. “At least nothing that I hadn’t already told the police.”

  “Which was what? Exactly?” Mac demanded.

  “That she wanted me to call Cosky and tell him to come over. Then I hit her with my grocery bag and knocked her out. I told the police I went into my apartment for some duct tape to tie her up, and she took off while I was gone.”

  A grin tugged at Tag’s lips. “That was some grocery bag.”

  “Yeah.” She coughed out a laugh, humor gleaming in her eyes. “It had a jar of Miracle Whip in it.”

  Rawls laughed. “Talk about irony.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Zane asked, bringing everyone back on track.

  “I’m going to call our bald friend and tell him we picked up Jillian, give him an address to pick her up at,” Mac said with a hard grin.

  Zane’s gaze narrowed as he scanned the maps and diagrams. “And we’ll be waiting for him.”

  Mac’s smile was cold. “That’s the plan.”

  Kait turned to look at the woman lying on the couch. “How can you be sure they don’t know you have her here? What if Pachico followed from my place when you picked her up?”

  “You said you didn’t tell him we have her.”

  Cosky stiffened at the accusatory bite in Mac’s voice, but Kait just frowned.

  “I didn’t.” She paused and added softly, “But I think he knew.”

  Zane turned toward her, his eyebrows raised. “What makes you think that?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Instinct?”

  With a snort, Mac turned away.

  “You posted Millian two blocks to the west,” Zane said, which brought Cosky’s head around. Hell, he hadn’t even seen Millian’s beat-up truck. “Who did you post to the east?”

  “Brenton,” Russo said, without taking his eyes off the map on the wall. “We have the all clear. Nobody appears to be watching.”

  Appears, being the operative word. If they’d staked out the place through a neighboring condo, they wouldn’t be watching from the road. And while neither he, nor Zane, nor Rawls had identified any unfamiliar faces hanging around, or unfamiliar vehicles in the parking lot, that didn’t mean much. Professionals would know how to mask their presence.

  “Let’s pack up, and set up,” Mac said. His icy gaze settled on Cosky. “You sit out.”

  “Make sure you wake her every half an hour,” Rawls said with a chin jab toward the woman on the bed. “If her pupil is dilated or pinpricked, get her to the ER. You can remove the IV once this bag’s drained.”

  Cosky nodded, watching as an arsenal of weapons were checked and rechecked, and then stashed behind belts or waistbands or tucked in boots. Watches were synchronized. Cell phone batteries checked.

  Kait’s gaze locked on Rawls’s cell phone, which obviously reminded her of her good buddy, Wolf.

  She dug into her purse, her hand emerging with her cell. Cosky pretended he didn’t see her punching buttons, and wondered what Tag thought about her pet Wolf.

  Rawls—Goddamn him—got entirely too helpful.

  “Here, you’ll need it green-lighted to place or receive calls.” Rawls took the phone from Kait, connected it to the scrambler’s port, and hit a couple of buttons. “It will take a few minutes, and then you should be good.”

  A few minutes later the door slammed and silence reigned. Cosky scowled, frustration rising like a tidal wave. He should have been headed out with them, damn it. Would have, if not for his damn knee.

  He transferred his glare down to his leg. He’d better get used to babysitting detail, because that’s all he’d be good for if his knee didn’t recover one hundred percent.

  His scalp itched like crazy beneath his toupee as Robert aimed the Oldsmobile sedately along the street in front of the development Simcosky and Rawlings lived in. He chanced a quick glance at their condo as he passed, relaxing at the sight of Mackenzie’s and Rawlings’s vehicles. There were several unfamiliar vehicles as well.

  Another indication they had Jillian and that the bitch had told them more than he could afford.

  By now they had to know Jillian was related to Russ. It was also a good bet that the bitch had described Robert to them and filled them in on his role in that previous debacle.

  Luckily none of that mattered, because they were all about to become very dead.

  The fatalities would be higher than the six he’d planned on. But that was for the best if Mackenzie was filling the rest of his team in on Jillian’s intel. Everyone in that damn condo needed to be silenced. And this was his best shot of silencing them.

  Without a twinge of regret, he picked up the handset to the old-school analog cell phone with its enormous battery packs. The damn think took up half of the passenger seat beside him.

  There was one serious disadvantage to the high-tech toys Simcosky and Rawlings were guarding their castle with. They were all geared toward digital signals, not the old analog one. So if you wanted to—oh, say, arm a bomb from a distance—without their fancy jammers and scramblers and whatnot interfering with the signal, well you just had to step back into the 1970s and go old school. An analog signal from an old-school cell phone, sent to a pager that was powered by tapping into the electrical wiring of the house itself, would do the trick.

  Without anyone in the house being the wiser.

  Of course, all their high-tech toys had been aimed at jamming unwelcome eyes and ears. They hadn’t been trying to guard against the arming of a bomb. Why would they? Up until, well, now, they hadn’t been threatened with any actual physical harm. The bosses had been targeting them through the legal system and the Naval Special Warfare Office itself.

  The bomb beneath the condo had simply been insurance.

  If things got out of hand and those bastards poked their noses into sensitive shit, well, instant and utter obliteration was available. But the bomb was meant as a last resort.

  The bosses didn’t want additional attention given to their story. And an explosion taking out four decorated Naval Special Warfare officers who just happened to be screaming conspiracy—well that was bound to attract far too much interest and speculation.

  So in thirty minutes, when the bomb beneath the condo detonated and incinerated everyone within the house, the bosses were going to be dangerously pissed and armed for retribution themselves. He needed to make sure he aimed that venom in the right di
rection.

  He glanced at the clock embedded in the dashboard of the Oldsmobile. He had fifteen minutes, give or take, to intercept Phillip and put plan B into action. It shouldn’t be that hard to hide the old analog cell phone in Phillip’s car, along with other incriminating items. His best bet would be to take Phil out and stage the scene. Convince Manheim that Phil had attacked him when Robert had tried to bring him in.

  He was working the strategy out in his mind when his cell phone buzzed. He checked the window and found CALLER UNKNOWN. Probably one of the crew, since everyone was using prepaid, untraceable cells.

  If his luck held, the caller would be Phillip. He’d talk him into meeting him for lunch, and then lure him out to the park on some pretext or another. He’d stash everything in Phil’s car after he’d eliminated him. He felt a twinge of regret, but only a twinge. While Phil was a good guy, there was only room for one when it came to self-preservation.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Detective Pachico?” a gravelly voice asked.

  It took a second for the name to kick in, which was the last fucking thing you wanted when you were running an alias. Jesus—he needed to screw his head on straight. This kind of a slip could get a guy dead pretty damn quick.

  “Who is this?” he demanded, although he’d finally recognized the gritty baritone. He put the cell on speaker while he scrolled through his phone’s tool kit and started the recorder so he could listen to the conversation later.

  “Mackenzie. You said to call if we tracked your girl down.”

  Robert’s eyebrows rose. Well this was unexpected, and suspicious as hell. “You found her?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got her.”

  “And where, exactly, do you have her?” Robert asked, keeping the dryness out of his voice. His eyebrows climbed higher at the address Mackenzie rattled off. The bastard sure as hell wasn’t directing him to the condo.

  Pulling over to the side of the road, he punched the address into his GPS system. Mackenzie’s coordinates would take him clear across town, into the industrial corner. Plenty of secluded spots to set a trap in that neck of Coronado.

  “Huh,” he injected surprise into his voice. “That’s clear across town from the last sighting.”