Forged in Ash (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel)

by Trish McCallan

  Talk about a bad idea.

  Gun extended, he slipped through the wall and eased forward and to his right, which should lead him back to the room they had originally entered from. Should…which didn’t actually mean it would. Christ, he could be headed away from the battle, not toward it.

  His shirt clung to his sweaty back as he picked his way as quickly as was safe around debris, trying to keep his approach as quiet as possible.

  Off-and-on gunfire hammered the building—his men’s Glocks, as well as those damn AK-47s.

  Were any of those shots Amy’s? Had she caught sight of them first, or they her? If they’d shot her before opening up on them, he would have heard it. The damn place was an echo chamber.

  Christ, he hoped that meant she was holed up somewhere safe and sound. And this was exactly why women shouldn’t be in the military. Men spent too many fucking brain cells worrying about them.

  To his right, gunfire started up again. He increased his pace, looking for cover in case his targets noticed him coming. Nothing.

  Damn it to hell.

  If they saw him coming before he saw them, he was as good as dead.

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  A DOOR FRAME arched just ahead to Mac’s left. Where the door should have been was nothing but a gaping black hole.

  Another volley of shots fired.

  “Fuck,” he whispered beneath his breath.

  His men were pinned down. If there wasn’t any cover for him to set up shop, maybe he could at least take out a couple of those bastards and give his guys a fighting chance.

  If he took a couple of rounds…well, hell, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about getting goat fucked by the DOJ and NCIS. With that in mind, he ducked low and swung through the gaping hole. As luck would have it, three feet into the room was a huge metal cabinet. He slipped behind it.

  Through his night vision device, he caught a glimpse of several men kneeling in front of the wall, framing the room they’d found the woman in. Movement across the room caught his eye. He tracked the movement and found Amy sliding through the open door in a half crouch, gun drawn.

  Son of a bitch, unlike him, she had no cover. He needed to move now, to draw their eyes and fire, otherwise she was dead.

  Stepping out from behind his cover, he took out one and then two of the targets. She took out two others. The fifth spun toward him on his knees, but Mac’s round caught him in the head. He pitched forward across his dead buddies.

  “Clear,” Mac said as he eased forward, listening to the way his voice echoed in the aftermath of the firefight.

  As he closed the distance to the mess of bodies against the steel wall, he grimaced. Christ, they needed to get the hell out of this place. If someone had reported the shots and the locals were in route, yeah, they’d be well and truly fucked this time.

  Zane swung over the wall as Mac approached, and went to work rolling the bodies over and stripping off their masks and night vision devices. Someone had sure outfitted these guys to the max.

  Amy started going through pockets.

  “Rawls, you got the camera in your pack?” Mac asked.

  Rawls nodded, thrust the girl they’d pulled from beneath the machine toward Mac, and shrugged out of his rucksack.

  The girl went limp in Mac’s one-arm clasp, and then twisted hard, trying to wrench free. Without missing a beat, he lifted her off her feet and simply held her there. After a moment, her struggles lessened.

  “Behave,” Mac told her coldly.

  Rawls handed the flash camera to Mac and took possession of their unexpected guest again. This time the woman didn’t bother trying to wrench free. Instead her gaze skittered between Rawls, Zane, Amy, and himself with guarded watchfulness.

  She was biding her time.

  Fine, as long as she kept quiet about it. So far she hadn’t made any sounds other than that surprised squeak when they’d grabbed her feet and jerked her from beneath the machine.

  “Son of a bitch,” Zane suddenly said grimly. “Take a look at this.”

  Mac walked around the bodies toward the one Zane was crouched in front of. Even in the milky light of the night vision device, he recognized Pachico’s face.

  “Son of a bitch,” he echoed Zane tightly. “He’s dead?”

  There went that avenue to answers.

  “Not yet,” Zane said slowly, rising to his feet. “Your round creased his hair. He’s out, but stable.”

  Mac smiled. “Grab him. Let’s get the fuck out.”

  “You know him?” Amy asked, taking a step forward and staring down at the bald man sprawled out on the bloody floor beneath them.

  “Yeah,” Mac said with a hard grin. “We ran into him in Coronado. He was impersonating a detective with the Coronado PD. We were trying to catch him yesterday when you called.”

  “Your stakeout.” Amy crouched down, staring much more intently.

  “Let’s move, people,” Mac snapped.

  While Zane lifted Pachico’s limp body in a fireman’s hold, Mac took hold of the woman’s arm, and they headed back out of the building.

  “Rawls,” Mac said as they moved down the hall. “Get the car. We’ll meet up in front of the gate.”

  His LT was the fastest of them. He’d have the car back by the time they got the girl and Pachico through the fence.

  Although they were still left with one big problem. Where were they going to hole up with their new hostage?

  As Mac tried to shove the woman through the hole in the fence, she started struggling. “I’m not going with you.”

  “Look at that, you can talk,” Mac said, “and yeah, you’re coming with us.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her back toward the fence.

  “No. I’m. Not.” She wrenched herself back. Only this time Mac was expecting the movement. “Unlike you, I wasn’t doing anything illegal. So it doesn’t matter if the cops catch me on the premises.”

  “It’s not the cops you need to be worried about, Dr. Ansell,” Amy broke in to say. She nodded at the woman’s sharp look at her. “Dr. Faith Ansell. I recognize you from your DV photo. Glad to see you didn’t perish in the fire like reported.”

  “You worked in the lab?” Mac asked.

  Hell, maybe their luck was finally changing. They had Pachico and one of the scientists those bastards had been after. Two pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into place.

  “Who the hell are you people?” Faith asked, her suspicious gaze shifting between Mac and Amy.

  “Believe it or not,” Amy said, “we’re the good guys. And the bad guys, the ones with AK-47s, buddies to the three men who just tried to shoot you, could be arriving any moment. You need to climb through that fence and come with us. We’ll explain once we’re on the road.”

  “You guys need to move,” Zane said, a note of urgency touching his flat tone. “We’re losing our window.”

  “Obviously you know the explosion wasn’t an accident,” Amy told the scientist when it became apparent she wasn’t going to respond to Zane’s urging. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have lain low and played dead. Obviously you know someone is after you, otherwise you wouldn’t have broken into the lab in the middle of the night to look for whatever it is you were looking for.”

  “I didn’t break into the lab,” Faith said sourly. “I’m a partial owner of the property. And why the hell should I trust you? You did break in. You have night vision devices and guns. You killed those poor men.” Her voice faltered.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Mac pushed her against the fence. This time she didn’t try to wiggle away, instead she bent down and slipped through the narrow hole. Amy followed her, her rounded ass swaying in the air.

  “You need some help getting Pachico through?” Zane asked.

  Mac dragged his hypnotized gaze away from Amy’s ass and bent down to their bound and gagged prize. Pachico’s eyes were still closed, which didn’t mean much of anything since the bastard could be playing p
ossum. But his breathing was slow and calm and there was no tension in his limbs. Maybe he was still out of it after all.

  Mac grunted as he dragged the guy to the fence and shoved him partially though. Zane grabbed his shoulder and pulled him the rest of the way. As Mac dropped to the dirt and shimmied through himself, Rawls swung in with the van. Everyone piled in.

  They stripped off the night vision devices and rucksacks as Rawls took off.

  On a rough-hewn log bench, overlooking the calm blue-green waters of an alpine lake, Jillian watched through her lashes as her guardian unpeeled an orange. His huge hands were surprisingly limber, flexible, working the orange with ease and care.

  They mesmerized her.

  “Eat,” he said simply and handed her several sections of orange and half a roast beef sandwich wrapped in a paper towel.

  She’d woken from her nap to find him banging on the wall across from her bed, which should have been frightening, but barely made a dent in her conscious before she’d fallen back into a deep, grief-riddled sleep.

  Her pillow had been soaked and her cheeks wet when she’d awakened the second time.

  Had he cradled her again as she wept? She didn’t remember any dreams this time. But she knew they were there. They were always there, waiting to ambush her the moment she closed her eyes.

  Taking a deep breath, she gazed out over the mirror-like surface of the water.

  The lake was shaped like a bowl, with a rocky, steep shoreline riddled with exposed boulders and tree roots.

  So very similar to the one she’d died in all those months ago.

  “Why were you banging on the wall?” she asked absently.

  He glanced at her and smiled slightly. “I was being hisoh’o.”

  Which told her nothing. “Meaning?”

  He shrugged. Reaching down, he pulled the hem of his jeans up and slid a wicked-looking knife out of a sheath strapped to his calf. “Loosely translated, it means being her elder brother.”

  So he was Kaity’s brother. She would never have guessed it by looking at them. But then maybe he meant figuratively.

  Jillian didn’t even flinch as he straightened with the knife in his hand. Instead, she took a bite of her sandwich, watching as he rummaged through the plastic bag he’d brought with them and emerged with an apple. Wielding the deadly blade deftly, he nimbly quartered and cored the fruit, and handed her two sections. After wiping the blade with a paper towel, he set it on top of the plastic bag.

  She dropped the apple sections next to the orange sections onto the paper towel stretched across her lap and took another bite of her sandwich.

  “What language is that? It’s beautiful.” Which it was, in a primitive, arrhythmic way. It wasn’t quite like anything she’d heard before.

  “Arapaho,” he said simply, taking such a huge bite out of his sandwich, half of it disappeared.

  “You’re Indian?”

  He simply nodded.

  She went back to staring at the surface of the lake, fighting the memories, fighting the loss, fighting the endless agony of grief that threatened to drown her.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” he asked, his gaze direct, intensely black.

  Confused, she frowned at him. “What?”

  “That I’m Arapaho? Indian? Many still view my people as barbarians.”

  Shaking her head, her gaze slid compulsively back to the water. “Have you killed?”

  She knew that he had. Had known since Kaity had shoved her into the SUV and he’d turned his head to look at her. The icy hardness that allowed killing sheathed him, just like it did the four SEALs who’d killed her brother, just like it had sat upon the men who’d kidnapped her and her children all those months ago.

  She’d become an expert at recognizing the face of a killer.

  Would he admit to it? Or lie?

  “Yes.” His voice was flat. Unapologetic.

  The admission shouldn’t have reassured her, yet strangely, it did. “How many?”

  “Many,” he admitted with the same cold lack of apology.

  “Do you kill children?” The question emerged on a haunted whisper.

  The bark of guns…the stench of fireworks…her babies falling.

  She shuddered and shook the memory away.

  “Never.” His voice was harsh, icy with cold, vicious rage.

  Startled, she glanced at him, wondering if the wrath was directed at her, at her question. But he wasn’t looking at her; he was glaring down at the lake.

  “We don’t kill children, heneeceine3 betee. We don’t kill anyone who doesn’t need killing.”

  She relaxed beside him, his words echoing through her mind. “We don’t kill anyone who doesn’t need killing.”

  “Who is we?” she asked, finishing off the rest of her sandwich.

  Not because she was hungry. But because she needed to regain her strength; she needed to escape. She might have been captured. She might be their prisoner. But she hadn’t failed yet. There was still time to make them pay.

  “We don’t kill anyone who doesn’t need killing.”

  His explanation resonated within her.

  The men who’d stolen her family needed killing.

  “We,” he echoed slowly, “are my people.”

  She nodded slightly. He must mean his tribe. A long, comfortable silence fell between them. She’d just finished the last of the apple and orange slices when he spoke again.

  “Who do you cry for Jillian?” His voice was very quiet. Very gentle.

  Frozen. She stared down into the water. Suddenly feeling like she was drowning. Drowning in the memories. In desolation. In the endless, emptiness of grief.

  The echoes of childish giggles haunted her mind.

  “We see you, Mommy. It’s our turn to hide. You find us.” The pounding of feet scattering.

  “Who, nebii’o’oo?”

  “My babies. My brother.” Her voice sounded dull, wooden. “They murdered my brother and my children.”

  She wasn’t telling him anything that he didn’t already know. Damn them. Zane Winters and his SEAL brothers might have denied killing her kids, but they were liars. They knew exactly what had happened.

  The lack of surprise at her revelation was proof he knew the answer to his question.

  So why ask?

  “Who?”

  “You know who.” She didn’t look at him. “Marcus Simcosky, Zane Winters, and the other two.”

  “No.”

  The denial snapped her head around.

  She started to rise, the betrayal sinking so deep it caught at her heart, snagged her breath.

  “Jillian.” He caught her around the waist and drew her struggling body against his side. He held her there, immovable. Inflexible. Until she collapsed exhausted and panting against him. “They do not kill children. They are not the ones who killed your babies.”

  “They admitted it,” she forced the words out through a raw, burning throat.

  “When?” There was patience in his voice.

  “On the television, they admitted they killed my brother.” She spat the words at him.

  “Your brother, yes,” he agreed steadily. “Your children, no.” He paused, held the rage in her gaze without flinching. “Your brother was not who he claimed, nor who you thought him to be.”

  “You’re one of them. Of course you’d back their story.”

  He shook his head, tightened his arm around her waist. “You know this in your heart, heneeceine3 betee. You have always known it. Trust in your heart.”

  She swallowed hard, trying to ignore his words. But they dug in and clung with claws tipped in poison.

  Of course she’d wondered about Russ sometimes. About his constant surplus of money. Or how he’d disappear for weeks on end and then suddenly show up again out of the blue.

  But he’d always had a good explanation. His job paid well, his consulting constantly took him out of the country.

  “He loved me,” she said, hearing the thickness in
her voice. “He loved the children.”

  “I do not doubt that,” he said placidly as he stroked a palm up and down her back.

  She could have bolted then. He wasn’t holding her in place. But she stayed. The warmth of his palm felt so good against her back.

  “Tell me what happened, heneeceine3 betee.”

  She shied away from the question, and the agony that nipped at its heels.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, half in curiosity—he’d called her the same thing several times now—half in procrastination.

  He smiled, leaned over to press his lips against the top of her head. She grimaced in disgust. Her hair was filthy.

  “It means lion heart.”

  With a slight smile, she leaned into him. But then she frowned. “I’m not a lion. When I saw him in the parking lot, the one”—her voice quavered and thinned—“the one who shot me, who shot Wes and Brianna. When I saw him, I ran.”

  “He shot you and your little ones?” Wolf asked, his voice as icy as the water glittering in front of them, but his fingers were warm and gentle against her back.

  Jillian shook her head, a tight, hot knot clogging her throat. “He shot me, and Wes, and Bree, but the other men, they must have—I didn’t see, just heard the guns go off and,” her voice died to a hoarse whisper, “Lizzy, Collie, and Katie crumpled and then, and then everything went cold and dark.

  “I’m not a lion. I am not.” Wrapping her arms around herself she bent and rocked. “I ran when I saw him.”

  His hand resumed, that soothing up-and-down caress.

  “But you came back, did you not? In the parking lot at Kait’s building. You came back to kill him. To kill them all.” There was no disapproval in his voice. He was simply stating a fact. An accepted fact. He’d obviously heard the story from Kait. “Tell me what happened, netee.” She sighed and leaned into his warm hand. She was still a lion in his eyes. And he didn’t seem disturbed by the fact she’d tried to kill four people. Four innocent people according to him. Did he know she’d threatened his Kaity with a knife?