Breaking Free

by Teresa J. Reasor

Zoe grabbed the beach bag containing her clothes and scrambled out of the Mustang’s bucket seat as fast as her sore leg would allow. She rushed around the car to help Brett out of the vehicle. Her brace made a clicking sound on the concrete driveway, but it allowed her to move more quickly than crutches, despite the discomfort.

  Brett waved her off as he shut the car door. “I’m all right, Zo. You don’t have to hover.”

  He looked pale and thin, but just walking from the car to the gate under his own steam brought color to his cheeks. It was such a triumph. His triumph. Zoe fought hard to suppress the urge to grow teary.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked.

  “Yeah. More than ready.” He paused with his hand on the privacy fence and drew a deep breath. “God, can you smell that? Grilled food. Manna. I’m telling you if I never have to eat another instant potato it will be too soon. And if I never have to breathe the scent of hospital air again it will be just fine with me, too.”

  “Ditto,” she said with feeling.

  He grinned at her, his teeth white, his jaw sharper than it had been a few months before. His gaze traced her features. “You and Mom are unbelievable. She’s like Atlas. She’s held up the weight of the world and kept right on going. With you, then Dad, then Sharon and me. And you’re like her sidekick. Did Atlas have a side-kick?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well, if he had, it would be you.”

  Zoe smiled. Typical. He was trying to thank her without just coming out with it.

  “Do you think, maybe we were born under an unlucky star.”

  Zoe caught her breath. “No. I don’t believe that, and you shouldn’t either. I believe in the old adage, shit happens. And we’re a strong family. We’ve come through all of it better, stronger people.” And somehow she’d survive her break with Hawk in the same manner. He’d given her no other choice.

  Brett grinned again and opened the gate. “I’m starving.”

  “Good. You need to put some meat on your skinny bones, Mr. Q-tip man,” she said as she switched the beach bag she carried from one hand to the other.

  They stepped into the Marks’ yard. A banner that read Welcome Back Cutter stretched across the eave of the house. A shout went out and the team converged on Brett with their girlfriends and wives. Zoe slipped around the group and stood to one side.

  “Man you are one tough hombre!” Bowie said.

  “A walking miracle,” Langley added.

  “I’d say one lucky mother- “ Derrick shot a look Zoe’s way and cut off the expletive. “Can’t say what I was thinking in mixed company. “I’m damn glad you’re back, Cutter.” He slapped Brett’s back.

  Flash clasped his hand and shook it hard. “Glad you’re over the hump, Cutter.”

  Oliver Shaker, stood to one side and stepped forward as soon as Flash moved aside. “Good to see you mobile, man.”

  Zoe paused to watch the men. Which one of them could have hurt Brett? And how could they shake his hand and wish him well after trying to kill him?

  Hawk stepped through the sliding glass doors, a platter of raw hamburgers in his hand. He set the tray aside on a table and walked down the deck. His gray gaze locked on her first, pausing for a painful eternity before moving on to Brett and the group surrounding him.

  Longing punched Zoe in the solar plexus with the impact of a medicine ball and she turned aside to hide her reaction. Even as her vision blurred, she repeated a mental mantra over and over, I will not cry, I will not cry.

  She limped toward the pool where Trish Marks stood keeping an eye on the children in the water. “Hey, is there anything I can do to help?” Zoe asked.

  “No, everything’s done. How’s Brett doing?” Trish asked.

  “He’s weak, but doing well. The aphasia he’s experiencing seems very slight. It’s going to take him some time to get back a hundred percent.”

  “So, they think he’ll be able to return to his unit?”

  “Yeah. The doctor thinks he’s going to be fine.” With a lot of work and speech therapy.

  “Good. I’ll go do my Mother Trish thing after the herd thins.”

  Trish ran her eyes down the slacks and camp shirt Zoe wore. “It’s hotter than Hades out here, tell me you brought your bathing suit.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Anxiety pinched Zoe’s stomach. If she was going to show Hawk she was moving on, that would have to be part of it. But she dreaded seeing the other team members’ reactions to her scars. The children’s response concerned her the most. “You’ve told the kids about my scars, haven’t you? I don’t want to frighten them.”

  Trish placed a hand on her arm. “They know you were in a terrible accident when you were just a little older than they are now. They’re curious more than anything. But they may ask questions.”

  “I don’t mind that. In a way it makes things easier when someone does. It takes the elephant out of the room.”

  Trish’s smile was half hearted. “And what about the other one that will be sitting by the pool?”

  Zoe resisted the urge to look over her shoulder toward Hawk. “I can take it if he can.”

  “If it makes any difference, I don’t think he’s taking it well at all,” Trish said.

  “Good.”

  Trish laughed. “Do I hear just a tad of satisfaction?”

  “Yeah, you probably do.” She didn’t want to hurt Hawk, but to deliver him a slap upside the head might make her feel better. Then again, it would probably make her cry, as so many things did lately.

  “I think I’ll rescue Brett before they drag him into the middle of a volleyball game he’s not ready for,” Trish said. “Why don’t you go change and join the rest of us girls next to the pool while the guys play. I’ll get Cutter settled in the shade with a glass of ice tea and something to snack on until the burgers are ready.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  Zoe slipped into the house with her bag and went into the bathroom. She locked the door and removed her clothes and the brace. Nervous nausea cramped her stomach. She drew several deep breaths and slipped on her bathing suit. As she wrapped the matching skirt around her hips, she looked up at the full- length mirror hung on the door.

  This was a mistake. The men would be grossed out and the women would look at her with pity. She looked like a monster. The only one who hadn’t looked at her that way, had dumped her. She fought against the wave of tears that burned her eyes. Had he thought her disability would make her too dependent, as she grew older? Did he think he couldn’t live with her scars the rest of his life? If that were the case, she didn’t want to hear it.

  For several moments, she breathed in and out, to regain control. She prayed for the return of the anger that had helped her stay in one piece for the last week.

  “Screw it.” If he didn’t have the balls to stick it out, he didn’t deserve her.

  Zoe grabbed the doorknob and jerked it open.

  Hawk’s large shape blocked the door. His t-shirt hugged his well defined chest, the sleeves banding his arms.

  For a long slow moment his gaze raked downward over her breasts, her hips to her feet and back up.

  At the look that flickered across his face, heat trailed over her skin, and her nipples peaked beneath her bathing suit bra.

  In a blink of an eye, his expression blanked. “We need to talk, Zoe.”

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “About?”

  “I think I’ve found out what happened to Cutter, or at least who’s responsible. But I need your help to prove it.”

  Surprise held her frozen. “Who was it?”

  Stress lines etched the skin around his mouth and eyes. Zoe ached to touch him.

  “We’ll talk about that on the way. I need you to go with me to Brett’s apartment and see if what he was looking for is still there, or if he found them the night of the break-in and took them.”

  “I can’t leave Brett. He just got out of the hospital.”

  “Trish has pro
mised to look out for him while we’re gone.”

  This might be the last time she could be with Hawk, talk to him. Only he could fill the emptiness inside her--An almost physical pain struck her. She couldn’t let him go without trying one last time to reach out to him. “I’ll need to change again.”

  He nodded. “I’ll wait.”

  She fastened the brace back around her leg, put clothes on over her bathing suit, and stuffed the cover up into her bag. Slinging it over her shoulder, she followed the hallway to the kitchen where Hawk waited for her.

  “I told Brett we needed to pick something up and we’d be back in just a few minutes,” he said.

  She nodded.

  When he rested his hand against her back to guide her out the back door, her heart leapt into the same fast rhythm it always did. Would she ever experience that with anyone else?

  “I called your mother last night,” Hawk said as he fastened his seat belt.

  Intent on fastening her own belt, Zoe raised her head in surprise. ”What about?”

  “I wanted to know which one of you unpacked Brett’s stuff and you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

  She looked away as pain constricted her throat. “What did you expect?”

  “I didn’t expect for it to hurt like this, Zoe.”

  Her breath caught in her throat and hope leapt inside her like a living thing. Zoe bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

  Hawk rubbed his jaw and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I want what’s best for you. You deserve some regular guy who’ll be there for you when you need him.”

  “There’s more to a relationship than that.” Her voice sounded rusty. “I thought I’d found what I needed, not someone determined to hold himself at an emotional distance. Is that what you did, Hawk?”

  “No, I didn’t do that. I just thought--” He drew a deep breath. “I kept telling myself the whole time, you’d be going back home after Cutter got better. I convinced myself that we were just having a fling.”

  “Can you really compartmentalize your life like that?”

  “I thought I could. I’ve always been able to do it before.” He reached for the ignition.

  Zoe grasped his arm. How could he have held her, made love to her with such tenderness, such intensity, and not be connected emotionally? “I never held anything back from you, Hawk. I tried to when we first met, but--I gave you everything there was in me to give. I thought you did, too. Was I wrong? Were you playing me the whole time?”

  “No!” His voice sharp with emotion filled the inside of the car. “I never played you.”

  The ache she’d carried around for days eased some. “Then why did you push me away?”

  He rubbed his palm over the steering wheel. “There are some things I’ve been carrying around with me for a long time. Some things that have been eating at me. When you do this job, it takes over your life, and the lives of the people you love. It’s a job probably better for men who aren’t married, who don’t have families, because there’s so much your loved ones have to sacrifice to it right along with you.”

  “I knew what I’d be taking on,” she said.

  “You don’t know the half of it, Zo.” He raised his head to look at her.

  “You never gave me the chance.”

  Hawk reached for the key, started the car, and pulled out of the driveway.

  Zoe turned away to look out the window at the houses on the street as they passed. Her pulsed skipped when Hawk’s hand grasped hers, and it was a natural thing for her fingers to close around his.

  “When my mother died, I was out of touch, out of the country. She died alone. I wasn’t there for her.”

  The staccato sound of his words, stark, succinct, gave the impression he was ripping a bandage off a wound.

  Zoe’s fingers tightened around his hand and she grasped his wrist as well. “You couldn’t control her cancer any more than she could control the danger you were in. She wouldn’t have blamed you for not being there, any more than you would have her.”

  “I’ve told myself that--But she was my mother. My mother--” His throat worked as he swallowed.

  “I know.” She rubbed the taut muscle of his forearm.

  “I can’t be depended on to be there.”

  He had said that repeatedly in one way or another ever since she’d known him. How hard would it be for a man used to being there for everyone else, to know he’d failed the one person who meant the most to him? The guilt and pain would be crushing. No wonder he held women at an emotional distance.

  But she’d never felt that from him.

  She didn’t even now.

  “Do you want to be there, Adam?”

  He glanced at her and his jaw worked. “Yeah, I want to be.”

  Fresh hope surged up to drain the strength from her limbs. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “Then, that’s enough.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yes, just like that.”

  He fell silent. They pulled into the parking garage next to Brett’s apartment and Hawk parked the car.

  As they walked to the elevator, once again he reached out and grasped her hand. With an effort, Zoe controlled the need to lean into him. She had to be more certain of what he intended.

  Hawk pushed the elevator button.

  “You remember when I had the video images enhanced so we could see who was on the tape at the hospital?”

  His change of subject drained her optimism and she sighed. “Yes.”

  “Well, I had the tape transposed to a DVD and gave copies to Flash and Lang. They both worked on them. But Flash found an image Lang didn’t. So, I went back over the footage myself. The problem is there’s no such image in the footage.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The elevator doors opened and they got in. The doors slid shut.

  “Yeah. I even took it to Lang and we went over it together.”

  “So, he created the image himself.”

  “Yeah.” Hawk drew a breath. “I went back to the hospital and got a copy of the footage where Derrick arrived at the hospital. The time he walked through the doors was twelve thirty-five. The time the guy walked out of Brett’s room was twelve-forty.”

  “He couldn’t have changed clothes and gotten upstairs to slap Brett.”

  “No.”

  Zoe experienced a quick twinge of guilt. She had lain it all at Derrick Armstrong’s feet, blamed him for everything because of his treatment of Marjorie.

  The elevator doors opened and they stepped off into the hallway. Zoe rummaged in her purse for her keys.

  “Then it was Flash who slapped my brother,” she said as they entered the apartment. She closed the door behind them.

  “I think it was, but the only proof I have is that he created an image to try and frame Strong Man.”

  “He had no other reason to do it?”

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  Flash had tried to kill Brett in Iraq.

  The night the team had set up her bedroom raced through her mind. He had teased her and asked her out for ice cream--How could he do that?

  Nausea struck her and she leaned back against the chair she’d flipped over during the attack.

  “He betrayed Brett and you--your whole team. He tried to kill my brother.” He grabbed me that night and terrified me.

  Hawk ran a hand over his eyes, the gesture weary. “I’m a little numb about it now, Zo. I’m sure it will hit me later. But right now--I have to stay focused. I have to finish this before we’re called up.”

  She nodded.

  Hawk cleared his throat and swallowed as though it were painful. “Last night when I talked to your mom, she said you both unpacked Brett’s gear. She said there were some cylindrical shaped stones stuffed into Brett’s socks. She assumed they were just souvenirs. She said she left them with you.”

  “I think Flash used Brett’s gear to smuggle something out of Iraq. There’s a lot of looting going on there. I’m not s
ure what they might be, but there’s a market for archaeological treasures on the black market. If they’re the real deal, they could be worth a small fortune.”

  Zoe’s lips parted in surprise. “We thought they were just souvenirs. If we’d known what they were--”She shook her head. “The day Flash bought the car, he helped me unload groceries out of Bowie’s trunk for the cookout at the Marks. He dropped a small stone object out of his pocket. He said it was his good luck charm.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Just like the ones we found in Brett’s duffle. It was about the size of my thumb, cylindrical in shape, and had a face carved on one side. I took the ones that were in Brett’s stuff and put them in a frame for him. It was going to be a housewarming gift from me and mom.”

  She motioned for Hawk to follow her down the short hallway. Decorated in cream and brown, the small bedroom held a dresser, a chest of drawers, a bed and a nightstand.

  She went to the chest and opened one of the drawers to find it a jumble of unpaired socks. She ran her hands under the socks but felt nothing but the lining of the drawer. She pulled open the next drawer, and the next, searching each one. “It’s not here. And I know I put it in here.”

  Hawk opened a dresser drawer and looked through it. She crossed the room to search the drawers on the other end.

  “If Flash needs money, why would he buy a car worth sixty thousand dollars?” she asked.

  “You missed his news earlier. His car was stolen a few days ago, right after I saw him driving it last.”

  “But you don’t think it was.”

  “No.” He turned to search the dresser drawers. “If he set it up, the insurance will pay off the lien, return the money he paid down and whoever stole the car would pay him what they’ve settled on between them.”

  “It’s because of his gambling isn’t it?”

  “I think so. I think he’s in over his head and he’s desperate. When I went by his apartment last, all his electronic gear, except his computer, was gone. He said he’d put it in storage, but--” He shook his head.

  “There’s nothing here,” Zoe said as she stepped back from the dresser.

  “Nothing here, either. God damn it!” He shoved the drawer closed with enough force the dresser moved. He rubbed a hand over his hair making it stick up. “Without the stones, I don’t know how we’ll prove any of this.”

  “You could turn it over to NCIS and let them follow the insurance fraud trail. There has to be a trail of some kind.”

  “Greenback said he and Brett were arguing about something and Flash told him to mind his own business. I think Brett was trying to talk to him about this. That’s complete conjecture on my part, but the whole thing fits.”

  Flash was the one who’d attacked her that night. She flinched away from the thought. “He invited me to go to Vegas with him after the break in. Why would he do that?”

  Hawk froze and his gaze searched her face. ”A guilty conscience. He probably never expected you to show up here. What were the odds?”

  Was that why he had told her about Hawk’s mother as well? She looked up to find Hawk watching her.

  “You didn’t go?” he asked.

  “No. Of course not. Brett was waiting for his release from the hospital and they hadn’t settled on the exact day. I didn’t want to leave him.” And she hadn’t wanted to leave in case Hawk came to her.

  “Was that the only reason?”

  Zoe slid one of the drawers more firmly shut. “No, you know it wasn’t.” Her voice dwindled away.

  When he reached for her, she hadn’t the will or the desire to resist. For countless moments, Hawk studied her features one-by-one with a look of such raw desire it stole her breath.

  “What we have isn’t a fling, Zoe.”

  “No.” She couldn’t bear it. She had to touch him. She cupped his face in her hands.

  His pale gray eyes took on a feverish hue. He pulled her close and buried his face against her throat. “After the way I treated you--I don’t deserve another chance.”

  “You can’t keep punishing yourself for what happened with your mother.” She breathed in the scent of his skin and smoothed the thick hair at the back of his head. “You taught me how to break free of the past and reach for the things I want. Now it’s time you allowed yourself to do the same.”

  His arms tightened around her almost painfully. “I want you, Zoe.”

  Emotions coiled tight inside her released.

  He pressed his lips to hers, their pressure harsh with need. His arms loosened, and as his tongue found hers, the kiss became, by degrees, more tender. Zoe ran her hands beneath the t-shirt he wore to stroke his back. The thrusting pressure of his arousal pushed against her.

  A high-pitched ring tone cut through her desire laden concentration. Breathing hard, Hawk drew back to remove the cell phone hooked to the waistband of his cut offs. He flipped the phone open and identified himself in a brusque tone. The look on his face triggered knots of anxious tension along her shoulders, and her arms tightened.

  “What is it?” she asked as soon as he hung up.

  “We’ve been called up. I have to report to duty right away.”