The Line of Duty

by Nichole Severn

  A bullet ripped past them, and Vincent automatically shielded himself behind the closest tree. They were pinned down. Any movement on their part would expose them to the next shot. They needed a distraction. These trees were thick, and the team on the other side of those guns had to be tactically trained. No way he and Shea could take them out with only the sixteen rounds from her weapon. “Toss me the pack.”

  She switched her weapon to her other hand before throwing their supplies at his feet. Another shot tore through the bark mere inches from his shoulder, and he dropped to the snow as Shea returned fire. Once. Twice. “I’ve got fourteen rounds left.”

  The shots reverberated through him and off the rocks surrounding them. He wrapped his grip around the flare gun he’d taken from the small case beneath one of the plane’s seats. One shot. That was all he needed. Arching around the tree, he homed in on the dark clothing set against white snow about thirty feet above then took aim at the brush the bastard was using for cover and pulled the trigger.

  The flare hit the dried tinder, catching it on fire within seconds. Black smoke billowed between them and the gunmen. The flame wasn’t designed to last long. They had to move. “There’s our chance, Freckles. Go!”

  Shea took off, Vincent close on her heels, down the mountain. Muscles burned in his legs, the stitches in his thigh protesting every time he pulled his boot free from the powder, but he wouldn’t slow down. Not until he got her the hell out of this mess. Another round of gunfire exploded from behind but never found its target. He pushed himself harder, careful to keep Shea in front of him as they sped down the incline in an effort to protect her from the next bullet.

  The distraction had done its job, giving them enough time to put distance between them and the tactical team, but it wasn’t permanent. Whoever’d sent those gunmen wanted something—or someone—and if they were anything like him and his team, they wouldn’t stop until they got it.

  * * *

  SHE COULDN’T TAKE another step.

  They’d been wandering through the wilderness, running off pure adrenaline, but Shea had nothing left to give. Her feet and hands had gone numb more than an hour ago, her lungs burning with every inhale. Ice crusted to her hair and eyelashes. One more step. That was all she had to focus on, but she couldn’t do it. She leveraged her arm against the nearest tree for support. They were still miles away from civilization, with no idea where they—

  She saw the glimpse of dark blue in a land of white, brown and green. Straight ahead, topped with inches of snow, surrounded by a clearing of pines. But... She didn’t dare breathe. Was it real, or had hypothermia already set in? Was this her body’s final attempt to survive by giving her false hope? Her mouth barely moved to form his name, the muscles in her jaw aching from the cold. “Vincent?”

  “I see it,” he said, and everything inside her released. “Looks like a ranger station.”

  A sob built in her throat. She collapsed into the powder as relief coursed through her, but Vincent was there, pulling her upright. Before she had a chance to protest, he swept her over his shoulder in a firefighter’s hold. She couldn’t imagine the amount of pain he must’ve been in with her added weight, admired him for making it this far with his injury, but he held her tight. His steps were strong, evenly paced, as he hiked over uneven rocky terrain leading to the ranger station.

  “I’ve got you.” His words vibrated down his back and into her chest, and she believed him. Just as she’d believed he would do everything possible to give her a chance to get to safety when the bullets had started flying, even at the cost of his own life. But she hadn’t been able to leave him. Not when she’d taken an oath to protect and serve. Not when... Not when he’d gone out of his way to save her life after the crash. To keep her warm when their fire had gone out. To share his supplies when they both knew there was only enough food for one of them.

  She had no reason to trust him, other than neither of them would make it out of here on their own, but the bitterness she’d clung to on the plane seemed stupid now. The edges of her vision darkened as he lowered her feet to the ground, but she failed to keep her balance and fell back.

  But still, he was there. Even with his dark Hawaiian complexion, color had drained from his face, a thin layer of snow and ice clinging to his beard and exposed skin, but he hadn’t complained once. Hadn’t let her give up. Vincent tore his glove from one hand, the other centered on her lower back as he helped her sit. When had he gotten her inside? “Hang on, Freckles. Stay here while I try to get the heat going.”

  He disappeared deeper into the station, her gun in his hand.

  Shea gave in to gravity, falling back on a single twin mattress shoved into the corner of the main room in the station. The National Park Service had cabins like this all over the mountains. They were used as shelters for backcountry hikers who hadn’t been able to escape bad weather or for support for rangers circulating through the area for their shifts. Which meant they’d hiked into a national park. They weren’t lost anymore. Seconds slipped by in silence. Minutes? She had to get up. Had to find Vincent and make sure he hadn’t succumbed to hypothermia. Because without him, she wasn’t going to ever see her son again.

  Stinging needles exploded through her hands, and Shea forced her eyes open. Haloed by a warm, orangish glow from behind, Vincent centered in her vision. He rubbed her hands between his big, calloused palms. He’d pulled her boots and jacket free, layering her in a thick quilt she hadn’t realized kept the tremors in her body at bay until now. She must’ve fallen asleep. Or passed out. She wasn’t sure which she preferred, but the truth was, she knew she was lucky to be alive. “You saved my life again, didn’t you?”

  “We saved each other.” He massaged heat and pressure into her hands, then her wrists and arms, a known technique for combating hypothermia to get the circulation in her body going again, but it was more than that. There were no visible signs of frostbite on her fingertips and toes, yet he hadn’t stopped touching her. Dark brown eyes studied her from head to toe, the sensation so raw it felt as real as physical touch. Or was that the lingering effects of the cold-induced delirium? “I’d have a bullet in my back if it weren’t for you tackling me like an NFL linebacker.”

  A small laugh bubbled past her lips. The past few hours of memories played back as he continued rubbing small circles into her arms, and the warmth he’d generated drained. Them finding the plane unburied, the pilot stumbling from the trees with a fresh bullet wound in his chest, the destroyed radio. It all fit with Vincent’s theory. Someone had sabotaged the plane, then hired a team to ensure no one had survived the crash. But who? Who would want either of them dead? “Why is someone trying to kill us, Vincent? What happened on your last case?”

  His strokes slowed, then he pulled away altogether, and her stomach jerked in protest. Running one hand through his hair, he leaned back in his chair. “My forensic unit was called to the scene of an officer-involved shooting back when I worked for the NYPD. An Internal Affairs investigator named Ashton Walter. He’d been killed in the warehouse district, but the medical examinor couldn’t give us anything solid to identify a suspect, even with small amount of evidence my team collected—or wouldn’t. The victim had been looking into a handful of unsolved homicide cases I brought to his attention after my commanding officer shot down my suspicion the killer had to have been familiar with crime scene procedure and forensics. According to her, Walter wasn’t supposed to have been in that area and had most likely gotten involved in something he shouldn’t have, but nothing I recovered from the scene supported that theory.”

  “You think he was killed because he was looking into your unsolved cases?” Her heart jerked in her chest. That amount of guilt could crush a person from the inside, even someone as insightful, intelligent and innovative as Vincent.

  “Officer Walter was a good guy, good investigator. He had a wife and a kid on the way at the time. Brass couldn’t pr
ove their corruption theory, and Homicide was instructed to close the case.” A disbelieving laugh rumbled through him. Vincent crossed his arms over his heavily muscled chest, gaze distant as though he wasn’t really seeing her in front of him. Shadows danced across his expression from the single lantern he must’ve lit while she’d been unconscious, hiding his expression, but she caught the soberness in his words. “So I convinced a couple techs from my team to take another look at the scene on our own. I just...” His thick brows furrowed over the bridge of his nose, those dark eyes centered on her, and the crash, the gunmen, everything disappeared for the briefest of moments. “I couldn’t let it go. I was trained to follow the evidence, but the place had been wiped clean before we’d gotten there. There was no evidence to follow, and less than two minutes after we arrived on scene someone knocked me unconscious. Next thing I knew, the entire place and everything in it was on fire. Including me.”

  Her breath shuddered out of her, and Shea wanted nothing more than to reach out to him, but any kind of sympathy from her paled in comparison to what he’d already been through. “That’s how you got your scars.”

  “I got out.” He nodded, pressing his shoulders into the back of the chair. “But the other two members of my team didn’t.”

  “I didn’t realize...” What? That he wasn’t the only one with a guilty past? That the Blackhawk Security operative she’d built in her mind over the past year wasn’t the man sitting in front of her? Swallowing around the tightness in her throat, she pushed to sit up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. In her next breath, she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and held him. She didn’t know what else to do, what else to say. The feel of him against her chased back the final tendrils of ice in her bones. Ducking her forehead into the tendon between his neck and shoulder, she breathed his earthy, masculine scent deeper. Until she couldn’t take one more single sip of air. “I’m sorry.”

  The air around them shifted as Vincent threaded his arms to her lower back, holding her against him, and she gave in to him at that moment. Didn’t matter she’d promised herself to keep her distance, not to get attached to the man she was so determined to hate. They’d survived a plane crash together, outrun an avalanche and fought off a team of gunmen after someone had killed their pilot in cold blood. She needed this. Right now, she needed to feel something.

  Shea turned her head upward, planting a small kiss against his jawline, and pleasure unlike anything she’d ever felt before immediately shot through her. She and Logan had done what all married couples were supposed to do. They’d conceived Wells together, but this... This was different. She slid her mouth along the veins in Vincent’s neck, smiled as his breathing shallowed, and a tremor shook his mountainous shoulders. This was unfiltered physical want. What she wanted. Something she hadn’t let herself give in to for so long.

  She’d traded her own path for the things others expected from her most of her life. She’d joined the Anchorage PD after her twin brother had been killed in the line of duty to carry on the family blue blood. She’d married the boy next door at her mother’s insistence that she move on after the funeral. She’d gotten pregnant after Logan had convinced her a baby would fix their problems. She’d given everything to live up to her friends’ and family’s expectations and had been the only one left with the consequences afterward.

  Vincent’s beard bristled against her oversensitized skin as she framed his face with her opposite hand. Logic battled desire. They were practical strangers, believed in wholly different ideals. Not to mention someone had sent a team of gunmen to hunt them down, but, in this moment, none of that mattered. It was only the two of them here.

  Now it was her turn to be happy.

  Chapter Five

  “Shea...” Damn, she felt good, her lips pressed against his throat. Vincent dug his fingers into lean muscle along her rib cage. He’d imagined this moment so many times before, to the point he hadn’t been able to tell the difference between reality and his fantasies as he’d wrapped his arms around her back in the cave. The moment was real—she was real—but this couldn’t happen between them. “We can’t.”

  She swiped the tips of her fingers against his lips, a combination of salt and her sweetness flooding his system. An extra surge of desire exploded as she maneuvered off the bed and straddled powerful thighs on either side of him. Her frame fit against him perfectly as she explored the sensitive spot under his ear, and he couldn’t hold back the quake of desire rocketing through him. “Don’t say anything.”

  “This is just the stress of the situation.” He’d said the words to convince himself more than anything else. They’d been through a lot over the past eighteen hours. The crash, nearly getting buried in the avalanche, surviving the night with only each other’s body heat. Now the hit team tracking them through the wilderness. He couldn’t blame her for giving in to the adrenaline. Hell, right now that seemed like the best damn idea to ignore reality, but he wouldn’t take advantage of it. She’d made her feelings about him—about the way he worked—abundantly clear since they’d investigated their first case together. Even in the face of death, she didn’t trust him. Gripping her arms, Vincent slowly settled her back onto the edge of the mattress. “We don’t want to do anything we’ll both regret.”

  When this happened between them—and it would—it wasn’t going to be because of some chemical reaction brought on by fear or desperation. She’d want him as much as he’d wanted her these past few months, and there’d be no claiming it was a mistake in the morning.

  Shea blinked at him, her lips parted, almost as though she didn’t know what’d come over her. “You’re right. I think I got caught up in the moment. That won’t happen again.” Brushing her curls back with one hand, she leveraged one hand against her knee, her attention on the lantern he’d lit. A quick laugh burst past the seam of her lips as she slid her gaze to him without turning to face him. “Are you going to be completely awkward around me now?”

  He couldn’t help but smile. The woman owned up to her impulse and tried to get him to laugh about it in the process. Damn that only made him want her more. If it weren’t for the fact that their lives were at risk, Vincent wouldn’t have stopped her. “Totally.”

  “Great. Glad we’re in agreement on something.” Pushing off the bed, she crossed the main room of the station. The same fingertips she’d brushed against his mouth slid across the desk against one wall, then the stone fireplace as she moved deeper into the shadows the lantern’s light couldn’t reach. All too easily, he imagined that fireplace alight, the flames reflected in her gaze as she whispered his name in pleasure. “These stations usually only have a minimal food and water supply, no firearms or ammunition, and too many sight lines for the two of us to cover. With all these windows, we’re easy targets to whoever’s tracking us, and we can’t just hunker down until we contact your team. So what’s our next move?”

  His thoughts exactly, which only left them with one option. “We wait.” Vincent hauled himself to his feet, his steps thundering across the old wooden floor as he closed the distance between them. “Let them come to us.”

  “You want to set a trap,” she said.

  It was the only way to keep her safe, to ensure the coming fight didn’t affect her chances of getting her son back. “I recovered what I thought was a partial fingerprint before I escaped the fire that night. It’d been melted into the handle of a gasoline can nearby. I ran it in every database I could get access to after I relocated to Anchorage with no matches, but now I don’t think it was a partial at all.” Vincent scrubbed his hand down his beard, tugging on the hair toward the end. “I think whoever set that fire, whoever wanted to destroy all the evidence of that IAB officer’s murder, I think the killer burned him or herself in the process bad enough to erase half of their print. I want to know who.”

  “You think the person who killed your vic is the one who hired the team waiting o
ut there.” Shea parted the curtains he’d drawn over the windows to lower the shooter’s visibility, just enough for her to scan the area. Apparently satisfied, she turned back toward him. “Why send them now? You said you recovered that print a year ago, that you’ve been running searches in the databases all that time.”

  He’d been wondering about that, too, but Vincent already knew the answer. He’d known it the minute the plane’s engine had failed. Maybe even before that, but the work he and his team did for Blackhawk brought all kinds of threats. Being followed came with the territory. Their clients came to them for one reason: protection. Stood to reason the operatives hired to do the protecting would be put at risk in the process. Hell, he’d be surprised if he wasn’t being followed on a daily basis. “Because I got on a plane to New York.”

  “Someone was watching you.” Shea clasped her hands over the back of the desk chair, dropping her head down as she widened her stance. “They were waiting to see if you’d keep the investigation going on your own, and when you got on the plane, they wanted to make sure you wouldn’t have the chance.” She straightened, hands on her hips. “No matter who else was on board.”

  A sickening swirl of nausea churned in his gut. “Shea, I never meant for you to get involved. If I’d known—”

  “I am on the brink of losing my son because of you. The custody hearing is in two days, and I’m not going to be there to fight for him. Everything I’ve done over the past year to prove I can be the mother he deserves was for nothing.” Controlled rage raised the veins in her arms, the tendons between her neck and shoulders stark in the dim light. She pointed one long finger toward the floor. Disgust and fire contorted her expression before she turned away from him, shadows darkening the bruise on her face. Unshed tears reflected the small flame from the lantern. Facing him again, Shea stepped into him, every bit the officer he’d encountered during their investigations. “You could’ve gone to the police. You could’ve involved your former CO and gotten the case reopened, but instead of following the rules like everyone else, you put other people’s lives in danger. Our pilot is dead out there with a gunshot in his chest because you and your team think you’re above the law, that you’re better than everyone else.” She collected her gun and backpack from the desk where he’d set them earlier and headed toward the short hallway separating the front of the station from the rooms in the back. “I hope you can live with that when this is over.”