Cover of Darkness (9 page)

"Will you both go back to the States after this?" She wanted to believe Spencer would make it, squeezed his hand and was relieved by the pressure in his grip as he returned the gesture.

Dec laid a hand on his buddy's shoulder. "Spence will be laid up awhile and I'll be on Pro-Dev rotation. What about you? You going home?"

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"I guess I will, once I know my father's going to be okay."

How could they be having such a calm discussion when they might have only minutes left to live?

He checked his watch, leaned over to take Spencer's pulse.

"Hanging in there, pal?"

Spencer let out a weak mutter.

Bryn discreetly leaned forward and put her head next to Dec's. "Will he be okay?" she whispered.

"If I can get him on that chopper in the next ten minutes, yeah. They'll give him a transfusion."

Ten minutes? She passed a hand over Spencer's clammy forehead, sending up a prayer for him.

As the seconds ticked past with Spence's harsh breathing filling the cave, her thoughts drifted to the everyday, mundane things she looked forward to having once she was safe at home.

"I need a bath and a toothbrush," she said to no one in particular.

"Don't we all." Dec sighed as he sat on his haunches, eyes scanning the darkness, ever vigilant. "A big steaming soaker tub filled right to the top—"

"With bubbles."

"With bubbles for you," he allowed, "then a steak dinner and a fresh toothbrush, and a big soft bed to crash in."

She almost moaned, she wanted those things so bad.

"What do you say, Spence? That sound good to you?"

"Yeah," he croaked, fingers still wrapped around hers.

"When we get back," Dec said, "I'll buy us all a steak dinner."

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Bryn squeezed the hand she held. "How about that, Spence? You want to take me out for dinner with Dec?"

Spencer bit back a groan and forced a weak smile. Then the distant throb of a rotor broke the silence. They all tensed, listening as it grew louder, then louder still.

"There's our ride," Dec confirmed, as though he was talking about a taxi waiting at the curb. "You're going to run real fast, right?"

She nodded. "Like the wind."

"Then let's go."

And just like that he pushed to his feet, snuck out to the edge of the boulders with his rifle. He reached back and placed a hand on his teammate's shoulder. "You're gonna be okay, Spence. I'll have you on that bird in no time." He raised his eyes toward the helicopter, waiting, then at some unseen signal he turned to her. "Ready?"

"Yes." With one last squeeze of reassurance, she released Spencer's hand.

"Okay, then. Get going."

Now? She hesitated, fighting the strangest urge to kiss him, to cling to him. What if she never saw him again?

"Bryn. Go, now."

"Be careful," was all she could manage past the lump in her throat before she bolted past him out into the clear. The helo sat there a few hundred yards away, like a great black insect perched on the sand. Dec's rifle fired behind her, covering her desperate dash to safety.

Her lungs burned, her thigh muscles straining under the burst of adrenaline shooting through her veins.

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Two men jumped out of the chopper with their rifles up, and her heart gave a great leap of fear. She almost stopped, but remembered Dec's warning and kept sprinting. They fired past her, the muzzles of their guns spewing fire in the darkness. The bullets sang as they whizzed past her, some close enough she felt their heat. Was Dec still out there behind her?

Halfway there. Keep running.

One of the soldiers motioned with his arm, waving it toward the ground as she drew closer.
Don't stop! Keep
going.
He was yelling something, but she couldn't hear him over the rotors. What was he saying?

His arm kept moving, and as she drew nearer, she saw the urgency on his face, saw his mouth move.

"G-e-t
d-o—o-w-n
!"

Terror froze her. Her heart rang in her ears. Everything morphed into slow motion. Instinctively covering her head with her arms, she dove. A blast exploded behind her, rendering her blind and deaf. She plowed into the ground as something sharp and hot peppered her arm and back, like she'd been stung by a swarm of angry bees.

Disoriented, terrified, she lurched up onto her knees, saw the soldier from the helicopter running flat out toward her.

The wounds burned like hellfire, and something warm was dripping over her skin. Blood. Her blood.

Pushing to her feet, she staggered a step, falling flat. She scrambled up again, determined not to die out here in the desert when she was so close to safety.

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Gaining her stance, she started toward the waiting chopper, and finally the soldier grabbed her and yanked her over his shoulder. He covered the remaining distance and clambered inside, flipping her onto her back to check her for injuries. She cried out as her wounded flesh hit whatever she was lying on, and gazed up into his face. In shock, she stared at the familiar features of her best friend, sure she was hallucinating.

"Rayne?" she blurted. What was he doing here?

The man peering down at her shook his head. "No. Luke."

But he looked just like Rayne, Bryn thought blearily. Her whole body trembled. Rayne's identical twin was saying something to her, his voice urgent, but it sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. Everything was fuzzy.

The burning pain in her back and side and arm eased to a dull throb as she stared blankly at the metal roof. She could still breathe, could still move her fingers and toes. But she was cold now, so cold. And where was Dec?

She winced when someone applied pressure to her side.

What had hit her? Another bomb?

More shots fired from close by. The rotors sped up, the whine of the engine rising to a shrill pitch. Her body jerked with uncontrollable shivers. Her jaw clenched. Her teeth chattered. She was shaking apart, cold to the marrow of her bones. She must be dying.

Someone was lowered next to her. She tried to turn her head, but it was so heavy. Another man came into view, blocking her line of vision. His hands moved fast as he ripped open a sterile pack of needles, a bag of blood clenched 85

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between his teeth. As he shifted to work on his patient, Bryn recognized Spencer's pale, pinched face lying next to hers.

He was still alive. She tried to lift a hand as she whispered his name. She didn't see anyone else. Had they gotten her father out on another chopper? Someone placed an oxygen mask over her nose. Then Dec's face appeared above her, and she cried out his name through numb lips.

His expression brimmed with concern as he moved to straddle her legs with his knees. "Where were you hit?"

"S-side." The word distorted because of the oxygen mask.

He took hold of her shirt and gave a quick yank, rending it down the seam. She gasped, but he ignored her and turned her halfway over. More pressure against her side and shoulder, and she winced as the pain burned through her flesh like greedy flames. She had the vague impression of being airborne and wondered if the helicopter had taken off yet.

"Dec," she whispered, focusing on his handsome face above her. His golden eyes stared directly into hers, as if he could hold her there with the force of his gaze alone. His warm fingers wrapped around her icy ones.

"I'm here, sweetheart, I'm holding your hand. Can you feel me?"

She nodded jerkily. "C-cold. So cold."

"It's shock, Bryn. You're in shock." His voice was so calm.

"But you're safe now. We'll get you to a hospital."

Maybe she wasn't dying, then. Alive and safe. And Dec was with her. But then her vision blurred and she lost it. "Dec!"

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He leaned closer, took her face between his hands. She registered the warmth of his fingers against her skin. "Look at me, Bryn, only at me." The stark command in his voice snapped her eyes to his. "Hang on, sweetheart. Hang on just a little longer, okay?"

"C-cold," she whispered, agonized by the way the shudders hurt her wounds. Burning—like someone had poured acid over her skin.

"I know." He wrapped a heavy blanket around her, rubbed his hands briskly over her uninjured side to warm her. "Better now?"

It helped a little, but the terrible shaking wouldn't let up.

"Dec..."

"Just think of being back home in Oregon."

Home. Oh God, she wanted to be home. She nodded, holding on to his strength, to the comforting sound of his voice.

"Think of sitting on the beach watching the sun set over the water..."

She closed her eyes, the lids too heavy to keep open. His voice held her steady, lulled her, kept her calm as she floated away from the pain. Her mind filled with images of rolling waves and crimson-stained sky, and then she slipped under the tide of blackness.

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Day 5, Hospital

Morning

When Bryn woke the next morning, dozens of wounds throbbed and stung across her back and right shoulder, down her upper arm and along her ribs where the surgeon had removed pieces of shrapnel. They'd come from a rocket propelled grenade, he'd informed her before he'd presented the metal shards to her in a stainless steel dish. Sitting up in her hospital bed, she poked them around with her forefinger, studying them with a kind of detached horror.

She must be living in an alternate reality. Any minute now, she was going to wake up back in her bed on the Oregon coast and hear the waves crashing on the sand. Yet the way her body hurt meant all of this was no nightmare.

So much for wishful thinking.

She closed her eyes and lay back against the thin plastic pillow hospitals used to make their patients extra uncomfortable, and focused on breathing calmly. Her poor father was up in the neurological ward after undergoing emergency surgery to drain the fluid from his skull. Even with the pressure removed from around his brain, he hadn't regained consciousness. Though she'd asked repeatedly to see him, the staff had refused to let her upstairs, saying she would be allowed in if he improved or worsened. The surgeon had told her to prepare herself for the worst.

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Now, Bryn faced the reality, the cold truth. She would probably lose her father. She might be an independent, strong-willed adult, but the prospect of life without him made her feel small and helpless.

Her father had always been so strong, so fiercely intelligent. For as long as she could remember, she'd wanted to make him proud. Of anyone important to her, she saw him the least, yet
his
approval was what she'd wanted more than anything. Without him she felt adrift, like her anchor was gone. Tears burned her eyes even as she scolded herself. She kept her lids closed and bit her lips together until she could get a grip on her emotions. Crying wasn't going to bring him out of his coma, and he would have hated seeing her sniveling during a crisis. He would have said death was a part of life, and that it was natural he die before she did. Practical and analytical to the core. Some would say cold, but those people hadn't heard the tenderness in his voice when he'd told her he loved her in their earthen cell. Why had he waited so long to say that to her?

Stop it. At least he said it. At least you have that to hold
onto.

Once the fear of the crying jag passed, she opened her eyes and stared down at the metal dish in her hands. The jagged splinters glinted where the metal had torn apart, some of the pieces stained rusty red from her blood. God, she could not believe—

"Hard to believe they dug all that out of your skin, huh?"

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was overcrowded, they'd been roomies since he'd been moved in from recovery. "Pretty amazing."

He sounded like he thought it was cool. Maybe it would be for a SEAL, she didn't know. They were all a little crazy to begin with, so there was no telling how their brains functioned. "I guess so," she allowed. The RPG had been aimed at the helicopter, the staff had heard from Dec, but if she hadn't hit the ground when she did, she'd have taken the shrapnel in the head or neck and probably died.

She sighed. And to think she wouldn't even get a medal for her trouble. That sucked. Didn't she deserve
something
after all she'd been through?

She needed a distraction. Watching the clock, waiting and worrying about her father wasn't going to make the second hand move any faster. She shoved away all thoughts of him and her own discomfort and switched her attention to Spencer, propped up with his left leg in a cast from groin to ankle. "How are you feeling, by the way?"

"Damn lucky to be alive," he admitted.

"What did the doctors say?"

"Busted femur, artery patched with a Dacron graft. You know."

Yeah, sure, standard stuff. Because this sort of thing happened to people all the time.

In hell
.

Bryn searched for a safe topic. "Did you call your wife yet?"

Spencer looked away, made a show of smoothing his blanket. "Nah."

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She angled her head toward him, frowning. "How come?"

Considering what he'd said after he'd been shot, Bryn had assumed he'd want to talk to her first thing. But maybe the Navy had already contacted her? Yeah, that must be it. She was probably on a flight right now to come see him.

He fiddled more with the blanket, his brow furrowing.

"Well, thing is, I'm not really sure if she's still my wife or not."