Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella (10 page)

Two weeks later, Grace had made some changes in her life. Not huge changes. She’d just swapped one war zone for another, really. But she wasn’t as excited as she should have been for her new gig. She walked slower, was a little slower to laugh at her favorite sitcoms and a little slower in responding to e-mails from her old college friends.

She would be okay. A decision had been reached to embrace her misery. To fully experience it and feel it and not to build up those barriers again. She knew, had always known, that it wasn’t really a productive or healthy way to go through life. Safe, but not healthy.

As she flipped up the door of her beloved storage unit, a warmth of homecoming washed over her. The tiny speck of heat, unfortunately, didn’t have a huge effect on the sadness she was embracing. The motion-sensor light came on, and she quickly closed the door halfway. Just far enough that anyone passing wouldn’t be able to see in unless they ducked.

The unit was laid out like a room, and although it was comforting to her, she realized only too well that it had a hint of serial killer to the casual observer. Some of her pictures were propped against the walls, her bed was made up in the center of the room, and a solid oak wardrobe took up most of one whole wall. Her five boxes of belongings were against the other wall, covered in a throw so they didn’t look quite so… well, temporary. It was crazy, since she spent her time off at the Four Seasons usually, but it pleased her to arrange her things as if she actually did have a permanent home somewhere.

She would miss this place…

A noise outside the door made her look up. A panting. A persistent panting. She shot to her feet, wondering if someone had been taken ill outside, but before she had taken a step toward the door, a small, yellow Labrador puppy with huge paws snuffled under the door. Attached to his red collar was a red leash. Attached to the red leash was…

“Wait! Chinook! Come back! You’ll ruin the surpr—” Then the shutter door clanged as if someone had walked straight into it, and the leash fell to the floor. The puppy launched itself at Grace, all gangly legs and drooling tongue. She laughed out loud for the first time in weeks and picked it up, squirming out of range of its tongue.

Half of her knew who was attached to the other end of the dog. The other half believed she was hallucinating.

When he ducked under the door, jelly legs gave way, and she sat back on her bed, puppy jumping and scrambling around her lap and bed, oblivious to the shock coursing around her body. Josh.

“I found you,” he said simply.

“How?” she asked, although that wasn’t what she wanted to say.

“I know a guy, who, as it turns out, is related to a guy with a very high security clearance.”

“You found me.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she let them fall.

“I’ll always find you. Hopefully, it won’t take me three years next time. I hope there won’t be a next time. But I came prepared to LoJack you just in case.” He closed the gap between them and drew her up from the bed. They stood toe-to-toe as he stroked her tears away with the back of his hand. “I know this is complicated. But I waited three years for you last time. I can wait a year for your next embedded adventure to be over.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m covering the D.C. political beat now. My editor said it would be more dangerous and brutal than Afghanistan.” She laughed at his astounded face. “It’s okay. I don’t think he was being literal.”

“I’ve PCSed to the Pentagon for three years.”

“PCSed?” she asked. She knew what he meant, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t leave her blurting out
I love you
.

“Permanent change of duty station.”

“So we’ll be in the same city?” she asked, her throat tightening even more.

Concern etched across his face. “Is that… all right with you? I mean, I plan on dating you. I’m not sure we’ve even had a proper conversation… but I know I want to give this a shot. And I know I want to come home from my deployments to you. But I won’t rush you. I’m prepared to…”

“I’m prepared to, too,” Grace choked out, hoping that she wasn’t about to ugly cry. Every muscle in her body relaxed, and she couldn’t believe how tense she must have been.

He kissed her. In daylight, in her storage locker. And it felt real. His tongue took her lips and mouth hostage. A moan escaped her. She pulled him backward onto the bed, running her hands under his shirt. He landed on top of her but braced himself so he could slip her top up, leaving her stomach bare. He dipped his head to kiss her navel, but the puppy got there first, jumping on the pair of them as if scrambling around on the bed was a game.

Grace giggled and propped herself up on her elbows. “So who is this?”

“This…” He picked the puppy up and put it in her arms. “This is Chinook. You said you wanted a puppy, so I thought I might talk you into joint custody, you know, in case me turning up like this didn’t fill you with the joy I was aiming for. He’s cute, and I thought if I couldn’t, then he might melt your heart a little.”

“You both did,” she said as she tickled Chinook’s belly with one hand and reached for Josh’s hand with the other. “You both did.”

Emmy Curtis is an editor and a romance writer. An ex-pat Brit, she quells her homesickness with Cadbury Flakes and Fray Bentos pies. She’s lived in London, Paris, and New York, and has settled, for the time being, in North Carolina. When not writing, Emmy loves to travel with her military husband and take long walks with their Lab. All things considered, her life is chock-full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny. And if you get that reference… well, she already considers you kin.

Learn more at:

EmmyCurtis.com

Twitter, @EmmyCurtis19

Please turn the page for a look at the next book in Emmy Curtis’s sinfully sexy military romance Alpha Ops series
,

Over the Line

Available Fall 2014

Khost Province, Afghanistan

“Alone at last,” Walker whispered as he crouched next to Beth. Dust flew up as the crack of a bullet hitting the ground ricocheted around the valley. He flattened himself next to her.

“You are
shit
at taking orders,” she hissed back.

He ignored her as he tried to figure out where the shots were coming from. If he could just neutralize the immediate threat, he could patch her up and get her to safety. His blood had flashed ice-cold when she radioed that she’d been hit. And she’d still been laying down covering fire for the guys when he found her. If she was the first taste of women in combat, bring it on.

A pool of dark blood glistened in the hazy moonlight, expanding and trickling across the sand as he watched.

Crap.

Another shot echoed around them, and this time Walker was ready to identify the telltale muzzle flash. As soon as he saw it, he swung his gun and sent a shot downrange toward the insurgent.

Silence. He took that as a good sign.

“Okay, Sergeant. Turn over so I can look at that leg.”

Beth grunted but complied, biting back a moan as she did.

Walker’s heart dropped when he saw that her ABU pants were completely soaked with blood. A lot of it.
Shit.
Maybe the bullet had nicked an artery. He grabbed his knife and cut away the pant leg to expose the wound. It was about two inches below her panty line. And blood was still pumping out in rhythm with her heartbeat.

He undid her belt and pulled it off her. No way was he going to let her die in this crappy valley, in the middle of Shithole City, Bumfuck. No fucking way.

As he slid the belt around the top of her thigh, trying not to touch anything that could get him court-martialed, one of the Strike Eagles he had called for screamed overhead. He threw himself over Beth and waited for the bombs to drop.

They exploded with precision, of course. Walker had been the one to give them the coordinates. The valley lit up with orange fire as they detonated. Rocks and scree sprinkled them, sounding like heavy rain, feeling like stones.

That should keep the Taliban out of his hair for a bit. He made to get up, and realized how close to Beth’s face his was. He hesitated for a split second. A bad, bad second. He’d been deployed with her unit for five months and had spent four of those dreaming about her at night and trying to ignore those dreams by day.

He swallowed and went back to business. “I have to tourniquet your leg. It’s going to hurt like a fucker,” he said as he fastened the belt as high on her thigh as he could manage. “Just think, all this time I wanted to see your panties and finally…”

Beth opened her mouth, probably to give him hell, and he used the distraction to pull the belt tight.

“You bastard,” she ground out between gritted teeth.

The wound stopped pumping blood, and he mentally thanked whoever was looking out for them upstairs. He grabbed the first aid kit from his pack and took out gauze and dark green bandages. A shot sounded again, and sand flew up inches from them.

Shit fuck.

Walker threw himself down again. This time he was lying between her legs, face about five inches from her wound. Which meant it was seven inches from her…

“Well, this is awkward,” he murmured. It worked, and to his relief, he heard her gasp a laugh.

“Next time… buy me dinner… first, all right?” she said between pants of Lamaze-type breathing.

He laughed quietly. “I’ve got to get you out of here first. Then I promise I will.” He loosened the tourniquet and watched to see if the blood flow had stopped. It hadn’t stopped, but it wasn’t pumping out as it had before. He tightened it and vowed not to check again.

“Walker,” she ground out. “I have a letter. It’s in my pants pocket.” She groaned as if she was trying to get control over the pain. “Take it out before it gets soaked in blood. Make sure my sister gets it if I… don’t make it.”

He didn’t waste time placating her. He reached his hand into her thigh pocket and grabbed the papers in there. He found the letter and stuffed it in his own pocket before replacing the notebook and loose papers back in hers. “Got it. I’ll look after it. But I’m going to do everything I can to get you home to her, okay?”

“Holy shit, look!” Beth propped herself on one elbow and pointed up the valley where they had left their truck. A huge cloud of sand was making its way toward them, seemingly in slow motion. She made as if to get up, but fell back down with a moan as soon as she tried her leg.

The impending sandstorm made his mind up. They couldn’t get stuck in it—Beth would die, in all likelihood. If they didn’t move now, it would be on them, and no rescue would be able to get to them until it dissipated. No time for second-guessing. They had to move now.

A cloud passed in front of the moon, and Walker instinctively jumped up. “Put your weight on your good leg.” He held her opposite hand as if they were about to shake hands, and he pulled her up. “Come on, Garcia. Walk it off.”

She breathed a laugh as he bent his knees and slid her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, so her good leg bore the brunt of pressure against his shoulder. She wriggled pretty weakly in protest.

“What the fuck? Put me down. I can walk,” she said, her words not reflected by the strain in her voice.

Yeah, not so much.
“Sure you can, sweetheart… I mean Sergeant. But we need to run. Are you going to stay with me?”

“I’ve got your six,” she whispered.

He launched his pack on his other shoulder and took off, away from the sandstorm. He knew he could outrun it—it was slow moving—but the quicker he could get her to a reasonable landing zone, the quicker the helicopters would land and get her to the hospital.

The cloud passed the moon, and in the sudden light, they were sitting ducks. Another shot rang out, whizzing past so close he could feel it rip the air next to his face. Beth tensed her stomach muscles against his shoulder and pulled herself up. One hell of a soldier. One hell of a woman.

She let off three shots as he ran, and then she flopped back down. “Got him,” she said. And then there was silence except for his own breathing that filled his head. Blood pounded in his ears as he ran. Blood pumping and breath puffing.

In, out, in, out. Nearly there, nearly there.

His muscles strained under her weight and the eighty pounds of their combined body armor, but he’d trained for this, and frankly, it wasn’t his first rodeo. It was his eighth. His legs kept pumping toward safety.

He hoped.

The familiar
whop-whop
of a helicopter penetrated his thoughts, as well as the more constant gunshots as he neared the last of their vehicles. Five soldiers were on the ground, firing their weapons into the hills opposite them.

He skidded to a halt and laid Beth down. He dropped alongside her and asked for a sit rep from the guys.

“Marks took one to the head. We lost him. There are about eight TBs left in the hillside, but they don’t seem to be giving up. Only small arms fired, so I figured the helo can land over there to the right of the valley entrance.” He pointed to the only real possible landing zone for the choppers.

“I have to go clear the LZ, Beth. I’ll be back.” He looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Eyes closed and barely breathing, she looked like she had already checked out. His heart clenched.

No. Fucking. Way
. He pulled the tourniquet tight again and started CPR. “Hey, you.” He slapped the nearest soldier on his helmet. “I need you to do CPR while I clear the landing zone, okay? Keep the tourniquet tight.”

The soldier took over without question. And then realized who it was. “Shit, is this Garcia? Oh man. My wife will kill me if I let her die,” he said.

“So will I. Keep that thought in the very front of your mind. I’ll be back in a few.” Walker grabbed his radio and one of the soldiers’ flashlights and ran to the potential LZ. He walked the square, checking for IEDs or anything suspicious. He didn’t think there would be, because the convoy had passed over this area on their way into the valley. He could still see their tire tracks. But it was better to be safe than sorry. As he paced, he couldn’t stop thinking about Beth. How pale she looked in the moonlight, how shallow her breathing, and how totally opposite that was to how she normally was: vibrant, prickly, beautiful, and strong.

The gentle
whop-whop
of the helicopters became much louder as he finalized checking the LZ. He took out his radio.

“This is Playboy. PJs, come in.”

There were a few seconds of silence during which he checked his radio for loose wires. Then, “This is PJ one, Playboy. How’re we looking?”

“We have five able soldiers, one KIA, and one seriously injured. I’ve set up the landing zone at these coordinates.” He rattled off a series of numbers.

“Can you light it up?”

“Roger that.” Walker snapped some green chem lights from his pocket and threw them to the corners of the cleared landing zone. Once it was clear the helo was good to land, he sprinted back to Beth.
Please God. I’ll do anything if you just let me get her to the hospital alive.

The second trail helicopter opened fire into the hills, backing up the guys on the ground. Two combat rescue officers ran from the helicopter toward them, weapons drawn. They took one look at Beth and started work on her. They secured her tourniquet and put an oxygen mask over her face.

Walker stood back and let them run with her to the helo. His heart rate finally normalized, but the clenched fist in his stomach did not fade. As he followed the others to safety, all he could see was Beth’s white face, and he wondered if she would live to have the promised dinner with him. As he unclenched his fists to climb into the Pave Hawk helo, he realized his fingers were crossed.