Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (7 page)

Well, he knew his medications. The fact that he’d questioned why she was on the prescriptions was a clear indication he knew the drugs were used to treat many diseases, including psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, along with organ transplants.

She hesitated before squaring her shoulders. He did need to know her medical history. Her heart condition could have a direct effect on him, as well as the rest of the people in this camp.

“They’re suppressing an organ rejection.”

Dead silence greeted that informational bomb.

“What organ?” he finally asked in a far too quiet voice. A muscle started to twitch in his jaw.

She considered sidestepping the question, after all, the precise organ wasn’t of importance.

“Which organ?” he asked again, louder, the determination in his voice a clear indication the specific organ mattered to him.

She hesitated before shrugging. “My heart.”

“You’ve had a heart transplant and you didn’t reckon it was advisable to warn anyone about your condition?” His voice remained soft for all of three seconds before the lazy glide to his vowels hardened. “How long have you been off the suppressors?”

“Since you dragged me from my lab and over to the Sierra Nevadas.” She forced herself to hold his disbelieving gaze. “If you’ll remember back, you guys didn’t give me a chance to grab my stuff from the motel.”

Although that wasn’t quite fair. She hadn’t asked them to swing by her motel. At the time, she hadn’t been sure she could trust them, so she’d decided to keep her motel room quiet in case she needed to escape. She’d had her emergency stash of cash there, along with her meds, so that, if she needed to, she could go to ground for at least a couple of weeks.

“A heart transplant, sweet Jesus, Faith.” He broke off and she could almost see him counting numbers off in his head. Exactly six seconds later he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You should have told me about this before now.”

Considering his reaction, it was a good thing he didn’t know that her current heart was her second transplant, and the odds of receiving a third anytime soon were
. . .
tricky at best.

“Rejection is a slow, drawn-out process,” she told him instead. “There’s a two-week window before I even need to worry about it. As long as I get back on my meds as soon as possible, I should be fine.”

“Should be?” His voice sharpened, his gaze narrowing.

“The transplant happened years ago. When I was fourteen.” At least the second one had. She’d received her first transplant two weeks after her thirteenth birthday, but it had failed within the first year. “I’ve been stable for fifteen years. That’s in my favor.”

Of course, her heart was also four years past the mean survival for a transplanted heart, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You were fourteen?
. . .
Jesus.” He looked oddly shaken for a moment before his face stilled. He cocked his head slightly and studied her closely. “What about the Cordarone. It’s an antiarrhythmic. You have arrhythmia?”

“Ventricular tachycardia—the donor heart was damaged during its removal. But I had an emergency stash of Cordarone in my pocket.” She rushed the last sentence out, suspecting he’d understand how dangerous tachycardia was. “So I’ve been taking those meds.”

“A stash in your pocket?” he repeated slowly, his face tight. “Why? In case the tachycardia hits unexpectedly even though you’re on medication?”

Well, he’d figured that out way too fast for her liking. “Arrhythmia can be brought on by stress, so before leaving the motel for the lab the night your team found me, I grabbed the old vial of Cordarone and shoved it in my pocket—just in case the adrenaline of sneaking into the lab brought on an episode. There’s still some pills left, but I’ll need more soon.”

“How soon?” His question hit the air like a demand.

“I’ve got four doses left.” She winced at the thunderstorm that swept across his face.

“You take a pill twice a day?” He didn’t wait for her nod. Just shook his head, disbelief wrestling with the thunder on his face. “Sweet Jesus, Faith. That’s only two days’ worth, and that’s assumin’ you don’t need an emergency dose in between. What were you thinkin’?”

She set her jaw. “I was
thinking
that I needed to ask you how I could refill my medications without anyone being the wiser since I’m supposed to be dead, and I have some super-secret, nasty organization on the lookout for me. I’ve been
trying
to track you down to ask for help.”

“You could have—” He broke off to take another series of those obvious deep breaths. “Okay, let’s back up. I’ll talk to Wolf as soon as he returns.” Another breath and the darkness lifted from his face. “What doses are you takin’?”

He didn’t write down the dosages Faith rattled off, but she didn’t doubt he committed them to memory. She relaxed—he was so much easier to talk to than Mackenzie, or even Cosky and Zane.

“I’ll need to up the dosage for a few weeks, though. So we’ll need to account for that.” This wouldn’t be her first fight against organ rejection, if she followed the previous dosage protocols, she’d be fine.

“Okay, darlin’,” he said, his drawl back in full force. “Don’t fret, we’ll get you hooked up with your meds.” He paused to eye her cautiously. “I reckon I should have a listen to your heart. Make sure your ticker is working all proper.”

She backed up a couple of steps, swarms of butterflies erupting in her belly. “That’s not necessary.”

“I disagree,” he countered firmly before making an obvious effort to lighten his tone. “And who’s the doctor here?”

When she took another long step back, he took a matching one forward.

“I am,” she announced, knowing her PhD in alternative energy wasn’t the kind of doctor’s degree he was talking about. “In fact”—she took another cautious step back, her pulse spiking as he followed her—“since you didn’t finish your residency, I believe I’m the only doctor in the room.” When the retort hit the air, it was laced with a snide superiority she hadn’t intended, and she stopped dead in mortification. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

“Darlin’.” The solemn, slightly hurt tone of his voice was belied by the twitch to his lip. “Y’all done demolished my mas-cu-lin-ity.”

After studying his straight face for a moment, she lifted her eyebrows. She suspected nothing anyone said or did could dent his self-confidence.

“Let me guess,” she said dryly. “My reparation somehow ends with you listening to my heart.”

He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Well now, that does sound like an apology I can live with.” When she continued to hesitate, he dropped the humor. “You want to tell me what’s kickin’ around in that head of yours? After fifteen years, you must be an old hat at checkups by now.”

She frowned. Granted, more men than she could count had listened to her heart over the span of her life. But none of them had given her chills or tingles or launched a fleet of butterflies in her belly. Her physical reaction to Rawls was out of control. If he leaned in close enough to listen to her heart, it just might stop beating to savor the moment.

He tilted his head, his gaze narrowing. “Talk to me, darlin’.”

She sighed and girded herself for the inevitable. All this stalling was just making him suspicious. “It’s a waste of time, that’s all.” She shrugged, trying to project nonchalance. “But fine, if you want to listen to my heart, be my guest.”

He studied her face for a moment before offering an encouraging smile. “Why don’t you take a seat?” Pivoting, he headed for the table against the wall, across from the foot of the bed, and grabbed an oblong black bag. “This will be easiest on the bed.”

On the bed . . . oh goodie . . .

She swallowed to lubricate the sudden desert parching her throat and settled on the mattress with stoic acceptance. A minute tops, and she could escape. She could handle a few minutes of personal contact. No problem.

He followed her to the bed, set the black bag on the mattress beside her, and opened it up, rummaging around inside. Removing a stethoscope, he settled on the mattress next to her with his left leg drawn up until his calf was braced against the mattress. He shifted to face her.

“Why don’t you turn toward me?” he said as he plugged the ear pieces of the stethoscope into place.

She scooted around as he’d requested, and the heat of his big body toasted her from shoulder to thigh. His warmth loosened something inside her, something urgent and hungry.

Leaning forward, he lifted the disk of the stethoscope and pressed it against her chest. Faith caught her breath and held it. Even with her blouse shielding her breast from his hand, she was unbearably aware of his closeness, his warmth, of the clean, soapy scent of his skin and hair. She felt torn between pressing closer and wrenching herself away.

Seconds later a frown touched his forehead, and he pulled back, lifting the metal disk. “I need a better seal.”

Without giving her a chance to protest, he lifted the hem of her blouse and slid his hand underneath. His fingers were hot and scratchy, the metal disk icy and smooth—the erotic juxtaposition sparked a trail of fiery shivers as he guided the instrument up her abdomen. Her breasts swelled. Her stomach flipped. Her muscles weakened. Goose bumps gathered at the nape of her neck and marched down to the base of her spine.

He bent his neck and tilted his head, his moist breath caressing her bare forearm, as he nestled the disk under the left cup of her bra. Helpless, she quivered, his humid breath bathing her sensitive skin, his fingers burning against the swell of her left breast. Heat bloomed, a slow lazy sprawl through blood and bone.

“You can breathe anytime now, darlin’,” he said, a hint of humor in the roll to his vowels.

Breathe, yes—she needed to breathe. Lack of oxygen would account for this sudden fit of dizziness. But when she tried to wrestle in a breath, his clean, soapy scent flooded her lungs, paralyzing her.

“Come on, sugar.” His calloused fingers slid to the right an inch or so, prickling against the swollen underside of her breast, and then pressed the disk firmly against her aching flesh. “No need to hold your breath, I can hear your ticker fine.”

She drew in a raspy breath, and prayed her rigid lungs would know what to do with it.

“Relax,” he said in such a soothing voice she wanted to curl up in an embarrassed ball and roll on back to her cabin. “Everything sounds just dandy in there.” He tilted his head to the right. “No need to get all—” His voice simply broke and stopped as they locked eyes.

He froze, his fingers still burning against her breast. The laser-blue eyes darkened and dilated. And then slowly, oh so slowly, they dropped to her lips.

Chapter Four

T
HIRTY-FIVE MILES NORTHEAST
of Bellingham, Washington, Mac watched the Jayhawk that Wolf had loaned them bug out. Once the dust cloud settled, he shifted his attention to Jude, the big, braided Arapaho warrior taking Rawls’s place. Twisting slightly, Mac scanned the equipment strewn across the landing strip. Supposedly the guy was a medic, although how he intended to treat injuries without a med kit was open to question. Son of a motherfucker—he should have checked the bastard’s gear before they hopped off the chopper.

“Jude, isn’t it?” Mac asked after waiting until the helicopter crested the hill looming in front of them and disappeared from view, where it would touch down, settle in, and wait for recall. “Wolf said you’re his team’s medic?”

An abbreviated nod of the regal head sent Jude’s long, graying braid swaying.

Mac eyed him closely. The guy looked a hell of a lot like their host. Same square face and hawkish black eyes. Same massive, muscled build tucked into a light green T-shirt and olive Flex-Tac pants. Same impassivity—although from the looks of it, the bastard had an extra twenty-five years on Wolf.

“Where’s your med kit?” Mac fought to keep the words a question, rather than an accusation.

Jude lifted his eyebrows and patted a small square pouch hanging against his side from an ancient leather shoulder strap. The bag was made from worn leather and embossed with a spider’s web in vibrant red and yellow.

Gritting his teeth, Mac turned away. That damn pouch was maybe four inches by four inches, barely big enough to carry a couple packages of QuikClot, a spool of gauze, and a suture kit. Sure as hell not much else.

In the distance, the Jayhawk’s rotor slowed as the pilot began the shutdown procedure. Mac swore beneath his breath. While Zane’s internal psychic alarm hadn’t sounded—yet—that didn’t mean much. Over the past fourteen years, numerous insertions had blown up in their faces without any warning from Zane’s emergency broadcasting system.

They’d better watch their p’s and q’s and pray they didn’t take a hit. Even with the chopper on site, it would take a good ten minutes to evac the wounded to the nearest emergency room. And that was after the rotor warmed up and the bird climbed into the air.

Still, the Sikorsky MH-60T was their ace in the hole—few organizations could afford the thirty-million-dollar price tags these babies carried, which raised some serious inquiries as to who Wolf worked for
. . .

Mac shook the questions aside, grim satisfaction rising. Party crashers wouldn’t expect an ambush from the air. Or a rescue for that matter. But since the beat of its blades could be heard for five to six klicks, the machine had to be shut down. Which meant a cold start when they needed it, and that meant several minutes of limbo.

Lives could be lost in those minutes—hell, forget minutes. Lives could be lost in seconds.

Shoving his unease aside, Mac turned in a slow circle, surveying their rendezvous site. Cosky had chosen the perfect terrain. The Jayhawk had dropped them into a bowl. Steep hills dotted with scraggly brush and smalls stands of Douglas fir rose from every direction. The single access point—a rutted dirt road—cut through the smallest hill to the north and dead-ended in the middle of the bowl. Once they climbed the hills and settled in on top, they’d have a bird’s eye view in every direction.

With a soft grunt of satisfaction, he relaxed slightly and turned toward Cosky. “What’s on the other side of those hills?”

“Acre after acre of trees,” Cosky said with a slow, sweeping survey from the right to left. “Besides the entry point, the closest road is an abandoned logging trail ten klicks to the east.”

“We’ll have eyes in every direction. Nobody’s slipping past us.” Zane signaled his approval with a hard thump to Cosky’s shoulder.

Mac slowly pivoted for one last scan of the surrounding hills and got down to business. As he started his third and final weapons check, Zane and Cosky silently followed suit. Once satisfied their weapons were good to go, Mac nodded toward Amy’s silent, tense figure. “Take positions and test her gear. Make sure the signal carries.”

During the flight out, Cosky had fitted her with a mic that fed into their headsets, but they hadn’t been able to test the device’s range. The ridge was a good three hundred yards uphill—they needed to make sure they could hear Amy’s conversation with her brother from their posts.

“Can I call Clay now?” Amy asked, her tone flattened by extreme patience.

“Not till I’m sure you’re hooked into our headsets,” Mac said with a quick sidelong glance at her rigid, athletic figure.

The tension in her limbs and shoulders announced her anxiety. This rendezvous with her brother and children had the woman tied in knots, a clear indication of how important her boys were to her. Mac’s chest tightened in sympathy. Amy rarely exhibited emotions. Hell, she was an old hand at locking down uncertainty or fear, an expert at projecting controlled competence. No doubt her ability to compartmentalize and bury her anxiety had been partly responsible for her meteoric rise through the bureau. Prior to her marriage she’d been on the fast track to taking the SAC’s chair of the white-collar crimes division in the Seattle field office.

Not that he’d gone to the trouble of checking the woman out—at least no more than was necessary when dealing with an unknown ally.

“Once we’ve taken our positions and tested your feed, I’ll signal you to call your brother,” Mac said, holding Amy’s shadowed gaze. He ignored the urge to assure her that everything would turn out just fine. He couldn’t promise her that. Nobody could promise her that.

Frowning, he swept Amy’s tense figure. The plan had been to let Amy handle the rendezvous herself while they provided cover from the ridge, but the woman was edgy as hell. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a partner, someone to step in if the situation went south. They could afford to lose the extra set of eyes; they’d still have plenty of scopes keeping watch from above.

“Cosky, stick around and watch her six,” Mac ordered, answering Cosky’s double take with a slight nod. “Zane, Jude—head up and into position.”

Amy squared her shoulders and pivoted until she faced Mac. “Jude should stay with me. Cosky should take to the ridge.”

The sympathy he’d been feeling for her withered. The woman liked countermanding his orders way too much. “Cosky stays.”

Her chin rising, Amy held his eyes firmly, which would have been admirable if her penchant for stubbornness wasn’t so damn infuriating.

“Look, Mackenzie. Clay’s a federal law enforcement agent and you and your men are at the top of every agency’s BOLO. You’re probably at the top of the bureau’s most wanted list by now. If he sees you, any of you, he’ll try to arrest you, that’s his job. It just makes sense that Lieutenant Simcosky should provide cover from the ridge, while Jude—who isn’t on a watch list—backs me up on the ground.”

Her arguments made sense. Except having Jude and Cos swap places left her under the care of a virtual stranger. A stranger whose competence was in question considering his lack of a field kit.

“Cosky stays,” Mac said. “End of discussion.”

“Mackenzie—”

“It’s Mac.” Where the fuck had that come from? He didn’t care what the hell she called him. Suddenly off balance, he scrambled to get his head back in the argument. “Cosky wasn’t at the lab. He won’t be on any BOLOs.”

Looking more determined than ever, Amy set her jaw. “He’s a known associate of yours. Clay will haul him in for questioning.”

Cosky smiled. “He can try.”

Amy blew out a frustrated breath, which locked Mac’s attention on her pink, unpainted lips.

Sonofabitch.
He wrenched his gaze away.

“I’m just trying to make this as easy as possible on the three of you. Having Clay hound you is only going to increase tensions.”

Another fair point, which Mac ignored. No way in hell was he trusting her life to a stranger. He turned to Zane. “I’ll take north, you take east.” He shot a hard glance at Jude. “That leaves you with the west ridge.”

“I’m telling you this is a mistake. If Clay sees Cosky, he’ll know the rest of you are here too.” Amy’s voice shed its patience and climbed into robust irritation.

Mac grunted an acknowledgment, mostly because he knew the response would annoy her as much as her constant questioning of his orders irritated him.

“Fine.” Blowing out another frustrated breath, she shimmied her shoulders and squared her stance, which cast a faint jiggle across her high, firm rack.

Mac’s attention splintered between her lips and her chest. His skin tightened. So did his crotch. His lungs sped up, trying to keep pace with his accelerating heart. Just fucking perfect. It wouldn’t be long before his men questioned why he was wheezing before the action even hit. There was a time and place for arousal and it sure as hell wasn’t on the cusp of a mission in the middle of a crowd.

He should give some serious thought to getting the old boy neutered.

Shifting the MK20 sniper rifle and the MP5SD submachine—two of the weapons he’d handpicked from the compound’s arsenal—until they hung against his back, rather than his side, he caught Amy’s eye.

“Wait until we’ve tested your gear before calling your brother,” he reiterated.

Her lips tightened, but she nodded an acknowledgment.

With one last glance down the rutted dirt road, he struck out for the north ridge. At least the steep climb would give his libido something besides Amy to focus on. It was hard to maintain an erection when strenuous activity required a constant flow of blood to the brain, heart, and lungs. Not to mention the arms and legs.

By the time he reached the small stand of maple trees he’d chosen for camouflage, he was panting harder than ever. A sad commentary on his naval career. Somehow, through the years, he’d become nothing more than a desk jockey. Since his heart was pounding hard enough to interfere with his breathing, he waited a few seconds for his circulatory system to recover.

“Alpha one, copy.” Zane’s calm, cool voice came over Mac’s headset.

Mac grimaced at the lack of breathlessness in his LC’s voice. Definitely time to start using the base gym again.

“Alpha one in position.” Mac carefully regulated his breathing. “Alpha three?”

“Copy,” Cosky said.

“Alpha four?” Mac dragged the sniper rifle over his head and aimed the scope toward the west ridge, but there was no sign of Wolf’s warrior.

“In position.” Jude’s measured voice came over the air.

“Amy?” Mac asked.

Fuck, was it his imagination, or had his voice actually softened over her name? He tried to convince himself the unusual bout of gentleness was simply a latent round of that earlier, frustrating breathlessness.

“I hear you loud and clear, Mackenzie.”

Amy’s voice flowed smoothly through his headset. In stark comparison to
his
query, her voice was cold and flat and bristling with irritation. Apparently she hadn’t shed her annoyance over their earlier tussle.

“Alpha two? Four? You copy her?” Mac asked, nodding in satisfaction at the instant affirmations that hit his headset. He trained the scope on the east ridge. No sign of Zane either—he’d faded into the landscape as expected. “All right, boys and girls,” he said, turning the rifle back in Amy’s direction. “Time to get the ball rolling.”

Through the rifle scope he watched her dig into the pockets of the gray pants that hugged her ass far too intimately for his peace of mind. Somehow the tactical flex pants looked a hell of a lot better on her than they did on him, or Zane or Cosky for that matter.

She jabbed at the screen a couple of times and lifted it to her ear. Mac absently listened to her side of the conversation as she methodically passed on detailed directions to their rendezvous point.

Her brother was waiting for directions at upper Whatcom Falls Park, thirty minutes out. Which gave them plenty of time to get the lay of the land, and to identify problematic points of entry. He scoped out the hillsides and relaxed after a thorough sweep. His vantage point was damn near perfect. He had a clear, 180-degree view from his position on the ridge. The terrain he couldn’t scope fell within Zane’s and Jude’s positions. Nobody would be able to crash their party unannounced.

They settled down to wait. Thirty minutes after Amy’s call, a thick cloud of dust churned into the sky over the access road.

“Our guests have arrived,” Mac announced quietly into his comm.

The dust boiled thicker and taller as it closed on Amy and Cosky, and then a blue Ford Expedition broke into the open. He caught the flash of red hair from the driver’s seat, which fit the description Amy had given of her stepbrother. He swung the scope to the rear of the SUV, but all he could make out from his angle were two small, dark heads hanging low against the backrest.

“Alpha two, you got a visual?” Mac asked as he swept the dust-veiled road behind the SUV.

If their adversaries were going to attack, it would be soon, but there were no new torrents of dust rising into the air signaling a second vehicle.

“Affirmative. Three subjects. All identified,” Zane responded.

The Expedition rolled to a stop in front of Amy and Cosky, and the back doors flew open. Two children with dark close-cropped hair exited the SUV from opposite sides. The smaller boy left his door wide open and raced toward his mother, his small sneakered feet kicking up thin puffs of powdery earth with each stride. Amy stepped in front of two plastic retail-store sacks on the ground and knelt. Mac watched her arms and shoulders tense as she braced herself. A soft “oomph” traveled over the headset as her son hurled himself into her arms.

Something hot and achy, like heartburn, spread through Mac’s chest as he watched her fiery head bow and her arms tighten around the child. He wrenched the scope away and focused on the older kid. The second boy had exited with much more decorum, stopped to close his door, and then walked around the rear of the Ford to close his brother’s. When he headed toward his mother, not even a hint of dust rose from his feet. He stopped a foot or two from Amy. She glanced up and reached for him. Latching on to the hem of his T-shirt, she dragged him into her hug.