Under Fire (40 page)

“Then don’t make ’em. You aren’t that guy from before. It’s that simple.”

Could it be that easy? Could the kid be right in teaching the old guy?

Jose James pushed away from the wall. “Look for a purple Jeep. Sorry about the color. It was the only Wrangler at the rental place. Enjoy your ride, sir.”

Liam watched Cuervo all the way into the dark parking lot, where he climbed into a silver sports car with Data at the wheel.

As they drove off, Rachel stepped around a cubicle wall, wearing borrowed surgical scrubs and holding an ice pack to her jaw. Butterfly bandages held together a split in her lip and another along her temple. He wanted to reach for her, but wasn’t sure where it would be safe to touch her.

“Are you okay?”

“Bill’s paid. Doctor says I’ll be fine. No broken bones. Just a whopper bruise. The general hits like a girl.” She snorted on a laugh, then winced. “Okay, moratorium on jokes for a while.”

He rethought his stance on kicking the crap out of the guy. He readjusted the ice pack over the Technicolor bruise climbing up from her jaw. “Maybe we should go back in to see the doc again.”

“I’m all right, Liam, really.” She tapped his temple. “Think like a medic and you’ll be able to dial back the worry. But what about you? Are
you
okay? What you did to save me up there… that was nuts.”

“I’m fine. Didn’t have to hammer my old knees with a jump, so it’s all good.” He waved away discussion of their time in the air, for the most part still a blur to him because he’d been so in the zone, focused completely on the mission. Maybe later he could decompress it, pull it out to examine for others to use in future rescues.

For now, he only wanted to think about Rachel, alive. Thank God, alive.

Looping an arm around her shoulders, he tucked her against his side, carefully, watching for the least flinch from her. “Let’s go home.”

“Where would that be?” She glanced up at him, her brown eyes dark, serious.

“Home with me,” he said as the electric doors swooshed open.

She didn’t argue, which he hoped meant she agreed. She just walked alongside him quietly, step for step in sync, like when he was with his team. Somewhere along the way, she’d become his partner, and he’d almost stupidly thrown that away.

He angled his head so he could smell her hair as the wind tossed it around. “I was thinking you could recover at my place, since you’re currently homeless. I keep a clean house—should hold up to chick standards. My mom taught me that too, along with cooking, to make sure I was independent, you know, for after she died.”

Dredging up that little painful nugget from his childhood hadn’t been easy, but he was trying to be Joe Sensitive here, opening up and sharing something of himself the way the counselors had always been digging at him to do. Would she recognize that he was trying?

“Your mom sounds like a wise and practical woman.” She glanced up, her jaw purple, her eyes full of… him. “Do you have a picture of her at your house?”

“I do. A few of them in an album tucked away.”

“Good, I would like to see them.”

And just that easily, she’d agreed to go with him. As Cuervo said, sometimes life was just that simple.

“First thing tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll find them.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Can we pick up the dogs at Sunny’s on the way home tonight?”

He exhaled, hard, relief whooshing through him as they made plans, wove their lives together. “Of course.”

“And can you pick out a new name for Fang, please? I really don’t like it now that I know what it means.”

“Okay, we’ll call her Rocki.” In honor of the Afghanistan dog, Rocky. Yeah, that fit. It felt right. The way Rachel against his side felt right. “Rocki’s mine, you know.”

She smiled up at him, then winced. “Ouch.” She adjusted the ice pack. “Tomorrow, I’d like to drive down to Catriona’s place and get the rest of my dogs too.”

He frowned, weaving around an ambulance on his way to patient parking. “How many would that be exactly?”

“Don’t make me laugh. And don’t worry. Just a couple more, Tabitha and Ruby Two.”

“Four dogs total.” Sounded like a family to him. His chest clenched up a little more, but he wasn’t going to surrender to that fear. He was through self-destructing. “Cool. No problem. I can swing that.”

“Because you feel sorry for me?”

His arm twitched, pulling her tighter against him. Too tight. He forced himself to ease up. He ushered her deeper into the muggy parking lot, one foot in front of the other, his heart in his throat.

He stopped beside the rental Jeep—had to be theirs, because no way in hell were there two metallic purple Jeeps on the planet—and faced Rachel full on, frustration pushing the words out until they exploded into the night air. “Because I love you, damn it.”

“Well, good,” she shouted right back. “Because I love you too, damn it.”

Her chest heaved and the echo of their voices faded like sparks showering from the bolt of lightning he’d once seen skip through an airplane. Tingling. Singing, even. A little dangerous. Definitely scary.

But exciting as hell. She deserved to hear just
how
exciting. No assuming she understood. No repeating mistakes of the past. Rachel was a gift. She was his future.

He took the ice pack from her and held it to her jaw gingerly, careful not to hurt her.

“Rachel Flores, from the moment I saw you in the Bahamas I knew I would claim you. That may not sound PC or romantic, but I felt it”—he thumped his chest over his heart—“here. Right where you’ve stayed, no matter how much time we spent apart or even when you wouldn’t return my calls. I have loved you. I still love you. I want you in my life as my partner, my lover, and if you can bring yourself to trust me, I would be honored to be your husband.”

She clasped his face and said simply, “I love you, and I trust you. Now, and always. Lover, friend, husband.”

His forehead fell to rest on hers, relief and happiness threatening to send him to his knees. “Let’s go home, Mrs. Franklin.”

He felt her smile against the ice pack.

“That sounds like a lovely idea, Mr. Franklin. Do you have any new sex games in mind to keep your old-guy libido revved?”

Stepping back, he gave her the ice pack and opened the door for her. “I was thinking that given your current condition, the best option would be for you to just lie back and let me be your gigolo.”

She swung up into the front seat. “Now that sounds like the perfect proposition to me.”

Ten days later

Wind rolled off the ocean and tugged at the frothy scarf Rachel wore to cover the fading bruises as she stood on the bleachers with Sunny Rocha. The United States Air Force Band played the national anthems of each country represented during the closing ceremony for the weeklong summit.

A blessedly uneventful week that went off without so much as a hiccup.

Today’s Florida summer weather was sweltering but breezy, without a cloud in sight. The lush lawn stretched out a natural carpet for the dais. Leaders from around the world who’d attended the confab on global missile and satellite technology were gathered. Behind them, an air force rocket launch facility loomed with a missile at least twenty stories high. What a backdrop.

Impressive.

But what impressed her most went unnoticed by others.

Liam and his team had been in the background the entire week, providing a tight inner circle of security for the high-profile guests. She’d seen firsthand how very qualified they were to protect as well as rescue.

The pararescuemen dotted the perimeter, around leaders of foreign nations and heads of state. Her eyes, as always, were drawn to Liam. And oh my, what a sight he was today. An M-16 on his shoulder, he wore his uniform with the maroon beret. As he dressed early that morning, he’d told her the color symbolized the blood sacrifice of the PJ brothers who had come before him, a sacrifice made “That Others May Live.”

She was alive because of just how far they would push themselves to carry out that vow.

The band reached a piercing crescendo of trumpets before finishing so the final remarks could commence. A two-star general stepped up to the lectern—the center commander—with Colonel Zogby at his side. No mention was made of General Ted Sullivan today.

News reports thus far had stated only that General Sullivan been brought up on a number of charges, from sexual harassment to dereliction of duty. His family had gone into seclusion, no comments forthcoming from them. But rumor had it, Sullivan’s wife was most definitely
not
standing by her man.

Rachel had expected to feel vindicated, but more than anything she was just sad over all the lives ruined. Who knew how many? Liam had only been allowed to tell her that the general had planned to sell the targeted locations of certain satellites that gathered intelligence. He’d intended to pin the leak on the two-star general at the lectern now, discrediting him so Sullivan could take his place.

According to OSI profilers, General Ted Sullivan was a sociopath with a narcissistic personality disorder. He truly believed the world was better off with him in charge, regardless of who got hurt in the process. But then, Liam had figured all that out without the psychology degree and he’d played the guy just right to save her life. Beyond amazing.

Sullivan also seemed to assume it was his right to sleep with any woman he wanted. Including Special Agent Sylvia Cramer. Something none of them had seen coming.

As best they could piece together, she’d been clueless about Sullivan’s espionage when the affair began, and once she suspected, had tried her best to bring him down while saving her own career. By sleeping with him, she’d already made her job all the more difficult, since who would believe an ex-lover’s accusations based primarily on suspicion?

She might actually have succeeded if Captain Bernard hadn’t stepped into Sullivan’s office and told him about Brandon being found. In one instant, her plan collapsed.

Sylvia had died for her mistakes, strangled by Sullivan and tossed into the back of his Humvee like a sack of gear.

Brandon Harris, on the other hand, was beating the odds and recovering well in the hospital. Catriona was a constant fixture at his side and had even managed to wrangle hospital approval for Harley to stay in his room. The doctors were impressed by how markedly Brandon’s vital signs had improved once the dog arrived.

A breeze slipped over her, crisp with the scent of the ocean and possibility.

No question, the work she’d done in Florida was good. She’d changed lives for the better and she intended to help grow the program supplying therapy dogs for PTSD patients. But she also knew Liam was right. She was ready to return to the field. Disco was ready. They had a mission of their own, wherever they moved to next with the rest of her pack.

And the
where
depended on Liam.

Her eyes gravitated back to him—tall, focused—and while others might not notice, she knew he had the sexiest glint of humor in his eyes again. He’d decided to stay in the military for now. She’d told him that thanks to Sunny, she saw how well things could work in a military marriage. He wasn’t a hundred percent sold on the idea of advancing to senior leadership now that he would no longer work PJ missions. But he was willing to give it a try.

Their next base?

They would find out soon enough.

Today, though, they were in sunny Florida, where all was right with the world.

And she was engaged to be married to Major William McCabe, the last wife that man would ever have.

No doubt about it, life was good.

It was a cold day in hell for Tech Sergeant Wade Rocha—standard ops for a mission in Alaska.

He slammed the side of the icy crevasse on Mount McKinley. A seemingly bottomless crevasse. That made it all the more pressing to anchor his ax again ASAP. Except both of his spikes clanked against his sides while the underworld waited in an alabaster swirl of nothingness as he pinwheeled on a lone cable.

Wade scratched and clawed with his gloved hands, kicked with his spiked shoes, reaching for anything. The tiniest of toeholds on the slick surface would be good right about now. Sure he was roped to his climbing partner. But they had the added load of an injured woman strapped to a stretcher beneath them. He needed to carry his own weight.

Chunks of ice and snow pelted his helmet. The unstable gorge walls vibrated under his gloved hands.

“Breathe and relax, buddy.” His headset buzzed with reassurance from his climbing partner, Hugh “Slow Hand” Franco.

Right.