Chapter 3
“I’ll take point,” Brawler growled, already moving. He needed space, the kind of space that was away from his sometimes overwhelming team, space from the image of Flash tumbling through the void.
Flash was still off. Pale under his mask, jaw set too tight, the tremor in his hands not quite hidden.
The guys couldn’t seem to stop touching him, rough and practical, brushing off his chute lines, checking his clips again, steadying him with a slap to the shoulder or a tug at his harness.
SEALs weren’t big on tenderness, but nobody was ready to stop reassuring themselves he was still here, still solid.
He gave a weak grin, voice raspy. “You were all divvying up my gear, weren’t you? Sorry to disappoint you bastards.”
That broke the tension, a ripple of chuckles going down the line. Easy muttered, “Dibs on your NVGs.”
Shark rumbled, “Hell no, I called those weeks ago.”
Even Tex’s curse carried a note of relief.
When Flash finally lifted his gaze, Brawler caught it. Just a second, but enough. That look carried the echo of what Flash had confessed on the trip back from their previous deployment, and the hollow space behind his usual humor. Something had happened up there. Something that rattled him.
Beast shifted at Brawler’s side, muscles tight, eyes fixed on Flash too. When the dog’s gaze came up to meet his, Brawler felt that same unspoken weight settle in his gut. It hadn’t just been a bad oxygen feed. Something else had touched Flash in that fall.
Unfortunately, no time for thinking about it, let alone talking about it.
The shadows closed in as he advanced, sweat already dampening the back of his neck, sliding between his shoulder blades beneath his plate carrier.
The air was a wall of heat and wet, thick enough to choke if you thought too hard about it.
Insects sang a shrill chorus, interrupted by the occasional shuffle in the underbrush.
He ignored the smaller predators. He was hunting the kind that carried rifles.
His NVGs painted the jungle in eerie green, a landscape of shifting shadows and spectral movement.
Their target was a downed UAV carrying hellfire missiles.
Emma Sutherland, their CIA liaison, had briefed them before wheels-up.
One had already gone into the ocean, and Sadie, Twister’s wife, was leading the dive on that wreck.
The other had crashed here, in this hellish green haystack.
Marines had been dispatched to recover it, six of them, and now they were missing.
One UAV failure he might believe. Two? That was sabotage.
If those Marines were still alive, the team would find them.
This black op was totally under the radar, covert, black. The powers that be didn’t want to tip off the Ecuadorian government that they had some powerful weapons for the taking.
They had a trek in front of them, and as he walked, all his instincts on alert, about one click ahead of the team, Beast stopped moving, nose testing the heavy, humid air.
Brawler crouched, listening. Beast’s tells were his pricked ears, his focused eyes, and the tension in his body. He was so well trained that he didn’t make a sound.
What Beast had detected reached Brawler’s average human ears: fast footfalls, ragged breathing, branches snapping under reckless speed. Someone was running hard and scared.
He slid sideways into the deep green shadows, slinging his rifle to the side to keep both hands free, one palm dropping in a silent signal for Beast to stay close.
She appeared in a blur of motion. Unbound hair, wild and damp with sweat, flashing like a distress flare in the green.
Boots slapping mud. Damp, thin cotton clinging to a compact frame that moved like a gazelle, quick, sure, but reckless.
Her attention was over her shoulder like death itself was giving chase, terror etched in every line of her delicate, pixie face.
She never saw him.
He stepped out, caught her mid-stride, his hands going over her mouth, muffling her surprised gasp, and the world shrank to the sensory map of her.
Light. Shockingly light. Compact muscle under his arm, the flex of her struggling, wired with adrenaline.
Skin warm and damp where his forearm locked around her, a faint salt-and-citrus scent cutting through the jungle’s rot and damp.
The shape of her mouth beneath his palm was soft, small, pressed tight as she fought to breathe through her nose.
The top of her head barely reached his chin, silky strands tickling his skin.
The difference in height made the fit almost too easy.
His brain pinged with input, stacking it in clean lines even as his body went into combat stillness.
The two men chasing her pounded past, rifles up, never glancing toward the shadow where he held her.
When their footfalls faded, she stilled. Then twisted.
He started to loosen his grip. “Easy, I’m?—”
Her elbow speared into the unprotected gap just under his vest. His diaphragm seized. Before he could reset, her fist came up like a piston and nailed him in the groin.
Impact detonated low and hard, a sharp, nauseating bolt that punched straight into his gut.
His knees gave a warning dip. But he held onto her for several beats.
She pushed hard against his chest, her eyes slamming into his, bright and feral, lit with a wildfire that burned straight through the night.
The hit landed deeper than her blows, fierce, alive, and beautiful in a way that burned.
Heat spiked low, primal, instant, dangerous.
Desperation bloomed, and he wanted to tell her he was American military, but he was still sucking air.
She twisted free, dashing away in the direction she came from. Smart woman, her self-preservation strong, her instincts on track, but eventually, those two men would realize that she’d ditched them and double back.
“Track… guard,” he rasped to Beast.
The Malinois sprang forward, silent and sure, nostrils flaring, catching her scent like a heat-seeking missile.
Tex’s voice came through his comm. “Brawler, sitrep.”
Brawler doubled for a count of three, four, took a long, slow breath, shoving the pain into a mental box where it could wait its damn turn. Ten seconds, maybe less, and he straightened. He’d been kneed in football, training, and understood the pain. There was no time for it.
Tex’s voice again, concerned. “Brawler, do you copy?”
He pushed into motion, legs shaking off the ache, eyes scanning the trail ahead. She was small, pixie sweet. Too small to take on armed men in this terrain. No weapon. No plan.
“Working a problem, LT,” Brawler responded, his voice winded.
“Good copy. Moving double-time to your position.”
Every instinct screamed to get her back in hand before the bastards chasing her got wise. He didn’t know who she was or why they wanted her, but that didn’t matter. She was in his AO now, and that made her his problem. His responsibility.
The jungle closed in again, wet leaves slapping his shoulders as he picked up speed, listening past his own breath for hers.
The pain dulled, settling into jittery, nervy vibrations, like hitting his funny bone.
It radiated up from his balls into his gut and hips, nausea spiking like a flashbang.
He’d been hit hard before, but this…this was goddamn surgical.
As he ran, he pulled out his roll of duct tape. He couldn’t afford for her to get loud or fight him again.
He could still feel the heat of her gaze on him, the compact slender body, and the imprint of her lips on his palm. His brain kept pulling those data points forward like intel that mattered, even though it didn’t. Shouldn’t.
He shoved it all aside. Safety first. Find her. Contain the threat.
He was sure Beast already had her, and the map in his head wasn’t just terrain and targets anymore.
It had her in it.
Ten minutes later, Brawler emerged from the jungle, stone-faced, with a pint-sized, furious woman slung over his shoulder like a misfired care package.
He’d had no choice. After he’d run her down, she wouldn’t listen to him, had tried to attack him again, and he had to restrain both her and Beast. She was panicked, and loud.
He expected those two men chasing her to appear at any moment.
Their mission was both covert and unsanctioned by the Ecuadorian government, and they had to remain undetected.
Duct tape covered her mouth, a zip-tie restraining her hands as a necessary stopgap until they could explain to her who they were and that they had no intentions of hurting her.
She was writhing like a rabid gremlin, muffled curses seething behind the tape, her eyes blazing and lethal, promised vengeance. Violent, creative vengeance. “Easy…we’re not going to hurt you. As I said ten times before, we’re American military.”
She just shook her head and struggled some more.
Flash blinked. Then squinted. “I thought you were going after tangos , not Tinkerbell .” Brawler didn’t answer. Just kept walking, jaw tight, carrying his cargo like a rucksack full of rage. “Where the hell did you find her?” Flash called after him, incredulous. “Under a toadstool ?”
Easy let out a wheeze. “She looks very dangerous, like she might be packing glitter bombs.”
“You duct taped her?” Shark asked, looking both impressed and horrified.
“I had to keep her quiet. This is a covert mission,” he growled. Much too aware of her body over his shoulder.
That got a chorus of low whistles.
“Damn,” Bondo muttered. “Here I thought jungle cats were the dangerous ones.”
Brawler came to a stop, adjusted her like she weighed nothing, and glared at the lot of them. “She ran. Straight into me. Punched me in the nuts and escaped. So, unless one of you wants to deal with her—” He turned his glare toward Flash. “Be my guest.”
She growled behind the tape.
Beast sat down next to Brawler, tail thumping with unmistakable enthusiasm.