Chapter 13 #2
She turned it over, frowning. “I’ve been trying to tell you something since we started on this trek, but you weren’t exactly receptive.” He opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a raised hand. “I know, I know. Life and death.”
“What intel?”
She smiled faintly, stubborn warmth in her gaze, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to tug a strand of copper hair.
“You kill me by degrees when you do that,” he muttered, repeating her words back to her.
She chuckled, eyes shining as they met his. “Sombra’s deviated from her path. Jaguars are predictable. They prowl the same routes, hunt the same zones, nest in the same places. Something spooked her.”
“So changing her pathing means?—”
“She’s rattled,” Emily finished with a nod.
“Something happened near that camera, something traumatic enough to push her off her pattern.” She shifted and sighed.
“That’s going to cause me a shit-ton of work.
I’m going to have to write a whole new section on my dissertation because of it.
All the data I’m collecting will support my theory.
I just have to figure out what happened. ”
Brawler shifted. He knew. The drone had gone down near her and the cubs. Someone had tampered with the coordinates, and Brawler and the team had been moving toward the wrong crash site. At the same crash site the chopper had gone down. Marines possibly ambushed.
He saw it clearly now. Emily couldn’t write a damn thing in her dissertation about what had caused Sombra to change her pattern.
The US wouldn’t allow the drone information to leak out.
The fact that there could be hellfire missiles in enemy hands would be something the State Department would keep under wraps.
Also, they were covert, as black as pitch.
No way would JSOC approve any information release on a clandestine, secret SEAL mission.
Which probably meant she’d be screwed. His heart sank for her.
“Can you show me and the team where you found this fragment?”
“Yes. Like I said, I know every inch of Sombra’s territory. I can find that camera location in my sleep.”
For her, it was a goatfuck. For him, it meant he’d have to tell her, eventually.
She wasn’t going to have the outcome she wanted. Academia didn’t reward vagueness. The minute those men had chased her into him, her research had been compromised.
For her, nothing was going to be all right, not if the team did its job.
He nodded once. “Tex will want to know. I’m sorry you got pulled into this, Emily.”
She bit her lip, slid a hand over his forearm. “I’m not,” she whispered.
The intel she’d just handed him was gold. After what they’d shared, he was reeling from everything: her, the mission, the sudden fear of losing both.
The dread was overwhelming. How was she going to take the hit to her research? Would she blame him? Would she pull away? He couldn’t bear the thought of it. But compromising the op wasn’t an option. Not now. Not ever.
The morning had begun with small comforts, instant coffee, a ration bar split in half, and Emily cross-legged, her laptop balanced on her knees.
The light slanted through the cave mouth, pale and unhurried, and for a fleeting moment it almost felt normal, two people sharing breakfast instead of fugitives carved out of the jungle.
Brawler gathered his comms, checked the seals, then slipped outside to test the net. He seated the earpiece and depressed the receiver.“Tex, come in.”
Static hissed back at him, grating, empty. He tried again, leaning into it, pulse tightening when the silence didn’t break. His CO needed this information yesterday.
He strode back into the cave, jaw tight, the hum still gnawing at his skull. Emily was no longer sprawled casually over her notes. She was upright, shoulders drawn, her gaze locked on the glow of her laptop. Tension radiated from her, sharp enough to slice through the heavy air.
“Em?” His voice was low, coaxing.
She startled, then exhaled, a breath she’d clearly been holding. One hand rose to adjust the screen as if buying herself a second of control. When she looked at him, her eyes burned steady, though her throat worked hard.
“You have to see this.”
He crossed the cave in three strides, the damp stone cool beneath his boots, and crouched at her side. She tapped the trackpad, the hesitation in her fingers belying the resolve in her voice. The footage came alive, grainy at first, the jungle framed in shades of shadow.
For a long moment, nothing. Just the night, restless with cricket-song. Then something dropped fast from the canopy, slammed into the ground, and the screen flared white with impact.
Brawler’s gut clenched. His body knew the shape of detonation before his mind caught up.
The flare dimmed. Across the lens, a spotted silhouette glided into view with lethal grace.
A jaguar. Power rippled through her shoulders, every line of her body a hymn to the wild.
Her eyes glowed pale, eerie lanterns in the dark.
Two smaller shadows tumbled after her, cubs clumsy but alive, their small bodies darting close to her flank before disappearing into the green.
Brawler’s breath caught. Christ, she was beautiful. Fierce and untamed, a warrior sculpted from shadow and muscle, carrying her young like royalty through a kingdom no man had any right to own.
His chest tightened, the awe sharp and unexpected.
This wasn’t just a big cat. This was survival made flesh.
He’d fought wars, seen destruction, held his brothers’ lives in his hands, but this, the primal sweep of her shoulders, the cubs scattering like sparks at her side, was something else entirely.
Emily’s jaguar. Sombra.
The name threaded through his gut, heavy with meaning, so much meaning for her.
Then the devastation hit, swift and cold. That magnificent footage sealed it. She wasn’t just logging spots in a jungle. She had captured something extraordinary, a mother and her cubs alive against impossible odds, and he was about to strip it all from her.
Her laptop. Her SD cards. Her field notes. Every hour she had poured into this work, every sliver of data that tied her to her sister’s memory. Today, all of it would be taken away. His job demanded it.
Anxiety pressed sharp against his ribs. Not fear for himself, not even fear of losing the team, but fear of what this would do to her.
She had clawed her way into this green hell to protect and prove the resilience of something wild and precious, and now the burden fell on him to be the bastard who erased it.
He looked at her, her face lit by the flickering screen, awe shimmering in her eyes.
Tucked against his heart, beneath the layers of duty and grit, a reluctant, aching admiration settled in.
She had done this. This slip of a woman, with her battered laptop and stubborn fire, had captured the ghost cat and her cubs on film. She had seen what no one else had.
He was going to take it away from her.
The realization scalded him.
Emily’s hand hovered above the keyboard, knuckles white, her breath snagging like the footage had punched through her chest. He could feel her willing the trio onward, her body vibrating with the same feral tension as the mother on screen.
The jaguar slipped into the green dark, cubs tumbling after. Silence cut the moment in half.
Then men burst into view. Boots, rifles, shapes of violence sweeping the ground the cats had just vacated. Their voices barked through the recording, harsh and too close.
Brawler’s jaw flexed. His protective instincts surged hard and fast, the same way they did in the seconds before a firefight. Not just for the team. For her. For those cubs. For the wild she had tethered herself to.
He started to rise, opened his mouth to speak, but she grabbed his forearm galvanizing him. “There’s more.” Her voice was compressed, filled with something he hated hearing. Violence…it was tinged with his world.
She pressed a button and the footage advanced a day and a half.
She stopped it, and it resumed in normal time.
In the distance, he heard the faint whop-whop-whop of chopper blades, and his gut clenched.
The helicopter came into view, hovered, and Emily’s hand flexed, her eyes hollowed out.
The whoosh of an RPG, that hated sound of a grenade carrying with it devastating destruction.
It hit the chopper’s tail rotor, and it spun out of control, slamming into the ground.
Men were already moving, guns ready, pulling out bloodied Marines.
It was clear the pilots were dead, and the fuckers left them where they’d died.
His fists clenched, and Emily let out a soft breath.
She turned to him and he went to his knees, pulling her against him.
“I heard it on the news, but I barely paid attention to it. Those were the missing Marines. You weren’t just searching for that drone…the missiles. Those men…” Her voice caught, and she just pressed against him, trembling.
He cupped the back of her head, fingers firm, anchoring her against him. Her breath shook through his shirt, warm and uneven.
“War is ugly,” he murmured, voice low and rough, threaded with the kind of honesty that never made it into after-action reports.
“Brutal and inhuman. We’re here to set things right, as we always do.
The UAV, the hellfires are important. National security.
We’re black, under radar, all of this has to stay classified. ”
He paused, the weight of the moment pressing close, then gentled his hold, his thumb stroking once through her hair. “But we’re here for those brothers who went missing. Thanks to you, we’ve found them. We can get them out of here.”
He eased her back, cupping her face in both hands, tilting her chin until her eyes met his. Her lashes were damp, her mouth trembling, but she held his gaze.