Beyond Limits (31 page)

He took her hand and held it. His touch seemed to steady her, and she took a deep breath.

“That’s the flashback I keep having. The moment it started. I think the worst of it’s still blotted out. I don’t know.” She pulled her hand away and curled her fingers around her coffee mug. “New pieces are coming back, though. Voices. Faces.”

He cleared his throat. “Any names?”

She looked away and seemed to think about it. “Rasasa. I remember Khalid saying it. I don’t know if it’s a person or a thing.” She put her coffee aside and pulled her knees to her chest. “I don’t know anything, really. It’s all so fuzzy. Maybe the opium was a good thing.”

He watched her, wanting her to keep going and also wanting her to stop.

She turned to look at him. “Do you know what happened to him? Khalid?”

The question surprised him. “There’s a lot of people looking for him, last I heard.”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t think I’d care, but . . . he was the only one who showed any spark of humanity. It’s ironic, really. The whole reason I went there was to help children. Kids not much younger than him. Looking at it now, it seems so naive. So much has changed. I feel . . . warped, in a way. Because of fear. And I
hate
that. I don’t want to be a slave to fear the whole rest of my life.”

Luke tried to just listen, tried to dial down the anger inside him. He hated the pain she was feeling—and the men who had caused it, he hated them more. “In BUD/S training,” he said, trying to sound calm, “they use fear to make you better. They throw it at you every way they can, physically and mentally. Whatever you’re afraid of—drowning, diving, jumping out of a plane—they figure out what it is, and they hit you with it. They do everything they can to bring your darkest fears to light, because that’s when you tap into your deepest survival instincts.”

She looked at him, and he knew he had her complete attention.

“They push you to your breaking point. Then push you some more. Starting out it sucked, and I kept thinking, ‘Focus on tomorrow. Just make it to tomorrow.’ And then it got worse, and I thought, ‘Just make it to the next hour.’ And by the end I just wanted to make it to the next minute. One minute at a time, you survive. That’s how I did it, at least.”

She gazed up at him, and he wondered where she’d gone in her head all those days she’d lived in that hole. “So what was yours?” she asked. “Your fear when you started?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “No, that’s not true. I do know. It was HALO jumps—high altitude, low opening. I’ve never been a big fan of heights, and the first time I got up there, my heart damn near stopped.”

“What about now?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. What keeps you up at night now?”

A lump rose in his throat, and he looked out over the water. He wanted to say something glib and lighten things up, but he couldn’t think of anything. “I’m afraid of letting people down.” He looked at her. “Not being there when one of my brothers needs me, maybe because I’m injured or out of the op for some reason.”

She stared up at him for a long moment. A tear slid down her cheek, and she brushed it away. “God, you must hate me,” she whispered.

“Why would I hate you?”

“Your friend died because of me.”

“Whoa. Back up. Not because of you. Because of some Taliban fuckhead with an AK.”

She flinched at the words.

“Sorry.”
Shit.
“I’m just—”

“You’re angry. It’s okay.”

He clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I’m angry, but it’s not because of you.” He looked at her and tried to explain. “I’m angry because the last few years, it’s like we’ve been fighting the enemy with one hand tied behind our backs. I’m angry because some people seem to think the war’s over, we won. Let’s pack it in and go home. Meanwhile, the enemy is out there flourishing, and the people trained to fight are being held in check. And all the spin doctors create this illusion that it’s safe for aid workers and relief orgs, and it’s a fucking lie.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m pissed off at things I can’t control.”

She choked out a laugh. “Yeah. I think I’m in touch with that emotion.” She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath.

“Didn’t mean to rant.”

“No, it’s good,” she said. “You should say what you believe. I think you’ve earned the right to have an opinion.”

She rested her head on his arm, and his heart did a little flip. He looked through the bars of the balcony and tried to focus on the waves.

“Were you really afraid of heights?” she asked.

“I was. Nearly booted my guts up on that plane.”

The wind picked up. She shivered, and he resisted the urge to put his arm around her.

He stared at the surf and wondered again what the hell he was doing here.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” she said softly.

“Do you sleep with the lights on?”

“Yeah.”

Her head felt warm against his arm. He looked down at the pale wisps of her hair, and his pulse started to thrum.

“I don’t want to do that forever, though. It feels, I don’t know, irrational. Like I’m giving into fear.”

“Give yourself a break,” he said. “You just got home. You need time to get your life back.”

She pulled her head away and looked up at him, and the expression in her eyes made his chest hurt. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For talking.”

He leaned down and dropped a kiss on her forehead. It was a friendly kiss, barely a kiss at all. Any other girl, any other moment, it would have been no big deal, but the second he did it he knew it was a mistake. She slid her arms around him and nestled her head against his chest, and panic spurted through him.

He couldn’t do this. He could
not
stay out here another minute with her, not without doing something truly dumb.

“It’s late,” he said. “I should get going.”

She nodded against him. “Can I ask you something?”

No. No, she could not. “Sure.”

“Will you stay here tonight?” She tipped her head back and looked at him. “Please?”

Elizabeth lay beside Derek, tracing a pattern on his chest. She ran her finger over the scar there and then trailed lower, to the one along his rib cage.

Her throat tightened, and she stopped tracing. Instead, she slid her thigh over his and nestled closer. His body felt warm and solid, and she tried to keep her mind in the present. If she could focus on his arms around her, she might actually get some sleep tonight.

“People do it, you know.”

She turned her head. “What?”

“The long-distance thing.” He eased his arm out from under her and propped himself on his elbow to look at her. “It’s tough, but it works. Not always but sometimes.”

She slid her leg away and rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling. The bathroom door was ajar, letting a wedge of light into the room. “I don’t want a relationship like that.”

“With me, you mean.”

“With anyone.” She sat up against the headboard and pulled the sheet up.

“What’s so bad about it?”

She stared at him. “We’d never see each other, for one thing.”

“We would when I have leave.”

“That’s what? A few weeks a year?” Frustration welled up in her chest. Why did he want to talk about this right now?

“That’s a cop-out, and you know it. You just don’t want to try.”

She looked at him there in the dim light. He was propped on his elbow, staring at her, all muscular and perfect and scarred and determined.

Her heart felt sore. He thought she was weak. And she wasn’t. But she knew herself a lot better than he did, and she wished he’d at least try to understand.

She reached out and brushed her finger over his knuckles. “Have you ever been to a place, and it’s so different from what you’re used to—you’re not there that long, but it’s so different that you notice every detail?” She watched him. “Maybe somewhere exotic, like the Himalayas or the rain forest or, I don’t know, somewhere underwater?”

He nodded slightly.

“That’s what it was like with you. I memorized every detail. And then you were gone, and it was really hard.” She met his eyes, and her nerves fluttered as she let the words come out. “I missed you so much. It took me a long time to deal with that and accept that we were too different. The circumstances were too impossible. It was hard to face up to, but I did it. And I don’t want to have to go through that again.”

She saw the frustration in his eyes, and she could tell he still didn’t get it. He’d always been the one to leave, not the one left behind.

“There was so much waiting and worrying,” she said. “I would have these moments of panic every time I watched the news. And I’d read in the paper about some suicide bomb or some helicopter crash, and I’d look for some hidden clue that it was or wasn’t you involved.”

His brow furrowed, but she kept going.

“I know how you are, how when there’s trouble you run to it, not away. I knew you guys were in on that raid before Gordon even told me. I knew it in my bones, Derek. It was so dangerous—who else would they send?”

“This isn’t really about me, is it?” His voice had an edge. “This is about your dad.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe in a way. I know what it’s like to lose someone important. The hurt is so deep I can’t even explain it. And I know how hard it is after. I don’t want that kind of fear in my life again. It’s taken me years to get away from it, and I know that’s not what I want. Can’t you try to understand that?”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “I understand fear better than anybody. Part I don’t understand is giving in without a fight.”

A
faint buzzing noise jarred Derek awake. He stared up at the ceiling and felt a heavy weight on his chest. Snagging his jeans off the floor, he dug his phone from the pocket.

“Vaughn.”

“You up?” It was Luke.

Derek sat up and glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth. She was out cold, her arms tucked snugly under the pillow. She didn’t move a muscle as he got up and pulled on his jeans.

She’d been so wrung out that she’d completely crashed. He knew from experience that she didn’t like emotional drama, but last night had been pretty maxed out.

“You there?”

“One sec.” He opened the glass slider and stepped onto the balcony. Although
balcony
was being generous. It was barely big enough to stand on—maybe if you were a hobbit sneaking a cigarette, but that was about it. He slid the door shut behind him and blinked up at the sun.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“I just talked to Hailey, and I’ve got some intel.”

“You
just
talked to her?” He checked his watch. It was 0600 in California.

“This was last night. She was going through some shit, and she asked me to come to her hotel to talk.”

“And you went.”

“Hey, fuck you, Mr. Self-Righteous. I didn’t touch her.”

Derek hoped for Hailey’s sake that Luke was telling the truth. He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Do you want this or not?”

“I do.”

Derek definitely wanted it. He looked out over the kudzu-covered bayou that separated Elizabeth’s hotel from a freeway packed with morning commuters. This thing, whatever it was, was ramping up, and the feds were still chasing their tails.

“Rasasa,” Luke said. “I don’t know if it’s a name or a place or what, but Hailey said it’s something Khalid was talking about during her captivity.”

“Rasasa.”

“Yeah, you roll the
R
. I think it’s a person, but it could be anything. I figured you could pass it along to the FBI. Can you reach Elizabeth?”

Derek glanced over his shoulder. The bed was empty now. “Yeah,” he said, stepping back into the room.

So much for the naked send-off he’d been hoping for. But the bathroom door stood ajar, and the shower was running, so maybe he had a chance.

“She mention anything else?” Derek asked.

“Not really.”

Derek scrubbed his hand over his face. “Okay, well, let me know if she comes up with something more.”

“I will. So are you back yet?”

“Nah, I’m still in Houston.”

“I thought you were driving.”

“I am.”

The water went off, and Derek watched Elizabeth’s perfectly wet and perfectly naked body step out of the tub.

“Listen, I gotta go.”

“Right. Got it.” Luke laughed, and Derek knew he’d figured out exactly why he was still in Houston. “Hey, don’t stick around too long. We’re wheels-up Thursday.”

“I know.”

Derek shoved his phone into his pocket and stepped into the bathroom as she was wrapping herself in a towel. She looked wary, maybe a little uneasy around him in the cold light of morning. She was typically so restrained all the time, and last night’s maelstrom of tears and emotion and lust had caught them both off-guard.

She moved to step past him, and he caught her arm.

“ ’Morning.”

“ ’Morning.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. Not exactly the full-frontal assault he would have liked, but it was friendly.