Deadly Force (20 page)

PTSD was a bitch. She’d seen no sign of it until now. Heart hammering, she lifted her gaze and met his over the barrel. The dark orbs were distant, as if he weren’t seeing her but something—some
one
—else.

“Cal, it’s me. Bianca.”

Nothing changed in his demeanor. He kept the gun pointed at her, his body rigid and ready for action.

Years ago, her mother had held a gun in her hand and looked at Bianca the same way—blank eyes, emotionless facial affect—right before she’d turned the gun on herself and put a bullet in her brain. Talk about PTSD. Bianca still had nightmares.

She’d failed with Annabelle, talking her off the ledge had been futile, but this was Cal, not her mentally unstable, alcoholic and drug-dependent mother.

Bianca was an adult now with a lot of skills and experiences under her belt, not some scared seventeen-year-old who’d recently lost a baby and was about to lose her mother.

I will not let the demons get you, Cal
.

“We’re in your father’s fishing cabin in upstate California,” she said in a calm, soothing manner, even though she was anything but calm. “I was attacked by an owl, remember? We made love and you fell asleep and had a nightmare. That’s all it was, a nightmare. I’ve kept watch on the house and grounds while you slept, and Emit texted your phone an hour ago. His extraction team will be here any minute. I, of course, informed him I wasn’t going to any safe house to hide out while you went to see Senator Halston.”

Cal’s head jerked slightly, as if he were trying to clear the fog. The distant look in his eyes faded. Not completely, but she could see he was truly waking up.

The gun, however, didn’t lower. The barrel was still aimed at the spot between her eyebrows.

Give him a little more time
.
Keep talking
.

“You’re not in Afghanistan. You’re here with me in America. You’re safe.”

Another blink. The gun lowered an inch.

“That’s right. You can do it. Fight the demons. You had a nightmare, that’s all it was. What happened was not real. I’m real and I need you.”

Maggie rushed to his side, wagging her tail and leaning against his leg. Confusion entered his eyes, and a second later, he frowned. “Bianca?”

Relief swamped her. She swallowed hard, wanting to jump up and hug him, yet knowing any sudden movement could trigger another episode. “Yep, it’s me. Your pain-in-the-ass wife.”

He looked down at the gun, back up to her face. “What happened? Why are you on the floor? Oh, God. Did I…?”

The weapon fell to the bed and he backed away, a look of abject horror on his face.

“It’s okay,” she said, rising slowly. “You had a nightmare and were having trouble coming out of it, that’s all. No harm done.”

The look on his face said differently. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, flattened himself against the wall. “I’m sorry.” He turned a tortured face to her. Maggie whined up at him. “I would never hurt you.
Never
. I would never lay a hand on you like your mother did.”

She couldn’t help herself. She launched herself across the space between them and threw her arms around him. “I know that. Stop beating yourself up.” She pushed her hands through his hair, holding his head so he had to look her in the eyes. “You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine.”

Maggie jumped up on both them, barking and acting like it was a game. Bianca laughed and bent to hug the dog. Her presence had seemed to snap him the rest of the way out of it.

Cal scratched the dog’s ears and took a deep breath, his body sagging slightly with what appeared to be relief.

Bianca almost mentioned the PTSD, then decided against it. After her mother had committed suicide right in front of her, the one thing that pissed her off was the clinical jargon the medical and psychiatric experts threw around. As if grief and anger and the awfulness of such a thing could be summed up by a sterile, unfeeling label. As if she, the victim of her mother’s neuroses and final act of desperation to escape them, could ever get over it without industrial-sized therapy. Maybe not even then.

It would be best to let Cal talk if he wanted to and to leave him alone if he didn’t.

On the other hand, Cal excelled at Houdini-ing his real thoughts and emotions.
Now you see them, now you don’t.
She’d never known him to admit anything was wrong, ever. Never in a million years would he voluntarily mention his feelings and emotions.

He needed to talk about what had happened. Needed to express the anger and terror and shock of what he’d lived through, and she was probably the only person he would ever confide in. Yet, she couldn’t force him to do it. The best way to get him where he needed to be was to simply open the door and let him walk through when the time came.

If it ever did.

“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.” He ran a hand over his face. “What was I thinking?”

“You were exhausted, and I was wide awake. Energized. I didn’t mind staying up.” It was true. After their love-making, she’d felt animated. Ready to take on Tephra and the whole goddamn US government. “I kept an eye on things, and Maggie was with me.” She patted the dog’s head. “We make a good team.”

He was still in his underwear, his broad shoulders and naked chest rippling as he moved to the bed to grab his clothes. As he pulled up his pants and worked his shirt over his arms, something dark and delicious quivered between her legs. Of course, he had to get dressed, but what a shame.

She touched her lips, remembering the feel of his against them. The control he always took of her in bed. As he finished dressing and headed to the bathroom, she sat on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes. The smell of sex emanated from the sheets and she rubbed a hand over the spot where Cal had lain, the sheets still warm from his body heat. If only they had a little more time to keep this rekindled flame alive.

No more
if only
s. By God, if it killed her, she
would
keep this flame alive. No more giving up; she was going to fight for her marriage, whether she had a day left or another fifty years.

“Hey, I almost forgot.” Cal came back from the bathroom, holding out a piece of paper. He appeared back to normal, his interior armor back in place with his usual confidence. “This was on the kitchen island at Emit’s place after Tephra ran. Is it yours? Didn’t look like your handwriting, but I grabbed it anyway.”

She took the paper. Two strings of numbers were written on it, the impressions made from a black ink pen deep.

418531

876121

A heavy hand had written them.

Tephra.

She glanced up and saw the same conclusion in Cal’s eyes.

“What do they mean?” she asked.

“I was hoping you could tell me. Is it a code or something?”

She read the two lines of numbers again, her brain breaking and regrouping them into plausible combinations. Not a phone number, social security number, or bank account number. Not any type of cipher or computer code she’d ever seen.

And yet, there was something familiar about them. Two lines, six numbers each.

Damn. She looked up. “I need my phone, but since we don’t have that, how about a map?”

Cal frowned. “Of California?”

She shook her head. “The world.”

Chapter Twenty

There were no maps at the cabin, world or otherwise. Who needed a map to fish?

No computer either, and the cheap burn phones Cal had bought didn’t have internet service.

Bianca was sure the numbers were a longitude and latitude location. Missing from the two sets of numbers were the degrees, minutes, seconds, and directions, but if they had a map, they could pinpoint the possible locations and theorize which was most likely to be the right one.

What did it mean, though?

Cal didn’t have the answer, but he did have Emit’s team. He replied to the text he’d slept through earlier.
Bring a world map
.

Exfil teams like Emit’s were run on the same premise the SEAL teams used. How they performed the job depended on whether or not their target was hostile or friendly, the type of terrain—sea, air, land—and whether they were under fire or sneaking in.

The team meeting them at the cabin was labeled Tier Three. Since Cal and Bianca weren’t under fire, the team probably expected an easy mission.

However, Bianca still hadn’t warmed to the idea of going off with them to a safe location, so when the black SUVs pulled up outside, she gave Cal a look that brokered no argument. “I’m not going to a safe house.”

He had to make her see reason. Not only would she be safer with Emit’s team, she’d be safer away from him.
My God, I almost shot her
.

His skin crawled. The nightmare had sucked him in again. The same one he’d had every single night since the mission. At least on his boat he’d been able to drown the sharp edges with alcohol. Here, his stepmom had removed the bottles of alcohol long before his father died from liver failure.

The only way to make sure he didn’t inadvertently hurt her was for Tier Three to take her away. His phone buzzed with a text.
All clear?

From behind the curtain, he watched one man from each of the two SUVs exit their vehicles. Dressed in black, they moved with the precision of trained operatives. Hyper-alert, the one in front held up a hand to stay the other who had an M4 sweeping back and forth over the drive and woods.

Cal typed back.
Clear
.
Front door is open
. “You can’t stay with me, B. Not after tonight.”

She stood near the kitchen table, hands on hips. “What are you talking about? We had an amazing night.”

“I knocked you down and pulled a gun on you.”

“You would never harm me.”

I almost killed you
. “You don’t know that.”

The leader of TT moved to the door, the other man covering his back. Standard protocol. Cal had his gun in his hand hanging by his leg. He turned the knob and opened the door as Bianca huffed. “I do, too, know that.”

TT’s leader moved into the room slowly, nodding at Cal and sizing up Bianca and the dog. His hair was Marine short, his body built like a semi-truck. His left earlobe was pierced with a tiny gold hoop.

Maggie started to lunge forward but Bianca caught her by the collar and told her to stay. “I’m not going with you,” she promptly informed the guy.

His gaze cut to Cal as he held out his hand. “Hubble Warwick, Tier Three team leader. What’s our status?”

Cal shifted his gun to his left hand and shook Warwick’s. He’d hand off Bianca in a minute. “Did you bring the map I requested?”

The man closed the cabin door and withdrew a paper map from inside his black jacket. “My men will watch the place, but I’d advise we move out quickly.”

Cal took the map and smoothed it on the coffee table. Bianca allowed Maggie to greet Warwick as she knelt on the floor next to Cal.

Her finger found the latitude line she was looking for, running horizontally across the map. “Let’s initially assume the coordinates are in North America…”

Warwick approached watching. “What are you looking for?”

She stopped her finger and handed him the piece of paper with the numbers. “I believe these correspond to a location.”

“Longitude and latitude?” he asked.

She nodded.

He pulled out his phone. “I have an app for that. Let’s type it in and see what we get.”

“We don’t know the directions,” Cal said. “North, South, East, or West.”

“Doesn’t matter. It will give us a list of possible places.”

Bianca sat back on her heels, smiling like Warwick had just given her a box of her favorite chocolates. “That’s all we need.”

A second later, Warwick turned the display so they could see it.

Bianca scanned the results and her smile faded. “Oh crap.”

“What?” Cal said.

She pointed to a Chicago address.

“McConnell Place?” He shrugged. “What’s significant about that?”

“The president will be there tomorrow for his last election speech before he returns to DC,” she said.

“And?” Warwick asked, seeming to be as lost as Cal was.

Bianca put her face in her hands and released a heavy sigh. “That’s where he challenged Otto Grimes to a showdown.”

Warwick gave Cal a look that said he still didn’t understand. He wasn’t the only one. “Grimes can’t get in the country, B. The president isn’t at risk.”

She lifted her eyes and met his. “Oh, but I think he is.”

Chapter Twenty-one

0900 hours

San Diego

He couldn’t believe they’d lost the Chevelle.

A yellow ’69 Chevelle that should have stood out like a sore thumb.

Cooper stood at the window of the office in the low-rent district part of town his team met at each morning for their situation report and stared out at the parking lot. The building housed the social security office and a chiropractor; the majority of people coming and going were well into middle, if not old, age.