Hold on Tight (2 page)

She didn’t react, didn’t blink. He wanted to see something from her, but she had her game face on.

It was time for him to put his on as well. If nothing else, he owed calm and collected to Mark Kendall.

It was Mark’s own words that came to mind now, a speech he’d given to the new BUD/S recruits during their first EE session.

Mark, who’d been captured twice before and escaped, had used his own experiences to pound the recruits under his charge.
Capture comes when you least expect it. Sometimes it’s because you lost focus momentarily. Sometimes it’s because you let your guard down when you shouldn’t have
.

In real life, letting your guard down happens. In combat, it never should
.

When anyone would ask Mark if he felt like he had nine lives, he would always answer,
No one’s that lucky
.

“I’m going to cut the title crap, call everyone by their first names. I know that’s not how you like to operate …”

“I can live with that,” she told him, and at least she was focusing on him and not Saint. Progress.

He fought an urge to drop his head into his hands and rub his temples. “You know the mission was to rescue a group of UN peacekeepers who’d been kidnapped outside Khartoum along the road to the British Embassy. They were with an American ambassador and his wife, traveling to a meeting with the Sudanese government because they’re trying to adopt a child from the country.”

“And they had their own children with them,” she added.

“Yes.” Losing an American ambassador would be bad enough—losing an internationally beloved movie star and her two small children would’ve put an international spotlight on both the kidnapping and the failure of the United States to protect their own. It would lead to copycat kidnappings and a breakdown in communications at a time when Homeland Security needed to gain much more cooperation from the Sudanese government. “That trip was a nightmare from the beginning—way too much publicity and not nearly enough protection. They didn’t even bring a bodyguard with them to the embassy—a show of good faith.”

“I guess they thought that the publicity would protect them,” Jamie mused. “That and the peacekeepers.”

He didn’t answer that, still couldn’t get over what the ambassador had done in leaving his family wide open like that.

Jamie pressed on. “From what I’ve read, your instructions were specific—you were given an exact time and place to meet the rebel soldiers and make the trade.”

Except there wasn’t going to be a trade. The United States didn’t play that way. The trade was supposed to have been a surprise takeout of the rebels. Nothing Chris and his team hadn’t done before. Working with the Joint Task Force was new, but all of the men were more than qualified to pull the mission off.

“We arrived hours earlier than the meeting,” he explained. “We were on the ground waiting by 0200 and we knew something was off.” In fact, all of them had gotten an instant sense of goatfuck.

That was the problem with covert missions—they were so classified, so secret that sometimes getting help to the correct areas was difficult if not near impossible.

“But you didn’t leave, didn’t radio anyone for clarification, correct?” she asked.

“No, we didn’t. We made the decision as a group to move forward. We had the cover of night on our side.”

“And by going in early, weren’t you afraid of compromising the lives of the peacekeepers?”

He forced his voice to be dispassionate. “Those men had been dead for a long time, probably since the night they’d been kidnapped.”

The mud-and-brick makeshift structure where the trade was to have taken place was still hot from the warmth of the day, the stench of death overpowering from the second they’d opened the door. Without even closing his eyes, he could still see the faces of the four men who’d been hanged, the blood pulled from their faces. It had taken him several long moments before he’d been able to force himself to look away.

Jamie paused for a second, the rat-tat-tat of muffled machine-gun fire echoing around the building—a near constant, most familiar sound in this part of the world. “The ambassador and his wife weren’t among the dead.”

“No. There wasn’t anyone else there—I searched the area myself, with Cam. Mark, Rocco and Josiah cut the bodies down and prepared to carry them back down to the beach to the LZ.”

But the blast of mortar fire rocked the structure, already precariously built into the mountainside, and the men scattered, looking for cover.

“Rocco was killed instantly,” he said bluntly. “The fire-fight cut off comms on our end. When we got the bodies to the beach, we were given intel that the ambassador and his family were being held at the Sudanese embassy, which was surrounded by Darfur rebels.”

“Were you wounded?” she interrupted.

“Most of my injuries occurred after the explosion.”

By the time they’d arrived at the embassy—close to dawn—the place was getting rocked. There was as close to a riot as Chris had ever seen, and he and his remaining team members waited quietly by the back wall, assessing the situation.

The carnage was everywhere, victims splayed all along the main area—men, women and children indiscriminately murdered.

But there were signs of life … signs that none of them wanted to see or hear. More rebel soldiers than their group of four could effectively deal with.

Of course, that didn’t matter—each of them was more than willing to go in, despite their injuries from the earlier skirmish.

But Josiah refused that plan. “We’re not going in. It’s suicide.”

Mark hadn’t argued at the time, but Cam had, the pain in his face evident.

Seven hours later, even as Cam and Chris escorted the ambassador and his wife onto the helo, that pain was still there, as if etched forever in the man’s features.

It was the screams that had gotten to them, had most likely been what forced Mark into the building against Josiah’s orders. Chris had always thought he could get lost inside his own mind, the way he did during capture-training exercises. But nothing could’ve prepared him for the gut-wrenching cries of the ambassador’s wife.

“So Mark Kendall disobeyed a direct order from Josiah.”

“Mark sacrificed himself so we could get the ambassador and his family out of there,” Chris shot back.

“Did everyone agree with his decision?”

“I was the only one he told, until Josiah realized he’d gone. At that point, the three of us took a vote—Josiah still said no to going in but Cam and I disagreed. Josiah wasn’t happy about that, he advised we stay put and refused to come into the embassy with Cam and me. But when I came out the back door, Josiah was there, waiting for me. Ready to give cover.”

“How did things escalate from the rescue to the explosion to what happened afterward?”

What happened afterward
. What a nice way to put it. Made it sound like he sat down and had tea after the entire embassy exploded instead of waking up facedown in the dirt, head pounding and ears ringing.

Even now, he still smelled the burning fire, the aftermath of the explosion, as if it was embedded in his senses. “I saw the rebel soldiers carrying Mark’s body out of the embassy. The next thing I knew, the building exploded. When I woke up, most of it was down—I couldn’t find any of my team members. I circled what was left of the building, looking for signs of life. Still saw none of my team and ascertained that my best course of action was heading to the LZ for backup.

“Who was at the helo when you arrived?”

“Cam.”

“So he’d left everyone behind.”

He let his gaze flick over her coolly for a few seconds, wondering if he could make her squirm at all.

Nothing. Fuck. “His job was to get the ambassador and his wife and children to safety. That was his charge—his order from Josiah.”

“And what’s the last thing you remember about Josiah, the last order he gave you?”

“One minute he was next to me. The next, there was no sign of him.” Chris heard the small break in his own voice, blamed the dizzying combination of exhaustion, pain and grief.

“What is the last order you received from Josiah?” she persisted.

He practically shot up in bed, which startled her. “There was none, Jamie. At that point, there were no more orders.”

“I think we’re done here for now.” Saint stood and prepared to escort Jamie out, whether she wanted to go or not.

Chris definitely had mixed feelings about that, but Jamie didn’t protest.

“Yes, we’re done for now. Thank you for your candor, Chief Petty Officer Waldron,” she said, her voice tight as she left the room with Saint in tow.

He buried his face in the pillow and mumbled, “Call me Chris. For fuck’s sake, Jamie, just call me Chris.”

Not that she’d thought about him exclusively. No, she’d worked her ass off to forget about the way his body had pressed hers against the floor of the downed plane in Africa.

The way he’d left her standing in the middle of a dirt road in Kisangani when he’d told her,
I can’t compete with a ghost, Jamie …

And still, the way he
looked
—and the way he’d looked at her just now … he was the one seeing ghosts on this day.

It had been all she could do not to crawl into the hospital bed with him and hug him.

Soft. She was soft and stupid. It was more than obvious Chris couldn’t wait for her to leave the room.

He’d looked good—tired, heavily bruised but good. Alive.

“Agent Michaels.” Captain St. James came up behind her, his drawl more pronounced than Chris’s was. Chris’s CO was handsome, but he wasn’t happy.

“Obviously, I’m going to need to speak with Waldron again,” she said.

“Interrogate him, you mean.”

“I’m sorry about the loss of your teammate, but the FBI lost a man on that mission as well. I’d think you’d want to learn all you can about what happened out there.”

St. James’s face went hard. “I know all I need to know. And you will not question him any more today—nor will you do so without me there.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Captain.”

He nodded curtly in agreement and walked down the hall, away from Chris’s room and her, his bearing stiff. She would’ve bet that, before this, it was as easy as Chris’s own gait had been, and she understood.

She hadn’t known Josiah, but it didn’t matter—he was one of her own as well. The
leave no man behind
creed didn’t just apply to the military.

Her stomach lurched, the way it had for the past few days, ever since she’d learned of the failed mission. It had taken three days before she’d been able to ascertain that there were survivors on the Joint Task Force, a day longer to find out that Chris had been one of the lucky ones.

She hated the way Chris’s getting hurt affected her, brought her back to that terrible place she’d been last year when she’d been shot and Mike had been killed, when she’d lost her partner and the man who was supposed to be the love of her life all in the same second.

When she met Chris, she’d been in mourning for what felt like forever. Her body ached in strange places it never had before, as if Mike’s death opened up a void inside of her that she’d never even known existed.

Chris had immediately responded to her needs, saw her as a female rather than a straight-and-narrow FBI agent and she liked it. It wasn’t disrespectful—no, he got it, knew what her job entailed and how she’d worked her ass off to get where she was.

He knew it so well he was able to help her leave her work and her worries behind, if only for a short time.

We’re just men and women underneath it all
, he’d told her that night as they lay, naked bodies inside the crashed Cessna, waiting for the rain to subside. A life-or-death experience, followed by intense sex—and no, she couldn’t blame the danger. The attraction had been electric from the second she’d met him.

The attraction was still there, underneath the tension and the thinly veiled hatred at the job she needed to perform.

That wouldn’t be a problem. Practicality was her strong suit—she had always been incredibly logical, while her older sister, Sophie, was the impulsive one.

In Jamie’s profession, her traits had never been a liability, nor had they been in her relationship with Mike. But lately, she felt caged in by herself—there were limits to be stretched, and she wasn’t sure if it was Sophie’s influence or Chris Waldron’s, but something inside of her had changed.

Now she just needed to figure out if that change was for the better.

God, this past year of her life had been the longest ever—the hardest probably since her parents had been killed. First she’d lost Mike, and then Sophie hadn’t come back home after Jamie had gone to Africa to rescue her—two types of loss, but the sting was equally painful.

Jamie had risked her own life and career to save her sister, only to have Sophie tell her she didn’t need or want any help.

Sophie was out there somewhere—alive. And Jamie was never sure if the FBI would ever fully trust her again thanks to the role she’d played in outing the group of government mercenaries who’d stolen her sister from her.

For now, Jamie had been reinstated. But there was always an on-edge feeling following her, a disturbance to her own privacy, which she’d always treasured.

Chris had been there when she’d searched for Sophie in Africa—she’d been forced to tell him that she and her sister had been part of the witness protection program for a long time, since they were both little. But the hows and whys she’d kept to herself, and he’d never pressed.

She didn’t like that someone she was investigating knew that part of her past, knew parts of her she hadn’t even known existed. And still, she’d known she could trust him with that information.

He’d been right to walk away from her. She hadn’t been ready for him. Now she was and he was lying in a hospital bed, expression remote, and she couldn’t get a read on him.

She stared at the closed door again and then pushed it open firmly, without knocking. When she thought about Chris, she just
wanted w
ith an immediacy that both frightened and fascinated her.

He was gone—bed vacated. The sheets were rumpled and there was the subtle scent of cypress left behind. She’d loved the way he smelled and now she resisted the stupidest urge to sniff his pillow.

She wasn’t about to screw up her job … which was exactly what she was doing by being in Chris’s room right now.

There was water running in the bathroom. Of course—he wouldn’t simply leave the hospital. She turned to leave quietly, when Chris’s voice rose up from behind her.

“How’s PJ?” he asked. She froze, her hand already on the doorknob, surprised by the intimacy of the question.

She turned to him—he looked more like his old self now, six feet six inches of cocky arrogance, complete with crazy eyes and a wide smile. Half Cajun, part gypsy and who knew what else combined to make him the most down-to-earth man she’d ever met in her life and also the most mystical.

Water ran down his body—all lean, tan muscle on display—and he stood there, dripping on the floor without bothering to reach for a towel.

“My sister’s name is Sophie. And I wouldn’t know. She hasn’t gotten back in touch.”

“I’m sure she’s worried about you too.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that one my entire life. Everyone seems to forget I’m more than capable of taking care of myself.” Coming back in here alone had been a mistake, and so she turned and left the room, closing the door like a shield between them. And still, she had to hold on to the wall for a moment to get herself back under control.

She’d been deep in thought, hadn’t realized Chris had opened the door and was standing watching her, leaning on the door frame for dear life. He was in pain—physical, emotional, it probably didn’t matter. Right now he was suffering in every way possible.

“Would you have come here to see me if you weren’t assigned this case?” he asked.

Tell him no. He walked away from you
. “I don’t know.” The words tumbled out before she could stop them.

He smiled then—a small one but it still tugged the corners of his mouth. “So you’re going to run away from me again?”

“I wasn’t the one who ran last time.”

“I might have been the one who took the walk, but you were the one running from our relationship. Make no mistake about that, Jamie,” he told her before he went back inside the room and shut the door behind him.

The power went out a second later.

Her first instinct was to look for an escape route, because that’s what she’d been trained to do.

But Chris’s door opened again. “Stay away from the stairwell.” His voice was calm even as he tugged her arm gently to pull her back into his room. She conceded, let him shut the door behind them once she was inside.

“What’s going on?”

“Power’s out.”

“Thanks for that update. The hospital has to have a generator.” As she spoke, the lights flickered back on and then off again, and then they came on dim, like they were running at less than half power. “Well, that’s something, at least.”

“Yeah, something,” Chris said as the floor beneath their feet began to shake and the window cracked from mortar fire.