Fatal Courage: Shadow Force International, Book 3 (Shadow Force International Romantic Suspense Series) (18 page)

“We’ll figure something out,” he said, smiling at Rolands as he held his shirt together in the front where all the buttons were missing. He stood, his soggy pants leaving wet marks on the chair. “You have my cell number. Give me a call, Chief. We’re glad to help.”

“You haven’t been any help at all,” the old codger said. “But I know all about you government types. I got a brother who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world cuz he used to work for the spook house.”

Ruby tilted her head as Jax grabbed her elbow and drew her to her feet. She yanked her arm out of his grip. “Your brother was an operative?”

“Kept it from us for years, the bastard. I only found out when our mother died and he was off in some God-forsaken third world country working inside a terrorist camp. I thought he was in Minnesota.”

Ruby and Jax exchanged a look. Ruby turned on the charm and stuck out her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Chief Rolands. Like Jax said, call us if you need anything.”

“What I need is a better excuse than you simply ‘found’ that gang banger in the Potter Feed & Grain when you went to take cover from the storm.”

Augustus Nelson’s body was at the morgue, which doubled as a doctor’s clinic a mile down the road. Chicago PD had no interest in it. Neither did the Feds, from Rolands’ statements. The only ones who would care about the cause of death was the CIA, and they were mute on the subject so far, leaving Nelson in the hands of the small town doctor.

Jax had little faith in the Pottersville system, whose police and medical experts had no vested interest in why or how Nelson had died.

Ruby touched the man’s hand since he didn’t offer to shake hers. She leaned forward, lowered her voice. “I wish we could tell you more, I really do, but you could end up dead like Mr. Nelson if we did. I don’t want to be beaten to death, and I know you don’t either. It’s safer we keep certain things under wraps. Okay?”

She winked at Rolands and something happened. The old guy grunted and nodded, his lips softening into half a smile.

Which was when Jax realized the detective was staring at Ruby’s breasts through the wet fabric of her shirt as she leaned over his desk.

I’m going to break every bone in his body.

Jax must have tensed because Ruby straightened, grabbed his arm and jerked him toward the door. “Talk soon,” she called over her shoulder to Rolands as she hustled them both out of the man’s office.

They blew by the cop pit where outdated computers decorated banged up wooden desks. All the beat cops were out on calls resulting from the storm. While the town’s main drag had survived untouched, the outlying areas had sustained a lot of damage.

The receptionist openly stared at Jax as they exited the front door, just like she had when they’d entered.

“Pig,” Ruby said under her breath once they hit the parking lot.

Jax stretched, clearing his lungs of the stale police station odor. “Give her a break. She’s closing in on ninety and probably hasn’t seen a good-looking guy in a long time.”

Ruby swung to frown at him. “Not the secretary. Chief Rolands.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jax rubbed his arm, where multiple bruises had formed thanks to his vice grip on the machine leg. “He was definitely a pig. I nearly nailed him to his desk.”

Ruby’s hands went to her hips and she looked around. “So we have no car and no place to stay. We need clothes, wheels, and I gotta pee. Suggestions?”

Jax’s phone beeped with an incoming text. He pulled it out. “Apparently Beatrice reads minds as well as everything she else she does. She says there’s a bed and breakfast a half mile from here. We’re to go there until a car arrives for us.”

“This Beatrice gal gets shit done,” Ruby said. “I like her.”

Jax laughed. “She takes care of her own, and believe me when I say, she owns me.”

They took off walking in the direction of the B&B. The sun was setting, turning the western sky a beautiful peach color.

“How so?” Ruby asked. “Beatrice, I mean. How does she own you?”

She was missing a shoe, having lost it in the storm. Jax wished she could wear one of his, but her feet were munchkin size. “You okay to walk like that?”

Not missing a beat, she nodded. “Tell me why Beatrice and Rock Star Security own you. What do they have on you?”

“Loyalty.”

“What?”

“They don’t have anything
on
me. They offered me a job after Morocco and the whole Hayden mess.”

She snorted. “You had a perfectly good job with the SEALs. You were born to be a frogman. Why leave?”

He focused on the scenery as they passed the post office and library all housed in one building, then a quilt shop and lawyer’s office next to it. Thinking about how he’d ended his Navy career wasn’t pleasant. “I broke rank. No going back after that.”

“Broke rank?”

He needed a diversion; saw nothing but dead corn fields. “When I went to the Justice Department about Hayden, my CO didn’t like it. Turned my team against me.”

Ruby’s footsteps faltered. “What? Why?”

“I went to my CO and told him my suspicions about Hayden killing Al-Safari. He told me to keep my nose out of it. None of my business; let the CIA handle it. But you know me, I couldn’t let it go. I disobeyed a direct order, left San Diego to go to Washington, and burned my career.”

She was quiet for a moment. “You did what you thought was right. Your CO was an idiot. He should have respected that.”

His CO wasn’t an idiot. That was the thing. “I had nothing after the SEALs.”
Not even you.
“Beatrice showed up and offered me a job with her group. She liked my renegade style. The fact I had medical training under my belt helped too.”

“All SEALs receive combat medical training.”

He gave up holding his shirt together, letting it flap in the breeze. “Mine’s a little more than that.”

She rolled her shoulders and grimaced, used her right hand to massage her neck. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

He kicked a rock. A car whizzed by them on the road, sending his shirt tales flying like wings on either side of him. “I dropped out of med school one semester short of graduation. Left a highly sought-after residency to join the Navy.”

Something in his tone must have alerted her to the fact he wasn’t proud of that. “I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“I thought being a doctor was the ultimate make-a-difference career. My mom and dad are both doctors—Dad’s a surgeon, Mom’s a chiropractor. I grew up on family dinner discussions about anatomy, diseases, and drug interactions. I never considered anything else.”

They walked on, Ruby slowing to his pace, staying at his side as he talked. “My best friend was a SEAL. He’d been all over the world, making a real difference by shutting down terrorists and evacuating Americans caught in bad situations. I admired his dedication but I thought he was crazy.”

“What happened to make you change your mind?”

“He came back from a rescue mission in Belgium missing both legs, thanks to a car bomb.”

She shook her head. Another car went by and honked its horn at them, some young guys angling their heads out the car windows to hoot at Ruby. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Jax wanted to hit the still-ogling kids as they raced away down the road. He flipped them the bird instead. “It sucked. I joined the Navy two days later and never looked back.”

“I don’t really get that,” Ruby said, shooting him a look. “Your best friend gets his legs blown off and you join the Navy?”

He wasn’t proud of the reason. “I wanted revenge.”

“Revenge on the terrorists?”

It was a muddled mess, his emotions and stupid logic. “The group responsible for the car bomb. His team wasn’t even after them. They were there on a training mission. An American diplomat whose son was part of the group invited all of them to his house for a dinner at the Embassy. The terrorist group set off a bomb outside the Embassy because of America backing some ridiculous political accord that Logan had nothing to do with.”

She pulled up short. “The Moroccan 5.”

“Yep, that was them. One of their many hits on Americans.”

She started walking again, head down. “So you joined the Navy and worked your ass off to become a SEAL in order to hunt those men down?”

“Sounds childish, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds brave to me. You gave up a lucrative career and promising future as a doctor to bring justice to your best friend.”

“My parents had a cow. Twin cows. They disowned me.”

“What?” She swung around in front of him and stopped. “You’re joking, right?”

He shook his head, also coming to a stop. “My parents told me I was being ridiculous and not to come home until I got my shit together and appreciated the sacrifices they’d made to get me into Johns Hopkins and line me up for the best cardiac residency program in the country.”

Her forehead scrunched and her eyes blazed with indignation. “Jax, that’s terrible.”

He shrugged. “I understood their disappointment. I tend to do my own thing for my own, selfish reasons, and it seems to always hurt other people. My CO told me as much when I disobeyed his orders and went to Washington to rat out Hayden. He was right. I’m not dependable, and what good has it done? The Moroccan 5 were caught and killed by the Israelis, and, now, I think Hayden may be innocent.”

The crease in her forehead deepened. Her lips thinned in a tight line. “The Moroccan 5…”

He waited, but she didn’t say anything else, instead whirling around and walking again. He could see the B&B at the corner. “What about them?”

One finger brushed hair from her face, curling it around her ear. “There’s more to the story than you know.”

He grabbed her arm, stopped her again. “What are you talking about?”

She bit her bottom lip, wouldn’t look at him. “It’s classified. I can’t share it. Forget I said anything.”

He let her walk off, his feet stuck to the ground. She hopped onto the sidewalk that ran in front of the bed and breakfast, and then when she realized he wasn’t with her, she stopped and cupped a hand over her face to shield her eyes from the sun. “You coming?”

His chest felt tight. She stood there, clothes sticking to her body, her feet bare and dirty from the walk. One ankle was bandaged. What did she know about the Moroccan 5 that she wasn’t telling him?

“Tell me the truth, Ruby,” he called.

Her hand fell. “I can’t, Jax. I’ve already said too much.”

Really? After all they’d been through, she was going to keep whatever nugget of intel she had about a subject that had changed the entire course of his life?

Fuck this.

He was done playing games. Damned tired of being dicked around.

Jax turned on his heel and headed for the road leading out of town.

Chapter Thirteen

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______________________________________________________

“J
AX!”
R
UBY
F
LEW
off the sidewalk, running after him. “Wait! Where are you going?”

No response. He didn’t even slow down, boots hitting the earth as if he were Godzilla, bent on destroying the city under his feet.

Running in her bare feet, she jumped over a downed tree branch and landed on a rock. The sharp edge bit into her arch, and when she tried to pull up, she managed to twist her ankle. The same one she’d twisted at the club.

She went down on all fours, skidding into some gravel. “Damn it!” she swore, ignoring the sting of pebbles embedding themselves in her palms and ripping through the knees of her jeans.

Her clumsiness had one benefit—Jax came hustling back to lift her up.

Seemed like he was doing an awful lot of that lately.

For some stupid reason, her eyes filled with tears. Everything was so beyond messed up, she didn’t know how to start putting the pieces of her life—as well as Elliot’s and Jax’s—back together.

But she had to try.

Because everything had gone wrong for all three of them in Marrakech.

A hiccup left her mouth and she bit down on her tongue to stop herself from all-out crying. That still didn’t stop her mouth from opening and a sobby-sounding “I’m sorry” spilling out.

Jax brushed rocks from her knees and then from her palms. “I can’t do this anymore, Ruby.”

“I know,” she said, although she wasn’t sure exactly what part of
this
he was talking about. Did it matter? “I can’t either.”

He hugged her briefly. “Right now, you and I… We only have each other. If we can’t be honest with each other, even if it breaches our personal or working code of ethics, we’ve got nothing.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “Come back to the bed and breakfast, and after I get cleaned up, I’ll tell you everything while we wait for the car.”

His eyes searched her face as if he could ferret out whether she was being completely honest with him. She stared back, not flinching, even though her body ached. Hell, her entire system ached—body, mind, and soul.

Jax didn’t look convinced, but he nodded and helped her to the sidewalk and up to the wide front porch of the house.