Navy SEAL Noel (3 page)

She blinked fast, pressing a palm against her forehead and swaying slightly. It was a lot of information to take in at one time. A lot to think about on severely limited sleep. He got that. “So we don't know each other,” she finally said.

“Right. They're going to drag me to your lab tomorrow and introduce us. I need you to act like you've never met me before in your life.”

“All right.”

He rubbed his palm up and down her arm, either to steady her swaying form or to see if this time she'd accept his touch, his comfort.

Definitely the first.

Probably.

No, it had to be the first because there could never be anything more than friendship between them.

“We've got to stay under the radar and keep the guards off our scent,” he said. “Can you help me maintain my cover until we get out of the country?”

“Panama.” Her tongue slurred the word, her eyes squinting into the space over his left shoulder.

“Right.” With a gentle hand, he held on to her elbow, keeping her upright. Some of the tension in her face eased, and she leaned toward him slightly. “You need to get some sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow we'll try to work out a plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

Will glanced toward the ceiling, hoping to find answers there. But all he discovered were big patches of green mold marring the once white tiles. For a multimillion-dollar drug lord, whoever was running this cartel sure had let his compound fall into disrepair.

“Probably something like tonight. I'll break into your room and we'll get out of here.” He rubbed his shoulder, which would have a bruise the next day. In a lighter tone, he added, “Maybe next time try not to hit me with your wrench.”

The teasing was lost on her, but she nodded.

“Listen, when we leave here, I need you to have the strength to run and the presence of mind to think on your feet. This sleepwalking bit you're pulling isn't going to cut it. You've got to get some rest.”

Her eyes flew wide open, her head whipping from side to side. “I can't.”

“Why not?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he recognized his stupidity. She'd been waiting for him, weapon in hand, when he'd crept into her room. She had been prepared for anyone.

Because it might not be him sneaking into her room.

His stomach rolled at the thought, bile rising in the back of his throat.

He squinted at her, trying to guess what she'd endured at the hands of these monsters. Her guard had laughed at her when she'd fallen into the mud that afternoon. How much worse had it been? Will tightened his grip on her elbow, but she didn't shy away, instead leaning more heavily against him. “Have you been— Has there been—” Words failed him at first, but he pushed on. “Has someone else come in here?”

She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “Not yet.” Her voice had barely enough force to reach his ears.

A rock fell in his gut, thudding heavily. “But they've threatened to?”

“It's more the leers and foul gestures. And the noises late at night. You know what I mean?”

He nodded because he didn't want to hear the tremble in her voice for another second. Some men—twisted men—took pleasure in frightening and harming women.

Those men made Will sick.

Others were just too self-centered to notice a woman's discomfort in the face of crudeness.

And Will knew a thing or two about the latter. At some point in history, sailors had earned a reputation for language and conduct unbecoming of gentlemen. And there was still a group of them determined to carry on that tradition. He'd even been one of them when he'd first joined up. Too arrogant to recognize his own impudence.

But that was before he'd met L. T. Sawyer, Rock Waterstone, Jordan Somerton and the other men of SEAL Team Fifteen. Before he'd joined their ranks.

Will wasn't that cocky boy any longer. And he would do whatever it took to protect Jess.

Stabbing his fingers through his hair, he snatched several quick breaths. His pulse slowed to almost normal when he closed his eyes and forced himself not to think about Jess in jeopardy.

“Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make sure that you're safe. Every night.”

Drooping eyelids lifted with hope, but uncertainty still masked her face. “How?” she asked.

“I'll be right outside your door from midnight until the first movement in the morning. I won't let anyone near you.”

She wanted to believe him. He could see it in her eyes.

But she wouldn't forget that he'd once let her down. That he'd once promised to come back and hadn't followed through.

How could he convince her that he wouldn't do that again?

Cupping her cheek with his palm, he brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. “I never stopped being your friend. I just didn't know how to be your best friend when everything was changing. But I swear to you, I'll be here to protect you until you're safely back in San Diego. In time for Christmas. All right?”

She swallowed, her head lowering and lifting slowly.

It was all he needed before he turned off the light and whisked her back into her bedroom. She fell onto the mattress, her head landing on a thin pillow. By the time he pulled a threadbare blanket to her shoulders, her breathing had already slowed.

“How's Sal?”

Her voice caught him halfway to the door, but it was what she said that stopped him short. A fist around his throat choked his response, and he had to cough before he could even whisper. “He's fine. He misses you, I think. But he's fine.”

“Is he married?”

The fingers around Will's neck squeezed even tighter, until his response was little more than a breath. “No.” He didn't expound. Couldn't manage to tell her that his brother was still hung up on her after all these years.

Instead he closed the door behind him and slipped around the side of the small building. Tucked in the shadows, out of sight of the guards standing sentry over the compound walls, he squatted, ready to wait the night through. At least he'd have some time to formulate a plan to keep a madman from releasing the deadly bioweapon. Right now the best option looked as if it would involve some kind of escape.

But Will wouldn't be able to walk Jess out the front gate. And they had to get away without the extraction services of the United States Navy. There was a lot of land between them and the American Embassy in Panama City. A lot of cartel-controlled land.

This was a foolhardy idea.

And there was nothing he'd rather do.

THREE

J
ess glanced at the heavy metal door—the only entrance to her lab—again. Still no sign of her new lab mate. Manuel, however, leaned on the doorjamb, one hand in his pocket, the other resting loosely on the black machine gun hanging from its strap on his shoulder. A black gas mask hung around his neck. Jess didn't bother to tell him it was outdated and probably wouldn't protect him from the toxin contained in a plastic vial.

At least it was a sight better than the paper mask they'd given her. If they expected her to open the airtight canister containing the toxin, they'd have to give her better protective gear. At her lab back home, she'd had a full-body suit and her own oxygen supply inside a lab with double air locks.

Clearly, her hosts in Panama didn't care if she lived or died. They were just concerned with finding a way to disperse the small quantity of Morsyni over a wide area. Whoever the target was, she felt sorry for them. The effects of the toxin would be widespread and instantaneous, causing painful sores on the skin and even worse abrasions on the lungs. The airborne pathogen wouldn't cause immediate death, rather its fingers would slowly constrict the lungs until they could inhale no more painful breaths.

“Aye!” Manuel's shrill call told her that his relaxed pose was only a facade. Apparently, she wasn't unloading and cleaning the box of scientific instruments fast enough for him.

“Time. It takes time.”

“No time. Now.”

Why? Why did it have to be done now?
She bit her tongue before the words could escape. He only got angry when she asked him questions. She cranked up a Bunsen burner and set a beaker of water to boil, dropping in an unmeasured mound of NaCl, sodium chloride, better known as common table salt. Maybe that would buy her some time. At least she looked busy, and the swirling mist of dissolving salt gave Manuel something to focus on while she unpacked microscope slides and set about washing them.

And considered her options.

If she really wanted to release the toxin in aerosol form in this sort of lab, her best option would be to disassemble used tear gas canisters and repurpose them.

But she didn't want to release it. She wanted to destroy it. Except there wasn't a way to destroy the powder without releasing the ultramicroscopic spores into the air. The lab didn't have a detonation chamber, and the ventilation hood in the back corner wasn't capable of containing such an acute toxin. Her best chance was to escape before the toxin was scheduled to be released, with the powder in hand. But could she keep stalling until Will found them a way out?

Her stomach jumped at the memory of her midnight visitor. She'd been safe. If just for a few hours before he'd knocked softly on her window to wake her before leaving his self-assigned post, she'd rested. That morning her mind hadn't been blank, her muscles not quite so sluggish.

Will had protected her for the night. But could he keep it up until they found an escape?

Three loud thumps sounded on the metal door, jerking Jess from her thoughts.

“Safe?” Hampered by lack of English, Manuel asked with his eyes what he couldn't express in words. If he allowed any toxin out into the compound, he would be dead before the Morsyni could take effect.

She nodded.
“Sí.”

He cocked his head, as if to confirm her certainty, and she nodded again.

The natural brilliance of the sun streaming through the open door blinded her after a morning under the painful glow of flickering fluorescent lights. Blinking into it, she could make out two forms. The easy swagger and relaxed movements of the larger man overshadowed the silhouette at his side.

The door's heavy metal clawed against cement before clanging shut and leaving the brilliance on the other side.

The first man wore a brown military uniform, the buttons straining against his belly. The hunched shoulders and wary stance of the figure at his side practically made the smaller man disappear into the other's shadow.

Will stood there with all the presence of a sea monkey.

Jess clenched her jaw to keep her mouth from falling open. This man, this fragment of a figure, was not the same one who had broken into her room the night before. He looked beaten. He'd been bested.

Whatever they'd done to him...

Her imagination shot to the worst possible scenario. If they'd found him sneaking back into his room, they wouldn't have gently escorted him out of the compound. They'd have used their fists and feet or worse to make him do whatever they wanted.

The night before, he'd been so strong, had filled her room with such power.

He'd looked the part of a SEAL.

But not now.

It took everything inside her not to run to him, wrap her arm around his slumped shoulders and ask if he was seriously injured.

And then he caught her gaze with his own. And he winked.

She sucked in a quick breath, the air catching in her throat, tearing a cough from somewhere deep in her chest.

He was playing a part.
The
part. She should have realized that the cartel wouldn't have believed the man in her room the night before was a scientist. That man was a battle-tested, steely-eyed warrior. And he had nothing in common with the figure standing before her now.

Straightening her shoulders, she blinked away the rush of relief, focusing hard on the boiling salt water on the burner.

Will's guard shoved him hard, and he stumbled— convincingly—into the corner of the table. His grunt echoed and was only drowned out by the yell of Manuel's partner in crime. Spanish words poured from his mouth faster than she could understand them, but he jabbed the barrel of his gun in her direction.

Stomach turning to steel, she was suddenly unable to move as the round end of the weapon filled her field of vision. She heard Will's shuffling feet move in her direction until she was suddenly staring at his back. He held up appeasing hands and nodded slowly.
“Sí,”
he mumbled, his voice sounding pained and unfamiliar. “Whatever you say. Yes.
Sí.
”

Why was his Spanish so awkward? It didn't make any sense. She knew that he spoke Spanish fluently. He and Sal both had learned from their mother's mother—their
abuelita—
who had lived with the family for years.

The guard grumbled something else, and Will just kept nodding and agreeing in a jumbled mix of Spanish and English words until the other man marched toward the door, his footfalls ringing into every corner of the cement bunker.

Will turned his back to their guards. He offered her a flash of a smile and mouthed,
Okay?

She gave a quick nod of her head.

“They want us to work together.” His voice was barely audible, and she leaned into him, resting her hand on his forearm, to catch the words. “Your guy is mad about what they're having for lunch, so he's going to leave early to try to sneak some leftovers from the cook.”

Suddenly she realized what was going on. Will's awkwardness with the language was entirely an act. It was all for show, so he could listen in on what the guards were saying without them realizing he understood every word.

It was a smart tactic. But like everything else that had happened since his arrival the previous day, it threw her for a loop.

Her pulse kicked into high gear. She was supposed to pretend she didn't know him. She had to act as if she'd never seen him before. She needed everyone else in the compound to believe that Will Gumble hadn't been the only person keeping her sane when her father had deployed, for the millionth time, during her sophomore year, and she'd been left again with her great-aunt.

That was the same year they'd both been in the high school drama team's production of
My Fair Lady.
Maybe Will didn't remember that she'd been dropped from the program for missing cues and flubbing lines.

She couldn't do this. She was going to mess it up and get them both killed.

Sweat peppered her palms, and she wiped them against her pants beneath the canvas chemistry apron.

“It's all right.”

Will's face was so calm, his smile so easy, she could almost believe they weren't in any real danger. Until she glanced past him toward the two men standing watch at the door. “How can you say that?”

“Because we're in this together.”

She jumped at the implied camaraderie. Deep in her heart, she wanted to believe him, but it wasn't quite that easy. They'd been together when her father, then a commander, had deployed. They'd been together the summer she'd spent praying her mother would come back. They'd been together when her great-aunt had taken a nasty fall and broken her hip. But when Sal offered her a promise ring, Will had flat-out disappeared. Ten years of silence, and she was supposed to trust him again?

She glanced toward the door as Manuel's voice grew animated and he gestured wildly to his friend, their attention clearly not on their charges. Manuel was probably still thinking about his lunch.

Whether he could read the doubt on her face or sense the tension in her shaking fists, Will's smile dipped. “Why don't you give me a tour of the lab? What are you working on?” He inclined his head toward her beaker, sounding sincerely interested.

“Boiling some water.” Oh, why had she said that? What if the guards overheard? Her chest tightened, a hiccup popping out before she could stop it. When her stomach pinched in nervous knots, she always ended up with the hiccups. Clapping a hand over her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that the hiccups would stop.

Will took a step, drawing close enough that his heat tickled her arms, and she let out another hiccup.

He was
not
helping the situation.

“Aye! Work!” Manuel yelled, his gun pointing toward the ceiling above their heads. He spit out a string of Spanish before jerking his head back to his friend.

Will nodded toward the black supply cabinet in the rear of the room. “Maybe you should show me around.”

* * *

Will peered over Jess's shoulder into the dim confines of the locker along the back wall. Rows of glass beakers, plastic tubing and other basic chemistry items lined the shelves. But even he could tell the lab as a whole was ill equipped to handle the kind of science that Jess had been doing back in San Diego. It was probably more accustomed to housing meth mixers than biological weapons.

A refrigerated locker sat on the counter right next to the cupboard. Its sides were stainless steel, but the door on top was made of a clear Plexiglas. And a three-inch padlock kept the curious from opening it.

“That's it.” She pointed toward the top of the fridge and a small black cube inside that boasted a yellow biohazard sticker. The lid was locked in place with four clamps, maintaining the airtight seal. The whole thing wasn't much bigger than his fist, but the way she gave it a wide berth suggested its size didn't have a direct correlation to its power.

“That's the toxin?”

“Morsyni.” Her tone carried no small amount of reverence and a slight quiver of fear.

He caught her gaze and held it, dropping his voice low. “What is it? What exactly can it do?”

The muscles at her throat constricted as a flicker passed through her eyes. “What's in that case is enough to kill every person in San Diego and the rest of California. And we're not talking about an easy death.”

As his stomach clenched, he shot a look at the guards to make sure they were still ignoring them. “How bad?”

“You've heard of botulism?”

He nodded. “Sure. It causes trouble breathing and paralysis.”

“Usually. And it can also result in severe internal distress. Its root is the botulinum toxin, which causes nerve damage.”

He pointed at the black box. “Is that what's in there?”

Jess shook her head, her long, dark ponytail swishing over her shoulders. “The effects of the Morsyni toxin are sometimes called botulism two point oh.”

“So if it's released, it'll kill everyone in the area.”

“An ugly, painful death.” She finally glanced away, dropping her gaze to her clasped hands. “For all of us.”

He sucked in the suddenly thick air. It had been humid all morning, but now he felt as if he was trying to catch a deep breath at the bottom of a pool.

The two men at the door grew louder, an argument erupting between them about who was going to go get lunch first. Sergio, the one who had been shoving Will around the compound, yanked on the door handle and marched past Manuel, who stuck his boot out, tripping his comrade. Manuel received a hard knock on the leg in retaliation.

As the men tussled, Will slowly stepped in front of Jess, blocking their view of her. She pressed a palm to his arm and whispered against his back, “What's going on?”

Over his shoulder he replied in an equally low tone, “They're both hungry. Best to look busy and stay out of their line of sight. One of them is going to lose this fight, and he won't be happy about it.”

Jess nodded, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves and picking up metal tongs. Her movements were stilted and jerky, but productive, as she emptied and cleaned the beaker she'd been boiling water in.

While she worked and the guards continued to argue, Will slipped silently along the back wall, his hands roaming over the uneven cinder blocks. Just to the left of the supply cabinet, a dingy, yellowed window overlooked the security wall, sparks of sunlight reflecting off of the jagged edges of green and brown glass standing sentry along its top.

With a quick survey around the edges of the window, he confirmed that despite its age and color, it appeared solid. Unfortunately, he couldn't jump onto the counter to get a closer look. At least not right that moment.

The only other window in the room was a rectangle even with the top of the door on the front wall. It contained a sputtering air conditioner, which worked about as well as a drop of water fighting a wildfire. It couldn't possibly keep up with the jungle's humidity, but at least the limited natural light in the building also blocked most of the force of the sun.