Navy SEAL Noel (9 page)

She'd never been afraid of the dark, but in that moment her breath caught. It wasn't the actual night so much as what it could be hiding that pulled her core muscles taut and dried her throat.

Suddenly, a light erupted in the far corner. At first she was blinded, and clasped her hands over her face, slowly separating her fingers to adjust to the filtered light. After several long seconds, she dropped her hands, blinked and slowly looked around the room.

A dusty brass desk lamp lit up a plain, unimpressive space. Large framed maps depicting the whole of Panama, mere decorations, covered pale brown walls. Grimy tomes lined floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls. The floor was made of slabs of unfinished lumber. The single desk in the room was covered in heaps of papers, and Will was already there, shuffling through them.

“You going to help me or just stand guard?” Although his voice carried a note of teasing, the tilt of his head suggested that if she wanted to be useful, she had better get started.

At his side she sifted through piles of papers and ledger books that most likely tracked the cartel's illegal activities. Page after page of lists and numbers, and Spanish words scribbled in the margins. All of it was little more than gibberish to her.

“There's nothing here,” she sighed.

Will glanced up at the wall, where a clock ticked off the seconds, taunting their failure. “Keep looking. We've still got a few minutes.”

Just a few minutes before they had to get back to their cells. A few minutes before someone might discover them missing. What could they possibly find in that time?

Jess jerked on a drawer handle, and it popped open. More red leather-bound ledger books were stacked nearly to the rim. Digging through them, she found a brown document sleeve. Pulling it free, she flipped open the cover. It was filled with oversize pages, and as she spread them across the desktop, she realized they were maps. Wavy black lines covered the white pages. And they made absolutely no sense at all.

She could feel Will's chin at her shoulder long before his palm pressed against her back. She sneaked a peek at him out of the corner of her eye. He was bent forward, staring intently at the new discovery.

“From the looks of this, we're not too far from Panama City.” His statement was so confident that she looked back at the map, expecting to see a clear you-are-here sticker. No such luck. Not even one in Spanish. In fact, she couldn't spot anything that indicated their location.

“How do you know?”

He pointed at the bottom of the page, his finger following an inconsequential line that intersected a wiggling blue one, which had to be a river.

“This section here is called the Darién Gap. It's mostly jungle, along the Colombian border.” He tapped his finger at another point on the page. “There aren't any roads into the gap, so we can't be that far south.”

“How do you know all that?”

A slow smile worked its way across his face. “This is what I do.”

“What's that mean?”

His forehead wrinkled for a moment, and she could see his internal debate over how much to share play out across his face. “On our SEAL team, my buddy Zig is in charge of coms—communications. Luke is the medic. Rock does demolition. L.T. is a language expert. Everyone has a specialty.”

“And you read maps?”

“Something like that. You didn't think I'd come down here without doing any recon, did you? I studied as much intel about this country as I could get my hands on in thirty-six hours.”

Of course he had.

He was no longer the kid who skipped class and tried to tempt her to do the same. She had to get that fact to stick. She'd learned to fend for herself without Great-aunt Eva or the Gumbles or anyone else during the past ten years, and she wasn't the only one who had changed.

“I figured we'd be in the eastern section of the country, but I couldn't know for sure. This pretty much confirms it.”

Jess nodded as if she was following his train of thought, but the truth was she'd been too busy doing chemistry extra credit through a good bit of geography class to know Panama's topography.

Whether he picked up on her hesitation or not, Will continued. “The Panama Canal breaks the country into two almost even sectors. Northwest—” he swiped his hand over a section off the map “—and southeast. And Panama City is right on the canal. When we get out of here, we'll only have to go about seventy to a hundred miles.”

Her tongue felt as if it had doubled in size. “Through the jungle?”

He nodded. “Right now, that's the only option we've got unless the cavalry shows up.”

“Right. Your friend at the DEA.”

He nodded in agreement. Leaning back over the maps and shuffling them around, he said, “But we can't afford to wait for them.”

The lines on the pages blurred, and she tried to follow Will's muttering, but it didn't make much more sense than the maps. Until he flipped a page to reveal a clear outline of the compound. The walls and guard towers were plainly marked, the big house dominating the back section in its grandiose style. The barracks, lab and even the mess hall looked like pop-up tents in comparison.

Around the outside of the security wall, someone had made more than three dozen red marks. They were spaced anywhere from one to three inches apart, almost like a checker board.

“What do they mean?” As soon as the question popped out of her mouth, she wished she could swallow it back down. She already had a pretty good guess, and if she'd escaped on her own, she would have had to face those red marks—whatever special brand of booby trap they might be—on her own.

“I don't know exactly, but you can bet they're a security feature.”

After a few more pages of nothing significant, Will paused on the very last one. The map contained a single red circle and a winding red line leading to it.

Jess held the map closer to the light, squinting to make sense of the strange chart. “Look, is that us?” She pointed to the start of the red line, then at the circle at its end. “And another compound?”

“I'm betting they're not friendlies.”

She shook her head. “Do you think this is the rival the Morsyni is intended for?”

“It's a solid—” He broke off abruptly at the same moment he pressed his finger to his pursed lips. His gaze settled just over her head, his shoulders squared and ready for a fight. “Hear that?” he whispered.

Closing her eyes and covering her own mouth with her hands, Jess listened, not daring to breathe. Spanish words in rapid succession slipped through the cracks at the front door.

Will's eyes flew wide. “They know someone's in here. Let's go. Now.” He shoved the maps back into the folder, threw it into the drawer and flicked off the light before she could even make sense of his words.

Grabbing her arm, he towed her through the darkness into the hallway. She pulled the door closed behind her, and it clicked just as someone yelled.

Will's pace picked up. His feet were silent. Hers were like a buffalo.

And then another set of footfalls joined theirs, this one sounding like an entire stampede.

Her heart beat a painful tattoo in her throat.

The man chasing them was falling behind. But not fast enough.

Suddenly, she was swung into the room with the open window. With a little shove, Will pushed her toward the farthest desk. “Hide. Under there. Don't move until I come for you.”

She did as he said, rolling the chair out, crawling into its space and pulling it back to hide her. Through a small fissure in the wood, she saw Will's form disappear into the closet, just as the stampede arrived.

A narrow beam of light swept across the floor, matching the cajoling tone of their pursuer. Over and over he asked who was there.

Her pulse thumped in her ears, drowning out his words.

The flashlight tracked toward her hiding place, the beam glancing over the crevice. And holding there.

A sudden hiccup demanded release, and Jess clamped her hands over her mouth and fought the tears that streamed down her cheeks. She pressed against the confining walls, doing her best to disappear, but the light didn't move.

Lungs burning. Ears ringing. Heart pounding.

She'd been caught.

And then the flashlight flicked away, toward the closet.

No. No. No. No.

The man's footsteps carried him toward Will's hiding spot.

Dear Lord, please don't let him find Will.

Her mouthed words didn't get very far as the old doorknob illuminated under the man's search.

Paralyzed, Jess could only watch and send an incoherent plea heavenward. If God was still around and had answered her prayer for a rescuer, He wouldn't take Will away so soon, would He?

Will had to be okay.

A disembodied hand appeared in the flashlight's beam.

Her heart stopped.

And their pursuer flung open the closet door.

SEVEN

W
ill closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds outside the closet instead of the twinge in his shoulders as his muscles tensed.

Their pursuer hadn't found Jess, and he was focused in on Will's hiding place.

Taking a deep but silent breath, Will shifted his foot against the wall, adjusting his leverage and easing the strain on his hamstrings.

He could sense rather than see the turn of the knob.

God, I'm ready, but if I don't have to fight, I don't want to.

Hinges squeaked. Feet shuffled. Light flashed directly below him.

Will didn't move, keeping his hands pressed against the front wall, his feet against the back. High above the door frame, he hovered, absolutely still.

The beam swept from side to side three times, and a mop of shaggy brown hair leaned into the narrow space, its owner surveying the shelves and empty floor.

“Where'd he go?” the man mumbled, backing away slowly. Then, with a loud curse, he raced out of the room and stomped down the hall, his footfalls growing quieter, his swearing louder.

For three aching minutes, Will didn't move, and he prayed that Jess wouldn't, either. She hadn't argued when he'd directed her toward the desk. Maybe she'd really follow orders this time.

Wood scraped against the floor, and the pitter-patter of tiptoeing feet drew near.

Then again, she'd never been cut out for the navy. Taking orders wasn't exactly her thing.

Walking his hands and feet down the walls, he met Jess at eye level just before dropping back to the floor.

“Where did you— I thought he was going to— How did you...?” Her questions ran together in a frantic rush as her hands reached for him. She didn't seem to care what she touched, one palm running over his shoulder and down his arm, the other pressing firmly against the cotton T-shirt covering his stomach.

He stopped her hands only by enveloping them in his own and pressing them over his thundering heart. He couldn't account for the accelerated speed. His pulse had been even and steady until she'd sneaked across the room.

Her tiny hands trembled in his grip, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. Quivering breaths shook her lips, slowing with every rise and fall of her shoulders.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” she confessed.

He brushed a silver track from her cheek and was surprised to find it damp. The Jess he remembered never let anyone see her cry. She wasn't cut out for this, and he had to get her back to her dad.

“It's okay. I climbed up there.” Her eyes followed his gaze to the ceiling, then immediately returned to his face. “We're safe for now,” he said. “But they know someone was here. They'll be looking for people out of place. We need to get back to our quarters.”

“Right. Just... I need a second.”

He nodded against the top of her head and tried to think of anything other than how natural it felt to hold her like this. His mind flashed back ten years to the night when she'd come to him, terrified of Sal's proposal. She'd been scared then, too. Maybe they'd both been too young to realize it at the time, but he could recognize it now. At eighteen she hadn't been ready to consider marriage. Especially not after her parents' union had crashed and burned so spectacularly.

Will should have just held her. Like this.

He shouldn't have run.

But even then he'd known that simply holding her might not be enough for him. And he'd had no right to anything more—not with the girl his brother loved.

In this moment, as her breathing returned to normal and the tension slowly ebbed from her, Will ran his fingers through her hair, which was softer than anything he'd ever touched before. But the face he saw was Sal's.

Sal, who had saved Will from his own stupid arrogance. Sal, who deserved a better brother. Sal, who was still in love with Jess.

After holding her like this, Will completely understood why ten years hadn't done much to change his brother's feelings. Jess had a magnetism that drew men without words. It was enough to pull Will almost four thousand miles.

She looked into his face, her cheek resting against his chest, and a little smile played on her lips. “Thank you.”

He tried to swallow against his suddenly dry throat, but instead of croaking a response, he only nodded. Then he squeezed his arm a little tighter around her waist.

Even in the dim light he could see her chin quivering, and he heard her little gasp. Did she, too, realize that this new nearness had gone from comfort to something entirely different?

Without thought or plan, he leaned forward. Just an inch. Just a tiny bit closer to her very essence.

Her mouth opened with a small but silent “oh”—an invitation if ever there was one. Her hands had been pinned between them, and she pulled one free to slip it to the back of his neck, where her cool fingers splayed into his hair. Her touch was a lightning bolt, setting every one of his nerves on fire.

He couldn't pinpoint how long he'd wanted this, but it didn't matter. He felt as if he were an inch away from water after trekking through the Sahara.

And she was still Sal's.

He tilted his head at the last second, resting his lips against her forehead. Then with stilted, vigilant movements, he put an arm's length between them, one hand still cupping her elbow.

“We should go.” He nodded toward the window, ignoring the confusion clearly written across her face. “I'll go first. Just follow right behind me. I'll catch you.”

He'd catch her, all right. But who was going to catch his wayward thoughts, which demanded to know what that kiss would have felt like?

* * *

“That's my window.”

Jess tried to narrow her focus to the glass pane that Will indicated, although he never slowed their pace, weaving between buildings, always alert to their pursuers. Or maybe he was just avoiding looking at her? She certainly didn't hear or see any signs of a pursuer that would require Will to be quite so vigilant. She was almost certain they'd lost anyone who might be following them. She hadn't seen anyone since the man with the flashlight ran off. In fact, by the time Will had gone insane and nearly kissed her, she was pretty sure the man after them had left the building.

“How do you get through that thing? It doesn't look big enough for a rat.”

He chuckled under his breath and picked up speed. “When it's the only way out, you figure out how to make it happen.”

But the window was at least six feet off the ground. She tried to picture how he hefted himself up and through without landing on his head, but every scenario ended up with him lying in a heap on the ground.

As though he could hear her questions, he continued, “I use the bed for a boost and go through feetfirst. Just a little twist of my shoulders, and I can get through without any major injury.”

That made sense. But he had the bed only on the inside. “And getting back into your cell?”

He shrugged a shoulder as he stopped to peer down an intersecting alley. “Slightly more dangerous.” His grin said everything she needed to know. He could handle it.

Like he'd handled her a few minutes before?

Rats! Was she going to dwell on his almost-kiss all night long?

Probably.

But that didn't mean she couldn't fight it. Sure, in the moment it had seemed like a great idea. With his arms about her, she'd never felt safer. The thudding of his heart had made her own amp up to match it. And those stupid butterflies she'd felt after he touched his finger to her lips had returned in spectacular fashion.

But she didn't have to think about it.

Especially since nothing really happened. He'd obviously changed his mind—or decided he'd never been interested in the first place—and she'd settled for the forehead kiss.

Pausing at another intersection, only about ten yards from her door, Will ran his fingers through his hair as he glanced over his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Sure.” But not if the sight of his fingers combing his velvet-soft hair insisted on reminding her of the time she'd had her own fingers tangled in those strands.

“You're kind of quiet.”

With a deliberate drop in her voice, she said, “I thought we were being covert.”

That earned her another low chuckle and a little tug to make it the last few feet. “You're so smart.”

“Top of my class at UCLA.”

The lines under his eyes crinkled. “I guess you did better when you didn't have someone begging you to skip class every day.”

“Something like that.”

Except it really was nothing like that. It was more like after her dad deployed again, Will left and she broke up with Sal, she'd needed something to focus on. And school had seemed like the best option. Science required her undivided attention, so it had been a natural major.

By the time she'd realized how much she actually enjoyed it, she'd been halfway to her bachelor's degree. From there the postgraduate work had been an easy decision. It kept her memories of Sal's broken heart, Will's disappearance and her mom at bay.

Her studies couldn't quite make her forget her mom's disappearance, but in the thick of an experiment, Jess thought less about the letter she'd found lying on the kitchen table when she was twelve. It had been in a nondescript, white envelope, just a single page in her mother's sweeping cursive.

Jess's hands had shaken as she'd read the words through watery eyes. Lynn McCoy was tired. Tired of being a single mom when her husband deployed for months at a time. Tired of being a commander's wife—required to go where the navy sent them. Tired of always being the responsible one, while her husband went gallivanting around the globe.

The letter said she'd found a job back East, near her childhood home and that Sean and Jess should keep going without her.

In the following weeks Jess's dad had called everyone he knew trying to track Lynn down, and in the end Lynn had called the house, just once, to tell Sean to stop calling. She was fine, but she'd had it with her old life.

Jess heard the truth, plain and simple. Lynn didn't love her daughter any longer.

Ignoring all that pain and those terrible memories had made them bearable.

But there was no ignoring the man checking out her room to make sure it was safe for her to be locked in again. The man who had almost kissed her.

Stop thinking about that, Jess!

Will made a sweeping gesture, inviting her in. “Safe. Ish.”

Jess managed a half grin, never making eye contact. “Thanks for checking.”

“Try to get some sleep.” She must have looked doubtful because he hurried to assure her. “I'll be right outside for the rest of the night.”

“No.” Her tone hit a high note that was much louder than she'd intended. “You have to go back to your room. If they go to check and find you gone, they'll know it was you in the office.”

“There was no one near my building when we went past, and no one has sounded any alarm. I'm okay. I'll be careful, but I won't leave you and your wrench to fend for yourselves.” He gave her shoulder an awkward pat—one that screamed so many words left unspoken.

Ready to argue again, she was cut short by a flicker in his eye.

“Listen to me, Jess. I know I haven't always come through for you, but right now, right here, I'm not going to let you down.”
You can trust me.

The silent words rang so loudly she was surprised that guards didn't descend on them right then.

Could she really trust him? To evade detection? To keep her safe? To get them both home by the holidays?

She couldn't answer all those questions right that minute, but the angle of his head seemed to request a response. Rubbing her hands together, she squared her shoulders.

“All right. But be careful.”

“Always am.” With a shrug and a wave, he closed the door, his footsteps immediately fading into the otherwise silent morning.

The wall snagged her black T-shirt as she leaned into it, covering her face with both hands. Her breath was warm against her dirty palms, her skin already sticky from sweat and humidity.

Between hiding under that desk and returning to this room, Jess felt as if her life had been upended. And she couldn't even pinpoint what had caused it.

It wasn't the kiss—almost kiss—or the terror of thinking Will had been caught. It wasn't the trembling in her stomach or the rush his gaze sent sweeping down her spine.

A man other than her father had asked her to trust him.

And for the first time in ten years, she actually wanted to. She just didn't know if she could.

Especially since that man was Will Gumble.

* * *

Will waited until the last possible minute to signal Jess that he was sneaking back to his room. When light flickered through the windows over his head, it was time to move on. Pushing his tired legs from their crouched position, he knocked on her window and took off running, winding past all-too-familiar cinder block walls.

When he reached his window, he grabbed the bottom ledge and pulled himself up, twisting his neck and shoulders to get first his head, then his shoulders inside. Bending at the waist, he reached for the floor. In one practiced motion, he lifted his legs and slid in.

He caught himself in a handstand that wouldn't win him any gymnastics gold medals, but certainly did the job. Injury free, he fell into bed, the squeaking springs a welcome sound to his weary body and mind.

Just thirty minutes. That's all he needed to recuperate, to recharge his batteries, to face another day in which he knew not much more than he had the morning before.

They were east of the canal. The other compound—probably another cartel—was just a few miles away. And booby traps outside the perimeter wall meant trouble. It wasn't much, but it sure spelled disaster if they did make it beyond the fence.