Playing Dirty (35 page)

She waited until Phoebe nodded, then took off down the hall for her father’s study, barging into the room without bothering to knock. Ford glanced her way, and in that one quick glance, she saw the truth—he was leaving.

Paul stood from his place on the leather sofa. “Mattie, I’m sorry, but this discussion is classified.”

She quietly closed the door. “Classify this,” she said and flipped Paul the bird.
 

“Mattie.”

She ignored the warning tone in Ford’s voice. “You’re in my house now,” she said as she approached the desk that had once belonged to her Grandfather Hart. She parked her bottom against the old, scarred mahogany surface and crossed her arms, giving Paul a hard stare. “If you have something to say to my husband, then you can damned well say it in front of me.”

“Very well,” Paul said, returning to his seat. “We have an intel report that indicates an American serviceman is alive and being held in a terrorist training camp deep inside Syrian territory.”

“Is that the same intel that told you my husband had been killed five years ago? Because we all know how reliable that turned out to be.”

“Matt, come on.”

“No,” she shot at Ford. Her insides were quaking and she didn’t think the trembling would ever stop. “You don’t get to tell me anything right now.”

A muscle ticked in Ford’s jaw, but he could suck it. She really didn’t give a rat’s ass that she was being rude or irrational. Paul had come here, to her father’s home, to take her husband away from her again. No way in hell was she going to make this easy—on either of them.
 

Paul picked up the heavy crystal tumbler on the table in front of him and took a drink of the amber liquid. “Did you hear the reports of the two journalists who were recently beheaded?” At her nod, he added, “What the public did not see was the American in the background.”

“More journalists? She asked. “Aid workers.” Anyone but a fellow serviceman.

Paul shook his head. “I’m afraid not.” He finished off his drink as if he needed the fortification. “It’s Gus McMillan.”

“Are you implying he was a willing participant in a public execution?” Ford asked.

Paul shifted his attention to Ford. “We’re not implying.”

Mattie found that news hard to believe. The only person she knew who was more red, white and blue than Ford was Gus McMillan. The man she’d known had lived, ate and breathed the stars and stripes. He’d also been one of the most dedicated members of the SEAL team.
 

“How can you be so certain?” she asked. “Maybe he’s doing whatever he has to in order to survive.” God knew if that were the case, she understood. Over the past two months Ford had told her more about his time away from her, and none of it had been pretty.

Paul’s expression remained grim. “We’re certain.”

Which meant there was more intelligence than he was willing to share with a civilian like her. “And you’re here because...”

Paul let out a sigh and leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “I’m putting together a special team.”

Ford stood near the window, his expression cautious. “What kind of special team?”

“An extraction team,” Paul said.

A coldness came over Mattie that chilled her clear to the bone. “An extraction team,” she parroted.
Ford looked at her. To anyone else, he might have appeared impassive, but she knew him well and saw the concern in her husband’s eyes before the SEAL in him pushed all that aside and he was a warrior once again. He stood close enough, she swore she could feel the moment his body tensed and went on alert, reminding her of how formidable he could be.
 

She wanted to cry.

“I know the area,” he told Paul. “I spent almost a year in that camp.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, Mattie,” Paul said, “but—”

“But nothing,” she said heatedly. She glared at her husband. “You’re seriously considering this?”

He wouldn’t look at her. That was all the answer she needed.

Angrily, she pushed off the desk. “Then screw you both,” she said, before she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

Mattie stood with her shoulder braced against the doorjamb of her daughter’s bedroom as she watched Phoebe sleep. Miraculously, her daughter hadn’t asked questions about why they were leaving without her daddy, but instead had been uncharacteristically quiet and cooperative, not even begging for one more story before bed. Maybe because she’d never seen her mother truly angry before, and that saddened Mattie. The last thing she wanted was for her own child to feel as if she had to walk on eggshells around her.

She blamed Ford.
 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she supposed she’d always known it was possible that Ford could one day receive orders that would uproot them and send them to another base somewhere. Worse, she knew that at any time the Navy could take him away from her again. She was a Navy wife, the wife of a SEAL. She knew the score. Long absences had been a part of their lives. Bugging out at a moment’s notice with no clear end date to give her something to cling to, even if it were only an illusion. But just because she’d known it were all a possibility, that didn’t mean she’d actually expected them to drag her husband back into enemy territory again. Not after what they’d all suffered, and not after he’d only been home a few short months.
 

Hadn’t he given enough? Hadn’t they both?

The chirp of the alarm being reset echoed throughout the house, and knew Ford was home. She refused to feel guilty for leaving him stranded at her dad’s place.
 

She heard a quiet thud, then a few moments later, he came up behind her. He stood so close, she could feel his heat. Smell his scent. She closed her eyes and breathed in, committing both to memory.
 

Varying degrees of fury and anguish threatened to rip her in two. She could not, would not, fall apart. She might have been to hell and back, but she
had
survived and she was stronger because of it.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
 

He kept his voice low, intimate, and she fought the urge to walk away from him. Her emotions were exposed and vulnerable, and everything about him scraped them raw. She thought of the sea bag stowed in the mudroom closet. His “go-bag,” the one he’d always kept packed and ready with a change of clothes, shaving gear and whatever other essentials a big bad Navy SEAL required. She hadn’t given the bag much thought until now, because it had been there since he’d come home. Now its very presence pissed her the hell off.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say,” she countered. She pushed off the doorjamb and looked at him. “If it’s my blessing, you can forget it.”

She walked away and headed for the family room. They’d intentionally be infiltrating the camp of a brutal enemy in hopes of taking back one of their own, who may or may not want to be saved. There were no guarantees any of them would come out alive.

He joined her moments later. “I get it.”

“No, I really don’t think you do,” she argued. “If you did, you wouldn’t be leaving. Has nothing I’ve said to you since you’ve come home registered?”

“You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“I really don’t care,” she said petulantly, sounding more like Phoebe than a grown woman. “This isn’t an extraction mission. Dammit, Ford. Wake up. It’s a suicide mission.”

He approached her, smoothing his hands up and down her arms. “I’m only involved because I’ve been there. My value is limited. I promise to stay at the back of the herd.”

She made a sound that could’ve been a chuff of laughter, but she suspected was closer to bordering on choking back tears. “Like you’d even know how.”
 

The determination in his eyes made her heart sink. “Paul’s sending you in with a team you’ve never worked with. Those guys don’t know you. I’m not stupid, Ford. I know how a SEAL team works. You’ve said it to me a thousand times. A great team is like a well-oiled machine. You know one another’s thoughts, can predict the other’s movements.”

“I know it’s not ideal.”

“Not even close,” she argued. “How many times have you told me that a good SEAL team trains together, works together, lives together? You don’t throw an outsider into that mix at the last minute, no matter how seasoned he might be.”

She’d just gotten her husband back. She’d prayed she’d never have to stand on another dock as Ford boarded a ship that would take him away from her again? How could they be so cruel? She couldn’t do it. Not again. Not after what she’d gone through the last time.

There were things he wasn’t telling her, parts of the conversations she hadn’t been privy to, because she’d let her temper and her fear rule her actions. “What did I miss?” she asked. “There’s a chance this could fail, isn’t there?”

He let out a sigh. He tried to pull her close, but she jerked away from him. If he held her now, she’d fall apart, and she’d be damned if she’d let him see her cry. She’d shed more than enough tears over this man to last her a lifetime.
 

“No mission is foolproof. You know that.”

She did. She knew there was a damned good chance none of them would get out alive because it was the nature of the job. When the wife of a cop or fireman kissed her husband good-bye when he went off to work, she did so knowing it could be the last time she saw her husband alive. The wife of a warrior understood that same sacrifice...her probably better than most.

“I don’t want to leave like this,” he said.

“Then don’t. Don’t go.”

“I promise, I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

Tears burned her eyes and created a lump in her throat. “How can you even say that to me?” she whispered. “Because you
don’t
know.”

“I can’t get into this now.”

“Now could be all I have.”

Guilt lined his gaze. “And you want to spend it arguing?”

“No, I really don’t,” she said. “I know you want me to tell you how much I love you. I know you want to hear that Phoebe and I will be waiting for you to come home. You want me to beg you to be safe and to come back to us. But I can’t, because I’ve lived through the darkness. I know what happens when you don’t come home.”

“Mattie—”

“I’m not finished,” she fired at him. “You walk out that door, there are no guarantees. There is no guarantee you’re going to come home. I don’t want to live that way.”

His expression turned dark. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I can’t keep doing this. You know what it cost me. How can you even ask me to go through that again?”

“I have orders, Matt. I have no choice.”

A wave of incredible sadness came over her and she wanted to weep. “We all have choices, Ford. Even you,” she said with more calm than she believed herself capable of feeling given the circumstances.
 

She closed the distance between them, then kissed his cheek. “Be safe.” Quietly, she walked away from him, her heart shattering for the last time.

Nineteen

FORD WALKED INTO the building housing the main command center at Carswell Field. The familiar rush humming through his veins had him quickening his steps. This was what he’d been missing since coming home—that surge of adrenaline which came from knowing he was heading into the danger zone. The heightened senses, the flood of confidence, the arrogance that he and those with him would succeed in the mission.
 

If he failed, people died. In his business, failure was never an option.

He knew all too well that occasionally, even the best laid plans ended up fubar. The years in captivity, the brutal adjustment of coming home to find his wife had married another man, the adjustment of becoming a father for the first time to his own five-year-old daughter whom he’d never met, were all prime examples of what could go wrong. Until his miraculous resurrection, Daddy had been nothing more than an obscure concept and an old photograph to his daughter. Did he really want that for his next child, as well?

Guilt simmered in his gut as he reached the stairs that would take him down two levels to where the Naval Intelligence Unit was housed. Could he really do this again? Was he really willing to risk hurting the two most important people in his life, three, if he counted the baby he’d only learned about tonight? Mattie had said repeatedly she almost hadn’t survived losing him. He’d arrogantly thought he’d understood, until she’d blindsided him with the truth of exactly what she’d meant the night she’d confessed that she had very nearly ended her life because of a broken heart.
 

Because of him.

Leaving for another hot zone wasn’t fair to Mattie, or Phoebe, and he knew it. But, what Mattie was asking of him was next to impossible. Orders were orders. She’d been a Navy wife long enough to understand that he could not defy an order from his superiors. And she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t about to risk his career by disobeying an order, either.

He was in a no-win situation and he didn’t like it. Not one fucking bit.
 

A young airman dressed in fatigues stood at parade rest outside his office. “At ease,” Ford said before the kid could jump to attention and salute him.