Under Fire (29 page)

Liam smiled darkly. “That would be too easy.”

“They were reckless, but not that reckless. It’s obvious they worked with someone high up the military chain of command. At first I thought it was a money thing, but the more I listened, the more I got the feeling it was about affecting the balance of power.”

“Whoa,” Cuervo interrupted. “Balance of power?”

“Right,” Harris continued. “It was about reshaping the face of the command structure, personal agendas for military armament programs that should excel versus which ones they would make sure failed.”

Damn. It would have been so much easier to go after a greedy bastard. Money trails were simple. But power-hungry types with an ideological ax to grind? Liam focused back in on Harris.

“Maybe a month into the assignment, things shifted. It was about more than talk. They planned an actual exchange, something to do with the coordinates for when U.S. satellites would be conducting intelligence gathering. If another country knows when you’re watching them…”

Shit. The implications were hellacious. U.S. intelligence operatives, military members on maneuvers… They would all be sitting ducks.

“Uh, yeah.” Liam scratched the back of his head. “That would constitute treason.”

Harris didn’t smile. “I could hardly believe what I was seeing. An exchange. A simple little chip that they passed over by exchanging cell phones.” He paused. “The data chip was in the phone. All I had to do was report them to officials on base and…”

“And?” Rachel touched his arm softly.

“The marketplace was bombed.” His voice went flat, his eyes hollow. “Bodies flew part. The two contractors died on impact. I heard sirens and screams. None of it fully registered. I just closed my hand around one of the cell phones and passed out. The next thing I remember, I woke up in a battlefield hospital ward.”

Liam leaned back in his chair, churning over Harris’s story in his mind. “That’s it?”

“When I got out of the hospital, I was pretty rattled. Go ahead and laugh if you want. Lieutenant gung ho was totally freaked out after a few months of combat and one especially close call. They tell me I was catatonic.” He shrugged. “When I came out of it enough to be moved to a rehab center, they gave me my stuff back. And there was that cell phone.”

“From the marketplace?”

“Exactly. I tried to alert the authorities to what happened. They informed me I was suffering from battle stress and that my memories were faulty.”

“Why didn’t they at least check the chip in your phone? That wouldn’t have taken long, to verify information.”

“The first time I started to explain things, I wasn’t as coherent or… calm. They gave me some kind of knock-out drug halfway through before I even got to the part about the cell phone. Next time I tried to tell, I was more cautious in holding back information, and before long I didn’t know what to believe. Maybe I was a mix of rational and delusional. But I didn’t know who to trust with that chip. I was afraid to let even my psychiatrist know. The paranoia paralyzed me. Until Rachel paired me up with the therapy dog, Harley.”

Harley nudged his hand.

Harris stroked the dog’s head in a way that appeared to soothe him. “Rachel said she would go with me to the authorities…” He shrugged. “It didn’t pan out as we’d hoped.”

“What about the chip in the cell phone?”

“I turned it over during my second interview with the OSI.”

“And now there’s no way to verify what you’ve told us.” Damn it, this guy had been stringing them along for nothing. The threats could have all been set up by him, especially if he’d had a psychotic break.

Liam looked from Rocha to James and could see they feared the same thing. That they were stuck in the boonies with a seriously unhinged and dangerous individual.

Harris stuffed his hand behind his back.

“Gun!” Rocha shouted.

Liam and his PJ teammates piled on top of Harris, knocking him from the chair. Harley growled, and from the corner of his eye, Liam saw Rachel grab the dog’s collar. Harris thrashed underneath them. Hard. Damned hard. With punches and kicks of a trained security force specialist. It took all three of them to pin his raging body.

Dimly, Liam heard Catriona scream, felt Rachel’s hand on his arm. The red faded from his eyes and he calmed enough to assess the restrained lieutenant. Harris’s chest heaved, his skin paling. His eyes darted from side to side. He appeared scared—but rational.

Liam leaned to catch Harris’s attention. “Talk to me.”

“No gun,” he said through gritted teeth. “A cell phone. I made a copy of the chip and stored it in another phone.”

Liam nodded to Cuervo to check it out. Cuervo reached into the guy’s back pocket and pulled out…

An iPhone.

Liam rocked back on his heels. “My apologies, Lieutenant.”

Harris sat up slowly, his muscles visibly twitching. “It’s okay. I’d have done the same in your position.”

Rachel knelt beside him with Harley. Harris hooked an arm around the dog’s neck, but he wasn’t meeting Catriona’s gaze across the room. That sure answered a couple more of Liam’s questions. Harris had a thing for the dog-sitter. Made sense that he would be embarrassed around someone he wanted to accept him as manly. Harris didn’t appear to care what Rachel thought of his masculinity.

Harris rubbed the back of his neck. “Any chance you guys can decipher the information on the chip?”

“Good news, bad news. We’re a team for a reason. We all have different skills. And our computer geek, Data—Marcus Dupre—is back home.”

Rachel shoved to her feet. “Now would be a great time for the good news part.”

“We have a generator and top-notch computers here. And thanks to the storm that’s keeping us from leaving, it’s also impossible for anyone to find us. So we have time.”

Time to figure out if the cell phone contained world-shaking information—or if that phone was Brandon Harris’s version of a crazy tinfoil hat.

Either way, he was keeping Harris the hell away from Rachel.

***

Rachel was going seriously stir-crazy.

The cabin that had seemed like such a safe haven initially had now become more of an overcrowded jail cell because of the storm. She sat cross-legged and pretty much useless on a bed with a sunburst quilt.

After Brandon’s meltdown, they’d cranked the generator. Liam hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it kicked ass. Air conditioners pumped cool air through the shack. Three computers had been set up on the dining table. The Internet was spotty, going in and out as they worked to reach Marcus Dupre. But Liam and the two members of his team were poring over the computer chip, with Brandon trying to break the code.

Catriona and Sunny were in the kitchenette and had quickly evicted Rachel, insisting she’d been on the road longer than they had, so she should rest.

Even the dogs had abandoned her. All four canines had piled pack-style on the porch, not a bad place, since they would serve as a first alert to anyone approaching. Their ears would be better tuned to nuances in the symphony of storm and marsh noises. She hugged her knees, resting her chin on them, drifting off…

She startled.

Looking around sharply, she found Cuervo standing in the doorway. The lanky PJ wore a marathon T-shirt and camouflage pants with combat boots. “Just checking on you for the major. Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Liam sent the guy to check on her? Watch over her? Touching and frustrating at the same time. She didn’t enjoy being pushed aside. She wanted to help. To do something. Anything.

She swung her feet off the edge of the double bed. “I’m not actually tired. Just bored to death after the frenzy of the past couple of weeks.”

“We play word games to pass the time during a long swim or run.”

“Seriously? You have the energy to talk in the middle of that kind of workout?”

A coal black eyebrow shot upward. “Do you think if we’re in the middle of hiking our asses off an Afghan mountain with the Taliban breathing down our neck that we stop for a break every time we need to pass along a message to each other?”

Her stomach churned at the image he painted of Liam’s life beyond civilian rescues and training exercises. Those scenarios were all too sharp edged, given what Brandon had shared tonight.

“Sorry,” Cuervo said. “Sometimes I forget it’s not everyday kinda stuff for the rest of the world. Part of why we play games to take the edge off, I guess.”

She swallowed hard. “Like what kind of word games?”

Crossing his boots at the ankles, he settled more comfortably in the doorway. “We just started playing this new word game called marry one, screw one, kill one.
Some
people on the team think it’s not PC enough.”

“Hey,” Wade Rocha shouted from the next room. “I heard that.”

Cuervo continued. “But I think it’s kinda like that ‘people in a boat’ game where you have to decide who gets tossed overboard and fed to the sharks.”

Rachel grinned. “You’re a bloodthirsty one.”

“Our options are laugh or what? Become like Bubbles?”

Bubbles… back in the Bahamas… “The one who always cleans his gun and never speaks or smiles?”

“Right. As for me, I prefer laughing. So”—he spoke loud enough to be heard in the living area as well—“in the interest of equality and all, we’ll give you ladies a shot at playing… with guys to pick from.”

Sunny Rocha stepped up alongside Cuervo. “I assume you’re not going to offer your own names.”

Cuervo clutched his heart. “If only I could, without Wade kicking my ass. So, ladies, pick a subject, and I’ll list three men. You too, Catriona. Come on in.” The dog-sitter stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “For example… I’ll choose three men from the
Ocean’s Eleven
actors. Or three sports heroes. Or three guys from the cast of
Glee
.”

“You’re a Gleek?” Catriona gasped. “For real?”

“I own all the past seasons on DVD. Cross my heart.” Cuervo drew an
X
over his chest.

Catriona shook her head. “I don’t believe you. Prove it.”

“Fine.” He nodded officially. “Challenge accepted. Cast of
Glee
it is. Puck, Finn, Mr. Schuester.” He named the characters with ease. “Marry one. Screw One. Kill one. And listen up in there, Major. You’ll learn a lot about your lady friend here from her answer.”

“Cuervo,” Liam called from the other room. “We’re working here. You should try it.”

“I’m keeping your girlfriend safe, like you asked.” Cuervo leaned out farther into the hall, speaking louder, “You’re a psychology buff right, Major? On
Glee
, Puck is the bad boy. Finn is the football star. Mr. Schuester is the sensitive type. So who does your lady friend, Rachel, want to kill? And who will she—?”

“Okay. Enough games.” Rachel shot to her feet and patted Cuervo on the cheek on her way into the hall. “I appreciate the laugh and protection. Truly. But no freebie peeks inside my brain.”

Yet as she looked into the dark wise eyes of Liam’s teammate, Rachel suspected she’d already given herself away. She hurried out down the hall and back into the living area.

Sunny stepped up behind her husband and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Wade, who did you pick to marry when you guys played?”

Wade didn’t even look up from the computer at the long oak table. “I refused to participate. I’m permanently benched.”

“Hey…” Sunny swatted his arm, then brushed a kiss over the top of his bent head. “I think that’s a compliment.”

“Totally.” He snagged her hand and pulled her closer for a firmer lip-lock.

Their happiness just about glowed. Not even the current crisis could dim it. It was hard not to feel jealous right now. Her eyes skated to Liam, who was pinching the bridge of his nose. Of course he had bigger concerns. She needed to prioritize.

Cuervo slung an arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “When we play the game, the major wants to marry all the women.”

Liam glanced up, scowling. “Thanks, my friend, but I don’t need your help watching over Rachel after all.”

“Ah, so you care what she thinks.” Cuervo winked at Rachel. “Got it. Officially backing off.”

And why wouldn’t he back off? He’d gone overboard in “protecting” her. He’d made his point by ensuring they both didn’t forget the obstacles in front of them.

As if she already didn’t know how much they both had working against them once they left this place and returned to the real world.

***

Liam stepped out onto the porch alongside Cuervo. With the moonless night and thick sheet of rain pouring off the roof, there wasn’t much to see beyond the cabin. Wind howled through the trees, drowning out the bugs and bullfrogs for once.

He leaned against a post beside his teammate standing guard. “Are you through trying to make me lose my shit?”

Cuervo peeled spooned lo mein out of an MRE packet. “You shouldn’t make your vulnerability so obvious.” He looked at the closed cabin door. “Where’s Rachel?”