A wealthy boarding school where teenage girls had been raped. A serial rapist/killer drug lord who wanted to kill her. The Whitcomb investigation and Cárdenas had two things in common—sexual assault and lots of money. But that was surely just coincidence. The Zetas hadn’t raped those schoolgirls, and she and Zach had yet to uncover any ties between Cárdenas’s money and Whitcomb.
She clicked on the school’s website again, randomly scrolling through pages, stopping to look through the photo album, a slideshow of smiling young women that reminded her of her days at McGehee. What happy days those had been, with Mama and Daddy still alive, her world intact, Beau still in her future . . .
Her thoughts trailed off as she looked at the photograph in front of her, an image of a girl accepting an award on stage, a bright smile on her face as she shook the hand of one of the school’s administrators. No, not an administrator. The caption identified him as Edward Wulfe, the president of the school’s Board of Trustees.
Though Natalie had never met the man, she knew she’d seen him someplace before. He was tall, with a head of salt-and-pepper hair, his features nondescript, his smile bland—not the sort of face that stood out. And still she remembered him from somewhere.
You probably saw him right here in this photo the last time you searched the school’s website.
Her tired brain tied in knots, she closed her laptop, stood, and carried her empty teacup to the kitchen sink. Still unable to face the darkness of her bedroom, she walked back into the living room. Beyond the wall of glass stretched the twinkling lights of Denver, the sight somehow comforting, friendly, warm. She dimmed the lights in the loft, then walked to the French doors and stepped out into the cool air.
She didn’t feel so alone out here amid the sounds of traffic and the glittering lights. She walked to the edge, looked out at the city beyond, two million people living their lives, most of them asleep. Denver didn’t roll up the sidewalks at sunset, but its nightlife couldn’t compare to that of New Orleans, where the parties went on—
“Natalie?”
She gasped, and whirled about to find Zach standing in the doorway.
“Jesus!” He shook his head. “You scared the crap out of me. I walked in, saw the lights off and doors open. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She squelched the surge of joy she felt to see him standing there. He wasn’t home to be with her, after all. He was simply back on duty. “How did it go? Is it really him?”
He stepped out into the darkness, closing the distance between them with slow strides. “It’s him all right. Rowan’s men found weapons in his hotel room but no traces of explosives. He isn’t talking. I left him in lockdown under the guard of two DUSMs. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
“How’s Joaquin?”
“He took a couple of body blows and a fist to the jaw, but he’ll be fine—until the four of us get time to kick his ass. He’s lucky DPD got to him as quickly as they did.” Zach stopped just a few feet away from her, close enough to reach out and touch her, if he wanted to. But he didn’t. “What are you still doing up?”
“I . . . I couldn’t sleep. That dossier on Cárdenas . . .” She saw on his face that she didn’t need to explain.
For a moment he looked like he was going to reach for her, like he wanted to hold her. Then a muscle clenched in his jaw, and he looked away, his fingers curling into fists, his gaze far away. “It’s late. We both need sleep. Let’s talk in the morning.”
He ushered her back inside, locking the doors behind them.
ARTURO LOOKED OUT the window, hating everything about this town—the dry air, the altitude, the people. He couldn’t wait to go home to Mexico. There, he lived like a king. Here, he was subjected to intolerable rudeness and humiliation.
Behind him, his host conducted business with one of his minions. “Is the GPS tracker in place on McBride’s vehicle?”
“Yes, sir. We should have the first upload in a couple of hours.”
“Excellent. We’ll know exactly where they’re hiding. By tomorrow night, this should all be over—and our friend Arturo will have learned a valuable lesson.”
It was on the tip of Arturo’s tongue to tell his whoreson of a business partner to fuck a goat, but he kept his silence.
There was no man on earth who frightened him like Edward Wulfe.
CHAPTER 28
ZACH LAY ON his belly with his face in the dirt, desperately thirsty from blood loss, the pain in his back excruciating. The sat phone was smashed, but that didn’t matter. He’d completed the call. Support was on its way. Mike, Chris, Brian, and Jimmy would be okay.
From down in the valley came the sound of three M4s and one HK MP5. They were still alive, still fighting. He might not make it out of here, but they would.
Give ’em hell, boys.
And then he saw.
At least eighty enemy combatants snaked down the mountainside across from him headed straight for the men, all of them armed with AKs. They would come up behind his element and catch them by surprise. The guys would be caught in a cross fire by an enemy that outnumbered them and had the high ground. By the time support arrived, it would be too late—for all of them.
Zach reached for his rifle, determined to send as many Taliban fighters to hell as he could, only to find his hands chained above his head. He couldn’t move.
There in front of him, two Zetas held Natalie while Quintana tore off her clothes, Natalie’s desperate screams drowning out the Taliban gunfire. How had she gotten here? He’d thought she was safe. He’d thought she was home.
“Natalie!” He tried to free himself so he could get to her, blood pouring down his arms from his lacerated wrists, pooling at his feet, electric cables perilously near.
“Chichis perfectas,”
Quintana said.
Perfect tits.
Then Brian’s wife, Debbie, appeared beside him, dressed in black, baby in her arms. “You didn’t save my husband. You won’t save her.”
From the valley behind him came the blast of an IED, the explosion followed by the cries of dying friends.
“Zach!”
His hands suddenly free, Zach lunged for Quintana, determined to get the fucker off her, his hands closing around the bastard’s neck.
And then inexplicably, he found himself staring into Natalie’s frightened face. She lay on the floor beneath him, clutching at the hands that squeezed her throat. A man’s big hands.
His
hands.
“
Jesus Christ!
” Zach jerked back from her and landed flat on his ass, his mind caught somewhere between his nightmare and the horror of what he’d almost done. Cold sweat beaded on his skin, his body shaking uncontrollably, the sound of screams and automatic weapons fire still echoing through his mind.
She sat up, coughed, a hand raised to her throat. “It’s okay, Zach. I’m okay. It was just a bad dream. I heard you cry out, and I came to—”
He staggered to his feet and headed downstairs toward the dark kitchen, wearing nothing but boxer briefs. He grabbed the unopened bottle of Jack he’d bought on his way home, his only thought to get himself away from her, away from the nightmare in his head. Without bothering to turn on the lights, he twisted off the cap, brought the bottle to his lips, and took a deep drink, whiskey burning its way down his throat to his empty stomach.
“Zach?” She stood there in that damned silk nightgown, watching him through eyes filled with concern, his own personal angel of mercy.
But he didn’t deserve her mercy, not after tonight.
“It’s obvious I can’t handle this assignment. I’ll ask Rowan to task someone else tomorrow morning.”
“But I don’t want that. I—”
“Go to bed.” He pushed past her, walked through the living room, then opened the French doors and stepped out onto the rooftop patio. Cool night air hit him in the face. He raised the bottle to his lips again, his heart still beating too fast, the image of his hands around Natalie’s throat making his stomach churn.
She came up behind him. “Does that really help?”
“Depends on how much I drink.” He laughed—a dark sound—then took another swallow. “Leave me alone, Natalie.”
“No. You don’t need to be alone. You’ve been alone with this for too long.”
Something inside him wanted to lash out at her, to say or do something that would drive her away. But he held his tongue, bit back his rage.
“You’re hurt.” The tone of her voice was soft, gentle, the tone a person used to soothe a wounded animal. “Sometimes the scar isn’t on the outside. Sometimes it’s on the inside where no one else can see it. Believe me, I know.”
“Stop!” He ground the words out through gritted teeth. He didn’t want her to see him like this again—weak, pathetic, broken. Why couldn’t she understand that? “Just leave me the hell alone! Please!”
“I can’t.” Her palm, soft and warm, pressed against the skin of his bare back, making every muscle in his body tense. “After the storm, I died inside. I lost everyone I loved in a single hour, and it hurt so much that something inside me shut down. My life was cold and dark and empty. But you made me
feel
again. You brought me to life, Zach. Do you think I can turn my back on you when you’re hurting like this? You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known, but sometimes even heroes need help.”
Zach started to raise the whiskey bottle again, but his arm wouldn’t move. His muscles had gone rigid, his body shaking, a strange burning in his eyes. Then his vision blurred, and he felt it—something hot and wet on his cheeks. Was he crying?
Oh, Christ!
He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stop, something inside him cracking, a choked cry ripping its way out of his throat. His knees gave, and he sank into a chair, helpless to combat the maelstrom inside him. The harder he fought, the more it dragged him down.
But then Natalie was there, holding him tight, her slender arms around his shoulders. He let her take the bottle from him and held on to her like a drowning man, surrendering himself to her along with whatever was left of his pride.
Slowly, the horror began to seep away—but not the shame. He was a grown man, a former SEAL, for Christ sake! He was being comforted by a woman he was supposed to protect, a woman who’d survived her own hell, a woman whose neck he could just as easily have broken a few moments ago.
You’re a fucking pussy, McBride. If the guys could see this, they wouldn’t even recognize you.
Natalie set the bottle of whiskey aside and cradled Zach’s head against her chest and held him, a hard lump in her throat. He was such a strong man, such a man’s man. He probably hadn’t shed a tear since he was a little boy. But he was crying now, real tears, his body shaking with the effort to suppress them. And it broke her heart.
“I tried! God, I tried! I tried to save them!” The words burst out of him, his voice ragged, tinged with despair.
She remembered what Agent Chiago had said about Zach and how he’d earned his Medal of Honor. He’d come close to being killed while trying to save his team. That must be what this was about.
“Aw, Jesus!” He drew back from her, shot to his feet, and took a couple of steps, wiping his face with his hands, clearly enraged with himself. And for a moment he stood there, ramrod straight, sucking in lungful after lungful of air.
Natalie held back, gave him his space, afraid she’d pushed him too far.
“I led a five-man team into the Hindu Kush mountains in Nuristan province in Afghanistan.” His voice was flat, lifeless. “We’d gotten a tip from an informant about caves where Taliban combatants had hidden a cache of weapons and explosives. Our objective was to find the caves and to destroy the cache. But the informant turned out to be a Qaeda agent. Instead of finding caves, we were ambushed.”
He grabbed a chair, sank into it, avoiding her gaze.
“We fought our way free. Chris, Mike, Jimmy, Brian, and I had been together since BUD/S. We were a team. It’s like we read each other’s minds. No matter what the odds or what the situation, we . . .” A faint smile played on his lips, then faded. “We retreated, tried to make our way to the extraction point, but we got boxed into a canyon by enemy fire—five of us against more than a hundred of them. We took cover as best we could. I . . . Ah, hell, I can’t believe I’m talking about this.”
Natalie sat across from him, waiting, giving him the time he needed.
He drew a breath, went on. “I tried to call for extraction, but I couldn’t get a clear signal. I knew that someone had to climb to the rim of the canyon to make the call, but that meant being exposed to enemy fire. They all had wives and kids. I didn’t.”
“So you took it upon yourself.” How like the Zach she knew to risk his own life to save others.
“I was their commanding officer. It was my job to bring them back alive. It was my
job
. And there was no one at home waiting for me to return.”
That sounded so terribly lonely. “What about your parents?”
He shook his head. “My mother had died a few months earlier of a rare heart infection, and my old man . . . We barely spoke to one another. The SEALs, my team—that was my family.”
Natalie knew what it was like to lose one’s entire family. She waited, fairly sure she knew where this story was going.
“I climbed to the rim of the canyon. Made it almost to the top before I got hit. Caught an AK round in the back. I managed to hold on, hauled myself over the top, made the call. I could hear the men’s weapons firing. I knew the guys were still alive. Six Black Hawks were in the air and on their way. If they could just hold on another twenty minutes . . .” He held out his hand, reaching for the bottle.
Natalie picked it up, passed it to him.
He drank, seeming to swallow his own emotions along with the alcohol, his face becoming an expressionless mask, his gaze focused on nothing. “I was thirsty from blood loss and needed water. I reached for my pack and saw a group of Taliban fighters making their way down the slope across from me, headed for my team. They didn’t see me. I grabbed my rifle, emptied the magazine, and reloaded. But I couldn’t move fast enough. I didn’t get all of them. They tossed a couple IEDs into the hollow where the men were hiding. I listened to my team die, heard their cries, Brian screaming . . .”