Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (12 page)

Still, it took every ounce of self-control, along with a massive surge of strength, to rip his mouth away, stand up, and deposit her on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” She wavered on the ground, her dark brown hair tangled. Her blue eyes smoky with arousal.

He dropped his gaze from the sensuality in her eyes. Big mistake, since it locked on that swollen, moist mouth of hers and refused to budge.

With a strangled groan he wrenched his eyes away, let go of her waist, and took a giant step back. Then to be safe, he just kept going. With each step his legs threatened to mutiny and reverse directions.

“Rawls
. . .
” Her hand lifted entreatingly. “
Please
, tell me what’s
wrong
?”

Rawls’s heart clenched. He needed to drive her off. Make sure the last thing on her mind was following him out to the woods.

“Nothin’s wrong. There’s just a time and place for”—he hesitated and then forced the word out—“fuckin’, and this ain’t it.”

“A time and place
. . .
” Her voice trailed off as her brows knit. She cocked her head slightly and scanned his face.

Christ, he needed to get out of here. But she didn’t look all that hurt by his explanation. There was bewilderment more than anything in her eyes. He needed to hit harder. Confusion wouldn’t keep her away.

“I mean it didn’t mean nothin’, right? You were on my lap, and it’s the nature of the beast to wanna scratch an itch. Maybe later if—” He broke off when she straightened and rolled her eyes. Jesus, he was making a mess of this.

“Let me guess, maybe later, if the itch is still there, we can scratch it,” she snapped, straightening her shoulders with a sharp twitch.

“Well, yeah.” He backed up until the door struck his back. “Maybe, if the timin’ is right.”

“You were the one who kissed me,” she said, dry challenge in her voice.

Like he needed the reminder. He shuffled forward slightly, his hands behind his back, fingers fumbling with the door handle.

He didn’t apologize, because he wasn’t sorry. Hell, he fully intended to do it again, under different circumstances. If she’d let him anywhere near her lips again.

Since there was nothing left to say, and every second he lingered increased the danger of Pachico’s reappearance, he pivoted and yanked open the door.

“How did you know?” she asked, her voice rising. “How did you know something was going to happen to me?”

He froze with his back to her, his hand rigid on the doorknob. “I didn’t.”

“You did. I saw it on your face. You knew something was going to happen to me well in advance. How?”

“You’re imaginin’ things.” Forcing his legs to move, he escaped.

“Liar.”

The accusation followed him through the door and down the stairs. He expected the thud of footsteps on the wood steps to sound behind him, but the courtyard remained eerily silent.

He gave in to the urge to look back, once he reached the safety of the tree line. But the courtyard was empty. The main lodge sat squat and stoic, the windows shuttered.

There was no sign of Pachico anywhere.

Eric Manheim studied Dynamic Solutions’ sprawling company retreat as the helicopter banked over Wilkes Island, skimmed the tops of the towering evergreens, and began its descent to the stone helipad below. Bright sunlight gave way to shadowy feathers of green as the trees closed around them. From the air, the retreat looked perfect for their agenda. Remote. Secluded. Empty.

According to Link, the small island, one of the smallest in the San Juan chain in Puget Sound, was completely self-sufficient and sequestered, accessible only by boat or air. As a company cresting the wave of technological breakthroughs, privacy was of paramount importance to Dynamic Solutions. A technological leak could cost the company millions of dollars. To keep their research safe, Leonard Embray, Dynamic Solutions’ chief stockholder and CEO, had outfitted the island with multiple privacy shields. Unwelcome eyes and ears found it impossible to access the compound. Listening devices picked up nothing but static, while digital images were fragmented and warped.

This confidentiality was essential to the success of their current project.

Link emerged from a white-pebble-studded path and halted at the edge of the stone circle, waiting for the helicopter to settle.

“You’re good to go, sir,” the pilot said into Eric’s headset.

Eric pulled the headset off and set it on the dashboard, wincing as the scream of the rotor sank into his ears. With a light shove, the cockpit passenger door opened and he climbed out, joining Link at the edge of the stone pad. Sunlight washed the helicopter silver as it took to the sky again.

“Everything went as planned?” Link asked once the helicopter had traveled enough distance to make hearing possible again.

“As far as I’m aware,” Eric said, stretching. “With the exception of your pilots, nobody knows I’m here.”

“The staff is paid extraordinarily well to protect the company’s interest, which includes preserving our guests’ identities.” Link turned, moving to the side of the white-pebble path so Eric could walk beside him. “What of your man? Has he made contact yet?”

“The meet-up should happen soon. He’ll alert us once Amy Chastain takes possession of her sons.”

He glanced at the tall, thin man beside him. Was it his imagination, or had Link lost even more weight since their last consultation—which had been a mere three days ago. His trousers and Fendi blazer hung from his skeletal frame like donated fashions in a thrift store.

Was the weight loss guilt induced? Regret over betraying Embray, the legend who’d pioneered Dynamic Solutions, and by all accounts Link’s closest friend since childhood? Was the treachery eating at him, or more accurately preventing him from eating? At what point did the council need to worry whether their associate’s guilty conscience would bring repercussions down upon all of them?

It was a fine line to navigate. Link was privy to reams of incriminating information. Material that wouldn’t just take down the council, but would spell disaster for everyone tied to the endeavor. They couldn’t allow a guilt-induced return to morality to sway him from their agenda. They’d have to excise such cancerous possibilities from their ranks well before it metastasized into dangerous territory.

However, it behooved them not to jump the gun. Link had proved damn near indispensable over the past year. The cutting-edge technology he’d provided had reeled their agenda forward by years. Bloody hell, even the tracking technology they were employing to catch Mackenzie and his crew was Link’s baby. Finding the SEALs without it had proved impossible.

He frowned. While it was in the council’s best interest to keep a close eye on their Dynamic Solutions partner, it would be wise to keep his suspicions to himself for the time being. Coulson, for one, would act precipitously if he suspected Link of backsliding.

“Is the data stream still live?” His future rested on Link’s biological tracker performing as expected.

“It’s working at a hundred percent efficiency,” Link assured him. “However, the signals have been stationary—or rather, the deviance in the signal has been minimal for the past hour.”

Eric nodded. “Our contact was told to wait at a park for directions.”

“Ah, that explains it,” Link said absently. He increased his pace slightly and stepped in front of Eric to open an ornately carved wood door.

They stepped into a cool, shadowy hall with banks of windows running down the left side, offering a tranquil view of huge moss-covered boulders and large knotted tree trunks.

“If you’re hungry, the housekeeper left us a plate full of sandwiches before leaving for the mainland.”

“I ate on the plane,” Eric said, curbing his impatience.

Link shrugged as they stepped into a large room with leather couches and armchairs facing a television riding the mantel of a rock fireplace.

Eric glanced around the room for the electronic tracker. “The device?”

“In the library.” Link led him through a door to the right.

Like the room they’d just passed through, a huge stone fireplace covered the entire north wall. But the couches had been traded for a glossy mahogany desk, and the walls were lined with bookshelves full of paperbacks, hardbacks, and racks of magazines.

A slender laptop sat on the desk, its screen up. Eric headed for it, walking around the desk to get a better view. An irregular red dot hung in the center of a screen surrounded by latitude and longitude lines.

“Where are they?” Eric asked. To him, the latitude and longitude lines meant nothing.

Link circled the desk from the opposite direction and leaned over the laptop. Two keystrokes later and a map of Whatcom County in Washington State popped up. Eric cocked his head, studying the red dot that was dead center on a section of the map identified as Whatcom Falls.

Purcell said that he’d been instructed to wait at a park until Amy Chastain called with specific instructions to their rendezvous site. While the directive had infuriated the fed, it had had the opposite effect on Eric. Pure relief had coursed through him during Purcell’s tirade. The caution evident in the instructions was pure Mackenzie. He was sure of it. The paranoid demand was standard operating procedure for the interfering bastard. Which meant that not only was Amy Chastain with those damnable SEALs, but they were aiding in the retrieval of her boys.

Exactly as he’d predicted.

What a bloody relief.

Once Amy had picked up her children, they’d be able to track them back to the SEALs’ lair and neutralize the whole lot of them.

“Whatcom Falls,” Eric murmured, fishing his cell phone from his trouser pocket.

“It’s a park. The map indicates it has restrooms. I imagine this would be vital considering he’s escorting two children and may have a lengthy wait.”

Eric nodded in agreement and punched in the number to his contractor’s burner phone. One ring and a voice answered.

“Yes?” A faint European inflection glossed the cold question.

Eric frowned slightly. He’d been working the accent over in his mind for months now, but still hadn’t placed it, something that annoyed him considerably. But considering the parameters placed on their arrangement, questions weren’t welcomed. On either side.

“Your unit is mobilized?” Eric asked.

“We’re scrambled,” the icy voice confirmed. “Awaiting coordinates.”

As were they all. “Excellent. I’ll contact you with the coordinates once the units are moving.”

“We’ll need enough lead time for team one to take up positions before team two moves in with the fireworks.”

“Understood,” Eric said before ending the call.

It was too bloody bad Remburg’s second in command hadn’t possessed their newest contractor’s common sense. If the bastard had surrounded the Sierra Nevada cabin before sending the helicopter in, Mackenzie and his men would be awaiting burial right now.

“Problem?” Link asked, pulling the thickly padded leather chair back from the desk and taking a seat.

“No.” Eric turned back to the laptop screen. “You’re certain this thing has the range to track the distance we need?”

While the technology had tracked Robert Biesel from Seattle to the Sierra Nevadas with no problem, the distance had only been nine hundred miles. What if Mackenzie and his crew had holed up somewhere thousands of miles away this time? He couldn’t afford to lose that signal.

“During the testing phase, a gray whale was tagged in Mexico and tracked all the way to the Bering Sea, a twelve-thousand-mile trek. The researchers never left their lab on Kauai, yet the data rolled in clear as day.” He glanced up with a shrug. “The latest rounds of testing indicated the range is likely much greater than twelve thousand miles. Closer to twenty-three thousand.” He paused a beat, held Eric’s gaze, only to frown slightly and look down. “We’ll find them.” He sounded almost regretful.

Eric let the hint of remorse slide. Link was as complicit as the rest of them. They were long past the point of second-guessing.

The minutes ticked by so slowly it felt like time was sliding backward. A quarter of an hour into their endless, all-but-silent wait, Eric dragged one of the thickly padded armchairs facing the south window up to the desk and settled back to wait in comfort. Link mixed them cocktails. And then a second round.

An hour and twenty minutes after his arrival, the laptop beeped. The screen flickered, and the red dot began to inch across the map of Whatcom County. Both he and Link leaned in for a closer look, watching the red dot scroll across the screen.

“They appear to be heading away from all major roa—” The shrill ring of Eric’s burner phone cut Link off.

Eric thumbed the green OK button and lifted the phone. “Yes?”

“They’re in the air,” Clay Purcell said into his ear.

“The air?”

“The bastards showed up with a helicopter.”

Interesting. “Is it a Bell Huey 205?”

Which had been the helicopter the bastards had disabled the tracker on and absconded with after the Sierra Nevada incident.

“No,” Clay snapped curtly. “It was a Jayhawk. What the fuck difference does it make?”