Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (18 page)

Ah, Brendan must have told the little guy they were playing hide and seek. Good call, turning the crisis into a game. But Christ, it made him feel old to see how quickly the kids had recovered.

Mac moved forward, meeting Cosky midway. Since the pair was coming from the direction of the hub, they must have already been there. At least he’d be getting a sitrep.

“You made it to the hub?” he asked once Cos was in hearing distance. At his lieutenant’s nod, Mac grunted in satisfaction. “Who’s accounted for?”

“Now that we’ve located you four—everyone but Rawls and Faith.”

Mac scowled. Rawls had been headed to the main lodge from their cabin. But what if the doc hadn’t been there? He could easily imagine his corpsman’s Southern honor getting him into trouble if he had to track the damn woman down.

He turned to Amy. “Any idea where that roommate of yours disappeared to?”

“She said she was going to the kitchen to get a start on breakfast.”

Which was where Rawls had been headed.

Mac froze, as the next possibility struck. He exchanged grim looks with Cosky. “How did your tunnel hold up during the raid?”

Cosky frowned. “Fair. We had some leakage where the tree roots had invaded the concrete, but not enough to pose a problem.”

There hadn’t been any roots in this section of the tunnel. What if Rawls and the doc hadn’t been so lucky?

Son of a bitch.

From the grim mask stamped across Cosky’s face, he shared Mac’s concern.

“Kait and I will backtrack. Look for them,” Cosky said on a sharp turn.

Mac started to follow, eager to remove himself from his current uncomfortable partnership, but—motherfucker—he couldn’t just abandon her twenty feet underground with two rambunctious boys.

“Problem?” Amy asked in a low voice, apparently picking up on something in Mac’s tense silence.

“Nah, they’re headed back to look for Rawls and the doc. The hub’s up ahead. We’ll wait for them there.” He fought to keep the frustration out of his tone.

“I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself and my children,” Amy pointed out in an edgy voice. “Go look for Rawls and Faith. The sooner you find them, the faster we can get out of here.”

Well, she’d sure as hell picked something up from him. Something she didn’t appreciate.

Too fucking bad.

But he bit back the immediate bad news.

Until they figured out how their hidey-hole had been located, they couldn’t afford to take the kids anywhere. Not if there was any chance they were bugged and transmitting their location.

With a ragged exhale, Rawls straightened, drawing in a deep breath to refill his starving lungs. Ignoring the raw ache in his lower back and the sweat trickling down his cheeks and stinging his eyes, he started the next round of chest compressions.

He stared into Faith’s peaceful face as the heel of his hands pressed hard against her chest and then lifted, repeating the rhythm over and over again. A dull blanket of defeat dragged at him, tried to smother him beneath exhaustion and loss. While he’d managed to jolt her heart into action a couple of times, the beat had been too erratic to sustain any rhythm on its own. Within seconds it had stalled. Again. And again.

While he’d been giving her the standard two breaths per thirty compressions for a one-person rescue scenario, it was doubtful she’d received enough oxygen to supply the depleted stores in her brain. Not without breathing on her own. Even if he could get her heart started and keep it pumping, in all likelihood she’d never wake up.

In all likelihood, she was already gone.

Sarah’s bleached, empty face loomed in his mind. He’d failed Faith as clearly as he’d failed his sister.

He should have tried to reach Kait
. . .
But Kait was Christ knew where. To find her meant leaving Faith alone.
Alone
—for Christ knew how long.

Long enough to die. That was for certain. To die all alone, in a dark, cold tunnel.

He hadn’t been able to tear himself away. Instead, he’d promised himself that someone would come looking for them when they didn’t show up at the hub. Someone would find them and then leave to get Kait. Kait would fix her. Kait would fix everything
. . .
he just had to keep Faith’s heart beating and her lungs full of air long enough for Kait to arrive.

He groaned out a shallow breath. A dull roar of defeat vibrating through him.

. . . Wrong decision. I should have left her. Found Kait. By refusing to leave, I killed her. Just like I killed Sarah.

He’d lost people before. On the field of battle, it happened. You learned to live with it. But this
. . .
this was different. It sheared at his soul. Not just the loss of life, but the loss of hope and possibilities and the chance at a future he’d sensed but hadn’t had a chance to explore.

Yet.

He hadn’t explored it yet. But it had lingered there in the back of his mind. Something to pursue after he’d exorcised his ghost and got his life back on track. A bright shiny possibility waiting for him in the future.

She’d wanted him. He’d known that. She hadn’t tried to hide it. Hadn’t pushed it, but hadn’t hid it either. And he’d noticed. Sweet Jesus, had he ever noticed. And been tempted, only to haul back because of the circumstances. She’d wanted him. And he wanted her. They could have started with that.

Not that it mattered anymore.

Turning his face toward his shoulder, he rubbed his stinging eyes on his shirt. But the cloth was soaked with sweat and did nothing to absorb the trickles of perspiration or liberate the sting from his eyes.

Might as well stop the compressions. She’s gone. It’s too damn late.

He lifted his hands, but leaned down, opened her mouth, closed off her nose, and gave her two more lungfuls of air.

He straightened to the sound of footsteps behind him.

“Rawls?” It was Cosky’s voice.

“Yeah.” A puddle of light closed over him as he started back in with the chest compressions. “Kait with you?”

His question was lethargic. Without hope.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

The lament pulsed in time to the beat of his hands on her chest.

“I’m here.” Kait squeezed past him, stepped over Faith’s limp body, and knelt across from Rawls. “What happened?”

“Her heart stopped.” The dullness graying his world echoed in his voice.

“How long has she been
. . .
out?” Kait asked, her tentative voice ripe with concern. “If it’s been too long, I might not be able to help.”

She meant dead. How long had she been dead?

Too damn long.

“I know.” He forced his palms to relinquish their claim on her chest and sat back, watching Kait’s slender hands with their long, tapered fingers replace his as Faith’s guardian against that silvery, transparent world he’d escaped.

“Cosky. I need you on this,” Kait said, settling onto her knees and pressing her hands against Faith’s still chest.

A vague memory stirred in Rawls’s mind. Kait’s voice.

“The odds are much better if we wait until Cosky returns. His touch amplifies my healing. Together we can heal injuries much faster. That’s how we managed to save you.”

His mind warped back to that eerie otherworld. He hadn’t been simply injured. He’d been dead. Kait and Cosky had dragged him back. Why not Faith as well? Hope swelled as he shuffled to the side and pulled back, making room for Cosky’s taller, wider frame.

Abruptly he remembered Faith’s dislocated shoulder. Best to fix that before Kait got cranking so the healing could work its magic on her joint as well.

“Hold this,” Cosky said as soon as Rawls had taken care of Faith’s shoulder. He handed over a flashlight and knelt across from Kait, covering the top of her hands with his palms.

Rawls directed Cosky’s flashlight toward the drama taking place on the ground. The beam from his own flashlight, still upright and propped against Faith’s knee, ricocheted down from the tunnel’s ceiling, intensifying the spotlight haloing Faith’s prone form.

His mind flashed back to his stint on the ground, with Cosky and Kait hovering over him. Beneath the backdrop of a gloomy liquid night, they’d been glowing. A bright current of white running from their arms into their hands and plunging into his chest.

He frowned, the tension expanding, pressing against the hope. The flashlights were so bright they drowned any supernatural glow. If Kait and Cos were glowing, he couldn’t tell.

“Is it workin’?” The question finally burst from him.

“I think so.” Kait sounded drugged.

Another minute ticked past while Kait’s face and Cosky’s hands turned redder and redder. He stared at Faith’s chest so hard his eyes burned. No movement. At least none that he could see.

Come on, baby. Come on.

He concentrated, willed life into her.

Still nothing.

The dullness from earlier returned, started to compress the hope.

Come on, sweetheart. Come back to me.

Cosky’s hands lifted slightly. Rawls’s gaze locked on them, his breath caught in his tight throat.

Come on, come on, come on.

Had it been his imagination? Wishful thinking? But no—there. Another flutter of movement and then a steady rise and fall of hands and chest as Faith’s heart and lungs went to work again.

The breath locked in his throat escaped in a whoosh.

She was breathing. Breathing on her own.

The seconds ticked on again.

“That’s enough.” Cosky pulled Kait’s wrists away.

“What the—” Rawls jolted forward. Faith needed more time beneath Kait’s hands. While it looked like the combined healing had healed her heart, what about her brain? Had it reversed the damage caused by oxygen depletion? “Let her keep goin’.”

“No,” Cosky snapped, still holding Kait’s hands. He rose to his feet, taking Kait with him. “She’ll drain herself completely trying to help.”

“Maybe you should let her make that decision,” Rawls snapped back, shooting a quick look at the easy rise and fall of Faith’s chest.

“I said no. Kait’s done.” Cosky’s voice hardened.

But Faith needed more time, damn it. He crowded closer to Kait and rustled up a coaxing tone. “Darlin’, just a bit more
. . .
”

His voice trailed off at the sight of her face.

Her brown eyes were glazed. Exhaustion carved deep crevices into the hollows of her face.

She looked as drained and sick as she had way back in the parking lot when she’d healed Cosky’s trashed knee. The memory morphed into déjà vu as her legs folded and she started to collapse. He leapt forward, catching her before she hit the ground.

“Son of a bitch.” Cosky’s voice rose grimly. He all but ripped her from Rawls’s arms. “You take care of your charge. I’ll take care of mine.”

Rawls surrendered his grip, guilt rising. Cos had been right. Kait wasn’t in any condition to continue the healing. He could only hope that Faith had received enough of whatever magical elixir flowed through Kait’s hands to heal her brain as well as her heart.

Chapter Twelve

T
HE HUB WAS
exactly as Mac remembered it. Jagged rock walls, bumpy rock floor. Fifteen by twenty feet in diameter. The tunnels fed into each other, until eventually, a single corridor spilled into the hub. At the moment, the rendezvous point looked smaller than it actually was. But then, a multitude of clustered bodies and flickering flashlights tended to have that effect on any given space.

Mac scanned faces as he entered the cavern. As Cosky had indicated, everyone was accounted for except Rawls and the doc. He frowned. He hoped like hell Cosky had found the pair, and not under the dire circumstances they’d both assumed.

He nodded toward Zane before beckoning him over. With their rock fortress encasing them, they were safe enough for the moment. They could afford to take a breather, figure out where the hell to go from here, and how the hell to get there.

Once Cosky returned, with or without Rawls, they’d discuss heading topside to take those bastards on. Do some damage of their own.

They could sure use a fountain of information—even a reluctant one.

Of course, someone would have to stay with the women and children, provide some protection in case the motherfuckers above found their way below. Not that there was much chance of that—although
. . .

He scowled as Amy’s youngest pushed past him and made a beeline for a jagged edge of the rock wall. If he was right, and the boys were tagged, those bastards might know they were underground and start looking for a passageway.

“Look how much it sparkles, Mom! I bet it’s a diamond. Grampa says they come from the ground.”

Zane joined him. “Glad to see you guys made it out in one piece.” He glanced over Mac’s shoulder.

“Cos went back to look for Rawls.” Mac acknowledged the implied question.

Zane simply nodded. He glanced at the child enthusiastically prying at the sparkling chunk on the wall. “You realize they must have been followed.”

“No shit.” Mac rolled his shoulders, lowering his voice as well.

“They changed clothes, right down to their skin,” Amy pointed out from behind them in that flat, conversational tone of voice that annoyed him profoundly. Why the hell it affected him so adversely, he had no clue, but he gritted his teeth and swallowed his instinctive retort.

“Then the tracking device must be somewhere on their bodies, not their clothes.” He managed to remind her in an even voice.

“Which they haven’t noticed? And I didn’t notice when I helped them change.” Amy’s voice flattened even further.

Zane glanced between the two of them and scrubbed a palm over his head. “Maybe they were drugged, and the device was inserted while they were out. If it’s small enough, it could be inserted in a filling, or injected directly into their skin.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. “Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. They haven’t been out of my brother’s or my parents’ sight. Believe me, if the boys had been injected with something, we would have known about it.”

Zane traded a cautious glance with Mac, before tilting his head and facing off against their redheaded momma bear. “Maybe
. . .
but it won’t hurt to check the boys out.”

Mac had no clue what Amy’s response would be. Normally she was the most reasonable, calm-headed woman he knew—until, apparently, her maternal instincts kicked in.

“Could it have been inserted during a flu shot?” Brendan broke in.

“A flu shot.” Amy’s voice sharpened. “Did someone give you one recently?”

“Yeah, some doctor friend of Uncle Clay’s.” Her son turned a considering look on his left forearm. “It hurt too, swelled way up.”

“You had a flu shot before school started.” Amy’s eyes narrowed. “Did Clay say why you needed another one?”

Because those bastards had needed a means of injecting a tracking chip, and a flu shot made the perfect cover. Mac stirred restlessly. Was the woman really so dense she didn’t see that? But he immediately jettisoned that conclusion. Amy wasn’t stupid. Far too loyal maybe, particularly to family—but hardly stupid.

“The doctor said there’d been an outbreak at school, and they wouldn’t let us back in without the current inoculation against it.” He paused to cock his head as though he was thinking back. “Uncle Clay stayed with us to make sure there wasn’t any funny business.”

Amy raised her gaze to Mac’s face.

“There’ve been a lot of flu strains this year, so it’s possible,” she said, but her eyes were troubled. “Clay wouldn’t do anything to hurt the boys. He may not always show it, but we’re family. He loves us.”

Mac swallowed his snort. From what he’d seen in the quarry,
Uncle Clay
was a rat-asshole. Not that he was going to tell her that.

“Of course, it’s possible there was an actual flu outbreak.” Zane calmly took the reins of the conversation. “It’s also possible a microchip was inserted during that shot.”

“Okay.” Her chin lifted, her gaze shifting back to Mac. “What are our options?”

There was only one option, and she wasn’t going to like it. “We know where the shot was given. We take a look. See if something’s in there.”

The words just hung there, echoing in the thick, dusty air.

And then her chin tightened and tilted. “And how, exactly, do you suggest we do that?”

She already knew, of course. There was only one fucking way to see inside flesh without an MRI or X-ray machine.

“We cut into the spot and look. If there’s something there, we remove it.” He hardened his face and tone. It wasn’t like he wanted to cut into the kid’s arm. Regardless of what she apparently thought, he didn’t enjoy torturing children.

“Without a doctor? Or sanitary conditions? Or the necessary equipment? Absolutely not.”

“He’s right, Mom,” Brendan said, stepping up beside them and instantly dissolving the standoff.

There was no way that adult tone had come from an eleven-year-old—more like a seasoned warrior with numerous campaigns under his belt.

Brendan shifted to face Mac, holding his gaze with steady dark eyes. The expression on the kid’s face was as old as his voice. “The shot left a scab. It will be easy to find the injection site.”

Respect stirred. Christ, if the kid was this self-possessed at eleven, what the hell was he going to be like at thirty? At forty?

He was going to be pretty damn formidable, that much was certain.

Amy’s face tightened, she glanced at her son’s calm, resolute face, but before she had a chance to countermand him, Jude stepped forward.

“This will not be necessary. Wolf comes. He will take us to
betee3oo hohe’
. We have the facilities there to remove such devices.”

Mac scowled.
Betee3oo hohe’? Where the bloody fuck is that?

And then the first part of Jude’s speech hit him. Wolf was coming? When the hell had that happened, and how did Jude know? Had he called Wolf somehow? If so, how? The radios didn’t have enough range
. . .
and the sat phone was in the kitchen. Rawls wouldn’t have had time to contact Wolf above the tunnels, and there wouldn’t have been enough reception below—besides, how would he have gotten the info to Jude? If it had come via radio, everyone would have heard it—including the assholes attacking them. A third possibility struck. Did Jude have a sat phone? Had he called his CO prior to escaping into the tunnels?

He shot a questioning look at Zane, who shrugged.

With an irritated roll of his shoulders, Mac dropped the questions. From past experience, he knew the impassive bastard wouldn’t answer unless it suited him.

“If the boys are tagged, our enemies will follow you back to your base,” Mac said. Not that the Arapaho badass needed the reminder. Jude had damn well understood the implications of his suggestion.

Jude folded his muscled forearms and lifted heavy black eyebrows. “They can try.”

Faith awoke slowly, vaguely aware of a strong, rhythmic throb against her ear. Heat cocooned her, rocked her in a firm embrace. She sighed, a low hum of satisfaction, and snuggled closer to the warmth toasting her right side from cheek to hip.

The rocking stopped.

“Faith? Open your eyes for me, sugar.”

The entreaty in the deep, Southern-spiced voice forced Faith’s eyes open. Not that she could see much through the shadows surrounding her. But what she did see was confusing—like a band of arms encircling her and a broad chest against her cheek.

“You awake, baby?”

She would have thought she was dreaming, except for the tension in the smooth, rich voice rumbling against her ear. She recognized that voice. Responded to it.

“Rawls?” She started to stretch, but the bands of steel encircling her constricted, holding her in place.

“How you feelin’, baby?” The normally smooth voice was rough, raspy.

She frowned slightly, unease jiggling. Why did he sound so raw? But the disquiet was impossible to maintain when she felt so wonderful—warm, cozy, cared for.

“I feel great.” She sighed again, nuzzling her cheek into his chest. And it was true. She did feel great. Better than she could ever remember feeling. Which begged the question. “Why are you carrying me?”

There was a noticeable lift and fall to his chest, as though he’d taken a deep breath, followed by an even bigger exhale. And then the rocking started again.

“Do you remember what happened?”

She thought back, images unfurling in her mind.

Explosions overhead. The ceiling cracking and tumbling down. Dirt and concrete plunging through the gaping holes. Fleeing. Agony in her arm and chest. The inability to breathe.

Her heart must have acted up. Hardly surprising considering they’d faced the very real possibility of being buried alive. She glanced up, relieved to find the concrete above her head intact. Rawls must have hauled her to safety. At least they didn’t have to fend off that particular danger at the moment. The first time had obviously put enough stress on her heart to trigger the tachycardia. Thank God she’d saved that last dose of Cordarone.

“Thank you,” she mumbled on a deep contented breath. The earlier crisis so dim and dreamlike, it didn’t have the power to pierce her current serenity.

“For what?”

His voice sounded closer, and she could swear something was nuzzling the top of her head.

“For getting the Cordarone into me. I would have died without it.” An unwelcome realization scratched at the contentment. She must have been totally out of it, because she didn’t remember taking that pill.

“Yeah
. . .
” That odd rasp was back in his voice. “I couldn’t get to the pill. I didn’t save you. Kait did.”

“Kait?” She raised her head, trying to make out his face in the shadows surrounding them. Where were the flashlights? But then the renewed tension in his arms and the rawness to his voice distracted her. There was more to the story than he was telling her.

“She healed you.” Thickness ironed out his drawl.

“Healed? Why did I need healing?” She tried to remember. But her recollection stopped when the ceiling had given way. “What happened?” She forced the question out, even though she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know the answer.

“Your heart stopped. I couldn’t get it goin’ again.” There was a world of dark, gritty anguish in his stark reply.

My heart stopped? I died?

She shook the possibility off.

No way. I’d know if I died.

“I’m awake. Alert. So you must have gotten it going again.” She tried for a teasing tone to lighten his mood, because it was impossible to take his account of what had happened seriously. Not when she felt better than she had in
—
well—ever.

“I didn’t. Kait did.”

So they were back to that again, were they? Faith shook her head. “It was probably beating, just so faintly you couldn’t hear it without your stethoscope. It must have recovered on its own, given time.”

“Sure.” Pure dryness condensed the words. “I reckon all that CPR I did was just for show.”

He’d done CPR on her? Faith focused on her chest. If he’d done CPR, there should have been some lingering sense of pain. Bruising or aching. She sure as heck wouldn’t feel like she’d spent the last month at a spa.

He must have picked up on the skepticism in her silence.

His voice cooled. “Have you forgotten I’m a medic?”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. It’s just—”

“—easier to believe I couldn’t find your heartbeat than Kait healed you?”

Well . . . pretty much.

But guilt stirred. By everyone’s account, he was a very good medic. Which made sense since he’d gone through medical school and into his third year of residency. Not to mention all those years keeping his teammates alive on the battlefield.

Against her will, common sense stirred. Someone with those kinds of credentials
would
know if a heart was beating. It wasn’t fair to just dismiss his opinion like that.

No wonder he hadn’t appreciated her disbelief.

“Okay. Let’s agree my heart did stop. Maybe your CPR took effect at the same time Kait arrived.” She offered the alternative tentatively.