Pursuit (11 page)

His men were self-selected to be able to handle the worst life could throw at them. Most actually thrived in dangerous situations.

Few people outside Special Forces realized that with the kind of men the armed forces recruited, keeping them on an adrenaline high wasn’t difficult. Men like SEALs were hardwired for the hunt. They thrived under stress, with adrenaline-tolerance levels that would kill any other kind of man. What was hard was turning them off. Humans fighting for their lives are reduced to animals, with the swift instincts of the wild. But few animals can survive that kind of stress without the ability to switch off when they can. The part of Charlotte’s brain that was older than conscious thought was telling her she was safe with him. Falling asleep in his arms was her body telling him she trusted him.
I can’t talk about it.

Her head didn’t trust him though, not yet.

Eventually it would. He’d make sure of it. The promise he’d made to her was real—as long as he was alive to draw a breath, no man would ever hurt her again. To keep that promise, he needed to know what the danger was, so he could guard against it. Her head would catch up with her body sometime soon, and she’d tell him everything. Her body would tell him when that happened before she knew it herself. Body language was infinitely easier to understand than the convoluted human brain. Particularly the female brain, which he’d never figured out.

His
body was talking to him, too. Loud and clear. Couldn’t be louder, couldn’t be clearer. He wanted this woman, with every cell of his body. The danger she was in just made it come more sharply into focus.

Matt looked down at the woman in his arms.

She is so fucking beautiful.

Her hair was matted, lying in clumps that were still slightly wet with the ocean’s salt water, looking darker than usual because of the damp. Matt knew that once it dried, her hair would return to the silvery platinum that looked like moonlight in the sun. She was still very pale, though not that terrifying bloodless wax color she’d had when he’d fished her out of the water. Her soft lips were slightly rosy now, not a cyanotic blue. The cartilage of the nostrils was no longer pinched and transparent. For a heart-stopping, horrifying moment on the sand, he’d thought she’d died. She looked almost normal now, tired and wrung out, to be sure, but normal.

Matt studied her features, though he didn’t really need to. By now her face was hardwired into his brain, he’d thought and dreamed of her so much.

He’d never been this close to her before, able simply to look his fill. He’d never held such a beautiful woman in his arms. Anyone who looked like that was in the movies or already married, usually to some rich guy who could afford the best. A woman like Charlotte was completely unavailable to someone like him. Most women had physical flaws; they were only human, after all. Makeup and hair covered a lot of defects. Once a woman was even just a little over on the pretty side of the scale from absolute dog to gorgeous, she used those mysterious arts women were somehow born with to fluster the eye and make you think she was even more beautiful than she was. He’d woken up many a time next to a woman who’d seemed like a looker in the darkness of a bar simply because she’d acted like one, only to find out in the morning that the looks were tricks of light and makeup and behavior.

No tricks here, none at all. Charlotte didn’t have any makeup on and from what he’d seen in her bathroom, didn’t even seem to own any except a lone tube of lipstick. She didn’t dress to allure, and she wasn’t a flirt.

Her beauty was all hers: fine features, good bones, perfect skin. Nothing short of death could wipe it out.

Death. Matt frowned. She’d come pretty close to it twice. She’d have drowned this afternoon if he hadn’t got to her in time. And the bullet wound—pure blind luck there. An inch to the left and it would have shattered her shoulder bone, an inch to the right would have nicked the aorta, causing her to bleed out in about four minutes. Any lower, and the bullet could have pierced the heart, which would have dropped her stone dead. Like him, she’d cheated death.

If she had died of her bullet wound, had been in the cold ground for months, would he even be here today?

Maybe not.

Matt thought about it long and hard in the quiet of the night, while she lay in his arms, fast asleep, breathing so lightly the blanket didn’t move.

He had been so sick at heart the day he’d arrived in San Luis. He hadn’t died in Afghanistan, and he hadn’t died in the hospital. He’d fought to live with every cell of his being, with every painful breath he took. He’d fought death as if it were his personal enemy, throwing everything he had at it, unwilling to concede defeat. But that day, the day he’d arrived in San Luis, he’d seriously considered swimming out to sea, as far as his strength could carry him, knowing he could have no hope of swimming back. He loved the ocean, always had, and it was fitting that he would simply let the ocean take him. For the first time in his life Matt had contemplated suicide that day. Just ending it. It wouldn’t have been hard at all.

Not even in the hospital had Matt lost hope. Every day had brought a small, minor victory, one step at a time away from death until he was finally released.

Being away from the hospital environment for the first time had scared the shit out of him. Hospitals were prosthetic environments, designed to make up for what the human body had lost. Outside the hospital, Matt finally realized how far he still had to go to be a functioning man, if he ever made it back.

An old teammate, Lenny Cortes, had repeatedly invited him to stay in San Luis, Baja Sur, where Lenny ran a diving shop. Sunshine, clean air, the ocean. Lenny’d promised all three—exactly what Matt needed.

Then he encountered his first obstacle. For the first time in his life, getting somewhere was a problem. All his life, if Matt needed to go somewhere, he’d simply go. No question. Into the jungle, to the Arctic, across a desert, he could do it. He could drive just about anything that had wheels, including tanks. He could fly anything smaller than a 707, including helos. If there wasn’t motorized transport available, he’d walk if he had to. Matt had never doubted his ability to do anything he wanted to do, or go anywhere he wanted to go. And yet after his release, there he was, unable to get his miserable carcass from the VA hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas to Baja, California. Lenny, who’d lost his spleen and his hearing in one ear when a mine blew up, knew his problem. Matt hadn’t had to say anything at all. Lenny’d sent a plane ticket to San Diego and had come to pick him up at the airport and driven him down the same day.

Matt had arrived utterly exhausted, completely drained from the plane trip and car ride. He’d been strong all his life and had no anchor to hold on to in this new life as a weak man. He didn’t recognize himself, and he didn’t recognize this new world he was in. Even crossing the beach to get to the water that first afternoon had been an enormous challenge. He’d almost called it quits then and there.

Wading into the ocean, the temptation just to keep going, to swim as far out to sea as his strength would take him, knowing he wouldn’t be able to make it back, had been ferocious. And that had been when he’d seen her—his Angel.

A beautiful woman on a terrace above the beach, watching him. There was sadness and knowledge in her gaze, as if she understood everything going through his head. Which was crazy. Even
he
didn’t understand everything going through his head. But there had been an unmistakable connection, magnetic waves almost visible in their strength, connecting them.

In the ocean, when he’d been tempted just to keep going, he stopped and trod water for a moment, looking behind him. She’d been poised with her hand on the railing, ready to rush to his rescue. He was as certain of that as he was of the fact that he needed to expand his lungs to breathe. The mysterious beauty was totally prepared to run across the beach, throw herself into the water, and do her damnedest to save a life he was contemplating throwing away.

Later, the first time he watched her in the water, the hairs on the back of his neck rose when he realized she could barely swim. She weighed a hundred pounds less than he did. If he’d given in to weakness and sought his own death, she’d have died trying to rescue him.

Beautiful and valiant.

Matt looked down at the woman in his arms. Even in her sleep, she looked troubled. She
was
trouble, every gorgeous inch of her. She carried trouble about her like a shroud. Now he was beginning to understand that aura of sadness she carried with her like smoke. He didn’t know the details of her story, but he didn’t have to because the basics were so clear. Someone had tried to kill her. If she was here in San Luis, she was in hiding. Which meant someone was still after her, still trying to kill her.

She was walking, talking trouble.

Matt had never backed down from trouble in his life.

Charlotte stirred in his arms. She frowned and turned her face more tightly into his shoulder, small breasts rubbing against him. Matt clenched his jaws, because the urge to touch her, caress her, was almost overwhelming.

Much as he loved holding her, Charlotte would be more comfortable in her own bed. Matt rose with her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. Bending to put her on the simple queen-size bed, his arms didn’t want to let go. She had one slender hand on his arm, and it took a real effort to lift away from it.

He tucked her arms under the blanket and went out into the living room. He picked up the phone, spoke quietly to Lenny, then hung up. Lenny would be quick. Matt could have gone himself up to the small apartment behind the dive shop he shared with Lenny to pack his own bag, but he was reluctant to leave Charlotte even for a minute. Suppose she woke up suddenly and found herself alone? She’d almost died that afternoon. She’d be weak, disoriented. Frightened.

No, better to ask Lenny for a favor and put up with Lenny’s knowing looks. Lenny’d find out soon enough anyway that he was going to spend the night, and the night after that. Everyone would. San Luis’s population was broad-minded and tolerant, but that didn’t stop everyone from knowing everyone else’s business if they wanted to.

Matt had every intention of moving into this house and moving into her life. While waiting for Lenny, Matt took a good look around. He’d absorbed a lot about the room when he’d carried Charlotte in, but now that he didn’t have worry for her eating up the forefront of his brain, he had a chance to wander around the big room and really look. He’d known she was talented by the lovely watercolor and stunning oil painting of the conch shell she’d given him. Waking up that morning to find the watercolor slipped under the door had blown him away. It could only have come from one person, and he’d known it the instant he held it in his hands. The delicacy could only be hers. And the conch shell—

when Matt saw the small exquisite canvas outside the door, he’d been humbled by the gift. It hung over his cot in the place the Mexicans often hung crucifixes. He could see now that Charlotte was an incredibly gifted artist. Her house was filled to the rafters with sketches, watercolors, pastels, and oils on easels.

Matt walked slowly over to a big portrait on an easel and stood looking at it. For an instant he tunnel-visioned, just like in combat. The painting was that compelling. The world shrank to this flat square of canvas—a life-size portrait of a white-haired elderly man sitting erect in a straight-backed chair, wearing an old, tattered jacket. The old man stared back at him, as alive as if he were about to start speaking. He’d be an interesting old coot, too. The refined, wrinkled face was lively with wit and intelligence. The white hair had once been a platinum blond, the irises were gray-blue, and the features were a male replica of Charlotte’s. Her father? Grandfather? An uncle?

Behind the old gentleman, in intriguing shadows, was a bookcase filled with books. Books were piled haphazardly on a shadowy table by the chair. The man’s right elbow rested on another pile. The portrait was so alive Matt felt as if he knew this man, could see inside his soul. Matt was sure the man had a sense of humor. He loved books. He wasn’t stuffy—the messiness of the library and the old jacket told their own tale.

Matt was thinking about him, wondering who he might be, when he heard a discreet knock on the front door.

Lenny stood on the front door stoop, all six-four of him, rain dripping off his hooded slicker. Matt stepped back as Lenny entered.

“Here you go, man,” Lenny said, handing him his kit. Matt knew it would have clean sweats, old sweats doubling as pajamas, jeans, a turtleneck sweater, clean underwear, dry shoes, soap, his razor, and his Glock 19, because Matt hated being unarmed. Just as he’d requested. Lenny had always been good at following orders. “Really shitty weather.”

This from a teammate who’d swum under the Arctic with him, who’d sat out a tropical monsoon for two days under a banyan tree, unmoving, waiting for a chance to take out a terrorist.

“Thanks.” Matt clapped him on the back, subtly angling him back out the door, but it wasn’t working. Lenny turned himself into a wall, a big flesh-and-bone wall. He pushed back his hood and looked around curiously. “Wow, lady’s a real artist.”

“You’re dripping.” Matt tried subtlety. You never knew.

“Hey, no prob, dude.” Lenny took the slicker off and hooked it over the doorknob, looking around with interest, showing every sign of wanting to stay.

So . . . subtlety wasn’t going to work.