Wild Hearts (Novella) (4 page)

Once they were out of earshot of him or anyone else, they stood in a tight circle.

“Who the hell was that guy?” Rath said, searching the crowd.

“Never seen him before,” Risk said. “But I have to say, I’m intrigued.”

Julian gave him the you’re-an-idiot look. “Always the first to jump into a black hole or the night sky from the ass end of an airplane.”

Risk smirked. “Now I don’t feel so bad about going through your bag before we left our quarters this morning.”

“If you cut holes in my briefs again, I’ll—”

Risk fended off a fist coming at his biceps. “For old times’ sake, buddy.” One of his favorite pranks was cutting holes in his comrades’ briefs. Built-in air-conditioning. He paid for it with retaliatory pranks. “Are you telling me”—he took all of them in—“that none of you are even a little intrigued by what that guy said? What his company is about? If it’s legit, it rocks. It’s everything we’re about. And it’s not military or government.”

Not a one of them gave away his interest. But Risk saw it in Knox’s face, and yeah, Saxby had that spark in his eyes.

“So you’re going to do it?” Knox asked.

Risk slung his bag over his shoulder. “The only plan I’m making right now is going to Norway and then Pakistan to do some jumping. Get the piss out of my system.” The guy knew about going through this kind of hell. He’d formed a company because of his experience. “But I’m sure going to keep it in mind.” Risk lifted his cell phone. “Keep in touch. See you on the other side.”

The last time Rath had come home to Breckinridge, Tennessee, he’d been one of the few in the Blackwood bunch to accomplish something. Now he was coming home a failure. He knew he’d always be a SEAL, but everyone else would consider him a fuckup and a nobody. It wasn’t like he needed to prove himself to anyone, but that they’d see him that way ate away at the calm veneer he’d layered over his anger. The anger, inherited from his father, was always simmering below the surface. He’d worked as hard to keep it there as he had to break out of the Blackwood mold.

His ma was long gone, and probably lucky at that. Rath’s dad was an angry man who used his fist to make his point more often than he used words. And they weren’t pretty either. Though probably the first bit of abuse Rath had suffered was being stuck with the old family name, Rathmusen. He’d gotten plenty of ribbing over that as a kid. That had stopped when he’d shortened it to Rath—and adopted the attitude to go with it.

He did a visual check of his storage unit. No signs of tampering or water damage. Much more secure than storing his stuff at the family’s barn. Rath pulled off the cover that shrouded his 1978 Harley Shovelhead and ran his hands over the gas tank with the American flag painted on it. A high school buddy had begged Rath for bail money. Instead of making a bad loan, Rath had offered to buy the bike from him.

The Shovel had been in rough shape, and Rath spent every spare minute of his senior year rebuilding the engine and making her pretty again. A local named Al had let him store it at his motorcycle shop and taught him how to fix all things Harley. Eventually, Al had let on that he’d been a SEAL, and Rath had soaked in his stories as much as he soaked in the mechanics stuff. He’d ridden the Shovel throughout his two years of college, when he’d considered taking over his uncle’s rifle business. Then he’d toyed with the idea of becoming a motorcycle mechanic or restorer. He liked using his hands, fixing and making things.

He swung his leg over the seat and cranked the engine. She started on the second attempt. He patted the tank.
Thanks for the welcome, Betsy
. After putting on his helmet,
he backed out of the unit, closed it up, and raced down the road that wound around Breckinridge.

Freedom. The idea of it both buffeted and buoyed him, same as the wind. Over five hundred pounds of vibrating metal and the roar of the dual mufflers took hold of his body and mind. He rode for an hour, long after he’d told himself it was time to head on over to see his family. A part of him was eager to lay eyes on them, but more parts dreaded it. Love and hate, pride and shame, all twisted together.

The forest on either side of the highway was lush and deep green. A recent rain left the air smelling of moist earth and wet, steaming asphalt. He pulled down the Blackwood gravel road leading into the woods. Memories of camping, hunting deer and turkey, growing up running free … damn, if he’d been a sentimental kind of guy, he’d be sucking it all in with a goofy grin.

Yeah, maybe he was, just a little. He’d missed his family, even the chuckleheads. Which was most of them, now that he thought about it.

Betsy, with her distinct sound, made sure everyone knew he was there. His core family was in the barn, tinkering with a truck that had been decrepit when he’d lived there. He’d barely stopped the bike when his brother Carlton flung himself at him, nearly tipping both of them and the bike to the ground.

Rath tightened his thigh muscles and held himself straight as they did a quick hug/backslap. “Chucklehead, you’re going to knock us both on our asses.” Damn, did he have to tell him every time? Well, yeah. It was Carlton, after all, his younger brother, whose heart was bigger than his brain.

Carlton stepped back. “When did you get in?”

“Just now.” Rath found a place where the dirt and gravel were packed harder and got the bike up on the kickstand. “Came straight over.”

Their dad ambled out, looking scrawnier than ever. And just as cranky. “How come you didn’t let us know when you was coming? We could’ve picked you up at the airport.”

Rath gave his dad a quick hug. “I know how y’all hate trekking to the airport. I asked Emily to give me a ride.”

Sam, his other brother, hoo-hawed and did a hip thrust. “I bet you gave her a ride,
too.”

Rath shook his head. “It was just a ride to the storage unit. We’re friends, nothing more.”

They’d skinned that rabbit long before he enlisted in the Navy. He was gone for months at a time, and she needed sex a lot more than every now and then. Said she was a sex addict, and he believed her. They had gotten busy whenever he’d come home on leave those first few years, but the older he got, the more particular he became about where he put his pecker. Yeah, she’d made it clear on the ride to the storage place that she was up for some slap ’n’ tickle, but Rath had given her gas money and a polite rejection. No need to go back in life. Always move forward, that was one of his mottos.

Carlton ran over with an ice-cold can of beer, offering it up like a puppy with a bone.

Rath took it with one hand and ruffled his brother’s hair with the other. “That’s why you’re my favorite brother.” Except the beer had nothing to do with that truth. Rath took a long pull as he wandered over to inspect the truck. It looked as dilapidated as when he’d last seen it. “Finally thinking about doing something with this thing?”

“Thought we might actually try to restore it, but it’s a mess,” Carlton said.

“That’s what happens when you neglect it for umpteen years.” Rath knew his way around a wrench, after doing most of his own work on Betsy and his truck. He also knew that as soon as he rolled himself beneath the chassis, everybody would make some excuse to wander off and leave him to work on it alone. Been there, done that. He didn’t need another T-shirt.

When Rath turned away from the truck, all three men were staring at him. “What?”

His dad was the first to ask the question that Rath had been expecting since he arrived. “You gonna tell us what happened over in Mex-ee-co?”

Carlton made some kind of snurfling sound. “Now you’re just a fuckup like the rest of us.” Then, obviously realizing how it sounded, he hitched his fat thumb toward their father. “That’s what he said when we was watching the news and spotted you being corralled into the building.”

His father showed not a speck of shame at having made the comment. “They
didn’t televise the hearings like that Benghazi crap.”

“Not that it mattered,” Sam said. “That was all a buncha BS. So what’d you all do, Rat, take a payoff from the cartels? Or did the whole team go nuts, like they was saying?”

Rath leaned against the truck, hoping the thing wouldn’t collapse on him. He would ignore Sam’s misuse of his name, as he always did. “I already told you, I can’t talk about it.” The government had given them each a check once they’d signed the don’t-tell-a-soul-about-it contract. It was somewhere in his duffel bag.

“That’s what you said on the phone, when they were listening,” Sam said. “But now you’re here, far away from ears.”

“We weren’t aligned with the cartels. We didn’t go nuts. All I can say is that we were given bad information.”

Sam murmured, “He fucked up. He just doesn’t want to say, ’cause he’s the big shot in the family. Mr. Navy SEAL, who’s all important and can’t say where he’s going or what he’s doing ’cause it’s
top secret
.” He made finger quotes that perfectly framed his sneering mug.

When Rath was younger, that kind of shit-talk would have incited him to pummel his brother. But he was thirty-four now, and he’d learned a lot about self-control in the SEALs. Besides, it would piss off Sam even more if he didn’t react. And he did like pissing off his older brother.

Rath kept his face neutral. “And the top secret stuff hasn’t changed. So now that we got that out of the way, what are you doing with your life? Still slinging hash at the Lazy Diner?” He already knew, because Emily had filled him in.

“He got fired a couple months ago,” Carlton advised with a big grin. “Now he’s helping Billy James with his lawn service.”

Rath didn’t need to rub it in that it was Sam’s two thousandth job. He turned to his father. “How’s Blackridge Rifles doing?”

“Same old, same old. Bert got an order for a hundred rifles couple months ago and couldn’t make the deadline. The order got canceled.”

Rath tamped down his irritation. Some of the best-made rifles out there, but Uncle Bert couldn’t get motivated enough to make a successful business out of it.

“Why don’t you go back to working for him?” his father suggested. “The company did good when you were there.”

Wow, a compliment. Rath tried to keep the shock from his face. “And I was the only one who was doing the work. Put in seventy-two hours straight one time to make an order while Bert and the boys were out turkey hunting. I told him the only way I’m signing on is if I run it. And he won’t agree to that, ’cause he knows I’ll fire the lackeys. Which would be everyone.” It was a sore point, a waste of a good product and able-bodied men. That was ultimately why he’d joined the Navy, to get away from the insanity of it all.

“So, you gonna stay around for a bit?” his father asked, giving no indication whether he was happy about that prospect.

“Just a week. I can take care of some of those maintenance projects I’m sure you have waiting to be done.” He’d already cataloged three of them, including the barn door that was hanging half off its hinges. “Then I’m hitting the road with one of the boys on my team. We’re blowing off steam doing Route 66 on our Harleys. Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

Rath and Julian had made the commitment to ride precisely for an out in case their families tried to talk them into staying. Plus, they needed the time to decompress. And Rath needed to wait until things died down in Mexico. Patience was not his strong suit, but he would wait nonetheless. He’d put in his share of waiting for the okay on a mission many a time. Let his anger simmer. Because when he found the Wolf, he was going to make the guy sing.

Saxby Cole hadn’t lost his acute awareness even while lounging in a hammock in his family’s backyard with his eyes closed. He knew that Mary Lou Sansbury was tiptoeing across the grass toward him in the sandals with the French name that sounded like a flower. Espri-somethings.

And he smelled cookies. Homemade chocolate chip cookies.

A pretty woman bearing cookies should make him smile, but a frown pulled at his mouth instead.
Goodbye, peace and quiet, hello, interruption
.

“ ’Lo, M.L.,” he said, his eyes still closed. He wanted to hold on to that peace for just a few seconds longer.
One, two …

“How’d you know it was me?” The pout in her voice was clear.

He cracked an eye. Yep, she was wearing the sandals with the basket weaving on the heels, along with tight flowery capris and a white tank top. “Trying to sneak up on me?”

“I wanted to plant one right on that luscious mouth of yours.” Her pout transformed to a smile that was so red and glossy, a sliver of sun reflected off her lips and nearly blinded him. She tilted her head. “I suppose I should be happy that you didn’t say someone else’s name, what with all those man-hungry floozies traipsing over here bearing food.”

His gaze slid to the tray of cookies she was balancing, along with two tall insulated cups. “And shame on every one of ’em.” He sat up and took one of the cups and a cookie.

She gave him the perfect Southern indignant look while her apple cheeks burned as red as her lips. “It’s just not like that at all. I baked a batch of pecan chocolate chip cookies for the church sale and remembered how you used to love them. Your mama made me bring out the lemonades.”

“ ’Course she did.” And bless her heart. He took a long draw of the family’s signature lemonade, feeing that nice burn of Gentleman Jack whiskey slide down his
throat. He patted the hammock.

She eyed it dubiously, no doubt remembering the last time he’d offered her a seat and she’d gotten dumped right off. She wiggled her flower-covered ass right in front of him as she prepared to touch down.

“Whew,” she said when she got settled, her thigh pressed against his. “I can’t believe you even suggested making out in this thing years ago. I can barely sit here without tipping.”

He’d made a point to master the danged thing when he was in his teens, and that balance had come in handy many a time. Both for hammock sex and combat. “It’s tricky, no doubt about it, but it can be done.”

She frowned, and he realized he’d admitted to getting freaky in the hammock with someone else. Well, he’d never made her any promises.