“Help me outside. Pull my truck around back, and get that body out of here first chance you get.” He winced. “Before daybreak. Make sure nobody sees you.”
She couldn’t imagine how she would do that on her own, but it hardly seemed relevant right then. Bill was having a heart attack, his third since he’d come to live with them five years before. “Okay.”
“I already searched the grounds. No sign of anyone else.” His face contorted in pain and he cursed colorfully. “Call Mac O’Brady. The number’s in my phone. Tell him we need a couple of his best guys down here to protect you. They’re SEALs. Retired, like me, but younger. They do private security.”
She was panicked now. He was talking like he wouldn’t be here himself to do it, and she feared he would not. “You’ll call him yourself when you’re able.”
He snapped at her. “Now, Jackie! Call him now, before they realize this guy took the express train to kingdom come, and they send someone else after you.”
He was right. She nodded vigorously. “Just as soon as we get you an ambulance.”
“Then get rid of the body.”
“I will.”
He closed his eyes and she took his wrists firmly in her hands, grateful for the hardwood floors that made dragging him a possibility as her mind worked to catch up on the night’s developments. She wasn’t safe here anymore, there was a chance Bill would die, and she needed to dispose of a body.
Navy SEALs coming to her rescue.
Some guy named Mac O’Brady.
Strangers in her home.
She threw open the door. It was as if she’d opened Pandora’s box, wind whipping grains of sand at her face as thunder rolled in the distance. With a strength she didn’t know she had, she dragged Bill over the threshold and across the wooden porch, then raced back for her phone and dialed the ambulance.
4
Goddamn fucking Mexico.
The pounding rain on the windshield battled the thumping pop music that filled the taxi with Spanish lyrics. Ian “Razorback” Rhodes had been here before, the memory of his honeymoon with his ex-wife making his mouth pucker like he was sucking on a lemon.
The speeding car lurched upward, his head hitting the roof of the vehicle before the taxi crashed back to the pavement. He’d thought this country was beautiful once, but shit, he’d believed a lot of things back then that weren’t true. Life had revealed reality one agonizing flash at a time, stripping away the weak flesh of emotion until he was no more than a skeleton.
A steel skeleton, useful and strong.
It was better this way.
Hell. He was better this way.
Joining HERO Force had shown him that, the second chance to use his skills just what he needed to frame his existence in a different light. He wasn’t just a pitiful vet with a scarred-up face. He was a warrior, and he was damn good at what he did, but the roadside bomb had altered a lot more than his body. It had made him angry, even mean, and the contrast between his younger self and the reflection in the glass was as sharp as the tactical knife he carried in a sheath at his side.
He stared into the night. It figured the weather was shit. That was what it looked like on the road to hell, to warn all good people to stay the fuck away. Goddamn, he was grumpy, restless energy making his foot tap incessantly on the floor. They were on their way to protect some friend of a friend of Mac’s, the leader of HERO Force New York, after someone tried to kill her. Trouble was, the woman wasn’t exactly a font of information on exactly who she needed protection from, and Mac’s friend was in the intensive care unit. Razorback had a feeling nothing about this assignment was as straightforward as it seemed.
“This isn’t a thunderstorm,” said Sloan Dvorak, his HERO Force partner on this mission. “It’s a goddamn monsoon.” He took a hit from his inhaler.
“How the hell did you get into the SEALs with asthma?”
“Easy. I got asthma after I became a SEAL.”
Razorback wasn’t sure he liked Sloan. Wasn’t sure he disliked him, either. The guy was a joker, the one who made light of any situation, and he seemed to think Razorback and he were best friends. But Sloan was right about one thing—this storm was a bad one. It was the second system to hit this area in the past week, severe weather that bordered on tropical storm conditions. Everywhere around them were damaged trees and downed branches. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. They’re tracking three more storms approaching the Caribbean.”
“Spinny ones?”
Razorback frowned. “Seriously? Is that the meteorological term?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but it makes you sound like an idiot.”
