“Yeah,” she lied, her voice nearly lost to the roar of descent.
The engines deepened, the hum turning into a growl as the C-130 sank through clouds. Warm, heavy air seeped through the vents, humid, familiar enough to make her stomach clench.
Suddenly she felt alone. Everything she’d shared with Bear felt intangible, out of reach, and she wanted nothing more than to twist herself into his body and ride out the storm building behind her ribs. But the closer they drew to Rio, the more it felt like her mind was sliding away from him, down into a place she couldn’t outrun, a living nightmare she couldn’t shake loose.
This place had almost taken him from her once, and she still didn’t understand how that brush with death had slipped past her armor and rearranged the shape of her heart, one she hadn’t let herself explore, not even when it whispered her homeward.
But shadows clung to her, even there.
Across the border, where her helo had fallen from the sky, the recovery of her support team had unearthed bones.
Taryn’s trail had ended in that wild, unforgiving hush, cut clean where the world grew steep and the river split the earth. Bailee lived with the fear that her cousin was gone forever, a spirit wandering lost in a land not her own, somewhere past the hills, past the river where Bailee had seen her ghost, swallowed by dark, dangerous monsters who hid in daylight and carried nothing but human hunger.
As the plane dropped lower, warm air spilling through the vents, all those threads, Bear’s near-death, Taryn’s disappearance, her own unraveling, and a mission that demanded professionalism and a razor edge paralyzed her lungs.
She had no idea how to wrestle all those jumbled emotions into something she could pick apart and understand, not when that old, familiar dread was already rising, tightening around her like a warning she couldn’t name.
All her ghosts were stirring.
They were headed back into the place where everything had fractured, and if she couldn’t face that crucible now, this intricate fear, this devastating history, this impossible love rising in her like a storm, she’d lose him, lose herself, lose all the meaning she’d only just begun to grasp. She’d die inside so completely, there would be no coming back.
Courage wasn’t the question. Surviving herself was.
The big plane touched down harder than expected, tires hammering against the Galeão runway in a long, shuddering roll. Bear barely felt the jolt. He’d flown worse. Landed hotter. But the woman beside him had gone still in a way that made every instinct in him sharpen.
Bailee kept her eyes forward, chin high, shoulders squared like she was bracing for incoming fire.
He didn’t say anything on the taxi in. Didn’t crowd her. Just watched the set of her jaw, the pulse at her throat, the way her fingers curled white-knuckled around her harness. She was retreating somewhere deep inside, and he could feel the distance widening with every mile they crept toward the terminal.
By the time they disembarked into the heat and humidity of Rio, she’d wrapped tight, armored in ways he hadn’t seen since before she’d let him touch her, trust him, fall apart in his hands, tucking herself so far behind her shields, he was sure it was going to be a battle to get her to drop them…again…this time for good.
It’s a good thing he ran into fire. He was here for her. He wasn’t going to give up because she was trying to process too much information overload, and he wasn’t going to be silent or still. His voice had power, he was believing he deserved this woman, and she deserved to be whole. It was her personal Hell Week, and he was going to be here every step of the way.
The team moved like they always did, loose, joking, cocky without trying, and he was thankful for the silent support and the brotherhood that never wavered.
Zorro slapped D-Day on the back. “Everly made me promise not to get shot this time.”
“Maybe listen to your woman for once,” D-Day fired back.
Bailee stiffened, her gaze going over him with snapping blue fire. “That isn’t even remotely funny, Zorro.” Her voice was cold. “Do me a favor and keep your SEAL macho shit to yourself.”
Blitz’s eyebrows lifted.
Buck muttered something about being careful.
Joker watched her slip away from them, and he looked at Bear. “You got this?”
Bear nodded. “She’s hurting, LT. This isn’t easy for her to come back here. She has a lot of weight on her shoulders.”
He touched Flint’s fur and the dog trotted off, pressing himself to Bailee’s leg, head up, nostrils working overtime in the heavy air. Good boy. He felt the tension too.
Bailee stopped, her shoulders loosening. Just enough as her hand sank into Flint’s ruff, fingers curling lightly, grounding herself on warm fur instead of fear.
Taking that lifeline Bear offered.
Then she looked back. Just a single glance over her shoulder, but the air between them shifted, snapped tight. Her eyes shone under the bright terminal lights, gratitude flickering there first…then something deeper. Something that hit him low and hard. Something that made every muscle in his body lock, like he’d taken a round straight to the chest.
Need. Raw. Unmasked. Undeniable.
