He rolled his neck as the vehicle bumped over potholes in the barely there road.
Billy sighed. “Man, I’m still pissed. That boxing match yesterday didn’t help with the anger.”
Wolfe turned back toward his brother. “Yeah. I get that.” Although he usually banked anger low and dealt with it when it exploded. “We lost two guys hauling in that heroin, and having it stolen is an insult.” They had a line on a key player in the trafficking routes, and his unit specialized in hunting. “We’re good at evidence collection.”
Billy drove around a large rock. “Evidence collection. Man, I’m getting tired of our euphemisms. Evidence collection, wet work, the gray zone. Why don’t we just say we’re going to fight this guy and scare or beat the crap out of him until he gives up the information?”
“Because we’re too classy,” Wolfe retorted, straightening as Rock came back into view, riding toward them and giving an all-clear sign. He relaxed again.
There was a moment of silence before the world detonated.
An explosion rocked the truck behind them, and Wolfe instantly pivoted, trying to see what had happened. “Turn around. Fast.”
Billy yanked the wheel and thumped off the road, hitting several rocks before turning and heading toward the burning truck and spirals of black smoke billowing into the sky.
Wolfe scouted the area, saw no one, and jumped out of the MTV, running toward the hissing metal. “Cover me.”
“Got it,” Billy yelled, already out of the vehicle, crouched near the rear, no doubt with his gun out.
Two men had been thrown free and were both lying against rocks to the north. Wolfe reached the truck and ripped open the door, burning his hand. Flames flashed down his side and pain flared, but he ignored it all and dragged Jack from the truck, shoving him to safety. Wolfe reached in for Booker and dragged his limp body, still burning, across the seat to safety.
He was turning to help them when a second explosion rocked the area. His ears compressed and his brain ticked in the microsecond before he was blown through the air, the light disappearing as he landed with a pain he could feel to his soul.
Night was falling when he awoke, parts of his body numb and parts in excruciating pain. Sucking in dust, he rolled over, biting his lip in agony. His team. Where was his team? He used his elbow to force himself to sit. His gut lurched and he turned to the side to puke into the dirt, his lungs and ribs screaming the whole time. He turned and saw Jack facedown in the dirt. Grunting against the pain, he crawled over to his friend and felt for a pulse.
Nothing, and Jack was cold.
The sound Wolfe made felt like it came from the depths of hell. He checked Booker, who was also dead.
Then he passed out for a while, waking to look at the stars. Blood dripped into his eyes, and he wiped it away, struggling to sit up and move toward the two men who’d been thrown from the blast earlier. His vision faded, and he fought against passing out again.
They were dead, too. Saul and Jose. Gone.
That left Rock and Billy. Where the hell were they? He couldn’t stand, so he crawled past the still burning truck toward the MTV, seeing a prone body. Billy? He’d been away from the explosion. Why was he down?
The world wasn’t making sense, and an ominous ticking sound echoed between Wolfe’s ears. He reached Billy to find a bullet hole neatly placed in the back of his large head. In the back? There hadn’t been insurgents near—he would have seen them.
“Rock?” Wolfe croaked, looking for the motorcycle. It was gone. So was Rock.
Wolfe let the ground take him again, awakening briefly when troops arrived and then again in a medicopter. He wanted to tell them to leave him with his team, but his voice wouldn’t work.
The dream morphed to the hospital in Germany where he’d recuperated. To the moment when the investigators determined that Rock had been the inside guy who’d stolen the heroin and killed the team. Anger had propelled Wolfe to heal and survive, at least temporarily. There would be justice.
The dream again changed direction, this time to images of Dana in the woods, in that pink corset, in his bed. An explosion rocked through his house, and she screamed as she was burned.
He sat up on the sofa, gasping for breath. Sweat soaked his chest. His hand trembled as he wiped his eyes.
Nothing would stop him from protecting her. Then, he would find justice.
* * *
Dana ignored her headache as Wolfe drove through the thick air to their office building. They’d both been silent on the drive in, and the inscrutable expression on the man’s face hadn’t encouraged discussion. This close to him, her body hummed with need, now that she had firsthand proof of how well he could handle that need.
He parked near the door and turned toward her. “We’ll leave around three for Tennessee.”
She paused in the midst of reaching for the door handle. “Huh?”
“For the wedding. We can drive about four or five hours today, stay somewhere in West Virginia for the night and get on the road in the morning. I’ll have you at your folks’ by noon, which is when your plane would’ve landed.” He opened his door, his voice matter of fact. “The wedding is at five, right?”
