Hunted
Authors: Kaylea Cross
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Military, #Romantic Suspense, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense, #Hostage Rescue Team Series
Hunted
Kaylea Cross
Copyright © 2014
by Kaylea Cross
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Cover Art by
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
ISBN: 978-1-928044-07-9
Dedication
A big shout out to the men and women in the military and law enforcement, working hard to keep us safe. Thank you for your service!
Kaylea
Can’t believe this is the third book of the
Hostage Rescue Team
series already! And,
Hunted
is my 25
th
book! Time flies when you’re having fun, right?
Well I certainly did have fun pairing Bauer and Zoe together. The thing I love most about this couple is that they both have so much to teach each other, and even though Bauer is jaded and cynical, he’s still willing to learn from Zoe and allow himself to grow.
Happy reading!
Kaylea Cross
Sixteen months ago
Somewhere down the long, dimly-lit hallway, a door opened and closed. Measured footsteps echoed against the jail’s concrete floors and walls, coming toward him, slowing as they reached his cell.
“Bauer.”
Clay Bauer turned his head at the brusque male voice, not bothering to sit up from where he was laying on the hard cot installed into the cement wall. Fifty-three hours he’d been locked up, after a single, frantic phone call to his best friend, the only person who might be able to help him now. The judge had finally set the bond yesterday afternoon and given him a court date three months out.
The jailer stopped on the other side of the iron bars and cut him a hard look. “Get up. You made bail.”
You sorry piece of shit.
The guy didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to because the disgust in his eyes said it all. And even though Clay was a full head taller and probably outweighed him by a good forty pounds, that look made him feel two inches tall.
Gathering himself, he pushed to a sitting position, ignoring the protest of his bruised, aching muscles and the throb of the scratches in his skin. It felt like he’d gone three rounds in the ring with another fighter. In a way, he guessed he had, but it hadn’t been a fair fight. He’d been forced to take all the blows without being able to strike back.
That wasn’t going to gain him any sympathy, however, with the judge or anyone else. Not that he wanted any. Having someone feel sorry for him on top of all this just might break him. And he was already closer to being broken than he’d ever been before in his life, even back during BUD/S when he’d been pushed past every limit he’d thought he had. He’d made it through and earned his Trident. He’d get through this as well.
Clay gripped the edge of the bunk so hard his knuckles turned white as an increasingly familiar flush of humiliation burned in his cheeks. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He’d been taken prisoner before during the grueling mental and physical stress of the most intense SERE training the military could throw at him and never once felt this beaten down.
Parts of the Navy SEAL Code ran through his head, mocking him.
I serve with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men.
Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond.
Funny how being arrested and locked behind bars could make a man wither in his own skin.
“Who paid it?” he managed to rasp out.
The jailer shrugged in a dismissive gesture. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.” He waved a hand impatiently for Clay to get up, his whole attitude making it clear that if it were up to him, he wouldn’t be letting Clay out anytime soon.
Clay pushed to his feet and crossed to the door as the guard unlocked the cell. The bars slid aside with a heavy clang and Clay stepped out into the gray hallway, followed the guy down it and through another locked steel door. In the office portion of the jail, a female officer doing paperwork glanced up at him, her face tightening with disdain before she looked away. His jaw clenched. How many of them knew why he was in here?
Clay kept his head high despite his embarrassment and refused to look at any of them. He read and signed the documents put in front of him, took his wallet, watch and phone, listened to the instructions about the conditions of his bond. Finally the guard led him through the office into a waiting area. When his gaze landed on the two men standing there, his throat tightened and he had to look away, unable to meet their eyes because he was fucking terrified of what he might find there.
“You look better than I thought you would,” Matt DeLuca, his boss and the CO of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team said in a chipper voice.
Clay stuck his hands in his pockets and looked anywhere but at them, painfully aware that the bruises and scratches on his face and arms were visible. The cops had documented them all when they’d arrested him, but he hated that the two men in front of him could see them.
Normally he didn’t give a shit what other people thought of him but with these guys, he did. And he was afraid this would cost him their respect. “Yeah. Thanks for getting me out.”
“No worries, man,” Tuck, his new team leader said in his Alabama drawl. Rather than try to say something funny to lighten the mood, he stepped up and clapped a solid hand on Clay’s shoulder. “Let’s get you the hell outta here, huh?”
Clay nodded, grateful they were making this easy on him but knowing he was eventually going to have to divulge every last detail to the both of them, and the entire command. He’d sooner face an enemy ambush. Alone. The scratches on his neck and arms stung like hell but what burned more was knowing that his entire career was now in jeopardy.
DeLuca led the way out to a black agency SUV and got behind the wheel. As Clay opened the back passenger side door he saw Tuck studying the marks on him. The deeper ones had made him bleed. He had more on his upper chest and shoulders. As far as injuries went, they were nothing compared to what he’d endured before. And yet they’d already scarred him more deeply than any of the others.
“You need anything for those?” Tuck asked.
They’d put some antibiotic cream on them when they’d brought him in. “No.” Fuck, he hated this. He slid into the back and shut the door, wanting to get back to his apartment so he could hole up alone, shut off his phone and destroy a bottle of Jack.
“You hungry?” DeLuca asked as he steered out of the parking lot.
“No.”
“I’m stopping for coffee,” he warned. “You should eat something.”
He wound up sipping a coffee and eating the bagel DeLuca shoved at him, though it tasted like cardboard in his mouth. They drove in silence across town and back toward Quantico, where Clay lived in a studio apartment near base.
Two miles from his place he couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore. “Am I off the team?” More than the possibility of a conviction once this went to court, and a fuckload more than the certainty that his sham of a marriage was finally over, the thought of being booted off the team over this latest incident set off a hellish grinding sensation in the pit of his stomach.
DeLuca didn’t try to sugar coat the situation. “Officially, you’re on leave for the time being. I’m gonna do everything I can to smooth this over, but the rest will depend on what the courts decide.”
That was months away, Clay thought in despair as he glanced out the window. His emotions were so jumbled he damn near felt numb at the moment. “So I’m fucked.”
Tuck shifted and leaned around to peer back at him from the shotgun seat, his dark blond brows drawn together in a pissed off scowl. “No, you’re not. Those are defensive wounds and we’re gonna document every single mark on you so we’ve got our own evidence,” he said, indicating the livid scratches Eve’s perfectly French manicured nails had gouged into his skin two days ago.
Clay tore his gaze away from Tuck. The guy was more than Clay’s team leader, he was one of his best friends, and since he’d served with Delta before coming to the FBI, Clay considered him a god. He fucking worshipped both men in the vehicle. That they were seeing him like this, at his absolute worst, was more than he could take.
He closed his stinging eyes and rubbed his fingers over them. It was all going to come out anyway. Every ugly, sordid detail. Better to tell them the worst now, so they knew what he was facing. “I grabbed her. Threatened her.” And that made him a fucking statistic. Yet another former Spec Ops member arrested for domestic violence. He didn’t even know how to process that, let alone go about forgiving himself for it.
“Threatened her how?” DeLuca asked in a sharp tone.
Clay sighed and leaned his head back, keeping his eyes closed so he wouldn’t have to see the men’s reactions. “I hadn’t changed the locks yet. She came in the bathroom as I was getting out of the shower.” She’d caught him off guard, then cornered him. He would have left but there was no way she was letting him out of that bathroom without a fight and he’d wanted to avoid a physical confrontation.
Little good that did you, huh?
“She threw a punch at me and everything went from shit to shittier.”
“Jesus, she’s whacked,” Tuck muttered.
“Yeah,” Clay agreed. It had been bad. When she’d kept on attacking him he’d finally grabbed her and used his strength and skill to stop her, something he’d never believed himself capable of until now. “I couldn’t get past her without hurting her so I had to restrain her. Pinned her to the wall with my hands around her wrists. I definitely left marks.” She probably had others on her upper arms and back, too, from him grabbing her and the force with which he’d slammed her up against that wall.
And God help him, in that moment as he’d stared down into her furious face he’d been more tempted to put his hands around her throat and squeeze than he had been to kill some of the insurgents he’d hunted during his tours back in Afghanistan.
A deafening silence filled the vehicle at his announcement.
Clay felt the burn of tears, swallowed the lump in his throat before he forced himself to say the rest. “I kept her pinned there and said I could kill her for what she’d done.”
More silence, and this time the shame he’d been holding at bay swamped him, flooding through his body like hot lava. He knew exactly how bad this was, what would go against him in court. He was big. Six-four, a whole ten inches taller and ninety pounds heavier than his petite, estranged wife. His whole life he’d been aware of his size, had grown to be aware of his own strength and what it could do to someone. He’d been brought up to respect women, to never raise a hand to them. As a SEAL, he’d been relentlessly trained to have control over that strength, to earn his Trident every day.
Guess every man had his limit. Much as it shamed him that he’d given in to his anger, Eve had finally managed to shove him head first over his. Even so he was fully aware that there was no excuse for what he’d done. His skin prickled with humiliation.
He blew out a shaky breath and continued, glad he couldn’t see DeLuca and Tuck’s faces. “The second I did it I knew I was fucked.” He’d snatched his hands away from her like she’d burned him and staggered back, a sick sensation in his gut at the gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. As though he’d just given her her fondest wish.