Promises in the Dark (14 page)

And she’d kissed him a lot.

She didn’t stir when he shifted away from her. He hated to do that, but he needed to keep a watch, even though the rain still pounded around the house, which kept things dark and cool. He yanked on his still-damp pants, grabbed his gun and took a walk around outside, his footprints quickly and efficiently washing away behind him.

Of course, that meant anyone tracking them would have the same luck. But his instincts weren’t triggered, the perimeter wires hadn’t been breached and, when he was satisfied they hadn’t been found, he went back inside.

And Liv slept on.

He wondered when the last time she’d really slept had been and decided it was at least six months ago. And he liked that she’d been able to let down her guard with him.

He stripped off the pants again, wrung them out and hung them before walking back over to her. The blanket had moved when she shifted positions and she was partially uncovered. He had no problem taking a long look at the woman who’d cried out his name an hour before.

During sex, everything had been filtered through the haze of lust, but he’d have to be blind not to have noticed the tattoo that swirled across her abdomen. It was an odd place for a tattoo for a woman, but it looked good on her. At first, he’d thought it was simply an intricate swirl of design, but when he allowed himself to look closer, he saw it spelled out the word
strength
in a thin script.

Well, everyone needed their juju, he supposed. This was something she could never lose.

He mentally calculated the ammo he had left. Thought about the satphone and the backup battery for his GSM cell phone, plus the emergency number that could bring members of his SEAL team to help, if necessary.

Dylan was waiting. Caleb was already pissed about this whole undertaking—Zane could practically hear his brother’s vibes from here.

And then he looked at Liv again. She was still resistant, no matter how willing she’d been in his arms.

Baby steps. It was nearly time for them to move out, get them one step closer to Freetown.

He didn’t want to consider why he felt like that step would make him lose her completely.

“Do you like it?” she heard herself ask in a voice that was slightly husky from sleep.

His eyes lit. “I like it. All of it.”

She didn’t think anything could make her blush again, but that did, creating a warm heat that spread from her cheeks to her toes.

“I had it done when I was sixteen,” she said, ran her hand over it, enjoyed seeing the heat rise in his eyes.

God, the man had the ability to make her forget everything, even the reason she’d gotten the damned thing in the first place.

And it wasn’t an easy reason to forget. But the urge to push him away, thoroughly disgust him, still plagued her. She owed him a lot for saving her, owed him even more for searching for her all this time. He deserved to know, to understand, why the thought of going back, of being vulnerable and out of control of her life, scared her so badly.

But she wasn’t ready to talk about all of it, could still hear the echo of him whispering,
Liv
, urgently in her ear, like he’d had the most important question in the world for her to answer—and he continued to ask, with his mouth, his hands, his tongue. She’d answered with a tug to his hair when his mouth found her breast, a low groan when his lips brushed her sex … a cry when he filled her.

She thought about the picture of her he’d carried with him for the past six months. Thought about the way he watched her so carefully, like he knew things she hadn’t told him yet.

The room remained dark as the rain intensified. She lay on her side, curled toward Zane, sated but not thoroughly spent. The air had cooled incrementally, and her time with DMH had stopped replaying itself like a bad movie inside her head.

“God, I could go for a margarita,” she murmured.

Zane was sweating, but still somehow managed to seem impervious to the heat’s other effects. He wasn’t slow or sluggish. His eyes were bright and alert and he handed her the canteen.

“This is the best I can do for now,” he told her, and she took it and drained the last of the water. “You’ll have to wait a few days before I can grant you your margarita wish.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

“You can hold me to a lot of things, Liv … I’m more than willing to let you have your way.”

He shouldn’t be able to make her tingle like that, but he did. It would be so easy for her to lose herself in him again. Easy, but not what she needed most.

Instead, she told him, “There’s a man—a medic my friend Ama told me about who runs a clinic for missionaries and locals too. I want you to bring me to him.”

She swore she saw him flinch before he answered, “No way.”

“Then I’ll find my own way there.”

And just like that, the closeness they’d shared disappeared.
Good. Don’t get attached, Liv
. “Ama said it’s a camp for people who need a specific kind of help.”

Zane raised his brows but didn’t say anything, gave nothing to indicate if he would agree to go there or not.

“It’s on the way to Freetown,” she continued.

“Yeah, on the way,” he said finally. And she could tell he knew what she was thinking.

But Zane wasn’t on a suicide mission either. “You’ve got coordinates?”

“I’ve got better—a phone number.”

“Give it to me.”

She found the paper inside the black medical bag Ama had given her. “It’s run by Doc J.”

He grabbed the phone from his bag. “I’ll call Dylan about him. See what he knows.”

With that, he walked out of the house, leaving her alone, wondering why he was suddenly taking her seriously. Was it a trick, or had she worn him down?

She’d picked the fight, started the battle and had a real chance of winning the war. Why did she feel so disappointed?

“Hold on,” Dylan said, sounding like Cael, and Zane heard typing in the background, Riley’s murmured voice and then he heard Dylan speaking with someone.

Liv remained inside—probably listening through the window.

She’d spoken so calmly. Like she’d thought all of this out. Like, when he was holding her this afternoon, she hadn’t been relaxing, but planning.

What the hell was he doing, in this country, risking his damned life to save a woman who didn’t want to be rescued?

Then again, what had he done for years after his rescue, but push everyone who tried to love him away? In many ways, he still did by not having anything close to a serious relationship—or any friendships. It was his brothers, and his team when he was on a mission, or else he was alone. By choice or because of his past, he still wasn’t sure. Who knew who he’d be if he’d remained in Africa, if his biological parents hadn’t been killed … if everything had stayed perfect.

He started, because it was the first time he’d thought about his early years in the missions as perfect.

“Okay, Doc J is Jason Berent—he’s ex-Army. Ranger, not Delta, but he was in when I was. He’s been running the clinic for the past five years. He was a good guy—my sources say that hasn’t changed. He could be a good stopping place on the way to Freetown,” Dylan confirmed, breaking into Zane’s walk in the past and cementing his next move.

“The doc doesn’t necessarily want it to be a stopping place.”

There was a deadly silence on the other end. Because Dylan tended to give Zane a lot of rope to hang himself most of the time, he’d forgotten how badassed his brother really was. There was a reason people feared and respected him.

Zane respected him, but the fear had never been there.

“Give me your damned location, Zane,” Dylan finally growled in his ear, and Zane felt the tension mount between them.

Dylan never demanded things from him. Caleb did, but Dylan … “No. I’ll get her to the clinic and then—”

“And then what? She’s leading you around by the balls, letting you risk your life.”

She didn’t appear to be in shock, but she had to be severely traumatized. And as badly as he didn’t want anything to do with a camp for missionaries, he couldn’t abandon Liv now.

He would stay with her, take her where she needed to go; he knew she would come to her senses at some point. She had to.

“That’s just it, man. She wants me to leave her so I stop risking my life, okay? She’s scared. She thinks she’s doing the right thing by staying on the run.” He didn’t bother to add that he knew what that was like, because Dylan was a smart man, even when he was being an asshole. “I’m guessing Cael knows.”

“I had to tell him.”

“Did you run any of that intel Olivia gave me, about the doctors?”

“I did. I checked out the names with some of my sources and they’re already known in some circles as being willing to do anything for a price, medically. Now I have to figure out what to do with what I know, and you need to get Olivia out.”

“She’ll come around, Dylan. Let me take her where she wants to go. This is a journey back for her—I can’t rush it. I understand that.”

And with those words, the tension broke. “Just be careful, Zane. Please, just be fucking careful with this one.”

Zane wanted to tell his brother it was way too late for that, but he didn’t.

And she was looking to him for salvation. They all were looking for that from Doc J.

He’d heard himself called Doc J for so long that he’d stopped thinking of himself as anything but, stopped thinking of himself as a red-blooded, forty-six-year-old American man with needs and wants and desires.

He was far from a saint, certainly never thought of himself as a religious man and yet everyone seemed to buy it. He liked helping the people here, liked helping the men he’d recruited and trained for mercenary work even more. Yes, he brought help and consolation to the weary and chronically unprotected, and most of the people who passed through the camp never realized what it actually was.

The medical staff never did—he’d made sure to keep them separate. Most of them were savvy enough to know that the men who passed through weren’t simply men passing through.

In truth, he was looking for a permanent medical staffer and had been unable to find the right candidate. The men got restless, the women scared, and in all truth, sometimes this place was too damned good at healing people.

Doc wanted that for everyone, sure, but he also needed to find someone who loved this place as much as he’d come to.

Rowan Moller’s tough as shit, calm under pressure
…
and she’s got some pretty high walls no one here’s been able to scale. Not easily intimidated, but she’s skittish at the idea of making connections
, her CO, and Doc J’s friend, had written.

He had people counting on him left and right, money piling up in an overseas account he’d no doubt never touch, and he knew he’d never be done here, despite the ten-year plan he’d promised himself.

Then again, what did he have to go back to?

Concentrate, Doc
.

There was too much going on at once—and that was always a harbinger of bad things. First, the family he’d hidden away, then Rowan’s arrival. Coupled with the phone call from a man named Zane and his imminent arrival—well, things were going to hell in a handbasket soon enough.

“Hey.” Tristan settled next to him, bottle of water in his hand. “New medic?”

“Yes.” He stretched his hands. The arthritis was better here in the dry heat, but his hands would never function the way they had when he was twenty-five. Combat—different kinds—harsh environments, life experience, they all showed in those tanned hands. A map of his life until now, with no hints of what was to come.

“I hope you don’t expect me to, like, help her.”

“God forbid,” he said wryly.

It was the first time Tristan gave anything close to the hint of a smile in weeks. Sometimes the stretches were longer. When the younger man had first arrived, Doc J swore it took six months. Now Tristan was his right-hand man, had been for the past three years. He nodded in the direction of where Rowan slept. “She’s bad off?”

“No worse than you.” Doc J gave him a sideways glance and Tristan snorted.

“Then she’s screwed,” Tristan stated. “Is she having flashbacks?”

“She doesn’t have PTSD.”

Tristan looked at him quizzically. “Then why the hell wouldn’t she just go home? What’s her deal?”

It was the first time Tristan had asked about any of them. And so Doc J answered. “She lost her husband in the towers. Enlisted soon after.” His voice was brusque, and he heard Tristan muttering something about
feeling like an asshole now
.

And still, they both knew that Rowan had a less than five percent chance of making it here. Very few lasted longer than a month. Longer than that, they tended to stick around, if not here, then at another mission or wherever they were needed.

Jason ran into them, on radio or infrequent trips to town. Most often, it was when they’d motor in, and then they’d sit around and drink warm beer and talk about the good old times they’d had together, which by definition were neither very good nor all that long ago.

But none of them would ever cop to it.

He’d seen it all between the Army and here—worst of the worst, best of the best and most of what was in between.

“Think she’ll make it?” Tristan asked him, his demeanor calm and unassuming, but Doc knew better. Tristan had his back, was ready to strike at a moment’s notice if needed.

The man was Irish-Cuban; he had fled into the Army and then fled from it. Then he’d come here and he’d stopped running, but Doc J was damned concerned, because the boy had never really settled.

What was here for him, beyond backbreaking labor and very few means of thanks? Would he ever be ready to take over this place alone? Would he want to? He was never fully unpacked, like he could leave at any second without so much as a good-bye.

Speaking of leaving … “You’ve got a pickup to make. Early morning.” Doc J rattled off the coordinates and saw Tristan’s small nod. Paper was in short supply here and the men got used to memorizing what they needed to know.

“How many?”

“Two. A female doctor, and an active-duty.”

“Great,” Tristan muttered. “Better not be a fucking know-it-all.”

“I’m sure you’ll set him straight.” Doc J paused. “The doctor’s a friend of Ama’s.”

“The same friend who got her killed?”

“You might not want to mention that when you meet Olivia.”

Tristan shrugged, like he couldn’t commit to that either way, and ambled off without another word.

Doc J stared up at the stormy sky, swore he could hear the voice from long ago, telling him,
When your prayer is answered, you take it. It’s that simple
.

Nothing was that simple, but it had been a start.