To the Brink (15 page)

"What, god damn it? Tell me what's wrong!"

Tears began streaming down Weasel's cheeks. Ethan felt his gut tighten with dread.

Thomas "Weasel" Griffin was six four and 250 pounds of steel. He was quick with a laugh, quicker with his fists, and in the three years they'd been on the same team Ethan had never seen Weasel break down.

It was scary as hell to see it now.

Runner Ward clamped a supportive hand on Weasel's shoulder. And started talking.

Oh God. Oh, Jesus God.

Worse. It was so much worse than anything Ethan could have imagined.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to hit something.

But he stood, stoic as a judge, as he listened to Runner relay the grisly news.

Brody "Gumdrop" Addison was twenty-three. But he'd been made by the cartel—and now he would never be twenty-four.

He'd wanted to be a teacher when he got out of the SF. He was so patriotic he bled red, white, and blue. And he had a kid sister back home who'd gotten hooked on crack cocaine and it had messed her up good.

So Brody had wanted to fight the bastards. He wanted to take down the drug lords at the mouth of the river where the flow was the most fierce, not at some small-time tributary where small-time criminals pled out to lesser charges before some namby-pamby bleeding-heart judge. Brody wanted to stop the traffic before it ever hit the streets. So he'd ended up in this hellhole, playing both ends against the middle and doing a damn fine job of it.

Until he'd gotten made.

"They strung him up like a damn animal," Weasel said, his face crumpling again with anger and pain. "And then the fuckers skinned him alive."

Ethan could hear Brody's screams in his head as Runner told him and Manny how they'd found the body yesterday.

Ethan couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. Was dizzy with grief and rage and hatred.

Brody was dead. There was no denying that fact. And as far as Ethan was concerned, there was no denying what had to be done.

He stumbled to the edge of camp and puked his guts out. Tears ran down his cheeks. For the loss of a brother. For the loss of a soldier whose family would never know he died a hero's death because what went on this far south of the border would never be publicly acknowledged.

...
Unfortunate accident during a routine practice drill
... would be specified on the death certificate. And Brody's mom and dad wouldn't even have a body to cry over.

Very quietly Ethan wiped his cheeks, then gathered his personal arsenal. The concerned looks didn't last long as one by one, led by Manny, the rest of the team armed themselves.

Without exchanging a word, they headed into the jungle.

Two days later, they dealt swift and merciless revenge. They didn't follow anyone's orders. They followed their guts. And they executed at least a dozen of the bastards who had tortured and murdered one of their own.

Ethan couldn't get out of the Peruvian jungle soon enough. Couldn't get to his wife—to her sweet, giving warmth, her innocence and love—soon enough.

Still, it was six months before he could slip away for a weekend in Lima.

Turned out, it was still too soon.

He hadn't decompressed from the Brody incident. He couldn't talk to her. Couldn't smile for her. All he could do was make love to her. Sometimes with a violence that left him ashamed. And then with a gentleness bred by guilt that would never atone for the way he'd used her.

She didn't complain. She never complained. She just stroked his hair and held him in the night and asked nothing from him but to give up his demons to her.

"Tell me. Tell me what hurts you so," she begged one night in the aftermath of a stormy lovemaking session that left him raw and edgy and her destroyed and clinging.

It was all she wanted. For him to tell her. And he couldn't do it. Couldn't dirty her with his sins.

So he lectured instead: "Are you being careful like I asked?"

He couldn't see her face in the dark. He didn't have to, to know he'd frightened her.

"Ethan?"

"Answer me, damn it!"

Filled with an unreasonable anger, he shot out of the bed and stalked to the window. The midnight breeze cooled his naked skin, but not his rage, as he propped his hands on his hips and fought a gnawing anger toward a world few people knew about and even fewer would believe.

A world where men were heartless and soulless and life had no more value than a dime bag. It was a world he knew too well and was as much a part of as the predators he hunted.

"Yes," she said finally. "I'm being careful." Her voice sounded small with hurt and uncertainty.

He was being a sonofabitch. Letting out a deep breath, he turned to her, ashamed.

She'd flicked on the light by her bed. She sat on her hip, her feet tucked under her. Naked and pure—with something very much like fear in her eyes.

He swore and went to her. Knelt in front of her. Pressed his face into the softness of her breasts.

"I'm sorry. I'm … I'm sorry, baby. But I worry. Christ, I worry about you, Darcy. I worry so much."

She touched a hand to his cheek. "I'm okay. I'm okay."

She didn't get it. She would never get it.

"How much longer do you have on your PCS here in Lima?"

She lifted a shoulder. "Six months, seven months."

"Perfect." He pulled back and gripped her by her shoulders, feeling his first flicker of hope. "You can go back to the states then. Find us a place to live until I get out. You'll love Florida. Or we can live in Cincinnati if you want to be close to your family. I don't care. I don't care where we live, just so—"

She pressed her fingers to his lips, silencing him. "Ethan." A deep furrow creased her brow. "I'm not going back to the states. I've already received my new PCS. I'm going to Israel."

He hadn't heard her right. He was sure he hadn't heard her right. For the past six months he'd been working it all out in his head.

As he sweated out the rain forest days and skulked through the heat of the nights on the hunt, he'd worked it out. She would go back home. Where she would be safe. Counting on that was what had kept him sane. What had kept him going. Knowing he could at least stash her someplace even if he couldn't be with her.

"Sweetie, no." He palmed her cheeks. Ran a hand through her hair. "Change it. Get a stateside assignment if you want to stay in the service, but don't go to Israel. For God's sake, that's worse than here."

She looked at him through those beautiful green eyes as if she didn't know him. And it shook him to the core.

"Ethan. This is my career. This is what I've planned for. What I'd dreamed of. I'm not going back to the states. Not for a long while yet."

"Darcy—"

"No. Listen. You think I don't worry about you? You think that every single moment of every single day I don't stop and wonder where you are? What you're doing? If you're safe? You think I don't know how dangerous your work is?"

"Baby." He drew her tightly against him. Whispered into her hair. "We're not talking about me. We're talking about you."

"No." She pulled out of his arms so she could look at him. "We're talking about
us.
Not me. Not you.
Us.
Don't ask me to give up what you wouldn't ask of yourself. What we do is part of who we are. It's part of you and me together, Ethan. I never dreamed you didn't understand that."

Stunned, he rose from the bed again, raked a hand through his hair. And said exactly nothing.

He didn't know what to say. He just wanted her out of harm's way. He wanted her someplace where she couldn't be touched by even the fringe of the muck he lived.

She walked up behind him where he stood in her open bedroom window. "It'll be okay. We'll be okay."

She pressed herself against him from behind. Warm, soft, breakable. Wrapping her arms around him, she rested her forehead against his naked back. "Just... just trust me to take care of myself. You have to trust me, like I trust you. If I didn't trust you to stay safe, it would make me crazy, Ethan. So I do. I trust you. I
have
to trust you. And you have to trust me."

He turned in her arms, pressed his face into the top of her head, and breathed in her fresh floral scent. Breathed it like he'd never breathe it again. And he hung on.

He knew she was right. If he didn't trust her to stay safe, he'd go insane.

And he didn't trust her.

JOLO ISLAND

PRESENT

Darcy awoke with a start; her heart beat like a bass drum in a parade march.

It was pitch-black. Something was wrong. She wasn't in her bed. She was—she blinked, looked around as things came into fuzzy focus.

Disappointment quickly replaced the confusion. She definitely wasn't in Kansas anymore. It didn't take long to figure that out and to remember exactly where she was.

She was in a terrorist camp. She was being held hostage.

But there was hope. Finally.

Ethan.

Last night, Ethan had come.

Or was it still tonight? She couldn't believe she'd actually fallen asleep. And for how long? A few minutes? A few hours? She had no way of knowing.

But she did know that he'd come. She
knew
that.

Didn't she?

A sudden and frightening uncertainty had her heart kicking up again. It couldn't have been just a dream.

Ethan had come.
He'd come.

A latent and too familiar panic piggybacked with uncertainty and worked hard at convincing her otherwise.

She settled herself with several deep breaths and the vivid memory of how sweet that cherry Life Saver had tasted on her tongue.

Yes.
Yes! The Life Saver.
It had been so sweet. Dirt and all—amazing how quickly standards nose-dived when survival was on the line. But the sweetest thing of all was settling the question. He
had
come for her. She could still taste the faint flavor of cherry on her tongue.

Lying very still on her side, with her bound hands beneath her cheek for a pillow, she glanced over at Amy. She was sleeping soundlessly, curled into herself like an orphaned kitten.

In the middle of the camp, the fire had burned down to nothing but a wisp of smoke and ash. It had to have taken a while for it to burn down that low—which meant that Darcy
had
slept. And for more than a few minutes. Not that it mattered, but she wondered what time it was. Wondered if Ethan was, at this moment, hunkered down at the edge of the camp, waiting for the absolute right moment to get her out of here.

Quiet. It was so, so quiet that she marshaled her breath so it wouldn't disrupt the volume of the silence. She looked down at Amy again. She was sleeping so soundly. It was the reason Darcy hadn't told her about Ethan earlier.

Darcy hadn't wanted to wake her; she knew that Amy would need all the strength she could muster when the time came to run. Now Darcy knew it couldn't wait. This night wasn't going to last forever— even though it felt like it was—and she felt it in her bones that Ethan would come after her before morning.