just so the guys on board could watch the women in the water, but wham, there we were. Lit up. There was no place to hide—and nowhere to go but over the side.”
“Bobby picked me up and threw me overboard,” Rio admitted. He must not have been moving fast enough—he was still kicking himself for that. “I didn’t see what happened next, but according to Wes, Bobby stepped in front of him and blocked him from the bullets that started flying while they both went into the water. That was when Bobby caught a few—one in his shoulder, another in the top of his thigh. He was the one who was hurt, but he pulled both me and Wes down, under the water—out of sight and out of range.”
Sirens went on. Rio had been able to hear them along with the tearing sound of the guards’ assault weapons and the screams from the women, even as he was pulled underwater.
“That was when the Swiss Chocolate took off,” Rio said. He had to smile. “Right for Miami.”
They’d surfaced to watch, and Bobby had laughed along with Wes Skelly. Rio and Wes hadn’t even realized he’d been hit. Not until he spoke, in his normal, matter-of-fact manner.
“We better get moving, get back to the boat, ASAP,” Bobby had said evenly. “I’m shark bait.”
“The chief was bleeding badly,” Rio told his friends. “He was hurt worse even than he realized.” And the water hadn’t been cold enough to staunch the flow of his blood. “We did the best we could to tie off his leg, right there in the water. Lucky and Spaceman went on ahead—as fast as they could—to connect with the rubber duck and bring it back toward us.”
Bobby Taylor had been in serious pain, but he’d kept moving, slowly and steadily through the darkness. Apparently he’d been afraid if he didn’t keep moving, if he let Wes tow him back to the little rubber boat, he’d black out. And he didn’t want to do that. The sharks in these waters did pose a serious threat, and if he were unconscious, that could have put Rio and Wes into even more significant danger.
“Wes and I swam alongside Bobby. Wes was talking the entire time—I don’t know how he did it without swallowing a gallon of seawater—bitching at Bobby for playing the hero like that, making fun of him for getting shot in the ass—basically, just ragging on him to keep him alert.
“It wasn’t until Bobby finally slowed to a crawl, until he told us he wasn’t going to make it—that he needed help—that Wes stopped talking. He took Bobby in a lifeguard hold and hauled ass, focusing all his energy on getting back to the rubber duck in record time.”
Rio sat back in his seat. “When we finally connected with the boat, Lucky had already radioed for help. It wasn’t much longer before a helo came to evac Bobby to the hospital.
“He’s going to be okay,” he told both Thomas and Mike again. That was the first thing he’d said about their beloved chief’s injuries, before they’d even sat down to breakfast. “The leg wound wasn’t all that bad, and the bullet that went into his shoulder somehow managed to miss the bone. He’ll be off the active-duty list for a few weeks, maybe a month, but after that…” Rio grinned. “Chief Bobby Taylor will be back. You can count on that.”
Chapter 1
Navy SEAL Chief Bobby Taylor was in trouble.
Big trouble.
“You gotta help me, man,” Wes said. “She’s determined to go, she flippin’ hung up on me and wouldn’t pick up the phone when I called back, and I’m going wheels-up in less than twenty minutes. All I could do was send her e-mail—though fat lotta good that’ll do.”
“She” was Colleen Mary Skelly, his best friend’s little sister. No, not little sister. Younger sister. Colleen wasn’t little, not anymore. She hadn’t been little for a long, long time.
A fact that Wes didn’t seem quite able to grasp.
“If I call her,” Bobby pointed out reasonably, “she’ll just hang up on me, too.”
“I don’t want you to call her.” Wes shouldered his seabag and dropped his bomb. “I want you to go there.”
Bobby laughed. Not aloud. He would never laugh in his best friend’s face when he went into overprotective brother mode. But inside of his own head, he was rolling on the floor in hysterics.
Outside of his head, he only lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “To Boston.” It wasn’t really a question.
Wesley Skelly knew that this time he was asking an awful lot, but he squared his shoulders and looked Bobby straight in the eyes. “Yes.”
Problem was, Wes didn’t know just how much he was asking.
“You want me to take leave and go to Boston,” Bobby didn’t really enjoy making Wes squirm, but he needed his best friend to see just how absurd this sounded, “because you and Colleen got into another argument.” He still didn’t turn it into a question. He just let it quietly hang there.
“No, Bobby,” Wes said, the urgency in his voice turned up to high. “You don’t get it. She’s signed on with some kind of bleeding-heart, touchy-feely volunteer organization, and next she and her touchy-feely friends are flying out to flippin’ Tulgeria.” He said it again, louder, as if it were unprintable, then followed it up by a string of words that truly were.
Bobby could see that Wes was beyond upset. This wasn’t just another ridiculous argument. This was serious.
“She’s going to provide earthquake relief,” Wes continued. “That’s lovely. That’s wonderful, I told her. Be Mother Teresa. Be Florence Nightingale. Have your goody two-shoes permanently glued to your feet. But stay way the hell away from Tulgeria! Tulgeria—the flippin’ terrorist capital of the world!”
“Wes—”
“I tried to get leave,” Wes told him. “I was just in the captain’s office, but with you still down and H. out with food poisoning, I’m mission essential.”
“I’m there,” Bobby said. “I’m on the next flight to Boston.”
Wes was willing to give up Alpha Squad’s current assignment—something he was really looking forward to, something involving plenty of C-4 explosives—to go to Boston. That meant that Colleen wasn’t just pushing her brother’s buttons. That meant she was serious about this. That she really was planning to travel to a part of the world where Bobby himself didn’t feel safe. And he wasn’t a freshly pretty, generously endowed, long-legged—very long-legged—redheaded and extremely female second-year law student.
With a big mouth, a fiery temper and a stubborn streak. No, Colleen’s last name wasn’t Skelly for nothing.
Bobby swore softly. If she’d made up her mind to go, talking her out of it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Thank you for doing this,” Wes said, as if Bobby had already succeeded in keeping Colleen off that international flight. “Look, I gotta run. Literally.”
Wes owed Bobby for this one. But he already knew it. Bobby didn’t bother to say the words aloud.
Wes was almost out the door before he turned back. “Hey, as long as you’re going to Boston…”
Ah.
