about to let this op become a failure. Which left him with one option.
He’d have to break into her house. Wait until she got back from work, if she’d already gone. Otherwise, he’d face her in the next twenty minutes. The woman who had gotten under his skin like no other, yet had remained unattainable to him.
The woman he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind since he last saw her, more than eighteen months ago.
“Shit.”
Any plans he’d dreamed up to rekindle what he hoped had been a mutual attraction were smashed like a jungle bug against a Humvee windshield. He bent over, hands on his knees as he tried to calm his breath as it came in jagged gulps. Half crouching, half leaning against the side of a huge tree that’d been washed ashore, he knew that in his dark clothing he’d be tough to spot from the air.
She’s right up above me.
He double-checked his coordinates and took in a few more deep breaths.
“Holy hell.” His body wasn’t that of a twenty-something anymore. Yet he had to force it to perform as it had on countless SEAL missions.
Joy Alexander’s house was on a cliff directly above him. This wasn’t the way he’d intended to see her again, but the entire nine-month operation, not to mention his life, was at risk.
You could expose her to the same danger.
Not if he made it up the cliff in short order.
He darted to the base of the cliff wall, where he hid behind a second pile of petrified trees, and pulled out his phone. He steadied his hands so he could pop the phone apart. Years of operational experience had taught him how to control the adrenaline surges inevitable in his line of work.
The phone’s SIM card snapped out easily enough, and he put it in his pocket. The rest of the phone he smashed against the rock cliff. Not because he had to—he’d already disabled the battery—but because it felt good to smash something the rat bastard terrorists had given him.
He couldn’t use this phone, and his one secure cell phone was in his vehicle. Even if he had his Bureau phone, he wouldn’t use it—not until he had time to make sure the terrorists weren’t looking for him, waiting for a cell phone signal to tip off his location. For now he had to stay alive and find a place to shelter while he figured things out.
He wiped his mind clear of all thoughts other than getting to the top of the two-hundred-foot wall in front of him.
The shale of the cliff cut his fingers, and blood dripped down his wrists. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm. Gloves would’ve been smart but they lay with his destroyed inflatable on the ocean floor.
He was going to need help. It wasn’t the how or the where that gave him pause. It was the who.
He’d done his research well. He knew exactly where she lived.
Joy.
Why was it that his only chance to untangle the vicious web that had almost destroyed him lay with the one woman he didn’t want to bring into this mess? A woman who’d sacrificed six months of her life to help him and another innocent man. A woman he wanted to meet under better circumstances. He wanted to thank her properly. And yes, ask her out.
You don’t have a choice. You need her help.
If there’d been anyone else, someone he wouldn’t have on his conscience if things went south, he’d go to that person. He wished he could talk to Mike, his boss. FBI Agent Michael Rubio, former Navy SEAL and now Brad’s boss at the Bureau. Mike had been on his SEAL team, and they’d worked together on operational missions for most of a decade. Mike had sent him to monitor Whidbey and to bring back hard Intel on the people surveilling the area for a possible terrorist attack.
He couldn’t take the chance of giving his location away with a cellular communication. Plus, Mike would have too many questions. Brad didn’t have time for questions.
Because this op had taken a major detour in the bright blaze of an explosion. An explosion he’d caused. Justifiably, but the local cops weren’t going to wait for him to explain that part. He also had to keep the über-classified nature of this mission in mind.
His rigorous training meant his thoughts could wander as he struggled up the cliff. And that kept the enormity of the physical task he had to accomplish more manageable.
How the hell had a small-town domestic terrorist cell obtained a surface-to-air missile? If they wanted to provoke a response from Naval Air Station Whidbey, why hadn’t they tried something on land? Was this to see what the Navy’s local capabilities were?
No fewer than a dozen scenarios fought for priority in his overtaxed mind. The terrorist cell he’d been sent to infiltrate had seemed amateur at best, Taliban or al Qaeda wannabes.
He hadn’t believed they were connected to anything on a grander scale. Until yesterday.
Channeling his frustration into the energy he needed to climb the cliff side was another survival tactic he’d used innumerable times. He’d never had to use it in his own country, though.
Anger made the blood roar in his ears. There were terrorists running free on Whidbey Island, and they’d almost succeeded in shooting down a US Navy aircraft.
His toehold, a small ledge, crumbled as he tried to cling to it, and his ribs slammed against the rough wall. An involuntary grunt left his chest, along with his air.
Focus, breathe, reach, climb.
He’d done this kind of thing when he was in worse shape. He remembered scaling an enemy compound wall with broken ribs and a collapsed lung... The searing pain in his side didn’t come close to the pain of past injuries.
The image of a beautiful woman with a voice as sexy as any he’d ever known flashed in front of him.
The same woman he hadn’t been able to erase from his mind in the year and a half since he’d seen her.
Joy.
He wished it was only the pain, the shock of his predicament, that made him think of her.
Had he really thought he’d be able to wrap up this case and then go reintroduce himself? After eighteen months of no contact, except reading her Facebook page via the fake one he’d created? Not that he’d been keeping track as he faced down the devil himself and came through the hell that was his life those last six months of active duty.
He wished, too, that he had someone else, anyone other than Joy, to rely on. Anyone other than the woman who’d already done so much for him and his colleague.
Now he had to ask her to trust him again—but without the evidence he’d provided in Norfolk. He gritted his teeth. Joy Alexander deserved better than to be drawn into the reach of such evil.
But you need her intelligence, her skill...her.
His fingers ached, and he wasn’t even halfway up the cliff. Worrying about Joy was just his brain’s way of distracting him from his discomfort. Another operational habit.
Schedules
