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The last trial of her Norfolk tour that resulted from the brief time in Guantanamo Bay had almost done her in. It had convinced her that her Afghani defendant was innocent, however, and she took the case to trial in Norfolk.
That took six grueling months, but with the help of an honest SEAL and other operatives who gave their testimony, she’d been able to free an Afghan man who’d been wrongly apprehended, a true victim of circumstance. He was safely in the Witness Security Program, his life under the protection of US Marshals.
She’d also been able to help the same SEAL keep his name free of any accusation of wrongdoing. The case had changed her in an elemental way and reminded her why the fight for justice was paramount.
The SEAL had affected her more than any other man in her life...
She opened her eyes.
Her phone lay on the kitchen counter where she’d left it. She should call the base, the police or at least her new boss and tell someone what she’d witnessed.
Her hands jerkily grabbed the pink-cased phone. Immense vibrations shook the porch screens as the wap wap wap of SH-60 helicopters burst through the air. Any sailor who’d spent time around a Navy base, air station or on board a ship knew the sound meant help was on the way.
She wasn’t the only one who’d seen that explosion. That was the sound of the Naval Air Station’s Search and Rescue team. For ejected aircrew, floating in the ocean awaiting their ride back to the aircraft carrier or nearest land, it was a lifeline. In this case, she wasn’t sure who could have survived an explosion that made an entire boat disappear in a matter of seconds.
An ugly premonition raised goose bumps on her arms. She was afraid that people had been lost in the fiery blast. This far away, her binoculars too weak, she couldn’t tell.
She looked for the return of the P-8 or P-3. They were reconnaissance platforms; it was in their mission description to find mishap clues.
Today was the start of her life as a civilian. Yet one terrible act, and she was back in uniform mode, even if she wore a fancy suit and dress shoes that made her feel feminine.
She cradled the phone. The emergency and NAS operators would be inundated with calls. Would the details of what she’d seen make a meaningful difference to any aircrew at this point? SAR was on the scene. She could wait and phone in her observations after she’d finished getting ready for work...
Then she changed her mind and quickly dialed 9-1-1.
With one blast, she might be in the middle of an international terrorist event. And late for her first day of work.
* * *
FBI AGENT BRAD IVERSON didn’t stop swearing the entire time he raced along the rocky shore of Whidbey’s West Beach. The inflatable powerboat he’d driven back, landing within yards of the shore, was safely destroyed and lay at the bottom of Puget Sound. His clothes were wet and cold, but that wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before.
But he’d never had to take out an enemy, not since he’d left the Navy and become a civilian agent.
Getting the hell out of sight and—he hoped—to his vehicle, where he could securely call his boss, was priority one. Because the remaining three suspects in the domestic terrorist cell he’d infiltrated during his current undercover op couldn’t be allowed to find him. As soon as they suspected he’d neutralized their fourth man, they’d be after him. If they captured him, they’d throw him in a pit and keep him there, until either their deadly mission was complete or he died—preferably both.
Brad thanked God for his Navy SEAL background and, currently, his FBI training. It had saved his life. Now he had to prevent anyone else from becoming a target.
A sharp rock punched through the bottom of his running shoes and his ankle twisted too far to the right. Brad ignored the jolt of pain that flashed up the side of his leg.
He had minutes. As he took in the beach’s length he could see flashing lights.
Damn it. Getting to his car wasn’t happening, not now.
He couldn’t afford the time it would take to explain himself to local law enforcement. He didn’t even have his badge on him; it was safely locked in his desk drawer at the Bureau in Seattle, standard procedure when you were undercover.
He had to avoid being seen. The terrorists couldn’t figure out he was still alive, not yet. An unintended camera shot of his face on the local news could prove disastrous to the Bureau’s entire operation.
Past missions had seared the thin line between life and death into his soul. He’d hauled shipmates, alive and dead, off the battlefield. Brad knew death, and he knew failure. Neither were strangers.
But he wasn’t 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 and crises had prevented him from connecting with her sooner. Clearing his name of a murder allegation had been another stumbling block, to say the least.
If he involved her in this op, there was no longer any hope of ever having more with her than what they’d always had—business. And yet, she was the only woman who’d completely believed in him, as a Navy sailor, a SEAL, a man.
Navy Lieutenant Commander Joy Alexander.
A wisp of memory drifted through his adrenaline-soaked mind—the tall, curvy Navy JAG he’d worked with, the attorney who’d defended him. It’d been a tough case.
She’d been tougher.
They’d made a good team. For six long months in the legal offices of Naval Station Norfolk, they’d slugged it out, seeking justice for an Afghan villager anyone else might have presumed guilty. It certainly would’ve been easier than facing down the entire United States Justice System with what initially looked like almost zero evidence.
Joy hadn’t given up from the very first minute they were introduced. In the aftermath of their trial win, his days had become bleak—for other reasons. He’d thought back to how she’d looked on that last day as she drove out of the legal building’s parking lot and waved goodbye.
He’d followed her Facebook posts while she was aboard the USS Lincoln,and then after, when she’d moved here to Whidbey. Brad didn’t post on Facebook; he lurked solely as a means of keeping in touch with the few old friends he had left. Joy had gotten out of the Navy and stayed on the West Coast to start over as a civvie.
He’d hoped to show up, take her on a date. If he got past his wariness over chasing a woman he still thought about. A woman he’d made love to in his mind countless times.
Like him, she’d been a loner. Dedicated to the pursuit of freedom and justice for all. The job was starting to wear on her; he’d seen it back then. He’d felt the same way. Dedicating your life to your country at eighteen, fresh out of high school, was noble and needed. Democracy had to be protected. Terrorists had to be stopped.
By thirty, the thrill of adrenaline rushes started to break down your body, no matter how fit you were, how dedicated. By thirty-five, you realized that the hard jobs were meant to be done by younger shipmates.
From what he’d gleaned, Joy had led a relatively charmed Navy career. Still, as they worked on the case together, he’d seen the fatigue shadowing her, too.
He knew she’d felt the attraction between them—he’d seen it in her glances, the way her hand crept to her throat in an unconscious defense mechanism. If they’d met elsewhere, some situation in which he wasn’t an enlisted SEAL and she wasn’t a Naval Officer JAG, their relationship might have played out very differently.
A different ending was what he’d hoped for when he saw that she’d gotten out of the Navy, too. They were both civilians now, free to take up with whomever they wanted.
And then he’d been assigned this mission.
You’ll never be free.
As he pulled himself over the edge of the cliff and onto grass that felt surprisingly soft after the rough-hewn cliff side, he figured he had three more minutes to make it inside her place.
Good thing he was in her backyard.
He’d memorized her address and the surrounding locale back at the office, when he’d done a search on her, just in case.
In case he had a chance to ask her out. Instead, he had to ask her for help. Again. He vowed to get what he needed and get out before the terrorists knew he’d been here, before Joy could wind up like his ex-fiancée.
Dead.
The question he’d ignored, the question he had to disregard, nipped at his conscience.
How are you going to let her go a second time?
* * *
“WE’LL HAVE A deputy out there as soon as we can, ma’am.”
“I have to report to work in an hour. Can I give you my work address and they can take my statement there?”
“No, ma’am.” The emergency operator’s voice was firm. Practiced in getting panicked people to tell her what she needed.
Joy wasn’t panicked. But she was getting annoyed.
“I’m just trying to do my civic duty. I’m an attorney, if that helps. Former Navy JAG.” It was a little bittersweet, saying former, but thrilling to think of her new life, too.
“Then you’ll understand, ma’am, why we need you to stay put. As you can imagine, we’re getting a lot of calls at the moment. Call and tell your boss you’ll be late, and an officer will be at your home, either from Oak Harbor PD or the sheriff’s office.”
“Fine.”
She disconnected and made a quick call to the firm’s receptionist as she hurried to her bedroom. Maggie picked up immediately.
“I’m so sorry to do this on my first day, but it’s unavoidable.”
