There was a stillness to the air that unnerved her. No sound except the occasional breeze through the pines disturbed the night. No moon shone. The sky was black, the stars blanketed by heavy cloud cover.
For the first hour she kept her mind purposely blank, not wanting the distraction of letting her thoughts wander. The second hour she wondered how D was doing and if he was worried. Of course he was worried. But she hoped he kept his faith in her abilities.
The third hour she allowed herself to think about Jonah and just how pissed he was at her. Then she wondered if Jonah had taken off to overtake her, and had Mad Dog stayed behind with Damiano? Mad Dog would have wanted to go.
That was a kink in her plan she hadn’t considered.
If both Jonah and Mad Dog pursued her, then that left D alone on the island with only the Falcon security team to help him.
She put her face in her hands and rubbed tiredly over her eyes.
Impulsive. Impetuous.
They were words that Jonah would hurl at her. He would accuse her of compromising Falcon for her own means, of putting her own priorities ahead of the team. And he’d be right on all counts.
But she wouldn’t apologize. Not for putting D first. He came before her. Before Falcon.
At six hours she still stared broodingly into the dark, willing the dawn to come so she would no longer be alone.
A warm mist enveloped her, and she relaxed, the tension in her body dissipating as Eli wrapped himself around her, surrounding her in a light fog. He touched every part of her skin, light and seeking. A gentle sensation trailed down her cheek like the soft stroke of a painter’s brush. Slowly, he came to form in front of her, his hands on her face.
“You should have woken me before now,” he chided.
“I can sleep while you drive. You needed the rest more.”
He tugged the blanket a little tighter around her and tucked the corners beneath her chin.
“Why don’t you go back and get some sleep now?”
“I’m not tired yet,” she murmured. That wasn’t true. She was plenty tired, but she knew her brain wouldn’t shut down enough for her to sleep.
“Then keep me company for a while,” he said as he crawled up beside her.
He put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close into the shelter of his body. She relaxed and laid her head against his chest.
“Tell me about you,” she said in a near whisper. “I only know what little I could dig up when I was looking for you and back when Falcon did background before accepting the guide job into Adharji.”
“Not much to tell,” he said. “No family. That was a requirement back when CHR was a spin-off to Special Forces. No ties. No life to speak of.”
She frowned. “How did you get from being a specialized unit to leaving the military and going out on your own?”
Eli sighed. “Same reason most military teams get axed. Bureaucratic bullshit, cutbacks, changes in administration. Everyone comes in with their own agenda.”
Tyana nodded. All reasons she loved being a part of Falcon. They didn’t answer to anyone but themselves.
“Our team was formed with a take-no-prisoners attitude. We were ruthless, and we did what we had to do in order to get the job done. We had a one hundred percent hostage recovery rate. Never lost a civilian. Bad guys? Didn’t fare so well, and we didn’t give a fuck.
“Then came changes in administration. They started making noises about dismantling us. We weren’t exactly politically correct. Admin didn’t want it to get out that the U.S. supported a military team that didn’t adhere to political niceties.
“And then we had an assignment into a fuck hole in the Middle East. Several Americans were being held hostage by some fuck show who wanted the U.S. to surrender to His Royal Highness the King of Fuck-u-ban.”
He turned his head toward Tyana. “You see the bright individuals we were working with here. Obviously with those kinds of demands there was going to be no negotiating, no reasoning with these brain children.
“So we went in to recover the hostages. Things were going well until one of the women, who’d evidently decided during her captivity that she sympathized with our poor misguided terrorists, decided to take a bullet for one of her captors.
“She stepped right in front of him. Took a round to the chest. The pisser was, she didn’t even save the asshole. The bullet passed through her heart and took the guy behind her out anyway.
“We recovered the hostages and got the hell out. It was our first civilian casualty, and the guys in Washington jumped at the chance to wag a finger in our faces and disband us. There was no way I was going to let go of something I believe so strongly in.
“Ian, Braden, Gabe and I resigned and struck out on our own. The Army was more than willing to utilize our services as long as they didn’t carry the ultimate responsibility. If a mission went to shit, they could throw their hands up and deny having any knowledge of a gun-for-hire hostage recovery group.”
“Real nice,” Tyana said dryly.
“It gets better,” he said. “After what happened in Adharji, it was like we ceased to exist. We’d call needing intel, they’d pretend they didn’t know who the fuck we were. All the contacts outside the military, mostly ex-military guys with ties to the government, wouldn’t give us the time of day. I’m not convinced that the government and your Esteban weren’t in it together.”
She scowled. “He’s not my Esteban.”
He continued on, ignoring her protest. “Esteban might have been the brainchild behind the chemical that turned man into shifter, but what would he want with warriors? He planning to go to war? A pharmaceutical company?
“No, I’m thinking for him it was all about money. He’d create the freak of nature and let the U.S. government buy the product. Only it didn’t turn out as well as Esteban hoped and no way Uncle Sam would pay a dime until Esteban could produce a working prototype. In this case, me. He wouldn’t want Ian and Braden around as shining examples of his failure.”
“That makes sense,” she murmured. “It still doesn’t explain why he has no interest in Gabe, in either killing him or having him brought in alive. When Esteban approached Falcon with the job, he was very fixated on you. Less so on Ian and Braden, but then he wanted them dead. But there was never a mention of Gabe then or later when he approached me outside of Falcon.”
“No, it doesn’t make sense unless he simply doesn’t know about Gabe.”
“So you’re men without a country,” she said, foregoing the subject of Gabe for the moment.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“I guess that’s something we have in common,” she said softly.
“So what about you?” he asked as he drew her a little closer to him. “How did you join up with Falcon?”
She stiffened and realized too late that by asking Eli for personal details she would be expected to reciprocate. Her skin itched just thinking about revealing parts of herself that she hadn’t shared with anyone.
“Shouldn’t we be going?” she asked as she checked the time. By the time they got back to the truck and on the road, it would be getting light.
Eli let out a small breath. “Yeah, I guess we should.”
He stood and pulled Tyana up beside him. They started for the truck, and when they arrived, Eli opened the door to the backseat and handed her a small satellite transmitter.
“Think you can buzz your guy and have him find out what he can on Esteban’s whereabouts?”
She nodded and took the equipment before climbing into the passenger seat. As Eli cautiously drove back out to the main road, she fitted the earpiece and entered a series of commands.