Under Fire (Elite Force 3)

And if he stayed in the air force, well, the odds didn’t bode well for military marriages, especially ones around his career field. “I’ve got a chance here with Rachel and I don’t want to wreck it by making the same mistakes all over again.”

“Then don’t make ’em. You aren’t that guy from before. It’s that simple.”

Could it be that easy? Could the kid be right in teaching the old guy?

Jose James pushed away from the wall. “Look for a purple Jeep. Sorry about the color. It was the only Wrangler at the rental place. Enjoy your ride, sir.”

Liam watched Cuervo all the way into the dark parking lot, where he climbed into a silver sports car with Data at the wheel.

As they drove off, Rachel stepped around a cubicle wall, wearing borrowed surgical scrubs and holding an ice pack to her jaw. Butterfly bandages held together a split in her lip and another along her temple. He wanted to reach for her, but wasn’t sure where it would be safe to touch her.

“Are you okay?”

“Bill’s paid. Doctor says I’ll be fine. No broken bones. Just a whopper bruise. The general hits like a girl.” She snorted on a laugh, then winced. “Okay, moratorium on jokes for a while.”

He rethought his stance on kicking the crap out of the guy. He readjusted the ice pack over the Technicolor bruise climbing up from her jaw. “Maybe we should go back in to see the doc again.”

“I’m all right, Liam, really.” She tapped his temple. “Think like a medic and you’ll be able to dial back the worry. But what about you? Are you okay? What you did to save me up there… that was nuts.”

“I’m fine. Didn’t have to hammer my old knees with a jump, so it’s all good.” He waved away discussion of their time in the air, for the most part still a blur to him because he’d been so in the zone, focused completely on the mission. Maybe later he could decompress it, pull it out to examine for others to use in future rescues.

For now, he only wanted to think about Rachel, alive. Thank God, alive.

Looping an arm around her shoulders, he tucked her against his side, carefully, watching for the least flinch from her. “Let’s go home.”

“Where would that be?” She glanced up at him, her brown eyes dark, serious.

“Home with me,” he said as the electric doors swooshed open.

She didn’t argue, which he hoped meant she agreed. She just walked alongside him quietly, step for step in sync, like when he was with his team. Somewhere along the way, she’d become his partner, and he’d almost stupidly thrown that away.

He angled his head so he could smell her hair as the wind tossed it around. “I was thinking you could recover at my place, since you’re currently homeless. I keep a clean house—should hold up to chick standards. My mom taught me that too, along with cooking, to make sure I was independent, you know, for after she died.”

Dredging up that little painful nugget from his childhood hadn’t been easy, but he was trying to be Joe Sensitive here, opening up and sharing something of himself the way the counselors had always been digging at him to do. Would she recognize that he was trying?

“Your mom sounds like a wise and practical woman.” She glanced up, her jaw purple, her eyes full of… him. “Do you have a picture of her at your house?”

“I do. A few of them in an album tucked away.”

“Good, I would like to see them.”

And just that easily, she’d agreed to go with him. As Cuervo said, sometimes life was just that simple.

“First thing tomorrow,” he promised. “I’ll find them.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Can we pick up the dogs at Sunny’s on the way home tonight?”

He exhaled, hard, relief whooshing through him as they made plans, wove their lives together. “Of course.”>And for their information, Lieutenant Brandon Harris was an air force security cop himself, and she was his girlfriend. Finally, finally, a sympathetic night shift nurse ushered her back if she promised to keep things quiet, and if the guard outside his door gave the okay.

“Of course,” Catriona said primly. “I’m always quiet.”

She ignored the chuckle from the wiry, older nurse and the guard as she pushed the door open into Brandon’s ICU room.

One look at him and tears clogged her nose. There were oxygen tubes. IVs dripped meds and what looked like a transfusion. His face was pale and puffy. Gauze was wrapped around his chest, his whole chest. How many times had he been shot? How many new scars on top of old ones would he have to bear for his country?

The nurse patted her shoulder. “He made it through surgery. That’s a good thing. You can sit with him and hold his hand. I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”

“Thank you…” Catriona choked out the words, trying to smile.