Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(95)

It was mayhem.

Every emergency vehicle in west Texas seemed to have converged on the scene. Gage spotted the missing tango face down in the dirt, where a team of FBI agents had him pinned to the ground as they shouted commands.

“Brewer!”

He spun around to see Reid jogging toward him. Gage jumped to his feet and wiped the dust from his brow with the back of his arm. “Two tangos in the tunnel,” he told the fed. “One cuffed, one dead. Your bomb tech’s down there, too.”

Several agents in SWAT gear pushed Gage aside and dropped down through the hole. Gage turned back to Reid. “Where’s Kelsey?” he demanded.

At his blank look, Gage shoved past him and plowed through the sea of people. He saw firemen, federal agents, hazmat workers, but no baseball cap with an auburn ponytail sticking out the back. Cursing, he scanned the scene again.

And then he saw her. She was yelling at some guy in an FBI windbreaker as another one tried to restrain her. Gage moved toward her, and her gaze landed on him just as she looked like she was about to deck the guy.

“Gage!” She shook off the agent and charged toward him. “Oh my God! Are you okay? I thought you were dead !”

“Goddamn you, Kelsey!” Gage caught her by the shoulders and shook her. “What the hell were you thinking jumping into an op like that?”





Ten

Kelsey’s hands were still trembling as she scooped her last bit of clothing off the floor of the motel room and zipped it into her bag. That was it. She had everything. She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the note she’d written before her shower. She’d leave it on the pillow, where Gage would be sure to see it when he returned from the debriefing.

But one look at the bed they’d shared last night had her pulse racing—not from fear but something else. On second thought, she’d leave the note on the dresser. As she put it there, the door opened, and Gage stepped into the room.

She took in everything at once—the grimy clothes, the muddy boots, the line of dried blood down the side of his face. It trailed down from a nasty-looking knot on his head, a knot she was fairly sure he’d sustained when the force of his own bomb blast had thrown him to the floor of that tunnel.

The same bomb blast that had caused Kelsey’s heart to stop. And even after the dust had settled, and he’d come up from that hole and let loose a flood of curses, it still hadn’t started beating again. It wasn’t until hours later that her pulse finally returned to normal because she knew he was okay. Angry as hell, sure, but not dead.

Glaring at her now, he crossed the dumpy motel room and began stripping off his clothes.

“Going someplace?” He flung his T-shirt on the bed and glanced at the duffel slung over her shoulder.

“Thought I’d go back to the dig site, see if Mia needs a hand with anything.”

His expression hardened as he leaned over to unlace his boot. He threw it into the corner of the room with a thomp that made Kelsey jump a little. The other boot followed. And an instant later she had a giant, sweaty SEAL glowering down at her.

“Why are you shaking?” he demanded.

“It’s cold in here.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s been an emotional day. And night,” she added, glancing at the window where the neon glow of the VACANCY sign now seeped through the flimsy blinds. The ordeal at the tunnel and the ensuing chaos and questions and formal debriefings had dragged on for hours. And still she hadn’t managed to regain her equilibrium. Every time she looked at Gage she got the shakes all over again.

He could have died in that tunnel. He could have died because of her. And even without her, he could still die, on any day, for a thousand different reasons, and each one of them had to do with the fact that he was a soldier.

“You were going to take off, weren’t you?” His voice was low and dangerous, and Kelsey stepped back.

He took her elbow and jerked her to him. “Weren’t you?”

“I wrote you a note.”

Anger and something else—hurt? disappointment?—flashed in his eyes. “Do you have any idea how much you scared me today?” His grip tightened. “Do you have any idea how much I care about you?”

She gazed up at him, wide-eyed, and gave a tiny shake of her head.

He pulled her up to him and crushed his mouth down on hers. She opened hers up to him and finally, finally found a way to tell him everything she hadn’t been able to say in the note. She told him with her tongue, her teeth, her arms coiled around his neck as she clung to him. And he understood all of it, she knew, because he lifted her right off her feet and deposited her on the dresser, right on top of the note he didn’t want to read, all the while jerking her shirt up and over her head and pulling her bra off and attaching that hot, angry mouth of his to her breast.

She leaned back and wrapped herself around him and let him take all that anger out on her, one kiss at a time.

KELSEY AWOKE TO find the sun casting stripes of light across the half-empty bed. Her heart gave a little lurch. She sat up and glanced around. She heard the low murmur of Gage’s voice on the other side of the motel room door.

Soon the door opened and he stepped inside, wearing only his faded blue jeans. His gaze locked on hers as he tucked the phone into his pocket and came to sit beside her on the bed.