Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(10)

She tensed, and for a moment it looked like he’d unintentionally managed to drive her away. But then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, holding his gaze. His lips twitched; there was that spirit again.

“Rumor has it you went to medical school.”

He’d bet his med kit that rumor had focused on his loss of sanity even more than his aborted medical career, not that he had any interest in digging up either subject. Besides, he doubted she’d gone to the effort to track him down to drill him about his schooling.

“And?” He scanned her inflexible figure and the heat in his belly spiked.

She looked fine. Okay, not exactly fine—she was too thin to fit that description.

He’d noticed how skinny she was four and a half months earlier at gate C-18 in Sea-Tac Airport. He still wasn’t sure why she’d caught his attention back then—she sure as hell hadn’t looked like a terrorist. But something about her had snared his gaze over and over again.

Her thinness had been readily apparent when they’d broken into her incinerated lab six days earlier and stumbled upon her shimmying her way beneath the particle accelerator. The woman seriously needed to eat, although if she hadn’t been thirty pounds underweight, she’d never have fit beneath the machine. Hell, she’d been light as a kitten, and as combustible as C4, when he’d dragged her out from beneath the machine and half carried her from the building.

She’d also been covered in scratches. Scratches she’d refused to let him tend . . . He swore beneath his breath and ran a palm over his head. “I knew I should have ignored your objections and insisted on dressin’ those gashes—”

“The cuts are healing appropriately,” she interrupted.

His gaze was drawn to the thick band of freckles marching across her upper cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her coloring was . . . unusual. Freckles were more visible on people with fair coloring. Yet her skin tone had a distinct olive tint to it, and her hair shone with blue-black luster.

And her eyes—deep, dark blue . . . He jerked his gaze away, struggling to remember where he’d been going with his train of thought.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, you moron, kiss her already. Get her out of that shirt. Let’s see some tits.”

Pachico’s loud voice knocked him out of his stupor. He stepped back, scanning her face—relieved to find her expression unchanging. At least she hadn’t noticed his momentary lapse.

“I’ll bite, sweetheart,” Rawls said, working overtime on his drawl. “If you don’t need me to tend them cuts, what do you need me for?”

Her eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed again. The tight skin of her forehead furrowed as she pressed her lips together.

Just maybe that question had come off more sexual than he’d intended.

“Never mind,” she said, and pivoted with such precision, she would have done the naval ceremonial guard proud.

“Now, darlin’.” He stepped forward, fixing to chase after her. “Don’t—”

“Rawlings.” A deep baritone barked from behind him.

Rawls spun to face the new threat and found himself face-to-face with the bulky, broad-shouldered frame of Kait’s Arapaho friend. Hell, the man moved as silently as an operator—of course, according to Kait, he headed some super-secret Special Forces team, which elevated him to an operator of sorts.

He shot Faith’s departing back a frustrated glance and forced an easy smile as he turned back to Wolf. “Thought you knew better than surprisin’ a person like that, hoss. Surefire way to get yourself gutted.”

Then again, it was a good thing Wolf didn’t have a hankering to use that wicked knife strapped to his belt, ’cause Rawls would have been the one filleted.

He was in pretty sorry shape, damn it. First Faith had managed to surprise him, and now Wolf. Inexcusable. He needed to screw his damn head back on. If the bastards hunting them pinpointed their new camp and stumbled onto him lollygagging off in oblivion . . . hell, his mental meltdown was going to get him dead. Get his whole team dead. Time to man up and start acting like an operator.

“A word.” Wolf let go of Rawls’s arm and crossed thick arms across a wide chest.

Rawls shrugged, forcing himself to hold his host’s hard, black gaze. “Have at it.”

Wolf glanced from side to side, his black brows drawing together. “Is it here?”

Tilting his head, Rawls studied Wolf’s face. His new friend’s tone had been raspier than normal, with an undercurrent of unease. “What?”

“The biitei.” The normally velvety baritone roughened.

With a roll of his shoulders, Rawls sucked back a tired breath. Christ, he needed a few solid hours of sleep. “You’re gonna have to speak English, hoss.”

Wolf’s lips tightened, and the disquiet lurking in his voice shadowed his face. “The biitei. He who walked the other side. He who followed you across the threshold.”

The other side?

That strange, ethereal dream rose in Rawls’s mind. “What’s a biitei?”

Wolf actually hesitated before offering a shrug. “Ghost.”

Pure shock rocked Rawls back on his heels. “You believe in ghosts?”

An asinine question since the big guy had just suggested Rawls had brought one back from the other side . . . which happened to be a pretty apt description of that eerie, silvery world in his dream.