Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(105)

He headed for the building at a run, the backpack bumping along behind him, ignoring the stitch in his side. Faith kept pace beside him.

Amid the flickering red-orange wash bathing the front lawn, shadows stirred, sat up, climbed to their feet.

Upon reaching the first hulking shadow sitting on the ground, he released the backpack and dropped to his knees. He didn’t realize his patient was Zane until the dark head lifted and a lean hand waved him off. Relief hit hard but disappeared almost instantly. Cosky and Mac had been in that building too.

“I’m good,” Zane said, his voice so loud Rawls actually heard it through the ringing in his ears. “Find Cos. Mac.”

Since his LC was coherent and mobile—or as mobile as one could get while stiffly climbing to their feet—Rawls snatched up his backpack and raced farther in field. The stitch started up again, only to suddenly vanish. He found Cosky shaking his head and stumbling to his feet. The heady blast of relief lasted a few seconds before it evaporated.

Where, sweet Christ, is Mac?

In the distance, above the trees, chopper blades beat the air.

Wolf suddenly appeared before him, his rigid face streaked with dirt and blood, his braid partially free and streaming down his broad shoulders. Rage, along with other dark emotions, sizzled in the air surrounding him.

Burnished by the fiery haze of the fire, he looked like an omen of death and destruction.

“Get everyone on the bird,” Wolf said tersely.

“Mac?” Rawls caught his elbow before he could turn away.

“To the right. Your buddies are with him.” Wolf shook Rawls’s hand loose and started to walk away.

“Gilbert and the rest of . . .” Faith’s voice trailed off entreatingly.

From the expression of dawning grief on her face, she already suspected the answer.

Wolf stopped and swung back to face her with a silent shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Ansell, they’d cleaned the building before we arrived. There were no survivors.” Without waiting for her response, he walked away.

“Cleaned?”

The ringing in his ears had subsided, but her question was so low he read it on her lips, rather than heard it. Sliding an arm around her waist, he leaned in to brush a kiss across her forehead.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered against her ear.

She slumped into him for a moment, pressing her face into his neck. The warm wetness of tears trickled down his neck and then she straightened.

Scrubbing her eyes, she shook herself. “We should see to the injured.”

He nodded, frowning in annoyance as that damnable stitch in his side returned.

“Zane and Cosky are over there,” Faith said, pointing to the right.

Rawls followed the direction of her finger and instantly recognized Zane and Cosky’s lean frames clustered around Mac’s stocky one. The commander was up, and without support—both good signs.

Thank Christ.

This time the relief was a sustained, steady burn—at least until he bent down to pick up the backpack, and the low-grade pinch in his right side morphed into a sharp, stabbing pain.

What the hell?

He straightened carefully, and reached down to probe his wet side . . . wet? When his fingers gently pressed the soaked area, a greasy wave of agony just about knocked him on his ass. He broke out in an icy, breathless sweat.

Well, hell. This he didn’t need.

Raising his hand, he shifted until he faced the fiery-orange jack-o-lantern burning across the lawn. Even through the ruddy glow glossing his hand, he could see the wet sheen of blood.




Faith studied Rawls’s face through the night vision goggles. The fluorescent glow that rinsed everything from trees to skin the same shade of crisp green made it possible to pick out facial features, but not expressions. But there was something troublesome about his stillness as he stared at his hand. Something worrisome about the sudden clench of his muscles.

Grief over the deaths of her coworkers gave way to concern. She stepped closer to Rawls, angling her head to get a better look at his hand since it seemed to have transfixed him. But the goggles she wore presented his flesh in shades of luminous green.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but her words were drowned beneath the whop-whop-whop of the approaching helicopter.

To get his attention, she reached out to touch his arm, surprised to find his jacket damp and cold against her fingertips. His clothing shouldn’t be wet. It hadn’t been raining. The forest had been dry. They hadn’t even pulled the water bottles out of his backpack. There was absolutely no reason for wet clothes . . . unless . . .

The snap of a twig. Rawls spinning, shoving her to the ground, and crouching in front of her. The muffled crack of a gunshot. The thunk of bullets in the tree trunk above them.

Had one of the bullets penetrated his backpack and hit a water bottle? But he’d been facing the shooter with his pack on the ground behind him. For a bullet to hit a water bottle, it would have had to go through him.

Or . . . her stomach rolled and bile climbed her throat.

Had he been shot?

No, he couldn’t have been. They’d been attacked over five minutes ago. If he’d been shot, she would have known. He would have shown signs of trauma.

“Rawls.” Her voice emerged sharper this time and much louder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’.”