Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(11)

“What makes you think I picked up a ghost?” Rawls asked.

“I know you crossed over. I know you walked the other side. I know you brought a biitei through the veil on return.” With each clipped sentence, Wolf’s voice hardened.

A denial teetered on Rawls’s tongue, but he couldn’t force it out. Damn it—he was tired of pretending. He was tired of not knowing. He wanted answers. “I died?”

“You deny this?” Wolf asked, anger flashing across his square face. He planted his thick black boots and glared.

“I ain’t denyin’ anything. Zane and Cos—they said I had a pulse.”

Wolf didn’t respond, but the anger faded.

“Hold up now,” Rawls said, studying Wolf’s inscrutable face intensely. “How’d you know there’s a ghost?”

Which was as close to a confirmation as he intended to get. While his teammates clearly knew something was wrong, they hadn’t identified the problem yet.

Thank you, Jesus.

Wolf’s black stare flattened. “Who was the biitei?”

“I reckon I ain’t sayin’ there is a ghost”—Rawls tried to lighten his drawl—“but if there was a transparent troll hangin’ around, it’d most likely be Pachico, our old friend from the lab.”

Which reminded him. It wasn’t like the * to stand on the sidelines when the conversation was so wickedly ironic. He glanced to the left, then the right, finally turning in a slow circle.

What the devil?

Pachico had vanished.

An icy chill washed down his back. For the second time in less than a week, the ground heaved beneath his feet. Pachico was gone? Rawls winced, massaging his temples, as a hell of a pounding shook his head.

What the hell? Had the * even existed?

Maybe he had been a hallucination.

But then Wolf’s words flashed through his mind. The big guy clearly knew there was a ghost. Hell, he appeared to know more about Rawls’s current situation than Rawls did himself.

Wolf dropped his arms, his body tensing. “The heebii3soo Jillian killed?”

“That’s the one,” Rawls confirmed absently, scanning the grassy field and scraggly brush surrounding him.

“Your shirt. The one you crossed over in. Where is it?”

“I tossed it.” The question, odd as it was, barely pierced his obsession with the whereabouts of Pachico.

Where had the ghost gone? How had he gone? For the past five days he’d been leashed to Rawls, unable to stray more than a dozen feet, expressing his frustration in the most annoying ways possible. And now he suddenly up and vanished? Why? What had changed? Rawls froze as the answer hit.

Wolf.

Wolf had appeared, and Pachico had disappeared. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Faith’s arrival hadn’t driven the ghost off.

He swung around to confront his host in time to witness the Arapaho warrior dive into the tree line, apparently heading back to camp at warp speed.

Rawls started after him, heading for the west edge of camp and the back of Wolf’s cabin. With luck, he could avoid the rest of his camp mates. But just as he dived into the forest at the camp’s perimeter, the distinct whop-whop-whop of chopper blades beat the air. The devil take it—there was no doubt in his mind that Wolf was on that bird. Rawls changed directions, heading for the north edge of camp and the helipad. He broke through the trees just in time to see the bird bank and climb into the sky, Wolf clearly visible in the passenger seat.




“Sure as hell they have eyes on your boys. You realize that, right? A rendezvous will spring a trap,” Commander Mackenzie growled, bracing his fists against the table.

Faith Ansell glanced at the drama taking place across the kitchen counter. The three SEALs might outweigh the petite redhead by a collective five hundred pounds, but Amy Chastain certainly held her ground. Did the woman’s self-confidence come from her years as a special agent with the FBI prior to her marriage and subsequent widowing? After all, climbing the ranks of the bureau’s good old boys’ club was certain to instill a belief in one’s own abilities.

Mackenzie’s voice rose at Amy’s lack of response. “You go in half-cocked and you’ll get yourself and those boys killed. I guarantee it.”

Faith flinched as Mackenzie’s voice scaled the walls of the combined kitchen, dining room, and strategy center. The commander, she’d discovered, employed two volumes—normal and nuclear. Too bad he didn’t come with a kill switch, like Big Ben, the particle accelerator in her lab. If Benny threw off his calibration and started thundering, she just flipped the switch and shut his bellowing down.

“I’m not asking you”—Amy’s cool hazel gaze touched Mackenzie’s face, and then Zane’s, and finally Cosky’s—“any of you, to come with me.”

In contrast to the commander’s voice, Amy’s was calm, the very definition of moderation. Yet it hit the edgy air like an electrostatic generator, shedding high-voltage sparks.

“The hell you aren’t. You know damn well we can’t let you go alone,” Mackenzie thundered, even louder than before.

Faith winced and rubbed her temples. Lord, the man gave her a headache.

“This isn’t open to debate. I’m going.” Amy set her jaw, pulled back her shoulders, and squared her feet, settling into a boxer’s stance, but with weapons composed of words rather than fists. “They aren’t safe with my parents. And Mom and Dad aren’t safe with the boys there. I’m taking them. Period.”