Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(16)

“Who were you talking to?” Zane asked with a long, slow look around the bedroom.

Ah hell, apparently the cabin walls hadn’t muffled his voice. Of course the living room windows were open . . . Rawls groaned beneath his breath in disgust. This was exactly why he’d taken to hiding out in the woods.

“Nobody.” At Zane’s raised brow, Rawls shrugged. “Talkin’ to myself. Ain’t no crime in that.”

A tense silence settled over the room.

Zane was the one to break it. “You know we’ve got your back. No matter what. You can tell us what the hell’s going on.”

Yeah? How was he supposed to tell his best friend that he was quite possibly certifiably crazy—as in actually certifiably crazy? What was the protocol for that conversation? A case of Coors, a jumbo bag of chips, a ball game on the telly, and during the intermission just throw the admission out there like a mortar shell?

“Goddamn it”—frustration tightened Zane’s voice—“you forget what being a member of ST7 means?”

Rawls stared at the ground so hard his eyes burned. He knew exactly what being on the team meant. Unqualified, absolute support from your teammates. But hell, there were certain qualifications an operator had to possess to secure that spot in the Zodiac. One of those qualifications was mental health, and the very definition of mental health was the absence of delusions involving ghosts.

How many of his teammates would jump into the beach boat beside him if they knew he was stuck in his own production of The Sixth Sense?

“Fine.” Zane released a sharp breath and tightened his shoulders. Rawls knew him well enough to catch the displeasure and frustration lurking beneath his flat expression. “As soon as the chopper returns, we’re headed out to grab Amy’s kids and Cosky’s mom.” When Rawls’s head came up, Zane shook his. “You’re sitting this one out, holding down camp.”

Rawls simply nodded, unsurprised. His LC’s caution was well placed—they both knew it. He couldn’t be trusted during the risky mobilization of a team insertion when lack of focus could result in casualties.

Zane cocked his head and studied Rawls’s face for a moment, as though expecting a protest, before continuing. “Keep an eye on Beth for me. This morning sickness is giving her hell, but she needs to eat. She likes French toast. Maybe ask Faith to make some?” At Rawls’s nod, Zane hesitated and shrugged. “Wolf’s leaving one of his guys to help out in case of trouble.”

Rawls’s lips twisted. Wasn’t that sweet? They were leaving a babysitter for the babysitter. He forced the self-disgust aside and concentrated on the subtext of the conversation. Someone must have talked to Wolf over the sat phone. What else had Wolf told them?

“Did Wolf say when he’s returnin’ to camp?” Rawls asked, working like hell to keep his expression neutral and his eyes away from the corner where Pachico was silently following the conversation.

Something told him Wolf was the key to dealing with his ghost.

Zane’s brows crinkled. “He didn’t say. He flew off with Jillian. He’s not coming back for the op, but he’s sending his pilot and his second.”

Rawls nodded and swallowed the rest of his questions. If Wolf had told them about Rawls’s ghost, Pachico’s name would have been the first thing out of his LC’s mouth.

“We’re sending the women and the kids to my dad’s doomsday friends. I know you’re not close to your father, but you should contact him, convince him to join—”

“He’s dead,” Rawls interrupted.

Surprise swept Zane’s face and then it closed down like storm shutters during a hurricane. “When?”

Rawls held his lieutenant commander’s icy green gaze. He’d known from the get-go that withholding the news of his father’s death and flying out alone for the funeral would eventually rouse confusion and ire with Zane and Cos. “Fixin’ on a year now.”

“A year . . .” Zane shook his head, the ice turning brittle in his eyes. “Those two weeks you disappeared to visit some gal back east?”

“I visited her while I was there.” Which wasn’t exactly a lie. He had visited Alyssa, which had been every bit as uncomfortable as the memorial and the two weeks of funeral arrangements.

“You’re full of surprises.”

Zane’s flat, cold comment stung, but Rawls shook the bite off. He didn’t regret keeping his friends out of that personal and painful intrusion from his past life. His teammates, for all their closeness, didn’t know who Seth Rawlings was. Hell, they didn’t even know his real name. Shrugging off his old life had been the entire purpose of joining the navy, of qualifying for the teams, of convincing HQ1 to let him join a platoon as a corpsman, rather than sticking him in the bowels of some naval hospital removed from the action. He’d been determined to erase that clueless, pampered child, determined to make sure he’d never face such helplessness again, and he had developed the skills necessary for survival.

If he’d told Zane and Cos about his dad’s death, they would have insisted on heading out to Columbia, South Carolina, with him, where they would have heard far too quickly about William Crosby Seth Rawlings—the self-absorbed son of one of South Carolina’s oldest families—and how his pathetic, ill-prepared, good-ol’-boy lifestyle had gotten his baby sister tortured and murdered.