Loe raamatut: «Navy Seal's Match»

CHAPTER ONE

MAN DOWN! ZACCOE’S DOWN!

The flashbacks had to stop. They came at him in the middle of the night when he was ready for them. They came at him in the middle of the day when he wasn’t.

Fall back! Get him to the Bradley!

Gavin Savitt jerked from the clutches of sleep. Colors bled through his eyelids. He could hear civilian life. Better, he could hear the soft wash of waves against the shore and the chatter of wind chimes, the kind that hung from the eaves of his father and stepmother’s bayside bed-and-breakfast. There was laughter, far off. Gulls crying overhead. He tasted sunshine on his lips.

The soothing sounds of the half of his childhood that had been good and whole and stable should’ve brought the unrest to a standstill. Should’ve obliterated it. It was fear that made the flashbacks hang around. The fear was all too real these days and had been his since his final deployment as a navy SEAL six months ago.

It was fear that he would open his eyes and the civilian world would be less clear to him than the assault of vivid memories from another world.

Funny that he hadn’t contemplated how stark and colorful those dreams were before his last mission, the one that had robbed him of half the visibility in his right eye and all of his left.

Gavin took a moment to quell the anxiety, to manage the fear, even if he couldn’t kill it any more than the flashbacks.

He braced himself, stomach tightening. Then he opened his eyes and confronted the odd blur of light and shade, the merging of shapes. He picked a fixed point out of his right eye to study...

The white house was like a beacon on a hill. Hanna’s Inn spread prettily, overlooking Mobile Bay. Even Gavin could see the proud and regal way it held itself up—columns, balconies, long narrow panes that glistened as the sun shrank from its high post. The winding paths through the gardens...he knew them by heart. Just as he knew the sand skirting the kempt lawn curved in a crescent shape to follow the slope of the Eastern Shore. Beneath its peaks and tumble-down kudzu-lined valleys, the beach formed the watery border of Fairhope, Alabama, the small town that had called to Gavin for most of his life.

He’d ignored that call, returning to Fairhope only out of necessity. However, nothing could compete with the inn that his father saw to alongside his stepmother, whose family it had belonged to for generations.

A smudge detracted from Gavin’s focal point. It was black and willow-slim. As he fixed on it instead of the inn, he frowned. It was getting closer, if not bigger, and he was definitely in its line of fire.

He knew only one person in the world who wore neck-to-toe black in July in the south.

Gavin sat up in the hammock and placed his bare feet in the thick grass his father tended well. There was a catch in his neck and his muscles were taut as wires. He had learned how to snatch his mind out of the dreams, but his muscles rarely followed suit.

He’d sought the hammock and the company of waves for relaxation to break the vicious cycle of PTSD, even if only for a short while.

He might’ve been able to do it if he hadn’t given in to fatigue and dropped off.

Smoothing his hand over the outer edge of his thigh, he wiped the damp from his palm. Oh, great. Night sweats were turning into day sweats, and the first person to find that out was potentially the last person he wanted to know.

“Have you seen a dog?” Mavis Bracken asked as she bore down on him in her combat boots.

He offered her a lazy salute. “Freckles.”

In spite of his limited field of vision, he knew she scowled. She’d hated the nickname he’d given her as a youngster. The dark speckles on pale cheeks made her stand out in a sea of faces. While his father, Cole, and stepmother, Briar, ran the inn, Gavin’s half sister, Harmony, had become bosom pals with Mavis, the daughter of the florist next door. Mavis was always younger—always aloof.

Some would say she was odd—those same people called him a loner.

With their close ties to Hanna’s, the flower shop, Flora, and the two families that had grown tight between the establishments, Gavin had always felt that he and Mavis shared similar experiences; they were both outsiders.

“You don’t look too good,” she observed.

He tried to release the tension ball inside him. It didn’t work. Gavin passed a hand over the back of his shorn head. “Hard to shave when you can hardly see a mirror.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Mavis paused and he felt her. His toes rolled in on themselves and a shimmy went through the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Mavis had a way, an eerie way that spoke of something otherworldly. She saw people in ways others didn’t understand.

She was downright spooky, and he felt far too raw to be the center of her attention. “You’re looking for a dog,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“He’s big,” she provided. “Black. Goes by the name Prometheus.”

“You’re kidding.” When she didn’t answer, his lips parted. “Right?”

Familiar sarcasm flooded Mavis’s voice. “Well, I thought Killer was overdone.”

“Prometheus.” Gavin shook his head. “Because that’s not over the top.”

“Have you seen him?” Mavis asked pointedly.

“Was he carrying a torch and running really fast?”

“Gavin.”

“No,” he answered. “I haven’t seen a dog or a Titan.”

Her arm rose to her head as if to shield her eyes from the sun. “Damn it,” she muttered. “It must’ve been herons. He always chases the herons.”

Gavin scratched his unshaven chin. “Is, uh, this by chance your dog?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“How’d you lose him?”

“He wanders,” she said by way of excuse.

“You’ve heard of leash laws,” he guessed.

“He’s called Prometheus and he weighs nearly as much as I do. You think a leash is going to make a difference?”

“He sounds like a legitimate beast,” Gavin mused. “At least you got the name right.”

Her arms crossed and her weight shifted. “You used to have a dog. Boots. Wasn’t that his name?”

Gavin’s hands folded. He clenched them against his thighs. “He wasn’t my dog.”

“What do you mean? During your visit two years ago, Harmony said you couldn’t shut up about him.”

“Boots belonged to the US government,” Gavin said. “Not me.”

“Oh.” She said nothing more. Because, again, Mavis sensed things. Like the fact that Boots had been shot outside a checkpoint in Kabul. Almost exactly like Benji had years before.

Don’t go to that place again, Gavin told himself. Once more, he focused on what was present. He picked Mavis as his focal point. A dark beacon. The kick-ass combat boots were followed up her slender ranks by black pants, or leggings. The heat index today was 102, which meant she either hadn’t checked today’s highs before leaving her bat cave or she was crazy.

Crazy, he thought. Let’s go with crazy.

There were white slashes in the fabric for venting at least. They went well with the punk look she’d owned since the tender age of sixteen. Or was it fourteen? By that point, he’d been in BUD/S, fighting to fulfill his dream of joining the SEAL teams.

“What are you doing out here?” she wondered out loud.

He spread his empty hands. “Reading the newspaper?”

She answered with knowing silence, making him more aware of the tremor in his knees. Mavis probably also knew by now about that vase he’d broken in the hall upstairs at Hanna’s and the semi-argument he’d had with his father as a result.

This isn’t working, he had told Cole as he stood by like a chump listening to the man and his wife clean up his mess. His third, in as many weeks.

We’ll move things around, Cole had replied.

Briar was quick to jump on the bandwagon. Sure, she’d said in her feather-soft voice. It’s my fault, really, for leaving the vase in your way.

The fact that they’d worked their butts off to accommodate him did little to temper the hot-burning coals inside him. The coals had been there since the surgeons informed him that he would be legally blind for the rest of his life, effectively shutting down his military career—the only calling he’d ever known.

It wasn’t fair to resent Cole or Briar. Yet with every valuable Briar had to sweep broken off the floor, those coals smoldered.

“When was the last time you slept more than an hour at a time?”

Gavin frowned at Mavis’s inquiry. Yeah, no. Not going down that road.

“There are people,” she suggested.

“People?” he chimed.

“That you can talk to.”

“I don’t want to talk to them,” he said quickly. He’d seen enough doctors. They were all in agreement that he was a head case who needed to be on the antianxiety meds that made him spin out of turn.

He’d take his chances with the flashbacks.

Gavin pushed himself up from the hammock, finally feeling steady enough. He crossed his arms and lowered his head, hiding the pink scars raked across his face by the winter’s RPG blast. He’d forgotten to use sunblock again, as instructed. What did it matter? The scars wouldn’t fade any more than the blindness. He started to walk away, then heard her drawn-out breath and stopped. “What would you know about it?” he ventured. “Ever had a flashback, Freckles? Night sweats? Hypertension brought on by stress?”

“No,” she answered plainly.

He gave a nod and began to walk toward the inn again.

“But I know someone who has,” she said at his back.

“I’m sure,” he replied, and kept walking.

“Which is your good side?” she asked, following. “Your right or your left?”

Why was she following? He’d never been one for glossing things over. Would he have to bite her head off to get her to stop chasing him with the same good intentions as everyone else? “I don’t have a good side,” he replied. When she only continued to follow, he elaborated, “The left’s worse. Why?”

She didn’t answer, but he found her in his right periphery. A shadow. With a quick glance semi-close, he was better able to pick up on her dark hair, cut raggedly, longer in the front where it tickled her fine-arrowed chin and shorter in the back where it rode just above her hairline. He could see she was wearing a flowy sleeveless top, feminine even if it was black as brimstone. A hint of skin underneath turned him on to the dark cut of her bra.

When in God’s name had Mavis started wearing flowy, see-through blouses? She was in her late twenties, but when Gavin could see twenty-twenty, he’d never known her hips to swing quite like they seemed to now.

Gavin studiously turned his attention to other features, ones he knew. The freckles. They marked her for the distinct thing she was. They reminded him of the quiet girl he’d known—the freckled Wednesday Addams. The sarcastic teenager he’d never thought of as womanly.

Her sharp-cut jaw still looked too much like her older brother’s.

Kyle. Like Harmony, Gavin had found a Bracken bosom buddy in the early years in Fairhope. Kyle had joined him at BUD/S after a year of college. They’d earned their Tridents together.

Kyle could boast just as many battle scars as Gavin. Most of his had come from walking into a frag grenade during his second deployment.

Seeing Mavis’s big brother hung up in traction five years ago hadn’t settled well. Gavin hadn’t stayed long at his buddy’s bedside as a result. No, he’d pushed himself back into the fight with grim determination that smacked of vengeance.

He should’ve slowed down, taken some time to decompress before going on the op months later that had ended abruptly with him carrying Zaccoe’s limp body from conflict.

Benji’s blood. Gavin would never forget how it seeped warm through the back of his digi-camo. He’d never stop cursing how his hands had shaken in the armored vehicle on the way back to base, making his job as medic impossible.

He’d lost that battle. He’d lost it hard, and, with it, a friend. Benji was gone, and he’d left Gavin’s sister a widow.

Everything started to blur once more. The ringing in Gavin’s ears warned him of return flashbacks. He tried blinking to snap himself back to present, then remembered. You’re blind, asshole.

He took a detour, hoping to lose Mavis so he could orient himself.

“Where are you going?” she asked. The question floated to him. It got chopped by the blender in his brain. When he veered into the floral undercroft of a lengthy bougainvillea-wrapped awning, she tailed him. “Gavin?”

He held up a hand. In the shade, things were cooler. The humidity clung to his skin, a wet blanket he couldn’t dislodge any more than the fresh scent of blood in his nostrils or the feeling that brought the tremor to his fingers. His heart beat heavy, the ache behind it keen. His lungs pushed the air in and out, rapid-fire. The overdose of oxygen made him dizzier. Groping, he found one of the awning supports beneath the vines and tried not to stumble into it. Pressing his brow into his forearm, he worked to bring himself out of it.

“You’re having a panic attack.”

No shit. It was what he wanted to say. Along with a whole lot of, You’re still here? What came was more along the lines of, “Mmmph.” And even that caught in his throat.

Mavis’s expressionless words came to him, closer. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

She still sounded muddled. Everything did when the anxiety peaked. Still, he frowned when he grouped the words together. Is it okay...if I touch you?

Had Mavis ever touched him?

He wasn’t coming down—his pulse, the Tilt-A-Whirl in his head, his breathing. He was being swept up by the sights, sounds, smells from another time and place. The sights, sounds and smells of death. He’d lost track of the self-assertions and tactics that sometimes simulated a sense of control.

Mavis didn’t take his hand. Her cool fingers wrapped loosely around his wrist. Her thumb found the flexed tendon in the center and applied pressure.

The fighter in him punched through. His muscles twitched. Damn it, he was jumpy enough to take her above the elbow and apply pressure of his own. The urge was knee-jerk and wrong. A remnant of his training.

“Do you feel that?”

The question bobbed to the surface. Mavis, he told himself. The brief image of her racing a horse against his at breakneck speed through a crowded wood stopped the training from taking effect. It stopped the urge altogether. He still didn’t know what the hell she was doing, but he nodded in answer.

The pressure of her thumb increased, enough for the blood flow inside the pulse point to slow.

She didn’t hurt him. If anything, the slight discomfort and the odd awareness of her skin against his tuned him in to her further.

While his pulse careered and the battle raged inside his head, she held him. Then, over the same spot, she began to knead.

It was several minutes before he realized that his focus had shifted. The pressure lifted off his chest enough to breathe. The words he usually told himself came to him. He chained them to the flight rhythm of his heart, slowing them by minor increments until the chant became a mantra and his heart rate leveled.

It wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he realized he’d relaxed enough for her to grasp his other arm. She kneaded his opposite wrist.

When he was able to bring his voice to the surface, he swallowed, fighting against a dry throat. “What’re you doing?”

“Acupressure,” she said. After more kneading, she added, “How does it feel?”

He raised his brows in answer. He lifted his lids again. Her dark head was beneath his. She was looking down between them. She smelled nothing like brimstone. He caught a surprising waft of fresh, cool mango. Her jet hair looked soft, so much so that he considered resting his cheek against it.

But that would’ve been weird.

Gavin bit off a curse. “Don’t you know better than to approach somebody like me with his guard down?”

She shrugged, letting her touch slide across his palms, down his fingertips and away. “You held yourself together.”

“I wanted to snap your arm.” He grated the words through his teeth. “Like a ruler.”

“You didn’t.”

He tilted his head at her. Who was this creature? With him so determined to stay away from life stateside, he and Mavis had rarely crossed paths after adulthood. As a boy, he’d been too distracted to take more than a second or two to fan the mystery of her. As a man, he’d been too busy elbowing his way back into the fight to really notice her. Cut to his return to Fairhope three weeks ago; she’d been the one who’d seemed busy, rushing in and out of the inn to drop off Harmony and Benji’s daughter, Bea, or grabbing a quick bite from Briar’s kitchen on her lunch break.

She had no reason to trust him—who he was then, who he was now. What the hell had he ever done for Mavis Bracken? “Your brother’s a SEAL,” he reminded her. “You know what goes through an operative’s mind.”

“What’s your point?”

“Keep your distance from me, Mavis. I’m a house on fire.”

“When a house is on fire, you throw water on it,” she told him. “You don’t stand back and let it burn.”

“You do if it’s too far gone.”

“Not everybody does.”

This wasn’t working. “Would you approach a wounded predator in the wild?”

Mavis took a step back, perhaps out of respect. “That depends. How well do I know this predator?”

“Huh?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“If this were any normal predator in the wild, I’d walk away. But if I knew, for example, that he liked blondes not brunettes, mustard not ketchup, and salty foods in lieu of sweets...more than likely, I’d use that to my advantage.”

He stared through the damaged veil of his eyes. “You remember all that about me.”

“Gavin, you hung out at my house with my brother every day you were in town as a kid. That’s ten years you and I ate at the same table. I can’t tell you how many times I saw the two of you turn out your billfolds for the customary condom count when Mom wasn’t looking.”

Gavin gave a startled laugh.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re still proud of that, are you?”

He coughed slightly, bringing his fist to his mouth. “Uh, no. Of course not, no. You remember?” He wasn’t able to get over it.

“Don’t you remember anything about me?”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “When you were little, you had these big screech-owl eyes that seemed to know everything. You were spooky. You still are.”

She studied him again. He picked up on the slight sound of her sigh. “You’re still white as a sheet,” she observed. “But your eyes are clear.”

“They are.” The careful non-question rang with surprise.

“The pressure point helps alleviate anxiety,” she explained. “It can also work for nausea and motion sickness.”

He was close enough. He might be able to count the freckles. Because it helped him hug the present closer, he started. One, two, three...four...

Forked pain struck his temples. He closed his eyes to shut out the light. The migraines nearly always followed the hard forays into insanity.

“Stress headache?” she ventured.

He laughed cheerlessly, webbing his fingers over his face. “Did you train to be a medical professional while I was away or are you psychic?”

“I get them, too,” she explained. When he only scrubbed his hand from his face to the top of his head and lowered his chin into his chest, her hands lifted between them and spread. “Look, if I touch you again, are you going to freak out?”

I might. She had a way, too—this new Mavis. “I’d prefer a sledgehammer to knock myself out with.”

“This is healthier.”

He raised his chin and tensed to stop her from edging in closer. “Since when are you the touchy-feely type?”

She paused, fingers curled toward him. “I’m not. But do you know why I’m a vegetarian?”

“No.”

“I can’t stand to see an animal in pain. Teeth or no teeth.” When he wouldn’t relax, she sighed at him again. “Stand still.”

Personal space be damned, she stepped right up into his. He wasn’t overly tall like her six-foot-four brother, but she was small even in combat boots. He remained rigid as her front buffered his, as she touched him, his face. More pressure points, he assumed. A snide remark formed on his lips when her thumbs came to the base of his cheekbones. It fell flat when she began to massage again.

“This is yingxiang,” she said in a low voice he found strangely hypnotic. “It targets the pressure points in the wrinkles of the nose. It works for stress headaches, but it can open up the sinuses and relieve hypertension, too.”

“Mm,” he said, trying not to drag the syllable out like he wanted to.

She massaged his cheeks for a minute or two more before her thumbs lifted. His face felt loose. Most of his tension he held in his neck and jaw. It had lessened to the point that he could feel the soreness around the joints and the relief that sang behind it.

Under his stare, she seemed to hesitate. This close, he could definitely count those freckles. He could also trace the shape of her big screech-owl eyes. Dark and uncharted. Like the far side of the moon.

Her lips parted and her tongue passed briefly between them before she moved her hands slowly to the place where his neck met his shoulders. “Or...if that doesn’t do it for you...”

The tendons beneath her kneading fingertips all but cried out at the attention. He gave up deciding whether it was from pleasure or pain. The muscles moaned under the ministrations. It was the exact spot the stress of the last six months had taken up residence. The stress of the last decade, now that he thought about it. He hoped she didn’t notice his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

No. Yes. Yes, no.

For the love of God, touch me. Touch me tender. Touch me hard. Freckles, just...

...touch me...

Gavin expelled a breath. It gave him away, he feared. It gave him away hard.

“You’re brick.”

“Hmph?” he responded, at a loss for better.

“Your muscles,” she muttered, exerting more pressure. “They’re like mortar.”

No, her hands were mortar. Crashing into his brick walls. Exploding them into dust.

“You’d really benefit from yoga.”

His snort was a half sound. “Who does that new age shit?”

“Friend of mine owns a school. Yoga helps you stretch the right way, loosen joints... It helps you learn to breathe...”

“Breathing’s involuntary,” Gavin said. “You’re either breathin’ or you’re...”

Dead.

Her low voice smoothed through the juncture. “Most people never give themselves over to all the multifaceted ways breathing can act as a tool for everyday life. Or they’re never taught to begin with.”