Authors: SE Jakes
He didn’t doubt Sawyer and Rex were as well.
It took just under an hour before they reached the safety of the FOB, just in time, too, since smoke had started pouring out of the engine a mile back. Medics swooped in immediately to help the injured, and Jace brushed off the doc’s offer to stitch his arm up for the moment.
“It’s not that bad,” Jace said.
“I’ll give you fifteen minutes to get your ass inside to me,” Doc called over his shoulder, and Jace nodded, although he had absolutely no intention of following that order.
He pulled his phone out and checked messages—it had been vibrating for the past several hours, but checking it had been the last thing on his mind.
The text wasn’t from the number he’d been hoping to see, the way he’d seen nothing for the past month. Instead, it was from Kenny.
Shit.
Shit.
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and began to walk away.
Jace had been halfway to Afghanistan when he got the first text. Code, and he’d known exactly who it was from.
The texts, though they always seemed to come in at the right time, shorthand, were references to things that only Jace would know from their weekend together.
Those words warmed him when the cold, brutal nights had him hunkered down, waiting to make the kills he needed. It followed that way, a daily check-in for nearly five months, and then nothing.
He’d steeled himself for the worst and realized he’d found it.
“Hey, you all right?” Sawyer tugged his arm. “You just went white as a ghost.”
He wasn’t—and he couldn’t just shrug it off. “Just some bad news from home.”
Sawyer watched him carefully, his eyes narrowed with concern. “It’s not…you know…”
Since their conversation in the caves, the men talked with each other about most things, from the banal to the serious. Sawyer knew that, while he had yet to follow through on his promise, Jace had. And now it was over before it had ever really started. “He’s… They said it was a car bomb.”
“Do you think it’s true?” Sawyer asked him.
“I don’t know what to believe. I haven’t heard from him since right before it happened.” Jace’s inherent suspicion nagged at him, but either way, Tomcat could be lost to him forever.
“I’m sorry, man.”
Jace nodded. “I’m gonna take a walk.”
“I’ll cover for you with Rex—and I’ll take the first doc appointment.”
“I owe you,” Jace told him as he walked away toward a more secluded area of the FOB to try to collect himself. He knew Sawyer was concerned—once, that would’ve annoyed the hell out of him, but now he was all right with it.
It had taken him forever just to get friendly with one of the guys on his SEAL team—Sawyer had started to break down his walls with good conversation and an excellent aim with a firearm but sealed their friendship during their night in the cave.
Since then, the men had been as thick as thieves, with Jace trying to nudge Sawyer gently in the direction of Rex, Sawyer bucking back as hard as he could, and Jace…well…he’d thought he was finally moving forward, and now everything had come to a screeching stop.
Rex poured cool water over his shaved head and checked his team from a distance.
None of these men would ever admit how hurt or tired they were, and it was his job as CO to do it for them.
His gaze lingered on Sawyer longer than anyone else, the way it had since he’d taken command of this SEAL team. Watched Sawyer talk to Jace, and Rex realized that Jace looked pale as shit.
He’d wait for Jace to walk away before heading over to get the intel from Sawyer. The boy couldn’t refuse him, even though he could refuse to admit why that was, and Rex wasn’t in any position to push him. Not as his CO, for sure.
But man, if Sawyer finally made his move, Rex would have him pinned and naked in seconds. And after all the years of mourning a man he’d never had the real chance to say goodbye to, it was a relief to finally realize that he was ready to move on, that he could actually feel something for Sawyer without guilt or reservation.
He threw more cold water over his head when Jace left the immediate area, and he approached Sawyer as the doc put a bucket down in front of him. His SEAL’s face was dusty but otherwise unmarked.
“Jace all right?” Rex asked.
“He got some bad news from home.” Sawyer finished getting his boots off, sand pouring out of them. The sand didn’t come off his feet as easily, and while Rex watched, he eased them into the bucket of water to soak off the dried blood and hissed at the burn of the salted water. “Motherfucker.”
Rex shook his head. “What’s the bad news?”
Sawyer glanced over his shoulder, the look on his face telling Rex he was breaking a confidence.
“I’ve got to know, Sawyer—I won’t say anything to him if I think he’ll be all right for the rest of the trip.”
“He will be, Rex. Don’t take this away from him now.”
Rex crossed his arms and waited, and finally Sawyer spilled. “He’s seeing some guy—CIA—and he got killed on an op.”
“Name?”
Sawyer glanced up at his CO and something unreadable flitted across his face for the briefest of seconds. “I only know him as Tomcat.”
“Get to the doc to bandage those feet. You’re training today.”
“Yes sir,” Sawyer muttered under his breath, and Rex was pretty sure the boy cursed him as he went to walk away.
It only served to make him want the kid more. Dammit.
And then Sawyer called out to him, “You saved our ass today. Thanks,” before Rex walked off, and Rex bit back a smart answer and simply nodded and accepted the compliment. He’d been at it a lot longer; his instincts were honed thanks to too many tragedies the rest of his young team hadn’t seen yet.
Tomcat.
Yeah, he knew that name, as he ran in those same rather small circles of elite operators they all leaned toward. Joint missions between the branches had happened long before the public knew about them, allowing connections between warriors who might’ve simply existed in a vacuum with no support. They’d also hung out after hours with other Doms they both knew, as they tended to run in the same circles as well.
He made a call to Damon, who’d be the one to give a message to a dead man. Damon picked up after several rings, and Rex said, “Tell your friend his boy just died a little with him.”
“How did you hear?” Damon asked. They’d been friends for fifteen years—he wouldn’t bother lying.
“Sawyer and Jace are good friends. And now Tomcat’s going to let Jace swing in the wind?” He and Damon had spoken about Rex’s attraction to Sawyer before. Actually, it was Damon who’d noticed it at a party and had been on Rex ever since to do something about it. Just because he was all happy and shit, everyone had to get matched up. Asshole.
“You’re assuming too much,” Damon said.
“I’m assuming this is a CIA stunt—and I’m betting Jace suspects the same.”
“I’ll tell you what Tomcat would say—don’t say a fucking word, and Jace is better off without him.”
“All you former Deltas are the same.”
“Don’t start with me, Mr. Unrequited Love.” And then Damon’s voice softened. “It’s what we signed up for, Rex. Jace knew what—who—he was involved with.”
“Maybe we need to treat our own a little better.”
“Who are you really talking about?”
“Fuck you and that CIA fucker.” Rex hung up on Damon, even though none of this was his fault. Being back here, in the field, was bringing back memories, none of them good.
In his new apartment that was an hour away from the MC club and ironically much closer to where Jace lived, Tomcat, the dead man, stared at the television and the Clint Eastwood Western marathon he’d been watching.
His old phone had been taken from him as evidence, but he still held the one he’d used with Jace. He’d thought about destroying it a million times a day, knew that he should and still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“You’re supposed to be harder than this,” he told himself. Typically he was a cold-hearted bastard, and that suited him. And this was make-or-break time for that persona.
He threw the phone across the room and watched it shatter into a million pieces.
It didn’t matter—he knew Jace’s number by heart.
Chapter Seven
Two months later, Jace still couldn’t stop thinking about, dreaming about the entire weekend he’d had with Tomcat. There’d been nonstop sex, yes, and his ass had ached for a week after he’d left, but his heart had been filled with a strange sense of peace that remained until he’d gotten the news of Tomcat’s murder at a time when he wasn’t able to sit down and properly focus on it.
That the news had come from Kenny made it worse, since his cousin never really liked Tomcat much. And when Jace read the words, his first reaction was complete denial. He’d texted a few people he knew who knew people and determined that Kenny was right.
The president of the MC confirmed it by calling out a rival MC for the murder. And Jace could do nothing but shove it down, so damned deep he could no longer feel it, and continue his mission until he’d gotten all the tangos and had the okay to come home.
The coffin had already long gone into the ground, so now Jace stood in front of a shitty gravestone marked
Tomcat
and some bullshit dates Jace couldn’t believe were real.
Rain poured down, which was good. Hid the tears that shouldn’t be on his cheeks.
Barely knew the guy.
But even as the words echoed in his head, he knew it was a lie. He knew Tomcat better than he had anyone in forever—the connection had been there and damned memorable.
He hadn’t been able to get more details from Kenny on Tomcat’s death, just that the man’s car blew, with him in it. And while that was enough to make Jace suspicious, the months of no contact were enough time to lay those suspicions to rest.
How he’d gotten so close to this man in one weekend, he’d never had time to parse. He’d gone straight from Tomcat’s apartment to base and on a helo to Afghanistan.
Now he was home, and he felt like he’d lost everything.
Jace placed his challenge coin on top of the temporary marker and left, went home and drowned his sorrows and wasn’t sure why the hell he felt shaken to the core.
He found messages on his home phone from some MC members—just a friendly head’s up to lie low for a while. If Jace wanted, they’d let him walk away gracefully from the group—a military career could bring too much heat onto them once the top brass got involved.
Again, he cursed his cousin, wished the asshole hadn’t been stupid enough to pledge his allegiance to one of the most dangerous gangs in history as he dialed Kenny’s number.
“Hey, cuz, welcome home,” Kenny said.
“You hanging in?”
“Yeah. Just doin’ what you told me. Lost my job, though. The club wants to help me out.”
Ah, fuck. “I’ll lend you money. Don’t take on any jobs for them.”
“I already agreed.”
“Dammit. What’s the job?” Kenny paused, like he didn’t want to tell Jace. “Kenny, I’ll come over there and strangle it out of you.”
“It’s nothing bad. I’m just going to be doing some pickups for Cools. They want me to start tomorrow night. I’ve got to go in for a debriefing tonight.”
Pickups.
Drugs, guns, it didn’t matter. Kenny was one step closer to jail and/or death. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
“I’m trying to do what you asked, but it’s not easy, Jace. And you were away and I wasn’t sure what to do.” Kenny sounded frustrated and upset, and the guy was so stupid and young.
Several weeks after Tomcat’s death, there had been a huge bust, centering around the warehouse Jace had pinpointed to the Feds months earlier. The Colombians were busted, along with one or two of the Killers, but for the most part, they’d escaped unscathed. According to Kenny, the MC was nervous from the fallout, and they started working at another warehouse with another group of Colombians. Jace knew the location but hesitated when he thought about telling the Feds any of this. Because, in the back of his mind, he was still tying that bust together with the work Tomcat had been doing. If there were undercovers involved in the new warehouse deal, Jace wasn’t selling them out.
And still, he knew there was no real way for Kenny to say no to Cools at this point—he’d gotten himself patched in and tattooed, all before Jace had known. If he’d been home at the time, he might’ve nipped this whole damned thing in the bud. “Tell them you got a job. I’ll cover for you.”
Even as he spoke, Jace went to the computer and transferred money into Kenny’s account.
“What kind of job?” Kenny asked.
“Fixing cars.” Jace knew the local mechanic would throw some work Kenny’s way, especially if Jace told him Kenny would work for next to nothing.
“I’ll try, but you know how they can be. And I think you’re too hard on them sometimes—they’ve got my back.”
Yeah, sure they did. And they’d stab him in it the first chance they got.
“Jace, Cools was telling me that you were close with Tomcat. Nacho saw you guys getting friendly.”