Big Sky, Loyal Heart Read online

  Chapter 12

  “Michael could have handled this, but he insisted that this was the right test,” Emily was speaking quickly as the three of them jogged across the main yard toward the barn. The rain was back, heavier, but she hadn’t had time to grab a jacket.

  “The right test?” She snapped her fingers and Rip fell in tight beside her in heel position. Stan had trained him up perfectly. If she spoke the word “seek” and signaled which direction with a hand gesture, she’d wager that Rip would do his duty and find any explosives or adversaries.

  “This is a live action,” Michael confirmed. “Not a training scenario. You will treat it with utmost urgency. I will be assessing your performance.”

  Lauren almost stumbled. Colonel Michael Gibson, Delta Force’s top operator, was going to be assessing her in a live-fire scenario? She was doomed. She hadn’t run a 10k since her arrival at the ranch. Even trotting across the yard in the rain, she could feel it. That was one thing she’d be fixing starting tomorrow—assuming there was a tomorrow.

  She wore no safety gear or sidearm. She’d seen Chelsea’s gun safe in the corner of the barn’s office—it was a Winchester Ranger and as secure as they came. It would take some serious effort to breach without explosives. Even with explosives.

  But Emily strode right past Chelsea’s office with the safe and raced up the stairs to the Tac Room.

  Six-digit code, thumb print, plus retinal scan.

  Whoa!

  Emily swung the door open and stepped inside.

  Lauren knew she was being judged, but she had to stop briefly on the threshold to even understand what she was seeing, never mind assess it.

  Her initial estimation about a military installation in the middle of a horse barn had been completely accurate and wholly misguided. She’d expected a couple of radios. Perhaps a secure terminal.

  “Tac” clearly stood for Tactical. It was a high-tech command center more impressive than even the upper deck on Air Force One, which she’d only seen in pictures.

  Out the two one-way windows ranged a bird’s-eye view of the barn. Dozens of horse stalls. For some reason, this view, more than any prior experience this week, emphasized the scale of the Henderson Ranch operation. As many stalls ranged in the other direction. A big skylight, also one-way she noted, offered a wide view of the pastureland.

  The views only made what was inside the room all the more surreal. There were two command stations, because there was no other word for them. A rack of satellite radios separated the two stations. She recognized several of the frequencies and could only blink—Delta Force and Night Stalkers headquarters command. Each station included a half dozen computer screens arranged to act as either separate displays or a single combined view, a pair of keyboards, and, Lauren turned, a server array of impressive power.

  Michael gave her a small push between the shoulder blades and she stumbled into the room. He closed the door behind himself and leaned back against it with his arms crossed over his chest.

  Emily dropped into one chair and, at a loss for what else to do, Lauren sat in the other. Rip sat at her side. She released him from heel and he dropped into the doggy equivalent of parade rest. Attentive, ready at a moment’s notice, but no longer vibrating with urgency. That was left up to her. She hated that Rip was now depending on her for giving him the right signals, but didn’t see any way out of it.

  Emily’s station had pictures of Mark and her children. A team of grinning pilots with smoke-stained faces in front of a helo painted black with flames down the side. She saw the Mount Hood Aviation logo that said Emily hadn’t merely flown firefighting helicopters, she’d flown with the best outfit anywhere. A similar photo, but this time more serious, a company-sized flight crew of men and women in full military gear ranged in front of a Night Stalkers lethal black-painted DAP Hawk helo.

  Lauren looked at the empty spot behind her console. What would she have? Four photos of dogs and a hook to hang Jupiter’s last leash that she still wore as a belt? What kind of a legacy was that in comparison with Emily’s array of photos?

  “There’s a team on the ground in trouble,” Emily started in.

  Lauren shook off her morose thoughts. “Where?”

  Emily glanced up at Michael, who showed no sign of moving ever again. Until he did, there was no escape.

  “All or nothing,” was all he said.

  Emily nodded. “All classified, of course.”

  “Duh!” Lauren had figured that one out on her own.

  “Sorry. I’ve been dealing with civilians for too long. Most of what I consult on is mission planning and post-action air tactics analysis. I almost never get live-action issues. Not supposed to get any, but this call actually came in to Michael despite his being on leave.”

  “For reasons we will beat out of him as soon as this is over,” Lauren had had enough of no answers. Michael, her own future, Patrick… Enough already.

  “Absolutely!” And Emily shared a smile with her.

  They both ignored Michael’s soft curse of resignation.

  “The team is on the ground in France.”

  Lauren blinked. “France?”

  “We got a track on a terrorist cell with a link deep into GIGN.”

  Lauren could feel the sheathed Glauca burning against her ankle. Their Number One dog handler, who’d given it to her, had worked for the French commandos of GIGN.

  “So we sent in a Delta team…”

  “Without notifying the French,” Lauren didn’t need to guess. “And now they’re caught in the sandwich between GIGN and the terrorists, both of which are thinking that the undercover Delta are the bad guys.”

  Emily nodded. “The team asked for our help to achieve their objective and exfiltrate without being caught and making a political disaster.”

  “Who’s the target?”

  Emily hit a key on her console and Lauren could only gasp at the face on the screen. She could actually feel the blood draining out of her face.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is,” Nathan was once again working on his bear sausage, though far less frantically.

  “Because we’re wearing our wedding suits, you idiot.” Patrick had made him take off his jacket and don an apron, but it was still ridiculous.

  “I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about Lauren.”

  “Telling a woman you love her and having her say ‘Okay’ isn’t a big deal?” Patrick gave up even trying to assist Nathan and just hiked up to sit on the counter, well clear of the work zone.

  “Well, this isn’t the movies, Patrick.”

  “I figured that out on my own.” No movie had ever communicated how Lauren made him feel.

  “Simple question. Is she the woman you want to take the blind, life-long bet with?” Nathan didn’t even have the decency to stop what he was doing, as if it was somehow a normal, everyday question—rather than one that was completely freaking him out.

  “I…” Patrick had no idea what to say to that. He began fooling around with the jar of mayonnaise that still sat unused on the counter, just to have something to do with his hands.

  “It’s only been a week. Take time. Ask me again in a month, or three. Despite the movies, lightning-strike romance isn’t the norm.” Nathan was not being helpful.

  “How long did it take you to fall in love with Julie?”

  “In lust? Several seconds, maybe. In love?” Nathan shrugged as he continued running cold water through the inside of a long line of sausage casing. “I guess I was a little clueless. When I was in it, I didn’t realize until it was almost too late. In retrospect, once I understood how I really felt about her, I’d been gone on her from the first couple minutes.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “You fell off your horse and into a puddle the first time you ever saw her.”

  And there was the several seconds that his brother had mentioned. He had been gobsmacked by Lauren from the first moment.

  “Heard you turned down a hot
camper that night.”

  “Clara.”

  “Uh-huh. When did you ever do that?”

  “All part of the ranch adventure for the guests. Have a fling with a cowboy.” Single women had certainly arrived often enough with that in mind and he’d been more than happy to reap the benefits…until that first night after he’d met Lauren.

  But that meant…

  “Oh, man! I really have loved her since the first moment, haven’t I?” He’d thought he’d just been…taken by her since then.

  Nathan tipped his head one way, then the other, before he slipped the casing on the end of the sausage stuffer and turned on the mixer attachment. “Love is a tricky word.” He dumped his sausage mixture into the top funnel and meat began squirting into the casing. “That takes knowing a person. I thought I loved Julie when I proposed to her, but that was just a shadow of how I feel about her now. In six months, who knows.”

  “Or in six years,” Patrick couldn’t resist.

  “Or sixty!” Mark entered the kitchen and dug a beer out of the refrigerator. “If that thought doesn’t shrivel a man, nothing will.”

  Nathan just glared at him. “I didn’t need to be thinking about that.”

  “Glad to help, Nathan,” Mark handed each of them a beer, but Nathan just nodded for him to set it on the counter. His hands were busy shaping the five-foot-long filled sausage casing into a large coil before starting on the next one.

  Patrick put down the mayonnaise jar—probably a good idea before he dumped it on his suit pants—and took the beer.

  “You know, Nat. They say that medical science is really going to be extending our lives. Could be way more than sixty.”

  “Which means a hundred years from now, you’ll still both be pathetic. Oh joy.” Nathan set aside the first filled casing and began filling the next. “The trick is that it takes time to get to know a person. How much do you really know about her?”

  “Like what? I know more about her than…” Patrick didn’t like where this was going.

  “Than most women you’ve slept with. Doesn’t mean much when you’ve been such a dog. I mean like what do you know about her past relationships? Not who she’s slept with, but had actual relationships with?”

  “Why would I care, if she’s with me now?”

  Mark just grunted at that.

  Nathan shrugged and set the second filled casing coiled on top of the first. “Just saying. You never know what is going to suddenly rear its ugly head from the past.”

  Patrick thought of some of his pasts and didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  Lauren couldn’t look away from the Tac Room screen.

  “Sergeant Georges Marchand,” she barely managed to gasp.

  Emily twisted to look at her in surprise.

  Then she felt the rage build inside her, build until she couldn’t hold it in and it boiled over. “He’s the traitor? That—! He—” She couldn’t even say it. They’d had an affair while she and Jupiter had been doing training with GIGN’s war dogs. It hadn’t merely been fun, that week they’d spent together in Tunisia was the closest she’d come to loving anyone before… Before…

  She sighed. Before Patrick.

  And Georges was a traitor? Passing intel to some jihadist terror cell?

  It was bad enough that an American general had betrayed her dog to its death. But that a lover and fellow dog handler—

  “What is it with men?” She spun and turned her rage on Michael.

  He was so surprised that he banged the back of his head on the door as he tried to jerk away.

  “None of you can be trusted.” Back to Emily. “Tell them to shoot the traitor and be done with it.”

  But “friend” Emily was gone. In her place sat Major Emily Beale—the chill, daunting presence of a topflight warrior. Forget that. She didn’t care.

  “What?” The bitterness burned in her throat and Lauren had to swallow hard to keep the bile from blasting forth.

  “It’s Commandant Marchand.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Equivalent of a major. “So he lied about that too. Lied about—” but she bit that off. It was too painful. After a splendid week in Tunisia, he had sworn on his dog’s life—the French were always so dramatic, which was part of his charm—that he loved her and there would never be another woman for him.

  Which was far too close to what Patrick had just said.

  Well, he could go jump, too.

  “Shoot ‘em and let me go home.” Except she didn’t know where that was anymore. “Let me go back to New York.” And she wrapped her arms around her gut against the knot of pain wound so tightly there.

  “Is that how you really feel?” Again, Major Beale was asking. But she also wondered if Emily might be in there somewhere, asking a different question with the same words.

  Lauren wanted to shout out her certainty, but it wouldn’t come.

  Patrick’s declaration had been sincere. Awkward, almost funny in that sense. She suspected that the moment would have made a great movie scene: him declaring his love in front of his brother and parents, and her saying a mere, “Okay.” She’d imagined, however briefly, having children with Patrick. A life…as if a warrior could ever have a normal life.

  There was them and there was us.

  Chelsea and Julie and Patrick all stood on one side. And on the other side of the door: she, Michael, Mark, and Emily. They knew better. They knew that love was too easily betrayed.

  Except she could see Michael’s simple band of gold and remembered how hard it was for him to tell his wife that he loved her.

  And Emily’s ring shone. Black gold with a blue diamond.

  “Night Stalker blue,” Emily followed the direction of her gaze and brushed her fingers gently over the diamond.

  “No. It’s the color of your eyes.”

  Emily blinked in surprise. And that’s when Lauren understood just how good a man Mark was. He’d given his wife a ring that was for both the warrior and the woman. What kind of man did that?

  It wouldn’t surprise her if a man like Patrick did something similar.

  She looked back at the image on the screen. Georges Marchand. Sergeant or commandant—the equivalent rank to Emily. He, too, had been sincere. She hadn’t understood that then because she had simply been enjoying the affair. It explained his attempts over the years to renew the connection, but Delta Force hadn’t left much flexibility in her schedule. Their relationship had devolved to a disconnected series of occasionally steamy phone calls.

  “It’s wrong,” the words were out before she knew it.

  “What is?”

  “Georges wouldn’t do that. It just feels wrong.”

  Emily consulted something on her screen. “Can you prove it in the next twelve minutes?”

  Lauren thought for a moment, pulled out her phone, and hit her Favorites list. Georges was still near the top.

  “I was helpful,” Mark protested.

  “Likely story,” Patrick teased him and sipped his beer.

  “Actually, he was,” Nathan nodded as he filled the last sausage casing. Several large stacks of filled sausage were now piled on the counter in great coils. “I almost lost Julie when I flew back to New York to help a friend launch his restaurant. Mark came and straightened me out.”

  “No idea what I was doing, but it worked,” he shrugged. “I guess we did okay between us.”

  “I’m here. It doesn’t even have to be about a relationship.”

  Patrick didn’t like imagining Lauren having any past relationship important enough to rear its ugly head. But with his past, he’d be better off keeping his mouth shut. But what if not just New York, but something in her military past got in their way? Or her military future. It didn’t take a genius to guess where she’d gone, even if he couldn’t begin to guess what was happening there. How would she make choices now?

  “Sucks when it is past relationships though,” Mark studied his beer with none of his usual bravado. “Or when you think it is.�
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  “What are you talking about?”

  “Emily. Had a big-time crush on the President. Scared the starch out of me. Still have no idea how close I came to losing her to him, but it was close.”

  Patrick had heard that Emily and the President were friends, but… “Major ouch!”

  “Yeah,” Mark agreed. “Worked out in the end though. And he’s been a good sport about losing her. Even performed the ceremony, half of it anyway.”

  “You beat out the President of the United States for Emily’s hand?”

  “Yep!” And the Mark Henderson he knew was back, cocky grin and all. “Best man won. So, who are you gonna be winning with, Mr. Best Man?”

  “One guess,” Nathan answered for him. He slid the sausage into one of the big fridges, washed his hands, and leaned back against the counter with his beer.

  “Where is your bride-to-be?” Mark aimed the neck of his bottle at Patrick’s chest, then at Nathan’s. “Off with his bride-to-be?”

  Bride-to-be.

  He’d told her that he loved her. If she agreed, then that step was kind of inevitable. Closing scene of Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and just about every other romantic comedy ever made.

  “No…” Patrick remembered Lauren rushing away from him. “She’s off with Emily and Michael. Probably in that Tac Room.” He’d never seen the inside once Julie had finished building it, but the way they’d left in such a hurry, it was the only thing that made sense.

  Mark looked toward the barn with narrowed eyes as if he could see through all of the intervening walls. “Why doesn’t that sound good?”

  “Ma chérie! This is not a good time. Very not. Not even to hear from you, my love.”

  “Don’t hang up, Georges,” Lauren had set the phone on speaker and set it on the desk so that Michael and Emily could hear as well. “On your life, don’t.”

  “This is no ordinary call where we heat each other up but never make a date to come together, is it, my Lauren?” Georges voice was thick with regret. Had she never noticed that before? Or had she noticed it and dismissed it out of hand?

  “I fear not,” she tried to think of how to approach this. “You gave me a gift once.”