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  Knowing that she had paid back such joy with pure pain, pain past imagining, shamed her.

  Because the pain wasn’t past imagining. She knew the awful silence of a heart being ripped out of your chest.

  She had stood alone at the graveside in Arlington, Virginia, on the same day she was supposed to be graduating from high school in Durango, Colorado. Her father hadn’t wanted to come witness Clay’s internment any more than his wife’s.

  Carla had looked down at her mother’s grave, the grass and headstone so perfect that they looked artificial.

  And she’d watched Clay being lowered into the gaping wound of dark soil beside their mother.

  Carla and the chaplain were the only ones to stand witness to the honor guard and the grave diggers. In the end, it had been her alone, the grave long since filled and the sod spread.

  The folded flag had still been in her hands when, less than a mile from his grave, she’d walked into the Arlington Army Recruiting Station and signed and sworn.

  Didn’t Kyle understand that she’d long since given everything she had to give? Would give him more if she could?

  No tears came.

  She muffled her dry-heave sobs with the pillow that, because he hadn’t come to her bed, didn’t smell even the slightest of Kyle Reeves.

  Chapter 21

  Kyle looked like hell and Carla felt like hell, which, she admitted, made it a perfect day to go to church.

  The Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Chiquinquirá stood in the heart of the city. This area was wholly different from the wearier northern section of the city that included the Hotel Castillo.

  To reach the Basílica they walked through the Paseo de la Chinita, a four-block city park filled with trees and long, cool fountains that battled against the midday heat already shimmering off the city. The walkways were a dramatic mosaic of black-and-gray stone. The park was dominated by a shining white colonnade forming a half arc around a towering white marble statue.

  The Madonna, the golden-haloed Lady of Chiquinquirá, stood and cradled the Babe Jesus in her arms, and around her feet were gathered the winged hosts of angels.

  Carla had never been a religious person, but at moments like this, she almost wished she was. So much of the world’s great art had been created with religious spirit that she wished she could feel it herself. But even before the loss of Mom and Clay there had been no place inside that was stirred beyond an appreciation for the beauty of what she beheld. And frankly, given her choice, she’d rather be looking out at the view of the central Rockies.

  Madonna help me. The words were empty. It was just a statue, but she needed help.

  Kyle had stopped beside her when she paused to study the sculpture, almost blinding in the sun. He fell back into motion beside her when she moved once more through the fountains on the way to the Basílica.

  They had spoken no words this morning that weren’t a part of the ongoing operation. They had watched the official state news in silence and had seen not a single word about their actions. The “free” stations had long since had their transmitter licenses pulled by the “elected” dictatorship. The newspapers hadn’t proved any better when Richie had gone down and purchased copies of today’s editions. Newsprint was only one of the many shortages afflicting the population, though the state papers still managed to receive at least a portion of their allotment. Even Twitter was silent.

  Duane and Richie kept eyeing both of them but were far too wise to actually say anything. They cut back on even doing that after Kyle hit them with a fulminating scowl. It had been a relief when they headed off early to get in place at the church.

  “Kyle.” She spoke softly as they stood at the curb waiting for a gap to cross Avenida 12. It hurt to speak, and her voice came out harsh and harder than she intended.

  “Yes?” He sounded little better.

  “We need to get past this.” Neither of them were functioning at even fifty percent, and who knew what they were walking into.

  “Get past this.” A flat, emotionless statement. “Get past this,” he repeated.

  Then he whirled to face her. She’d have stepped back if his hand hadn’t clamped around her arm so hard that she could feel her muscles grinding against the bone.

  “Get past this?” he roared in her face. “Goddamn it, Carla. Maybe you don’t have a heart after all. You’ve just ripped out my guts, and you want me to behave naturally as if everything in my world hasn’t just turned to total shit?”

  Carla had only seen Kyle angry once or twice before, or thought she had. Those had been nothing compared to the man now crushing her arm in his grip. She could break loose, but she’d have to really hurt him to do it.

  “I thought we had something. Stupid, naive ass that I am. How was I so screwed up that I trusted the simple fact that a woman who filled me with such goddamn joy was giving me no more than just her goddamn body? Shit, Carla. I’ve never had any trouble finding someone to fuck.”

  The words battered at her as he spit them into her face like a weapon on full auto. She could feel each syllable slicing past her skin to shred her inside.

  “If I’d wanted a casual fuck”—he lashed her with it again—“I’d have gone out barhopping with Chad and Duane. Plenty of women have been glad to spread their legs for me. But no, asshole that I am, I had to choose you. Then, even worse, I’m such a shithead that I fall in love with you. I’ve never done that before, ever. And now you want to behave as if—”

  He cast her arm aside, causing a final shock of pain as blood rushed back into where he had squeezed it out. She’d have a line of bruises up her bicep in the shape of his fingerprints. She shouldn’t have worn a sleeveless blouse.

  Kyle strode out into the traffic along the Avenida. He stalked across four lanes of mayhem as if it wasn’t there.

  Carla refused to rub her arm though it was still zinging. Ooo, you’re so strong that you’re hurting me, a line she’d never use. She was a dangerous woman—one of the most dangerous anywhere, courtesy of Delta—and could defend herself just fine. But she’d never backed down in the face of pain or hardship. Had a thousand training and action bruises that were ten times worse. So why had none of them ever hurt so much?

  She’d never felt like this. Had never before been so connected to someone that she cared how they felt.

  Well, girlfriend, you just found out how important you were to him. What are you going to do about it?

  * * *

  Kyle stopped on the far curb of Avenida 12 and couldn’t make himself turn back to look at Carla. Christ preserve him, he’d just made everything worse.

  He’d used his superior body strength to hurt her. He’d known he was doing it but had been unable to stop himself. He’d never hit anyone in anger, not since that asshole Mitch Holmes who’d thought he was a hotshot for beating up on the tae kwon do instructor’s kid.

  Mitch and a couple buddies had been waiting for Kyle in the alley outside the dojo one night. Kyle had come out of their ambush battered; they’d come out of it with broken noses, shattered toes, and a dislocated shoulder. When he’d staggered into the house with cracked ribs, his dad had bound his chest without a word. Kyle had still done the classes, though he’d been excused from sparring until he healed. Mitch and his buddies had never shown their faces again.

  Kyle had just handed out a load of pain to the one person he cared most about in the world. He could feel the pain beneath his hard grasp and been unable to do anything about it. He’d used his superior body strength as a weapon against—

  He hung his head and closed his eyes as his world spun. He was so lost because of a quiet woman with dark eyes and a world of hurt locked away deep inside her.

  Deep breaths. That’s what you did when you were pushing limits, deep, slow breaths. Get the damn pulse rate down.

  He’d never cursed out a woman either.

 
What the hell was going on?

  When he opened his eyes, Carla was standing barely a foot in front of him. A glance at her upper arm already showed his fingerprints purpling against her dusky skin.

  If she punched his lights out, he’d deserve it.

  Instead, she stood there, looking at him, without judgment or fear. It would be easy to think that she was standing there calmly, but he knew better. You didn’t spend six months so close to someone and not be able to read them.

  She was just as lost as he was.

  Cursing himself for being eight times an idiot, he reached out and slid his arms around her.

  She let him. Not like a lover, but like a friend. She rested her head on his shoulder and held on. He rested his cheek on her hair, breathed her in, and tried to ignore the pain washing through him.

  “I’m so sorry, Carla.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I have no excuse.”

  “Shh. I’m not made of glass.”

  No, she was made of goddamn steel.

  Yet around her, he felt so fragile that he wondered if his heart was going to break.

  * * *

  Chad Hawkins had been trained to see patterns, the gaps in them, and how to break them. He leaned back against the leftmost of the four big columns that guarded the entry to the Basílica de Whatever and watched the shifting crowd of tourists.

  Tanya of the amazing body had booted his butt a couple of hours earlier. Rather than circling back to the hotel, he’d scouted the area. As the morning heat rose toward noon, he’d parked himself here to wait and watch.

  Throughout his childhood, Chad had watched the constant power shift between gangs in school and on the streets. He’d learned to gauge that tipping point where the smallest action could swing the power in the direction he desired, with no one the wiser.

  He’d never been the leader, never been interested in it. He could get what he wanted by using his skills in analysis from behind the scenes. Had never followed a particular leader, except in self-interest, until Kyle Reeves had impressed the shit out of him so many times.

  The dude’s reputation had carried from his 1st Special Forces Group over to Chad’s own 3rd SFG—even though they’d been posted a country apart and fighting in wholly different theaters of operation. Reeves’s teams didn’t just come out victorious every goddamn time, which is what Green Berets were supposed to do; they all came out in one piece.

  Chad had been thinking that if he failed Delta, he’d apply for a transfer to Reeves’s Green Beret team. Then Reeves had been in the same Delta class.

  About the only way Chad made it through Delta Selection was knowing he wanted to serve with the man so obviously at the head of the pack. Chad had driven himself past anything he’d ever done before to do it, and it had paid off—even if he hadn’t been able to talk to the guy for his first weeks on base. “Mister Kyle” showed his patterns loud and clear: I’m going that way. I dare you to keep up. Chad was still pretty damned pleased that he had.

  Tanya was another one with consistent patterns, not as the reporter who she purported to be, but rather as a world-class shadow warrior for the Israeli government. While they hadn’t wasted a single moment together in sleep, he’d learned impressively little about her—other than her exceptional skills between the sheets, in the shower, on the… His body hardened all over again at the memory.

  He’d spotted Richie, just because his pattern was a touch too perfect—that, and his skin shone seriously white-guy white. The dude had wandered into the Basílica in shorts and a T-shirt, then gawked his way through the entire church as he scoped it out before taking a spot in the second pew from the back. There he’d pulled out a Spanish-language guidebook. That his pack lay conveniently open near his shooting hand looked purely accidental.

  Chad hadn’t spotted Duane, which only meant he was here but specifically hiding from Chad to mess with him.

  After checking the church once more, Chad had moved to lean casually against one of the four tall, yellow columns that supported the grand portico or whatever they called the big-ass front of this church. From here he could see the three arched doorways, as well as having a clear view across the vast, baking brickyard in front of the old church.

  He’d been idly eyeing the crowd and some of the fine Latin ladies done up ever so nice—there was a thing about showing cleavage that he could truly appreciate. He’d always been something of a T-and-A man, especially the T, and this culture just fed into that.

  Then the pattern broke.

  Kyle and Carla should be strolling casually forward, arm in arm and gawking at the architecture. Instead they were walking a foot apart, moving purposefully through the crowd, and the circles under their eyes were so dark that they looked like they’d both been slugged.

  They were dragging.

  Those two never dragged.

  They made it so much fun to serve on this team that he wondered how he’d been wasting his whole life before Delta. Just being around them made a man feel good.

  Carla offered a discreet nod as she passed him by.

  She should have bought shorts and a flirty blouse, or worn that sundress and the goofy straw hat she’d looked so damn cute in on the boat. Instead, she wore the same slacks and blue blouse from last night, which were out of place and looked much the worse for wear.

  Then he glanced down and saw the line of finger-sized bruises on her arm.

  He flicked a glance to Kyle’s hands and saw him clenching and unclenching the fingers of one hand.

  Carla continued on into the shadowed interior of the church.

  * * *

  Kyle didn’t even see Chad until the man appeared from nowhere, grabbed him by the throat, and spun to slam his back into a pillar.

  “You the one who marked her, Reeves?” Chad’s face was inches from his own.

  The snarl of fury told Kyle he was moments from having his neck broken.

  “Well?” Chad shook him as if he didn’t weigh anything. The man was far and away the strongest man on the team; he could fight an ox and win.

  Kyle tried to speak, but he wasn’t even getting air, never mind able to make words.

  Chad eased off and Kyle’s heels landed back on the ground. No wonder he couldn’t breathe. Chad had actually pinned him up in the air.

  Kyle dragged in a breath, then another. Didn’t think Chad would give him time for a third, so he held up his hand palm outward.

  “If I could cut it off”—his throat hurt like fire and sounded worse—“I would. If I could take it back, I’d do that too.”

  “Did you hit her?” Chad’s hold might be looser, but he’d shifted his grip on Kyle’s throat. A quick squeeze and Kyle wouldn’t have a windpipe.

  He was about to scoff—he’d never hit a woman except in sparring or a battle—but he saw something in Chad’s eyes. Kyle had come from a world where such things just weren’t done. Chad clearly came from a different world.

  Not trusting his voice, Kyle just shook his head in a sharp negative.

  Chad understood and eased his grip about a millimeter, but not two.

  He leaned in until his face filled Kyle’s field of view.

  “You fix this, Reeves.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “I don’t give a shit. You’re Delta; it’s what we do. You fix this.” Then Chad spotted something over Kyle’s shoulder, and his expression altered from Death’s personal assistant to lit-up all-smiles farm boy.

  Kyle started to turn, but Chad shifted his hand to rest casually on Kyle’s shoulder…and dug his thumb into the brachial plexus nerve junction on the front of Kyle’s shoulder. Pain sliced into his arm.

  “You go inside and fix this.” Chad sounded positively cheerful, easing off his pinch just a moment before Kyle was going to knife-hand him in the solar plexus. “I have to go meet someone.”

  K
yle risked a glance around the column as Chad moved off.

  “And try to look like the boss for the meeting.” Chad spoke just loudly enough for Kyle to hear. Then he was striding over to wrap Tanya Zimmer in a warm hug and kiss. “Babycakes!”

  Kyle turned for the shadows of the church and rubbed at his shoulder.

  Go fix this?

  Like he had a frickin’ clue where to begin.

  And then right on the threshold of the arched entrance, he had a horrible thought.

  What if Carla wouldn’t let him fix it?

  * * *

  Carla had always hated churches, on top of the fact that her father loved them, the hypocrite. She especially despised the ornate ones. She saw them as symbols of a clergy who specialized in picking the pockets of the masses.

  The only god she’d ever found had lurked somewhere high in the Colorado Rockies—the only place where beauty and peace had ever abided. Hoping for some feeling of connection, she’d once tried a vision quest in the Sawatch Mountains. All she’d ended up with was serious hunger from a five-day fast and a bout of near-hypothermia. That would teach her to watch stupid Hollywood movies or trust in dreams.

  But this church was incredible, a work of art without crossing over into totally ridiculous ostentation. The high, fluted columns of dark brown were painted as if they were trees with vines climbing up their towering trunks, holding up the blue and white barrel-vaulted heavens. Blue-ceilinged, half-dome alcoves off to either side lightened the space, almost making it feel like outdoors. The back of each pew was a whitewashed, elegantly carved tracery of vines that again suggested the outdoors. Not small, discreet ornamentation, but large, cheerful vines with leaves as long as her forearm.

  People flowed around her, often with quiet gasps of relief as they entered the church’s cool interior. Some sat to simply admire the church, others to kneel and pray.

  She didn’t need to turn to know when Kyle came up close behind her. That hadn’t changed. Carla could feel his presence in the crowd of a thousand, as if their bodies did not belong to two separate individuals.