Cover Me (Elite Force #1)(59)
Author: Catherine Mann

“Okay, since you asked… Then Navy Underwater Egress Training at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Survival school up in Washington.” He shivered melodramatically. “Freefall Parachutist School after that.”

Now she was more than impressed, she was awed. “What else could be left to learn?”

“Special Ops Combat Medic Course, then our PJ Recovery Specialist Course, finishing up at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.”

“I knew PJs were a highly specialized group… but, wow, I didn’t have a clue.” She sifted through it all. So much training, so many places. “How do couples manage to stay together during all that time apart?”

He angled his head back, his cocoa-brown eyes meeting hers somberly. “If a couple can’t handle the training, they aren’t going to be able to handle the stress and separations of military life. Our divorce rates are high.”

Her breath hitched in her chest at the shift in the conversation, the seriousness. The possibility behind the warning. “Are you proposing or warning me off?”

“I’m just telling you the facts so you have all the information.”

A nonanswer if she’d ever heard one. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to push for more, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Your parents stayed together, in spite of everything life has thrown their way.”

He stared up toward the northern lights, his eyes taking on a distant look. “Maybe I should bring my mother to one of the other, more accessible hot springs in Alaska, let her experience the hot springs, the healing waters.” He glanced back down at her with a half-embarrassed grin. “I suffer no delusions that it’ll fix everything for her, but at least I could give her something.”

“That’s a lovely thought.” She cupped his neck, stroking along the shaved hairs at his nape, bristly crisp with freezing water. How ironic that she’d brought him out here for the soothing power of the healing waters without realizing how it might touch a deeper hurt than a couple of stitches in his shoulder.

His shoulder.

Just that fast, the levity evaporated faster than the steam dispersed by the cold Alaska air. How could she have forgotten even for a second that just earlier that week, Deputy Smith had shot wildly at them, trying to crush them with an avalanche?

Something tugged at the back of her brain, some detail, some sense that she was missing something. She searched though everything that had been said—tougher and tougher to do with Wade’s hands making tantalizing forays over her br**sts, his thigh working gentle, arousing pressure between her legs.

Her body warmed from the inside out, coming back to life as it always did with Wade, and she struggled to follow the elusive whisper of logic tap, tap, tapping. God, following it was as futile as kicking through an ice wall with bare feet. She needed serious firepower to let loose the avalanche.

She slid off Wade’s leg and nearly slipped under the surface. Spluttering water, she resurfaced.

Wade braced her with his hands clamped to her waist. “What’s wrong?”

“All this time we’ve been wondering if Deputy Smith was a serial killer who acted alone.”

“Um, right, but what made you start thinking about that, right now?”

“Your injury reminded me of that day, when Deputy Smith was waiting for us, to shoot us.”

“I remember it too damn well.” His grip tightened around her.

“Serial killers have an MO, right? All the old cop shows stress that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“So if Deputy Smith killed all those other people with a knife because he was a serial killer, doesn’t it make sense that he would follow that same pattern in trying to take us down?”

Wade went still. Very still. The gush of water filled the silence between them as she could all but see the wheels turning in his mind.

Sunny continued. “Maybe he was just desperate, but it’s worth considering alternatives to the serial killer scenario. According to every true-crime show I’ve watched, serial killers have their rules, their patterns—a particular method. They have to stick to the ritual to get the thrill. Rand Smith killed my friends by slashing their throats. If he’s a serial killer, it stands to reason he would have used the knife on us instead of the gun. We have to seriously consider the possibility that he’s an assassin, hired by someone higher up the chain.”

Wade cursed low under his breath, his face hardening back into warrior mode. Her tender lover had faded away.

A noise cut the night, a door opening. He tensed, tucking her to his chest before she could say so much as “I can take care of myself.” Although given that they were both naked, outside in Alaska, that made them both plenty vulnerable.

She looked to the entrance leading back inside. The brown door opened wide, the two figures backlit, faces indistinguishable.

They stepped forward as one, a man and a woman. The female eased forward and Misty’s face came into focus. Sunny sagged with relief. Her sister stood with Flynn Everett, who apparently hadn’t gone home for the night after all. Wade’s uniform and Sunny’s clothes littered the ground around their feet.

Now that the initial freaked-out fear had gone, awkwardness crept over her. She was in the middle of the hot springs, naked with a guy.

“Um, would you mind turning your backs for a second so we can get some towels and our clothes?”

“Of course,” Misty said quickly, spinning around and pushing at Flynn’s shoulders for him to follow. “Could you hurry? It’s really important.”

“Right…” She half swam, half walked across the small pondlike springs until she reached the steps, feeling Wade’s bulk behind her.

She snagged a towel and robe, tossing one to Wade. Yanking the terrycloth over her body and half dancing to keep her toes from freezing on the deck, she allowed herself a quick glance at him. He pitched aside the robe in favor of yanking on his camo pants. So quickly his body had become familiar to her, from his taut butt to the green footprint tattoos walking up his shoulder. With the world unraveling around her, he was fast becoming her one constant.

As she rushed to follow her sister and Flynn inside, she saw Wade shrugging into the rest of his uniform, damp splotches mottling the camo pattern from where the fabric had rested on the icy deck. It was almost as if his body was immune to the cold.

The thick wood door eased closed, sealing the four of them in the dimly lit corridor. She started to suggest they go upstairs to her apartment, but Misty grabbed her by the arm.