Fatal Honor: Shadow Force International (2 page)

Miles took one last look at the photo and nodded. She hardly looked like the woman all the MI6 agents talked about as though she were a ghost, but perhaps that’s why they had such a lousy photo of her. She was a ghost in the wind.

“You think I’ll find her in the plane debris?” he joked.

Hardy didn’t smile. “If Bourean is in on this, she is too. SIS wants Bourean, but I want her more. No MI6 operative sells out my country and lives to talk about it, you feel me?”

“Yeah, pretty boy.” Miles clapped him on the back. He didn’t run off to remote areas of the world and put his life on the line for grins and giggles. He lived and breathed being a SEAL. Would do anything to protect his country. “If I see Agent Butter, you’ll be the first to know.”

Southern Carpathians

Five hours later

M
ILES
F
LOATED
I
N
a hazy cloud of pain and bliss. How the two sensations could exist at the same moment, he wasn’t sure. He blinked his eyes open but the scene before him didn’t compute. Open beams on a ceiling, dried flowers and plants tied with strings hanging down. Shadows dancing over rough-hewn log walls, the comforting smell of a fire.

A woman hummed as she rocked in a rocking chair near a fireplace, a book open in her lap. She was beautiful, with long, dark blond hair flowing over one shoulder, thick eyelashes hiding her eyes as she stared down at the book. Graceful fingers twirled the end of one section of her hair as she hummed. Her left leg was drawn up under her, toes of the right foot pushing off the floor, keeping up the chair’s cadence.

Where am I? What is this place?

His memory was thick as pudding. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to swim through it, grasping at the fleeting images.

It was no use. The last thing he remembered was Andy’s face, the seriousness in his eyes.

Scientist. Plane.

Butter
.

The helicopter explosion. It all came back to him in flashes, nothing concrete, just out of his brain’s reach.

The rocking chair creaked and he opened his eyes once more. The woman was no longer reading; she was watching him.

Dark eyes locked on his, her expression steady and serene.

His tongue was thick, his mouth dry. Pain shot through his lower leg, his ribcage, when he tried to move. “Hello?” he said, but it came out a croak.

She stood from the chair, putting her book down on the side table. The hem of her long white gown fell to floor and she hugged a sweater around her body as she walked softly over to peer down at him.

“You’re finally awake. I was worried you might have a concussion, but there wasn’t anything I could do but wait and see. We’re kind of stuck here in the middle of nowhere, I’m afraid.” She motioned to a window across the room. “How do you feel?”

He could barely see through the frosted pane but it appeared a blizzard raged outside. “Like I fell out of a helicopter.”

“I didn’t see it, but that sounds possible.”

“Where am I?” This time his voice was stronger.

“A cabin in the mountains. You’re lucky to be alive.”

How
was
he alive? A flash of memory jarred his mind—the helo shifting too suddenly; panicked voices; losing his balance as he hung in the open door.

“I found you in the snow. I thought you were dead.”

“And the others?”

She looked to the fire, shook her head. “There was an explosion. The helicopter crashed.”

The pain radiating throughout his body took on a sharper edge. He closed his eyes and sensed her moving away. “How?” he whispered to himself.
Explosion. Crash
. It didn’t make sense. “How did that happen?”

As he replayed the memories he could dredge out of his brain over and over, the bed moved with her weight as she sat on the edge and handed him a cup of water. “Drink this. You need fluids.”

He was gutted.

Let me die.

He turned his head away, stared at the opposite wall where a desk and bookshelf sat.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she said, quietly. “The pain, the survivor’s guilt. The need to understand why it happened, who was responsible. Blaming yourself doesn’t help. Getting answers sometimes doesn’t either. Nothing can bring them back.”

For long moments, Miles wished her away. She didn’t say anything else, didn’t touch him. Just sat with him as if sharing his grief.

His ragged breathing slowed. His parched throat yearned for the water she held. A thousand daggers stabbed at his heart but eventually, the desire to know what had happened made him look at her once more. “I’ll take that drink, now.”

She gave him a sad smile. With her help, he propped himself up on his elbow, enjoying the soft touch of her hands, her patience with him. He grasped the cup, his fingers lacing with hers. His skin tingled where their fingers met, his hand trembling with weakness. She held onto the cup, guiding it to his mouth.

Their eyes met over the edge of the cup. The water was cool and tinged with a flavor he couldn’t place. The raw burn in his throat vanished. “What’s in it?” he asked.

“A tonic my mother used to use on me when I was feeling ill. All natural, nothing harmful, I promise.”

She smiled again and his mind went blank. She was strikingly beautiful, her voice soft and soothing. Her touch…

While the realization that his SEAL brothers were gone was a nightmare, he, himself, had apparently fallen into a dream. He was alive and stuck in a cabin in a snowstorm with the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

Maybe I died, too, and went to heaven
.

While that seemed unlikely, he hoped that was the case. Living without his team wasn’t an option. If they were dead, he wanted to be dead with them.

Taking the cup from his hand, she glanced down at it. Shadows from the fire danced across her tanned skin, but he swore he saw her cheeks blush. “My name is Sarah,” she said.

“Miles.”

Those dark chocolate eyes of hers came up to meet his. Her smile made his pulse jump. “Nice to meet you, Miles.”

She turned and leaned over to put the cup on the nightstand and his little slice of heaven went straight to hell as he saw her in profile. The blond hair and the pert nose. The tiny lightening bolt earring in her right earlobe.

She turned back and adjusted his blankets. “Your left ankle is busted up pretty bad, but I do have some medical training, so hopefully the set job I did on it works. You’ve got a couple of bruised ribs and some other minor injuries.” She gave him that knockout smile. “You’ll live but it could be a while before you can walk on that leg. Since we’re probably going to be snowed in for a few weeks—this is Romania, after all—we’ll have plenty of time for rehab.”

He tried not to stutter, his pulse now double-timing it as he looked into her beautiful face and knew he was hip deep in shit. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

It was no lie.

She chuckled and put a hand on his shoulder as she pushed him back down into the bed. The lightening bolt flashed. “Well, don’t you worry. I’m going to take good care of you. I assume from the gear you were wearing and the look of your…”—another blush as her eyes scanned his chest. “You appear to be military. U.S., yes? Doesn’t matter, I don’t need to know. But your physical appearance suggests you’re quite healthy. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble recovering from your injuries.”

He smiled back, hoping she didn’t see the worry in his eyes.

The beautiful, charming woman he was stranded in the Romanian mountains with—the women his very life depended on at this moment—was Butter, the dangerous MI6 traitor Andy had warned him about.

Three weeks later

C
HARLOTTE
C
OULD
T
ELL
Miles was feeling better. The worst of the pain from his broken ankle was over. She’d reset it, splinted it, wrapped it. A medicine cabinet full of Gypsy remedies kept his wounds disinfected and they were all on the mend. The bruises dotting his body had disappeared.

Initially, he’d been fighting the pain. Once that abated to tolerable levels, he’d fought depression. She’d done everything in her power to keep his spirits up. A tough job when the snows came every night, burying them deeper in the cabin, and the wind whistled through the cracks in the logs and the uneven windowpanes.

There was nowhere for them to go, no other human beings to interact with. Communication towers in these mountains were unheard of. She’d taught him Tile Rummy and a card game called Macau. He’d shared stories about his childhood and discussed politics. He’d taught her how to whittle small dogs from their stash of firewood. She’d explained the local Gypsy culture and demonstrated one of the clan’s favorite rituals to clear the body of toxins, hexes, and demons. While she danced the required steps of the banishing dance, he laughed.

But there was something more in his eyes now. A hunger she recognized and felt inside her own body.

The nights were long, the cabin chilly. There was only one bed. Now that he was better, he insisted she take the bed while he dozed in the nearby chair or slept on the floor. He brewed coffee every morning and brought her a cup while she was still in bed.

Her body ached for him. Not because he was the sexiest man she’d ever been around, or the most honorable. Certainly not because she was alone and on the run from a monster. She was used to being alone, independent. But even in another time, another place, she would have fallen for him. He was an impeccable specimen. Beautiful. Strong. A man worthy of a woman so much more than she could ever be.

And yet, she saw it in his eyes. He wanted her too.

She hadn’t told him who she really was—he knew her only by her middle name, Sarah. He hadn’t told her much about his job as a SEAL and hadn’t demanded to know about hers. Early on, she’d seen the suspicion in his eyes. He knew she was more than a single woman living in the woods on the side of a mountain, but he never probed too deeply about her present situation.

Night was upon them once more, Miles standing at the single window staring out at the snow. A full moon hung low in the sky, its light playing over his rugged features.

“It’s time to change your bandage,” Charlotte said.

Every day it was their ritual. He sat on the edge of the bed, she unwrapped the old bandage, rubbed cream on the healing skin, and rewrapped it. She’d discovered he was ticklish and enjoyed teasing him about it.

Tonight, he shook his head. “I’ll do it myself.”

His tone was brusque, he wouldn’t look at her. Had she done something to annoy him? “All right. I’ll get you the supplies.”

When she returned from the bathroom he was in the chair, head in his hands as he leaned his elbows on his knees. She set the basket of fresh cotton strips and salve next to his foot. Without looking at her, he removed the thick, wool sock and began to unwrap the bandage.

Charlotte made busy work of stoking the fire, getting a glass of water. From the corner of her eye, she watched him toss the used bandage down and slap the salve on, all with a pissed look on his face.

“I’m sorry if I’ve done something to upset you,” she said softly.

His hands stilled. He leveled her with a look so intense, she nearly took a step back. “It’s not your fault.”

The words lacked conviction. “Isolation is challenging for most people.”

A long silence. Then, “True, but we’re not most people, are we?”

For half a second, she thought he knew she was an intelligence agent. That maybe he knew everything. “I’m sure, as a SEAL, you’re trained to withstand isolation.”

“And you seem quite adept at living alone out here in the mountains.”

It wasn’t her first choice, but it beat being chained up in Nico Bourean’s belowground torture chamber.

“I don’t know who you’re hiding from,” Miles went on, as if reading her mind, “but I want you to know, your secret is safe with me. I won’t tell anyone you’re here.”

He thought she was hiding from a partner perhaps. An abusive relationship.

If only he knew. “I appreciate your discretion.”

“I need to leave, Sarah. For your sake as well as mine.”

Leave? The thought made the pulse at the base of her throat fire like a tiny, trapped bird. “You can’t travel until the snows melt.”

“If I stay…”

He shook his head, let go of a ragged sigh.

Her nerves bounced around in her stomach. “If you stay,
what
?”

Again, that intense gaze hit her. It did a slow perusal down her body, back up to her eyes, lighting every point it touched on fire. “If I stay, I can’t promise not to touch you.”

Her breath caught. Her knees felt loose in her joints. She grabbed onto the fireplace mantel.

The air between them shimmered and shifted. The hunger in his stormy gray eyes was back, everything he was feeling shining in them like the flames from the fireplace.

She wanted him to touch her. Longed for the feel of his hands and lips on her body. Day and night, she’d found herself fantasizing about him.