Breaking Away (Military Romantic Suspense) (Book 3 of the SEAL TEAM Heartbreakers) Read online

  With both men down, Flash staggered to his feet and kicked the rifles under the car. He bent over the man he’d shot in the chest, ran his hands over him checking for weapons, then jerked his shirt up. Kevlar had kept the bullets from penetrating, but he remained unconscious.

  Flash wiped the blood back again as it streamed down the side of his head. He crossed to the man rolling on the ground in pain, bent and jerked the mask from the sniper’s face.

  A stranger.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Flash demanded. His temple pounded with every beat of his heart.

  “Fuck you,” the man answered.

  Not an acceptable answer, since the son of a bitch had shot him. He kicked him in the head and the sniper went still, unconscious.

  He flipped back the shooter’s jacket, pulled a wallet from the inside pocket, and opened it. A badge glared up at him. His heart seized along with his breath. FBI. He’d shot an FBI agent.

  These guys had been sent to assassinate him, Unger, and his sidekick. To kill them all.

  What the fuck was going on? Who had arranged this? Was it Gilbert?

  He reached for his cell phone and hit speed dial. The phone rang and rang, then went to Dobson’s voice mail. It was a gunshot he’d heard. He was certain of it. Was Dobson dead? And where the hell was Gilbert? He ended the call without leaving a message.

  The only two agents he’d worked with were Dobson and Gilbert, and Dobson had called to warn him of a setup. Had Gilbert set up this assassination?

  When he found the bastard, he was going to take him out—slowly. Very, very slowly.

  CHAPTER 2

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  A child’s wail reached into the protective darkness and pulled her toward consciousness. It must be Joy, crying. Her child’s distress dragged Samantha further toward awareness. She tried to lift her head, but it felt heavy like it was glued to the…It was the floor she was lying on. As consciousness returned, pain ricocheted through her body like the recoil of a bungee cord. She groaned. The last thing she remembered was Will’s fist coming at her face.

  Joy’s insistent cries pierced her muddled thoughts. Have to go to her. She bunched her knees beneath her and attempted to rise. Her jaw was numb, her vision blurred in one eye, and her arms shook as she pushed her upper body free of the floor. Nausea rolled over her and she gagged. She curled in on herself and pressed her forehead to the floor as dry heaves convulsed her body, intensifying every ache.

  Once the sickness passed, she breathed in and out, afraid any further movement might make it return. Phone. I need the phone. God, her face hurt. She hurt. Oh God, the baby! Fear charged through her. She touched her lower abdomen where an achy cramping had taken root. She looked down her body to her shorts. Her legs were coated with blood. A sharp wail escaped her and blended with Joy’s cries. He’d killed their baby. She was miscarrying.

  No. No.

  She curled on her side and waited for the pain to recede. The sound of a phone ringing broke through her pain. The living room looked like a war zone. Furniture was toppled. The lamps broken. The coffee table had been destroyed by a brutal stomp. It lay beside her, two legs broken off. The muffled ring sounded from beneath it.

  She hadn’t walked away when she should have. The first time he’d slapped her, she should have left. But he’d threatened to kill her if she did. And now their unborn child was dying because she hadn’t had the courage to stand up to him. Oh, God!

  She’d run for the phone and Will had wrenched it from her hand. And punched her. He’d wanted to kill her. She’d seen it clearly in his eyes, his face.

  The ringing stopped.

  Joy’s cries grew more frantic. And she was beating at her bedroom door.

  A knock sounded at the door. Samantha gathered her breath. “Help me.” The weakness of her voice shocked her. Why couldn’t she shout?

  The knock came again. A man’s face appeared in the window, dark hair, square jaw. Shock tracked across his features. The door was shoved open and a man and woman stood at the entrance. New neighbors. She’d seen them yesterday moving in. They didn’t know to ignore the shouts and cries. The sounds of breaking glass and furniture.

  “Dial nine-one-one, Steve,” the woman said even as she was coming into the room.

  “I’m on it.” He was punching numbers.

  “Oh, dear God!” She knelt next to Samantha and touched her shoulder.

  “Get Joy,” Samantha pleaded and pointed down the hall with a movement of one finger. Even that seemed to hurt.

  The woman rose, picked her way through the debris, and disappeared down the hall. Joy’s cries grew louder and closer.

  Her pale blonde hair hung wet with sweat around her face, which was flushed and swollen from crying. “MommaMommaMomma….” Joy strung her name together in a constant litany, like baby talk, her voice fraught with fear and anguish. She struggled to escape the strange woman’s arms and come to her. The woman soothed her by taking a seat on the floor next to Samantha.

  Joy’s hiccups and sniffles tore at her. This was her fault. This was what she’d forced her child to experience.

  “Momma’s hurt, but she’s going to be just fine,” the woman said. She held Joy in her lap, but allowed her to touch Sam’s hand. That seemed to sooth her.

  Samantha caught her daughter’s fingers, and with what little breath she could muster, through the constant painful pressure of her ribs, she shushed her. “Momma’s going to be fine, Joy. The doctors will help me.”

  A siren wailed in the distance.

  “Callmygrandmother. Joyneedsher.”

  The pity she read in the woman’s face brought tears to her eyes and shame to her heart. She turned her face into the floor.

  “Phone,” she croaked, pointing her finger toward the coffee table. “Ellen.”

  “I’m going to wave the ambulance down,” the man said from the door.

  With one arm looped around Joy’s small body, the woman shoved her hand beneath the coffee table and retrieved the phone, then pushed buttons.

  Samantha closed her eyes and listened to the conversation. The words, “she’s been beaten” echoed over and over through her brain. How many times had she hidden the bruises, the red marks like burns on her skin, the pain of wrenched muscles and broken bones? How many times had she denied that she was a battered wife? To herself. To her grandmother. She had hidden it until no friends remained to deny it to.

  Will had killed their unborn child with his fists, his feet, and she had allowed him to—because she’d stayed. And she’d stayed because of his threats against her, her grandmother, and Joy. If he could kill the child in her womb with his fists and feet, he could kill Joy with one twist, one slap. Her four-year-old body was so small, so fragile.

  Samantha clenched her teeth against their chattering. She felt so cold. The blood gushed from her womb. Her thin cotton shorts were sticking to her skin. “Don’t let Will have her. He threatened to…kill her.”

  The woman’s lips trembled, and then she pressed them together. “I won’t. Your grandmother is on her way.”

  A siren screamed up to the house, then cut off. Two male EMTs entered the house loaded down with equipment. They set aside their kits, and the woman hurried to her feet at their direction. She hiked Joy on her hip, murmuring reassurances.

  Samantha flinched when one of the men reached out to touch her face.

  “Easy,” he said.

  Samantha dragged in as full a breath as she could. “My husband beat me. He threatened to kill my daughter,” she muttered as he continued his examination.

  “The cops are on their way,” he said, shining a light into her eyes.

  “His name is Will Cross.”

  The man’s movements stilled. “As in Cross Construction?”

  “Yes.” A fresh gush of blood erupted between her thighs and pooled beneath her.

  The two men glanced at each other.

  “If I die, you have to tell them, he killed our baby.” The words
sounded slurred. It was difficult to speak.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  She couldn’t feel her face. The room darkened, as though she were looking through a mesh screen. She ran her hand down over her belly. “Not anymore.”

  Blackness rolled over her. She welcomed it.

  CHAPTER 3

  San Diego, California

  Flash woke to a headache that pounded against his temples with every heartbeat. Dried blood had hardened on the right side of his face and stiffened his hair into spikes. Head wounds bled like a son of a bitch, and this one had oozed all over the seat.

  Where the hell was he?

  Finally recognizing the back of his apartment complex, he shoved open the car door and swung his legs out. He groaned as the movement caused the throbbing to ratchet up to jackhammer status. He must have passed out for a while. What the hell had happened? One minute he was going along with the plan and the next he was dodging bullets.

  And getting shot.

  He remembered the drive away from the scene as though it were a fog-enshrouded dream.

  How long had he been out? He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to drive from the storage facility to the apartment complex. Then he’d been out maybe ten minutes.

  Gripping the edge of the door, he eased himself up and out of the driver’s seat. Dizziness struck and the asphalt rocked beneath him. He swallowed back nausea, and braced a hand on the edge of the open door. He had to get to his apartment and assess how badly he was injured. He should have driven to a hospital. But until he was certain about what the hell was going on, he couldn’t risk having a bullet wound reported.

  Holding onto the car for balance, he gathered the bag full of money and the gym bag holding the artifacts from the trunk, then staggered forward toward the back entrance of the complex.

  What was the key code? If he didn’t get it right within three tries, it would lock him out completely for thirty minutes. If anyone was coming after him for shooting the FBI assassins, they’d be here any minute. His vision blurred. He closed his eyes and attempted to visualize the numbers. Opening his eyes again, he punched in the number and a red light flashed.

  Wrong code. Damn. What the fuck was it? And why wouldn’t his eyes work? He closed the left one and the pad grew clearer. He punched in the number again and the light flashed green. Thank you, Jesus.

  He swung the door open and slipped inside. The back hallway ran from one end of the building to the other, and stairway on the right led up to the other floors. He tugged open the steel fire door and climbed the stairs to the second story. Pain throbbed with every step. His vision blurred and cleared. But at least the nausea was easing. He cracked the door and looked out into the hall. All clear. He hustled down to his door and unlocked it.

  Wait. What if they were waiting for him?

  Setting the bags aside, he drew his Sig from the small of his back. He pulled back the slide to check the chamber. How many rounds had he fired? Two at the one guy’s chest, and three into the other man’s legs. Seven remained out of the twelve-bullet magazine, plus one in the chamber.

  Standing to one side, he shoved the door open.

  Nothing happened and he bobbed around the edge of the door to look inside the apartment.

  Silence rushed out and nothing moved. He took a tentative step into the room. Everything was as he’d left it. He retrieved the bags and tossed them into a chair, kicked the door closed, then staggered down the hall to the bathroom. Blood darkened his jacket and had saturated his shirt. He peeled them off and tossed them into the trashcan.

  Using a washcloth, he wiped away the dried blood in his hair and attempted to look at the injury. A deep furrow cut across his scalp on the right side of his head to his temple. The coppery scent of blood turned his stomach.

  He’d missed being killed by the width of a piece of paper. And there was no doubt he had a concussion because of it.

  “Motherfuckers!” he muttered. He had to get dressed and get out of here. Until he knew what was going on, he needed to be wary of everyone who’d been involved in the mission.

  He rummaged through the medicine cabinet and found gauze, tape, and antibiotic ointment. He slathered on the ointment, wound the gauze around his head, and, tearing off a piece of tape with his teeth, slapped it on the end of the bandage.

  His head throbbed relentlessly. He swallowed two ibuprofen dry, and with a fresh washcloth, wiped away the remnants of blood that tinged his skin pink. He had to get moving. If the FBI had double-crossed him, they’d be coming here any minute to search for him.

  He remembered the call he’d received during the buy and jerked his cell phone from his pocket, flipping it open and playing Dobson’s first message. Rick Dobson’s voice said, “There’s something screwy going down, Flash. Don’t go to the meet. Hole up somewhere until you hear from me.”

  The call had come in at O-six hundred. By six-ten he’d called again while he was under fire. The only people Rick would have been with at that time were his team. Had the international cartel they were dealing with somehow learned about them? But how? Had they fallen under attack? It had sounded like it.

  The cartel would have known to come after Flash because he was the go-between, but they wouldn’t have known about Rick and the team. Unless someone they trusted had burned them.

  Rick hadn’t told him any names of the players involved. So he had no idea what had been going on behind the scenes.

  Flash returned to his bedroom, dragged a shirt from his closet and another jacket. Two minutes later he walked out of his apartment with a backpack hanging over his shoulders that carried a change of clothes, his laptop, medical supplies, and extra ammunition. A baseball cap hid the bandage around his head. The bags from the drop dangled heavily from each hand.

  He was going to do just as Rick told him and hole up somewhere until he heard from him… if he was still alive.

  Jesus, he felt weak and nauseous. He walked out the back door just as the scream of police car sirens sounded in the distance. Avoiding his car, he walked down the alley and across the busy street at the corner to a nearby park. He dropped the bags at his feet and looked down the alley as two police cars halted in the apartment building parking lot. Four cops leaped from their vehicles and, drawing their guns, descended on his car.

  “Jesus,” he breathed as shock punched him in the gut, taking his breath.

  He was fucked.

  CHAPTER 4

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Though she had only been given Jell-O and broth, the smell of the chicken they’d served for dinner on the rest of the hospital floor lingered in the room, intensifying Samanth’s nausea. The doctor’s voice seemed to drone on and on. Wah-wah-wah, like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

  “We believe you have spontaneously expelled the tissue, so you won’t need a D and C. We did give you one unit of blood.”

  The doctor looked younger than she’d felt in a long, long time. It was hard to pay attention to what he was saying. Expelled the tissue. Is that what they called it when you lost a child? Had he put it like that to keep from breaking her heart even more? Or was he just trying to keep it clinical? She touched the IV that pumped fluid into her arm. The tape holding the tubing in place pulled at her skin.

  “You also have a concussion and a fractured cheekbone. I consulted Dr. Nuñez while you were asleep. He believes that the fracture will heal without any treatment. I’ll want to keep you under close observation for the next couple of days to make certain the vision in your eye returns to normal.”

  Sam touched the patch over her eye. At least Will hadn’t blinded her.

  But what was normal? Her stomach cramped with anxiety. Would she ever feel normal again?

  “You have two broken ribs on the left side. Those will probably be the most painful during healing.”

  Was he including her psyche in that?

  He paused and seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “Do you understand everything I’ve said, Mrs. Cross?�
�

  She flinched inwardly at hearing the name. Every time someone said it, a rush of bitterness and anger welled up inside her. If she were never called Mrs. Cross again it would be too soon. “I understand.”

  “I can arrange for you to talk to a hospital psychologist while you’re here. It will help.”

  She shook her head. It wouldn’t help to relive the last four years of her life. She just wanted to forget everything that had happened, every single moment. Shove it into a closet and close it off forever.

  “Is she going to stand between me and my husband so he can’t beat me again? Are you?” she asked.

  “We have security guards here. He’s not going to hurt you while you’re in the hospital. You’re safe here.”

  He was so oblivious to the real world. “You don’t know him. He’ll get in here if he wants to.”

  And what about Joy? Could he find her and Gran?

  “My daughter. She’s okay?”

  “She’s with your grandmother, as you requested. There are two policemen outside who want to speak to you.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll send them in.”

  Two men came into the room. Both looked younger than the doctor. Dear God.

  The taller of the two introduced himself as Detective Kipler and his stockier partner as Detective Marshall. Both appeared to be early thirties, dark haired, clean cut. “We’ve spoken to the emergency personnel who brought you in, Mrs. Cross.” Kipler said. “They both said you identified your husband as the man who assaulted you.”

  “Yes. He killed our baby.”

  He cleared his throat and focused on the pad he held. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “The EMTs said you were hemorrhaging and going into shock. Do you remember what you said to them?”

  “I told them if I died, that my husband had killed our baby and had threatened to kill our daughter.”

  “There have been three other reports of domestic issues at your house ma’am. Is that correct?”