up. With her feeling better, I can get down to brass tacks, solving this case so everybody has a shot at a normal life again.
Still, there’s something pulling at my mind, keeping me wide awake long after I crash.
I think it’s knowing she’s just on the other side of this wall. In my bed.
Fuck.
I should’ve asked if she needed a pain pill or something before going to bed. Or maybe I should’ve popped a few myself to dull the ache below my beltline. It’s hotter than a grill on this sofa, even with just a sheet draped over my legs.
Turning, struggling to get comfortable, I shift my focus back to the case, going over what I still need to fill in the blanks.
Five Years Ago
I fight the churning waves, dragging Cash through the water, back toward shore.
It’s dark, the rough undertow of the current threatens to pull us both out to sea. I counter it, swimming harder, searching the black waters for other survivors.
Don and Miguel. I can’t see them. Can’t hear them. Jax stopped screaming less than a minute after our boat took a direct hit and blew our world apart.
Not a fucking good sign.
My feet touch the bottom after what seems like forever. Grunting, my teeth finally touch solid ground and I tug Cash to shore, his expression still dazed.
It’s rocky. Volcanic boulders or something. I pull him over several feet, find a spot where he’ll stay hidden, where I hope to fuck he’ll claw his way out of his stupor. “Sit tight. I’ll be back. I have to find Don and Miguel.”
“Go,” Cash whispers hoarsely, shaking his head. “Go.”
Goddamn, I can’t believe this.
How’d we miss an ambush?
This should’ve been an easy job for Damysus Security. Find the woman and her daughter, kick the asses of the men holding her hostage, and bring them home. I can still see her in my head, old photos with her face drilled into us by rote memory.
Now? Now, we’ve got ourselves a total clusterfuck.
I hurry back over to the rock, slide into the water, searching for my team.
The pain is excruciating. But I can’t black out again.
I have to know where I am, where they’ve brought me.
But I press on, re-emerge on dry ground, and keep going. I don’t see the open wound on the back of my leg bleeding a neat trail across the sand until it’s too damn late.
I’m just surrounded.
Dark shadows, smiling men with rifles, leering at me with no gap to make a clean break and no hope of drawing my sidearm.
They haven’t even done it yet, but my back starts to burn.
“Fuck!” I roar, bolting up.
My heart races, my back blazes, and I’m shaking like a rabid dog. It takes a second to recognize my surroundings.
Home. Safe. For now.
I lie there, giving myself time to regain control, knowing it was just a dream. A nightmare I haven’t had for years.
Composure comes slowly, but it comes. I glance around, making sure I haven’t woken anyone else up with my outburst. No, the house seems silent.
Then I reach for my phone and pull up the home security app. All the signal lights are still on, no unusual motion from the cameras. There’s no breech.
It’s a quiet night, just like it should be.
I sit up taller, wiping the sweat off my forehead and the back of my neck. The woman’s photo in my dream, the mark we were supposed to extract, it hasn’t hit me this bad in years.
Closing my eyes, I try remembering what she really looked like, before she’d been snatched from Honolulu along with her young daughter. They’d been taken hostage, held for ransom at this secret compound just outside Bali, which is where my Damysus team found them.
The woman was wealthy. Married the wrong man with dirty connections. And that made her a target.
Fuck, she could’ve resembled Val. Young, with long flowing hair, but the face in the photo in my dream wasn’t hers.
It was all Val.
Fuck the mind’s trickery.
I get up. Phantom pain still scorches the scar tissue on my back.
The scars haven’t hurt like this in years, but tonight, they feel fresh, new. Knowing I need to stretch my muscles, I walk through the house to the back and go outside, onto the lanai.
The night breeze always feels refreshing. I cross the tile, the sand, then walk to the ocean, slipping through the coolness until the gentle waves slosh up past my waist.
Let it wash away the dream. Let it take away the