The Captive's Return

Small talk. This night was getting stranger by the second. Might as well go for broke since he sure could use some advice. "Have you ever done anything you regretted?"



Hunt jerked in his seat as if shot, then stared at Quade as if he'd grown an extra head or two. Damn. He wasn't that antisocial.



Okay, he was. But you'd think a guy could be more polite in hiding his surprise. "Forget it. I need to—"



"Hang on." He passed the mug to Lucas—to give himself time to think? Or recover from the shock, more likely. "Yeah, sure. We've all done things we're sorry for later. Maybe the feeling's a little more alien for you, sir. No disrespect meant."



"None taken." Sort of. But the jab was well deserved. He'd ridden the squadron hard during his command, demanded perfection.



"I've got boatloads of regrets." He stroked his mustache again even though his Ivy League appearance was smooth as ever after a full day of work. "But the one that bit the worst came from hurting a friend."



"I was talking about woman regrets."



"So am I."



"Oh, uh. Right." Of course. Why hadn't he thought of that himself?



Hadn't Sara been his friend? The only real one he could ever remember having. Except she'd said they weren't even friends, that he was too busy taking care of her, or whatever the hell she'd meant.



Hunt reached for his mug again. "When a woman's your friend but sex screws it up—so to speak—it's impossible to go back if you're not interested in going forward. Does that make sense?"



Sort of, in a jumbled way. "Are you sure you didn't have some of that rotgut tequila?"



"Positive." The pilot topped off his mug. "I'm just dead on my feet tired. Didn't sleep much while waiting for word on if you'd made it or not."



"Hell, sorry." He should go anyway. So why wasn't he standing? "You should sleep."



"Can't do that now that you've made me start thinking about her again."'



That he understood well. "Did you ever fix things with this friend of yours?"



"Tough when she won't talk to me."



"Sounds like her fault then." Wasn't that a lightbulb moment? He should be in there discussing this with Sara rather than Hunt. But it would be rude to bolt out.



Rude? Now he was going all sensitive, too. Next thing he knew he'd be a softie as Sara said.



"The problem is, sir..." Hunt turned his mug around and around on the desk, sloshing a film of coffee along the sides like a fine liquor. "I neglected to talk to her first for a while after we, uh...after I ruined the friendship."



Hunt had slept with a woman and didn't call her afterward? Hell, even he wasn't that clueless. "Remind me again why I chose an apparent moron as my third in command?"



"Beats me." He stared down into the coffee mug as if it held answers. "I'd give my left nut for a chance to fix things with her."



"If you have feelings for her—"



"I didn't say I'm in love with her or anything." He bolted back a gulp of Java like the shot he wasn't sharing with the rest of the crewdogs. .



"Right. You didn't." But being one of the walking wounded of an ambush from Cupid, Lucas recognized the signs.



"It's just awkward seeing her around."



"I can see how that would be tough." He could use a shot himself tonight.



"And her family."



Lucas paused middrink. "They know you, uh, did what you did?"



Hunt's head jerked up. "Hell, no! Her father would kill me. Slowly. Painfully. Staked out with buzzards to pick at my remains. And I'd deserve it."



"Wish I had some advice for you."



"I don't expect any. She's moved on anyway, so there's nothing to do."



Moved on but she still wouldn't speak to Hunt?



Lucas scratched the back of his neck. He wasn't a romance expert by a long stretch, but it seemed that neither one of them had moved on.



And he was an expert on being stuck in the past.



Footsteps sounded in the hall, pulling Lucas back to the present and duties. Thank God for all the guards on base, inside and out, so he didn't have to worry as much about Sara and Lucia.



The doorway filled as Bo Rokowsky charged though with his ever-present guitar slung over his back, more crewdogs straggling after him. The copilot had even stayed behind in a craft after an emergency landing once to pick up his guitar.



Rokowsky slung the instrument onto his bed, back to the room. "Does anybody besides me smell roses?"



Crap. Lucas checked his flight suit for stray petals. He'd forgotten all about lying around in those flowers with Sara.



Before he could say anything—not that he had an idea what—Rokowsky turned toward the room.



And screeched to a halt. His eyes locked on Lucas and went wide, his shoulders bracing. "Hello, sir."



"Hello, Captain." Lucas stood. "I'm heading out so everyone can sleep."



They also needed to unwind, something that wouldn't happen with a commander around. Even if the commander magically turned into a true softie, he was still the boss. "Good night."



Lucas nodded to the other crewdogs, not surprised to find them hanging out together. The whole squadron had been through a lot with deployments to the Middle East, some more bonded than others because of the shoot down—Hunt, Rokowsky, Price and Max Keagan, who'd gone undercover on a flight with them.



Price leaned closer to share a joke with Hunt. The pilot's smile was tight, his eyes not holding.



Good God.



Hunt had slept with Price's college-aged daughter? If the loadmaster found out, Hunt would be lucky to get off with just buzzards. No wonder Hunt felt so guilty.



Lucas ducked into the hall. Hunt's words about friendship rattled around in his head along with what Sara had said about letting her care for him, too. That made for scary crap, opening himself up for her.



If he was in charge, no one could get too close. He'd been scared as hell of letting her crawl under his skin five years ago. The more she meant to him, the more it would hurt if he screwed up and lost her. Now he knew exactly how much it hurt, which had turned him into even more of a coward.



Rather than dropping to his knees in gratitude over having a second chance with her, he'd tried to lock her out of his heart. As if he'd ever had any luck with that before. He wasn't just a coward. He was a bigger idiot than Hunt.



But he was trainable.



Time to do his best to fix the mistake because he absolutely would not lose Sara again. He did an about-face away from the briefing room full of charts, back toward his quarters where Sara and Lucia—and his future— waited for him.



Nodding to the guards, he reached for the door, opening quietly so as not to wake them. Light from the hall cast a muted glow over the stark space and Sara's empty bed.



Was she in the bathroom? The door was closed. He checked Lucia, the kiddo on her side under the sheet, her eyes squeezed shut tight.



Too tight.



He grinned, kinda proud of himself for this parental insight of catching his kid fake sleeping. "Hey, beetle." He crossed to sit on the edge of her bed. "Do you need a drink of water or something?"



Please, though, not a fairy tale request yet. He needed to go to the library first.



"Just want my mama." She sidled closer to him, big brown eyes open and sad.



Man, was that his heart flipping over?



He glanced at the bathroom door. "She should be out soon."



"Nuh-uh." Lucia shook her head, tangled curls swishing. "She went for a walk and she didn't even ask me to go. I'm mad, but I didn't eat a bug."



A walk? Leaving Lucia alone?



Even with the guard outside, he seriously doubted Sara would leave Lucia by herself in the room. "Where did she walk?"



Lucia rocked forward on her knees and pointed down. "Through the floor with Tio Ramon."



Sara squinted in the dark tunnel, Ramon's machine gun in the middle of her back a persuasive reminder to keep marching. Their only light gleamed from a miner's lamp on his head, casting a thin stream through the pitch nothingness. Seemingly endless with no way to tell how much longer until they reached an exit.



At least she'd persuaded Ramon to leave Lucia behind. She'd vowed she would scream if he took one step toward her daughter. He would have to blow her brains out as he'd threatened, which would alert the guards.



The only way she would go peacefully was if Lucia stayed behind. At least Lucia had pretended to stay asleep through it all. Thank heaven they both hadn't been asleep when he'd come through the floor or he would have almost certainly gagged her.



For a moment, she'd thought he would kill her anyway and blaze his way out with Lucia. Was this the man he'd been back in his guerrilla fighter days'? She shivered at the thought of Nola Seabrook on the road with him, shuddered to imagine this element of his personality had been lurking, ready to snap free at any time.



Some sanity must have remained in his twisted mind, because he'd accepted her bargain. She'd known by then that Lucia was faking sleep, but her daughter didn't wince. She grieved that her child had to witness her mother's kidnapping, especially after an already bizarre childhood.



But she also prayed Lucas would check in soon and Lucia could explain well enough. Sara wanted to confront Ramon with his years of deception in letting her believe her husband and brother were dead. Wanted to scream at him for the pain he'd brought her, for robbing Lucia of her father. But she wouldn't indulge impulsive emotions and risk upsetting him. Bottom line, she had to delay their journey down this dank earthen tunnel long enough for her daughter to alert Lucas.



"Tio Ramon..." She hoped calling him uncle would remind him of softer emotions, the pseudo-family-tie that had bonded all of them together for years. "My father would not want this for me, or for you. You have your own family. Please let me build mine."



"In the United States?"



He seemed to already know anyway, so she allowed herself a small nod.



His sigh racked long and hard behind her. "I had already suspected, feared, but crawling around under the floor place to find your room, I heard much about your joyous reunion with your husband."



He'd been listening? Hope of reasoning with him faded away.



"Puta." He spit. "You betrayed your family when you left with these people. And the rest of my family..." His voice cracked on the last word, his steps faltering. "They are gone."



"Gone?" All of them? Her mind reeled with flashing images of his grandchildren, his adult children, too, all pawns in his perverted control games.



"The whole compound has been destroyed, my family with it."



Grief chilled her even more than the underground iciness. Ramon's grandchildren had been Lucia's only playmates. Sara's charges in her nanny duties.



What-if scenarios chilled her further. If she hadn't left, Lucia would have been in the room with them when Padilla's bombs and bullets hit. In Ramon's fanatical attempt to "protect" them from the outside world, he'd left them all defenseless.



Except she wasn't defenseless any longer. She'd defied him by escaping once. She could—and would—do it again.



He prodded the steely barrel of the gun against her spine again. "Walk, damn it."



She hadn't even realized her feet had stopped. "Of course. I'm sorry, I'm just..." She swallowed down emotions she couldn't afford to indulge at the moment if she expected to live long enough to see Lucas again. "I can't believe they're all dead."



"I have nothing left but the hope of returning my country to its former glory."



"Then why risk that by coming in after me?" She willed Lucas to hurry, her fist closing around the few remaining rose petals she'd snuck from the room. She'd been dropping them when she dared, praying Lucas would see and understand. Follow through the crawl space under their room, into the bomb shelter with a hidden door to an old drug runner's tunnel.