“What is going on?” Paige whispered.

“A royal cluster fuck from where I’m sitting. Those are Kirikhan rebels.”

“How do you know that?”

“The Russian dialect.”

“You speak Russian?”

“Yeah, and several other languages.” He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “Don’t tell me you only speak Spanish?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” she bit out. “What do you think they’re doing here?”

“I haven’t a clue, but if they’re here, you can bet it’s in support of the revolution. They work for a really bad duo, in fact they’re on our list of HVTs.”

“High-value targets,” she said, nodding.

“Boris and Natasha Golovkin.”

“Boris and Natasha? Like, ‘How do we kill moose and squirrel’ villians? Is that a joke?”

“Believe me, it’s not a joke, Rocky and Bullwinkle aside.”

“I’m sorry, but they’re not on my radar or NCIS as far as I know.” She reached back for her weapon. “What do you want to do about this?”

“My gut says that it might have something to do with the guns, but I don’t know for sure. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Cris sent us here, Paige.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Why would he knowingly send us into danger blind?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not like him at all. If you’re right and he is under stress, it probably has to do with Anderson.”

“Then does Anderson know who you are?”

“You think my cover is blown?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking they got tipped off the night at the warehouse and are, at the very least, suspicious of us. Let’s push these further down the road and hide them in the cover of the jungle. We’re going to need to do some recon.”

“Is that what you do on the Team?”

“Yeah, point man, sniper, sneaky bastard.”

The thick jungle closed around him, blocking sunlight, and the cooler temperatures created a thick rolling mist over the forest floor. The beauty of it escaped him, his steps slower because he couldn’t see the ground well.

They were about thirty yards into the forest when the first shot came.

He went still and sighed. His inclination was to head toward it. It didn’t matter that he was only toting a knife. She put her hand on his arm. “Ashe, we can’t.”

“Sure we can.”

She shook her head. “It’s better if we check it out first before we start killing people pell-mell.”

“It would be controlled chaos,” he said, completely serious.

They found a good place to stash the vehicles just as the sound of someone running through the forest shifting debris and displacing foliage. When he peered out, he saw it was the kid from the village. The boy would never outrun whoever was behind him, and Kid caught up with him, snatching him off the ground and covering his mouth with his hand as he backed into a darkened area off the path. The boy squirmed and Kid kept him tight in his arms, grunting when the kid bit him.

He forced the boy to look him in the eyes, and gave him a stare he reserved for terrorists. For a second, he thought the kid would faint. Then his frightened eyes went to Paige, and her projected calm soothed him. He nodded, relaxed and Kid released his hand. The boy opened his mouth to speak, and Kid covered it.

“Not a word,” he warned in Spanish.

He released him and the skinny kid folded to the ground. Kid motioned him to hide behind him in a burrow of vines and the boy quickly obeyed. Kid slid forward, his knife drawn as he watched the rebels strut along the path. They were overconfident, laughing about scaring the villagers, and while Kid wanted to teach them a lesson about being bullies, he couldn’t afford to reveal their location. The trio moved deeper into the valley, and he let them pass, then motioned to Paige and the boy.

“What’s your name?”

“Jorge.”

“Nice to meet you.” He didn’t offer their names.

“They were looking for you two.”

Most likely not, Kid thought. “Why are they here?”

“They don’t say. They just keep going into the jungle and at night we hear helicopters. They don’t like strangers here.”

That Kid could believe. Clear out the untrustworthy, threaten the locals and you’ve got your bases covered since it the police were scattered thinly in these outlying parts.

The reason they were here had to be tied to those weapons. Had they somehow gotten wind of the mishap?

Then he saw him, striding confidently with two more rebels. Dean Norris. Anderson’s shadow, his tattoos visible down his arms. He nudged Paige who was looking the boy over for injuries. She turned to look and her mouth tightened.

He bent down and whispered to the boy once Norris was safely past. “Get your butt back home.”

“I can show you where they go,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I followed them, but it was too dark to see what they were doing.”

“Show me.” Kid followed the boy, watching his back while Paige, her weapon drawn watched his. With a finger to his lips, Jorge smiled devilishly, then pointed through the underbrush. There were crates stacked everywhere, new construction, bits and pieces of old shattered wood scattered over the ground. Those three he’d seen previously and the two with Norris were standing around until one of them pulled out a two-way radio and spoke into it. Then, Kid heard the whop, whop, whop of the chopper rotors. Transport for the recovered guns.

This didn’t bode well for those weapons. If the Kirikhan rebels were involved in the salvage, they were either part of this deal or the buyers who had come to claim their merchandise. Kid was not going to stand by while these weapons fell into their hands to be used against NATO.

He pulled out his cell phone, but when he activated it, there was no service. “We’re either too far out or they’re jamming the signal.” He slipped the phone into his back pocket. For a moment, Kid considered capturing one of the five for a little interrogation, but nixed it. It was a better plan to pick up intel. Then they would hightail it back to La Paz to report to LT and NCIS so that they could send a force in here and to the La Paz warehouse to recover the Navy’s weapons.

The men started to argue and finally two of them grabbed a crate as the chopper materialized in the sky, flying directly toward them.

Arguing heatedly, they lost their hold on the crate and it hit the ground. The lid cracked and for a moment they all just stared at the spilled contents.

Kid’s gut clenched hard and alarm tightened every cell in his body. Paige gripped his shoulder as she also registered the crated cargo—warheads. Ballistic missile warheads.

Holy fucking shit!

Someone wasn’t forthcoming on the intel about the warheads and, with the threat of them now in the rebels’ hands, this was dire. American weapons being used against their own was bad enough, but the Golovkins with ballistic missile warheads? That would mean many NATO deaths, including Americans.

Suddenly out of the jungle, three uniformed Bolivian police emerged, guns drawn and trained on the three rebels. “What is going on here?” the lead police officer demanded in rapid Spanish.

The rebels looked unconcerned and none of them said anything. The police moved in, and one of them pulled his radio. Before he could bring it to his mouth, his chest exploded, taking his lungs out his back. Kid pushed Jorge down, and his gaze went to the direction of the shot. He couldn’t see a thing. A second later, another shot came, knocking the second guy backward off his feet, a clean hole in his forehead even before the report echoed. Kid was admiring the precision hit as the third officer turned to run. The shot cracked a couple of seconds later.

The sniper was about six hundred yards away, Kid thought, in the hills. No noise suppressor, but a scope. That meant the shooter was unconcerned about being hidden.

He turned to look at Paige, her face drawn and solemn. He’d almost forgotten about the boy. Kid motioned Jorge toward the village as he eased back, careful not to disturb the bushes and give the sniper more targets.

When they were a reasonably safe distance away, Kid said. “Jorge, did you see a plane go down around here?”

The boy frowned. “There was the sound of a plane a while back, maybe two weeks ago, but I didn’t hear any crash.”

Back at the ATVs, Kid said, “Jorge get back to your mom and keep quiet.”

He nodded. “Good luck,” he said before he ran off.

“The plane can’t be far from here.”

She nodded. “I need to see it and document it before I call my boss. We find it, get some pictures, get back to the car and La Paz. We need a signal to call NCIS.”

He nodded. “I’d like to see how many of these rebels we have milling around as well. Give your team and mine a better idea of what they’ll be up against when they storm in here.”

“Okay, let’s go find us a plane.”

They set off in the direction of the rebels and the downed Bolivian cops. Skirting around them, they came upon a green SUV with Policia Bolivia stenciled on the side in white. Kid leaned inside and grabbed the radio, but when he tried to use it, got nothing but static. “Yeah, they’re jamming communications.”

She blew out a breath. They left the vehicle and that’s when Kid saw it. Broken branches. A lot of broken branches. Paige pulled out her phone and started snapping pictures. He started tracking the distinctive path until he came out to a clearing and a lot of chewed up ground. There was a long scar of disturbed earth, broken vines and displaced brush and at the end, the nose of the plane sat at an angle against a copse of trees, wedged into the branches. The fuselage was gone, broken off and had flown into a tangled mass of metal and wires across the field.

“He crashed landed,” Paige said, framing and capturing the scene. “He must have been out of it and totally missed the airport, then when he was dying, tried to set down and lost control.”

“Yeah, he most likely had no choice.” He turned to her. “Stay with me and keep that weapon cocked, but try not to fire unless absolutely necessary.” His eyes moved across the field and the jungle beyond. There was no movement, but that didn’t mean the rebels weren’t around. They were gathering up the weapons and…Christ…the warheads. “How’s your aim?”

“Marksman,” she said grimly, her honed gaze just as alert as his.

“That’ll do.”

She gave him a slight smile and shook her head. “I’ve got your back.”

He chuckled and they stayed just on the fringe of the jungle, in the shadowed patches to hide their approach. “Let’s go.” He darted out, and they rushed across the open ground. Reaching the plane, they circled it and then ducked through the jagged opening caused by the fuselage being ripped away.

There were still some seats left in the interior, but mostly it was a chewed-up wreck. Approaching the cockpit, still watching for any kind of threat, Kid deferred to Paige. This was, after all, her investigation and this was the man she’d been looking for.

He was slumped over the steering wheel, his eyes open. His body had collapsed, his flesh a creamy consistency and insect movement made the body shift. The smell was overwhelming, his body in full decay. There was a rust red stain on his shirt near his lower abdomen that ran down the seat and pooled and dried on the floor.

It was a horrible sight, but Paige didn’t balk or flinch. He bet she’d seen a lot worse. He sure the hell had. She donned gloves. She was all business. So far, she’d been an asset in the field, holding her own. He admired her professionalism and her courage. His gaze traveled over her dark hair, pulled back in a simple ponytail, remembering the silky feel of it. She was compact, curvy, and in charge, with beautifully expressive tiger-eyes.

“He bled out, died either during the landing or shortly thereafter.” Her voice was a clinical flat tone, noting the facts and keeping everything neutral. “I’m surprised they didn’t destroy the plane and him with it.”

The rebels hadn’t even given a damn about him, just left him here to rot and part of his disgust was because a human being had been neglected like this. Even though he’d committed illegal acts, he’d been a former marine. Kid couldn’t help but think about how that compared to his dad. Had Anderson been lying just to get to him? Or had his dad not been the man he’d thought he was all these years? The not knowing was tearing him up inside.

Was Paige right?

Was he too busy trying to prove himself, he wasn’t rising to his own level of potential. That it wasn’t enough to be like his dad, but he needed to be his own man, on his own two feet. Stop living in his dad’s shadow.

Any way he looked at it, he still wanted to do his father proud.

Paige continued to snap the pictures she needed. Searching the body, she came up with his damp wallet.

She flipped it open and just inside, the ruined picture of him and his mom smiled at them. Paige studied the driver’s license. “David Duffield.” She sighed as if the first leg of her investigative journey had culminated in his dead body. “It’s him and this is the correct plane. But, Ashe, my boss never said anything about warheads.”

Kid’s lips thinned. “Maybe he wasn’t informed about them. The Navy only gives out enough information to get the job done. It was obvious they didn’t want to broadcast that Anderson and his crew got away with ballistic warheads.”

“I hate it when we’re supposed to be on the same team and we get stonewalled.”

She pulled out an evidence bag and dropped the wallet inside. “That is a bitch, but the name of the game. You have what you need?”

“Yes,” she said, stripping off the gloves and giving the body another look. “He shouldn’t be left here like this. We’ll make sure he at least gets a burial. He just wanted to help his mom.”

Kid nodded, liking that about this woman, her compassion. She might not be in the military, but she got the gist of the leave no man behind concept.

“Let’s get out of here and back to the ATVs.” The smell in here was overwhelming, the heat and the humidity of the jungle only adding to the thick and still air.

They made their way to the ragged opening, but Kid saw a shadow slide across the small windows. He alerted Paige, but she’d already seen it. He moved to intercept, silently, quickly, waiting for the bastard, his knife in his hand when the guy cut across the opening.

Shooting him at close range with Paige’s weapon would have been effective, easy—and way too loud. The six-inch razor-sharp blade was just as effective and far quieter, but it came at a cost when the man instantly countered Kid’s attack and fought back, blocking his first strike.

Then elbowing him in the ribs, sending pain radiating out, but Kid didn’t let him go, nor loosen his hold. The guy kicked and squirmed, until Kid body-slammed him hard into the side of the plane and stunned him enough to wrestle him to the ground. He got in one deep-cut to the guy’s gut and jerked the blade upward, hard.

As added insurance, Kid took the rebel’s head in his hands and twisted, hard and fast, breaking the guy’s neck. The sound was unmistakable.

Another rebel came around the structure and raised his sub-automatic, but Paige plugged him right between the eyes, the retort of the gun loud.

Shouts echoed around them. He reached down, snatched up the dead guy’s weapon and grabbed Paige’s hand. Access across the field to the ATVs was cut off as rebels came running out of the woods.

Bullets cracking at their heels and whizzing by them, Kid kept up his pace. They crashed through the jungle, speed valued over hiding at this point. Kid burst in short spurts with the sub-automatic as he ran.

They were being herded, and he had to believe that was to give the rebels an advantage against them. Then Kid saw it. A suspension bridge and the rim of a gorge, he noted there were slats missing. He remembered reading something about it—the semi subterranean waterfalls. They had no choice. Picking up his pace, Paige right behind him, he made for the bridge. As soon as he stepped on the bridge, he saw men on the other side blocking their escape. He brought up the weapon and as the structure swayed with their weight, without stopping, kept up a continuous burst that scattered them. Condors, displaced from the craggy perches above them, flew in agitated circles.

Paige picked off as many as she could. When they reached the end, rebels behind them, Kid veered to the right and skirted the gorge, displacing rocks and scree as he raced to the desired location. To the right was a sheer drop to the river, the path was nothing but a mere shelf cut in the face of the cliff and to their left rose the smooth walls of black, frowning rock. Just below the falls, a pool. A sixty-foot drop was their only chance of survival.

He glanced behind him and using up the last of the ammunition, rode the trigger until it clicked dry. Throwing the weapon down, he took Paige’s hand.

“Do you trust me?” He looked deep into her eyes, realizing what he was about to do was on a scale of crazy he had yet to explore, as crazy as getting involved with her. Falling for her in a way that left him speechless, breathless and before Paige, wondering how he’d ever understood what it really meant to fall in love, be in love, get lost in love. But he was batshit crazy over this woman, and he wasn’t afraid to do something that would give them a fighting chance. It was better than zero and he liked their odds. Both of them were survivors.

“Yes,” she said sincerely, reverently as she locked her gaze to his.

“Wrap your legs around me and don’t let go.” He wrapped his arms around her and looked down, into the sheer drop, half a gallon of adrenaline instantly drop-loading into his veins, switching on every survival instinct he had. “Hang on.”

He leapt off the cliff just as the rebels from the bridge reached them. It was as if everything slowed down. Paige’s gun discharged in rapid succession, deafening him as bullets zinged and zoomed past them, the retorts of the weapons reverberating off the granite walls. She released her clip, never letting go of him in the process, shoving another one home and continuing to fire.

She was magnificent.

* * *

Hang on.

It sounded like what a superhero would say just before he took to the air.

Paige watched the cliff’s edge fall away, but she kept pulling the trigger, hitting the men standing there, laying down covering fire and giving them a better advantage as they plummeted. Little details registered in a blink of an eye, the soft silk of his hair against her wrists, the strength of his solid, muscular body holding her close, his even breathing, calming her without even trying. The bravery and guts all wrapped up into the sheer beauty that was Kid Chaos.

But there was more to him than that. So much more, and she wanted to explore it all. She saw beneath the human shell, the intimidating and intense gaze, the devastating looks, and the humor to the man he was inside. Just as compelling as everything else. He was meant to be like this—audacious, fearless, determined—even in his vulnerability he was bold and daring, showing her a part of himself that he’d kept reserved, private, secret.

She wouldn’t want him to be any other way. She loved that about him. Everything about him. Even the way he killed, grace personified, brutal, masterful and without any wasted effort. He was a warrior.

And, she wanted him to be hers. The knowledge of that sunk deep down to her bones as they hit the water, the impact taking her breath away, the kind of impact that mirrored her reaction to Ashe.

The cold hit her like a runaway truck, knocking the breath out of her, her gasp caught in her throat as she clamped her mouth shut to keep precious air from escaping. She felt almost sick with the sudden awful cold shocking her system, but he wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t let her rise to the surface. Bullets hit the water in a bizarre slow-motion slide, hot, sizzling lead gliding through cool, stalling liquid, leaving behind streaking white conic tails.

Then he started to swim, still holding her, a flip of his upper body and lower like the tail of a dolphin. He knew where he was going. He already had a plan, and she was safe here with him.

Of course, he was a SEAL and this was the sea part. He was as home in the water as he was on the land, as he was when her sky had been falling. He’d jumped out of helicopters and planes. What was a small cliff?

She looked up at the man holding her so close, watching him concentrate with a calm, resolute look on his face. He had no doubt they were getting out of this alive. She felt it in his steady heartbeat. She saw it in his eyes, the utter commitment he’d made when he’d jumped into thin air.

There was no doubt what would happen if any one of those rebels crossed into his space. He would take them out one by one.

Kid Chaos.

Her lungs were about to burst just as he brought them to the surface under an overhang of rock. She took a gasping breath, sucking in oxygen as he continued to breathe steadily. “You have nerves of steel,” she whispered. Her lips quivering and her body beginning to shake now that the air was hitting her wet head.

He directed her to the edge of the river, the rebels couldn’t see them, he’d made sure of that. He navigated the soft embankment and froze. Paige followed his gaze, and she wondered if the universe felt they needed an additional challenge.

Drinking not far from them was a mountain lion, it’s tawny coat ruffling in the breeze. Its pink tongue came out repeatedly, siphoning the liquid for a cool drink of water.

Ashe, rose slowly, taking off his wet hoodie and pulling out his knife. “Stand close to me,” he said, his voice subdued and hard.

She rose and did as he instructed. The cat raised its head and turned to look at them. It was big, so she suspected it might be a male. Ashe stood his ground, the look on his face as intimidating as hell. He started to back away, and the cat watched them go for a few steps, then it rose from his drinking crouch and followed their movement.

“Keep moving,” he said. “But don’t turn your back and don’t run unless I tell you to.”

“I’m out of ammo,” she said and he nodded, not taking his eyes from the animal.

Just when she thought he was going to lose interest, he broke into a leaping run right at them.