Hard to Hold Read online

  Her sneakers hit the hard sand right along the surf line, her breath coming in icy puffs in front of her, and dammit, she was going to go farther than two miles this time, even if it killed her. And judging by the sad way she was breathing and the stitch in her side, it might do just that.

  Every step took her farther away from the clinic, farther away from a job she wasn’t comfortable in … farther away from her memories of Africa and the papers sitting on her desk.

  Too far from Jake.

  She turned about-face and headed back in the direction she’d come.

  Jake had enlisted Max—owed that man more favors than he cared to think about—to help him access files he shouldn’t be allowed to touch.

  When Max decided to collect, it was going to be a bitch.

  Even so, Jake wasn’t getting very far—files for Delta operators were locked down tighter than his own and there were still places he couldn’t let his fingers travel for fear of backlash. He slammed the lid of the laptop down hard and stared at the map of Africa he’d printed, until his eyes crossed.

  It was past 1800 when Cal called his cell.

  “I’m taking Isabelle home tonight.” The admiral dispensed with hello. “Her mother’s having dinner at my house. She’ll have her own security team with her.”

  “I’m not invited?” Jake asked, pictured the frown on the admiral’s face as he crumpled the map and pitched it in the trash.

  He’d been checking on Isabelle throughout the day—without her seeing him. He’d spent the better portion of the morning skulking around the clinic, and an hour watching her run down the beach. Her form was good, but she’d been hurting.

  Since she’d be taken care of for a few hours, he was on his feet, headed to his car and on to plan B.

  “I’m still not happy about her moving in with you. The senator’s going to be even less happy.”

  “I’m not in this to make anyone happy, Admiral.”

  “I might not tell the senator.”

  “Isabelle will. She won’t go for lying.”

  “Now you know her better than I do?” Cal asked. “Don’t answer that.”

  Jake hadn’t planned on it, mainly because he didn’t understand how he knew the kind of things he already did about Isabelle. “I need to tell Nick and Chris about all of this.”

  “No,” Cal spoke sharply. “There’s no need for that. You can do this job alone. I told you, the threat’s not imminent. If and when it becomes so, I’ll take matters back into my own hands.”

  “Every threat is imminent, Admiral. That’s what makes it a threat.” Jake kept his voice quiet and calm even as his heart rate increased. He clicked the phone shut, knowing the admiral had been the one to hang up first.

  With a sharp squeal of tires he was off the main road and onto a back dirt trail that would get him off base and toward the edge of town fast.

  Yeah, he’d tell himself that this was all in Isabelle’s best interest. Right now, it was the only thing he had.

  And still, he tried to get rid of the sickening feeling that Cal was jerking his chain, but he couldn’t shake it. And Jake had always lived by his instincts.

  The one day he hadn’t listened to his gut, he’d nearly died. No, that wasn’t true exactly—he had listened to his instincts but he’d followed Steve back to their apartment anyway, to let what was supposed to happen play out.

  In the end, his will to live happened to be stronger.

  His phone rang again as he pulled into the bar’s parking lot, all the way on the opposite end of town. Dad. “Did you make it home all right the other night?” Jake asked, hoping to ward off any questions. “We left messages for you, but we never heard back. We were worried.”

  “Don’t try that reverse psych bullshit with me, young man. Do you want to tell me what’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Jake—”

  “I can’t talk about this.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Normally it’s a fifty-fifty split, but this is can’t.”

  “All right. I just know how you don’t like surprises.”

  “What surprises are you talking about?” Jake asked, keeping his voice low as he entered the unusually quiet bar.

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I can’t talk. But I can listen.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” his father told him. “Just don’t ignore your instincts.”

  Jake sighed as he hung up the phone, shook his head at his father’s perceptiveness and wondered if Chris was also going to be able to see right through to what he was doing. Luckily, his brothers were on base through the night for training.

  And this time, Jake wasn’t about to ignore his instincts. He could lie to himself and pretend that his interest in the merc named Rafe was purely professional, but he didn’t. Isabelle was far more than just a job to him, and he’d spent many a night forcing himself not to think about what he’d do to the guy if he even got close to him, because that would screw with his own control.

  The closer Jake got to her, the more he hated lying to her. Lying didn’t sit well with him—never had.

  He’d exhausted all the typical routes, which he’d assumed would happen. Rafe’s records were highly classified, so much so that it was as if the man didn’t exist. Part security, part deniability, all necessity for Special Forces.

  He’d have to turn to other avenues. And so he planned on seeing if Nick’s contact, the man named Clutch, could help.

  Clutch was a former Delta sniper who’d turned private contractor once he’d discovered how much cash his skills could net him on the open market. If anyone had a shot at knowing Rafe’s movements, it would be Clutch.

  A merc who wanted to disappear in Africa could easily do so—the skill set of a former Special Forces soldier was wildly appreciated. Rafe would find himself a ton of work.

  Nick had met Clutch years earlier when his old team and Clutch’s Delta group worked a mission together. Nick had also done some private work for Clutch last year—nothing since, not since Kenny got ahold of him—of all of them—and demanded they stop putting themselves in unnecessary danger.

  As far as Jake knew, Nick hadn’t gone back, even though his brother still talked about joining Clutch once his time with the SEALs was over. Chris tried to talk Nick out of it, especially out of private contracting work while he was still employed by the U.S. military, although he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Nick had a need for speed and danger that always had—and would—outweigh both his brothers’.

  Jake made it through BUD/S because there was no torture they’d put him through that he hadn’t already survived. Nick made it through because he was completely desensitized to pain and he was constantly searching, craving, for ways to feel.

  Chris made it through because he had that little edge of crazy that made it necessary for men like him to succeed.

  After hearing about some of Nick’s work, Jake had thought about joining Clutch more than once, but knew his nightmares would follow him to Africa. Trying to outrun them would be stupid. So would trying to outrun his feelings for Isabelle.

  Before last night, he’d tried to sort his feelings logically and finally figured that what Isabelle felt for him had everything to do with the rescue and nothing to do with love. Okay, there was an attraction there too—he’d be an idiot not to see or admit that.

  But there was something more, something he’d all but admitted to Isabelle herself—the same things that made him bypass some very willing women as he walked through the bar, in favor of finding out more about the guy who’d hurt Isabelle. A part of this job Cal had not put him in charge of.

  When Isabelle found out about all of this—and he had no doubt that would happen sooner or later—she would freak. There was no getting around how badly all of this was going to blow up in Cal’s face. In Jake’s too.

  He had to decide how badly he cared.

  “What can I get you?”
The bartender—a guy Jake had never seen before—put a napkin down in front of him.

  Jake folded it in fours and put it back down on the bar. “Just water.”

  The bartender nodded, as if the request was nothing out of the ordinary. He poured Jake his water and slid it across the bar to him.

  “Go ahead toward the back room. Vic is waiting,” the bartender told him.

  Jake had never had to call in this particular favor before, but he’d heard enough about Vic and the way he helped like-minded people in the military community—and beyond—connect. A brief knock on the heavy gray metal door and Jake found himself looking up at Vic. The guy had to be as tall as Chris, around six-five, but bodybuilder big. For a second, Jake thought it might be the same guy who picked the fight with him the other night at Craig’s, but he wasn’t.

  “What do you need?” Vic asked after Jake walked into the back room and closed the door with a thud.

  “I’m looking for Clutch. Tell him it’s Nick’s friend Jake. He’ll know.”

  Vic frowned. “That’s what they all say. I’ll dial in. You’ve got to talk to him here.”

  “I’ll need privacy.”

  “Yeah, you all do.” Vic dialed, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He waited, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Freakin’ Africa. They keep changing the area code without telling anyone. Hey—Clutch? Yeah, someone named Jake looking for you. Friend of Nick. What? Hang on.” Vic leaned forward and stared into Jake’s eyes. “Gray. Weird color.”

  Jake snorted.

  “Here.” Vic handed him the phone and ambled from the room, shutting the heavy door behind him.

  Clutch had been tired of waiting for the phone call, the one that had come night before last, just like he’d known it would. The voice on the other end of the phone had triggered relief rather than the fear he’d experienced three years earlier, when he’d been taken out of Delta Force, shipped off to Africa to work for GOST—Government Operatives Specialty Team—a secret group of mercenaries funded by the government.

  If GOST hadn’t called then, it would’ve been tonight or tomorrow or next year, but they were always going to call, had promised him that he’d never truly be free.

  Up until now, he’d been lucky, and he nearly laughed out loud for using that word in conjunction with himself. Laughing was easier last night with half a bottle of whiskey inside his belly, burning through his veins, nearly making him forget his own name. Tonight, his head pounding, he remembered it all too clearly.

  Bobby Juniper, we need you back.

  He’d played the message on his answering machine over and over, until he broke the tape. And then he’d smashed the machine and the office phone into little pieces and threw it in the driveway and ignored Juma and Moody’s calls asking if he was all right.

  It hadn’t mattered—they’d continued to call his cell phone.

  If he didn’t come back and do the job GOST needed him to do, they’d kill him or expose his true identity to the people who’d been looking for him for the past eighteen years.

  Clutch didn’t know which would be worse. And so 1300 saw him sitting at his desk in his house in Ujiji, staring blankly out into the night with his bags already packed. Until Vic called through with a guy named Jake, a friend of a SEAL named Nick who’d done some work with him in the past. Crazy motherfucker, that one.

  “Don’t you know Army boys and squids aren’t supposed to get along?” Clutch asked.

  Jake’s voice came clearly across the crackling line, a man determined. “What’s that—the once in, never out bullshit they teach you?”

  Bobby Juniper, we need you back …

  “Look, I’m trying to track a merc who worked as a bodyguard in Djibouti a few months ago. At the Doctors Without Borders clinic. His name’s Rafe McAllistar.”

  Clutch held the neck of the beer bottle so tightly his arm began to shake. Slowly he released his grip and set the bottle down heavily on the desk in front of him. “I know him.”

  Or at least he had known Rafe once—today he didn’t recognize the man who’d blown his shot at becoming a Delta Force operator, two months away from completing his training, by defying a direct order. These days, Rafe was a man who would do anything and everything for money. Obviously, turning on his own clients wasn’t something Rafe stopped at.

  “Do you know where Rafe is now?” Jake persisted.

  “After the senator’s daughter was kidnapped, he took off. I assume he’s hiding.”

  “How did you know about the doctor? It didn’t make the papers.”

  “It doesn’t need to make the papers for our community to know about it. We had plenty of guys approaching the senator after it happened, offering real protection from the guy. She refused. Said she had a friend who was taking care of things.”

  “Tell me what this guy’s all about.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say that you’ll want to hear.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  Where had he heard those words before? “Rafe’s gotten into places over the past couple of years that I wouldn’t be able to touch, and I’ve had more training than him.” Clutch didn’t know if it was the fact that Rafe just didn’t care that made him so good … and so dangerous. “He’s as deadly as they come.”

  “He’s never done anything like this before, like what he did to Isabelle?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Mainly, he’s hired to do the impossible—to break in where no one else can; he’s also responsible for the assassinations of some important people over the past years. He’s damned good at what he does, Jake. I know you and Nick are trained, but this guy’s a master of disguises. He’s above and beyond, and he’s a loner.”

  A man with a death wish.

  “Can you catch him?” Jake asked after a moment of silence.

  “I can’t make you any promises.”

  “The senator’s daughter also mentioned a photographer who’d been hanging around the clinic.”

  “What’s the name?”

  Clutch could hang up now, leave the way he’d planned, and not to do the job he was supposed to do—no, this time he was disappearing for good. If GOST found him, he’d take the consequences. If they turned him in to the men who’d been looking for him for eighteen years, he’d be dead.

  But even before Jake spoke again, Clutch knew what the man was going to say, knew that leaving wasn’t an option.

  “I’ve only got a first name—Sarah.”

  Sarah. Soft and warm, curled up next to him, tangled in the sheets … tangled around him in mornings that seemed to last forever.

  But it hadn’t been forever. It had been a year. She’d stayed with him on and off, refusing anything more than some food and his bed and his body.

  She’d gotten some crazy idea that he could train her, she’d wanted to become what he was, when all he wanted to do was to shed his skin and walk out of this lifestyle, would do it in a second if there was another way for him to survive in this country. And there she was, so willing to step into what he would willingly cast off.

  She was innocent to him, even with the tats and the guns and the wide eyes that had seen too much and never, ever pleaded with him for help with anything. And then the one time she did, he’d turned her down.

  “We can work together.”

  “Sarah, the things I do, things I’ve done … you have no idea.”

  “I’ve grown up here, among men like you. I’m not innocent.”

  “I won’t let you do this.”

  “You have no way to stop me.”

  He hadn’t—but pushing her into Rafe’s arms hadn’t been part of the plan.

  Live or die, Sarah. Figure that out first and the rest will be easy, he’d told her as she’d walked off his porch.

  Clutch hadn’t seen her in six months, had heard the rumors that she’d started working with Rafe and hadn’t wanted to believe them.

  “I’ll try to find her and dig up any intel on Rafe. Leave your number with Vic—I
’ll get back to you.” Clutch severed the connection but continued to grip the big black phone, feeling it all come down on his shoulders.

  How could he have been so wrong about Sarah?

  You’ve been wrong like that before, he taunted himself.

  Now he’d have to hunt one of his own. What Rafe had done hit Clutch too close to home for comfort, a story confirmed as fact by some rebel soldiers who Rafe had paid to leave the woman alone for the American soldiers to discover.

  He had no idea why Rafe had done what he’d done, but Clutch had no doubt as to why he’d left the senator’s daughter alive after he’d collected his money.

  She was a message to someone. And messages like that weren’t something to be ignored.

  CHAPTER

  9

  When Isabelle’s day at the clinic ended, Uncle Cal was waiting for her outside her office in his khaki uniform, shoulders back with the stiff military bearing she’d grown familiar with.

  She’d never called him last night, or at any point today; she bristled inwardly at the thought of having to check in with anyone at her age. Her mood wasn’t helped by the fact that she was still pissed at Jake.

  She readied to meet her uncle’s comments head-on, but none came.

  “We’ve got dinner with your mom tonight. I figured you’d need a ride home,” was all he said, nodded curtly to a few passing Marines who saluted him.

  She’d forgotten completely about dinner after clearing one after another of the never-ending stream of patients, staying too busy to think about the way she and Jake had left things earlier. The fact that he was, no doubt, still pissed at her. “Thanks.”

  He nodded and she followed him out to his car. For the first few minutes, she slumped in the seat nearly boneless, the hard day coming off her in waves. Uncle Cal was wrapped in his own thoughts as well, and normally this shared solitude cemented the easy bond between them. Tonight, the silence just made her feel guilty.

  Finally, she spoke. “I’m sorry, Uncle Cal—about last night. It’s just that—”

  He held up a hand. “Please, Izzy, it’s all right. You don’t need an old bulldog like me policing your every move. The fact that you had to sneak out was embarrassing, to say the least.”