Backlash Read online

  Her manuscript was growing longer by the day and was regularly taking turns that she hadn’t planned. For once, she found an odd comfort in letting her characters take on lives of their own, not forcing herself to plan everything out with outlines and character sketches.

  Still staring at the computer screen, she gave a little shake of her head. She hit the delete key a few times, changing the last part of the sentence so she wouldn’t have to describe the gun.

  With a sigh of satisfaction, she read through the last few paragraphs and got back to work.

  9

  Kel sat in one of the two chairs in his room, his elbow on the little table beside him. After more than a week in the hospital, he was no longer willing to be in bed unless it was time to sleep in it. His dinner tray was still on the table where he had eaten, and he held a book in his hands.

  Alex wouldn’t let him do much physically yet, but he could at least keep his language skills sharp. In the stack of books Marilyn had brought him were a couple of novels written in French, so he decided to pass the time with those.

  When his door opened, he assumed it was someone coming to collect his dinner tray. Then he heard Seth’s Southern drawl. “Hey, boss.”

  Kel looked up and grinned at the huge black man filling his doorway. Then his eyes settled on the woman beside him, the same woman he had been shot trying to protect. “Good to see that you made it back safely.”

  “How are you doing?” Seth asked, his voice serious. “Anything new from the doctors?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll make it back,” Kel told him.

  “Any idea of when you’re getting out of this place?”

  “They want to keep me for a few more weeks so I can do my rehab up here,” Kel told him. “I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea with my replacement showing up in a couple of days.”

  “Tell you what,” Seth began. “Why don’t you let us handle breaking in the new guy, and you concentrate on getting back to a hundred percent.”

  Before Kel could respond, Vanessa interrupted, “Do you think you can be up and around by July 2?”

  “Yeah.” Kel nodded. His tentative release date was the first of June. “Why?”

  “We wanted to be sure you can make it to our wedding.”

  “You’re getting married?” Kel saw it now, the diamond sparkling on Vanessa’s left hand. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Seth answered, but his face was still serious. “I also wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened. I shouldn’t have had you come in after us.”

  “Don’t go there, Seth.” Kel shook his head. He had already spent far too many hours second-guessing his decision to go ahead with the mission, analyzing what he could have done differently that night. “We both made the best decisions we could with the information we had to work with, and we all made it out alive. We can’t ask for a whole lot more than that.”

  Seth gave a curt nod. Then he nudged Vanessa farther into the room and closed the door behind him. “What do you know about the new kid?”

  Kel glanced over at Vanessa, reminding himself that she was CIA and had top-secret clearance. “Have you met him yet?”

  “He reports tomorrow.”

  “Name’s Jay Wellman. I don’t know anything about him except what’s in his file,” Kel began. “He’s an Academy graduate, speaks Spanish and French, and his scores were strong on the shooting range.”

  “Brent said you were the one who chose him from the short list,” Seth said. When Kel nodded, he asked, “What made him stand out?”

  Kel shifted in his seat and thought back to how he had struggled to choose. “It started out with eliminating some of the other candidates for different reasons. Then when it came down to the last couple, I noticed that he was a competitive swimmer. Marilyn and I thought that being an athlete, he might have the kind of standards we live by.”

  “Marilyn?” Seth’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Yeah.” Kel shook his head, still a bit awed by the help his wife was to him in the selection process. “It was the strangest thing. I kept reading through those files and praying about who I should pick. Then Marilyn comes in and after talking to her for five minutes, completely in generalities, the choice was made.”

  “Well, we’ll try to go easy on him the first day or two,” Seth said. “We’d better get going, but you take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” Kel told him. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  Seth opened the door and then looked back at Kel. “You said this kid is a swimmer. Exactly how fast is he?”

  “Fast.” Kel laughed. “If you want to make him feel good, let Tristan challenge him to a race. That ought to give him some confidence.”

  Seth smiled now. “Seems to me I still owe Tristan for that little surprise he left me last time we were in Brazil.”

  “You did start that war when you left the tarantula in his room,” Kel reminded him, remembering all too well the baby snake Seth had discovered curled up in his boot.

  “Yeah, but this time he won’t know I set him up.” Seth gave him a knowing look. “I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll hear about it.” Kel laughed as Seth escorted Vanessa out the door.

  * * *

  Halim Karel crossed the plush carpet in the oversized dining room with purpose. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a tailored Italian suit, his handsome features belying his ruthlessness. He stopped opposite the seat Akil Ramir currently occupied. “I have something you should see.”

  Akil set down his fork and looked up. “What is it?”

  Halim held up a printout of a newspaper article from the United States. “I had a couple of our men searching the Internet for recent articles on anyone injured by a gunshot wound.”

  “You’re trying to find the man who was shot when Lina was taken?” Akil’s eyes narrowed.

  “I thought it might help us narrow down where she is being held.” Halim handed him the printout and tapped a finger on the headline that read, “Local hero wounded.” “I didn’t really expect to find anything. Especially not this.”

  Akil scanned the article about the sailor who was injured in a training accident a few days before the paper had been printed. He looked up at Halim and shook his head. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “Look at the picture.”

  Akil shifted his eyes to the photo. Rather than the standard military photo that normally accompanied such articles, this one appeared to be a snapshot of the commander. It had been cropped so that he was the only one visible. But he wasn’t the only one visible. Towering over him in the space behind him was the man they knew as Seth Billaud, the man who was supposed to be engaged to Akil’s niece, Lina.

  Now Akil looked up at Halim and stared. “How is this possible?”

  “Perhaps your niece wasn’t kidnapped by your business partner like we thought,” Halim suggested. “Perhaps she was taken by Seth and his military friends.”

  “You think he infiltrated my brother’s organization?”

  “He must have.” Halim nodded. “He knew this place, and we know he visited your brother in jail.”

  “Find him,” Akil ordered.

  “We’ve already tried, but no one even knows his real name,” Halim told him. Before Akil could start a tirade, Halim continued, “But I do have another idea.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Look at the date of the article,” Halim suggested. He had already surmised that the wounded officer hadn’t sustained his injuries in a training accident but rather in a firefight right outside where he now stood. “I don’t think our sailor was hurt in a play fight.”

  “Says here he’s being treated in Bethesda.”

  “I noticed that, too,” Halim said calmly. “I think one of us needs to take a trip to the United States.”

  Akil stroked his mustache and considered. Then he nodded slowly.

  * * *

  Marilyn opened the door to her
husband’s hospital room, surprised to find that he wasn’t there. She was pretty sure he didn’t have any tests scheduled, and his rehab sessions were normally in the early morning and late afternoon.

  His rehab seemed to be going well, and he had even graduated from using a walker to using a cane. His limp was pronounced, but Kel seemed confident that in time he would recover completely. Marilyn wondered how much time.

  She wanted her husband to heal, but she was so enjoying the novelty of knowing where he was going to be each day. No one was going to call in the middle of the night and tell him he had to report for duty. He didn’t have to leave on training missions that lasted weeks at a time.

  She knew he was getting restless with his current situation, especially being confined to the hospital for so long. She had arrived the day before to find him arguing with the doctor, asserting that he should be allowed to do outpatient for his rehab. The doctor had shut him down, explaining that their policies wouldn’t allow him to have the intensive help he needed if he wasn’t still admitted to the hospital. Basically, everyone agreed that he was well enough to go home, or at least to stay at the Whitmores’ house, but no one seemed to know how to cut through the red tape to make it possible.

  Despite Kel’s eagerness to leave the confines of the hospital, Marilyn couldn’t help enjoying the time his stay had given them together. She felt like her marriage was becoming what it once was, what she still wanted it to be.

  After waiting for a couple of minutes, Marilyn walked down the hall to the nurses’ station. “My husband isn’t in his room. Do you know where he is?”

  The young nurse opened up a chart and pointed down the hall. “If you take your first left, it’s the third door on the right.”

  “Thanks.” Marilyn moved down the hall, wondering if she would be better off going back to Kel’s room and spending some time writing. She didn’t want to get too involved with her story, though, if he was going to be back soon. Resolved to find out what he was doing, she turned the corner and found the correct door.

  She walked inside and looked around. Various exercise equipment was scattered around the room, although only a couple of exercise bikes were currently being used. Then she saw him.

  Kel was on a stair-climber, his face contorted with pain. His green T-shirt was soaked with sweat, and he was struggling to catch his breath. Marilyn started forward, but a hand reached out and stopped her.

  “He can do it,” the man assured her. “Let him try.”

  “It’s only been a few weeks.”

  “Let him try,” he repeated.

  Kel fought to keep up with the machine even though it was set to an incredibly slow pace. Then, with a shake of his head, he hit the off button and swiped at the sweat on his face. “I can’t do it.”

  “You can do it,” the therapist insisted. “You’ve worked through pain before. You can do it now.”

  The man who had stopped Marilyn interrupted. “I think the commander has had enough for now,” he said, as he approached Kel. “I’m sure he’ll be ready for this challenge tomorrow after he’s had some rest.”

  Kel’s gaze landed on Marilyn for a moment. Then he looked at the man standing beside her and nodded in agreement.

  “Mrs. Bennett, why don’t you wait for your husband in his room? He’ll need a few minutes to shower and change before he heads back.”

  Slowly, Marilyn nodded. “Okay.” With a last glance at Kel, she turned and left the room.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Alex asked his supervisor, Commander Ruben.

  “I think I don’t like to hear a Navy SEAL say he can’t do something.”

  “This is the third time this week he’s been unable to do the stair climber,” Alex told him. “Am I pushing him too fast?”

  “No, he’s ready.” Commander Ruben considered for a minute. “His wife isn’t going to push him through this, but I think I know what will.”

  “What?”

  “The one thing that SEALs can never resist is a challenge.” He picked up Kel’s chart and reached for the phone. “And I think I know just the person to issue it.”

  10

  Marilyn studied the letters as Kel placed them on the Scrabble board. He wasn’t surprised when she looked up at him and shook her head.

  “That is not a word,” Marilyn insisted.

  “It is too a word.” Kel grinned at her, grateful that she had not insisted on talking about his earlier failure in rehab. “It means ‘generous’ in French.”

  “Nice try,” Marilyn said, shaking her head. “But you know the rules. No foreign words. Even if it really is a word, it’s not in the English dictionary.”

  Kel leaned forward and gave her a playful kiss. “Prove it.”

  “That’s it,” Marilyn told him. “I’m going out tonight to buy a dictionary.”

  After nearly a month in the hospital, they had both tired of the games Marilyn had brought from home, and this week they had graduated to Scrabble. Kel found that his wife was even more formidable in this game than she had been in the various games of chance they normally played together.

  “You don’t want to spend your hard-earned money on a dictionary,” Kel told her. “Besides, if you do that I won’t have a chance at beating you.”

  “Very funny.” Marilyn leaned back in her chair. “Do you want to give up now, or should we play this game through?”

  The door behind her opened.

  “Knock, knock.” Brent Miller’s voice called into the room.

  “Come on in,” Kel begged him. “You can save me from my wife’s endless torture.”

  “In that case—” Brent stepped inside, followed by his wife, Amy, along with Tristan and Riley Crowther, and another man he’d never met.

  “What are you all doing here?” Kel asked, shifting to look at them. “I thought you were heading out for a training exercise tomorrow.”

  “It was postponed for a couple of days,” Brent told him. “Besides, we had another mission that was more important.”

  “What mission is that?”

  “The Nats game. Tonight.” Brent motioned to Tristan, who closed the door to ensure some privacy. “Grab your shoes. We’re breaking you out of here.”

  “That’s funny.” Kel shook his head. “I already tried to get them to let me do outpatient, but these doctors are determined to strangle me with red tape.”

  “Commander,” Tristan drawled, amusement in his voice, “you aren’t backing down from a little challenge, are you?” He stepped farther into the room and motioned to a dark-haired young man who looked to be about twenty-two. “Meet Roger. He’ll be standing in for you tonight.”

  “Are you suggesting he sneak out?” Marilyn looked at Tristan like he was crazy. “You’ll never get him past the nurses’ station, not to mention the guards at the front entrance.”

  Every man in the room looked at her, eyebrows raised, disbelief in their eyes.

  “Marilyn, maybe you and I should go get the car,” Riley suggested and then turned to Tristan. “We’ll meet you outside.”

  Marilyn let Riley lead her out of the room before she looked at her and asked, “Are they all nuts?”

  “They’re Navy SEALs. Of course they’re all nuts,” Riley said with a laugh. She put a hand on Marilyn’s arm and ushered her down the hallway. “Come on. We don’t want to talk about this here.”

  With a shake of her head, Marilyn walked down the hall, past the nurses’ station, the doctors’ lounge, a security desk, and then past the guards at the main entrance. Surely, her concerns about Kel leaving the safety of the hospital were unfounded. There was no way he was making it out of there.

  * * *

  “I assume you have a plan,” Kel said as he slipped his shoes on.

  “We thought about having you climb out the window, but we figured we’d give you another week to recover before we throw that one at you.” Brent motioned to Roger, who was dressed casually in a T-shirt and cargo shorts, very similar to what
Kel was now wearing. “Roger will stay here while we’re gone so that it looks like you’re sleeping. We’re going to take the back way out and go to the game.”

  “I guess I’m following your lead.” Kel nodded to Brent. He stood up, only struggling a little to put weight on his injured leg.

  Brent glanced down at his watch, and Kel could tell he was counting down. Then he pointed at Amy, who opened the door, held up one finger, and closed the door behind her.

  A minute later Tristan opened the door and peeked out before motioning for Brent and Kel to follow. Roger climbed up into the bed and rolled onto his side so that his face couldn’t be seen by anyone passing by. Then Kel was walking as casually as he could down the hall, shielded by the two taller men as they passed by Amy, who was currently talking to the nurses.

  Instead of heading for the main entrance, they moved to the stairwell. Kel didn’t want to think about his earlier struggles with the stair-climber in rehab. With a new determination, he moved with his men and put his hand on the rail. Pain shot through his knee when he took the first step, and Kel leaned on the rail to compensate for his leg’s weakness, quickly taking another step so his weight was on his good leg once more.

  “We’ve got four minutes to clear the stairs, and two minutes to make the back door.”

  “The alarms?” Kel managed to ask, as he continued his struggle down the stairs.

  “We’ve got it covered.”

  Kel didn’t ask how they were going to take care of overriding the alarms. He was still thinking about the four minutes his team had given him to make it down three flights of stairs. Normally, that much time would sound like an eternity. Now it sounded nearly impossible. He took another step, shifting his weight once more to the good leg. He could almost hear Alex’s words echoing through his ears.

  Stop favoring that bad leg or you’re going to strain the good one. Trust that you can do it, and you can.