Deadly Promises

  "Gage!"

  She reached for the hole. A tremendous weight landed on her back. Something cool and metal pressed into her neck.

  "FBI! You're under arrest!"

  DUST FILLED GAGE'S lungs, his eyes. Wheezing and coughing, he yanked out a pair of zip-cuffs and wrenched back the arms of the man he'd just tackled to the ground.

  "Truck one, driver down! Brewer, where are you?"

  Gage recognized the voice of the bomb squad leader who had been on the radio with him just minutes ago. He must have come down the manhole.

  "Driver two, cuffed and disarmed!" Gage shouted. "Where's driver three?"

  Pain ricocheted up his leg as his captive landed a kick. Gage jabbed him in the kidney, then secured his ankles and rolled him against the wall. Then he ran to help the bomb tech grab the third terrorist.

  "He's gone!" The bomb tech's flashlight beam swept over the truck half-buried in rubble.

  Gage checked the cab. Even through the still-swirling cloud of dust and smoke, he could see it was empty. One by one, they scoured each truck from top to bottom. Shit, where would he go? Both ends of the tunnel had been sealed off by bomb blasts.

  "The ladder!" Gage jerked his SIG from its holster and dashed back toward the exit where he'd taken Kelsey. God, please don't let this turn into a hostage crisis. He raced toward the faint band of light that shone down from the manhole, then took the rungs three at a time and erupted into the sunlight.

  It was mayhem.

  Every emergency vehicle in west Texas seemed to have converged on the scene. Gage spotted the missing tango face down in the dirt, where a team of FBI agents had him pinned to the ground as they shouted commands.

  "Brewer!"

  He spun around to see Reid jogging toward him. Gage jumped to his feet and wiped the dust from his brow with the back of his arm. "Two tangos in the tunnel," he told the fed. "One cuffed, one dead. Your bomb tech's down there, too."

  Several agents in SWAT gear pushed Gage aside and dropped down through the hole. Gage turned back to Reid. "Where's Kelsey?" he demanded.

  At his blank look, Gage shoved past him and plowed through the sea of people. He saw firemen, federal agents, hazmat workers, but no baseball cap with an auburn ponytail sticking out the back. Cursing, he scanned the scene again.

  And then he saw her. She was yelling at some guy in an FBI windbreaker as another one tried to restrain her. Gage moved toward her, and her gaze landed on him just as she looked like she was about to deck the guy.

  "Gage!" She shook off the agent and charged toward him. "Oh my God! Are you okay? I thought you were dead !"

  "Goddamn you, Kelsey!" Gage caught her by the shoulders and shook her. "What the hell were you thinking jumping into an op like that?"

  Ten

  Kelsey's hands were still trembling as she scooped her last bit of clothing off the floor of the motel room and zipped it into her bag. That was it. She had everything. She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the note she'd written before her shower. She'd leave it on the pillow, where Gage would be sure to see it when he returned from the debriefing.

  But one look at the bed they'd shared last night had her pulse racing--not from fear but something else. On second thought, she'd leave the note on the dresser. As she put it there, the door opened, and Gage stepped into the room.

  She took in everything at once--the grimy clothes, the muddy boots, the line of dried blood down the side of his face. It trailed down from a nasty-looking knot on his head, a knot she was fairly sure he'd sustained when the force of his own bomb blast had thrown him to the floor of that tunnel.

  The same bomb blast that had caused Kelsey's heart to stop. And even after the dust had settled, and he'd come up from that hole and let loose a flood of curses, it still hadn't started beating again. It wasn't until hours later that her pulse finally returned to normal because she knew he was okay. Angry as hell, sure, but not dead.

  Glaring at her now, he crossed the dumpy motel room and began stripping off his clothes.

  "Going someplace?" He flung his T-shirt on the bed and glanced at the duffel slung over her shoulder.

  "Thought I'd go back to the dig site, see if Mia needs a hand with anything."

  His expression hardened as he leaned over to unlace his boot. He threw it into the corner of the room with a thomp that made Kelsey jump a little. The other boot followed. And an instant later she had a giant, sweaty SEAL glowering down at her.

  "Why are you shaking?" he demanded.

  "It's cold in here."

  "Bullshit."

  "It's been an emotional day. And night," she added, glancing at the window where the neon glow of the VACANCY sign now seeped through the flimsy blinds. The ordeal at the tunnel and the ensuing chaos and questions and formal debriefings had dragged on for hours. And still she hadn't managed to regain her equilibrium. Every time she looked at Gage she got the shakes all over again.

  He could have died in that tunnel. He could have died because of her. And even without her, he could still die, on any day, for a thousand different reasons, and each one of them had to do with the fact that he was a soldier.

  "You were going to take off, weren't you?" His voice was low and dangerous, and Kelsey stepped back.

  He took her elbow and jerked her to him. "Weren't you?"

  "I wrote you a note."

  Anger and something else--hurt? disappointment?--flashed in his eyes. "Do you have any idea how much you scared me today?" His grip tightened. "Do you have any idea how much I care about you?"

  She gazed up at him, wide-eyed, and gave a tiny shake of her head.

  He pulled her up to him and crushed his mouth down on hers. She opened hers up to him and finally, finally found a way to tell him everything she hadn't been able to say in the note. She told him with her tongue, her teeth, her arms coiled around his neck as she clung to him. And he understood all of it, she knew, because he lifted her right off her feet and deposited her on the dresser, right on top of the note he didn't want to read, all the while jerking her shirt up and over her head and pulling her bra off and attaching that hot, angry mouth of his to her breast.

  She leaned back and wrapped herself around him and let him take all that anger out on her, one kiss at a time.

  KELSEY AWOKE TO find the sun casting stripes of light across the half-empty bed. Her heart gave a little lurch. She sat up and glanced around. She heard the low murmur of Gage's voice on the other side of the motel room door.

  Soon the door opened and he stepped inside, wearing only his faded blue jeans. His gaze locked on hers as he tucked the phone into his pocket and came to sit beside her on the bed.

  "That was my CO."

  It took a moment to process. "You mean Joe?"

  He nodded. "Our team's going wheels up at twenty-one hundred."

  The numbers permeated her brain. She glanced at the clock. She looked up at his somber expression and knew he was talking about today. He lifted a hand to her face and brushed his fingers down her cheek, as if that would somehow soften the message.

  "When do you... ?"

  "I've got a flight leaving Midland in three hours."

  "I'll drive you," she said.

  Then she got up from the bed, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door. She showered, dressed, and packed her duffel--again--all without the slightest sign of emotion. She thought of Joe, the man who'd raised her to know what stoicism was, and held it together the entire time. Even her hands were steady on the wheel of her Suburban as she neared the dusty town of Midland and the first airport sign came into view.

  "Where are you going?" she finally asked, breaking an hour of silence as she exited the highway.

  "I can't tell you that." He turned to face her and she saw her reflection in his sunglasses.

  "Is this training or... ?"

  "I can't tell you that either."

  Her chest squeezed. She focused her gaze on the road in front of her, concentrating on the little yellow stripes to
keep from thinking about the emotions churning around inside her.

  At last, the passenger drop-off area came into view and she pulled up to the curb.

  "Kelsey."

  She turned to look at him. He'd removed the shades and those blue eyes held hers.

  "I can't tell you. Even if we were married, I couldn't tell you. That's the way it is in the teams."

  "I know."

  Married? The word put a giant lump in her throat. Why had he said that?

  She glanced away and was proud to see her hands at least looked still on the steering wheel. He couldn't see that her palms were sweating, that her pulse was racing, that a cold panic was seeping into her chest. She took a deep breath and fixed a smile on her face.

  "Good luck," she said, maybe a little too brightly.

  He watched her as if he were trying to read her mind. She prayed that he couldn't, that he had no idea how she felt right now, or that she was about one kind word away from losing it at the door of this airport.

  He leaned closer. "Kelsey..."

  "Bye." She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and pulled back, putting the car in gear.

  She waited, nearly biting a hole in her tongue as she gazed into those unreadable eyes. Finally he eased away and opened the door. He reached over and grabbed his bag from the backseat. "I'll be in touch."

  She held her breath as the door slammed, as he hesitated beside the car, as he stepped to the curb. Then she pulled away. She drove past the waiting passengers, the loading and unloading cars and trucks. She drove past the sign for a rental car company, past the orange cones marking a construction zone, and even the sign for the upcoming Interstate 10 before she pulled over and let herself breathe again. And when she finally did, it felt like a thousand razors filling up her lungs, and she knew it was the ragged shards of her broken heart.

  GAGE JOGGED UP to the Suburban that had stopped on the shoulder, and he knew before he even opened the door what he was going to find. But knowing it didn't make it any less painful.

  "Hey." He climbed in and pulled her hands away from her face. She looked up at him with those soulful brown eyes and he felt like he'd taken a bullet in the chest.

  "Come here," he said, and pulled her over the console and into his lap, and she made a keening sound like an animal. "Hey." He wiped the tears off her cheeks with his thumbs. "Don't do that. Hey."

  "The thing is, I think I love you. And I can't stop thinking about"--her breath hitched--"what happens when you come back. And what happens if you don't."

  She buried her face against his chest, and he held her head against his heart and wanted to absorb all that pain he'd seen in her face. He never wanted her to feel that. Ever. And especially not because of him.

  His pulse was pounding now because of what she'd said.

  He eased her back and lifted her chin with his finger, and he took another hit when he saw the anguish on her face.

  "I love you, too," he said. "Only I don't think, I know."

  Hope flickered in her eyes, but he could tell she still didn't believe him.

  "And what happens when I come back is that I come see you. First thing. Because we're going to have a lot of catching up to do." He paused. "You up for me coming to Texas?"

  She nodded.

  "And what about San Diego? You up for coming to visit when I get leave?"

  She squeezed his hand. "Will this work? Do people really do this?"

  "It's hard, but yeah, some people do it. I've never understood why. Until now." He cupped his hand around her cheek. "I want to see you every chance I get. So don't go forgetting about me or picking up with that guy Blake or finding someone else, all right?"

  She looked startled now. "How did you know about Blake?"

  "Call it a sixth sense." He smiled. "Maybe because every time he looks at you or talks to you or gets within a hundred feet of you, I want to take his head off."

  "Is this just about jealousy?" She looked worried again. "Because that's not love."

  "It's not." He kissed her. "Jealousy, I mean. This is... I don't know, different than anything I've felt before."

  "Me, too," she whispered, then she smiled up at him through her tears and he felt his own eyes filling up.

  She laughed. "God, would you look at us? How did this happen?"

  "Hell if I know. I think it happened for me when I first saw you out at that dig site, covered in dirt and bossing everyone around. Only I didn't know it then."

  She laughed, but then her face grew serious. She glanced over her shoulder at the airport behind them as the reality of what he had to do came back into focus.

  "Are we really going to try this?" she asked.

  "Trying isn't going to work." He took her hand and looked into her eyes. He hoped he could somehow make her understand. "If you want to do something really hard, you have to decide. And then make it happen. Are you up for that?"

  She kissed him, and she was heat and sex and tenderness and Kelsey, and she was everything that had turned his world upside down and everything he'd come to care about, and she was the thing that had made his heart start working again when he'd thought it was dead.

  And when she was done kissing him, he pulled back and looked down at her. "Is that a yes?"

  She smiled. "That's a yes."

  Turn the page

  for a sneak peek

  at the first novel in the new Belador series

  Blood Trinity

  from

  New York Times bestselling authors

  SHERRILYN KENYON AND DIANNA LOVE

  Coming soon from Pocket Books

  UTAH, BENEATH THE SALT FLATS

  August 2008

  Uphold my vows and die.

  Or break my vows and die.

  Evalle Kincaid had faced death more than once in the past five years, but never with so little hope of escape. A citric odor burned her lungs, confirming that Medb majik shrouded the rock walls, high ceiling, and dirt floor of her underground prison.

  Grace be to Macha, Evalle still couldn't believe one of her own, a Belador, had betrayed her.

  Not just her.

  Anger over the betrayal and her own stupidity for falling for this filled her deep. But she pushed it down, knowing it wouldn't do anything except weaken her more. And right now, she needed her full sense and bearings.

  Peeking carefully from beneath lowered eyelashes, she took in the other two captives--male Beladors--also held upright by invisible constraints.

  A human would be blind in this black hole but her vision thrived on total darkness. Natural night vision that allowed her to see in a range of monochromatic blue-grays. One rare perk of being an Alterant--a half-breed Belador... unlike those two purebloods with their backs against the glistening red-orange stone wall.

  Did those men know each other?

  Did she really care? They were either allies or enemies. And until she knew more about them, they were definitely enemies.

  Similar in height and size, they were different as night and day in skin color and the way they dressed. The one with nothing on but jeans had been conscious when she'd regained her wits twenty minutes ago. Completely still, he hadn't made a sound since then--like a snake lying low until it saw an opportunity to strike. Arms outstretched and legs spread apart, his gaze now cut sideways at a rustle of movement.

  The fair-haired guy on his left struggled to reach lucidity.

  Being imprisoned with two Beladors would normally fill her with hope for escape, because of their ability to link with each other and combine their powers. When that happened, Beladors fighting together were a force few unnatural beings could win against.

  But linking required unquestioned trust. And right now, she couldn't offer trust so easily. Not after a Belador's telepathic call for help had lured her into this hole--into the hands of Medb warlocks--her tribe's most vicious enemy for two thousand years.

  Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice...

  Die with pain.

  Even so
, could she refuse to help these two warriors--members of her tribe--if there was a chance to save them? Beladors were a secret race of Celtic people connected by powerful genetics and living in all parts of the world. She'd only met a few. Never these two.

  But every member of the tribe had sworn an oath to uphold a code of honor, to protect the innocent and any other Belador who needed help.

  If a warrior broke that vow every family member faced the same penalty as the warrior, even the penalty of death.

  Evalle had no one who would be affected by her decisions--too bad her aunt was dead, but she'd still upheld her vows since the day she'd turned eighteen. Not because she had to, but because she wanted to. And--until now--she'd always supported her tribe without question.

  Absolute trust was expected, demanded, among the Beladors.

  Were those two Beladors across from her allies or foes?

  She had one chance to answer that question correctly. Live or die...

  What else was new?

  "Anyone know who called for this delightful little meeting?" the fair-haired male grumbled in a smooth voice born of enhanced genetics and a hint of British influence. The sound matched the urbane angles of his European face, which could be Slovak or Russian. He straightened his shoulders as if that would smooth the creases in his overpriced suit, obviously tailored to fit that athletically cut body that James Bond would envy. She'd put him in his early thirties and close to six foot three.

  Bad, black, and wicked next to him might be an inch or so shorter, but he balanced out the difference with a pound or two of extra kick-your-ass muscle.

  "Introductions appear necessary... unless you two know each other." The blond guy looked in her direction, then at the other male, but she doubted he could see a thing in this blackness.

  Then again, as a Belador, who knew what powers he had? That thought sent another chill down her spine.

  Evalle fought a smirk over pretty boy's dry tone and well-honed nonchalance. She'd never met a Belador male who wasn't alpha to the core. But she had no intention of jumping in first to answer after blind trust had landed her here.

  Trust had never come easy to her to begin with. She'd been a victim enough in her life, and one of these two could very easily be a Medb surveillance plant.