Going Dark Read online

  But Dean didn’t give a shit about the police. He yanked off his mask, tossed it in the water next to him, and pulled her into his arms.

  She was alive. That was all that mattered.

  Thank God, he’d arrived in time. But it would be some time before the image of her gasping for breath and trying not to panic faded from his memory. He was too torn up to say anything—emotion stuck in his throat like a logjam.

  He was glad that she’d lifted off her mask, because it made it easier when he kissed her—kissed the hell out of her. It was as if all the emotion, all the bundled-up tension, all the panic and fear gave loose in a fierce—savage—explosion of need. He’d almost lost her, and he wasn’t ever going to let that happen again.

  She was kissing him back with the same ferocity. A tangle of lips, tongues, and salt water. Frigid salt water.

  He wanted to go on kissing her forever, but he had to get out of this water. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Hit pause until we get on the boat.”

  Her eyes flew open. “Oh my God, you must be freezing. I wasn’t thinking . . .” Her voice cracked. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

  “I’ll tell you everything when we get on that boat.”

  Normally he could swim the distance of a football field in just under a minute. But the fifteen minutes or so that he’d been in the icy water had sapped his strength and turned his limbs to bricks. The increasingly choppy waters didn’t help, either. It was a good five minutes before he was climbing the ladder onto his borrowed speedboat and reaching down to help Annie up.

  But her head was turned toward the pier. The dive boat had just left the harbor and was making its way toward them, presumably with the police on board.

  She turned back to him and shook her head, refusing to climb aboard. “You have to go, Dean. You can’t let them find you.”

  “I’m not going to leave you—” Suddenly he stopped, staring down at her in shock. “How do you know my name?”

  “I guess you haven’t seen the paper today. The reporter doing those lost platoon stories posted a photo of her brother and a few of his friends. It was hard to make out your faces, but you weren’t wearing a shirt, and I . . . uh . . .” How the hell was she blushing in ice-cold water? “I knew it was you.”

  He wasn’t going to ask her how. Not right now at least. Not while he wasn’t naked and she couldn’t show him.

  “That’s why you’re hiding,” she said. “You’re part of the SEAL platoon that she said disappeared.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

  “I assume you have a good reason, and you’ll tell me what you can when it’s safe.” She stared up at him, her expression suddenly uncertain. “I’ll wait for you—if you want me to.”

  He reached down the ladder and pulled her on board. She’d probably be pissed off later at his high-handedness, but he’d make it up to her. He thought of all kinds of ways he was going to make it up to her, and he felt a spark of warmth pulsing through his frigid veins.

  “Want you to? Fuck yes, I want you to.” He pulled her in tight against his body to emphasize his point. He’d give everything he had right now to strip off his wet jeans and her wet suit. But she was right. He had to go.

  For now.

  “I wasn’t sure,” she admitted. “I didn’t know why you came back. How did you know I’d be in danger?”

  He gave her a twenty-second recap of what they’d found out about OPF and Jean Paul’s death. She was clearly shocked.

  “Short-selling? Blowing up the drillship was about money?”

  He nodded. “When I learned that the woman who’d killed Jean Paul had gone diving with you . . .” He shivered—and not from the cold, though it wasn’t much warmer on this damned boat. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  She smiled. “I thought big, badass SEALs didn’t get scared.”

  “Sweetheart, you scare the livin’ shit out of me.”

  The confession seemed to please her enormously. She looked like a kid in the proverbial candy store—him being the candy store. “I do?”

  He wasn’t going to elaborate on how much. He’d do that the next time they were alone, preferably in bed. “If anything had happened to you, it would have been my fault. I shouldn’t have left you.”

  “I understand why you did now.”

  “Yeah, well, I still shouldn’t have left the way I did.” His fingers caressed the side of her cheek along the edge of the neoprene hood as she gazed up at him. His voice was suddenly husky. “I should have told you something first.”

  She was scanning his gaze so intently that he felt his chest squeeze. She seemed scared to ask, “What?”

  They were words he’d never said to any woman before, but he didn’t hesitate. The last few hours had made him damned sure. He would figure out how to make it work. That was what he did for a living. Found solutions for the impossible. “That I love you.”

  She blinked, tears suddenly filling her eyes. “You do?”

  He nodded and kissed her again. This time far more gently, and unfortunately far too briefly. He hated this. But there would be time. Lots of time. He’d make damned sure of it.

  “I love you, too,” she said when he released her.

  “Good,” he said with a smile. “You can tell me how much next time I see you.”

  He could tell she wanted to ask, but bit her lip to stop herself. That she understood how it worked—that he wouldn’t be able to tell her about what he did—was going to make things a hell of a lot easier.

  He answered the unspoken question as much as he could. “Soon, sweetheart. As soon as I can.”

  “How will you find me?”

  He grinned. “Trade secrets.”

  He reached for his backpack, glad that it was waterproof. The short swim to shore was going to be mostly underwater. The dive boat and police would be able to see them soon.

  “You can’t get back in that water. Just take the boat. I can handle the cold with this wet suit.”

  He shook his head. “There will be police all over the area soon. I would never be able to get away in the boat. But there are a bunch of sea caves along the shore. I’ll find one and stay there until they stop looking. Tell them I died—and be convincing. It will slow them down.”

  She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Be careful. You must be close to hypothermia already.”

  He was, but she didn’t need to know that. A fire would be too risky, even in one of those caves, but getting out of these wet clothes would help.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He leaned down and gave her a quick kiss before diving in the water. He wanted to surface and tell her he loved her again, but he’d already stayed too long. He couldn’t risk the police seeing him.

  But he intended to tell her again very soon. He wasn’t going to take any chances that she might reconsider waiting for him. For however long that might be.

  God knew it wasn’t great timing—and he was going to do everything he could to help the LC figure out what the hell had happened so they could come out of hiding—but he’d met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. For the first time since the missile had exploded in front of him, Dean felt hope for the future.

  Thirty-six

  It had been a long day of travel. Annie was exhausted as she walked down the stairs of the small regional plane—she didn’t think she would ever get used to flying in a bathtub—and crossed the tarmac to the terminal. She was surprised by how good it felt to be back in Scotland.

  It didn’t feel like Oz anymore. Actually she’d begun to think that it might feel like home. For a while anyway.

  She tried not to worry about Dean, and wonder where he was and whether he was all right. He would find her when he could.

  She had to g