Fatal Heat

  FATAL HEAT

  A SEAL Novella

  LISA MARIE RICE

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  SEALs and Why We Love Them

  Introduction to Bonus Excerpts

  Excerpt from NIGHTFIRE

  Excerpt from INTO THE CROSSFIRE

  Excerpt from HOTTER THAN WILDFIRE

  About the Author

  Also by Lisa Marie Rice

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  April 2

  San Sebastian, California

  “That must have hurt like a bitch,” a voice said out of the darkness. A female voice. A very sexy female voice. “Here, have a cookie.”

  Max Wright sat up painfully, shocked out of his funk. Someone lived next door?

  Fuck.

  He’d assumed he was going to put his broken body back together without anyone watching. His commander had simply handed him the keys to his vacation beach apartment and given him orders to get better. He hadn’t said anything about neighbors. Not this early in the season.

  Get better.

  Those orders still had a bitter taste. Because with a lot of time and a lot of pain and a lot of rehab, he was walking—or, to be honest, limping—again, and he’d gotten back most of his upper-body strength.

  But he was out of the navy and no longer a SEAL—permanently. So how was “better” in any way a possibility? Even in the same fucking ballpark of a possibility?

  The voice was female. Soft, sympathetic, slightly amused.

  He wasn’t going to growl, Yeah, it hurt like a bitch, even though it had, because pain wasn’t important. As every senior chief in the history of the universe screamed, pain is weakness leaving the body. Pain was nothing.

  He wanted to snarl something but it would be to empty air, because there was a slight click, then a light woof! that had him raising his eyebrows, and he was alone.

  With a plate of cookies on the tile divider between the two balconies.

  Shit. No one to snarl at.

  But . . . cookies.

  Max had had no appetite since the attack, none. For the first month in ICU, they’d fed him through goddamned tubes bored into his belly, and when they took the tubes out, food tasted like cardboard dipped in shit.

  The cookies smelled really good, though. Really good. The plate was within reaching distance, and a good thing, too, because getting up and walking at the end of another day in which he’d pushed the limits entailed a cane and a whole lot of pain.

  As a matter of fact, the doctors had been adamant that he still needed to stay in the rehab unit for another month, maybe two. He’d had to check himself out, signing his name with a flourish and handing it to the nurse, who clicked her tongue in disapproval.

  Tough shit.

  Max wanted out. He wanted out of this place with all the sick people. He didn’t need reminding he wasn’t whole. He knew.

  He’d been strong all his life. He knew what he was now.

  Weak.

  He wanted a place that didn’t smell of Lysol and Formalin, a place where no one would harp that he was overdoing it, and a place where people didn’t smile at him professionally when he was in a shitty mood. Goddamn it, snarl back.

  It was a good thing they’d taken his guns away in rehab because he’d have ended up shooting someone.

  Prison would arguably be worse than the rehab clinic, so before he offed the next smiling sadist, he signed himself out. His XO, Commander Mel Dempsey, offered the use of his vacation beach house about half an hour north of Monterey, handing him the keys and telling him to get better.

  It was off-season. Max wanted peace and quiet and solitude while he put himself back together again.

  He didn’t want next-door neighbors, female or otherwise. He liked women as much as the next man, maybe more, but not now. Not while he threw up if he moved too fast, not while one leg wouldn’t bear his full weight, not while he was this pathetic . . . fucking . . . cripple.

  Cookie Lady had a real sexy voice, and the very little he’d seen of her in the dim light—wow. But he wasn’t coming out to play. Not for a long while.

  He was going to eat what he could choke down, sleep as well as he could, pump iron, do the exercises the rehab doc had given him, and walk along the beach, making sure he didn’t fall on his ass. All those good things. And keep his dick down.

  Not hard to do.

  His dick had disappeared after surgery. Oh, it was physically there, all right. Mainly as a tube to piss through. Not even a twinge of sex, not even with the nurses in the hospital. Not even with Nurse Carrie, who’d looked really hot in white and had offered.

  Max didn’t want any. He didn’t want anything at all except to get back on his feet and back in the Teams.

  Not going to happen.

  He didn’t want pity or commiseration, he wanted to be left fucking alone.

  Though, actually, the neighbor lady had left him alone. With cookies.

  Goddamn it, who the fuck left cookies for a SEAL? SEALs ate rocks and shat nails. They didn’t eat fucking cookies. They—

  A stray gust of wind blew from the sea and he froze.

  Damn, those cookies smelled good.

  He had long arms. He didn’t have to get up. He held a cookie up in the dim light and bit in.

  Best cookies he’d ever had, bar none. White chocolate chip. Perfect cookie in a world of imperfection.

  He sat and glowered at the dark sea and ate the plateful up.

  In his dreams, it was always the same and always different.

  He was in Helmand: the desolate dun-colored peaks of the Hindu Kush rising sharp and jagged around him, the air so clear his binocs showed him the valley floor as clearly as if it were ten feet away instead of a thousand.

  He saw everything with crystal clarity.

  It was a mission to take out a real bad guy, Ahmed Sahar. A warlord who’d become Al Qaida’s go-to guy and was funnelling arms to the Taliban. Also a world-class crazy. A fucking psychopath.

  From his hilltop sniper’s den, Max had watched two executions and the lashing of a young girl. He couldn’t wait to have the fucker in his crosshairs. Sahar was a psychopath—but a crafty one—and stayed in his compound year-round. But they had intel that a major operation was in the works and Sahar would have to travel.

  Max had been waiting for three days in his hideSTET under netting, pissing in a bottle, never sleeping, barely breathing. Because he really, really wanted to nail the fucker.

  And—there he was! Coming out of the gates, looking around for his enemies. Up here, fuckhead, Max thought, finger lrosht, finoose on the trigger.

  It was a convoy, but Sahar wanted to oversee something, and got out of his vehicle to shout at the lead driver. Max kept him in the sights: that gross, misshapen head he’d studied for hours while being briefed.

  This was it. Sahar straightened and took one last look around as Max let out half a breath and gently squeezed the trigger. Sahar’s head exploded. A swift clean head shot.

  His work here was done.

  Except when the bullet pulped Sahar’s head, another crazy shouldered a long tube. Someone had told Max—who was really good with guns, who had shot maybe a million rounds in his life—that some Afghanis had a mystical relationship with arms. Max believed it, because though Second Psychopath couldn’t have had a clue where the supersonic bullet came from—and it would take a team of forensic experts hours to ascertain the direction of the shot—Second Psychopath had
no problems.

  Second Psychopath’s head swivelled and in one second he somehow nailed Max’s position. Max watched as the tube foreshortened and Second Psychopath was rocked back on his sandals, something trailing a cloud of smoke spearing its way to him.

  The world exploded in fire and pain . . .

  Max bolted up, panting, twisted in sweat-soaked sheets, teeth clenched hard against any possible sound, the way he always woke up from his nightmares. The legacy of a childhood spent terrified of waking up his stepfather, who plunged into terrifying rages at the slightest provocation.

  Nightmares without noise were his special gift, learned before he could talk.

  But even without noise, they left him sweaty and drained and shaking. He hated it, hated them.

  He slipped out of bed, lurched once on his bad leg, and caught himself.

  Getting strong again would help. Being strong and staying strong had always been his touchstone, was the reason he’d survived his childhood. That was how he’d got his Budweiser. That and being too damned stubborn to quit.

  Losing his strength after the RPG attack had been the hardest thing in a hard life.

  Mel hadAdo000">Me a fully-equipped gym in the garage, but even if it weren’t there, Max would have improvised one. Plastic bags or empty milk bottles filled with sand, fingertip pull-ups from the door frame, a two-by-four as an ab bench—he’d done it all as a kid.

  Time to sweat out the nightmare. When he walked into the gym with its gleaming equipment, the sky outside the window was slate gray. An hour later, wiping the sweat from his chest, it was pearl gray.

  The ocean was forty feet away. Back in the day, forty feet was laughable, nothing. He could run it in a few seconds. He ran ten miles a day in boots, every day, and did a hundred push-ups at the end of the run. He didn’t do it laughing, but he did it.

  No running now. Maybe not ever. His doctors had originally said he’d never walk again and now look at him. Of course he didn’t walk so much as lurch. Each step took a second and sent a wire of pain straight into his head.

  But in the water . . . ah, in the water he was still a god. An injured god, slower than any of his Team mates, but still faster than most civilians.

  Time to swim. He looked forward to his long daily swims where his mangled leg was merely a deadweight. Slipping into the water was a delight. He headed out into the still-dark ocean with strong, sure strokes, using his arms more than his legs, the sun sliding up into the sky at his back.

  If he’d had the ocean a few steps away a year ago when he’d woken up from surgery, as soon as he could walk he’d have been tempted to swim as far as his strength could carry him—so far he could never make it back—and die a swimmer’s death.

  Better than the death that was staring him in the face: pissing into a bag, needing help to sip soup. If he’d had the means and the strength to end it those first few months, he would have. But they’d watched over him and nothing sharp was ever within reach.

  And so he determined that he’d walk again and, by God, inch by trembling inch he’d done it. The physical therapist threatened to tie him down because he did too much, but he knew his own body. His body wanted to stand upright, wanted the challenge. Going slow was not an option.

  He swam for an hour until his strength began to fail. He’d gone less than a mile. He hated that. During BUD/S he’d swim five miles, come out of the surf running, hit the grinder to pound out a hundred push-ups. Now he was exhausted as he trod water.

  There was a small island three miles out. Some kind of research facility, his XO had told him. Santo Domingo Island. Goddamn it, he was going tcal was goo get to the point where he could swim there and back, no matter what it took.

  The swim back was slow, his muscles not pulling him smoothly and strongly through the water as they were supposed to. He started trembling.

  Fuck this. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t even supposed to be upright. That the doctors had told him he might never walk again. He was a fucking SEAL. And SEALs didn’t do weakness.

  He dove under, swimming the last fifty yards under water, knowing he couldn’t possibly do a hundred push-ups at the end.

  Max strained toward shore, fighting the urge to breathe, at the very limit of his strength, when he suddenly heard his name called. A female voice, calling his name.

  What the fuck? A mermaid? Some kind of underwater creature calling him down to his death?

  He reared up from the water.

  And something strong and hairy, moving fast, cannonballed into him, taking him back under before he had a chance to fill his lungs with air.

  Oh no!

  Paige Waring stepped back in dismay. A man had suddenly appeared out of the water, rising up like some mythic sea god. Max jumped him and he tumbled back under.

  Her gorgeous, smart, totally undisciplined dog Max, who growled at some men and became instant best friends with others.

  The man he’d jumped was so frightening-looking she couldn’t understand Max’s friendliness.

  He looked like he’d eat you for breakfast and spit out the bones. And he was her new neighbor.

  She’d known only that her new neighbor was a former naval officer recovering from wounds sustained in combat. Though Uncle Mel hadn’t said it, she supposed her new neighbor was a SEAL, because that’s what Uncle Mel was.

  The man crested the surface, Max jumping and yapping happily around him.

  He didn’t look frightening—he looked terrifying. Last night she’d had the impression in the darkness of danger on a hair trigger.

  A wounded officer next door. She was hardwired to try to do something for him. After all, he’d been wounded in the service of his country. So she’d baked cookies, meaning to go over and invite him to a glass of wine and cookies as a neighborly gesture.

  Then she’d seen him, a huge figure in the semi-darkness, face grim and frightening. One leg extended, thinner than the other one, which was thick with muscle. The damaged leg had looked so mangled and scarred, it hurt to look at it.

  He’d turned to her, and even in the gloom his face was frightening, speaking of the terrible things he’d seen. The terrible things that had been done to him.

  She’d murmured a few words, left the cookies on the balcony between them, and retreated to her apartment because the guy sitting out there in the dark didn’t look like a nice neighbor. He looked like a killer.

  Now he rose back up from the waves, water streaming off him. And up and up. He was tall and huge. Or had been huge. He was on the thin side, but he had the bones of a big man: broad-shouldered, long-legged, with enormous hands.

  Crisscrossed with scars. Terrible scars. Life-threatening scars. On top of that mangled leg.

  Paige stood and stared. He seemed like a creature from the mists of time, a ravaged warrior misplaced on their tame stretch of beach.

  Max jumped him again and Paige broke out of the spell she’d been under. She had to save her dog. This man could hurt Max badly with one swipe of one of those enormous hands.

  “Down, Max, down!” she cried, rushing forward into the surf, heart pounding. She was ready to face the man down to defend her dog, but heavens, he looked terrifying.

  Max leaped again and she saw the man’s weight shift to that mangled leg, and he faltered.

  “Max!” Paige clapped her hands because a dog instructor—one of the many to whom she’d taken her loveable but absolutely incorrigible dog—had told her it was a signal for dogs to calm down.

  Not Max—he was rollicking in the waves, jumping on the man.

  m" widtm" align="justify">The man made a gesture with his big hand, and to her astonishment, Max settled a little, dropping his front paws back into the sea.

  The skin on his back rippled and Paige’s eyes widened.

  “No!” she shouted.

  But it was too late. Max shook all over, drenching her and the man. He was wet all over anyway, but she’d have to shower again before heading to work.

  Oh God. Ma
x had knocked this man down and showered him with doggy-smelling seawater. Who knew how he would react?

  And then the man looked at her and grinned. It was a mere flash, a movement of the edges of his mouth, a glimpse of white teeth, and then his face settled back into its usual grim lines.

  “Cookie Lady,” he said. “The cookies were great.”

  His voice was unusually deep and dark, completely out of place on this bright sunny morning. She shivered.

  “Yes. Cookie Lady.” She looked at him—at the height of him, the breadth of him, that face that was now totally unsmiling. It had to be done. She was in the wrong. Her dog had made a man with a crippled leg tumble into the ocean.

  So she did the brave thing and offered her hand. Hoping he wouldn’t notice that it trembled. Hoping he’d give it back unharmed.

  Paige disliked shaking hands with macho men. She needed her hands to do delicate lab work. Often guys felt they had to prove their manhood with their grip. This one looked like he could crush her hand with no effort at all.

  But . . . her dog had jumped him. And Uncle Mel was his commanding officer.

  “I’m really, really sorry. I’d like to say that I don’t know what got into my dog, but he’s always like this. I seem to spend all my time apologizing for him. I’m Paige. Paige Waring.”

  His hand enveloped hers in a strong, gentle grip. His hand felt like warm steel. He might be wounded, but his grip was like touching a live wire, crackling with electricity. She was so surprised, she kept her hand in his as if the electricity had created some kind of chemical bond.000bond.

  “Max.”

  At hearing his name, Max gave a happy bark and jumped both of them. Paige lost her footing in the surf and would have fallen if he hadn’t immediately snaked a big arm around her, pulling her upright and against him in an unshakeable grasp.

  His leg might be mangled and he might be overly thin, but there was no mistaking the strength in the muscles she found herself plastered against.

  It was intensely embarrassing and—whoa—incredibly exciting. The only other man who looked this strong was Uncle Mel, but she’d never been in a full frontal embrace with him.