Page 19 of Rescuing Macie

“No, Macie,” he said as he put a hand on the side of her neck and leaned in. “Are you good?”

She couldn’t help the small smile that broke out. “I’m good,” she told him. “Really. I liked them. Annie is hysterical, and I loved getting to know Emily and Casey more.”

“And Mary? Did she behave?”

Macie must’ve hesitated a moment too long, because Colt sighed and pulled back. He reached for her hand and pulled her into the living room. He sat on the couch and tugged Macie down onto his lap. He put his arms around her waist and held her firmly.

Macie stared at him in shock. They’d slept curled up next to each other every night, and Colt never hesitated to touch her, to caress her cheek or run a hand over her hair. But he’d never simply hauled her around before—at least, not since the night of the break-in—and she hadn’t sat on anyone’s lap since she was five years old.

Not sure where to put her hands, she rested them in her lap awkwardly.

“What’d she say?” Colt asked.

“Nothing.”

“Mace,” he said more gently. “I can tell she said something. I mean, it’s Mary, she can’t help herself, it’s part of her charm.” He smiled. “Now tell me, so I can reassure you about whatever it was, and then I’ll go get us some dinner. I’m hungry.”

It was the last bit that made Macie change her mind about telling him. She had a feeling he would sit there all night if she didn’t spill. He was that stubborn. But his stubbornness was one of the many reasons she was crazy about him.

Pushing those feelings to the back of her mind, refusing to think about them right now, she said, “I’m sure she was exaggerating, or that she simply doesn’t know the truth.”

“About what?”

Taking a deep breath, Macie said, “She was just trying to make sure I knew what this was. What was happening here. And she told me about you killing a bunch of people when your friend was captured.”

She felt Colt’s thigh muscles tense under her butt, and it seemed as if the air in the room thickened with emotion.

Oh shit. Why had she told him? She should’ve made something up. She was such an idiot! Now he was going to tell her she couldn’t stay at his house anymore, that he couldn’t help her. She should’ve kept her big mouth shut!

Chapter Five

Colt felt Macie begin to tremble in his lap and did his best to relax his own muscles. But it was too late. He could tell by the way she’d hunched in on herself and the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

He hated doing anything to make her anxiety flare, so he quickly tried to fix it. Her words had surprised him and brought back the memories of that awful day, the day that had changed his life forever.

Tightening his arms around her so she couldn’t flee, he began speaking.

“I’m forty-three years old. I’ve been in the military almost my entire adult life. I have no idea what I’ll do when they finally force me to retire. I’ve never been married. Don’t have any children. I’ve made my share of mistakes in my life, and I won’t lie to you, Macie. I’ve killed people. Lots of them. But if I had to do it again, I would. Every time.”

He paused and took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure he could relive what had happened at the end of his Delta Force career.

Then he felt Macie relax slightly against him. She put her head on his shoulder and tentatively put her arms around his neck. That was all it took to give him the courage to open up to her. She wasn’t rejecting him. She knew the basics, and still she put her arms around him.

“My team was sent into a hostile town to meet with who we thought were loyal supporters. Our intel said they wanted to assist us in taking down the Taliban that had a toehold in that region. Honestly, we were losing the fight there and needed all the help we could get. The bigwigs thought it would be a good idea to use local strength to fight. So we went in. We were cautious and uneasy, but we were given a direct order, so in we went. I was in charge of my team, and so I was in the lead when an RPG—rocket-propelled grenade—came out of nowhere and decimated the building behind where we were standing. It collapsed right on top of us.”

Macie inhaled harshly, but didn’t speak. Colt could feel her fingers at the nape of his neck, caressing the short hairs there. He closed his eyes and took a minute to appreciate the feel of her body on his. How good her fingers felt.

“I woke up some time later. I’m not sure how much time had passed. I was completely buried under the stones and concrete of the building, but somehow hadn’t been crushed because of the way the walls fell. I don’t know if you remember after 9/11 that some people were found alive in one of the stairwells of the collapsed buildings?”

Macie nodded, so Colt continued.

“Yeah, well, that happened to me too. I was relatively unhurt, just sore, confused, and had a raging headache. I pushed the rubble off myself and crawled out. It was almost dark but I could still see all around me. Two of my teammates were lying dead, their heads crushed under rocks from the building. Another had been dragged out of the debris and stripped. Bud was naked, and he had bullet holes throughout his body and a huge puddle of blood around him. Back home, he had two kids and another on the way. I turned my head to puke, and met the eyes of another teammate, Randy. He was alive. Lying in the debris of the building, but his legs and pelvis were crushed and he was pinned under a huge block of concrete.

“I went to his side, and he told me what had happened to our last teammate I hadn’t found yet. Randy had witnessed what had happened to everyone, but couldn’t do a damn thing to help. He knew he was dying. Could feel it. He said that Sergeant Griswald had fought off the insurgents at first, trying to keep them at bay. He’d used all his bullets and was trying to reload when they overwhelmed him. Bud had shot at them from where he was also trapped under the rubble, but they dragged him out and beat the hell out of him. When he was almost unconscious, they stripped him and began shooting…just for fun. Randy said it seemed like the entire town was there, watching, laughing, participating. Women, kids, men, old and young alike. When Bud was dead, they turned back to Gris. He’d been detained by five insurgents.”

Colt huffed out a breath. “Took five of those fuckers to contain him. He was strong as an ox, and I can imagine that he was pissed way the hell off. Anyway, they tied a piece of rope around his neck and dragged him away. Randy said Gris had managed to get his hands under the rope, so he wasn’t strangled as they dragged him in the dirt, but he didn’t know where they’d taken Gris or what had happened to him.

“The last words Randy said to me were to tell his wife that he loved her, and that he was proud as hell to be hers. He died in the middle of that fucking miserable town and there was nothing I could do about it. No amount of first aid would put his legs back together or stop the bleeding. Looking around at the four dead men surrounding me, something snapped. I was so enraged that these men—my friends…husbands and fathers, brothers and sons—were dead.