Beyond Limits Read online

  It was a classic SEAL mission and should have been no sweat, but Derek’s team wasn’t exactly operating on all cylinders. Sean’s death was an open wound. Every last one of them had been hit hard, especially Luke, who’d been Sean’s swim buddy during BUD/S training. The CO knew his men were hurting, so he’d arranged to squeeze in a few training ops before sending them on leave. To some it might seem cruel, but Hallenback understood his team, and they respected him for it. So despite tired bodies and flagging spirits, they were putting their full effort into tonight’s exercise.

  Not to mention that they were competitive. Tonight’s winners would get a ride back to base aboard a motorized boat. The losers would get a rubber raft and a pair of oars.

  Derek hated losing, whether it was a baseball game or a bet or a woman, and the idea of losing to a bunch of Marines was pretty much intolerable. It propelled him forward as he peered through the murky water and skimmed his fingers over the ship’s skin.

  He hit pay dirt.

  His pulse spiked as his hands moved over the familiar shape. He tugged the line to signal Luke, who took one look at Derek’s discovery and gave him a thumbs-up.

  It was exactly what they’d expected: a basic limpet mine attached by magnet and rigged with a timer. As the designated EOD tech, Derek took the lead in disarming the mock explosive and detaching it from the ship. His teammates swam over, lured by some invisible force, like dolphins communicating underwater.

  Mike tapped his watch. Tick-tock. Besides the Marines, they were up against their commander’s stopwatch, and if the mission wasn’t accomplished within the time limit, every one of them was rowing home.

  Derek handed off the mine to Mike, their fastest swimmer. He took off like a torpedo.

  Derek followed, feeling uneasy without knowing why. One limpet. He’d found it. Based on the size, it could tear a pretty good hole in the ship. But it couldn’t bring her down, and that bothered him.

  A sharp tug. Luke materialized in the shadows. Derek swam over and saw what had captured his attention: a second device illuminated in the glow of Luke’s attack board. They traded looks. This was classic Hallenback.

  One is none, and two is one. It was what their CO always said right before telling his EOD guys to back up their charges in case something went wrong, which had a tendency to happen in the heat of battle.

  He and Luke made quick work of the second device. Derek checked his watch. Eighteen seconds.

  Cradling the limpet like a football, Derek kicked and swam for all he was worth, breaking the surface just in time to hear a cheer going up from the Marines’ boat. He glanced at his teammates bobbing glumly in the water.

  Hallenback stood on the dock, arms crossed. Derek held up the second mine. A smile spread over the CO’s face, and he shot his rival a look.

  Derek shoved his mask up and swam over to the bulkhead, where Cole gleefully took the prize off his hands and held it up like a trophy.

  “Hey, girls, you missed one!”

  A chorus of barks went up from the SEALs. They leaped and cannonballed off the dock and converged on the pontoon. Surrounded by jeers and insults, the Marines unassed the boat. Derek heaved himself aboard and pulled off his fins. One of the jarheads had a few choice words about Derek’s mom. Derek grinned and threw him an oar.

  It was a nice ride back, considering. There was a moderate wind out of the west, a chop in the bay. He glanced up at the night sky, still feeling a little strange about being home after so many months away.

  “Nice save.” Mike sank onto the metal seat beside him. “We owe you a beer. You going to O’Malley’s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know? We haven’t been there in freaking forever.” His gaze narrowed. “What’re you, sick?”

  Always the medic.

  “I’m pretty beat.”

  Mike smiled slyly. “So make it an early night.”

  They pulled up to the dock and briskly secured the boat, everyone energized by the prospect of a well-earned night off. Derek shouldered his gear and trekked back to the team building. He wanted a hot shower and a cold beer. And sex. That would probably help, too. But the thought of all the bullshit small talk it would take to get him there made his head pound.

  “Yo, Vaughn.” Luke walked over, still dripping in his dive suit. “Hallenback wants us at HQ.”

  Derek hung his fins in his locker. “What, now?”

  “ASAP. As in eighty-six the shower. He said move.”

  Derek stashed his gear and traded his dive suit for BDUs. He was jamming his feet into boots when Luke rushed back, also in battle dress uniform. He was still buttoning his shirt.

  “Know what it’s about?” Luke asked.

  “No idea.”

  They double-timed it across the grinder, where a line of recruits was struggling through night PT. Their backs sagged as they performed their umpteenth set of push-ups. One guy was dry-heaving in the grass, and the others looked ready to drop.

  A Humvee zipped past them and pulled into a space beside a Lincoln Town Car. Hallenback climbed from the Humvee’s passenger side as the team’s chief petty officer hopped out from behind the wheel.

  “We’re in the SCIF room,” the chief informed them.

  The Lincoln’s doors opened, and three men in suits piled out.

  Make that three men and a woman.

  Elizabeth LeBlanc slid from the car, and Derek’s brain stalled. She wore a black suit and heels, and her straw-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He watched her cross the pavement, dimly aware of introductions being made all around him. A second later, she was standing in front of him, watching him with those cool blue eyes.

  “. . . Petty Officer Luke Jones,” Hallenback said. “And Lieutenant Derek Vaughn.”

  He tore his attention away from her and managed to shake a few hands. He remembered the tall FBI agent, Gordon Moore, from last summer.

  Elizabeth offered a handshake. “Lieutenant.”

  “Ma’am.”

  Her skin was warm and soft. Jesus, how long since he’d touched her? He looked at those pink lips and remembered the honey-sweet taste of her mouth.

  The cool expression faltered, and she tugged her hand away.

  The chief pulled the door open, and Hallenback led the visitors inside. Elizabeth fell in line behind her boss, and Derek stared after her.

  “It’s about A-bad,” Luke muttered.

  Derek looked at him.

  “Asadabad. He’s with CT. Didn’t you hear what they said?”

  No, he hadn’t. He hadn’t heard a damn thing.

  * * *

  The Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility was a state-of-the-art briefing room with lead-lined walls to thwart electronic listening devices. Derek had been in it exactly once, and the conference table then had been packed with VIPs, meaning standing room only for a team of SEALs about to spin up on a top-secret mission.

  This time everyone took a chair. Derek waited for Elizabeth to settle in and grabbed a seat directly across from her. Luke took the seat beside him, eyeing the suits around the table with a wary look.

  Derek checked out the faces, sizing everyone up and trying to get his head around the situation. Twenty-five minutes ago he’d been underneath a destroyer. Now he was in one of the Navy’s ultrasecure meeting rooms with a team of feebies that included Elizabeth LeBlanc.

  Derek tried not to stare at her, but it was damn near impossible. Same eyes, same lips, same stubborn tilt to her chin. She was avoiding his gaze, which gave him a chance to get his thudding heart under control.

  Derek hadn’t seen her since last summer, when his best friend had found himself at the center of an FBI murder investigation. Elizabeth had been assigned to the case. Derek had spent nearly a week with her, and when he hadn’t been dodging her questions and pissing her off, he’d been trying to get her to go to bed with him. No dice.

  Had she thought about him at all since then?

  “Let me start by
saying the information we’re about to discuss is highly sensitive.”

  Derek dragged his attention back to Elizabeth’s boss.

  “It’s part of an ongoing investigation and must not leave this room.”

  “These men are familiar with the concept of a classified briefing,” Hallenback said. “You can speak freely.”

  “Fine.” Moore’s attention locked on Derek. “Lieutenant Vaughn, I understand you offered to guard a prisoner directly following the rescue operation in Asadabad.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I understand you know Pashto?”

  Derek glanced at Hallenback. “I get by.”

  Moore looked at Luke. “Your CO tells me you’re fluent?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  Luke had picked up the language while working alongside Afghan medical personnel. And now Derek understood where this conversation was going.

  “So, you spoke to the prisoner.” Moore’s statement was directed at Derek.

  “We had a few words.”

  “Why?” This from the suit beside Elizabeth. Potter. His introduction had included something about the CIA. “We had a trained interrogator en route to your location.”

  “Thought it wouldn’t hurt to debrief him a little,” Derek said. “Way things have been going with the CIA lately, you never know.”

  “You have a problem with our people, Lieutenant?” Potter leaned forward on his elbows, clearly affronted.

  Derek glanced at Hallenback, whose expression told him he was clear to give his opinion. Not that Derek minded offending a few pencil pushers, but he didn’t want to cause his CO any headaches.

  “Not your people, your policies,” Derek told him. “It’s catch and release over there. We risk our necks taking down some Taliban stronghold, bag up a bunch of tangos, and two weeks later they’re back in business making suicide vests and planting IEDs.”

  Derek glanced at Luke, whose teeth were clenched, probably as he remembered the raid. Sean had discovered a shit ton of intel and spent the last minutes of his life collecting it before taking a bullet. As soon as they’d touched down at base, the team had put him on a medevac plane to Germany, but he never made it.

  “The A-bad raid netted a huge volume of information,” Derek said now. “Plus a high-value prisoner. And yes, we were more than happy to guard him, case he had anything to say before the CIA showed up.”

  “Then I assume you noticed the maps,” Moore said.

  Derek had grown up in Texas, which this guy probably knew. Of course he’d noticed the maps. “They caught my eye, yeah.”

  “Did he say anything about the tactical objectives involved?”

  “Well, as Agent Potter here pointed out, I’m not a trained interrogator. I knew that was a sensitive topic, and I didn’t want to fuck it up.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “ ’Scuse my language, ma’am.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but Derek knew he’d annoyed her. She didn’t like to be singled out for special treatment.

  “So what did you talk to him about?” Potter asked.

  “The houses, mostly. Who lived there. Who was in and out. We tried to get names.”

  “These guys operate in a network,” Luke said. “We’re always looking for the missing links. We needed names to plug into what we already had on the area.”

  “Did you get any?” Moore asked.

  “He was pretty tight-lipped,” Derek said. “Gave us a few names, but we were fairly sure they were bogus. And they never lined up with any preexisting info on our end. It’s in the report, though, so the intel guys can follow up.”

  “How’d they do, anyway?” Luke asked. “Did the CIA drag anything out of him?”

  Moore glanced at Hallenback. “The prisoner’s no longer talking.”

  Derek shook his head, disgusted.

  “We did, however, manage to develop some background on him,” Potter said. “The Afghan police ID’d him as Khalid Rana. He’s a known associate of Al Qaeda’s chief recruiter in the area. Now that the war’s winding down, they’ve been operating without much pushback.”

  Derek gritted his teeth. Did he think they didn’t know this? With the troops leaving, the place was becoming a free-for-all, with native Taliban forces, foreign Al Qaeda fighters, and local militia groups coming out of their hidey holes and vying for power.

  “In addition to that, he’s obviously closely linked to the kidnappers, including Omar Rasheed, who masterminded the attack on the MedAssist convoy. Rasheed’s been rising through the ranks of Al Qaeda for years, and this recent operation bumped up his status.”

  “What about the maps?” Luke asked. “Looked like they could be planning an attack on one of our cities.”

  “We’re processing everything now,” Moore said. “We’ve got our best people working on it.”

  Elizabeth looked at Moore, and something in her expression made Derek uneasy. Was it admiration? Respect?

  Or something else?

  Or maybe he was just wishing she’d look at him that way. She’d been across from him now for ten minutes, steadfastly ignoring him, as if just being in a room with him made her uncomfortable.

  How many times had he thought about seeing her again? Countless. Only they hadn’t been in a SCIF room, and they sure as hell hadn’t been surrounded by other people. After all that dreaming, he couldn’t believe she was here, in the flesh. And now he couldn’t stop thinking about how he was going to get her alone.

  She glanced at him for barely a second, but something sparked in her eyes, and he knew she’d read his mind.

  “We received intel from Great Britain,” Moore said. “They have word that Rasheed was in Bahrain last week meeting with a known Al Qaeda supporter.”

  “Supporter?” Derek asked.

  “A financial backer. So we know he’s on the move, and in the light of the maps your team recovered, that’s an alarming piece of intelligence.”

  Alarming was an understatement.

  “Are they sure they can’t get Khalid to talk?” Luke asked. “Maybe they need a new team in there. Sounds like a little arm twisting’s in order.”

  Potter scoffed. “Is that why he shut down on us? You tried a little SEAL arm twisting on a frightened kid?”

  “Hey, we didn’t touch him,” Derek said.

  “Don’t let his age fool you,” Luke added bitterly. “He’s plenty old enough to hold an AK or plant an IED or rape a hostage.”

  Potter gave him a cool look that confirmed all Derek’s suspicions. No way this guy had ever been in the field. He had analyst written all over him.

  Moore stood up then, and that was it, meeting over. The feds packed up their legal pads, clearly disappointed with the outcome of their fact-finding mission. Yes, a couple of big bad SEALs had talked to the prisoner. No, they hadn’t gleaned anything useful. And now the little shit had clammed up, leaving the CIA, the FBI, and about every other alphabet agency in Homeland Security standing around more worried about safeguarding a terrorist’s civil rights than safeguarding an American city.

  The suits filed out, and Derek watched Elizabeth, trying to catch her eye, but she managed to avoid him. Perfect. He had a few opinions for the investigators involved in this case. But something told him she didn’t want to hear them.

  Chapter Three

  Elizabeth splashed water on her face and checked her reflection. She looked even worse than she felt.

  Seeing him had been harder than she’d expected. People always said absence made the heart grow fonder, but she’d had a different experience. Derek’s absence had made her heart grow smarter, and she’d thoroughly convinced herself that staying away from him was a wise decision.

  Seeing him, though—even for a few minutes—had turned all of that logic on its head.

  Nearly a year had gone by, and still the mere sight of him made her skin tingle. He had the power to make her forget every other thought in her head with just a look. She’d been surrounded by colleagues and matters of great i
mportance, and still that warm, steady gaze of his had managed to completely distract her.

  This trip was tougher than she’d imagined, because now she knew that he hadn’t changed at all. He hadn’t lost his touch, not one bit.

  She looked at the mirror, studying her tired eyes and dull skin, the direct result of way too many weeks living with way too much stress and way too little sleep. He might not have changed, but she certainly had. So much had happened since she’d last seen him, and she didn’t even think of herself as the same person now. She patted her face dry with a towel as her phone chimed.

  She froze. Would it be him?

  Of course it would. Derek was nothing if not persistent, and there was no way he’d let her sneak out of town without a conversation. She crossed the room to the dresser, where her phone was charging. Lauren’s number on the screen brought an unsettling mix of disappointment and relief.

  “Hi.”

  “Where are you?” Lauren asked.

  “San Diego.”

  “What’s in San Diego?”

  She returned to the bathroom in search of an aspirin. “Long story.”

  “Hmm . . . and the plot thickens.”

  She pictured her friend flopping onto the sofa in her apartment and tipping back a glass of merlot. Lauren was one of only a handful of female agents in Elizabeth’s office, and they’d bonded from the very first day.

  “So how come you never told me you knew the legendary Gordon Moore?” Lauren asked.

  “It’s no big deal,” Elizabeth said, rummaging through her purse. Over the past forty-eight hours, she’d managed to pop every aspirin in her vicinity.

  “You’re on a first-name basis with the assistant director of counterterrorism,” Lauren said. “That, my cupcake, is a big deal.”