Wild Card by Lora Leigh
But had he survived? Sometimes, Jordan wondered if the man who had taken that final SEAL assignment was the same one he was staring at now.
His face was different. The plastic surgery had made it leaner, the bone and muscle more defined. Fuentes had done a job on Nathan’s face while he was a captive. Bones had been shattered, the repairs had been extensive. The change drastic. No one who knew Nathan Malone before would guess at his identity now. His build was different. His body was leaner but more powerful, rock hard, and his will was steel. He was a cold, icy-eyed killer.
He wasn’t Nathan Malone anymore. He was truly Noah Blake, because Noah had made certain nothing of Nathan existed.
Noah’s training with Reno Chavez’s unit in the past years had worried Jordan. Where once the Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had pulled his punches and killed only when he had to, now . . . Jordan shook his head. Noah killed with deadly, silent efficiency.
Jordan remembered the night they had rescued the man who had been Nathan from Fuentes’s hold. Nearly every bone in his body had been broken at some point. He had been wasted away, nearly starved, and pumped so high on whore’s dust his eyes had glowed like a demon’s. And he had fought. He had fought not to rape the girl locked in the cell with him, he had fought to protect her. And he had fought to walk out rather than be carried out.
Jordan had been certain his nephew would never survive the withdrawal of the drug and the effects to his brain. He’d never imagined Nathan would come back, stronger than ever rather than broken. Darker than ever, and so different that his identity change rarely blipped Jordan’s radar anymore.
“He’s never going to be the same, is he?” Lieutenant Ian Richards said somberly, admitting what none of them had dared say aloud over the years. Ian was part of that SEAL team, had stood with the other men who had spent the past years with the man they called Noah.
It had been harder on Ian in some ways, because he had been closer to Nathan than even Jordan had been. Nathan had only been ten when he heard young Ian’s screams echoing through the desert landscape of their ranch. He had awakened his father, harassed that mean-assed Grant Malone out of the house, and found the young boy whose mother was dying in his arms.
Grant, in a surprising display of compassion, had helped the young woman and her child. Grant had his moments, Jordan thought, they were just few and far between.
“No, he’s never going to be same.” He admitted the truth to Ian, as well as to himself. “This man isn’t Nathan Malone anymore, Ian. He’s truly Noah Blake. We may as well accept that.”
“He’s a machine now,” Ian stated heavily, his expression saddened as he watched Nathan work out. “He’s the best damned killer I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Silent as a thought.”
Jordan turned to Reno Chavez, the commander of the group.
Reno shook his black head. “He’s not a SEAL any longer. He questions orders continuously, lays in backup plans out the ass, and always has a plan if that one goes bad. If he feels he needs to deviate, then he deviates. He’s not insubordinate, but he’s a leader now. He won’t follow easily unless he’s assured the plan is the only way to go. He’s a wild card, Jordan, but he’s a damned efficient one. Like a shark. Cold-blooded. Focused. And deadly.”
Jordan nodded. “Thank you, Reno. I appreciate the report.”
“You have my written report as well.” Reno nodded to the file that had been laid on Jordan’s desk.
The monthly reports hadn’t deviated in years. Nathan was barely a man any longer. He often reminded Jordan of a robot, little more.
“Jordan, he’s not going to survive like this,” Ian said quietly, turning back to the window, watching the man that had once been his friend. “He’ll self-destruct. One of these days, he’ll put a bullet in his own head.”
As though Noah had heard him, sensed him, he sat up on the weight bench and grabbed a towel. His gaze sliced past the two-way mirror and stared back at them. His eyes were darker, wilder than Nathan Malone’s had been. Searing navy blue in a dark, sharply defined face. His black hair was thick, long, nearly to his shoulders now. He refused to cut it. As he turned his back Jordan glimpsed the black sun pierced by a red sword that had been tattooed on the left shoulder blade of Noah’s back.
The emblem of the Elite Operational Unit was another reminder of how Noah had shed his past as Nathan Malone. He had signed his life over to a unit that at times could be little more than a suicide mission.
“He’ll survive.” Jordan kept his response cool, but what he felt inside was anything but cool. “He’s not finished yet. He just thinks he is.” Nathan hadn’t returned to his wife yet, and Noah, the man he was, hadn’t forgotten that woman. He wouldn’t find himself until he did.
Jordan had pulled his nephew into this unit because he knew the man he loved like a brother would have never survived intact if he’d had to face the world after his release from the clinic. Or if he’d had to face his wife.
The psychologist had agreed. Nathan would have taken a walk one day and just never returned. He hadn’t been ready. Noah might still not be ready either. But Jordan was going to end up testing him anyway.
Three years later
“It won’t be easy to get him to agree to it,” Ian Richards warned Jordan as they watched the six-man unit of the Elite Ops working out in the gym through the two-way mirror that looked into it.
Noah was stronger than ever. Lean. Powerful. Cold.
“He’ll go,” Jordan said softly. “He’ll not let her remain in danger.”
Ian blew out a hard breath as they stared at the man they all knew as Noah now.
“Would she want him back like this?” he asked.
Jordan had questioned that one himself. For six years Sabella Malone had been without her husband. In the past three years, she had finally begun living again. Dating again. There was a chance Noah could lose the wife he never admitted he had, very soon, to another man’s arms.
“We’ll find out, won’t we,” Jordan mused.
“We’ll be your backup in the Alpine mission,” Reno told him then. This small group of men had been assigned to the Elite Ops; partly privately funded, partly government backed, the unit was a test unit, a group of dead men, of rogues. In the past years they had become a highly advanced, specialized unit dealing in operations that other agencies couldn’t touch either because of political sensitivity, or the level of danger involved.
Jordan nodded slowly before watching Noah once more.
“We’ll meet up at the command center set up in Big Bend National Park,” he told them. “You’ll receive your orders within the next day or so.”
Ian and Reno nodded and left quickly, heading out to prepare for the coming operation. All that was left was getting Noah Blake to go along with it.
Jordan sat down at his desk, picked up the file he had on the mission, and called Noah into his office.
Noah made him wait. When he walked into Jordan’s office, his hair was still damp from his shower, his blue eyes cold, no emotion, no life flickering within them.
“Are we ready?” Noah took the seat in front of the desk that Jordan indicated.
“Almost.” Jordan nodded. “Command center will be broken down tonight and flown to the new location. We should be set up within forty-eight hours.”
Noah didn’t say anything, he just stared back at Jordan, waiting. His patience was seemingly endless now. But when he erupted into action there was no one faster. No one deadlier.
“You’re delaying,” Noah finally drawled, that ruined voice scraping.
That voice had once been flowing, deep. Now, it was guttural, almost raw.
“First mission is in Texas,” Jordan stated.
Noah didn’t respond. His gaze didn’t even flicker. As though nothing in Texas concerned him. No family, no grandfather, brother, or father. No wife.
“Command center will based forty miles out of Alpine.”
“No.” Noah’s tone was icy.
Jordan lifte
Jordan stomped from the office, slammed the door behind him, and left Noah to the information they had gathered.
Noah, he never thought of himself as Nathan anymore, stared at the file as though it were a rattler. He didn’t want to read it. He didn’t want to know. Siberia suited him just fine. Hell, that scientist was a quiet little thing, she just liked working on her projects, she didn’t like company. She would do.
He got to his feet, then stopped. He stared at the file and almost turned away. Almost. A picture had slid from just inside the file, and he knew that chin.
He picked it up slowly. The center of his chest was a hard, searing knot of agony as he pulled the picture free and frowned.
And there it was. That familiar curve of the brow, those pretty, soft gray eyes. But he’d be damned if he knew the woman they belonged to.
She looked like Sabella. His Sabella. It was his Sabella. But she was so different.
Her sun-streaked blond tresses were darker, almost brown in some places. And her hair was longer now. Well past her shoulders, thick and heavy. Her face was thinner, her expression was quieter.
There was no smile on her lips.
Unless she was angry, Nathan had never seen Sabella without a smile. The thought of her smiles, her laughter, her joy, followed him into his dreams sometimes. Sometimes, they held the nightmares at bay. What would he hold on to now that he saw that smile was gone?
He held the picture in one hand, staring at her. He had refused to read any of the reports he knew Jordan kept on her. Refused to hear anything about her in the past six years.
He had only two questions if her name came up.
Was she alive?
Was she safe?
Jordan had always nodded, and Noah had always walked away.
He opened the mission file.
It didn’t take long to read it. Even less time for him to have to fight the howl of pure rage that burned in his throat.
Sabella was smack in the middle of an operation that had already killed three FBI agents and the wife of a prominent politician.
Son of a bitch. He’d asked his father for one thing in his entire life. If anything ever happened to him, to watch out for Sabella, and that lying bastard had sworn he would. But he hadn’t. Sabella was undefended.
Only his bastard half brother was trying to help at this point.
The mission file was peppered with information on Sabella, his half brother, Rory, his grandfather, Riordan, and the father he could feel himself beginning to hate now.
And it was filled with danger. That danger could touch Sabella. He could see it. He could see the threads that, if pulled just the right way, would tighten around his wife’s neck and put her in harm’s way.
Nathan’s wife, he reminded himself bitterly, not Noah’s. Noah Blake had no wife. But he couldn’t erase the past that had once belonged to him, or the dreams of a wife that had been his, no matter how hard he tried.
And now she was in danger.
Because he hadn’t watched out for her.
He sat down and stared at the picture. It was bad enough the man she had loved had died, but the haunted shell that was left hadn’t even been able to watch out for her.
He ran his finger over the picture, down the curve of her cheek, as he closed his eyes and remembered her smile. Remembered touching her. As he let himself remember, outside his dreams, of loving her.
“Go síoraí,” he whispered, breathing in the scent of those memories. “Forever, Sabella. I’ll love you forever.”
And the first crack in Noah Blake’s shell appeared.
“Nathan.” His name was breathed into the darkness as Sabella came awake. As though the past six years had never happened, as though she had never lost him. She heard his voice in the darkness. Those words. The ones she had never asked the meaning of. Go síoraí.
She stared into the dimly lit room. No Nathan. Nathan wasn’t there. Dry eyed, aching, she lay back down and closed her eyes. “Goodbye, Nathan,” she whispered back, wishing she could still cry. Wishing the pain could be shed so easily. “I miss you.”
CHAPTER TWO
The little shack that sat in the middle of the sprawling Rocking M Ranch looked just as weathered, just as faded and familiar, as it ever had even in the dark, beneath a bleak, black night.
Noah moved through the darkness like a wraith. He jumped the little wrought-iron fence and moved to his grandmother’s grave.
Erin Malone. Go síoraí. Forever. They were the only words on her granite tombstone. His grandfather had chiseled them in himself.
Kneeling by the tombstone, Noah stretched out his left hand, touched the stone, and lowered his head. His grandfather had always paid homage to their grandmother in this fashion. All her children had except Grant Malone. And Noah did now. He wondered if his brother Rory did as well.
He lifted his head and stared at the shack. It was dark, shadowed, but he knew his half brother was there.
He eased back from the grave then and bounded back over the fence before moving to the cabin.
Rory was quick. He was suspicious. He had known throughout the day that someone was watching the cabin, but Noah hadn’t tried to hide it.
He moved around the shack on silent feet. He flowed with the shadows, became a part of them, used them to his advantage until he stood at the end of the back porch and stared at the young man who sat in the aged rocker.
Rory was twenty-five, a man grown, and he looked too much like Nathan had at that age. He was broader in the shoulders and his muscles were heavier, but not as effective.
Rory sat silently, his rifle resting across his thighs, his body tense.
“I know you’re here,” his brother muttered. “If I haven’t scoped you by now, I’m not going to. You might as well take the shot.” Disgust lined his voice, filled his expression as his head lifted.
Rory thought he was dead, just as everyone else did. And Noah needed to ensure no one else suspected. Except Rory. Nathan would need his help.
As silent as moonlight he was over the banister of the porch, the rifle pulled from Rory’s grip, the barrel across his brother’s neck as the rocker tilted back to the wall.
It wasn’t a harsh grip, it was a warning one. He didn’t want to wake the old man. He didn’t want to add to Rory’s grief, or to his own shame.
“Stay silent,” Noah hissed in Rory’s dark face. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Rory’s expression was frankly disbelieving. But Noah would have been surprised if he’d reacted any other way.
“You have one chance to know what I know about your brother,” Noah warned him quietly. “One chance. Blow it, and it will never return.”
Rory’s eyes narrowed. Startling blue eyes, true Malone eyes.
“My brother’s dead,” he bit out quietly. “What could you tell me about him that my uncle couldn’t?”
Noah leaned closer. “Bràthair, what could I tell you that you want to know?”
Then Noah leaned back again slowly. Rory was shaking. His dark face, Gaelic dark, paled as he stared back at the shadow hovering in front of his vision.
Noah moved back slowly, still gripping the rifle. “Come with me.” He jerked his head to the shed at the edge of the house yard. “Does he still keep the shed lit?”
There was no answer, but Rory was following. They stepped into the shed and Noah closed the door carefully before flipping the light on.
Rory collapsed on the old chair in the corner and stared back at him. His gaze was dark with pain, anger.
“I thought you were my brother,” he whispered. “Hell, I hoped you were.”
Noah watched as his brother rubbed his hands over his face and shook his black head.
Noah removed the
Rory blinked.
“Do you still sneak in here to smoke?” Noah asked, remembering how his brother used to slip a cigarette when he thought no one would catch him.
Only he and Rory had known that.
Rory’s hand shook. He gripped the arms of the old chair and stared at Noah as though he could force himself to see what he needed to see.
“Who are you?” Rory finally breathed out painfully, his voice filled with more disappointment than Noah had expected. “And what the hell do you want?”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t have time for games, Rory.”
“You’re not Nathan,” Rory whispered.
“I’m not the Nathan you remember.” He moved to the wardrobe in the back of the shed, opened the small door in the bottom and extracted the bottle of whiskey he knew his grandfather kept there.
He hid his spirits from his Erin, he would always grin when he slipped a sip. Even though his Erin was dead, his grandfather continued the tradition.
Uncorking the fine imported Irish spirit, he tipped the bottle to his lips and took a healthy drink. He didn’t grimace as it went down, he savored it. Recapping it, he returned it to the drawer and turned back to Rory.
The boy was staring at him now as though he had seen a ghost.
“No one knows about Grandpop’s stash,” he whispered.
Noah nodded shortly. “You knew. I knew. Grant never knew.”
Rory breathed out roughly. “You stopped calling Grant dad after you found out about me.”
Noah lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “He couldn’t be your dad, then he was no dad of mine.”
Rory shook his head as though to shake the confusion clear. Nathan almost felt sorry for him. He didn’t have time for pity though.
He grabbed an old wooden chair and pulled it to him. Straddling it, he stared back at his brother.