Page 41 of Stranded with the SEAL

“After the crash or causing the crash?”

“There’s no way to tell for sure. C-4 is relatively stable, but you can get it to detonate if you try hard enough. Depending on the car accident, it might have ignited.”

Cowboy whistled from the other side of the vehicle. “Looks like Hawk was packing more than C-4. I’ve got enough munitions over here to poke holes through half of Texas.”

Jax turned slowly in a circle, his eyes taking in the frozen landscape, interrupted only by the HERO Force chopper still idling in the distance. He didn’t like being so damned obvious and visible this close to Steele’s territory, but the storm had limited their options.

These cars had clearly fallen from farther up the mountain, though where exactly was far less clear. Hawk had been on his way up Warsaw Mountain when this accident had sent his truck and the other car back down into this ravine.

But where the hell was Hawk? Acid churned in Jax’s stomach, burning in the spot where he’d once had an ulcer. When they got to the last known coordinates transmitted from his cell phone, they didn’t even see the cars. They’d had to dig through two feet of snow just to uncover the wreckage, and another three feet with their hearts in their throats as they worked to uncover their friend.

Jax had a lot of time to think while they dug through that snow. Thoughts of his history with Hawk, their time on the Teams together, how instrumental Hawk had been in starting HERO Force.

How important Hawk had been in his own life, more like a brother than a friend.

Jax knew what Ralph’s death had done to Hawk, and he knew the damage he himself had done by refusing to avenge Ralph’s death. He’d made a phone call today before they left headquarters. A phone call that made him free to go after Steele as he hadn’t been free to before. The irony was almost too much to bear. They were digging for Hawk’s dead body, and Jax could finally give the go-ahead to kill Steele.

But Hawk wasn’t there.

Thank God. Jax could have wept, he was so relieved. He couldn’t stand the blood of another HERO Force member on his hands, as Ralph’s was. That was a stain Jax could never wash off.

And poor Jessa…

He slammed the door on his thoughts. There was a time and place to think about Ralph and all that had transpired, and it usually involved Jax being alone in the dark with a bottle of whiskey.

Matteo climbed out of the chopper with a laptop in his hands and made his way to Jax. “Satellite imagery of Warsaw Mountain taken last winter. You can see Steele’s compound at the top, just over eleven miles from here, but I count seven other buildings on this side of the mountain, the closest of which is only one-point-two miles north-northeast from here.” He handed the papers to Jax.

“So that’s the closest shelter, but what are the chances he would have found that one?”

“The other buildings are each more than ten miles from this location, sir.”

Cowboy approached, his hands on his hips as he waited. “There’s blood in the truck. Enough to indicate an injury, though not necessarily anything severe. There are marks on the dashboard where the left leg would have been, and several drops on the carpet and the door.”

“So he was hurt,” says Jax. “What about the other car?”

“No blood, no obvious signs of injury prior to the explosion and impact.”

“Someone must have been driving it.” Jax furrowed his brow. “Or maybe it was abandoned on the road due to the storm.”

Cowboy nodded. “Possible.”

Jax looked up the mountain again, his eyes focusing on the first ledge above their current location, some hundred feet higher than they stood. “A lot of things are possible. Let’s focus on probable for a minute.” He pointed to the ledge. “That’s probably our accident scene. How far is it from there to that cabin you were showing me?”

Matteo nodded. “Just over a mile. A straight shot up the road.”

“We go there first,” said Jax. “If we don’t find him, we go to the next most likely place he could be.”

“My money says he’s at the top of the mountain,” said Cowboy. “If Hawk had a day’s breath in him, he’d have gone on up there and done what he came here to do.”

Jax glared at him. “Eleven miles is too far to go on foot in these conditions, especially if he’s injured.”

Cowboy moved to walk past him. “I don’t know. Where I come from, y’all can make a pig fly if you want to badly enough.”

27

Olivia woketo the sunlight warming her eyelids and stretched languidly on the bed, her foot running into Trevor’s. She smiled, curling up to his side and smelling the spicy scent of his body — a body she’d gotten to know well over the last twelve hours.

Now that the fire was out, there was no reason to forsake the comfort of the bed and the space it offered in favor of the couch in the living room, and she was enjoying the freedom to stretch out nearly as much as she was enjoying being too close to Trevor’s body.