Brynn Kelly - Deception Island

And then there was the woman. Two innocent lives at stake, because of him. He doubted he needed to worry about her emotional state, at least. She was as tough as any soldier in his company—and as beautiful as Simone. He exhaled, raggedly. So maybe it was possible for him to react to a woman like a normal man did.

Just as long as he didn’t act on it.

Focus. What time was it in Corsica—early evening? His commando team would have just finished eating. Perfect. Michael and Uriel, God rest their broken souls, had at least given him the space to quietly mobilize a backup plan.

He drummed his fingers on the laptop, hearing Laura move around inside the villa. So her father had outsourced her. Like Rafe had done to Theo, after Simone’s death. He could have given up the Legion, become a fisherman on Corsica like Simone’s brothers, or taken over her water sports school. But he carried a darkness inside him and battled it every minute. What if it spilled out one day, when he was alone with Theo?

Instead, he’d sold their home, closed her business, left Theo with his mother-in-law and embarked on ever more dangerous missions, on communication blackouts for months at a time—Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Guiana, Somalia, Cambodia... Hiding. Hiding from the guilt, hiding from a vulnerable little boy he cared about so much that it hurt, smack in the chest. Telling himself Theo was better off with a grandmother who knew how to show him love than a messed-up father who didn’t know what the hell to do with him.

It’d been the same with Simone—he might have loved her, whatever that meant to someone who’d been trained to hate. But if so, he’d been too damn scared to let down his guard. He didn’t understand normal human behavior. Why the hell she’d been attracted to him in the first place, he’d never know. They’d only married because she got pregnant. A few years later she’d had a brain aneurysm. By the time word reached him, in a desert in East Africa, the funeral had been and gone. He never got a chance to redeem himself. He rolled in his fingers the twin gray-green amulets that hung from his neck, each on a leather cord. His, and Simone’s. A warning not to break any more women’s and children’s hearts.

A mosquito whined in his ear. He slapped his face, and the squeal muted. He hadn’t been there for Theo then, and he hadn’t been there when Gabriel’s men had come in the night. He’d been en route back to Corsica after wrapping up a mission in Mali as they were sneaking his boy out of the country.

Rafe had walked into Theo’s grand-maman’s house, expecting his son to run and greet him, and found instead the terrified woman bound and gagged and three soldiers waiting to escort him away. How long had Gabriel been watching them? Rafe clutched the phone. Gabriel’s instructions were clear—if Rafe involved anyone else, he’d never see his son again.

He’d have to construct his contingency plan carefully. If Gabriel had contacts in the Legion—which seemed likely, given his intelligence on Rafe—they’d notice if several legionnaires suddenly took leave. But one? It was a gamble, but not as big a risk as doing this without backup.

Water poured off the roof, drops ricocheting up into the hammock. It was hot enough for him not to care about being wet, though that in itself was a danger. He peered out at the rain. He couldn’t risk calling from here—the less she knew the better. He dashed to the shed they’d passed earlier and shoved the door open. Something scuttled into a corner. It was a storage bunker and guardhouse, with gardening equipment, basic aquatic gear, a set of bunks. He inspected a roll of thick plastic—it’d do for a waterproof laptop case, later. Rain drilled on the tin roof. He laid out the comms gear and reinstated the batteries. Laura had been updating a blog regularly, with photos, so she had to have a strong satellite connection. After a few minutes, he figured out how to hook up the laptop to the internet connection via the sat phone, after first checking it wasn’t sending a GPS signal. It’d be suicide to make the call directly from the sat phone—whoever was paying the bills would see the number he dialed. He drummed his fingers on the laptop casing. A Skype call to a landline, using his personal account? Yes. All they’d be able to discern was that the sat phone was used in the Indonesian region.

He laid the sat phone outside the hut, where it could catch the signal, and dragged the USB cable just inside the shed door. After firing up Skype and disabling the video, he dialed his base. He asked for Flynn in English, in his best attempt at an Australian accent, shouting over the rain while muffling his voice. Not that his lieutenant ever got calls from home. After a few reconnects and holds, a gruff voice came on the line.

“Allard.”

Merde. Of all the guys to answer the phone. “Can I speak to Lieutenant Flynn?”

“Non.”

“Caporal Armstrong?”

“Non.”

“Capitaine Angelito?” For good measure.

“Non.”

Rafe pressed his lips together. He couldn’t go right through his commando team. Maybe they were all out training—or drinking, more likely. One more. “Sergent Levanne?”

“Non.”

“Where are they?”

“Who is this?”

“Flynn’s brother. It’s an emergency.” Rafe knew his lieutenant didn’t have family, but Allard probably wouldn’t. He wasn’t a guy anyone took into his confidence.

The line went quiet. Finally, Allard spoke. “Guiana—South America. Deployment. Can’t be contacted.”

Putain. “Camopi?”

“Oui...yes.”

Rafe winced. Of all the Legion outposts the team could be in, they picked Camopi, a hundred clicks upriver from nowhere? Even if Rafe got a message through, and Flynn could extract himself, it’d take forty-eight hours at least for him to get to Asia. “When will he return?”

A pause. Rafe pictured Allard’s I-don’t-give-a-shit eye roll. “Weeks. Months.”

“Thanks, mate.”

Rafe ended the call and leaned against the tin wall of the hut, clutching his temples. He could send a coded message to Flynn, over the internet, but it might not be picked up for weeks.

He was on his own.

* * *

Rafe woke to sun on his face. The insect calls had given way to birdsong. Had to be late. He sat up in the hammock, planting his feet on the floor to stop the world swinging, and pushed away the mosquito net. His mouth was as dry as the white sand on the beach a few meters away.

He pushed himself up, cricked his back and knocked on the villa door. “You awake, princess?”

No answer. A tingle of suspicion crept up his neck.

Another knock. “Princess?”

He pulled the key from his shorts pocket and unlocked the door. The bed was empty, the shutters open. A gauzy curtain sailed up before an open window, an insect screen tapping on the frame. The door to the bathroom was ajar. No one there.

Damn, he usually didn’t sleep that solidly. Years of commando training had him bolting out of bed at any suspicious noise, his instinct honed to recognize risk even as he slept. How could he have missed her leaving the villa? He hadn’t had a chance to do a proper scout of the island—what if a boat had managed to get through the infamous network of reefs and currents, and she was right now waving it down?

He jogged out onto the veranda and spotted movement in the lagoon, beyond the jetty that jutted into the azure water. She was swimming for it? No, her long, languid strokes were parallel to shore. She was...doing laps. His muscles unwound. He stepped inside, yanked a bottle of water out of the fridge and chugged it until his throat relaxed. Probably trying to keep in shape for her next photo shoot. He ripped off a handful of baguette and wandered back outside. She’d turned, heading to shore, the low sun lighting up lean, lightly tanned arms as they circled through the water.