But Brantley wasn’t ready to give up yet. The longer he could hold this bastard off, the better chance his team would get here.
The beam of light moved, lowered, which meant the guy had made it down to Brantley’s level. It began a slow creep up his leg, his torso. The tango’s face came into view, his dark eyes following the yellow glow. Right before it could blind him, Brantley pulled the trigger, nailing the bastard between the eyes. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth as the reverberation sent agony rippling through his leg.
A deafening silence followed the gunshot, the ringing in his ears right on its heels. There were no pounding footsteps, no voices calling out his location. For a brief moment, Brantley thought the stars had aligned, that the bad guys had taken a dinner break, retreating.
“Phantom Team,” Brantley rasped, his words scratching along his throat, sending his diaphragm into spasms. “Need help.”
“Sit tight, B,” came the response.
“Not goin’ anywhere,” he said softly.
“B, we’re comin’.”
No, they weren’t. He could hear it in that tormented voice. Something was keeping his team from coming for him. Either they were pinned down or—
That was when he heard it. The familiar whistling sound alerted him to a big fucking problem. The only thing he had time to do was scramble in his brain for a prayer that might get to the big guy’s ears before—
The blast shook what was left of the house overhead as well as the ground beneath him. Another was right behind it, closer, bringing the building down on top of him. The third was just icing on the fucking cake.
Sometime later—hours, days, who knew—his team would do as they promised. They would eventually find him, dig him out of the rubble, evac his battered and broken body, deliver him to the nearest medical facility, where he would cling to life for weeks. Numerous surgeries would be performed to repair the extensive damage to his leg, drain the fluid off his brain, and ultimately keep him alive. Months of agonizing therapy would follow, during which Brantley would finally learn how to use his leg again.
Nine months after that clusterfuck of a mission, his superiors would add insult to injury, releasing Brantley from his duty as a United States Navy SEAL.
Good news: he was alive.
Bad news: every-fucking-thing else.
Chapter One
Thirteen months later, July 2020
“Sun, sand, and surf. What more can you ask for?”
Brantley Walker glanced over at his sister, frowned. “Heat, dirt, and salt. Damn sure don’t see the appeal.”
“Says the man who’s spent most of his adult years in Afghanistan.”
More like all over southern Asia, but he didn’t bother to correct her. “Exactly.”
“Good news, there’s water,” Bryn tacked on.
“Saltwater. Not exactly refreshing.”
“The eternal pessimist, you are, Brantley. You know that?”
“I prefer realist,” he countered, ambling along the water crashing gently against the shore. He did his best to ignore the throbbing in his left thigh and paid attention to his gait. It had taken endless months of therapy, but the limp was finally gone. Mostly. Only when he was exhausted did it make an appearance.
“You wanna take a break?” Bryn asked, her tone chock full of sympathy. “We can sit and watch the sunrise?”
Evidently he wasn’t as good at hiding it as he’d thought.
Brantley glared over at her, the words coming out a bit harder than he’d intended. “No, I don’t wanna take a break.”
“Okay. Be a stubborn ass, see if I care.”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Then tell me this,” Bryn prompted as though the break in their conversation hadn’t happened, “where would you rather be?”
“Anywhere but here,” he grumbled.
“Liar. One more. That’s all you’ve got. One more day, one more night where you’re subjected to the ultimate in torture techniques.”
And by torture techniques, Brantley knew Bryn was referring to the Walkers’ yearly retreat to the beaches of Galveston. And, fine, maybe he hadn’t attended these annual get-togethers for a good portion of his adult life. In his defense, before now, he’d usually been otherwise engaged. Being a SEAL in the United States Navy wasn’t conducive to a whole lot of family time, no matter how well-planned.
Of course, that was no longer a problem for him. Due to that unfortunate event—namely the ill-fated op that went sideways, resulting in his medical retirement from the Navy—Brantley had found himself with quite a bit of time on his hands. Hence the reason he was walking the Texas shoreline at the ass crack of dawn with the youngest of his three sisters while the rest of the Walker clan were still snoozing in the beachside house.
“Six and a half days too long,” he said, grimacing when he stepped on a broken shell.
This was Frank and Iris Walker’s annual vacation, the time set aside when they would all get together for one week out of the year. Why they chose mid-July to make the trip to the overcrowded, not to mention, ridiculously hot beach on Galveston Island, he would never know. Yet they’d been doing it for as long as he could remember and years before that. According to Mom, they’d started this tradition when Sadie was two. In an effort to create memories, they’d toted his oldest sister and every kid who came along after down here once a year.
They called it fun. Brantley compared it to Hell Week. One mom, one dad, seven kids. All cooped up for a week except for those brief few hours they would traipse down to the water, sit in the sand, and let the brutal sun beat down on them. He remembered a lot of aloe and pain relievers involved, not to mention yelling. So much fucking yelling. Didn’t matter that it came from the younger set, one of his brothers or sisters always attempting to have the last word.
And fine, maybe Bryn was right. He was a pessimist.
Granted, the family had grown up, expanded in the past decade. What had once been a trip for nine had nearly doubled. To accommodate and keep everyone under the same roof, his parents had traded in their tiny two-bedroom condo for a six-bedroom house right on the beach. Even then it was cramped, filled to capacity with Mom and Dad, three brothers, three sisters, one future sister-in-law (potentially), two brothers-in-law, plus two nieces and a nephew. Pretty soon, the folks would need to invest in a hotel just to house them all.
“How’s school?” he asked, hoping to keep his sister from harping on him for his inability to relax.
“Good.” Bryn smiled brightly. “Only five semesters away from graduation.”
“The eternal optimist,” he quipped.
“I know, right? Sometimes I think I’m adopted. There’s no other way to explain how I ended up in this family.”
“You’re tellin’ me. What I don’t get is what prompted you to want to go back to school now.”
“Are you sayin’ I’m old, little brother?”
He pretended to think on that. “Thirty-six isn’t exactly young, sis.”
Bryn huffed a laugh. “Careful what you say, kid. You’re not all that far behind.”
No, he wasn’t, but age was just a number as far as Brantley was concerned. At thirty-five, fresh out of a seventeen-year stint in the Navy, Brantley felt as though he was starting over. A kid, right out of high school, without a clue what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Only, he was equipped with knowledge most people couldn’t fathom, a skill set that wouldn’t do much for him as a civilian but could likely make him a good living if he wanted to go the mercenary route. Plus a leg that ached when it rained and recurring headaches that ranged from irritating to debilitating.