Page 111 of SEAL's Promise

Cal didn’t react when he felt Rachelle’s hands on his lower back. What was she doing? After a slight tug, he realized she’d pulled his Ka-Bar from the sheath. He eased his hand behind his back and gripped the hilt. In the shadows, he hoped no one would notice the black blade and hilt. “You willing to take that chance, Stokes? When my teammates and I aim at targets, we don’t miss.”

“You’re lying,” he snapped. “No one’s that good.”

Hale’s eyes narrowed. “He’s stalling.” The Under Secretary motioned with his hand and four more men appeared. He glanced at a man large enough to be a linebacker on a football team and inclined his head toward Cal and Rachelle. “Take the woman to the basement. I’ll deal with her when I’m finished with Taylor.”

Rachelle gasped.

Cal glanced over his shoulder in time to see Linebacker drag Rachelle deeper into the woods. “Rachelle!”

“Focus,” Eli whispered through the comm system. “Thirty seconds.”

The order was enough to shift his focus back to Hale and Stokes. Hale’s thug wouldn’t get far with Rachelle fighting him every step of the way. Cal would deal with Hale and his remaining band of mercenaries, then go after his woman. “You don’t want to do this, Hale. My team and I aren’t the only ones who know your identity.”

The Under Secretary’s eyes narrowed. “Another lie.”

Cal smiled. “You sure?”

At that moment, a red laser light appeared on Stokes’s chest. Cal adjusted his grip on the hilt knife. “Now,” he ordered. Shots rang out, one of them a rifle shot. Stokes flew backward. His back slammed against a tree. He slid down the trunk and keeled over onto his side, a bloodstain growing on his shirt.

Cal threw the Ka-Bar at Hale. The blade sank deep into Hale’s chest. With a stunned looked on his face, the Under Secretary sank to the ground, weapon falling from his hand as he reached for the knife.

“No, Hale,” Jackson shouted from behind Cal. “You’ll bleed out.”

The other man ignored the order and yanked the blade from his chest with a loud groan. The stain on his shirt grew at an alarming rate as Jackson closed the distance between them.

A minute later, he looked up from where he knelt beside Hale and shook his head, then went to Stokes to check for signs of life. Another head shake.

A glance around the area revealed the rest of Hale’s men were down. Enough. Time to find Rachelle. “Eli.”

“Go. Rafe, watch his back.”

Cal scooped up his Sig and ran in the direction Linebacker had taken Rachelle without bothering to wait for his teammate. Rafe either caught up with him or he didn’t. Nothing would stop Cal from rescuing the love of his life.

The bright moonlight highlighted the signs of Rachelle’s fight to escape her captor, making the trail easy to follow. A scream shattered the silence of the woods.

Cal leaped over a fallen tree and dodged a boulder.

“No! Don’t!” Rachelle yelled.

Two hundred yards further, he broke through the tree line to see his woman fighting Linebacker on the bank of a swift-moving river.

When Hale’s man noticed Cal racing toward him, he cursed, punched Rachelle in the face, and shoved her over the bank into the water.

“Go after Rachelle,” Rafe snapped. “I’ll handle the garbage.”

Linebacker grabbed Cal’s arm as he ran past. Cal threw off his hold and leaped into the river. He surfaced seconds later and swam with the current, scanning ahead of him for Rachelle. When he didn’t see anything, his gut tightened. Maybe he missed her.

What if she hadn’t surfaced? After Linebacker hit her, Rachelle had gone limp. She might be unconscious. He had to find her. Now. He swam on, using every ounce of skill he’d learned during his SEAL days to move faster.

The current swept him around a bend. His heart skipped a beat. There. Dismay filled him. Rachelle was face down in the water, making no attempt to turn onto her back.

Pushing himself harder, Cal covered the distance between them and snagged her by her arm. Flipping Rachelle to her back, he wrapped his arm around her and swam at an angle, towing her to shore.

Clambering up the bank with Rachelle in his arms, Cal laid the woman he loved on her back. He checked for signs of breathing. Nothing.

“Stay with me, baby.” He tilted her head back and started CPR. “Come on, Rachelle. Breathe.” He alternated chest compressions with blowing air into her lungs.

Nothing. Bone-deep terror nearly paralyzed him. He couldn’t lose her. She owned him, heart and soul. “Come back to me, sweetheart. Don’t leave me.”

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