Page 2 of Being Bold
Nugg didn’t respond right away, and the closer Bo got, the clearer he could see the woman’s face. Tears tracked down her cheeks while the crowd of shoppers milled around her without sparing her a glance. He was ten paces away across the roundabout exit when her gaze met his. Something desperate shone in her eyes, and it liquefied his gut.
“Help me,” she mouthed in Pashto.
A car drove by. The wind from its speed blew her hijab aside enough for him to see the vest she wore underneath. His gun was in his hand. Still, he hesitated. She might be wearing a bomb, but he didn’t believe she wore it willingly.
A flicker of light drew his eye, and he spotted Nugg close behind the target, weapon lifted and ready to fire. Before he could say or do anything to stop him, the woman disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and the world exploded.
The car that had just turned in front of Bo helped shelter him from the blast, but its force still picked him up and tossed him into something solid. His back connected first, then his head. The breath rushed from his lungs, and he struggled to pull more in as his ears rang and his vision swam.
A cloud of smoke and building dust darkened the sky. Beneath it, everything was chaos. It raged around him as he attempted to sit up. Hot pellets of pain showered his body with the movement. When his eyes cleared, he found his left leg trapped under a flaming car door. The sight of the fire sent a flood of adrenaline coursing through his veins to wash the shock from his body.
Frantically, he worked to shove the metal off. The slightest movement sent lances of heat shooting up his leg.
“Arrgh!” A piercing howl left his throat as the fire ate at his skin.
Gritting his teeth against the excruciating pain, he kicked the door off with his right leg. He thought he’d been in pain before, but the effort it took to move that door left him in agony so acute he couldn’t fight against it. A blackness swallowed him, and he crumpled to the ground.
With a gasping breath, Bo shot upright on the couch. His heart hammered in his chest as his head swiveled, taking in his surroundings.
Cabin. Home.
Not that horrible day four years ago.
A tortured sound—half groan, half sob—escaped his throat. He’d had the nightmare again. Only it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was his past. A past that haunted him relentlessly.
Dropping his head into his palms, he squeezed his eyes shut against the images from that day. He’d lived through torture as a SEAL, but this torment was slowly driving him to the edge of insanity. Death waited at the bottom, and it was getting harder and harder not to give in and jump.
Not that he’d take his own life, but he felt dangerously close to doing something stupid like BASE jumping at night without any lights.
After the explosion left him with a fractured tibia and third-degree burns, he’d spent nearly a year recovering. He’d regained full use of his left leg, but scars mottled the lower half. Though he could’ve remained a SEAL, he hadn’t been able to face his unit. Instead, he’d gotten out of the Navy and found a new team at Tactical Operations & Protection.
TOP, as everyone in the business called it, was a leading security firm. He’d been with the company as an operator for the past three years. They did everything from personal protection to private military operations.
Maybe he’d ask his team lead, Victor, for a solo op. Something he likely wouldn’t come back from. At least then, his death might mean something. If he died helping someone, maybe it’d make up for the lives he hadn’t saved.
Even though he’d recovered from his physical injuries, part of Bo never healed. Deep in his chest, a gaping pit loomed. When the nightmares came, he stared into the pit’s abyss, guilt threatening to pull him into its depths.
Because he’d lived, but Nugg hadn’t.
His teammate had not only been a friend, he’d been the younger brother Bo never had. He’d respected the hell out of theguy. Nugg had been smart, loyal, and too damn good at his job for it to be over so soon.
If anyone should’ve survived that blast, it should’ve been him.
Bo felt moisture on his cheeks and shoved to his feet, swiping at his face with both hands. “I need a fucking drink.”
Anything to dull the pain he felt over the memories.
The wind whistled outside as he headed for the whiskey in the cabinet over the sink. He didn’t have far to go. His cabin maxed out at 632 square feet. It only had three rooms plus a loft, with a bed he rarely slept in. The loft sat above the kitchen and bathroom, the only room in the home that wasn’t left open to everything else. Like the cabin’s construction, the kitchen’s cabinets were made from hand-peeled logs. Their light-blonde color helped bounce the moonlight shining in from the undressed windows. It’d be full in a few days. Because of that, it provided enough of a glow to light his path as he padded across the braided oval rug separating the living and eating area.
Despite the wool socks covering his feet, a chill shuddered over his sweat-slicked skin. Bo noticed the cold for the first time since he’d woken up. It was winter in Montana, which meant nighttime temps in the mountains dropped below zero. The corner wood-burning fireplace was dark. The flames from the fire he’d stoked before falling asleep on the couch had long since burned out. He’d have to relight it.Afterhe had a drink.
With a grunt, he pulled the stopper out of the whiskey bottle and poured a couple of fingers of the amber liquid into a glass. Knocking it back, he let the burn warm him up. Without the fire’s crackling, the air within the confines of his cabin remained still as a tomb, but he didn’t mind the quiet. He’d bought this place because of it.
His little cabin sat an hour south of Bozeman. Buffers surrounded the property, contributing to its isolation. He hadthe Lee Metcalf Wilderness to the west, and to the east, a national forest kept everything but animals away.
Exactly how he liked it.
He kept people at a distance, which was easy to do when his closest relatives were already dead and gone. He’d lost his parents to an avalanche at a young age, and the grandmother who raised him died shortly before he joined the Navy.
