Hero of My Heart (The McRae Series, Book 5 - Will) Read online

  Hero of My Heart

  The McRae Series

  Book Five

  by

  Teresa Hill

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Published by ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-502-5

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Teresa Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Dedication

  In memory of these fallen heroes:

  Former U.S. Navy SEAL Glen A. Doherty

  Former U.S. Navy SEAL Tyrone S. Woods

  Rachel D'Avino

  Dawn Hochsprung

  Anne Marie Murphy

  Lauren Rousseau

  Mary Sherlach

  Victoria Soto

  Author's Note

  Once I finished Five Days Grace and it was published, I knew Will's story was next. What I didn't know until a few months later is that Will's story actually takes place before Grace's. Oops.

  I envy writers who can figure all these things out ahead of time. Sadly, I am not one of them. I hope it's not too confusing to those readers who have already read Five Days Grace.

  So, here is Will's story, with mentions of Grace still being married to her first husband, Luc. Don't worry. She's absolute going to meet and fall in love with Aidan shortly after Will's story ends.

  Chapter 1

  Buhkai, Africa

  January 16th

  Navy Master Chief Petty Officer Will Gerard was one of those guys whose heartbeat stayed as steady as a metronome, even in the middle of a firefight.

  It was a quirk in brain chemistry that few possessed, one that short-circuited the body's natural alarm system against danger. It made him one of those people who stayed calm and could think under pressure, a highly prized quality among candidates for the SEAL teams.

  No one was shooting at him now. Nothing had blown up. He wasn't about to jump out of an airplane. He wasn't in a helicopter going down.

  So he was surprised to realize his heart was pounding fast and heavy, just because of a phone message.

  It had started out as a perfectly ordinary day, if he ever had such a thing. He'd been hot and sweaty. He seemed to have dust or dirt in every cell in his body, and he'd have given anything for a decent meal.

  Perks of the job, as one of his friends and fellow SEALs said when anyone complained. And the job did have its perks. Will thought it was the best job in the world, although sometimes he had to do it in really lousy places. Like here in Buhkai, a crazy little country on the eastern coast of Africa, where a full-scale uprising seemed more likely with every passing day.

  Something had happened. He didn't know what, because the Buhkai Presidential Guard officers he was training didn't really trust him yet, or the United States. For that matter, Will didn't fully trust the Buhkai officers. All he knew was that a few minutes ago someone had come roaring up in a ragtag Jeep, yelling in an obscure dialect Will didn't understand, and his pupils had taken off.

  Again.

  It was the third time inside of a week. They'd come back when they came back, Will knew.

  Officially, he was here, in this long-abandoned town ninety minutes from the capitol, teaching the small group of officers how to fight in an urban area, where it was too easy to kill innocent civilians instead of bad guys.

  That is, he would teach them if they stayed long enough for him to do it.

  Heading back toward the shell of a building where he slept, to get out of the sun for a while, he hit the one spot where he tended to get a satellite signal, and his phone rang.

  "Gerard," he said, as the line crackled.

  "Will? How are things in the big city?" It was Mace, one of Will's buddies in the SEAL teams.

  "Peachy," Will said.

  "You know, I'm about to get off duty, and I'm thinking about finding a nice icy cold beer, maybe a big T-bone steak for dinner."

  "Yeah? Me, too, asshole." They both knew Will wasn't near anything cold, and certainly no beer. No hot food, either. "You call just to give me shit?"

  "No, I called to tell you to call home." Mace laughed, because it was the kind of message a kid would get from the teacher in the middle of a school day.

  A normal kid.

  Will's childhood had been far from normal.

  So the message—call home—sounded like a joke.

  "Mace, what do you want?"

  "That's the message. Call home. Have you got some woman stashed at your place that I don't know about? Because I didn't think you had anybody waiting for you at home."

  "I don't," Will said.

  Home, to him, was a condo he hardly ever saw near home base for the east coast SEAL teams in Little Creek, Virginia, near Virginia Beach.

  People didn't leave him messages that said, "Call home."

  He'd never seen his father. His mother was an alcoholic and a drug addict, in and out of one destructive, abusive relationship after another his whole childhood. He wasn't even sure if she was still alive. The whole story of his sorry childhood was one even those closest to him in the teams didn't know. There was no one who'd leave him a message like that except...

  Damn.

  He started to feel vaguely uneasy, because there was someone who might... just might... if something really important came up, call the emergency contact number and leave a message like that.

  "That's it?" he asked. "Just call home?"

  "Yeah. 'Sam says, call home.'"

  And there it was.

  Sam.

  That was when his heart rate kicked up about twenty notches. The flight-or-fight response, an automatic reaction from caveman days that, for most people, sent blood to the extremities and away from the brain. It made it easier to run away or fight, rather than think. It made sense when you were a caveman faced with a wild animal, but not so much if you were a Navy SEAL executing a carefully crafted plan of attack.

  Thinking in times of chaos had always come easily to Will. He and chaos were old friends.

  Not so much at the moment.

  He made himself think anyway.

  Sam was the closest thing Will had ever had to a father, despite Will carefully trying to keep a certain distance from the man and his whole family. Sam had left the message, so he was probably fine.

  Rachel? She was every pleasant image he associated with the word Mother, even though she'd been his for such a short time, and so long ago. She loved to stuff him with glorious things she cooked. In the rare times he
had visited her in the last two decades, she would have catered to his every whim, like he was some kind of visiting royalty, if he'd let her. She and Sam behaved like it was an act of kindness—his toward them—when he so much as showed up for a day or two every few years.

  Please, he thought closing his eyes, don't let something be wrong with Rachel. Or one of the foster kids they had actually gotten to adopt, unlike him. Surely some people should get to have damned fine lives, easy and trouble-free. If he got to pick people for that, he'd choose that whole family.

  "Hey, you still there?" Mace asked.

  "Yeah, I'm here."

  "Need the number?"

  "No. I've got it."

  "Hey, call me back if I can do anything. If we need to get you home, we will."

  "Thanks, Mace."

  Will disconnected the call, an odd heaviness settling into his mid-section. His phone got something that resembled really poor Internet service, with text-sized messages that came in like e-mail, when he had a connection.

  He tried that next, and there it was, a message from Sam.

  Call home.

  Another just like it, and then, Call home. Emergency.

  "Fuck," Will said.

  It was nearly 11 a.m. here, so not quite 4 a.m. in Baxter, Ohio, where Will grew up. He checked the message again, saw that it was sent around two-thirty in the morning, Ohio time, and... that day. Not that long ago. Whatever it was, it had just happened.

  He looked at the number on Sam's message. Home, not Sam's cell, so that's what he dialed. Sam answered on the first ring.

  "Sam? It's Will. What's wrong?"

  * * *

  Baxter, Ohio

  January 13th

  Three days earlier, Sam McRae sat on a stool at the diner, his coffee getting cold, while on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall, chaos unfolded on the other side of the world.

  Another country, long ruled by a dictator until a year ago, was trying to hang on to a fragile democratic rule.

  Too bad the process was proving so perilous.

  The camera cut to a close-up of protestors being beaten back with clubs by militants loyal to the former dictator, who was fighting to return to power.

  Sam winced and looked away. Then he realized a man he knew was two stools away, watching the same news report.

  "I can't watch that anymore," Sam said.

  "It's killing me, but I can't bring myself to look away," said James Warren, who had served as U.S. ambassador to a dozen Middle Eastern and African countries. He was retired now, working on his memoir and teaching at a nearby college. Sam had finished restoring a beautiful Georgian home for the man nearly a year ago.

  The two shook hands, and Sam asked what James thought of Buhkai's chances of surviving without sinking into all-out war.

  "For a while, I thought... maybe, but I swear, every time I see the news in the last few weeks, it looks worse. It's driving me crazy."

  "Me, too," Sam said. "A kid I know is over there."

  "You're kidding," James said. "My daughter's there. She's teaching in an international primary school and living with a diplomatic family we knew when I was posted in Saudi Arabia. If I didn't know how seriously the man took his family's—and my girl's—safety, I'd have yanked her home for good over the Christmas break. Assuming I could have ordered her home, and she'd have actually come. Daughters, you know?"

  Sam nodded. "I do. I'm afraid the Frenchman my youngest married is an idiot, and I'm no art critic, but his paintings suck, which is how he supposedly earns a living. That and the family trust fund. If it ever runs dry, he'll be in serious trouble."

  "It was so much simpler when they were younger, and we could run their lives. I tell Amanda that, and she says I'm the one who raised her in countries just like the one where she is now. What can I say to that? It's true." James shook his head and laughed briefly. "Who's the kid you know in Buhkai?"

  "I shouldn't call him a kid anymore. He's thirty-eight, a soldier, and a damned good one."

  "We don't have U.S. soldiers stationed in Buhkai," James said, looking even more uneasy.

  "Yeah. He's Navy. But the truth is, I'm not exactly sure who he's working for these days or what he's doing."

  "Special Forces?"

  Sam nodded. "He told me not to worry, that what he's doing there is no big deal, routine even, but he always says that."

  "When I was at the State Department, we sometimes had Special Ops guys working security for U.S. officials, or even our allies, in especially hairy places. Sometimes State loaned them out to the locals, for special projects, things like helping train security forces for governments we'd like to see stay in power."

  Sam swore softly. "Which would put him right in the middle of things now."

  "Yes, it would." The ambassador shook his head. "I wonder, if I paid him enough, if he'd kidnap my daughter and bring her home."

  They both laughed, then turned back to the TV, sobering instantly as they watched an unconscious protestor being dragged through the streets.

  "Kidnapping is looking pretty good to me now," James said.

  Back at home, Sam didn't say anything to Rachel, not wanting to worry her. But he kept an eye on the news and tried three times to call Will, with no luck. That wasn't unusual. Getting him was often iffy, even by cell or satellite phone.

  Three days later, around two-thirty in the morning, the phone rang.

  Time difference, Sam thought. Will, calling despite the hour, because he'd finally gotten Sam's messages.

  Sam snapped on the light. Rachel's eyes came open. She pushed her long hair off her face and frowned. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. I bet it's Will. I've been trying to call him." Sam gave her a quick kiss. "Go back to sleep."

  "Is he okay?" She looked tired and worried but still beautiful after all these years. He was a lucky man, and he knew it.

  "Last time we talked, he was fine." Sam got out of bed, grabbed the bedside phone and walked into the hall, closing the door behind him, hoping Rachel would go back to sleep.

  "Hello?" he said.

  "Sam? This is James Warren. I'm outside your house. Can I come in? It's an emergency."

  "Sure," Sam said, wondering if something had happened to the ambassador's daughter? Or Will? Or both?

  * * *

  Baxter, Ohio

  Seven weeks later

  Amanda Warren knew where she was.

  In her bedroom, in her father's new house in Ohio.

  She knew she was safe, that her ordeal was over, and yet it wasn't. It was coming back to try to grab her, pull her back inside. She could feel it, like someone in the shadows always following her, waiting for a chance to pounce. She could keep moving, but she couldn't outrun it.

  Curiously, she knew she was asleep, yet couldn't make herself wake up. She knew what was coming, yet could do nothing to save herself from it. And it seemed so real, like living it all over again.

  She started to whimper, to shake, to try to bury herself more deeply under the covers. Even though she never slept without a light on anymore, her room seemed black as night, while the sounds of that awful day started to come back to her. The sounds and the smell of chalk.

  She'd seen chalk on the floor, broken, some of it ground into dust. It was like it got deep inside her nose, into her mouth, coated her throat. She could taste it.

  The smell of chalk made her want to throw up, even inside her nightmares.

  Finally, she broke free of sleep, jerked upright in her bed, crying and whispering, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. She was shaking, in a cold sweat, her hands clamped over her mouth, hoping she hadn't woken anyone.

  Her father and her Aunt Margaret took turns sleeping in the bedroom next to hers, because the house was big. They didn't want to be too far away when she woke up screaming. It was like she was six years old again and her mother had just died. That was the last time Margaret had lived with them, during the first few difficult years following Amanda's mother's death.

/>   This was what Amanda's life had come to, feeling like a child who couldn't so much as sleep through the night without several big night-lights and someone to come running when she screamed.

  She knew they were worried, that she should be grateful she had people in her life who cared enough to look after her so well.

  It just got to her, how scared she was, how dependent on others. With her mother gone, she was raised by a loving but busy, important man, raised to be strong, capable and confident, to want as her father did to make a difference in the world. Which is what she'd thought she was doing as an American teaching little children in Africa. She just hadn't wanted to believe how quickly the country was falling apart, a stunningly bad mistake for her—a career diplomat's daughter—to make.

  It felt like forever since the attack in Buhkai, but she wasn't getting any better, despite the doctors, the medication, the therapy.

  She was angry at the whole world, and most of all at herself for putting herself there in the first place and refusing to leave when she should have.

  She'd been so naive, so stupid.

  She missed the kids she'd taught in Buhkai, missed going to work every day, laughing with them. They were so adorable at times and always funny, always surprising.

  She missed her life, missed seeing the world as a grand adventure, where she could go anywhere, do anything. Her life was so small now: this room, this house, her father, visits to doctors and therapists. Fears. Nightmares. Awful memories just out of reach.

  She hadn't been this afraid since her mother died.

  Amanda lay there, waiting for a bit of light to shine into her windows, so she could get up, shower, dress and go downstairs without her father or Margaret worrying about her. Amanda was tired of worrying everyone, tired of being angry, really tired of being afraid of things she still didn't fully remember.

  So she was going to see a new therapist, Emma McRae, who happened to be the daughter of the man who'd restored the house she now shared with her father, a man with some kind of connection that had helped get Amanda out of Buhkai.