“Liam?”

He looked back at her. “Okay, Rachel, you want to talk, then okay. Let’s talk.”

“Liam,” she interrupted, stepping forward, “something’s wrong with the bank.” A mudslide? “See the ground—”

Move.

She screamed as an alligator emerged from the muck, racing straight for Liam.

Chapter 17

Liam turned hard and fast at Rachel’s warning. But not fast enough.

He stared straight into the cold eyes of an alligator. He didn’t even have time to figure out how he’d been caught so off guard. He zigged and zagged, hard left, then right. Again. And again. It was his only defense against a gator that could definitely outrun him. The beast had to stop and adjust for each turn.

The mud made speedy moves tougher, but not impossible. Shift right. He reached for his gun, already calculating how to shoot the reptile in its one vulnerable spot—where the skull joined the neck.

He heard Rachel cry out to him again a half second before the gator’s tail whipped his feet from under him. Liam slammed to the ground. His gun slid from his hand and into the water. He could see inside the alligator’s open jaws as it prepped to grab him for a death roll.

Instincts kicked into overdrive. He sprang up and onto the alligator’s back. There were a thousand places he would rather be, but the only way he could think to buy time and stay out of the beast’s gullet.

“Rachel, get your gun,” he shouted, arms and legs wrapped around the reptile.

Knobby bumps dug into his gut. His muscles screamed with the force of holding on to the thrashing creature sliding back into the shallow marsh. If they reached deeper water, he was screwed.

Dimly he heard the dogs going nuts in the cabin and Rachel screaming for help as the scaly rough skin scratched his face. But he also heard her feet running along the porch and down the steps. She’d called for backup but she wasn’t waiting around.

Brackish water slid over him and into his mouth. “I can’t let go,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re going to have to shoot the gator.”

“With you on it?” she asked, only a hint of panic leaking into her voice as she climbed up onto the dock.

“Don’t think I can go anywhere unless you do.” What a time for his humor to come back. “Shoot right where the skull joins the neck.”

“That itty bitty spot right in front of your face?” Her voice cracked. She jockeyed for better positioning as the gator slipped into deeper and deeper waters.

“Anywhere else and it’ll ricochet off and send bone shrapnel everywhere.” All over him. “Aim. Shoot. Don’t jerk back. Hold your arms steady after you pull the trigger.”

Where the hell was his team?

“Right.” She raised her Baby Eagle pistol that he’d never had the time to teach her to use.

Braced.

Shot.

Missed.

Shrapnel bit into his arms. The scrapes burned like a son of a bitch. But not half as bad as the razor-sharp teeth of the alligator would if the scaly bastard got hold of him.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God, Liam, I’m so sorry.”

“Shoot again, damn it. Shoot, Rachel!” He looked at her for what he hoped wasn’t the last time.

God, she was incredible, standing down an alligator without question. Not backing off. Not even shaking. He couldn’t have asked for better from anyone on his team.

She lined up the shot. Hands steady. Pulled the trigger.

The alligator went limp.

Rachel dropped to her knees on the dock.

The shrapnel scratches on his arm hurt, but he kept holding on anyway. “Rachel, hon, you did great. Now, I need you to pass me the tape out of the duffel so I can seal this guy’s mouth closed. I’m not taking any chances that he’s playing possum.”

She bolted into action, leaping into the boat and racing back before he finished catching his breath. She passed the roll of industrial duct tape with hands shaking so hard she almost dropped it in the water. He wrapped it around and around the alligator’s mouth until finally… he gave himself permission to haul himself up onto the planked dock with Rachel. She locked her arms around him and he realized she was sobbing, hard. From shock, no doubt.

He looped an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “You did good, Rachel, damn good.”

“I missed,” she gasped.

“And then you didn’t miss.”

She was every bit as incredible as the first day he’d seen her. She was so much more woman than she even realized.

The world expanded, his vision widening beyond just Rachel and himself. His team and the other women stood on the porch and along the shore. Guns out. Dogs restrained.

Liam scanned them all, his ragtag team, with Rachel an unofficial but fully contributing member. The enormity of everything he would be losing soon kicked him in the gut as hard as any swipe from a gator tail. “I got us some fresh meat for breakfast.”

***

Rachel had never felt less like eating in her life. Her stomach was stuck somewhere in her throat while she waited for Sylvia Cramer’s call. Or for some other “divine blessing” from the string of computers set up on the rough-hewn table. Periodically, one pinged with a new message, which turned out not to be Sylvia as they’d hoped.

Nerves ragged, Rachel leaned against the counter with the others, chowing down chunks of cooked alligator tail. The same gator that had tried to eat Liam. The same reptile she’d shot. After missing once and sending shrapnel all over him.

Her stomach climbed up into her throat again. Her full plate stayed in front of her while everyone else replayed the whole event as if it were a particularly fun episode of Swamp People, for God’s sake.

Cuervo repacked his first-aid kit, his dish of gator chunks waiting beside him. “Hey, McCabe, where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?” Liam’s shirtsleeves had been cut off, his shrapnel wounds cleaned and bandaged by his teammate.

“You’re joking again, right?” Cuervo threw away empty packets of antiseptic ointment. “Where did you learn to wrestle gators?”

“Training.” Liam speared the tip of his knife into a chunk of pan-fried meat. “Were you sick that day? That’s too bad.”

Cuervo threw a half-empty roll of gauze at his patient. Liam snagged it in midair without so much as a wince, as if both his arms weren’t covered in bandages. Thank heavens there had been medical help on-site.

She forgot sometimes that the PJs were trained medics, so multifaceted… ready to do more than rescue anywhere, anytime, but provide medical aid when needed, fight back enemy forces, even. Do whatever was necessary to bring home the person in their care.

Her heart lurched up there into her throat with her stomach.

Catriona scrunched her nose. “Who trains to fight off alligators?”

Brandon stood beside her, shoulders touching in subtle intimacy. “People who do rescues in the Everglades.”

Catriona forked up another bite. “Did the class include how to cut it up and prepare it, too?”

Wade diced more of their pan-fried brunch with his jagged-edged survival knife. “Sunny deserves all the credit. She’s a whiz at cooking in rural situations. Besides, our gourmet cook was busy getting patched up.”

Forcing a smile, Rachel speared a bite. “Really, it’s great. Better than great, Sunny. Thanks.” She stuffed it in her mouth, chewing it fast into teeny tiny bites so she could force it down her tight throat. “I’m just praying we don’t get a ticket for hunting out of season.”

Jose lifted his plate for more just before a computer pinged.

Liam checked and shook his head.

Jose said, “Nothing could be as bad as that stringy goat we ate in Afghanistan when McCabe and I got stuck out in the desert for five days.”

Liam uncapped a water bottle. “And you’re all questioning why I’m ready to retire?” Tipping back his drink, he grinned with his mouth, if not his eyes. “Can’t imagine why.”

How could they all sit here so calmly and joke, after Liam had almost been hauled to the bottom of a swamp by an alligator? She wanted to scream. But of course that was impossible with her throat full of her stomach and heart.

She shoved away from the counter, unable to take even one more second of pretending everything was okay. She needed air. Quietly, she ducked out the front door and plopped onto a simple wooden bench. Nothing fancy, it didn’t even have a back. But there was plenty of humid air to suck into her constricted lungs. Disco nudged her knee and she realized she was still holding her plate full of that alligator meat.

The evils of feeding a dog table scraps be damned.

She set the dish on the ground. “Have at it, pal.”

As Disco ate the hell out of the godforsaken gator, Rachel’s eyes zipped right back to the muddy bank, the swirls and patterns in the shoreline chronicling each detail of Liam’s battle on the way into the water. She swallowed down bile.

The cabin door creaked open. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Liam’s broad shoulders fill the void. Silently, he stepped over and sat on the bench next to her. The gauze on his arms snagged against her skin.

She blinked back tears.

He reached toward her and she instinctively leaned into him. He tapped a mosquito off her arm, then caught it in his fist.

Straightening again, she scratched her arm where the insect had been. “Thanks.”

“No. Thank you.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for. I did what had to be done.” She stared down at her feet beside Disco licking the plate clean. “Why were you pulling away from me back at the dock?”

“Before the gator tried to eat me?”

She looked sideways at him. “Not funny.”

“Yeah it is.” He grinned. Sort of.

She touched his arm lightly, beside one of the bandages covering a shrapnel wound. “You’ve been putting distance between us all morning, and I don’t understand.”

He covered her hand with his, his green eyes getting the pale hazel streaks that came when he was emotional. Those streaks offered the only clue in a man who held himself so tightly in check, always in command. “I’m letting you go, Rachel, if that’s what you really want.”

She snapped upright, stunned, hurt, angry, overflowing with emotions after the nightmare of seeing him nearly mauled to death by a f**king alligator. “You’re dumping me?” Hysteria frothed inside her. After the morning she’d been through, she was due a meltdown. “I thought you married your women before you dumped them.”

“Not funny and not fair.”

“No damn kidding.” She gasped for air. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Undaunted, he calmly took her hands in his as they sat side by side on the bench. “You’re an incredible woman. The work you’ve done with the therapy dogs is amazing. You’ve helped spread that gift and it’s clear the momentum will keep on rolling.”

“I hope so.” Except what did that have to do with breaking up with her?

“But you also have to know what you’re really meant to do, you and Disco.”

“Whoa! Stop right there.” She yanked her hands out of his, recognizing his hand-holding now for what it was—a pacifying gesture, his way of being the man in control, doling out comfort. “I’ve already told you why I stepped out of the field. And if we’re playing fair here, I’ve gotta call foul on your using that against me now. If you’ve suddenly decided you’re in over your head with this relationship, then man up and say so. But don’t you dare make excuses.”

Frustration flecked his eyes. “You’re not hearing me. You may have needed a break, but when you’re working a rescue mission—when you’re shooting an alligator between the eyes—you are magnificent.”