Hot Velocity. Elle James

sobbed loudly into the smooth linen of Sierra’s tan slacks. Once Eloisa started, the other children sensed her distress and joined the squall.

      “Shut up!” Clay yelled.

      For a moment, all the children stopped crying and then, as if the spigot had been opened full blast, they all screamed and cried like a dozen caterwauling cats in a back-alley fight.

      Clay yanked her out of the center of the noise and dragged her toward his truck.

      Sierra dug her feet into the dirt and resisted with all of her might. “Let go of me. I’m not going with you.”

      “The hell you aren’t,” he said. “You belong to me.”

      “I belong to no man.” She clawed at the meaty hand gripping her wrist like a vise. “I have a restraining order against you.”

      “No one’s going to honor it. Everyone knows you’re my wife.”

      “Ex-wife. What part of divorce don’t you understand?” She couldn’t let him get her into his truck. Sierra couldn’t go back to this man. He was a bully, a cheater and a monster. “Let go of me, or I’ll scream.”

      “Scream. Only those brats will hear you.” He snorted. “You expect them to come to your rescue?”

      “I don’t need anyone to rescue me.” She stopped leaning back against his hold on her and let him pull her close. When she was in range, she stomped hard on his instep and raised her knee hard against his crotch.

      Clay bellowed and bent double, clutching the area she’d injured. But he didn’t release his grip on her wrist.

      Sierra’s fingers were growing numb, and the kids behind her were hysterical. She had to do something to stop this madness. But what? Clay was bigger, stronger and meaner than she was. He’d demonstrated that over and over again. She had the scars to prove it.

      “Please, Clay, you’re scaring the children. Let me get them into the building. When I’m done, I’ll go with you.”

      “Yeah, right.” He grunted and straightened. “You expect me to believe you?”

      “I will. Cross my heart.” She held up her hand as if she were swearing in front of a jury, something she’d had to do in order to convince a judge she’d been abused and needed out.

      “No way.” He turned and dragged her closer to his truck.

      “You can’t leave them standing outside. They might get lost in the woods. They’re just children.”

      “Like the kids you wouldn’t give me? Why the hell should I care?”

      “I wanted children. I tried,” she said. “You can’t blame our problems on these little ones.”

      “They aren’t mine. I don’t give a crap what happens to them.”

      When he set his mind on something, there was no stopping the man. He’d refused to listen to reason when they were married. What made Sierra think he would listen now?

      Using another one of the techniques she’d learned in her recent self-defense class, she twisted her wrist, jerked her arm downward and broke free of Clay’s hold. Free at last, she spun and ran. She hadn’t gone two feet when a hand clamped on her hair and yanked her backward.

      Sierra screamed and stumbled backward. The children screamed, as well. She could see them standing there, terrified and confused. It made her mad enough she could have spit nails, and all the more determined to free herself of the madman she’d once promised to love, honor and cherish.

      “Well, it goes both ways. And you didn’t live up to your part of the bargain,” she muttered, twisted and turned, attempting to get away. But short of letting him rip chunks of her hair out of her head, she was caught.

       Chapter Three

      A persistent ringing grated on T-Rex’s nerves. He didn’t like to look away from the road when he was driving, so he waited until he pulled to a stop sign before glancing at his cell phone.

      GALLAGER

      The name on the screen made his heart tighten. The man had gotten out of that Afghan village alive, barely. He hadn’t lost his life, but he’d lost so much more. “Hey, Gunny, how’s that baby?”

      “Great. I got to hold him today. With a little help.”

      T-Rex swallowed hard before saying, “That’s great, man.”

      “Did I tell you that I’m getting some of the feeling back in my fingers?”

      “No kidding?”

      “No kidding.” Gunny sounded more upbeat than T-Rex had heard him since he’d returned to the States. The hand squeezing his heart loosened a little. “Glad to hear it.”

      “I’ll be throwing a football for slugger before long.”

      “Please tell me you didn’t put ‘Slugger’ on his birth certificate.”

      “No. The wife wouldn’t let me. Officially, he’s Lance Gallagher. But I drew the line at Junior. Nothing shoots a man’s ego down more than being called Junior.”

      “True.”

      “So, how’s your TDY going?” Gunny asked. “About ready to head back to home station and ship out again?”

      “Past ready.”

      “That boring?”

      T-Rex had to think about that. “Not really boring, just not what I want to be doing.”

      “What? Kidnappings and big-game hunters not exciting enough?”

      “How’d you know about that?” T-Rex asked.

      Gunny snorted. “I read the news.”

      “I could do without some of the excitement. I want to get back to the front line.”

      “You know you won’t find the guys who did this to us,” Gunny said, his voice softening. “You could hunt every last member of the Taliban and still not know whether you got the guys who staged that trap.”

      “Maybe, but if I don’t try, they get away with what they did to you.”

      “Oh, is this about me?” Gunny laughed. “The way you blew up in front of the command psychologist, you’d think it was all about you.”

      T-Rex’s hand squeezed the cell phone so hard, he was surprised it didn’t crack. What he was feeling was in direct response to what had happened to Gunny. The man had taken the full brunt of the attack. He’d suffered spinal cord damage and might be a quadriplegic the rest of his life. The thought of the father of four spending his life in a wheelchair made T-Rex want to rage at the universe. “It’s just not fair. I should have been the one injured. I didn’t have a baby on the way.”

      “You didn’t get to pick,” Gunny said. “It’s the way the cards fell. Or the grenade, in our case.”

      “Anyway, things might be settling down here. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels.”

      “Yeah, but I doubt the commander will want you back so soon. He was pretty hot when he sent you off.”

      “If he knew what a boondoggle it is, he wouldn’t have sent me.”

      “Boondoggle?” Gunny snorted. “Sounds like another day in the life of a marine. You’ve got enemy hiding in the hills, you’ve been shot at and you’ve taken out some of the bad guys.”

      He had a point. Still, T-Rex would rather be back where his world had come apart. Then maybe he could put it back together. “I don’t know which strings our team lead pulled to get a loan of highly skilled military men to work for the Department of Homeland Security.”