Page 65 of Delta Force Defender

“I think that’s it,” Caradine finished. “I definitely feel like I’m in an action movie now. That’s good, right?”

“Die Hardis an action movie, not a Christmas movie, jackhole,” Templeton said to Blue.

Blue snorted. “If you’re dead inside.”

“Terrific,” Isaac said, and he might have sounded disapproving, but Caradine could see that gleam in his gaze, and she knew better. And hated that she could tell, because that was one more thing she was going to have to leave behind. “We have a little bit of a drive.”

He started off across the small airfield, leading them around the tiny terminal building and out to a waiting SUV in the largely empty parking area. Caradine didn’t ask who had delivered it. Just like she didn’t complain when the four of them fell into formation around her, seemingly without needing to communicate with one another. They just did it. They fanned out around her, so she was in the center, and matched their strides to hers.

She almost thought it was automatic, and that settled in her like another flush of heat.

In the SUV, Templeton sat in front while Isaac drove, leaving Caradine to be sandwiched in the back between the tall, solidly muscled frames of Jonas and Blue.

She suddenly wanted to ask a thousand questions. Was this how they always traveled? What happenedwhen they needed more people on a team? Did they carpool like this, shoved up against each other like kids in the back of a station wagon?

When she had to bite back an inappropriate giggle, Caradine understood that she was becoming hysterical.

She couldn’t let that happen for any number of reasons, but most important because it would prove to Isaac that she couldn’t handle this. And she would rather die than disappoint him or have him think less of her in any way.

Another time that her favorite phrase was completely true.

And another thing she needed to let go of now, or carry with her forever, out there in all that beige that waited for her.

Caradine gulped down the giggle, focused onbeige, and sat as rigidly as possible between two large men with wide shoulders they couldn’t do anything about as the SUV charged onto what passed for a main road in this remote part of a famous island.

Isaac drove the way he did everything. With skill and focus, which helped as they passed through a collection of buildings she thought was a town, then headed into the wilderness on a dirt track Caradine would never have called a road. Especially when the tangled green closed in around them like it was swallowing them whole.

At certain points she could see through the thick wall of jungle. There were sweeping views every now and again, while impossible flowers bloomed everywhere, offhandedly, down the length of the hill they were climbing. She saw the small town they’d driven through and, below it, a brooding sort of sea with rocky inlets at odds with the vision she’d always carried in her head of what Hawaiian beaches ought to look like.

“This is the windward side of the island,” Blue said, almost as if he were commenting out the window. Caradine didn’t know how to feel about the evidence that hewas paying close attention to her. She kept having to reevaluate all of these people she’d put into careful boxes a long time ago, and it was disconcerting, to say the least. “It gets battered by the wind, sees more rain above sea level than the leeward side, and is less populated. The kind of Hawaiian island beaches and resorts you might expect are on the other side, protected by the mountains and blessed by the trade winds.”

“Hana-side is real upcountry Hawaii,” Jonas said from her left, gruffly. “It’s the difference between Anchorage and every other part of Alaska.”

“I apologize, Caradine,” Templeton drawled from the front seat. “You’re stuck between two navy men. They think spending time on a couple of sailboats makes them experts on every island they find along the way.”

“Better than an army man,” Isaac said dryly. “Expert on nothing.”

“Whatever, jarhead,” Templeton retorted, sounding outraged, though he remained in his lazy, half-reclining slouch. “I’m the only person in this vehicle who isactuallyHawaiian.”

“Part Hawaiian,” Jonas replied. “I’m sure that will impress the locals.”

Everyone laughed. And it took Caradine a few more moments, jolting along the deeply rutted dirt track that climbed farther and farther up into the rain forest, to realize that all of this was affection.

There was absolutely no reason it should leave a lump in her throat.

Except, you know, that this could all end horribly any minute now, her usual harsh inner voice chimed in.

It only made the lump in her throat worse.

Isaac kept driving, seemingly into nowhere. The views disappeared, the lush green and riotous flowers on all sides so intense they blocked out the sky in places.

And about ten minutes up that road, right when Caradine was beginning to get concerned that she wouldsuccumb to the claustrophobia she’d never known she had, he stopped.

“Perimeter,” he said shortly.

That meant nothing to Caradine, but Blue and Jonas opened their doors. Then they melted off into the jungle, disappearing with so little trace that she was watching them do it and had to blink. Because one moment they were there and the next it was as if they’d never been.

Caradine understood this meant they were close to the place Oz thought Lindsay was. She tried to take a deep breath. She tried telling herself to be calm. But her stomach was in knots, she felt vaguely nauseated, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to see her sister, or didn’t. She didn’t know which was worse—or better.

---