Cries of terror rang out, circling his head. He tried to move, tried to force himself to ignore the agony. He had to rescue the caller. Had to. The screams continued. Sharp at first, calling for help. Then weaker. Then nothing. Just the crackling roar of fire, the hideous thunder of a heart struggling to keep its beat.
Just as the struggle became too much, a hand reached into the fire. Cool, liberating, extricating him from hell. Long, slender fingers soothed the misery, eased the terror.
Even as he grasped salvation, desperate for respite, a part of him—a remote particle of his brain—recognized the hand. He knew the scar that bisected the index finger had come from a broken bottle. The ring, a twist of gold and silver with tiny copper beads, had been bought at a county fair.
For a heartbeat he was free of the pain. But even as he escaped the fire, the hand disappeared. Leaving him in the aftermath.
The pain.
Soul-ripping pain.
The bitter taste of failure.
Trapped in the heavy silence, the reminder circled, spiraling tighter. Closing in.
The pained cries from his teammate. His brother. His friend.
Everything went black. Soulless and empty as reality clenched around him in a tight fist, forcing him to face the inescapable. That instead of rescuing his teammate, instead of doing the job he’d been trained to do, he’d let the man die in a miserable inferno.
He would pay for that forever.
If only here in the silence.
“Yo, Rembrandt.”
Lieutenant Elijah Prescott woke drenched in sweat that felt like ice on his skin, his mind—his heart—still gripped by the sharp teeth of the dream. His breath came in guttural pants. His body flashed hot, then cold, then hot again as his pulse whipped furiously through his battered system.
Still spiraling through a hideous slide show of mental images, he pried his eyelids open and hoped like hell it really had been just a dream. No. Memories, he realized as he blinked in the dim light.
Half dreams, half memories. It didn’t matter.
He pushed himself upright, rubbing both hands over his face to scrub away the sticky layer of dried sweat.
“Rembrandt?”
“Yeah?” Face still buried in his hands, Elijah turned his head toward the voice in the shadowy dark of his doorway.
“Supposed to report for duty in less than an hour,” Lansky said, the shrug clear in his tone. “Figured you might not have heard your alarm.”
Was that the shrieking siren that had been blaring through his dream? His alarm clock? He glanced at the numbers glowing red and noted that it was already 5:08 a.m.
“Thanks, ” he said. For the wake-up, and for letting it go at that.
Waiting until Lansky melted back into the darkness, Elijah dropped his face back into his hands and breathed, shaking off the nasty dregs of the nightmare.
They had fifty-two minutes until they reported for duty. There’d been a time that he could go from waking to duty in ten. Three if he was stationed in a hot zone.
That was then.
Now?
Now he was rolling out of bed feeling like a goddamn eighty-year-old arthritic on a wet, cold night.
Or, worse, an invalid.
Elijah gave his face one last scrub before shoving to his feet. Ignoring the pain ripping down his side, tearing into his thigh, he stretched.
Katas, chaturangas.
His body was a machine.
He dropped to the floor for his customary one hundred push-ups.
His body was well honed and built for power.
By the time he’d finished his morning trifecta with sit-ups and pull-ups, he was ready to admit that his well-honed, powerful body hurt like hell.
Bare skin covered in a layer of sweat and boxers, he ignored the trembling muscles and moved back to his bed. A part of him wanted to drop down, face-first, into the pillow, wanted to burrow under the covers and find the sweet oblivion of dreamless sleep.
Instead, with the military precision honed by a dozen years served in the Navy, he tucked and stretched the bedding into place with a couple of practiced moves. He didn’t have to think about what to wear, just grabbed the neatly pressed digies—blue camo multipocketed pants and tee—on their mutual hanger, snapped up boxers and socks and headed for the shower. He didn’t bother with the lights. He had vision like a cat, and the dark was easier on the burning behind his eyes.
He stepped into the shower, letting the brutally hot water pound away the ache of a restless night. Letting it wash away the nagging pain he couldn’t explain. Or, rather, chose to ignore. Elijah rubbed his thigh, running soap over the glossy, puckered flesh as if it didn’t bother him. But the water, comforting a second before, felt like shards of glass. Instead of stepping out from under the water, he turned up the heat.
He refused to be a wimp.
It took him under ten minutes to shower, shave, dress and get ready for the day. He’d spent a couple of years serving on a submarine, so he could have done it in three, but he kept finding himself frowning at the wall, trying to recall what he’d dreamed that had left such a hollow feeling in his gut.
Following the scent of coffee through the living area of the apartment-style barracks he shared with Lansky and into the postage-stamp-size kitchen, Elijah took the mug his new roomie held out and gulped the caffeinated elixir with a grunt of appreciation.
By the time he’d drained it, Lansky had eggs scrambled into a tortilla, covered with a couple of slices of bacon and a tidy sprinkling of cheese.
“Living with you is going to be one sweet pleasure,” Elijah stated, nodding his thanks as he eyed his teammate. Both SEALs, he’d served with Jared Lansky for a decade now. Elijah had never realized the guy could cook like this. Goes to show you could know someone for years, train and serve and bleed with them, drink until sick together, but they could still surprise you.
Elijah used to like surprises.
“I figured you could use a hot breakfast today,” Lansky said, his words light and friendly. But there was a deep well of concern in the man’s eyes. “First day back and all that.”
Elijah’s shoulders jerked, his spine stiffening. He knew the concern was heartfelt, brother to brother. Just as he knew it was justified. But damned if he wanted it. Concern like that, it was a heartbeat from pity. And he’d had enough of that in the past few months to last a lifetime.
Enough to put doubts in the corners of his mind. Doubts that tried to creep out in his dreams. Doubts that, if left unchecked, could destroy him.
“All I need is a great breakfast to kick today’s ass,” he said, biting into the burrito and grinning as the heat and spice hit his tongue. “This is damned good.”
“You need anything else? Fruit or oatmeal or something?”
Oatmeal? Elijah had to swallow quickly to avoid choking on the second half of the burrito.
“Dude, you think I’m so pathetic that you need to stick me with oatmeal?”
“Sorry. It was my mom’s go-to for big mornings. You know, first day of school, finals week, the day I enlisted, the day of my dad’s funeral.” Looking embarrassed—something Lansky never was—the other man gave a good-natured shrug. “Guess it’s one of those crazy kid things that we never lose, ya know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
And he appreciated it. The offer. That Lansky cared enough to make it. And the guy’s insight.