Countdown

Hard-as-nails Sergeant Joe Donnally was tough by habit and training—and fought to stay that way. A tragic loss had closed his heart, yet captivating new partner Annie Yellow Horse stirred dormant emotions Joe had long ago denied. Annie’s promise of love meant an end to his loneliness and pain …but when peril threw them into the line of fire, could Joe take the ultimate chance and offer his love to her?

Countdown

Lindsay McKenna

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Annie Yellow Horse was nervous. As she entered the headquarters building at Camp Reed, one of the two largest Marine Corps bases in the United States, the hot California-desert wind almost grabbed the door from her hand, recalling the persistent wind where she’d grown up, on a sprawling Navajo reservation in New Mexico. Wryly, she reminded herself that she wasn’t home, no matter how much she wanted to be. Annie didn’t know a lot about Camp Reed, except that they’d had problems in the brig area over the years—and that Captain Ramsey asking her to transfer here meant trouble with a capital T.

After speaking briefly to a lieutenant in the busy personnel office, she took a seat on a bench in the hall outside and waited. The lieutenant had told her that Captain Ramsey wouldn’t be meeting her after all. Instead, Sergeant Donnally, who was to be her new boss, was coming to meet her. Perhaps because she was Navajo, or a woman—or both—Annie had learned to rely strongly on her deep intuition. And if her tightened gut was any indication, she thought, this Donnally meant trouble, too.

Rubbing her damp palms on the skirt of her light green summer uniform, Annie worked to maintain her outer calm, but her stomach felt full of butterflies. Maybe it was simply because of being uprooted from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where she’d been stationed for the last two years, she tried to reassure herself. She had friends there and a comfortable life-style that suited her. Now she needed to find an apartment somewhere outside the gates of Camp Reed and completely reestablish herself—including making new friends.

Annie groaned. Friends. She had women friends, but none here at Reed, and it was difficult to start from scratch. Probably the only problem she had with military life was repeatedly losing the camaraderie of friends from a previous base. Hearing the door open at the end of the passageway, Annie sensed a powerful, potentially threatening presence. Narrowing her eyes, she saw a tall marine moving briskly toward her. Gulping back her initial response to panic, Annie used all her senses to decipher this dark-haired sergeant, his garrison cap gripped tightly in his left hand, his shoulders thrown back so proudly that he looked more like a furious eagle than a man.

Her Native American ancestry and reservation training had helped Annie develop an almost psychic ability to “read” people, but the approaching sergeant was projecting an unusual combination of menace and physical appeal that had her senses spinning. His square face appeared merciless, darkly tanned by the California sun and not at all softened by frosty blue eyes. His generous mouth was compressed into a single line of obvious unhappiness.

Annie tensed inwardly as he strode confidently toward her. He didn’t seem to see her, his focus squarely on the Personnel sign above the open doorway next to her. Black hair sprinkled his arms and peeked out from the neck of the white T-shirt he wore beneath a tan shirt. Although he was more than six feet tall and had to be close to two hundred pounds, Annie couldn’t spot an ounce of fat on his frame. If anything, he reminded her of a well-fed summer cougar, its beautifully sleek appearance masking its inherent danger.

Annie switched to her inner sensing equipment. This man was very angry. But at whom? Could this be Sergeant Donnally? Although he was still too far away for her to read the nametag above his left uniform pocket, her intuition said yes. While her head cautioned, “wait and see,” Annie experienced a surprising lurch and pounding of her heart. Stunned by her unexpected response, she sat very still, attempting to integrate the unreasonable feeling. Only one man in her life had ever made her heart respond this way, and he had died in Desert Storm.

Tears leaked into Annie’s eyes, and she quickly bowed her head. Marines didn’t cry. Their code demanded they remain tough, not showing fear or tears or pain. To show any kind of weakness meant losing the respect of other marines, and Annie wouldn’t allow that to happen. So, swallowing hard, she forced the tears away—but the memory of losing Jeff continued to ache like a wound that hadn’t completely healed. Perhaps, Annie realized, as she raised her head to focus on the marine rapidly closing the distance between them, it was best that she’d been transferred here. She had met and fallen in love with Jeff at Camp Lejeune and it was still filled with memories. Yes, coming here was best. Or so she hoped.

* * *

Sergeant Joe Donnally tried to contain his fury. He was angry that his boss, Captain Ramsey, had asked him to come retrieve the world-famous brig tracker, Corporal Annie Yellow Horse. What a hell of a name. And she was probably just as different as her name sounded, he fumed inwardly. He didn’t have time to be chief meeter and greeter to every new brig chaser transferred to Reed. With Ramsey turning on the heat to get the lackluster brig personnel squared away, Joe didn’t need this welcoming-committee stuff. Anyway, he admitted to himself, he was angry that Ramsey felt they couldn’t do without this woman brig chaser. Baloney! No one was indispensable in the corps, and they didn’t need this prima donna tracker. He had plenty of men—including himself—who were decent enough trackers to hunt escaped prisoners if necessary.

Momentarily, Joe’s focus shifted, and he was startled to see a young woman with copper-colored skin sitting almost at attention on a wooden bench outside the personnel office. His heart sped up, and his scowl deepened. She had huge, cinnamon-colored eyes, and her black hair was neatly coiffed in a short style that emphasized her oval face and high cheekbones. Was this Yellow Horse? No, he growled to himself. She was too pretty. He’d expected someone old and tough looking—a throwback to the old-corps days.

In spite of himself, Joe felt some of his anger dissolve as he met and held her widening gaze for a moment. Her gentle look offered him no returning challenge as he glared in her direction. Something in him told him this woman was Annie Yellow Horse, although he tried to convince himself it was a crazy idea. Whoever she was, she wasn’t conventionally pretty, but had an earthy kind of unspoken beauty. She wore no makeup, yet her skin glowed, the perfect backdrop to her expressive eyes and mouth. Joe slowed his pace as his gaze settled on that mouth. He’d never seen one quite like it—full lips curving slightly upward at the corners and parted just enough to make any man groan with need.

Did she realize how damned sensuous she was? Joe wondered. He knew only that he was staring at her like a slavering wolf—a totally improper reaction to a fellow marine. Desperately gathering his strewn feelings, ignoring the blood pumping through him in response to her single, luminous look, Joe tore his gaze from hers. He was close enough now to read the nametag above the pocket of her feminine uniform: Yellow Horse. With a groan, he slowed considerably, his senses rebelling with anger and frustration.

Annie Yellow Horse wasn’t anything like the image he’d invented in his mind. Captain Ramsey had spoken of her so often and in such glowing terms that Joe had automatically begun to dislike her. No one could be that good, he’d thought, as Ramsey extolled her capabilities as a tracker to heaven and back. After that kind of buildup, she had no right to look so young—and so damned beautiful! His gaze locked aggressively on hers, and he saw that her eyes were filled with curiosity and compassion.

If he’d expected some hardened woman corporal, he certainly didn’t see one. Joe watched her slowly rise, tension evident in her tall, lithe body. He wanted to hate her. He certainly didn’t need to play baby-sitter to some world-famous tracker coming into his section. Not right now.

Joe halted and tried to collect himself. His heart was pounding, and a strange emotion seemed to be radiating outward from it, touching him softly, subtly, throughout his body. What the hell was going on? Was Yellow Horse more than just a tracker? More than just a woman? As he drilled a merciless look into her eyes, he realized he barely needed to look down, so she must be at least five foot nine. Compressing his lips, he continued to glare at her.

“Yellow Horse?” he snarled. Joe hated himself for behaving this way, but he had to take his anger out on someone, and she was the one making his life even more complicated.

Annie felt buffeted by the marine’s snarl, but she held her ground, tightened her jaw and deliberately hardened her own eyes. “I am. And who are you?” she flung back in a low, husky tone. She saw surprise in the sergeant’s icy blue gaze. He was trying to tower over her, but because only three inches in height separated them, he couldn’t do it, so he placed his hands imperiously on his hips to bluff her. Annie had been in the Marine Corps for six years, and she knew her place in it as a corporal. This man might be trying to threaten her with his stance, but he was only one grade above her—and he had no right to try to intimidate her this way.

Joe scowled heavily. He’d seen her eyes go hard—seen her luscious mouth thin with displeasure. And she hadn’t taken a step back from him—hadn’t so much as batted an eyelash. She’d held her ground and, bitterly, he had to respect her for it. “I’m your new boss, Yellow Horse. I’m Sergeant Donnally. I was sent over to baby-sit you. Captain Ramsey couldn’t make it, so you’ve got me instead.” His glance flicked to the personnel file she held tensely in her left hand. “That your orders?”

“Yes,” Annie snapped back, “it is.”

“Give them to me.” Joe felt a little chagrined at his own rudeness. Momentarily, he saw confusion dart through Annie’s beautiful eyes—the most alluring feature of her face. Her fingers accidentally grazed his as she handed over the folder, and Joe nearly jerked the file out of her grasp. He pretended to look at the paperwork, but it was a ruse. His heart was hammering so hard that he wondered wildly if this was some sort of early heart-attack warning.

As he paged through the papers in her file, Joe could feel her silent appraisal. Well, let her look, he thought, it wasn’t going to do her any good. Yellow Horse meant nothing but trouble to him, arriving at a time when the office situation was still tentative and volatile. They had so many morale problems—the legacy of Jacobs, their recently departed captain—and Joe didn’t want to try to integrate a new member on top of it all. Especially since, as a corporal, Yellow Horse would be looking to him for help and direction.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Joe said gruffly. He glanced over—and instantly drowned in her eyes, which had again lost their hardness. He felt himself being pulled into their gold-flecked, cinnamon depths, framed by thick, black lashes. Why did she have to be so desirable? Disgusted with himself and his response to her, he added in a low snarl, “Come with me.”

“Wait!” Annie tilted her head. The sergeant was obviously furious—with her?

“I don’t have all day. What is it?”

She tried to let his irritability slide off her. “Sergeant Donnally, is something wrong?”

He gave her a sarcastic look. “Everything’s wrong, Corporal.”

“How so?”

Restraining his building anger, Joe drilled her with a venomous look that he hoped would put a stop to her questions. “Corporal,” he announced brusquely, “you work for me. You’re in my section. When I want you to know something, I’ll be the first to tell you. If I don’t want to talk to you about certain things, that’s the way it’ll be. Do we understand each other?”

Annie held his glare and felt ice pour through her veins. “I’ve had six years in the corps, Sergeant, and I’ve just taken my test to become a sergeant. In two months, I’ll know if I’ll be an E-5 like you. I feel a lot of resentment coming from you toward me. If there’s a problem, perhaps we should work it out here and now. I don’t want to start a new assignment with someone hating my guts.”

Joe recoiled inwardly. Annie’s soft exterior concealed a steel backbone, he realized. The look in her eyes was no longer lustrous and inviting, it was pointed and fearless. Although part of him respected her for it, a greater part disliked her for her courage. His lips lifted away from his teeth, and he put his face inches from hers, his breathing strangled as he spoke. “Corporal, you work for me. Got that? Until you get that sergeant’s stripe, you’ll do as I say. I’m not the kind of marine who communicates a whole lot, so you’re just going to have to put up with it.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Unless you want a transfer—which wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Annie swayed and caught herself, inwardly shaken by Donnally’s anger. His blue eyes narrowed with such a fierce light that she knew this man was a hunter and dangerous, with a brutal side that could hurt her emotionally. “I’ve got it, Sergeant,” she whispered tightly. But even as he pulled away and straightened, Annie knew she was in trouble. Great. Her boss hated her just for being here.

Joe tried desperately to contain his ugly, unraveling feelings. What was wrong with him? He never snarled at his people like this! Thoroughly irritated with himself, he spun on his heel. “Follow me,” he snapped.

Stalking down the passageway, he tried to figure out what had happened. Yes, he was angry with Captain Ramsey for pulling him off far more important work at the brig office to come and pick up Yellow Horse. Further, he disagreed strongly with his boss about needing a world-class tracker here at Reed: no prisoners had escaped in the two years he’d been here. His conscience smarted. He’d seen his fury hurt Annie. Damn! Now he was thinking of her as Annie! Use her last name and keep it impersonal, he angrily instructed himself.

Scrambling internally, Joe didn’t want to admit that she’d surprised him—not only with her looks, but with her courage in standing up to his blistering “welcome.” Perhaps her Navajo lineage gave her a special kind of bravery, he mused. Not many marines stood toe-to-toe with him when it came down to a confrontation. Joe was a scrapper, and he was street smart. He’d grown up tough in a gang in the barrio of National City, near San Diego, and he knew how to fight—with his fists and his mouth. Although he looked like his Hispanic and Yaqui Indian mother, his father was of Irish ancestry, so except for his blue eyes, his name, Donnally, didn’t fit Joe’s otherwise dark looks.

As he pushed open the door, the California heat and bright sunlight struck him full force. Settling the garrison cap on his head, he glanced over his shoulder to see if Yellow Horse was coming. Disgruntled to find her near his left shoulder, he was shocked that he hadn’t heard her at all. Hell! Usually he heard everything—his awareness of his surroundings was, by necessity, sharply honed. That supersensitivity to his environment had saved his life numerous times growing up in the gangs, who fought with deadly knives and pistols. Bitterness leaked through Joe at Annie’s obvious abilities. This woman was going to be the number-two person in his section whether he liked it or not. And he most emphatically did not.

As they moved down the sidewalk, bracketed with recently mowed green Bermuda grass, Joe entertained the idea of telling Captain Ramsey he wanted a transfer. Again his conscience needled him—more sharply this time. Joe had a fierce loyalty to his section, to the men and women who put their lives on the line every day. No, they’d been left enough in the lurch by Jacobs, without Joe sulking and leaving them in more trouble.

“Sergeant?”

Joe started. This time he hadn’t realized that Yellow Horse had come abreast of him as he strode across the asphalt parking lot. The noontime sun blasted them, and Joe began to break out in a mild sweat.

“What is it, Corporal?”

“Can you tell me what your office does?”

Having unwillingly made eye contact again, Joe tried to tear his gaze from her. She wore a bucket-style hat, her black hair as shiny as a raven’s wing in the sunlight where it showed around the edges. Annie had a grace that he’d not seen in many women before—an easiness and familiarity with her body, maybe. Although Joe couldn’t quite define it, the way she moved was riveting. Disgusted with himself, he snapped his head forward.

“I run Section A of three sections at the brig,” he responded brusquely. “My people serve two functions: brig duty and transport of prisoners.”

“How long have you been stationed here at Camp Reed?”

He knew she was testing him, trying to find out something about him—as her boss. “Two years,” he replied with a glare.

“And Captain Ramsey was just assigned? I imagine that’s causing you some changes?” she asked, understanding lacing her voice.

Her insight was startling, and Joe scowled again. If she could fathom that much, what else could she perceive? The thought was unsettling as hell. “Let’s put it this way, Corporal—the last officer who ran the brig was a total loss. He was a screwup from the git-go, punching his ticket because he had to have this assignment look good on his personnel record so he could get early major’s leaves. Otherwise, he couldn’t have cared less about the brig, the prisoners, the transport of them or my people.”

“So you ended up shouldering a lot of the load to protect your section?” she pressed gently.

Joe’s mouth fell open. He halted and spun around, capturing her gaze. “Are you psychic or something?” he croaked. Then he caught himself and frowned in warning as he ruthlessly searched her eyes. Eyes that were wide, vulnerable and without harshness, he noted. Her lips lifted very slightly, almost into a shy smile.

“Not psychic,” Annie said softly. “Being in the corps six years maybe gives me a better perspective than someone who’s had less time in grade.”

Disgruntled, Joe nodded. “Yeah, things got rough. I came in while Captain Jacobs was on board, and we all suffered under the bastard for two years. I saw him tear down my people because he was unhappy and didn’t want to be here.”

“So you ran a blocking action, took the heat and protected them?” Annie guessed. She saw the surprise in the icy depths of his light blue eyes. As growly as Donnally was, she sensed that the inner man—perhaps the real man beneath that armored exterior—was likable and decent. She vowed to withhold judgment until she could understand the responsibilities he carried on his broad, capable-looking shoulders.

“Yes….” he admitted, hesitating.

Annie smiled a little, hoping to ease the tension between them. “And Captain Ramsey has just come on board, so you’re trying to help him clean up the mess created by the previous officer?”

Joe gave a bark of laughter and dropped his hands on his hips as he studied Annie. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were some kind of investigator from C.I.D., Criminal Investigation Division, not a brig chaser.”

With an answering chuckle, Annie shrugged, noticing the way laughter changed Donnally’s dark, thundercloud features, if but for a moment. “No, I’m not C.I.D., Sergeant, I’m Navajo. My grandfather was a code talker in World War II, and my mother comes from a long line of medicine women. I’ve lived close to the earth all my life. Six years in the corps gives me knowledge on another level. It’s pretty easy to put two and two together.”

Joe didn’t want to like Annie, but in that moment, he liked her immensely. If he’d treated a male marine the way he had treated her so far, he knew there would be no laughter, compromise or softening between them. No, it was Annie’s ability as a woman, he guessed, that had defused some of the anger he’d aimed at her. Still, he reminded himself, he couldn’t afford to like her or get close to her. Not now, not ever.

His mouth thinning with the thought, he held her upturned gaze, which spoke eloquently of her compassion for the personal hell he’d suffered these past two years. “Your grandfather was a code talker?” he asked, with new respect for her heritage. During World War II, he knew, the Navajo code talkers had been drafted into the Marine Corps and used to convey messages in their native language to prevent the Japanese from understanding them. It had worked so successfully that Navajo men had served with great pride, helping to save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives during the war years.

Annie nodded. “My grandfather is eighty-four now, but he still has clear memories of the time he served in the Marine Corps.”

“That’s something to be proud of,” Joe muttered. Her grandfather being a marine explained somewhat why she was in the corps. Annie was following a tradition begun over fifty years ago. Joe had to back off a little on his aggressive attitude toward her, knowing she carried such a proud history.

Standing there in the parking lot, Joe realized he was staring at her the way a biologist might stare at a bug under a microscope. But he didn’t want to know anything else about Annie—Yellow Horse, he corrected himself savagely. “Let’s take the station wagon over there,” he said, pointing toward it. “I’ll show you the office and then it will be chow time.”

Annie knew that Donnally wanted nothing to do with her, and the knowledge hurt. She liked the proud way he held himself. She liked the rugged look of his square face. Now, in the sunlight, she noticed several small scars across his prominent chin and a more recent one across his left cheekbone. His nose appeared to have been broken several times, adding to his rough-and-ready appearance. No, Donnally certainly wasn’t pretty-boy handsome. Also, despite his Irish-sounding name and blue eyes, his dark coloring spoke of a mixed heritage, probably Hispanic.

There was nothing forgiving about Donnally, either, she thought. Built tall and noble, he was medium boned and rather heavily muscled. Most brig chasers were taller and heavier than marines in other corps professions, and hauling around prisoners of all sizes and weights required top physical condition. Annie herself worked out three times a week at a gym to build and maintain upper-body strength. Her gaze ranged back to Donnally’s face and especially his mouth as he turned toward the vehicle he’d indicated. He had a generous mouth, she thought, but he seemed to keep it thinned, as if he were holding back a lot, buried deep within himself.

She followed without a word to the olive green station wagon. It was a typical brig vehicle, she noted. The rear seats were separated from the front by thick, bullet-proof glass that prevented a prisoner from reaching the driver. Further, the rear doors were locked from the outside, with no inner handles, so a prisoner couldn’t open a door and escape. She took in the riot gun propped in the front seat as she opened the door—and the three different types of radios installed on the dash, for communicating with various law-enforcement agencies should a brig-chaser team need help during transport.