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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
Table of Contents
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