He might have grown to adulthood that way if he hadn’t contracted a monster case of influenza. While driving home from work, Mary had found him lying on the side of a road, incoherent and burning up with fever. Though he was half a foot taller than she and some fifty pounds heavier, somehow she had wrestled and bullied the boy into her truck and taken him to the local clinic, where Doc Nowacki discovered that the flu had progressed into pneumonia and quickly transferred Chance to the nearest hospital, eighty miles away.
Mary had driven home and insisted that Wolf take her to the hospital—immediately.
Chance was in intensive care when they arrived. At first the nursing staff hadn’t wanted to let them see him, since they weren’t family and in fact didn’t know anything about him. Child services had been notified, and someone was on the way to take care of the paperwork. They had been reasonable, even kind, but they hadn’t reckoned with Mary. She was relentless. She wanted to see the boy, and a bull-dozer couldn’t have budged her until she saw him. Eventually the nurses, overworked and outclassed by a will far stronger than their own, gave in and let Wolf and Mary into the small cubicle.
As soon as he saw the boy, Wolf knew why Mary was so taken with him. It wasn’t just that he was deathly ill; he was obviously part American Indian. He would have reminded Mary so forcibly of her own children that she could no more have forgotten about him than she could one of them.
Wolf’s expert eye swept over the boy as he lay there so still and silent, his eyes closed, his breathing labored. The hectic color of fever stained his high cheekbones. Four different bags dripped an IV solution into his muscular right arm, which was taped to the bed. Another bag hung at the side of the bed, measuring the output of his kidneys.
Not a half-breed, Wolf had thought. A quarter, maybe. No more than that. But still, there was no doubting his heritage. His fingernails were light against the tanned skin of his fingers, where an Anglo’s nails would have been pinker. His thick, dark brown hair, so long it brushed his shoulders, was straight. There were those high cheekbones, the clear-cut lips, the high-bridged nose. He was the most handsome boy Wolf had ever seen.
Mary went up to the bed, all her attention focused on the boy who lay so ill and helpless on the snowy sheets. She laid her cool hand lightly against his forehead, then stroked it over his hair. “You’ll be all right,” she murmured. “I’ll make sure you are.”
He had lifted his heavy lids, struggling with the effort. For the first time Wolf saw the light hazel eyes, almost golden, and circled with a brown rim so dark it was almost black. Confused, the boy had focused first on Mary; then his gaze had wandered to Wolf, and belated alarm flared in his eyes. He tried to heave himself up, but he was too weak even to tug his taped arm free.
Wolf moved to the boy’s other side. “Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly. “You have pneumonia, and you’re ina hospital.” Then, guessing what lay at the bottom of the boy’s panic, he added, “We won’t let them take you.”
Those light eyes had rested on his face, and perhaps Wolf’s appearance had calmed him. Like a wild animal on guard, he slowly relaxed and drifted back to sleep.
Over the next week, the boy’s condition improved, and Mary swung into action. She was determined that the boy, who still had not given them a name, not be taken into state custody for even one day. She pulled strings, harangued people, even called on Joe to use his influence, and her tenacity worked. When the boy was released from the hospital, he went home with Wolf and Mary.
He had gradually become accustomed to them, though by no stretch of the imagination had he been friendly, or even trustful. He would answer their questions, in one word if possible, but he never actually talked with them. Mary hadn’t been discouraged. From the first, she simply treated the boy as if he was hers—and soon he was.
The boy who had always been alone was suddenly plunged into the middle of a large, volatile family. For the first time he had a roof over his head every night, a room all to himself, ample food in his belly. He had clothing hanging in the closet and new boots on his feet. He was still too weak to share in the chores everyone did, but Mary immediately began tutoring him to bring him up to Zane’s level academically, since the two boys were the same age, as near as they could tell. Chance took to the books like a starving pup to its mother’s teat, but in every other way he determinedly remained at arm’s length. Those shrewd, guarded eyes took note of every nuance of their family relationships, weighing what he saw now against what he had known before.
Finally he unbent enough to tell them that he was called Sooner. He didn’t have a real name.
Maris had looked at him blankly. “Sooner?”
His mouth had twisted, and he’d looked far too old for his fourteen years. “Yeah, like a mongrel dog.”
“No,” Wolf had said, because the name was a clue. “You know you’re part Indian. More than likely you were called Sooner because you were originally from Oklahoma—and that means you’re probably Cherokee.”
The boy merely looked at him, his expression guarded, but still something about him had lightened at the possibility that he hadn’t been likened to a dog of unknown heritage.
His relationships with everyone in the family were complicated. With Mary, he wanted to hold himself away, but he simply couldn’t. She mothered him the way she did the rest of her brood, and it terrified him even though he delighted in it, soaking up her loving concern. He was wary of Wolf, as if he expected the big man to turn on him with fists and boots. Wise in the ways of wild things, Wolf gradually gentled the boy the same way he did horses, letting him get accustomed, letting him realize he had nothing to fear, then offering respect and friendship and, finally, love.
Michael had already been away at college, but when he did come home he simply made room in his family circle for the newcomer. Sooner was relaxed with Mike from the start, sensing that quiet acceptance.
He got along with Josh, too, but Josh was so cheerful it was impossible not to get along with him. Josh took it on himself to be the one who taught Sooner how to handle the multitude of chores on a horse ranch. Josh was the one who taught him how to ride, though Josh was unarguably the worst horseman in the family. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t good, but the others were better, especially Maris. Josh didn’t care, because his heart was wrapped up in planes just the way Joe’s had been, so perhaps he had been more patient with Sooner’s mistakes than anyone else would have been.
Maris was like Mary. She had taken one look at the boy and immediately taken him under her fiercely protective wing, never mind that Sooner was easily twice her size. At twelve, Maris had been not quite five feet tall and weighed all of seventy-four pounds. It didn’t matter to her; Sooner became hers the same way her older brothers were hers. She chattered to him, teased him, played jokes on him—in short, drove him crazy, the way little sisters were supposed to do. Sooner hadn’t had any idea how to handle the way she treated him, any more than he had with Mary. Sometimes he had watched Maris as if she was a ticking time bomb, but it was Maris who won his first smile with her teasing. It was Maris who actually got him to enter the family conversations: slowly, at first, as he learned how families worked, how the give-and-take of talking melded them together, then with more ease. Maris could still tease him into a rage, or coax a laugh out of him, faster than anyone else. For a while Wolf had wondered if the two might become romantically interested in each other as they grew older, but it hadn’t happened. It was a testament to how fully Sooner had become a part of their family; to both of them, they were simply brother and sister.
Things with Zane had been complicated, though.
Zane was, in his own way, as guarded as Sooner. Wolf knew warriors, having been one himself, and what he saw in his youngest son was almost frightening. Zane was quiet, intense, watchful. He moved like a cat, gracefully, soundlessly. Wolf had trained all his children, including Maris, in self-defense, but with Zane it was something more. The boy took to it with the ease of someone putting
on a well-worn shoe; it was as if it had been made for him. When it came to marksmanship, he had the eye of a sniper, and the deadly patience.
Zane had the instinct of a warrior: to protect. He was immediately on guard against this intruder into the sanctity of his family’s home turf.
He hadn’t been nasty to Sooner. He hadn’t made fun of him or been overtly unfriendly, which wasn’t in his nature. Rather, he had held himself away from the newcomer, not rejecting, but certainly not welcoming, either. But because they were the same age, Zane’s acceptance was the most crucial, and Sooner had reacted to Zane’s coolness by adopting the same tactics. They had ignored each other.
While the kids were working out their relationships, Wolf and Mary had been pushing hard to legally adopt Sooner. They had asked him if that was what he wanted and, typically, he had responded with a shrug and an expressionless, “Sure.” Taking that for the impassioned plea it was, Mary redoubled her efforts to get the adoption pushed through.
As things worked out, they got the word that the adoption could go forward on the same day Zane and Sooner settled things between them.
The dust was what had caught Wolf’s attention.
At first he hadn’t thought anything of it, because when he glanced over he saw Maris sitting on the top rail of the fence, calmly watching the commotion. Figuring one of the horses was rolling in the dirt, Wolf went back to work. Two seconds later, however, his sharp ears caught the sound of grunts and what sounded suspiciously like blows.
He walked across the yard to the other corral. Zane and Sooner had gotten into the corner, where they couldn’t be seen from the house, and were ferociously battering each other. Wolf saw at once that both boys, despite the force of their blows, were restraining themselves to the more conventional fisticuffs rather than the faster, nastier ways he’d also taught them. He leaned his arms on the top rail beside Maris. “What’s this about?”
“They’re fighting it out,” she said matter-of-factly, without taking her eyes from the action.
Josh soon joined them at the fence, and they watched the battle. Zane and Sooner were both tall, muscular boys, very strong for their ages. They stood toe to toe, taking turns driving their fists into each other’s faces. When one of them got knocked down, he got to his feet and waded back into the fray. They were almost eerily silent, except for the involuntary grunts and the sounds of hard fists hitting flesh.
Mary saw them standing at the fence and came out to investigate. She stood beside Wolf and slipped her small hand into his. He felt her flinch every time a blow landed, but when he looked at her, he saw that she was wearing her prim schoolteacher’s expression, and he knew that Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie was about to call the class to order.
She gave it five minutes. Evidently deciding this could go on for hours, and that both boys were too stubborn to give in, she settled the matter herself. In her crisp, clear teaching voice she called out, “All right, boys, let’s get this wrapped up. Supper will be on the table in ten minutes.” Then she calmly walked back to the house, fully confident that she had brought detente to the corral.
She had, too. She had reduced the fight to the level of a chore or a project, given them a time limit and a reason for ending it.
Both boys’ eyes had flickered to that slight retreating figure with the ramrod spine. Then Zane had turned to Sooner, the coolness of his blue gaze somewhat marred by the swelling of his eyes. “One more,” he said grimly, and slammed his fist into Sooner’s face.
Sooner picked himself up off the dirt, squared up again and returned the favor.
Zane got up, slapped the dirt from his clothes and held out his hand. Sooner gripped it, though they had both winced at the pain in their knuckles. They shook hands, eyed each other as equals, then returned to the house to clean up. After all, supper was almost on the table.
At supper, Mary told Sooner that the adoption had been given the green light. His pale hazel eyes had glittered in his battered face, but he hadn’t said anything.
“You’re a Mackenzie now,” Maris had pronounced with great satisfaction. “You’ll have to have a real name, so choose one.”
It hadn’t occurred to her that choosing a name might require some thought, but as it happened, Sooner had looked around the table at the family that pure blind luck had sent him, and a wry little smile twisted up one side of his bruised, swollen mouth. “Chance,” he said, and the unknown, unnamed boy became Chance Mackenzie.
Zane and Chance hadn’t become immediate best friends after the fight. What they had found, instead, was mutual respect, but friendship grew out of it. Over the years, they became so close that they could well have been born twins. There were other fights between them, but it was well known around Ruth, Wyoming, that if anyone decided to take on either of the boys, he would find himself facing both of them. They could batter each other into the ground, but by God, no one else was going to.
They had entered the Navy together, Zane becoming a SEAL, while Chance had gone into Naval Intelligence. Chance had since left the Navy, though, and gone out on his own, while Zane was a SEAL team leader.
And that brought Wolf to the reason for his restlessness.
Zane.
There had been a lot of times in Zane’s career when he had been out of touch, when they hadn’t known where he was or what he was doing. Wolf hadn’t slept well then, either. He knew too much about the SEALs, having seen them in action in Vietnam during his tours of duty. They were the most highly trained and skilled of the special forces, their stamina and teamwork proven by grueling tests that broke lesser men. Zane was particularly well-suited for the work, but in the final analysis, the SEALs were still human. They could be killed. And because of the nature of their work, they were often in dangerous situations.
The SEAL training had merely accentuated the already existing facets of Zane’s nature. He had been honed to a perfect fighting machine, a warrior who was in top condition, but who used his brain more than his brawn. He was even more lethal and intense now, but he had learned to temper that deadliness with an easier manner, so that most people were unaware they were dealing with a man who could kill them in a dozen different ways with his bare hands. With that kind of knowledge and skill at his disposal, Zane had learned a calm control that kept him in command of himself. Of all Wolf’s offspring, Zane was the most capable of taking care of himself, but he was also the one in the most danger.
Where in hell was he?
There was a whisper of movement from the bed, and Wolf looked around as Mary slipped from between the sheets and joined him at the window, looping her arms around his hard, trim waist and nestling her head on his bare chest.
“Zane?” she asked quietly, in the darkness.
“Yeah.” No more explanation was needed.
“He’s all right,” she said with a mother’s confidence. “I’d know if he wasn’t.”
Wolf tipped her head up and kissed her, lightly at first, then with growing intensity. He turned her slight body more fully into his embrace and felt her quiver as she pressed to him, pushing her hips against his, cradling the rise of his male flesh against her softness. There had been passion between them from their first meeting, all those years ago, and time hadn’t taken it from them.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to bed, losing himself in the welcome and warmth of her soft body. Afterward, though, lying in the drowsy aftermath, he turned his face toward the window. Before sleep claimed him, the thought came again. Where was Zane?
Chapter 1
Zane Mackenzie wasn’t happy.
No one aboard the aircraft carrier USS Montgomery was happy; well, maybe the cooks were, but even that was iffy, because the men they were serving were sullen and defensive. The seamen weren’t happy, the radar men weren’t happy, the gunners weren’t happy, the Marines weren’t happy, the wing commander wasn’t happy, the pilots weren’t happy, the air boss wasn’t happy, the executive officer wasn’t happy, and Captain Udaka sure as he
ll wasn’t happy.
The combined unhappiness of the five thousand sailors on board the carrier didn’t begin to approach Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie’s level of unhappiness.
The captain outranked him. The executive officer outranked him. Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie addressed them with all the respect due their rank, but both men were uncomfortably aware that their asses were in a sling and their careers on the line. Actually, their careers were probably in the toilet. There wouldn’t be any court-martials, but neither would be there any more promotions, and they would be given the unpopular commands from now until they either retired or resigned, their choice depending on how clearly they could read the writing on the wall.
Captain Udaka’s broad, pleasant face was one that wore responsibility easily, but now his expression was set in lines of unhappy acceptance as he met the icy gaze of the lieutenant-commander. SEALs in general made the captain nervous; he didn’t quite trust them or the way they operated outside normal regulations. This one in particular made him seriously want to be somewhere—anywhere—else.
He had met Mackenzie before, when both he and Boyd, the XO, had been briefed on the security exercise. The SEAL team under Mackenzie’s command would try to breach the carrier’s security, probing for weaknesses that could be exploited by any of the myriad terrorist groups so common these days. It was a version of the exercises once conducted by the SEAL Team Six Red Cell, which had been so notorious and so far outside the regulations that it had been disbanded after seven years of operation. The concept, however, had lived on, in a more controlled manner. SEAL Team Six was a covert, counterterrorism unit, and one of the best ways to counter terrorism was to prevent it from happening in the first place, rather than reacting to it after people were dead. To this end, the security of naval installations and carrier battle groups was tested by the SEALs, who then recommended changes to correct the weaknesses they had discovered. There were always weaknesses, soft spots—the SEALs had never yet been completely thwarted, even though the base commanders and ships’ captains were always notified in advance.