At the Quietest Word

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Ricardo lay in the mud where the horse had tossed him and tried to ignore the cold rain slashing down on him. He still held his rifle securely in his hand, not that he had any live ammo for it. If he had to lie here much longer, he might use it as a club on someone—soon.

Just another day in Delta Force, he kept telling himself.

Except he wasn’t in The Unit anymore.

This was all Isobel’s fault. Not the leaving The Unit part, but all the mud and rain part.

Why don’t y’all come up to Montana? And, like naive chumps, they all had. When the great film star Isobel Manella called, everyone came—even her twin brother. Which somehow meant that he’d ended up crawling facedown through the near freezing prairie mud.

One of the stuntmen on her movie had driven the thirty miles from the shooting location, here in the wilds by the steep mountains of the Montana Front Range, to the nearest bar in some hole called Choteau. He’d gotten into a predictable brawl with the locals last night, and was sleeping it off with one arm in a cast and the other handcuffed to a hospital bed. Some Hollywood Joe-boy taking on a bar full of Montana ranchers. Not the brightest dude.

Her director had needed five-ten of lean Latino dude about the same moment the Shadow Force’s plane had landed…and he’d been volunteered.

The fake rain—that the water truck had clearly tapped directly from a glacial stream, maybe straight from a glacier itself—made the quagmire far colder than should be possible on a hot June day. If it didn’t stop pounding him deeper into the frigid mud soon, he was definitely going to have to hurt someone. Not Isobel, of course. Not only was she the movie’s star, but he’d long ago learned (probably while still in the womb) to never try to outsmart his twin.

Her skills as an empath had cut off every nefarious plan a twelve-minute-younger twin brother could come up with before it even hatched—they’d split midnight between them and she’d been lording the extra “day” over him ever since to explain her “natural superiority.”

:You look so cute.: Michelle’s voice bubbled into his brain. And there was his first target.

:Go to hell!: Telepathy had its uses; telling off Michelle Bowman was a good one.

:You wish. You do look seriously cute though, Manella. Great butt. Which is about all that’s showing above the mud.: She sent an emotion tag of :(So laughing.):—because no emotional tone passed over their link, just the words and timing. Over the last year, with her thoughts constantly rattling in whenever they chose, he’d learned to punctuate most of her sentences. She always chose the tease over the straight line, sarcasm over…most anything.

He pushed himself up just enough that he could see her standing close behind the director. Even mixed into the crowd of male and female ranch hands gathered to watch the movie being made on their property, Michelle still stood out. Five-ten of sleek auburn redhead in jeans, a flannel shirt, and blue cowgirl boots—because, of course, she was always dressed perfectly for any occasion. She offered him one of her electric smiles.

He let himself drop back down into the mud. Do not be thinking about that woman.

Michelle scowled at him, but since that was one of her natural states, he couldn’t begin to figure out why.

Besides, telling himself off didn’t help. And the cold mud wasn’t enough of a distraction. To a former Unit operator, this really was nothing. He’d take this any day over an Indonesian mangrove swamp crawling with eight kinds of nasties before you even started counting the critters that weren’t carrying guns.

He began belly-crawling forward per the script.

Someone grabbed his hand, and it took all of his strength to not reflexively take them down hard. He was supposed to be the battle-battered hero wounded in a Wild West ambush after all.

Isobel, wearing the wet look like perfection, helped him to his feet. She slung his muddy arm over her shoulders. At least they hadn’t dressed her in one of those white blouses that went transparent when wet. Izzy certainly had the figure for it and he appreciated that they hadn’t taken the cheap shot. It saved him having to beat the s**t out of the director.

“Remember to keep your head down. You look nothing like Javier,” she whispered as he limped out of the mud straight toward the camera.

“Right. I’m much more handsome.” But still, he wasn’t the newest hot-guy movie star and Javier was.

His own shirt, however, was paper-thin, torn in all the right places, and bloody—with more red leaking from the small bladder under his arm and trickling down his chest.

“I’ve got better pecs, too.”

Ricardo could feel Izzy’s half laugh where her arm was clutched around his waist, though of course she didn’t show it.

He used the butt of his lever-action Winchester 1873 rifle like a four-foot-long crutch as instructed. It was a crime to do such a thing to such a great old gun, but this was Hollywood recreating the Old West and he assumed they were too stupid to care.

They dragged forward until he was afraid they were going to walk square into the lens before the director yelled, “Cut.”

In moments, they were both swarmed by aides for this, that, and the other thing. All he needed was a dry towel and a fresh shirt, but instead he was pushed into a shower stall on a truck that appeared to be there just to provide shower stalls.

Fresh clothes and towels were waiting for him by the time he was clean.

As he stepped back out, some damn fool tried tackling his hair with a blow dryer on a long extension cord. He waved the kid off, half hoping he’d go electrocute himself in one of the many wet spots left over from the scene shoot. But it wasn’t going to happen, because there was some other chick tending the cord to make sure it stayed dry and no one tripped on it. Behind her there was—

Isobel was looking dry and perfect as she met him outside the trailer and led him over toward an actual chuck wagon, complete with wooden wagon wheels and a red-and-white checked canopy. Someone was already pulling a jacket on over her shoulders. It wasn’t hers—some rawhide thing that maybe was appropriate for a gunslinging woman in the Wild West—so probably for her next scene. She shrugged to settle it into place with an elegant gesture.

The food was anything but authentic, and it smelled seriously good. The chuck wagon must be part of the ranch location rather than the movie. He hadn’t had a chance to look the place over yet, some fancy-ass dude-ranch horse spread.

He did grab a spare towel while they waited in line and began wiping down the rifle that he’d also rinsed in the shower. It was habit. A Unit operator’s life often depended on the condition of his weapon, so it always got second priority, after any dangerously bleeding wounds. Minor injuries, food, sleep…all those came third.

“You really need all these people?”

“Do you pay for more support staff or do you shoot for more days? On big films, bodies are cheaper than time.” Isobel went for the healthy stuff, of course. Just to make her whimper, he loaded his plate with sausage buried in peppers and onions, a big side of potato salad and chips, then threw a couple of fried chicken breasts aboard for good measure (a favorite of both of theirs).

“More bodies are especially cheaper if they’ve got your big sister the star on the payroll,” Michelle appeared by Isobel and fingered the rawhide. “I want your jacket.”

“Wrong shape for you, Michelle.” The two of them traced all the way back to being college roommates. The jacket had definitely been custom-made to show off his twin’s curvy figure rather than Michelle’s sleek one.

“I want it anyway.”

Ricardo imagined what Michelle would look like in a similar rawhide jacket…and nothing else. She also had really good arms. Maybe sleeveless. Should buy her a vest like that, dude. And…maybe he should go soak his head back in the ice-cold mud puddle.

Instead he took a bite of chicken, then set his plate down while waiting for a shot at the brownies. He chewed and focused on drying off the Winchester. If he could scare up a cleaning kit, he’d do it properly rather than trusting some hack of a prop guy.

“I always like a soldier who takes care of his weapon,” someone handed him a BoreSnake kit as if reading his mind.

Ricardo almost dropped the long Winchester, then snapped to attention out of habit. “Colonel Gibson?” He nearly spit his lunch on his former commander.

The man who never smiled, still didn’t. “Master Sergeant Manella.”

“What the hell are you doing here, sir?” He swallowed hard and nearly choked himself. He didn’t know why he bothered asking. Colonel Gibson was the commander of Delta Force and was probably the best soldier who’d served in The Unit’s spectacular forty-year history. He also had a habit of silently appearing at the most unlikely of times.

“My wife and I are retiring here,” he nodded in the direction of the main ranch that lay up against the break of the Montana Front Range.

“You’re married?” He’d never imagined the colonel married; he was such a pure hard-ass soldier that it was hard to imagine him as anything else.

At that the man almost did smile. “And I thought my retirement would be the big news.”

“No sir.” Ricardo shook off his surprise. “That’s simply unimaginable. I find that to be way past the friendly lines of mere surprise. So you being married is the only thing that fits within my personal range of what I would classify as surprising.”

Michelle—who’d been purposely blocking the brownies just to piss him off—looked at them in wonder. “I don’t know who you are, Colonel. But you just made him string together more words than he’s used since birth.”

“Like you’d know,” Ricardo really didn’t need her sassing his former commander.

“She wouldn’t, but I would.” Isobel held out a hand and Gibson shook it firmly. “She’s right as usual, Ricardo, and you know it. A pleasure to see you again, Colonel.”

“Again?” Ricardo hadn’t even known that his former commander knew about his twin, never mind actually knew her.

“Let’s have lunch and talk,” Colonel Gibson nodded to where the other three members of their team were already eating.

:This is gonna be fun,: Michelle teased him.

:Careful or I’ll make you swim in the mud.:

:You first. Oh, wait. You already wallowed like a pig facedown in slop. Besides, if you try, I’ll sic your big sister on you and then you’ll be sorry.:

Which almost made it tempting to try.

He wished he could mentally shut her out, but he hadn’t found a way yet.

Ever since he’d busted through whatever barrier had spared him from her internal voice for most of his life, she could project her words inside his head and he couldn’t do a thing about it. His only vengeance was that he could do the same—if only he could ever think of what to say to her. There were times he wished he could scream at her to stop, but it would sound just as atonal as everything else they said to each other this way. He couldn’t even sleep through it if she spoke “at” him in the middle of the night.

A flunky came up to take the rifle from him, but scampered away when Ricardo snarled at him. He pocketed the cleaning kit, tucked the rifle in the crook of his arm, and picked up his plate. Together they threaded their way through the crowded fold-up tables and chairs over to the one wooden picnic table where the rest of Shadow Force: Psi had gathered.

There were six members of Shadow Force, the only six in the world—that they knew of—with psi powers.

Isobel was both movie star and empath.

Michelle’s stepbrother Anton, an Army helo pilot who towered as big as a Montana grizzly, could “see” remote places.

Just a couple weeks ago they’d picked up another pilot—Jesse was a Texas cowboy and a Night Stalker helo pilot who stood almost as tall as Anton—and his now-fiancée Delta operator, the little slip of a blonde Hannah Tucker. Together they did strange things with sound projection.

Talk about a motley crew: movie star, four ex-soldiers including himself, and whatever the hell Michelle was.

Just as he sat, he realized that Michelle’s ploy had worked—he’d forgotten to grab a damn brownie. He knew exactly what she was.

Total pain in the ass. Ricardo nodded to himself. Yep! Dead on.