by Ronie Kendig
She shifted, hand going to her neck.
Stricken, he sagged onto the mattress. “I . . . I’m sorry.” Shame shoved his gaze down. He didn’t want to see how he’d hurt her.
“Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay.”
He reached for her—and she came. He pulled her spine to his chest and tightened his arms around her. Crushed her close. Anything so he didn’t pummel her with apologies and let her see his brokenness, the terror that had claimed his soul.
***
This was not how she’d imagined being in bed with Leif Metcalfe. He hauled her against his bare chest and wrapped his hold around her. Her heart writhed at the restriction, the familiar sense of panic from when she’d lived with Hristoff. But this was Leif, and his touch was strangely calming.
Ragged breaths came hot against her cheek. They were frantic, exhausted. Lying there, she recalled his pale blue eyes. Wild and dark, they’d been hostage to whatever nightmare had him shouting in the night.
A clock in the living room ticked off the seconds, droning into minutes. She didn’t dare push him, and she had no idea what to say. What surged to life in his dreams obviously tormented him. And he needed time to emerge from that. Reset.
She smoothed a hand along his arm, sensing his frenetic heart rate slowly even out and his trembling quiet.
“I could’ve killed you,” he breathed against her ear.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she taunted. The violence of his actions had been real and startling. But she couldn’t voice that, not after the agony in his tone when he apologized.
His arms were a perfect cradle hold. This wasn’t about passion, but security. About being there for each other, being a refuge. When Taissia had been in danger with Hristoff, Leif had come. Now she wanted to do that for him. Even though he was the most capable operator she’d ever met. From the start, his lack of fear warned her that he’d been through a lot. Only an experienced person rushed into an unknown situation without hesitation. But the demons hiding in the dark passages of his memories . . . those had them both terrified. Leif was skilled. Unafraid. What did it take to make a man like him quake?
Silence cocooned them as night lumbered on, defying dawn to break its power. Much as Leif had, apparently, been fighting whatever specter occupied his dreams.
“You didn’t call,” he said, breaking the quiet around them.
“I couldn’t.” When he inquired about her whereabouts, why she hadn’t responded to his calls or texts, she would have to lie.
No. She couldn’t do that again. Not after the last time, the way he’d looked at her. The anger and hurt that wreaked havoc with her ill intentions. She must find a way to explain without compromising.
Or she could just tell him. But then Director Iliescu would be livid.
Leif’s hand twitched, his hold weak yet steadfast. His breathing soft. He’d probably fallen asleep. Relaxing, she let herself drift off, too.
Amid a strange chill, her mind sprang awake in time to feel Leif vacating the bed. He plodded to the bathroom. It was a nice view. His v-shaped, well-muscled torso, the black workout shorts, his long, tanned legs. She nearly laughed at the irony that she’d slept with him without sleeping with him.
Iskra sank into the warmth of the bed, surprised she wasn’t bothered by being here with him. That she’d lain in his arms and didn’t find it constricting or repulsive as she had with Hristoff. This was beautiful. This was . . . hope. She snuggled into it and drifted off.
The sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen drew her back to consciousness. Sunlight poked through the window over the sink, amplifying his beautiful physique.
Startled that she’d fallen back asleep, she scooted off the bed and made her way over to him. Around a yawn, she eyed his still-damp hair. His scruff was gone.
“Eggs?” he offered as she slipped onto a barstool at the island.
“Please.” Chin on the heel of her hand, she watched him, still drowsy. A little drunk on being here in a domestic, casual sort of way instead of the intense live-or-die way.
Last night had surprised her. What if it had been Taissia who’d awakened him? More than once, Iskra had imagined being married to Leif. With his training and work, she had to respect the warrior in him. Just as he’d respected her.
But . . . did he?
Unease sifted the quiet of the flat. He clearly knew she’d been somewhere. But he wasn’t pushing it. At least not yet.
“Taissia will be glad you’re home.” He moved the eggs onto a plate and slid it over to her with a fork.
“Mm, I can’t wait to see her.” She made quick work of the eggs. “What about you? Are you glad I’m home?”
Amusement crinkled the edges of his eyes. “Home?” He chucked the pan in the deep sink, then pivoted and palmed the island. Stared at her. “Why did you come here?”
She set down her fork, surprised at the quick turn in conversation. But not really. This was Leif. He never played dumb. “Last night, I called your brother as promised to let them know I was back. Canyon was still up, said to leave Taissia for the night. He mentioned you’d been there. That you asked about me.”
Leif snorted. She could almost read the “so if Canyon hadn’t said to come here, you wouldn’t have” in his expression.
“Your brother didn’t tell me to come, but I saw the number of times you had called—and didn’t leave a message.” She tried to make a point, but his face remained impassive. “So I . . . came over.”
“Where have you been?”
That tone went sideways through her. “You sound like Hristoff.” She hated the words as soon as they left her mouth. Teeth gritted, she swallowed.
“This isn’t about me controlling you,” he bit out. “It’s about what I suspect.”
“Jealous lover already?”
He scowled. “How long do we dance around this?”
“Why am I getting the third degree?” Hurt plucked at her that he wasn’t glad she was here. That she’d stayed with him last night, slept in his arms. That she’d allowed him to keep her in bed. He had no idea how hard that had been. How in retrospect it so nearly paralleled being held down by Hristoff. But his touch, her desire for him, had settled that panic. “Why don’t we talk about you shouting and screaming in your sleep?”
Leif pitched his plate in the sink and stalked out of the kitchen.
She let him. Hugged herself, arms resting on the island, and followed him with her gaze. He vanished into the closet.
She expelled a painful breath. After what she’d been through with Hristoff, she had no inclination to pander to a man. To placate his moodiness. But that wasn’t Leif. He wasn’t moody. He was intense yet funny. But something was . . . off.
When he reappeared, he had on jeans and was threading his arms through a black T-shirt. He grabbed his wallet and phone, stuffing them into his pockets before plodding to her on still-bare feet. He planted one hand on the island, the other on the back of her chair, and leaned in close.
And God help her, she felt herself collapsing beneath those sparkling blue eyes.
“I’m not trying to control you.” His gaze searched her face. “Tell me you know that.”
She nodded. “I also know you want answers from me but aren’t willing to give them yourself.”
He clenched his teeth, his jaw muscle bouncing. Then a nearly imperceptible nod. “Two operatives make for an interesting relationship. Both with secrets we can’t or don’t want to uncan.”
“You know I can’t tell you where I was.”
“So you are working for Dru.”
“But you can tell me where you were,” she challenged, speaking of his trip to who-knew-where.
“No.” He drew in a hard breath and snorted it out. “I . . . can’t figure out what’s in me, so I can’t explain it.”
She shifted on the barstool, peering up at him. “Let me help. I want to be there for you.”
He cupped her face and tilted it forward. Kissed her crown. “S
oon.” He snatched his keys. “My brother asked me to go to the range with him. You ready to see Taissia?”
Curse the man—he always knew how to negotiate his way out of conversations he didn’t like.
“Yes. But when you’re ready, so am I.”
CHAPTER 14
FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA
After clearing the main gate and security checkpoint of the building, Adam strolled up the main hall to the commander’s office. It was good to be working with Peyton again, but he felt like he was walking on eggshells. “We wasted half a day waiting for this guy to call.”
“At least he called.” Peyton strode to the receptionist’s desk and handed over her creds. “We’re here to see Captain Brigham.”
Hair in a slicked-back bun and her ACUs crisp, the airman nodded. “Have a seat. I’ll notify him you’re here.”
Adam turned toward a row of butt-numbing plastic chairs and wanted to groan.
“Right here,” a man said, his voice the nasally kind that made Adam want to punch him. He extended a hand. “Lieutenant Devine? And . . . ?”
Seemed he’d deliberately forgotten Adam’s name. Usually happened when guys saw Pete.
“This is Staff Sergeant Adam Lawe,” Peyton introduced. “Special Forces, multiple tours, plenty of medals to cover that thick chest of his.”
Adam stilled at the way she rattled off his record. What was that about?
“Right.” Withdrawing his wary glance, Brigham nodded over his shoulder. “Come on back. There’s a conference room we can use.” He led them down a hall, banked right, then angled through a door. He took a seat at the head of the table. “So, you have questions about Gilliam?”
Peyton lowered herself onto a brown vinyl chair and crossed her legs. “We do,” she said sweetly. “You may have heard he’s AWOL.”
“I looked up his record when I was made aware of your appointment.”
“We’re trying to establish a history for him. We were told you were his unit commander when he was last in Afghanistan.”
Brigham, hair trimmed close on the sides and back but not quite a high-and-tight, scratched his head. “I’m sorry, but isn’t this the job of the MPs or CID? I’ve already talked with them.”
“Does it bother you to answer our questions, Captain Brigham?” Peyton asked, patronizingly calm.
“It bothers me to take time from my duties,” he said with a nervous laugh.
A glint appeared in Pete’s expression. “Is your duty not to your fellow soldiers and those under your authority, as well as your country?”
“Yes, but”—he shrugged—“soldiers go AWOL every day, wracked with guilt or struggling with PTSD.”
“He had PTSD?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Brigham said, obviously aware of the legal ramifications of asserting a soldier’s state of mind and what that could do to a soldier’s chance for advancement.
She cocked her head. “Did Carsen have a hard time when he returned from his last tour of duty?”
“Sure.” Another shrug. “We all do. It’s hard to come home and find things different. Life goes on here while we’re out there fighting for freedom and the innocent. You return, and your friends have new friends and jobs are hard to find—where do sharpshooter skills fit in with society?”
“Sir,” Peyton said leaning forward, “you saw our credentials, proof that we’re not with CID. Sergeant Lawe and I have no interest or desire to prosecute or otherwise charge Sergeant Gilliam. Our intent, plain and simple, is to find him. Maybe find out why he disappeared.”
The granite expression of the captain never faltered, but something in his eyes did—and yet still forbade him from opening up.
Adam had dealt with things like this many times in the field, convincing privates to cough up intel that could get their buddies in trouble. “Look.” He shifted to the edge of his seat. “I get not wanting to rat on one of your own, but that’s not what we’re after. We have cause to believe Carsen may be in trouble or caught up in something he probably wouldn’t do on a normal day. That’s what we want to stop. I’ve been in the field, seen things nobody wants to talk about. Done things most would never admit. I’d do anything for my team, anything to protect them. Even if it meant protecting them from themselves.” He narrowed his left eye. “I think you’re the same breed of soldier.”
Brigham sighed. “I swear, if you turn what I saw against him or me—”
“Give it to us,” Adam said. “It stays between us.”
Brigham looked at the door and swallowed. “Carsen did come back . . . different.”
“Moody, irritable?” Peyton offered.
“Yeah.” Brigham hesitated. “No. I don’t know. He was irritable, but it seemed . . . He wouldn’t talk. Even his AARs were off.”
“Off?” Adam repeated. “How’s that?”
“Incomplete, vague.” The captain straightened and swiped his lower lip. “It was like he was afraid of telling the truth.”
“Did something happen out there that he wanted to protect or hide from superiors?”
“That’s just it, no. Nothing.” Brigham tapped the table. “I mean, what happens out there, we want it to stay there, but he didn’t do anything worth getting run up the flagpole over. But when I applied pressure on him to fix the report, he got mad. Told me to back off—indirectly, of course.”
“Just one report?” Adam pressed. “Or on several?”
“A few,” Brigham admitted.
“Was he always sloppy with reports?”
“Never. He was by the book, and one of the best I’ve worked with. And he had it together, ya know?”
“When did he change?” Peyton asked.
“I don’t . . .” He seemed to be searching for information. “Maybe two, three weeks before we came back.”
“Was there a trigger?”
“No.”
Adam nodded. “Can you tell us which mission the vague reports started with?”
Brigham bounced his shoulders. “Not off the top of my head. I could research it and let you know.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Peyton said with that killer smile. “Anything else you can think of about Carsen? Anything he mentioned that upset him—”
“No.”
“—or worried him? Made him not want to come back?”
“No.” He stilled. Frowned. “I haven’t talked to him since we came back because I got reassigned here, but last I saw him, he was worrying about his sister.”
“Sienna?” Peyton supplied.
“Yeah.” Brigham sniffed. “Carsen was a gruff son of a gun, so you’d never expect him to have a hot sister like that.”
“She’s a cultural support team member, a valuable member of the military,” Peyton stated flatly.
Brigham blanched and donned a contrite expression. “Right. Of course.” He hunched his shoulders. “Sorry.”
“If you recall anything else, Captain,” Adam said, standing, “you have our contact information. We’d appreciate your call.”
“Of course.” He shook their hands. “I hope you find him and he’s okay. Nothing worse than finding out someone you worked with became one of the twenty-two.”
Adam tensed. It was no secret that every day twenty-two veterans committed suicide. “You think he was that bad off?”
Brigham hesitated. “I don’t know. None of us ever knows, do we?”
***
“I thought you were going to take a bead on him,” Adam teased as they left the base in her crossover.
“In my mind, I was,” Peyton admitted as she pulled into traffic, still furious over how hard her fellow cultural support team members had to work to prove themselves and not get treated like meat. “He mentioned nothing about Sienna’s abilities, only her looks.”
“Cad.”
“You mocking me?” She whipped a glower at him.
“Never.” A grin peeked from his thick beard. “Maybe a little.”
Her pulse thrashed. “So you thin
k it’s okay for him—”
“No!” He grunted. “Not at all.” He hooked his arm over the back of her seat and gripped the headrest. “I hope you know that I appreciate you for more than your gorgeous looks.”
Did he seriously—
“I mean, if you had any.” He flinched. “See? This is why I don’t do politics. If I were in government, I’d accidently sign over the country somehow.”
The man was hopeless. “It’s not political, it’s politically correct.”
Adam threw up his hands. “I can’t even get that right.”
Okay, she had to admit she felt bad for him. He tried. Honest to God, he did. But he was so immutably alpha and, well, male. Peyton tried to hide her smile, knowing he’d seize on it. She shifted her attention to traffic, to Brigham’s information.
She wanted to get things written down before she forgot what he’d said, but traffic was a bear, as usual, heading onto the Beltway. “Mind if we grab dinner to avoid rush hour and so I can write things down while they’re fresh?”
“I’m always up for food.”
That was one thing they’d always done well—dinner. She wasn’t one of those ounce-of-dressing-and-pile-of-leaves girls. Give her pizza, burgers, and cheesecake all day, every day. She could put away a steak with the best of the guys.
Seated in a booth near the back of Mozzarella’s, her favorite American grill, she tugged a small notebook from her purse and started jotting notes. The waiter took their orders and soon brought glasses of water and a basket of bread for them while they waited for their meals.
“I’m surprised you defended Sienna,” he said quietly.
Peyton hesitated, pen poised over the bullet journal. “I didn’t defend Sienna. I defended CSTs.” She dropped the pen and sat up straight, pushing her bangs from her face. “Go to any social media site or website that talks about our role in the combat theater and check the comments. The majority are male veterans belittling our work, questioning our medals—saying they aren’t earned—and disputing that we’re heroes, too.”
For several long seconds, he studied her, then glanced down at the table. “It’s wrong.” He scratched his beard, looking abashed. “I was one of them. Until I met you.”