by Kaylea Cross
Spencer sobered. “No, seriously. I owe her.”
“For?”
A smile tugged at his friend’s lips. “I’m headed to Maine tomorrow.”
Dec couldn’t fathom why. “Why, what’s up there?”
“Staying at a cabin with my lady.”
Now it was Dec’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “You off the market again?”
“Was never on it.” A big smile spread across his face. “Tara asked me to spend Christmas with her, just the two of us.”
Dec’s eyes widened in shock as he gripped his buddy’s shoulder. Spencer and his wife had been on the verge of divorce for a few years now, though Spencer hadn’t wanted it and still loved Tara as much as ever. But clearly something big had changed since Dec had last talked to him. “That’s awesome, Spence. I’m happy for you. What happened?”
“It was Bryn’s doing.”
Dec stared at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“She wrote Tara a letter about a year ago, pleading my case. Apparently they wrote back and forth for a while, and Tara finally called to talk to her early this fall. Whatever Bryn said, it made the difference, because Tara phoned me out of the blue a few weeks back. She says she misses me, and is willing to try and work things out.”
Dec shook his head, floored. He knew Bryn cared about Spencer, that they’d bonded during the harrowing mission to rescue Bryn and her father. But he hadn’t realized the lengths his wife was willing to go to in order to help his buddy. Damn, he loved her big heart.
“I didn’t know.” What other secrets had his wife kept from him?
Spencer shrugged. “I just found out about it myself.” He shifted his stance, leaning more weight on the cane. “You got time for a beer before you head out?”
Dec glanced at his watch. “Yeah, man. Come on.” He clapped his buddy on the back, grabbed his gear and walked with him into the hangar. When everything was squared away, they drove off base to a little bar and caught up over a cold one.
Just as they were finishing up, Dec’s cell rang. He was surprised to see Luke’s number. “Hutch. What’s up?”
“You still OCONUS?”
“No, Virginia Beach. We got in a few days early, so I’m actually catching a flight to Charleston in a bit. Don’t tell Bryn, I wanna surprise her.”
“Roger that. Listen, just wondered if you’ve been involved with anything pertaining to Said Kader.”
Dec stilled at the name, thinking of the most recent failed op to capture him in Syria. He couldn’t tell Luke about any of that, however, because the mission was classified and Luke was technically not with the Agency anymore, even with his security clearance.
“I know about him. Why?” They weren’t on a secure line, either. Luke had to be damn concerned to talk about this so openly without one.
“I’m hearing from my contacts that he was killed in Idlib last week in a drone strike. You hear the same?”
Dec straightened up on the barstool, starting to get a little concerned himself. Either Luke’s contact had bad intel, or he’d straight up lied. Both possibilities bothered Dec.
“No. In fact, that’s the opposite of what I heard.” They wouldn’t have sent Dec and his boys to capture Kader if they thought he might be dead. The HVT was missing, and no one knew where the hell he was hiding now.
“Was afraid of that,” he muttered.
“What’s this about?” Dec asked, frowning.
Luke paused. “Someone sent Sam an encrypted list of accounts and transactions. All offshore. Whoever it is went to a lot of trouble to hide the money. We don’t know who sent the intel or why. But there are pictures attached of an Agency officer I know, and Kader’s in the background. I’m starting to think they were working together. At least when that picture was taken.”
That didn’t sound good, and it was news to Dec. They hadn’t been told anything like this in any of the briefings on Kader. “When did she get the intel?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“You talk to Jamie about it?” Luke’s former boss.
“Not yet. He’s away with his family for the holidays. I don’t want to reach out until I’ve got a solid handle on what this is. When are you due in?”
“Oh-two-hundred or so.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow. I’ll leave the porch light on for you.”
Chapter Six
Something was up. And he didn’t like being left in the dark, especially where his twin was concerned.
Rhys waited until everyone else had gone upstairs to bed before cornering his brother in Luke’s study with Sam. Ben looked up at him from next to her, the two of them huddled together looking at something on her laptop.
First, Luke had disappeared in here to make a call right after the baby announcement, then Ben and Sam had followed a while later. Rhys intended to find out what it meant. “What’s going on?” he asked his twin.
“We don’t really know, to be honest,” Ben said. “Trying to unravel a mystery.”
“What mystery?” Rhys walked over and stood behind them so he could see the laptop screen while Sam ran him through everything.
The more Sam said, the less Rhys liked it. Whatever this was, it involved an active duty paramilitary officer, and one of the country’s most wanted terrorists. And someone had involved Sam, which made this personal.
She finished explaining everything with a little shrug. “If we find out who’s been funneling money into these offshore accounts, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“What about the note and the key?”
“Best we can tell it’s coordinates, though we’re not sure what the sender was trying to point us to. The area’s an industrial-type place. Lots of warehouses, a few businesses and a couple storage places. The key could be for any of them, we’ll have to keep digging on that one. Most places are closed for the holidays now. We can start calling around on the twenty-seventh if we don’t find anything before then.”
“Why didn’t you report it to the Agency?”
“Luke is holding off on contacting Jamie until we have more information. And also, because of who we’re dealing with, Luke thinks there might be some kind of Agency corruption involved. We won’t report the evidence until we figure out what’s really going on here,” Ben said.
He absorbed that in silence, agreed that some caution was needed until they had more intel. At least he was satisfied that there was no imminent threat here. Yet. He relaxed his posture. “You reached out to any personal contacts about this yet?”
“Luke did the other night, to a guy not with the Agency anymore,” Ben answered, chewing away on his Big Red. “He was told Kader was killed in a drone strike last week, but Dec says no. Anyway, we’ll all feel better when we start to get some answers.”
Him too. Sam was his sister now, and if this whole thing put her in any sort of danger, he would do whatever he could to help keep her safe. “Just tell me what you need done, and I’ll do it.”
Sam smiled at him warmly. “You’re so sweet, thank you.”
Rhys grunted, the back of his neck warming. Sweet was only something Nev and his mother said about him.
Ben tipped back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and grinned at him. “You’re gonna be a father. That’s wicked awesome. I still can’t believe it.”
A smile tugged at Rhys’s own lips. “Yeah, I know.”
“How’s Nev feeling, anyway?” Sam asked, fingers poised over the keyboard. “Has she been sick?”
“Not too bad, and she’s getting better every day. First trimester’s over in another few days.” Then they could both breathe a bit easier.
Though when he thought about having a newborn handed to him, it made him break out in a cold sweat. He knew shit about caring for a baby, and prayed he had some kind of paternal instinct hidden away inside that would magically spring to life when the baby came.
Ben nodded at the door. “Well, what are you standing here talking to us fo
r? Better go up and take care of her.”
Rhys didn’t mind the dismissal, because upstairs with Nev was exactly where he wanted to be now that he wasn’t worried about a dangerous situation going down here. “See you in the morning.”
The house was still and quiet as he made his way up the carpeted runner on the curved staircase to the second floor. The guest room he and Nev were staying in was at the far end of the upstairs hall. Emily had given them the king-size bed, which he appreciated because he and Nev were both tall, and squeezing into a double or even a Queen bed made for an uncomfortable sleeping situation.
A strip of light spread out from under the door onto the hardwood floor of the hallway. He opened the door a few inches, checking to see if she was asleep. Nev was sitting up against the headboard of the four-poster, canopied bed, reading.
She set her e-reader down on her lap and smiled. “Hi.”
He came in and shut the door, feeling totally out of place in the soft yellow, feminine room. “Hi.”
God, she was so beautiful amongst all that pale yellow bedding, her arms and upper chest bare beneath the straps of her nightie. Her dark brown hair fell all loose and shiny in waves around her shoulders, and her sapphire blue eyes were filled with warmth as she watched him. “Feeling okay?”
“Yeah, just tired. You?”
His eyebrows went up. “Me? I’m fine.” Better now that he knew what was going on with Ben and Sam. His twin might irritate the shit out of him sometimes, but there was nothing Rhys wouldn’t do for him and Sam.
Nev gave a low chuckle as he approached the bed. “That was a whole lotta emoting all at once for you earlier. Bet you’re as tired as I am now.”
He half-smirked and started stripping, laying his clothes over the dainty chair in the corner of the room. It looked like it would break if he tried to sit on it. “I’m getting better.”
“You were already pretty great to begin with,” she told him, her gaze sweeping over the length of his naked body and back up again. “I’ve got no complaints.”
When she looked at him like that, with pride and pure female admiration, his ego swelled. Along with another part of him that needed to chill the hell out right now. She was three months pregnant, and tired.
“Glad to hear it.” He climbed in next to her, froze when the antique bedframe gave an ominous creek. Shit, he didn’t want to break the bed.
Nev laughed softly and sat up to wind her arms around him from behind, her palms pressed to his bare chest. The feel of her breasts pressed to his back sent more blood rushing to his groin. “Now that would be funny, trying to explain how the bed just broke without us even doing anything.”
He huffed out a laugh and gingerly stretched out next to her on his back. The wooden frame creaked, but there was no popping or cracking. “I’ll just lie here like this and not move all night.”
“Mmm, that gives me so many tantalizing ideas,” she murmured, rolling on top of him.
He grabbed her hips to still her when the bed groaned, freezing in place. Afraid to breathe. This bed had probably been in Emily’s family for over a hundred years. He didn’t want to be the one to wreck it.
Nev’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, then she came up on her elbows to peer down at him, her gorgeous hair falling around them like a soft curtain. “Hi.” She traced a finger down the side of his cheek.
He was rock hard against her abdomen as he smoothed a hand up the silky length of her back, then down to the cool satin covering her beautifully curved ass. Raising his head from the pillow, his heart swelled when she met him partway, her lips melding with his. She sighed and nestled her head against his shoulder, smothering a yawn.
Reminded of how tired she was, Rhys ignored his hopeful erection and carefully rolled her to her side, turning her away from him before pulling her in tight to his body. He ran his left hand over the length of her arm, then down to cradle the tiny swell of her abdomen where their baby was curled up deep inside her. Man, it still floored him.
“Ben was pretty excited, huh?” she murmured. “So sweet.”
“Yeah.” Little punk had always been the more emotional and demonstrative of the two of them. Rhys actually liked that about him. “He’s going to be an awesome uncle.”
She laid her hand on top of his, her fingers caressing the back of it. “And you’re going to be a fantastic dad.”
“Hope so.”
She angled her face toward him. “What’s that mean? You’re gonna be great.”
He made a sound of agreement, but deep down he worried about that. She knew his background. Though they were twins, he’d been kind of a father figure to Ben in a way, but he hadn’t known what a proper parental figure was until their adopted parents stepped in.
For their formative years, he and Ben had pretty much been left to their own devices on the streets of south Boston. They’d been in survival mode for most of their childhood, and it had shaped their personalities well before they’d been put into the foster system. It was the reason why Rhys still struggled to allow himself to feel and express strong emotion.
Neveah wouldn’t let it go. She rolled to face him, her eyes troubled in the soft lamplight as she studied him. “What is it?”
He let out a breath. Talking about shit still wasn’t in his top hundred favorite things to do, but if she really wanted to know, he’d tell her. All except the part where he confessed he was worried about her, that something would go wrong during the pregnancy or birth. He needed to keep that to himself.
“I guess I… I just want our baby to have the opposite of my childhood.” Rhys didn’t want their child to know hunger or fear or shame like he and Ben had. He wanted the baby to be healthy, happy, and most of all, safe.
Her expression softened. “This baby is going to have an incredible childhood, and an amazing life. He or she will be protected, never go hungry, and never go a day without feeling loved or secure.”
He nodded and drew her head to his shoulder so she couldn’t keep staring at him. His life hadn’t been easy, and even after the Sinclairs had stepped in and stabilized his and Ben’s lives years ago, something had been missing for him.
He’d gone into the military right after high school and eventually made it into The Unit, then spent most of his adult life doing things most people couldn’t imagine. He’d taken so many lives. It seemed unbelievable that he was about to bring one into the world. Part of him felt like he didn’t deserve that chance after everything he’d done.
“And I can hear your brain working from here, so I’m gonna stop you right there, because in spite of what you may think about yourself, you have an incredible amount of love to give our baby,” Nev told him, intuitively knowing what was going on in his head. “You being an elite soldier just means you’ll be that much more capable of protecting our baby. I know you still worry that part of you is dead inside, but that’s just not true. Know how I know?”
“How?” he said to placate her, though he was secretly hanging on her every word.
“Because of the way you love me and your family. That’s all the proof you need, right there.” She ran a hand over his chest, her touch soothing him deep inside, smoothing over all the jagged pieces he tried to hide from the world. Even from Nev, whom he loved with his whole heart.
“I know the thought of being a parent,” she continued, “of being responsible for a tiny life that depends on us is kinda scary. I never thought much about being a mother either, until after what happened in Vancouver. But you know what? You and I have what it takes.”
“You’re gonna be an incredible mother,” he murmured against her hair. Nev was strong, bold, and she also had one of the biggest hearts of anyone he’d ever met.
She’d risked her life to offer medical help to the poorest people in war-torn countries with Doctors Without Borders. She’d been taken captive because of it, and had survived everything fate threw at her, including being locked in that elevator with a knife-wielding madman. She still bore the scar
s from it, and he loved and admired her all the more for being a survivor.
Nev’s soft smile turned his heart over. “I can’t wait.”
Rhys wrapped his fingers around her wrist and brought it to his mouth, kissing the surgical scar that had marked the end of her career and the chance to begin this next phase of their life together. She was ecstatic about becoming a mother, and not the least bit worried that anything would go wrong. She amazed him. “I love you.”
Her eyes were filled with tenderness and understanding. “Love you back. And it’s going to be okay, I promise.” She kissed him softly, then took his hand and settled her palm flat over her abdomen before snuggling into him.
Rhys reached behind him and turned off the reading lamp. Tucking his wife against him, he thought about what she’d just said. Of everything they’d faced together until now, and the future that lay ahead of them.
Everything would be okay, because Rhys would make sure of it.
He just hoped he could live up to Nev’s expectations and be the kind of father their child deserved.
Chapter Seven
Bryn woke in the middle of a dream when the bed dipped suddenly. She inhaled a sharp breath and came up on one elbow just as a large silhouette came into view beside her. Her heart rocketed up her throat.
“Merry Christmas,” a deep voice murmured.
She froze in surprise, the fear vanishing in an instant as her heart settled back where it belonged. “Dec!” She flung her arms around him and buried her face in the side of his neck, his deep chuckle reverberating in his chest as he crushed her to him. Reassuring her that she wasn’t dreaming.
“Surprise.”
She hugged him tight, joy flooding her. “When did you get back?” He smelled like sweat but she didn’t care. She hadn’t heard from him in almost two weeks, and hadn’t expected to see him for another few at least. Their most recent mission must have either flopped, or gone really well.