Invisible

by Skye Stone

  I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed out on while I was living removed from the world until this moment.

  Liam and Dante began wiping themselves down and I shifted uncomfortably as I tried to ignore the warmth that was gathering below.

  These three were way too sexy for their own good. My imaginary sex life was getting a crazy workout every since I’d met these men. They overwhelmed me with feelings that I didn’t want to confront right now.

  Jaxon

  The fact that Amara was a closet ninja was totally unexpected. I couldn’t wait to discover the other secrets that she was hiding from us.

  Before we met Amara and were working out the plan, we’d all worried about the next leg of the trip and were concerned that she wouldn’t be up for it.

  Now, I just needed to understand why she stopped going outside. I wasn’t sure if she was up for having that conversation.

  Tonight was my night to make dinner and I lost myself in the process. I’d started cooking after I left the service. Exercise helped but there was something about the artistry of cooking that helped get my mind off of things.

  Tonight I was making fajitas, simple, tasty and good.

  For the next thirty minutes I focused on the task at hand. Everyone grabbed a dish and helped set things up on the table.

  Dante and Liam knew what we were going to discuss, I just hoped that Amara could handle it.

  She sat down and began eating quietly looking up every once in awhile as if trying to figure out what our next move would be.

  “Amara, we need to talk.” Dante stated baldly.

  Placing the fajita back down on her plate, she looked up. “What about?”

  “We need to know why you stopped going outside sweetheart.” Liam looked at her with kind eyes.

  Chewing on her lip, Amara pushed her chair away from the table and stood up. Her fists clinched and then her entire body relaxed as if she was preparing for war or at least a battle.

  “Why, why is that important to you?”

  “Where tasked with keeping you alive and if you’re going to do anything that will potentially endanger our mission we need to know.” Jaxon said after he picked up his beer and took a deep drink.

  “If I planned on losing my shit do you think I would tell you or that I would be capable of telling you? Maybe I’m crazy and that’s a risk you have to take?”

  “The thing is, the woman who just kicked our ass isn’t afraid. You’ve adjusted to being in a new place surprisingly well and we have to wonder what’s really going on with you.”

  No one had been around to ask me questions like this one and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share that part of me.

  But, these guys were putting their life on the line and so I needed to let them know what was really going on with me.

  “I was a shy kid. My mother was this hippie with dreadlocks and a personality that was effervescent. People were always drawn to her and I loved it. She was my everything.”

  Walking over to the counter I looked through the different bottles until I found some whiskey and poured a shot.

  Liquid courage.

  “Even when I was little, I never felt like I belonged anywhere but with her. I was to light for the black kids and I clearly wasn’t white so I got picked on by white kids too. But, that wasn’t the biggest issue that I struggled with. Almost everyone else had a dad, but me.”

  I returned to the table and sat down.

  “My memories of him were faint, like a water color that faded over time. I remembered the one and only time that I met him. He picked me up and held me so closely and I could have sworn that he was crying.”

  Liam reached over and held my hand. Out of the three of them, he was the most sensitive.

  “Then, he was gone and I thought it was just my imagination. My mom and I were alone again, just the two of us against the world. Then, she began getting sick. At first we weren’t sure what was going on. Finally, I convinced her to go to the doctor. She had cancer. I went from being an awkward teenage girl to a caregiver over night and I was so glad that I could do this for her. But the days became months and the months became years.”

  Dante stood up and began massaging away the tightness away from my shoulders. My chest tightened and burned from fighting off the tears that I was fighting off.

  “Then, one day, my mom passed away. It was almost anticlimactic. She’d fought for so long and then that day she lost the battle and I was…alone.”

  Jaxon looked at me intently, I couldn’t read his thoughts as he listened to what I had to say. Dante finished massaging my shoulders before leaning down and lightly brushing his lips against my temple.

  Drawing in a shuddering breath, I tried to hold it together so that I could share this part of the story.

  “You have to understand that for almost four years we fought the good fight. Then, I was all alone and I was so tired. Physically I was worn out, mentally I was a wreck and I had no one. Then, during the midst of this I see Scott’s inauguration and I thought to myself, I don’t even exist to him. Then one day I walked inside the door and didn’t go back out.”

  “Why did it last as long as it did?” Jaxon finally said something.

  “It was so incredibly easy to become invisible. To fade away and be left alone to lick my wounds. You know what was surprising? No one even noticed. And, with each day that I stayed inside I found myself enjoying the break from all off the noise and bullshit that comes from everyday life.”

  “You’re not agoraphobic?” Liam placed as soft kiss on my knuckles.

  “No, and I never was. I just was tired.” They knew my darkest secret and it felt so good to say it out loud.

  “Why didn’t you contact the Governor?” Dante looked puzzled.

  “What would I say? Hi! I’m your long-lost daughter and I wanted to reconnect with you even though you’ve never tried to contact me? Come on Dante, I didn’t think he cared whether I lived or died so I managed to do something in between. I disappeared, I never acknowledged our connection, and I kept to myself. Let’s face it I was just as shocked as you were that he sent you to protect me.” That was something that I couldn’t figure out.

  Why now? Why would he reach out to me now?

  “What happened when Bianca contacted you?” Liam asked softly as he turned my hand and placed a soft kiss on the inside of my wrist.

  “That day was the biggest shock that I’d had in awhile.” Laughing to myself, I remember that day.

  “I was working on a project and then someone knocked on the door. The thing is, I was sure that I hadn’t ordered anything so I was nervous to open the door.”

  “Go on.” Jaxon shifted slightly in his chair and drank from his bottle of beer. I became distracted as I watched his throat move and imagined placing a kiss on his collarbone.

  Focus Amara, focus.

  “I knew who she was before I opened the door. I’d begun checking on the Andersons’ social media. It was so easy to get lost in what ifs. What if Scott really wanted me, but for some reason was being kept from seeing me? I would imagine all of these scenarios in my head about our reunion. But, it wasn’t Scott who showed up at my door, it was Bianca.”

  I finally noticed the tension in the room. My nerves were stretched thin with each gentle caress and kiss these men had giving me and I needed it to stop.

  Standing up quickly, I pushed away from the table making my chair crash on the ground breaking the calm in the room.

  The guys looked startled. I liked that I’d managed to shock them.

  “Bianca was literally the sister that I’d never had. In fact, the only thing that she wanted from me was to be her sister in every sense of the word. She’s the only reason why I agreed to go with you and she’s the only person that I trust.”

  I picked up my chair and poured another shot before leaving the room and sitting in front of the fireplace. I just needed some space, even if it was for just a few moments.

  Jaxon

  “
What do you think?”

  “About what Jax?” Liam was the nicest of the three of us, but he also was the most direct.

  “Will she be a problem moving forward?” I had to find out what they thought.

  “I think she’ll be ok. She’s tougher than she looks.” Dante’s opinion was similar to mine.

  “Let’s give her a few minutes and then we need to discuss the next part of the plan with her.” The longer we stayed at the cabin, the more likely it was that our position would be compromised.

  “Do we want to talk about the elephant in the room?” Liam smirked.

  “You want to talk about that shit now?” Right now I didn’t have the patience for this.

  “We all want her and we don’t just want to sleep with her.” Liam made me crazy sometimes. But, he wasn’t wrong, there was something about this woman that had captured my interest.

  “Let’s keep her alive and then we can have this discussion later.” I didn’t want to think about this now.

  “Who knew that you would be the one out of the three of us to avoid your feelings?” Dante laughed as he made his way into the living room.

  Following him, it was now time to get down to business. Amara continued looking at the fire as if she could pretend that we weren’t there.

  “Darling, listen up, here’s the plan for the next five days.” I’d squatted in front of her, gently holding her chin before leaning in to kiss the area where I knew her dimple was hiding.

  “We’re hiking out of here and we need to know that you can handle it. All of us will be carrying packs that have food, water, and weapons. Our hope is that is to get a head start ahead of whoever is trying to kill you and make our way to the next the final destination point. That means 12 hours a day for at least the next 5 days of hiking, dirt, mud, bugs, etc. You up for it Princess?”

  “I’m up for it. What about you…stud?” Amara gave it as good as she got.

  “There will be no bitching, no whining, or complaining about the conditions you go that?”

  “Jaxon, are you sure your not projecting your own issues onto me? I’ll be fine” With that she swept out of the room leaving me to watch her ass swaying enticingly in front of me.

  “We’re leaving at 5:00 am!” I shouted after her.

  Liam and Dante were trying to hold their laughter in.

  “Well, this should be fun.” Liam rubbed his hands in anticipation. I hated to see what he considered real fun.

  “Why didn’t you tell her that we’re going to hunker down with the Andersons until this is over?” Dante wondered.

  “Now is not the time for that conversation.”

  “I’ll take the first watch.” I needed some space. Whenever we were on assignment we never let our guard down. And always had someone on watch duty.

  Making my way down the hallway, I paused in front of Amara’s door. I could hear her showing running and imagined what it would be like to join her in it.

  Now was not the time to get distracted. I shifted the front of my pants and made my around the cabin double-checking that everything was secured.

  Grabbing my laptop, I made my way onto the dark web. My hope was to figure out who the assassin was and figure out what the Andersons were keeping from the team.

  Scott Anderson was like every other politician I’d ever met, slippery as fuck, and prone to dodging the truth whenever it benefited him.

  His daughter Amara was a great example of that.

  I had a hunch about who paid for the assassin and it wasn’t that difficult to figure out. It was clearly Barbara. The thing that I couldn’t figure out was how she picked the one assassin who didn’t actually need the money and changed the job to include killing the entire family.

  There were rumors of a man called the Death Dealer, but he was notoriously difficult to connect with. Who in the hell was the person who connected Barbara with the killer?

  Stretching my neck I kept trying to figure it out and finally it hit me, it had to be one of the guards on her protection detail. They were ex-military and the only type of people that she was around regularly who dabbled in this type of thing.

  Picking up my phone I made a call.

  “It’s me.”

  “I figured, you’re the only one who calls me in the middle of the night like this. What do you need?” The sexy woman on the other end of the call was a skilled hacker that I liked to work with on collecting the hidden information needed to find the people that we were looking for.

  She was great in bed too.

  “Barbie, could you do some research for me?”

  “It’s going to cost you.” She laughed.

  “It always does.”

  Amara

  Turning off the shower, I quickly dried myself and began putting lotion on my skin. I’d played it off better than I thought.

  The guys had no idea that I was absolutely terrified about hiking through the woods and camping. I’d gone camping a couple of times with my mom when I was younger, but hiking for 12 hours a day carrying everything on my back wasn’t something that I was prepared for.

  I was scared to death.

  The bed looked so inviting and was so comfortable as I snuggled underneath the covers and fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

  “Amara, it’s time to wake up.”

  A warm hand was gently clasped around my ankle making its way up to my knee. Tiny tingles swept through me as I slowly made my way from sleep to being awake.

  Dante was looking down at me. “Breakfast will be ready in 15 minutes. We leave in 30 minutes. I’ve left what you need on the bed and we’ve already packed your backpack for you.”

  “Thank you.” My voice was raspy with sleep as I tried to fight the feeling of disorientation that swept through me.

  Looking at my pack, I saw my hiking boots that I only ever work in my yard. But, at least they were broken in. Everything else was new.

  Pulling on a fitted black turtleneck and army green pants, I was ready to take on the world.

  Lifting up the pack, I groaned. That thing was so damn heavy. This wasn’t the time to complain, I would have to suck it up and deal.

  Dante had also laid out a outdoor jacket as well on the bed, I grabbed it and made my way down the stairs.

  The guys were standing in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking quietly.

  Liam’s expression brightened up as he watched me walk into the kitchen. “Good morning sweetness.”

  Like usual, Jaxon had a stern look on his face.

  “You look great in the outfit that I picked for you Amara.” Dante smiled as he drank his coffee.

  It was too early for his jokes and I was starving. Walking over to the counter I poured a cup of coffee and mixed a generous amount of cream in it to.

  Breakfast was surprisingly hearty, with a hearty pile of eggs, bacon, and toast. God, I was starving.

  Time to eat.

  The guys were again amazed by my appetite and I had to wonder if they’d never seen a woman eat like this before.

  “Do the women in your life not eat?”

  “Not like you.” Jaxon started laughing. “We love it.”

  “We’re moving out in a few minutes.”

  The guys began gathering their things and I found it to be one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen. Their muscles moved sexily underneath their shirts as they put on their jackets and hefted up their packs onto their backs.

  Quickly washing my dishes, I mimicked their actions and focused on trying not to fall forward as I put my backpack on.

  It was finally time to go.

  Dante

  One of my favorite aspects of going on a mission is the opportunity to get out into nature. We almost always helped protect targets by going into nature to shake off the people following them.

  It always catches people off guard because they expect their targets to use the typical means of transit to getaway versus spending some time into the woods, forest, or the mountains.

  We hoped that
this system would hold true as we helped Amara escape. The forest was quiet as we made our way deeper into the mountains. A light drizzle coated our faces and I cursed inside as the drizzle became rain.

  Amara slipped every once in awhile but never once did she complain. Her face was pale as she concentrated on making her way carefully through the forest floor, pine needles crunched underneath our feet with each step.