If the Freedom Force came after her, she’d fight back. She’d die fighting back if she had to. Never again would she allow others to harm her.
Emily went downstairs and crossed the compound toward the dining area. She held her chin high as she stepped into the room. Men looked up from the groups in which they sat. She crossed over to the table where the cook dished chicken and rice onto a plate for her. She took it and went to join a group of men she knew.
Rascal made room for her, and she sat down and picked up her fork. She could feel eyes on the back of her head though. Her scalp tingled, and her fingers trembled as she fumbled the fork.
“You still not feeling better, Em?” Rascal asked, his brow pleating in concern.
“I’m all right. It’s just noisier in here than usual.”
Rascal shot a look across the room. “Yeah. Eighteen military operators make a difference.”
“Two teams then.”
He lifted an eyebrow in approval. “Yep, two teams. Guess Uncle Sam wants those hostages back pretty bad.”
“No one deserves what will happen to them if they aren’t freed,” she said softly.
“No, no one does.”
“Emily?”
A chill went over her and she looked up. Her sister’s fiancé, Nick Brandon, stood there, looking cool and casual and somehow murderous at the same time.
Great.
“Hi, Nick.”
He grabbed a chair and turned it, straddling it so he could face her. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“You’re here because you want to be?”
“Yes.” She swallowed and set her fork down. She wasn’t so hungry now. “I’m sorry I skipped out like that, but Victoria would have tried to stop me. You know that.”
“I know she went through hell to find you the last time. I know what it cost her.”
“Hey, man, don’t guilt the girl.” Rascal was looking kinda pissed. “I worked with Victoria for a couple of years. Girl is tougher than hell. Or was until you showed up. Speaking of which, I ain’t forgot that you lied to us. Tried to pretend you were some kind of asshole that’d been kicked out of the Army and wanted to join up with us. All you wanted was to take us down.”
Nick’s gaze slanted to Rascal. “I did my job, Rascal. Same as you. And you’re still here, right? Nobody got taken down.”
“If you two could stop the pissing contest,” Emily said. They looked at her with expressions ranging from amused to annoyed. “Nick, I’m sorry, but I had to do what I had to do. Victoria has paid for caring about me, and I’m here to fix that. She’ll never stop worrying about me, never stop blaming herself for being unable to get my life back for me with no strings attached. When I can’t fly out of the country, she’ll blame herself. When I can’t get a government job, or any job that requires a security clearance, she’ll blame herself. When I have to tell a man who might want to marry me that his life will change if he stays with me, Victoria will blame herself when he leaves me because he doesn’t want to take that chance. If Ian can change that—if he can give me back what I lost when I married Zaran—then I’m going to seize the opportunity with both hands and make things right. Because I don’t want Victoria to live her life thinking she failed me somehow.”
Nick’s expression didn’t change. He still looked tough and mean and angry. And then he swiped a hand over his face and huffed out a breath. “All right.”
Emily blinked. “All right? That’s it?”
He nodded. “Yep. You hurt her when you left again, but I understand why you did it. I can’t argue with that kind of motive because I’d do anything to make her happy too. Even when it pisses her off at first.”
Emily blinked back tears. Jeez, she was emotional lately. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to Victoria. If she doesn’t tell you that ten times a day, she’s crazy.”
Nick’s smile was sudden. “Don’t worry, I remind her when she’s slacking in Nick-worship.” He reached out and took her hand, squeezed it gently. “I hope like hell Ian gives you what he promised, because you deserve it. If he doesn’t, then I guess I get to kick his ass after all. Something I’d enjoy immensely, I might add—but I’d rather he keep his promise.”
Nick got up and went back to his table. Emily pushed food around her plate, the back of her neck still tingling in warning.
“There’s a guy over there staring at you like you took away his favorite toy. Want me to put a stop to it?”
Emily glanced up at Rascal. He was looking protective and furious, and she patted his arm. “No, it’s fine. He’s angry with me for good reason. If he can’t glare at me, he’ll probably explode.”
Rascal tipped his chin toward her plate. “You better eat something, girlie. Shoving it around the plate won’t do you any good when you need the energy.”
“My stomach is still off, I think.”
Rascal stood and went over to the cook’s table. When he came back, he had a big piece of warmed flatbread. He set it down next to her plate. “Eat the bread then. It’ll help.”
Emily’s heart hitched as she tore off a piece of the bread and put it in her mouth. Rascal was a good guy, almost motherly in a way, and she liked him. He’d never, not once, made her feel like she didn’t belong or like he wanted anything more from her than conversation once in a while. He’d never made a pass at her, and she appreciated that more than she could say.
Emily finished the bread, then sat and listened to Rascal and the other guys razz each other and tell stories. The dining room quieted as men filtered away, and still she sat. She knew Ryan was in the room because she could feel him looking at her.
Finally she turned and met his gaze. He was sitting alone now, leaning back against the wall, his hand around a cup on the table. Her heart flipped at the sight of him. She had a strong urge to go over and beg him to forgive her, but she knew she’d gone too far to ask him for that.
Still, she stood and went to where he sat. His eyes were hooded as she approached. Her stomach churned and her pulse throbbed as she stopped in front of the table.
I love you, her heart whispered. I need you.
No. No more need. No more vulnerability because she wanted love. She couldn’t go down that path again. She loved Ryan Gordon with everything she had in her, but she wasn’t about to beg him to love her in return. And how could he after the way she’d lied to him?
“I didn’t expect to see you out here,” she said. “Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.”
His eyes glittered hot. “This is the job, Emily. If there’s danger, then you should expect me to turn up. Especially when it involves the Freedom Force.”
She slid into a seat opposite him. “I had hoped to be back before now.”
He snorted. “That’s the problem with covert ops, honey. You never know what’s going to happen.”
Her ears were hot. “Ian didn’t lie to me. He gave me a chance to clear my name in ways that HOT didn’t offer. Maybe Victoria didn’t want me to get involved with this kind of work and made sure Mendez didn’t offer, or maybe Mendez just doesn’t have that kind of influence.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore, because I’m here—and my knowledge is useful.”
He took a sip from the cup. She noticed his knuckles were white.
“You should have told me.”
She snorted. “Would you have let me go?”
His jaw tightened. “No, probably not.”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t realize anything was wrong at first,” he said, his tone conversational. “I woke up and you were gone. No big deal. Maybe you had class. Maybe you were protecting me. But I knew I’d hear from you later, so I didn’t worry about it.”
There was a knot in her stomach. “Ian said I couldn’t communicate with anyone once I got on the plane. So I didn’t.”
“I texted you that afternoon. Still didn’t worry when you didn’t immediately reply. But that night, when I hadn’t heard a word all day? Yeah
, I began to get concerned. That’s when I drove to your place and your roommate told me you hadn’t been there all day. I searched your room. There wasn’t much missing, but there was enough to tell me you’d gone somewhere. Somewhere warm judging by the clothes you didn’t take.”
“Ian sent a message.”
“The next day, after I spent a night trying to piece together where you could have gone. I didn’t want to alarm Victoria, but I called her and Nick. They didn’t sound upset, so I knew they didn’t know. I didn’t tell them. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.”
Her heart throbbed as she imagined him looking for her.
“I thought I did something to you, Emily. Something that made you run. Until the next morning when Mendez rolled in like a thunderstorm and pulled Victoria aside.” His voice was hard, brutal. “I didn’t even have a fucking right to know what he told her, yet I was the one who knew you were gone. Thankfully she didn’t keep the information from the rest of us.”
She wanted to reach for him, but she couldn’t. She knew he wouldn’t welcome her touch. Her eyes were blurry and she reached up to swipe away the tears. Damn, she was usually better at controlling herself than this, but these days she cried at the slightest provocation.
Not that this was slight at all. It was huge.
“You didn’t make me run. I’ve told you why I did it. I won’t keep apologizing.” She dashed the tears away. “Do you know how many times I had to sit and wait for news from you? How many missions you went on while I worried and wondered?”
“It’s not the same fucking thing. You knew what I did. You knew.”
“It is the same! You’re a Special Operator, and you do what you do to protect our country and its citizens. Well, I got asked to do the same, so here I am. You have no right to deny me the chance to help my country or to clear my name. I couldn’t even be with you, Ryan. Not openly, not for your sake. And maybe you didn’t want that anyway, but at least after this I would know it was because of me and not because of something stupid I did in my life.”
CHAPTER TEN
RYAN BLINKED. SHE THOUGHT HE wouldn’t want to be with her?
God, all he could do was sit here and swallow down the need flooding him like a nuclear shock wave. Because he did want her, even if he was pissed as hell at her. And he didn’t fucking care if she’d been married to a terrorist. He wanted to wrap her body around his and explore to his heart’s content.
Once hadn’t been nearly enough.
“If the fact you’d been married to bin Yusuf meant a damn thing to me, I wouldn’t have kept talking to you in the first place.” He leaned forward, searched her gaze with his. He knew he looked hard and angry, but he didn’t have the ability to be anything else right now. “I encouraged you to find someone more like you. Someone who wasn’t a part of this fucking life. You didn’t need this shit again, yet you’re in it and I fail to understand why you’d even begin to think that was okay.”
Her eyes widened. And then color flooded her face. “Goddamn you, Ryan.” She slapped a hand to her chest. “I make my own choices, all right? You don’t get to make them for me. And what the hell does that mean, someone more like me? A damn basket case? Someone scared of their own shadow like I was?”
He didn’t miss that she said was. Jesus, he didn’t understand her at all. Who was this woman?
“It means someone normal, Emily. Someone who doesn’t live on the edge of disaster as a means of earning a living. You deserve the picket fence, a guy who worships you and who’ll be there for you every night. You deserve better than what you had before, and you deserve better than someone like me.”
She snorted. “Listen to you. What made you ever think I wanted a picket fence? When did I say that?”
“You didn’t have to say it. I saw you that night, when you were covered in his blood and suffering from shock. It would have never happened if you’d been back in the States, going to college, meeting some nice frat boy there and getting married.”
Emily gaped at him, then shook her head. “You’re kidding, right? Don’t you watch the TV when you’re Stateside, Einstein? How many perfect”—here she did air quotes—“marriages end up on the nightly news? How many unsolved murder shows are there on TV about relationships gone sour? You aren’t living in reality if you think the same thing couldn’t have happened to me in the States. No one is safe.”
He gripped the cup so hard he thought he might break it. Finally he shoved it away and took a deep breath. How did she do this to him? How did she twist him up inside so thoroughly and make him uncertain which way was up?
He’d thought he knew her. He’d thought he knew who she was and what she needed, but he was finding out he hadn’t known a goddamn thing. Because she hadn’t been truthful with him. She’d come crying to him so many times over the past few months, but here she was as strong as he’d ever seen her. Confident and certain.
“You aren’t the person I thought I knew.”
“I am the same, Ryan. You just can’t see it because you’re angry.” She put her hands on the tabletop, clenched them together and looked at him earnestly. “I’m trying to fix my life, fix what I did wrong. Am I scared? Hell, yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m quitting. I can’t quit because I want the life I should have had. I want the freedom and the choice—and I want to save Linda Cooper and her baby.”
She pushed back and stood. Their gazes locked for a long moment—and then she turned and walked away.
*
Emily woke up sick the next morning. Her stomach churned and sent her running straight for the bathroom. Once there, she threw up what little was in her stomach. Then she rinsed her mouth with water and stared at herself in the mirror.
Had she gotten some kind of crud? No one else was sick in the compound, but she didn’t suppose that meant she couldn’t be. She went out into the city often enough to come into contact with a bug.
She turned on the shower and got under the spray, hoping it would help settle the nausea a little bit. Her breasts were tender when she ran her hands over them and she winced. What the fuck?
Linda Cooper flashed through her mind, and Emily gritted her teeth. Not pregnant, not possible.
She’d seen a doctor, a Qu’rimi man who hadn’t been very nice but had been perfectly competent. He’d said something about scarring on her tubes and impossible for an egg to get through, etc., etc. She’d had the report in her hand, and she’d gotten into the car Zaran had sent her in and gone back to their home crushed and weepy.
She didn’t need to relive that moment to know how wrong it was to even attempt comparing her symptoms. Not to mention, no matter how much the thought of a dark-headed copy of Ryan might make her heart clench with longing, it most certainly wasn’t something he would want to deal with when all they’d had was a one-night stand.
Especially not with the way he’d looked at her last night—like she’d betrayed him.
Emily finished her shower, then dressed, gasping when her hand brushed the side of her breast as she dragged on her T-shirt. She strapped on her weapons, slicked her hair into a wet ponytail, and gathered her courage before going downstairs.
She found Ian in his office. There was no one else with him at the moment. He looked up from his laptop as she entered.
“You look green,” he said, frowning.
Emily sighed. “I know. Everyone keeps telling me.”
He snapped the laptop closed. “I’ll have Jared check you out.”
Jared was one of the medics Ian kept on the payroll. But he was more than a medic, having been an Air Force Pararescueman. He was as badass as any Special Operator, but with medical skills that were vital to a forward-based unit such as this.
And Emily absolutely did not want to see him. She didn’t want anything to interfere with her mission here, especially now that Ryan had arrived. If she had a sniffle, or a stomach flu, he’d insist she needed evacuating. Emily didn’t think Ian would cave in to that demand, but she didn’t want to watch the
two of them go head-to-head again.
“No, it’s fine. I probably ate something.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t risk you passing something to others around here.” He picked up his cell phone and tapped in a message.
“I have to meet with Mustafa today. You aren’t going to pull me, are you?”
Ian looked up. “Can you manage it?”
Emily swallowed a wave of nausea. “Of course. Who else is there? Besides, he trusts me.”
“It’s getting more dangerous,” Ian said. “Mustafa is unpredictable, paranoid. And he knows who you are.”
Emily shrugged, though she didn’t particularly feel dismissive. It’s just that she couldn’t dwell on the danger if she was going to do this job right.
“He’s known that for a while. I would think if he’d planned to betray me in some way, he’d have done it by now. The longer he talks to me, the worse it looks for him if anyone finds out.”
Ian nodded. “That’s certainly true. Still, I don’t like how he’s been stringing you along lately. He knows where the hostages are.”
Emily had been thinking about that. “But what if he doesn’t? He could just want us to think he knows so we’ll keep paying him.”
“It’s possible. But his information in the past has always checked out.”
“Yes, but he could have pissed someone off. Maybe they’re suspicious of him.”
Ian frowned. “If they are, that’s not good for you, Emily. They’ll be watching him.”
“I’ll take extra security then. They won’t grab me in a public marketplace in broad daylight.”
“I’m going with you.”
Emily’s head swung toward the door at the same time Ian’s did. Ryan was silhouetted there along with Chase Daniels. They filled the wide entryway as if it were nothing. Shoulder to shoulder, they were big and intimidating in native dress instead of their typical military camouflage.
“Eavesdropping is a bad habit, fellas,” Ian said.
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