by Caisey Quinn
“Um, well, I’m from Texas, which you already know from my file. My parents were . . .” She trailed off, searching for the right way to say “kidnapped by the Russian Mafia when I was a child.” It wasn’t exactly something she could just work into a conversation. “Not around,” she said instead. “So my grandparents raised me for the most part.”
Chase nodded. “And they were good? Good to you, I mean.”
She returned the nod. “Extremely. I was lucky to have them. My grandma passed when I was sixteen but my grandfather is still hanging in there. He has a home nurse though, and I suspect he doesn’t have a great deal of time left.”
“Is he sick?”
Vivien shook her head. “Not with anything specific. He’s eighty-six so for the past few years he’s just kind of had one ailment after another. He’s being forced to resign from his own company because he’s beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s.”
Chase let out a sympathetic noise from the back of his throat. “Sorry to hear that.”
Vivien was quiet for a few moments, contemplating how strange life could be. Here she and Chase had grown so close, had come to mean a great deal to each other, and yet there was still so much they didn’t know and might never be able to share.
“So the tattoos,” she said, gesturing to his left arm and part of his bare chest. “There are a lot of them.”
One corner of Chase’s mouth lifted. “Yeah. I started in high school. Got some tribal nonsense I didn’t know the significance of because all my friends were doing it. Then when I enlisted, I got one for my unit.” He pointed to the symbol containing several numbers. “Added this one for my mom.” He touched the praying angel on his bicep. “This one for myself,” he said, sliding down toward an intricate portrayal of flames engulfing the entire scene. “There are a few representations of the tours I did and one for each of the guys we lost in our unit overseas.”
Vivien was fascinated. She’d never cared about ink either way. But seeing his through his own eyes, knowing how meaningful it was to him, made it pretty appealing. She skimmed her fingers across the intricate patterns. “You put a great deal of thought into it.”
Chase arched a brow. “Well it’s permanent, so . . .”
She smiled. “Good point.”
“You got any?” Chase grinned. “If you do, you’re damn good at hiding it.”
Vivien rolled her eyes. She doubted there was an inch of her flesh he hadn’t seen. “No. And I don’t suspect I’ll ever get any. I wanted to get two swallows on my wrist to represent my, um, family. But I chickened out at the last minute. Needles make me queasy. And like you said, they’re permanent. I can’t imagine anything I’d want on my body for the rest of my life. I change my mind about shoes and clothes every other season.”
“When it’s important enough, you will.”
Vivien lifted one shoulder. “Eh. Maybe. Maybe not.” She took a bite of the turkey sandwich he’d packed. It was surprisingly good. Perfect turkey to cheese to bread ratio. She appreciated a man who knew how to make a decent sandwich. “So the roommates . . .” she prompted after swallowing.
Chase looked relieved at the change of topic. “Aiden and Luke.”
“How did you meet?”
Chase polished off his own sandwich and emptied his bottle of beer in that two-gulp way guys always amazed her with. “They went to high school together. Aiden and his sister, Annalise, were raised by their mom, and she had issues . . . not quite as bad as my dad exactly but selfish to the point of neglect from what I’ve gathered in bits and pieces. Aiden isn’t much of a sharer.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Vivien broke in.
Chase didn’t disagree. “I guess they spent a lot of time at Luke’s family’s place growing up. This beach house we’re staying at belongs to his family so apparently they’re pretty well-off.”
“And you got tossed into the mix how?”
“We met at basic at Fort Benning. Bonded over college football shit talk. Continued on to the same unit for special ops training and completed a seven-month tour in Afghanistan together. Now we’re here.”
“The three amigos,” Vivien said over her wineglass. “I like it.”
Chase let out a light laugh. “If you say so.”
“Jen and Emerson are kind of like that for me.” Vivien smiled, remembering the night they’d met. “Except we were roommates before anything else. I answered their online ad and basically told them I was military trained so if they pulled any single white female crap, I’d break their legs.”
“Nice.”
She shrugged. “They’re both linguists and they requested to be assigned here so we could stay together, but their transfer came later and I already had a room in the barracks. They have a small apartment off base and I hang out there sometimes. They joke that I’m the badass of the group. But honestly, you couldn’t pay me to sit and decipher foreign languages all day. You were right when you called me out for trying to transfer. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
“So after this,” Chase gestured with his freshly opened bottle of beer, “after EOD certification, I mean—what’s next for Vivien Brooks?”
A pang of something strange and unfamiliar struck her in the chest. Was this his way of saying “Don’t get it twisted, girl. This is just for now”? She wasn’t sure. But it felt like that.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I guess I’ll see where my assignment is once I’m certified.”
Chase looked away from her, staring toward the current ebbing and flowing beside them.
He was like the ocean, Vivien decided. So much constantly happening beneath the surface even when everything appeared calm. Coming and going, pushing and pulling. Waging internal wars with himself, with his emotions. He wanted her, he’d proved that with his behavior when she’d shut him out. But the closer she came the more he seemed to pull away. He wanted her at a safe distance, she decided. Not too close but not out of reach.
She frowned. “So is this it for you? Fort Jackson? Training EOD techs?” When he didn’t answer she leaned closer to get his attention and continued. “I have to be honest—I picture you more as an in-the-field guy. They say those who can’t do, teach. But I suspect you can do very well, so my money says being an instructor is a temporary stop for you.”
Chase’s gaze was intense when he turned it on her. “Yeah? What else do you picture me as?”
Vivien grinned, hoping to lighten the mood. “I picture you huffing and puffing behind me in the sand this morning when I kicked your ass on our sunrise run.”
Before she even had time to appreciate the look on his face he sprung like a panther and tickled her around the rib cage.
Vivien broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. “Okay, okay. Naked. I picture you naked.”
Chase pinned her down, making a cage with his arms but propping himself above her so his weight didn’t crush her into the sand. “Better.”
He leaned down to kiss her but she felt something wet against her side. The wine had spilled on her and the blanket. “Oh no.”
“That’s fine,” Chase said evenly, continuing his descent but rerouting southward. “I’d rather drink it off you anyways.”
Vivien stared up at the cloudless blue sky as Chase brought her to orgasm with his expert mouth. Her hands raked into his thick, dark hair when he slid inside of her warm, willing body. She buried her face in his neck as she came again along with his release.
Their breaths matched pant for pant until it felt as if even their hearts were beating in time with each other.
“I love you,” she whispered quietly into his skin. Her body heated instantly and part of her wished an ocean breeze would blow, taking the words she’d uttered and carrying them far away before they reached his ears. But it was too late.
Chase stiffened in her arms, then maneuvered out of them completel
y.
“You should go inside and clean up.” He propped back on his knees and gestured to the crimson wine staining her white sundress. “I’ll take care of everything out here.”
Stung by his rejection but not surprised by it, Vivien swallowed the tangled knot of conflicting emotions wrestling in her throat and nodded. “See you inside.”
21
Chase wondered if there was an Asshole of the Year award. If there was, he suspected he’d get his trophy in the mail any day now.
Vivien loved him.
She’d tossed it at him so quickly and unexpectedly in the heat of a passionate moment, and he’d fumbled.
He couldn’t process it.
No one had ever said those words to him. Not that he had any memory of anyway. It was as if she’d spoken a foreign language he wasn’t fluent in.
He knew what she expected. Knew what she deserved. But his mouth dried up as if he’d shoved a handful of sand in it. They’d had an amazing time at the beach. Privacy. Hot sex. Comfort and solace in each other’s company. Laughter. Hot sex that was worth mentioning two or three more times.
Even opening up to her about his parents and his roommates and his goals for rising in the military ranks hadn’t been as difficult as he’d expected.
In his entire life, Chase had never had a place he truly considered home. Growing up, his dad’s house was a living nightmare. After that it was military barracks, which all started to look the same after a while. Then cots in the desert. Then a shared space with Luke and Aiden, where only one bedroom truly felt like his.
But with Vivien . . . watching her make coffee in the morning, humming and shaking her perfect apple-shaped ass while she did it, chasing behind that ass as she ran down the beach way too early in the morning, sitting down to meals with her knowing she was going to like whatever greasy, fattening thing he ordered much more than the health-conscious meal she had until he simply gave in and traded plates with her, all of it felt like . . . home. Like where he belonged.
And she’d be leaving soon. When they returned, she’d get her certification, there’d be a small ceremony for the ones graduating from the training program, and then she’d go where the wind, or rather, Uncle Sam, blew her.
Leaving him . . . behind.
He didn’t say much on the drive back to the base and neither did she. He remained in his head, trying to work out a way they could continue this, whatever it was, even after she was reassigned.
He could only think of one way and that involved him doing as she’d said and going back to fieldwork. He didn’t have a problem with that at all and he missed it a great deal. He’d only taken the instructor position to begin with because they were shorthanded. But he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about him following her wherever she was sent. Sure, she’d said she loved him, but that didn’t mean she’d want him tagging along on her assignment.
Ask her, idiot.
He wanted to. Badly. But he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear the answer if it was no.
He glanced over at her profile. Her expression was pensive as she stared out the window.
Just tell her, jackass. Give her the words. She needs them.
He would, he decided.
No one had ever said I love you to him as far as he could recall. He assumed his mom had said it at some point before she passed, but there was no concrete memory of hearing those words for him to hold on to.
Having Vivien say it to him for the first time had awoken feelings in him that he hadn’t been aware he was capable of having. Elation. Confusion. A desperate need that made him uncomfortable.
His entire life he’d learned that the moment you thought you were safe, the moment you relied on someone else for anything, you became vulnerable to being kicked in the teeth.
But the hard lessons of his childhood weren’t something he wanted Vivien to pay for. She deserved better than that. Now that he was positive without a doubt that he loved her, as much as someone like him was capable of loving another human being, he would tell her. Then he’d ask how she felt about him transferring to wherever she was assigned. Or if she wanted to try long distance first. He wasn’t picky; he just knew whatever he had that resembled a heart was hers. Since he didn’t have much else to offer, he prayed that would be enough.
22
“Private Brooks?”
Vivien stopped short just outside the door to her building. The night before, she’d given Chase a quick kiss on the cheek and practically sprinted from his truck, unable to remain in it with him and her own shame breathing up all the oxygen for a second longer.
Part of her hoped it would be him outside her door that morning, but, much to her dismay, it wasn’t.
Not once had she cried over the way he’d shut down when she’d told him how she felt until she was safely inside her own living space. Then she’d allowed herself the night to break down and wallow in self-pity. Now she had to suck it up and face him at her final evaluation for certification.
The man who’d called out to her looked nothing like Chase. He was tall and lean, with short brown hair styled carefully to one side. He wore a dark suit and sunglasses and stood next to a sleek black sedan.
“Can I help you?”
He nodded and opened a black portfolio-style billfold to flash an official-looking badge. “Special Agent Marshall Whitworth. I’d like a word with you if possible.”
Vivien’s head spun. She’d thought she’d left this life behind in Texas. The FBI, the CIA. All of the government officials who believed her parents’ disappearances were fraudulent to cover their involvement with her mother’s Russian crime family.
“I have a class to get to.” It was more than just a class. It was her certification to see if she qualified to be an EOD tech. It was also the first time she’d see Chase face-to-face since walking away from him the day before. And she was not going to be late even for a federal agent.
“Actually you don’t,” Agent Whitworth informed her. “It’s been rescheduled. Put off for a few hours because you aren’t feeling well.”
She stilled, then let her shoulders slump. “Okay. Then I guess I can talk.” Not like she had a choice. She didn’t know why these types even bothered asking.
He opened the back door of the sedan, and she hesitated.
“You will be back in time for your certification. I promise.”
She eyed him skeptically. “In my experience, the promises of men like yourself don’t mean much.”
Agent Whitworth smirked and it bothered her that she couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses.
“Guess you’ll have to take a leap of faith then.”
***
“No,” Vivien told Agent Whitworth and his partner, a black-haired stone-faced man who introduced himself as Agent Emilio Gutiérrez. She shook her head rapidly in the back of the sedan. “I can’t do this. I won’t.”
“You don’t exactly have a choice, Vivien,” Agent Gutiérrez informed her. “This isn’t a drill. Dmitri Vetrovsky wants to use you as leverage to get something he wants very badly. Therefore, he’s coming for you. Period. This isn’t a game. He won’t play nice to get what he wants. And we know for a fact you don’t have it anyway. That won’t matter so much to him.”
“What is it, exactly?”
“Information on your parents. Specifically, information your dad is privy to.”
Vivien’s heart pounded so hard she was certain it would tear through her chest any moment. “How? I mean, why? Why would he think I know anything? As far as I know my parents have been missing since I was a kid.”
The agents exchanged a look much like Jen and Emerson did when they knew something she didn’t—or when they were realizing she was slow on the uptake.
“They are missing. Officially, that is. Unofficially is another story,” Agent Whitworth said evenly. “And we’ll get to that. B
ut if you want to know more about them and their whereabouts, you’ll have to do as we say.”
Vivien’s mind blanked then began to whir rapidly as if someone had pressed START on the spin cycle. “And if I don’t? If I refuse to play your game your way? What happens? Does the government just hand me over to Vetrovsky?”
Agent Gutiérrez sighed loudly. “No. Of course not. But we can’t put people on you twenty-four seven, and he has his ways. It will be a risk and not just for you, but for anyone you care about.”
“Speaking of which,” Agent Whitworth broke in. He produced a blank manila envelope and handed it to her. “I’m guessing this is someone you care about. Someone who you wouldn’t want to be involved in your mess.”
Her mess? She opened her mouth to toss a few choice words at the agent but closed it when she removed the stack of photographs from the envelope.
Chase. Him walking across the base. Getting in his truck.
Him leaning her against the building by where they did her training in the bomb suit.
Her leaving his office the night she almost sabotaged them in front of his CO.
The two of the making love on the beach.
That one really burned her.
Hot, angry tears pricked her eyes. Vivien wasn’t the type to cry when she was sad. When she did lose control of her tears, which was rare, she cried more out of anger and frustration than anything else.
“This was private,” she bit out, clenching the photo tightly. “On a private beach. Not entertainment for some paparazzi-wannabe FBI agent.”
“Sorry,” Agent Gutiérrez said as if he was bored with her entire outburst. “We thought helping you stay alive was more important than your privacy. I’ll make a note in your file for next time.”
“I need more than this. If you really want me to do as you say, I need to know for certain that I will get to see my parents. Alive.”
Whitworth frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “And I wish I could give you that. But I can’t. All I can do is tell you what I know about what happened the night they were taken. Everything else is above my pay grade.”