by Jillian Neal
H.A.L.O. Undone
A Broken H.A.L.O. Novel
Jillian Neal
Copyright © 2018 by Jillian Neal
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN: 978-1-940174-46-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018944902
Many thanks to Ann and Ann – for your friendship and your help, two things I needed more than you will ever know.
Contents
1. Griff
2. Hannah
3. Griff
4. Hannah
5. Hannah
6. Griff
7. Griff
8. Hannah
9. Griff
10. Hannah
11. Griff
12. Hannah
13. Griff
14. Hannah
15. Griff
16. Griff
17. Hannah
18. Griff
19. Hannah
20. Griff
21. Hannah
22. Griff
23. Hannah
24. Griff
25. Hannah
26. Griff
27. Griff
28. Hannah
29. Griff
30. Hannah
31. Griff
32. Hannah
33. Hannah
34. Griff
35. Hannah
36. Griff
37. Hannah
38. Griff
39. Hannah
40. Griff
41. Griff
42. Hannah
43. Griff
44. Griff
45. Hannah
46. Griff
47. Hannah
48. Griff
49. Hannah
50. Griff
51. Hannah
52. Hannah
53. T-Byrd
54. Griff
55. Hannah
56. Griff
57. Hannah
58. Griff
59. Hannah
60. Hannah
Epilogue
H.A.L.O. Redeemed
About the Author
Also by Jillian Neal
1
Griff
“I should’ve shot you the first time I met you.” I stared down T-Byrd, one of the idiots who was supposed to be my brother in arms, and all that other shit they shovel into your skull in Basic. I willed him to be some kind of mirage or one of those visions you get when you’re high on pain killers or something. Normally, I loved the guy like he was my brother. Today, not so much. “I’m gonna give you a chance to repeat what you just said to me. But think on it before you do because if you seriously think I’m going to do what you just said I was gonna do, you’ve lost your damned mind.”
In true T-Byrd format, he was laughing- hysterically, I might add. “Dude, you should see your face right now.”
If you served in Special Forces long enough, you figured out a few things. The ability to do a thirty-mile run with an eighty pound ruck is handy when, say, you’re fleeing insurgents on foot. Endurance is a thing just like keeping your mouth shut and not bitching about living in hundred-degree weather with hundred-percent humidity while you’re stuffed in a ghillie suit like a sardine in a deep fryer. But the two skills that will save your ass day in and day out are the ability to tell when someone’s lying and being able to effectively tell a lie without getting caught.
I ran my hand through my hair and then gripped the thick oak desk I’d had delivered to my corner office four years ago. How the hell I’d come to have a job that required a desk I still hadn’t figured out.
Here’s the thing though: T wasn’t lying. You don’t work with a guy for seven long-ass years and not know their tells, Beret or not. He’d actually gone and done this and now I was going to have to smash his face into the pavement, which was a far more appealing prospect than actually doing the thing he’d just informed me I was going to do. “I’m not fucking around, T. If you’re shitting me, say it because I’m about to shove your head through that concrete wall and hang a frame around it. I don’t give a damn what all we’ve been through together.”
This only elicited more laughter. His guffaws echoed against my skull. I ground my teeth until my molars protested.
He quieted down and gave me his signature eye roll. “Come on, Griff, you haven’t had a vacation since we started this security firm. You work every weekend. You work every holiday. It’s fucked up. I’m sending you to Vegas not Valdivia.”
I shuddered at the mention of the Chilean city where we’d spent far too much time doing far too many things I didn’t care to remember.
“What’s he bitching about now?” Smith Hagen, the guy who was going to be demoted from being my best friend if he knew anything about this, strolled by my office and leaned in. His hulking frame took up the majority of my doorway.
“I’m not bitching about anything,” I ground out. “Tell him he’s a moron.” I shoved my finger in the general vicinity of T-Byrd.
“Hey, T, Griff says to tell you you’re a moron.” Smith smirked. Asshole. “Oh, is this about the Vegas thing?” His smirk turned into an all-out freaking grin. He actually chuckled. I made plans to have both of my best friends’ faces permanently mounted onto my office walls. They’d fit nicely right between my Distinguished Service Cross and my Medal of Honor.
“You knew about this and decided to keep your mouth shut? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Honestly, bro, I wanted to see the look on your face when he told you. He was supposed to wait ’til I got here just so I could enjoy this moment. Based on that fact, I agree with the moron status.”
“Hey,” T huffed. “He was about to take on yet another client. I had to get to him before he signed the contract.”
“I guess I’ll allow that.” Another chuckle erupted from Smith. Here’s the thing about my best friend - if NASA, the army, and some badass tattoo artist hijacked Professor X’s lab to create the ultimate soldier, they would’ve created Smith Hagen. He’s not someone you want to piss off but typically he’s pretty chill, the very reason we’re friends. Well, that and the fact that we’d marched straight through hell on numerous occasions and always had each other’s back.
Instead of him coming through for me this time though, he slipped into negotiations. He cleared his throat. Never a good sign. Smith was about to tell me something he knew I didn’t want to hear. “He’s right, you know. We all got out of Walter Reed, got our discharge papers and a slew of medals, and you started working. You never so much as took a day off to piss around. It’s a week in Vegas. Drink too much. Sleep too much. Blow some money. Hell, get yourself blown. You’re literally getting paid to get laid.”
“Precisely what I was trying to tell you,” T vowed. “But you know I’m just a moron. I’m worried about you. You’ve upgraded your normally hot-headed status to full-on asshole lately. You need to get the hell out of Lincoln. That’s for damn sure.”
“Get out of my office.” It was the only phrase I could come up with. Clearly, I needed to up my repertoire of threats. I’d been out of the army too long, getting soft. I was no longer accustomed to having to threaten people a dozen times before my second cup of coffee. That was it. My synapses were under-caffeinated. Damn them.
“No,” T huffed. “It’s for charity, man. It won’t kill you.”
I got another eye roll from T. “Legal? You’re worried it’s not legal. Who the hell are you?”
“It’s sketchy as fuck,” I snapped. “Some chick is supposed to bid on me? Who even came up with this?”
Smith laughed. “We were Berets, the kings of black ops. The shit we did. The shit we still occasionally do under the guise of an everyday government security firm. Come on, sketchy as fuck could be our team motto.”
“Does the Department of Defense know about this?” I demanded.
Another round of hearty laughter filled my office from my former friends as they helped themselves to the chairs in front of my desk.
“It’s a charity bachelor auction, Griff. Organizations do them all the time. The DOD doesn’t give a shit about it. Plus, it’s for Homefront Heroes. They actually get money to vets that need it, unlike most of the charities that say they help and don’t. They helped Maddie pay for what we couldn’t cover of little Olivia’s eye surgeries last year. Do it for Chris.” Smith still choked over his name. It had been four years, and we still couldn’t say their names.
The calendar on my desk distracted me from the gut-punch of pain. I amended my original thought. It had been almost four years. Almost.
“Do not…” I shook my head. That was low. “Don’t you fucking go there. That’s a bunch of bullshit right there. Don’t you go pulling him into this shitfuckery you’ve decided to sign me on for.”
“How about you don’t make me pull rank on you.” T levied another blow.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t had a uniform on in years so you can take your rank and shove it up your ass so far you choke on it. You may have gotten to order me around back in the day but you do not actually outrank me,” I reminded him.
“Oh, that reminds me, you need to be in your blues for the ceremony thing at the end when they give the money to Homefront Heroes. Don’t forget to pack them.” He acted like the only part of my diatribe he’d heard were the words uniform and years.
“T, man, I need you to get your head out of your ass so you can hear me. I am not going to Vegas to be purchased for charity. If this whole deal was the other way around, and the women were the ones being bought, you and I and the entire Department of Defense would be ripping people’s heads off and busting balls with no mercy. Rightfully so. I’ll write Homefront Heroes a check myself, right now. But this,” I lifted the brochure he’d placed on my desk, “this isn’t happening.”
“You’re not being purchased,” T came right back. “You’re agreeing to take some woman out to a few formal dinners, to a brunch, and to attend a ball. That’s it.”
“Sounds an awful lot to me like my cock is going on an auction block.”
“Better than being cock blocked though, right?” Smith laughed.
“So, help me, man. I have three pistols in arm’s reach that you can’t see. Don’t tempt me.”
This time I earned the coveted double eye roll from my team members. “Yeah, you two keep rolling your eyes. Maybe you’ll locate your brains back there.” My own brain started creating new and more colorful curse words for this shitastrophy. Oh, that was another good one.
“Once a weapons sergeant, always a weapons sergeant.” Smith shook his head.
“It’ll be good for your people skills,” T tried.
“I don’t need to improve my people skills. I’m good with people.”
“You are good at killing people but not necessarily talking to them,” T reminded me.
Smith smirked and switched back into negotiation tactics. He was going to pay for this. “So, you’re saying if some smart, sweet, gorgeous woman wants to spend a little time with you and your cock, you’re not interested?”
A Beret is really only as good as his ability to adapt, so I switched tactics. Ordering myself to leash my rage, I attempted to get him on my side. I filled my chest with air instead of fury. “That is not what I’m saying. I have long been a fan of women of every variety. They’re all fucking amazing and have, on numerous occasions, made me certain there is a God. They make the whole damn world spin. My cock is practically the freaking fan club president, but we” —I gestured to myself and then to my crotch— “prefer it if we have some say in who we’re spending time with.” I sank down in my chair and reminded myself that I was a grown-ass man who didn’t have to do anything at all. I no longer took orders from the army.
My ability to effectively tell a lie had just come through for me again. There was one woman. One who’d ever convinced me this world wasn’t a fucked up cesspool of hate. One who’d made me believe heaven was actually wherever she existed. One who’d been…everything. And there would only ever be one. Because as it turns out this world is completely fucked up. And because life loves to twist a knife already buried to its hilt, Smith was just one of the reasons I could never have her again. But the idiots sitting in my office bought my bullshit about being a fan of all women and that’s all that mattered.
“Hey, Smith, man, let me talk to him for a second.” T’s request came off as an order. I hadn’t heard that tone in quite some time. What the hell was going on? Maybe he hadn’t quite bought my lie. Shit.
Before Smith could follow T’s order, Rylee, our own personal ballbuster poked her head in. “Smith, Mrs. Kendrick is here.”
Smith sighed. “Doubt she’ll be Mrs. Kendrick much longer. Not after I show her the pics I got of her husband and not one but two of his mistresses last night. Griff, man, take him up on his offer. This job occasionally sucks. Have a gin and tonic or four and blow through a few Benjamins for me while you’re there.” He closed the door on his way out.
He was right. This job did occasionally suck. What job didn’t? But catching the cheaters was a very small part of our security gig. We also helped find missing and runaway kids. We help find criminals the cops couldn’t get their hands on. Hell, last year we helped a half-dozen men and women who’d been adopted as babies hunt down their birth parents so they could help with medical issues. We did all of those things to keep from ending up with the same reputation of a few of the government security firms out there. The ones people vaguely knew about because they all had a sketch factor higher than the Empire State Building. We took on the small, pro bono cases to cement ourselves in humanity, to remember why we’d ever signed on to be Tier One assets of the United States Department of Defense. Eighty-percent of our cases came with classified dossiers that included words like weapons trades, foreign cybersecurity hacks, and terrorist shields. The other twenty kept us sane.
As much as it sucked to have to watch it through a camera lens and show it to whoever hired us, knowledge was power, right? Besides, they weren’t all cheaters. Once, I caught a guy taking dance lessons behind his wife’s back so he could take her dancing for her birthday. Nothing wrong with that.
Keeping the people who hadn’t yet realized what a shithole this world is from figuring it out seemed like a noble effort. It was the same reason I’d joined Special Ops. I do the things no one wants to do, or even know exist, so everyone back home never has to think about them. No one has to be afraid of the inevitable wolf at the door. Believe me, there is always one there and there always will be. Keeping people safely inside whatever version of reality made them smile made my own personal hell a little easier to swallow. At least I slept on occasion now. That was something.
“How long have you known me?” T’s question jerked me back from my own inner monologue.
“Right now, I’m thinking too damned long.”
“I’m serious, Griff.” And he was. Damn this reading people thing I’d been trained to do.
“Long enough to expect you not to pull shit like this.” I wasn’t letting it go.
“Fair enough, but
if you’d get over yourself for the better part of a minute maybe you’d figure out that you need to do this.”
The way he’d emphasized need was weird. What the hell was he up to?
I rubbed my temples attempting to rid myself of the constant tension that resided there. “Look, we can sit here all damn day playing who’s better at lying and who’s better at telling when someone’s lying. By the way, both of those would be me. But why don’t you just tell me why you did this?”
He shook his head. His amused expression only served to make me determined to add some kind of antler hat to his stupid head when I framed his face in my wall. “I can’t do that so how about you trust me when I say, there’s more to this than you know and I need you to go to Vegas and just be. Take a week. Be…happy. Hell, maybe take a whole lifetime to do it, but I’m not letting you out of this. You deserve to go. Get packed.”
We went through the Q course and jump school together. Hell, we’d shared barracks and patches of sand all over the Middle East. I’d known Master Sergeant Thomas Byrd almost a decade. He was the guy always cracking a joke no matter what we had to do. I had never, in all of that time, in all of our training, on the most grueling days when I wanted to quit, every single day in that hospital while I had my leg reconstructed out of rods and pins and it hurt so fucking bad I asked him to just shoot me and put me out of my misery, ever heard him speak so earnestly about anything. Never. “Is this for a case? Is someone in trouble? Just…what does ‘I need to go’ even mean?”