Would it be all or nothing? She hadn’t been certain when the others left, but she’d had to make sure Gunner was really, truly okay.
So far, that wasn’t the case.
She’d wanted to take a room in a hotel, give him some space, and although he wasn’t exactly himself, he refused to let her leave. And he still used all the security equipment.
She figured that was simply a hard habit to break. That he was still protecting her, worried about blowback. But Rip—aka Richard Powell—worked alone and his men, who’d actually been the ones to kill him, had scattered to the wind. They were afraid for their own lives.
Tonight was the last night before Dare and Grace left for the Seychelles, before Key left for parts unknown and Jem went to Texas, although nobody knew what he’d lost in Texas, and he wasn’t telling.
After she’d said good night to everybody, bid them safe trips, knowing it would be the last time she saw them for a while, she sat on her own bed and debated.
Tomorrow, the place would be emptied of everyone but her and Gunner.
Now she padded down the stairs to Gunner’s room. His was the only one on the second floor—Key and Jem slept in the panic room on the shop level with all the cameras, because they felt most comfortable there. Gunner’s floor held the same sort of security setup.
Dare and Grace were already pretending to be on their honeymoon on the third floor, down the hall from Avery’s room, and everyone granted them their space.
She’d been sleeping with headphones on.
Now, shivering more from anticipation than the cold, she stood in front of Gunner’s door, wearing just a T-shirt that skimmed her thighs, the neckline stretched comfortably enough to fall off one shoulder. It was actually his T-shirt she’d grabbed one day and never given back.
She knocked lightly and he opened the door quickly, like he was expecting her.
Duh, because the cameras probably picked you up the second you left your room.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. He held his gun in his hand and she touched his wrist and pushed it so the gun faced the floor.
“Nothing.”
“Oh.” He stared at her. “You’re sure?”
“Never more sure,” she murmured. She took a step closer, stared up his body. Put her free hand out to trace the swirl of tattoos along his neck and he let her. Stood stock-still, frozen, watching her face.
Her hands traveled along his arms, starting from his shoulders and moving downward and then back up, the muscles bunching and flexing under her touch.
Still nothing from him but the stare. She really hoped he didn’t want to talk about this—about anything—because she did not come here for conversation tonight.
Finally, she stood on tiptoes, slid a hand around the back of his neck and brought her lips to his. She closed her eyes and melted against him, the heat of his body calling to her like a beacon.
It took her maybe ten seconds to realize he wasn’t kissing her back.
• • •
Gunner had tried to back away, but he’d found himself mesmerized by her touches, by the smooth expanse of tan skin that showed around the old white V-neck T-shirt of his she wore. When she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him, the instinct to pick her up and carry her to his bed and fuck everything else nearly won out.
God, she was sweet. He wanted to sink into her and not pull out for days. Weeks. Forfuckingever.
But none of that was in the cards.
Your whole life is a lie.
He ripped his mouth away. She looked stunned. Stepped back, touched her swollen lips with her fingers. Stared at him like she didn’t recognize him.
Had she sensed something? Did she know?
He hoped not. There was so much more to his past than Avery or the others knew. Finding out he was Richard Powell’s son had only scratched the surface of a very tarnished past, one he’d wanted to stay buried.
“Sorry,” she whispered, backed away and he didn’t go after her, not even when she turned and ran. He stood like stone, steeling himself for what was coming next.
When he heard her race up the stairs and lock her door, he knew what he had to do. The rest of the crew would leave in a few hours. He lay on his bed for most of that time, listening. Waiting. When he heard the last of them leave, watched the cabs pull away for the airport, he knew he was nearly ready.
It was only then that he used the blade to lightly go over the tattoo already embedded in his skin. Recut and press the herbs into the welling blood to keep the charm active. Most would tell him he only had to rub the herbs, not do the cuts. But Josephine—his Josie—had made him promise to do it like this. Said it was more effective.
He’d keep that promise to her until the day he died. Could hear her chiding in his ear, “That’s it, chère . . . perfect.”
Perfect.
She would hate that he’d mourned her for so long that he’d left a string of broken hearts in his wake, trying to forget.
She’d be angry, but she’d understand, and that was the bitch of it all.
He muttered her name like a prayer. Remembered the most important words he’d ever learned.
“From this moment on, all your lies are your life.”
He’d been lying for as long as he could remember.
The first thing he remembered was being woken in the middle of the night. He’s twelve. He should be asking what’s wrong, should be scared, but it had happened so many times before, he’s just moving. Sleeping on his feet. By the time he wakes, he’s in a moving car with the bag he’d carefully packed hidden, shoes shoved on, and they’ll be in a car heading toward a train or a plane that’s also going somewhere.
Doesn’t matter, because he won’t have a choice. That somewhere won’t matter. At least it never had before.
But this time, as the helo hovers over the landing strip on the small island, his stomach’s tight, muscles tense.
This time, everything’s different.
The bag he always kept packed was bigger now, held more sophisticated things, but a go bag was always the same, made the same feelings surface. There was a silence that wouldn’t go away. No matter what he did, no matter how many good things he accomplished, it would always be there.
His voice mail still blinked, the message from the private number as yet unplayed. He knew what it would say, who it was from. He’d already gotten a call the day after they’d returned from the island, the day after he’d killed his father.
The threat was so fucking real, and what was worse, he’d been waiting for it every single minute of every single day for more than ten years. Once he’d been on his father’s island again, he knew there was no going back.
He’d been caught on surveillance tape while there. His life would never be the same.
Now he picked up the phone and redialed the number he still knew by heart. All the messages that had been left for him daily had said exactly the same thing.
Welcome back from the dead.
Drew Landon picked up on the second ring. “Cutting it close, James.”
“Under the wire’s always been my specialty.”
“You disappeared after you fucked up my job a second time,” Landon told him. “Imagine my disappointment.”
“What do you want?”
“Work off your debt. If you’re as good as you used to be, you’ll work maybe five years.”
So fucking reasonable. “And if I don’t?”
“I can send every criminal you ever helped after you. Ever family member of every trafficker you ever took down will have your picture. And pictures of your team members. The deal I’m proposing isn’t so bad now, is it?”
“Haven’t you done enough?”
“I haven’t even started. But I’m a man of my word. Your friends will be safe. I trust you’ve been making arran
gements while you’ve been ignoring my messages. The next step would’ve been a visit to your shop.”
Your friends will be safe.
Why should he trust Landon now? Just because he didn’t have a choice was the only answer he could come up with. “You didn’t keep Josie safe.”
“I never promised that. But I had nothing to do with Josie’s death, James. If I did, don’t you think I’d admit it? I’m outright threatening your team—obviously, I’m far from terrified of you.”
Maybe Landon had never been, but now he should be. Gunner would make damned well and sure of that.
Not that it had ever been the same. Not for long, anyway.
He slung the go bag over his shoulder and grabbed the file folder that held the contracts for the sale of the tattoo shop and the other properties. Dare and company had a month to vacate, and he had a job to do. One he never should’ve tried to get away from.
He promised himself he’d never try to again.
• • •
Avery hadn’t wanted to leave her room, not after Gunner’s rejection hours before. He’d just pulled away and stared at her. She’d never forget the look on his face, although she couldn’t quite place it.
Could she have misjudged this so badly? Or was he that freaked out by what had happened?
God, she felt stupid. Humiliated. And maybe she’d ruined any chance of him working for S8.
Would you really want to work with him if you couldn’t have him?
She wasn’t exactly in the headspace to answer that question. Maybe after coffee, which she smelled brewing. Maybe it was a peace offering.
It was just after seven in the morning. Sleeping in—or much at all—wasn’t happening these days. She was about to cut around the corner to the kitchen when she saw the note propped up on his favorite tattooing chair, her name written on it.
She went over to it, noting how quiet the shop seemed. She ripped the envelope open and found a note in his handwriting telling her that the shop and the surrounding building and garage had been sold. And that she needed to vacate within a month’s time.
She wavered between hurt and anger. The anger won out at first. She slammed one of his tattoo guns against the wall, watching it break in half.
You have a month to vacate.
Well, thanks for that. She’d take about a minute.
Although it didn’t work like that, because after the initial anger wore off, she realized that leaving Gunner would be like wrenching her heart from her body. Was it that easy for him?
She couldn’t bear to think that it was.
He had to have been planning this. His rejection of her last night made sense in light of that. She read through the note again, focusing on his last lines.
I can’t be a part of S8. I can’t be who you want me to be. Key’s a good guy. He’s good for you.
“He’s kidding me, right?” she asked out loud. He’d left her, the shop. The team. He’d waited until it had been just her here. The lease, the note, it was all for her.
And that’s why he rejected you last night. That’s why he’d been acting so oddly. This had been in the works for weeks. Maybe from the second they’d stepped foot back in Louisiana.
She wondered if it was because there had been blowback she didn’t know about, stemming from the murder of Richard Powell, an ex-CIA spy who nearly ruined all of their lives. But she knew Jem was still monitoring the situation. They all were. If something big had come up, vacation or no vacation, they would have gotten in touch.
Which meant Gunner chose to walk out of her life, wanted to get away from Section 8, and from her. This was a major statement and one she wasn’t taking too well.
And then she went into every single nook and cranny of the place, looking for clues. He’d left a lot of his stuff behind, presumably for the new owner to simply throw out.
She knew she’d neatly pack up his clothes. His books. The framed pictures of his tattoos. She’d put them all in storage for when he came back. But for right now, she sat in the quiet of Gunner’s shop, unable to stop thinking on the strange, sometimes miraculous and equally heartbreaking turns her life had taken in under a year’s time.
It started out with Avery and Dare trying to save themselves from a man named Richard Powell and ended up with them finding a new group who felt like family.
Section 8 had been assembled in the eighties, comprised of seven men and one woman who’d gotten dishonorably discharged from the military for many different reasons. Typically, for not being leadable enough, and one of those men was Avery and Dare’s father, Darius O’Rourke. S8 was charged with doing black ops missions for a handler they’d never met, and after one mission gone wrong, the original S8 was disbanded. But when their handler called them back together, disaster stuck and the original team, save for Darius and Adele, were killed.
After Darius and Adele discovered their mysterious handler was Richard Powell, they helped his stepdaughter, Grace, escape from his island. Powell in turn hunted down anyone and everyone who was ever associated with S8 and tried to kill them.
Unfortunately for Powell, he’d underestimated Darius’s children and Grace herself. Together with Dare, Grace, Jem, Key and Gunner, they’d taken down Powell.
Or rather, Gunner had. The fact that Gunner’s father was Richard Powell, who was also Grace’s stepfather and the man behind Section 8, was a twist none of them had seen coming. So Avery and Dare were legacies. The rest were guilty, as it were, by association with S8. And so the new Section 8 was born. At least until Avery took the practical measure of reminding them what they’d all been through, and how a future in such a group would not be easy. She was telling military men this, and Grace, a survivor in her own right, but it needed to be said. Coming off the high of a completed mission, coupled with the low of Darius’s death and learning Gunner’s secret, things were complicated, to say the least.
Six months, Avery told all of them when they’d gotten back to Gunner’s shop after burying her and Dare’s father, Darius. Six months to decide if they were truly in or out of the new S8.
She’d thought more than once about asking Dare what really had happened on the island when Powell was killed by his own men, but she’d stopped herself. It was more Gunner’s story than Dare’s, and she would wait for him to make the reveal.
She had a feeling she’d be waiting a long time, at this rate, anyway. She was haunted that she missed Gunner’s leaving, possibly by mere minutes. Gunner had been pulling away faster than any of them had been able to reel him in. And now he was running.
When Avery first met Gunner, she’d been running too, first from the police and then from the men Richard Powell sent to kill her.
Richard Powell, who’d been responsible for the deaths of both her mother and her father.
Richard Powell, the biological father of the man she’d fallen in love with.
Trying to reconcile Gunner to that monster who’d made sure she’d only met her father long enough to hold his hand while he died . . . it was impossible.
Grace was adopted by Richard Powell, but Gunner was his blood.
God, what a complicated mess, hampered by the fact that she was more worried about Gunner and what all of this had done to him. She knew he was nothing like Powell. She had a feeling he wasn’t as sure, and it was breaking her heart.
They’d grown close in a very short period of time. Danger and proximity often did that to people, but what happened between them was more than that. She’d never felt this way about any man before him. And she felt closer to understanding many of her mother’s decisions because of that.
Everything was in limbo, with all of them deciding whether they were ready to take this on. And they all needed time to tie up loose ends, get their heads together. Because once they started working, downtime wasn’t going to be as free.
If they decided to be a pa
rt of the new Section 8. She’d known there might be hesitancy, but she hadn’t figured any of them would quit outright. Not like this.
Dare had taken Grace to the Seychelles. Key hadn’t mentioned where he was going, but knew he’d stay in touch with his brother, Jem, who was spending time in Texas.
She didn’t bother to ask why. With Jem, it wasn’t so much why, but rather why not?
Jem, who’d been the most reluctant to leave her behind. “Worried about you, kid,” he’d told her a couple of nights ago.
“Who’re you calling kid?”
He’d laughed, then handed her a phone.
“What’s this?”
“A phone.”
“Jem, I have a phone.”
“Not like this, you don’t. You call me, any fucking time. Got it?”
“You’re worried.”
“Very.” He’d glanced toward Gunner, who’d been on the computer, not talking to any of them, not joining in their conversation. There, but not there, the way he’d been the entire month. “Something’s up.”
“Well, yeah, after what he’s been through . . .”
“Something’s. Up.” He’d stared at her. “You call me. Dig?”
“Dig,” she’d said, although barely able to with a straight face. Now she was never so grateful for what she’d dubbed the bat phone in her entire life. She’d hold on to it like a lifeline and pray that Gunner would come to his senses. Because it was never too late.
Chapter Two
For the past three weeks, Avery had walked around in a daze. Every time she saw a tall, blond man from the back, she fought the urge to run up and hug him. Or punch him.
It was never him, anyway. And while she hadn’t called any of the others about Gunner’s disappearance, she’d finally worked up the courage to visit someone who might be able to give her insight.
Being able and being willing were two very different things and she’d been bracing for a rejection on the entire walk over, which was why she hesitated outside the restaurant. It was quiet—the dinner rush hadn’t started yet, and she knew she had to take advantage of that.
Unbreakable_A Section 8 Novel Page 2