SEAL's Honor

by Megan Crane

  “My childhood wasn’t perfect. Far from it.” She glared at him, and wished she didn’t know how to hit things now, because it was all she wanted to do. “You’ve met my mother. She’s driven and exacting when she’s on vacation. You have no idea what it’s like being her disappointing child who failed to follow in her footsteps.”

  “Yeah, let me haul out my violin. That sounds terrible.”

  Somehow, Everly managed to keep her head from exploding. “It’s not a competition.”

  “I should have known better than to touch you,” he said, in that same way he’d brought up what had happened between them before. Like a gut punch. And this time, even though she knew it was deliberate, a distancing maneuver he was using to push her away, she found that it worked. It felt like her heart was three times its usual size, bruised, and lodged in her throat. “I knew you couldn’t handle it.”

  “I don’t think that I’m the one who can’t handle it, Blue.” She refused to let him see how much he’d hurt her. No matter how it cost her to stay calm. “It’s pretty clear that I’m not the one freaking out here. Do you want to talk about why you can’t handle it?”

  She knew perfectly well he didn’t.

  And they were so close, there in the front of that SUV. She could see that fascinating muscle tense in his jaw, and she wanted nothing more than to run her palms over his face again, so she could marvel in the feel of his cheekbones. So she could feel the heat of his skin. And get close to that gorgeous mouth of his, which she really didn’t know if she could bear to never kiss again.

  But she didn’t dare reach out. Not now.

  Everly had never seen anyone look more lonely, or more angry and defeated, somehow, than Blue did right now. As if he were carrying an unbearable weight he didn’t know how to put down.

  She felt tears prick at the backs of her eyes. She felt the ache of wanting to help him moving over her like a kind of flu.

  “You don’t have to freak out about this,” she told him, though she knew better. She really did. But she couldn’t seem to make herself stop. “You don’t have to worry. I love you.”

  He let out a sound, not quite a laugh, because it was far too bitter for that.

  And he looked at her as if she’d betrayed him.

  “Blue . . .”

  Everly cast around for something to say. She wanted desperately to take back what she’d said, or modify it so he wouldn’t look at her as if she’d attacked him. But on the other hand, she was reluctant to do anything of the kind. Because it was true. And because some suicidal or just plain silly part of her thought that even though he didn’t want to hear it, he needed to.

  “Blue, you have to know—”

  “Stop.” His voice was soft. Too soft, and somehow still a stern order. His dark eyes glittered, as if he were holding back a storm by sheer force of will alone. And still, she felt it wash over her—through her—like a hurricane. “We’re here.”

  Nineteen

  Annabeth Lambert lived in what could only be termed a mansion. It sat up on a bluff over Lake Michigan, on a stately street lined with other glorious homes made of rambling wings and carriage houses, pools and terraces and acres of manicured lawns. The house itself bore more than a passing resemblance to the one Everly had dreamed about when she was younger, all faded brick and ropes of ivy.

  “There’s no time to do any decent recon,” Blue told her as they walked up the long front path that led them through some landscaping to the imposing front door.

  He was all business now. He’d slid those sunglasses over his eyes and cut himself off from her completely. And despite everything churning around inside her, Everly couldn’t really complain. She certainly didn’t want him distracted.

  And if that meant she had to tag along with him on potentially dangerous errands while her heart felt exposed and much too large and hollowed out at the same time, well, that was just the price she had to pay for opening her big mouth in the first place.

  “This is a perfectly normal social call,” Blue was saying in that same urgent undertone. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell by the way he held himself that he was scanning here, scanning there. Looking behind bushes and up toward the house’s many eaves for . . . whatever it was he looked for. “You’re the roommate. You dropped by to pay your respects in the middle of this troubling time and maybe to see if Rebecca’s been in touch. That’s all.”

  “That’s it? No good-cop, bad-cop routine?”

  But he didn’t so much as crack a smile. Not even that tiny curve in the corner of his mouth that she’d managed to eke out of him before.

  Before she’d gotten all emotional. Before she’d committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with him and, worse still, telling him about it.

  “This isn’t a game, Everly.” He couldn’t have sounded less amused if he’d tried. Though she didn’t really want him to try. “Stop acting like it is.”

  “Once again,” she said, as evenly as she could, “the only reason people are trying to kill you is because you’re protecting me. I remain the target. And as the target, I assure you, I’m not playing any—”

  “Everly.”

  She stopped talking. And part of her hated that she did, because surely she should . . . do something. Fight. Make demands. Something.

  What demands would you make? a cynical voice inside her asked. That he love you? What if he doesn’t?

  And there it was, ugly and unvarnished and exposed, right there on Annabeth Lambert’s front walk.

  Everly’s worst fear.

  Not that Blue, specifically, didn’t or wouldn’t love her—but that nobody did. Not really. Her parents were fond of her—she knew that—but they loved Jason. They talked about her brother’s accomplishments constantly. They didn’t always have time to drive an hour into Chicago to see her, but they took vacations out where Jason lived.

  She was used to being the disappointing one in her family. No one was ever mean to her. No one ever treated her badly. But Everly had never been as ambitious as her mother and brother, or her father, who had transitioned from academic life to the boards of various charities. And she had always been keenly aware of the differences.

  But maybe never so much as she was today, when she’d actually told Blue about her place in her family and he hadn’t cared.

  He’d been the older boy she’d looked up to all those years ago. Now he was a hero, and more, he’d saved her already again and again. And she had fallen in love with him because who wouldn’t? He was beautiful and he was dangerous and aside from all that, she liked him. A lot.

  But if he’d taught her anything, it was to attack, not defend. To set the terms of the interaction so an attacker could never take advantage.

  “I should never have touched you,” she said sadly, because she couldn’t palm strike him in his gorgeously unshaved face. “I should have known you couldn’t handle it.”

  His lips thinned, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t snap right back at her, which defeated the purpose as far as she was concerned.

  And then they were at the front door, and she wondered why she was trying to provoke him when she had no idea what lay on the other side. Maybe she really was the child he kept telling her she was.

  Or maybe she was full up on things to take seriously. A polite meeting with her missing roommate’s mother was low on her list of fears. It turned out that a Molotov cocktail through the bedroom window really reordered a person’s priorities.

  “I don’t understand why Rebecca was living in an apartment with me if she came from this kind of money,” she said under her breath to Blue.

  “That’s just one of the questions I’m going to need answered,” he agreed. “I told you the financials don’t make sense for either Rebecca or her mother.”

  He jutted his chin toward the doorbell, and Everly reached over and rang it.
r />   And then they stood there.

  It was a pretty summer afternoon. The humidity had let off and there was a breeze kicking up from the lake, pleasant and faintly sweet. Everly could see the water through the trees, right there where the great houses ended, sparkling blue beneath the sun.

  The street they were on was quiet, with tall trees providing shade. There were wind chimes in the distance and the sound of people splashing in pools she couldn’t see. It was like a daydream of suburban perfection, and Everly found it hard to imagine that the kind of scary men who’d been chasing her could have anything to do with a place like this.

  “Ring it again,” Blue said from beside her.

  He’d turned to face the street, standing in that loose, ready stance she recognized from their brief self-defense lessons in her living room.

  Those stolen hours after work felt like a lifetime ago.

  Everly reached over to hit the bell again. She could hear an echo roll through the house inside, and didn’t know why the sound made her tense.

  “It’s the middle of the day,” she pointed out. “She could be at work.”

  “There’s no evidence that Annabeth Lambert has ever held a job.”

  Blue said that as if there were layers to his statement that she should have recognized instantly, but she didn’t. Instead, the longer they stood there, the more she noticed more things about the house that hadn’t been apparent to her before. Like the fact that once they’d walked up to the front door, they were hidden from the street. There was a driveway that circled around, but it, too, was hidden by the high hedges.

  Meaning anyone could drive up to the front door and park here, and no one on the street would be any the wiser. Anyone could do anything here, in fact. And no one would see. She wasn’t sure they’d even hear it, unless the breeze from Lake Michigan was exactly right.

  These were things that would never have crossed Everly’s mind a month ago.

  She felt a weird kind of itchy sensation on the back of her neck and turned toward Blue, opening her mouth to tell him they should leave, but that was when she heard it. A faint sound on the other side of the big, thick door.

  Everly rubbed at the back of her neck, but the dancing bundle of nerves deep in her belly kicked into overdrive.

  Blue was right there with her, so they would be okay. She was sure of it.

  There was the sound of the locks being pulled, and then the great door swung inward.

  And Everly actually flinched back in surprise. Because standing before them, rail thin and lightly tanned, wearing a bright orange top and white pants that managed to look both simple and incredibly expensive at the same time, was Rebecca.

  Of course, it wasn’t really Rebecca, Everly realized in the next second. But the resemblance was overwhelming—and more than a little disconcerting.

  The woman standing in the doorway was older than Rebecca, though how much older, Everly couldn’t begin to guess. Her forehead was too smooth for it to be at all natural, and there was a suspicious flatness beneath each eye. She had Rebecca’s same bright blue eyes and a long, thick mane of expertly blown-out chestnut-colored hair. She had the same narrow nose and the same faintly haughty set to her mouth, though her lips were significantly plumper. She was tall and willowy even without the added height of her glittery platform sandals, and Everly understood that this had to be Rebecca’s mother.

  It couldn’t be anyone else.

  “My God,” she said without meaning to. “You look just like her.”

  The woman who was obviously Annabeth Lambert smiled, though it went no further than a strained crook of her overdone lips. “I’m told we could be mistaken for sisters. Perhaps even twins.”

  And Everly made a mental note to never, ever worry about her relationship with her mother again. Because her own mother might have her issues, but Everly had never worried that she might try to . . . pass herself off as Everly.

  She felt Blue’s gaze on the side of her face, and remembered herself. And why she was here, talking to a woman she wasn’t at all surprised her roommate had never mentioned. Because really, what would she have said?

  Come to lunch with my mother and me, but fun fact, she’s made herself into my doppelgänger and maybe steals my clothes. Along with my face.

  Maybe it was better that she and Rebecca had stuck to the odd revealing conversation about bad dates and, aside from that, shared rants about reality television episodes.

  “I’m sorry to show up at your front door with no advance notice,” she said, trying to sound whatever normal was under these circumstances. “I know we’ve never met, but I am—I mean, I was—Rebecca’s roommate. And I was—”

  “Yes.” Annabeth’s face didn’t change expression. Everly wondered if she was being deliberately flat and unreadable, or if she couldn’t actually move her face with all that . . . smoothness. “The roommate who reported my daughter’s murder when it appears Rebecca simply ran out on you. Evelyn, was it?”

  That was a lot to digest, so Everly concentrated on the part she could actually handle straight off, as it was certainly not the first time she’d been called Evelyn over the course of her life. “Everly, actually.”

  “What a strange name.”

  Rebecca’s mother didn’t smile at that, however woodenly. She didn’t laugh to soften it. Instead, she gazed back at Everly as if she were daring Everly to do something about it.

  So Everly laughed, as if it had been a joke.

  “My parents really love the Everly Brothers,” she told this woman, who she was coldly certain didn’t care at all. She felt as if she were looking at herself from a distance, standing on Annabeth’s pristine front steps in her grubby T-shirt, jeans, and Converse, with her hair such a mess she’d had to decide to simply not care about whatever it was doing. “They named my brother after my mother’s favorite uncle, but me they named after their favorite classic band. What can I say? I get to be unusual.”

  “How is it that I can help you?” Rebecca’s mother asked, still not smiling. Or relaxing her stiff posture in any way. Or inviting them in, either.

  Everly found herself standing up tall as well, as if mirroring Annabeth would help the situation. “I was just wondering if you’ve heard from Rebecca?”

  “This is some kind of joke, I presume?” Annabeth shifted her attention from Everly to Blue. “Let me guess. You’re the one who called me yesterday.”

  “We’re just looking for your daughter, ma’am,” Blue said, in his gruffest military voice.

  Annabeth appeared immune, which made that odd little itch on the back of Everly’s neck start up again. “You’re not going to find her here. Is that why you came?”

  “You seem real broken up about the fact she’s missing,” Blue pointed out, that drawl in his voice was another one of the weapons he used.

  But Annabeth didn’t seem to notice that, either.

  “My daughter is a grown woman who makes her own choices,” she said coolly. “In this case, last I heard, she’s off somewhere with some new boyfriend.” She inclined her head very, very slightly toward Everly. “Despite your theatrics. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  She went to close the door, and Everly didn’t know what came over her. But she threw herself forward, sticking her arm out to keep the big door from shutting on her. She was aware of Blue behind her, and maybe that was why she did it, as if she could muscle this woman’s door open if she wanted, when she’d never muscled a thing in her life.

  “I just want to know what happened to Rebecca. Those social media posts don’t sound like her. I don’t believe them. I think something’s wrong.”

  I saw them hurt her, she thought, but didn’t say.

  “Step back,” Annabeth said in a frigid sort of fury. “Or I’ll be forced to call the authorities to have you removed.”

  “Come on,” Blue said from behind her,
and Everly felt his hand at her hip, gripping her like he meant to haul her away if necessary.

  But she was holding Rebecca’s mother’s gaze, and she couldn’t bring herself to drop it.

  “I was there that night,” Everly said quietly. “I saw what happened. You must know that this act isn’t going to change that. I know.”

  Blue’s hand got almost hard enough to hurt, there at her hip, but he didn’t yank her back. He didn’t step in and stop her, or try to smooth things over.

  Everly chose to take that as unspoken support.

  “You know?” Annabeth stared back at her, seeming to grow another inch as she did it. “What, exactly, do you think you know?”

  Everly played a hunch, and smiled. “Everything.”

  And for a moment, the three of them simply stood there, locked in place.

  Annabeth had stepped back into her foyer. Everly was halfway through the open door. And Blue was behind her, a solid wall that for a long, frozen moment was the only thing that reminded her that her feet were actually on the ground.

  “You’re a little whore, aren’t you?” Rebecca’s mother murmured, so very politely that it took Everly an extra beat to register what she’d actually said. “You should have died that first night. Instead, you’ve caused me nothing but trouble.”

  And everything sped up.

  Blue hauled her backward, hard. The door slammed in her face, and as it did, Everly had the confused notion that another fire alarm was blaring—but nothing blew up. There was no fire, no flames.

  Blue was beside her, pulling her by the hand and then shoving her ahead of him. She had the faint notion they would run for the street, but he went the other way, breaking ahead of her and then tugging her along with him.

  He took a hard right, throwing himself between the garage and the house, headed away from the street and what she would have considered safety. She didn’t understand—