And that track didn’t have anything to do with him or the torture of their sleeping arrangements.
“If you ever get tired of saving the world, you have a brilliant future as a tour guide. I guess you’ve seen a good part of the Baltic countries now: Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Russia. I hear Sweden is beautiful. Ever been to Stockholm? What about Estonia?”
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the relaxing of his guard after a long, exhausting day. Or maybe it was just his ease of being around her, but John almost answered before he realized what she’d done.
Russia.
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he eyed her over the candlelit table. Why had he chosen this place anyway? It was too damned romantic! “Well, if things at the paper don’t work out for you, you have a hell of a future ahead of you as a lawyer.”
She blinked innocently, which he didn’t buy for a minute. “What do you mean?”
“You are good at asking questions with lots of facts not in evidence.”
“What facts are those?”
“I never said I’ve been to Russia.”
“You didn’t need to. Where else would you have gone from Vaernes? I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were in Vaernes for a week or two right before those satellite images of an explosion in Russia were taken.”
She’d done it again. More fact assumptions. “What makes you think I’ve been to Vaernes before I went there to save your sweet little ass?”
She put down the wineglass she’d been sipping from all night. She wasn’t much of a drinker. He’d had most of the rest of the bottle himself.
“Nils recognized my picture of Brandon,” she said. “If my brother was there, I know you were there, too. The reason that I was leaving the bar with Nils that night was to talk to a friend of his who’d transported you guys to a shooting range while you were there. His name was Johan. Do you remember him?”
John was good and pissed off and didn’t bother trying to hide it. “Unlike your young Norwegian friend, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a low-cut top and tight jeans to get me to spill my guts, Brit.”
She had the nerve to smile at that. She tried to hide it, but he saw it. Damn her.
There was also something calculating in that smile that scared the crap out of him. He’d thrown down that gauntlet without really thinking about it. There were ways she could try to press him that he wasn’t so sure he could fend off.
They sure as hell didn’t teach how to resist spilling information under sexual duress by a woman he could barely resist even in the best of circumstances. Great. He had his own personal Mata Hari.
He was relieved that she let it go.
“The way I figure it, Vaernes was where you launched the mission. Probably by helicoptering or flying to the coast to hop on one of our subs in the area. Getting to that part of Russia isn’t exactly easy, but my guess is you either parachuted or swam in. Given how good you guys are at swimming, my money is on the latter.” She paused, completely unfazed by his expression, which had darkened to good and black by then. “Am I warm?”
He was practically seething. Warm? She was on fire. That was pretty much exactly how it had gone down. She was only missing the submersible launched from the sub. “We aren’t going to do this, Brit.”
She shrugged. “I don’t really need you to corroborate. I’ve got enough to go on already. I wonder what I’ll find when I look into what subs were in the area at that time.”
The goddamned Internet! That kind of information was too easily available.
John wanted to shout, but he forced his voice to a low rumble. “Have you forgotten about what happened in Norway? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten, but I’m not going to put this aside until I find out the truth about what happened. What kind of reporter would I be if I let someone intimidate me so easily?”
“A breathing one,” he snapped. “You keep talking about the truth as if it’s this great panacea. But this quest you are on isn’t going to give you what you are looking for. It isn’t going to bring your brother back—or your parents. It’s just going to get more people killed.”
“You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me why.”
“You just need to trust me.”
“When you won’t trust me?”
Their eyes held. He wasn’t sure who looked away first.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” she said dejectedly.
“What do you mean?”
“Look at what you do for a living. Your entire life is cloaked in secrets.”
His jaw practically cracked his teeth were clamped so tightly together. “For a reason.”
“So you say. I know all about the ‘need for secrecy to keep America safe’ arguments—I heard them enough times from Brandon. But I’m not as ready to trust the government as you are. Secret government is the antithesis of democratic government. The press is a big part of what keeps our government in check. Free and open, remember? That’s the real red, white, and blue. So I’m not going to take anyone’s word for anything until I know what happened.”
“There’s a bigger picture here that you aren’t seeing. Sometimes the greater good requires secrecy. It’s a balancing act between national security and the free flow of information. You can’t have a very effective military or national defense if your enemy knows what you are doing. I wouldn’t be able to do my job in the open.”
“But that’s just it. There isn’t a balance. Much of our military action has shifted to secret warfare now— covert ops by special forces rather than traditional ground forces. You may need secrecy to function, but I question whether you should be functioning at all. I bet most of the American public would be surprised to hear the level of military action being undertaken by our Special Forces around the globe right now. We should be given the right to ask questions about whether this is what we want. Congress is supposed to make war, not the president or some general at the Pentagon.” She gave him a hard look. “But even if I accepted what you said about needing secrecy to do your job, you aren’t operating in a vacuum. You have to be willing to answer for your actions after the fact, and the government has to be held accountable for what it does in our name.” She paused. “Such as an illegal covert operation to Russia.”
To protect the US from something potentially far worse. But he didn’t show any reaction to her statement that was really a question.
John heard what she was saying—and he didn’t disagree with all of it—but he knew constitutional principles weren’t all that was at work here. She might believe in freedom of the press, but that wasn’t what was driving her. It was misplaced guilt and the fear that the same thing that happened to her parents would happen with her brother’s death. That justice would be denied.
But John wouldn’t let that happen. Someone would pay for what had happened to Brand and their seven other teammates. Justice might be delayed, but it would come.
“That’s the problem,” he said. “It isn’t after the fact.” He gave her a solemn look. “This isn’t over.”
When it was, he would tell her what he could. She deserved to know the truth.
Whatever the hell the truth was.
* * *
• • •
Brittany didn’t expect John to understand. She and Brandon had fought enough about his job as a SEAL for her to know the arguments. But strangely, it seemed as if he understood a little—or at least he wasn’t as vocal as her brother had been in disagreeing with her.
“Thoughtful” wasn’t a word that she would have attributed to John Donovan, but maybe there was more depth to him than she gave him credit for.
There she went again. Inventing feelings for him and fitting him into that silly, unrealistic, fantasy image she had of looks-like-Mr.-Bad-Boy-on-the-outside-but-is-actua
lly-Mr.-Sensitive-on-the-inside. She had to stop doing that. It was hard enough as it was to keep her head on straight when they were spending all this time together.
Here they were on the run, with someone potentially trying to shut her up permanently, and it felt as if they were a couple on the vacation of a lifetime. He had the uncanny ability to make stressful situations feel not so intense. He defused tension with humor and just by being so utterly relaxed and in control.
She could see why he was a great guy to have on the team—or in the locker room or frat house, for that matter. They all kind of blended together in her opinion as bastions of testosterone, which might have been an instant turnoff if he weren’t so otherwise evolved. She suspected it was because of his upbringing in Berkeley with a single mom. He respected women and their opinions in a way that most guys only gave lip service to.
Every hour they spent together, it was getting harder and harder to remind herself why he was no good for her. She’d laughed more in the past two days than she had in the last year. He was outrageous, charmingly arrogant (she never thought those two words would go together), shameless, and utterly incorrigible. Unfortunately for her and her story, he was also sharp. She’d been trying to get something out of him for two days, but he seemed to see her coming a mile away.
She’d forgotten how considerate and gallant he was. Almost old-fashioned. Hold the door open, help her get out of the car—that kind of thing.
No wonder women fell for his shtick. A genuinely nice guy with that big, protective alpha-male thing going on—not to mention serious eye candy? He was pretty much irresistible. Female catnip, as she’d said before.
Especially with that uncanny ability to make you feel as if you were the most important woman in the world.
It was exactly the way he’d made her feel five years ago. Except she was wiser this time.
Wasn’t she?
She sighed. She wasn’t so sure anymore. The past few days he’d been chipping away at the protective shield she’d wrapped around her heart, and she had to admit there might be a few cracks. If she didn’t watch it, she’d start believing that this was about more than some kind of misdirected sense of duty. That John might actually care about her.
She looked at him over her glass of half-filled wine as he handed the bill and a stack of kroner back to the waiter who’d come up just after John made his ominous pronouncement about it not being over.
The scruff and longer hair looked good on him. Really good. He smiled at something he said to the waiter, and it was like a shot straight to the heart.
Oh God, what was she going to do?
Even if she could let herself believe that he did care about her, where did that get her? Did she really want to fall in love with someone like him?
It wasn’t just the too many women or the “nothing gets to me—don’t look to me for anything but a good time” personality. As they’d just talked about, could she really see herself with someone who couldn’t tell her anything about what he was doing (which she probably didn’t want to know) or where he was going? She hated secrets. Did she want to be with someone whose job—whose life—was dependent on them?
It would drive her crazy.
And then there was all the danger and stress that came with being a SEAL. Did she want to say good-bye to him every time he left and wonder if he was ever going to come back? Her brother had been gone for months at a time. One year Brandon said he’d spent less than a month at “home.” Could she handle someone being away so much?
There was a reason the divorce rate was so high among Special Forces guys. They might look and act like superheroes, but being married to one would take heroism of its own. John might make it seem as if nothing bothered him, but how could he not be affected by the things he did and saw? By the deaths of his friends?
She suspected he was affected—far more than he wanted to let on. She saw how much he drank, and she didn’t think he was sleeping much. Last night he’d been restless, and she thought she heard him mumbling something. It had woken her up. She’d tried to ask him about it earlier, but he’d brushed her off, claiming that the room had been too hot.
She didn’t know what was worse: if he really didn’t feel anything or if he did and just bottled it up or tried to self-medicate with alcohol. He’d obviously been drinking heavily for a while, as he could have five or six drinks and not show any effects. He was a big guy, but that was a lot of drinks for anyone.
No matter how many good reasons she came up with for why this wouldn’t work and why she shouldn’t fall in love with him, Brittany knew that if this went on much longer, she might not have a choice.
She had to do something. Staying away from him would be a great start. Tomorrow, no matter how much he tried to entice her away with some fantastic thing that “she had to see,” Brittany wasn’t going to let him. She was going to find an Internet café and get in touch with Mac and do a little more research for her article.
Of course, she had to get through tonight first. And when she returned to her room—their room—and the beds that might have been pulled apart but were still far too close for her peace of mind, the night had never looked so long.
It seemed that she’d just closed her eyes, when they shot open again. Her heart jumped to her throat at the sound of a hoarse cry. “I have to try, damn it! I can’t just leave them . . .” He made another sound, this one more of a low moan. “Oh God. Please . . . no.”
The raw emotion in his voice broke her heart. She climbed out from under the duvet—apparently they didn’t believe in sheets in Scandinavia—and crossed the short distance between the two beds.
She knew he was having a nightmare—or more likely reliving something—and she had heard enough about PTSD to be cautious. He could react violently.
He was on his side with his back to her, squeezing a pillow in his arms as if he were about to tear it apart. She could practically feel the tension of coiled-up muscles. Tentatively, she put her hand on his bare shoulder.
He was burning up as if with fever. Whatever memories he was wrestling with in his nightmare, they were taking a physical toll on him. It was like putting her hand on the lid of a pot of boiling water.
But he didn’t flinch or lash out. Instead his body stilled.
Emboldened, she sat down on the bed beside him and moved her hand over his back in gentle little caresses, almost as if she were trying to quiet a baby.
“It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “You’re just having a nightmare.” He seemed to relax into her hand. “Go back to sleep.”
He turned to look at her. Or maybe he was just responding to the sound of her voice, because the next moment he’d pulled her down onto the bed in front of him and brought her in tight against his chest. His arms went around her and held her there.
She was instantly enveloped in heat and muscle and the scent of a man who’d just done battle. Of course, just as everything else about him, he even sweated sexily. John Donovan didn’t stink; the soapy smell of his skin was just intensified.
Suddenly, he sighed. Deeply. As if utterly contented. He fell into what sounded from his breathing like a deep sleep.
But he held on to her as if he would never let her go. She felt like a beloved teddy bear. Which just might be the most awesome feeling in the world.
Brittany didn’t sleep. She just listened to the steady flow of his breathing until dawn, her heart breaking for him the entire time. John might not want to admit it, but whatever had happened out there was hurting him.
He was mourning the death of her brother maybe even more than she was—which wasn’t all that surprising. Other than the three weeks that summer, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her brother in the past twelve years since their parents had died. John and Brandon had been best friends since they’d gone to SEAL training together—BUD/S, or whatever they called it—e
ight years ago.
Brandon had been more John’s brother than he’d been hers. She envied him that relationship even as she saw the pain it was causing him now. Brittany mourned Brandon, too, but not in the same way. Not so immediately. More in that she regretted their estrangement and the loss of the brother she’d known and loved as a young girl. But there had been a hole in her life where Brandon was concerned for a long time. Now it was permanent.
About an hour before dawn—such as it was in the land of the midnight sun—Brittany crept back to her bed in the semidarkness. It felt as if everything had changed. The question was what she was going to do about it.
Fourteen
Kate tried to get a little sleep when she returned home to Arlington from the airport after the red-eye. She tossed and turned for an hour before giving up. A shower, an omelet, and a triple-shot latte made her feel almost human again.
She decided to work from home for the day rather than go into the office. Percy, who had been living with her since their engagement, had been tied up with a morning meeting and had sent a driver to the airport to pick her up, but he’d checked in on her later that morning with a phone call.
“You’re sure you are okay?” he asked after she filled him in on what had happened in San Diego.
Or, rather, most of what had happened. She left out Colt’s last cruel dig, which had felt something like a jagged knife opening an old wound. An old wound that for a moment had been very raw and very painful.
How could she have let him get to her like that? She couldn’t put her shield down even for a moment when it came to him. But she’d been lulled into a false sense of complacency. They’d been getting along so well, she’d actually thought that maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she thought. That maybe they could work together like two rational adults. Which was idiotic, as there had never been anything rational about the two of them.
She’d made a mistake in a moment of weakness, which she attributed to the accident. Seeing that child nearly run over and then holding the baby until her parents arrived had stripped her to her core and left her unusually vulnerable.
Off the Grid Page 18