“Where is he?” I ask stonily, my jaw grinding so hard it hurts to talk.
They share another look, and I feel my eyeballs blaze when Lenny clears her throat and shrugs uncomfortably.
“He’s here.”
No shit! I already get that I’m only alive because that asshole told the guys about me. How he knew…that’s another facet of this mess I can’t let myself think about now. I hurt all over and just the thought of this new betrayal makes my heart hurt.
“Did he tell the guys everything?”
“By everything…?”
“I mean, did he tell them that we were together before?”
“Oh hell,” Kinsley mutters, her mind obviously calculating it all with a speed that leaves the others behind and confused. “Shit. They don’t know everything yet.”
“But you do.”
It’s not a question. Part of my training involved reading people, and from Kinsley’s body language, I get that she’s put a lot more together than anyone else has.
“How long have you known?”
“Just since I learned about the mystery shooter.”
Yeah. That would have done it, I think, closing my eyes against the pity shining from hers.
This is the deal. No one else would have gone to the trouble to protect the guys and their wives but Gunny. It’s that simple. To put it mildly, not a one of them is nice enough to evoke that much loyalty, especially not from a man who obviously went to a lot of trouble to keep on top of them.
And I know why, which pisses me off even more.
“Send them in.”
“Honey—”
“Please.”
***
I’m bathed and dressed and sitting up after Lenny personally helped me in the bathroom and spoon-fed me soup and orange juice just minutes ago. The girls all left soon after I demanded to see the men for the third time. When the door creaks open, it takes a lot for me to school my features and not react in any way, as six men come striding into the room, their stances all hostile as they look me over.
I don’t spare a glance at Gunny even though I know he’s the one who comes directly to the side of the bed and drops into the chair to my right. I can’t look at him, not yet. I’m too raw right now, and honestly, all I want is to forget this all happened and leave so that I don’t have to face the whole truth of it.
“Thank you.”
As an opening line that one is pretty weak, but it’s the way I feel as I take in Storm’s clenched jaw and the growl that shoots out of Jericho. Even Lex isn’t as happy looking as I thought he’d be. My bad for believing at least one of these men would be glad that I survived.
“Don’t. We came for you because it’s the least we could do after Echo. Now, I’d like you to tell me exactly what the fuck is going on,” Storm snarls, his jaw rigid as he looks at me.
My first instinct is to look at Gunny for confirmation, or permission, but I squelch the urge and instead nod once, waving at the seating area across from us with a calmness I don’t feel.
It physically hurts to lower my feet to the floor and push myself up from the bed, and I almost fall on my ass before a strong set of arms wraps around me and pulls me into a chest that is even harder than I remember.
I can’t help myself then, and before I know it, I’m looking up into golden eyes that I will never forget, their intensity set in a face that is so different from that of my beloved that it hurts just to see it.
The right side of his face is covered in fine scarring, but he’s handsome all the same. He’s still as devastatingly cocky too, as our eyes meet and he looks right into me.
“Tell them everything.”
I’m so shocked it takes me a minute to close my mouth and swallow past the emotions bombarding me. I can’t believe his words, and yet, as I look into his eyes and feel his arms holding me up, I see the truth and resolve there.
And it makes me goddamn suspicious is what it does. I don’t trust Gunny as far as I could throw his supposed-to-be-dead ass, and the sadness I feel at that realization is perhaps the only reason I find the strength to pull away from him to hobble to a seat where the others are waiting.
He curses when I shove his helping hand away, and that makes me feel a little better. I’d rather walk across broken glass soaked in gasoline with a lit match in my hand than take anything from this man.
I stifle a groan as I seat myself, and despite the need to avoid the anger I know they feel, I look directly at them, just as I did my jailers, and raise my chin.
“When I came to the base as Rachel Keene, it was directly after starting and failing on a directive that I was given as Sergeant Regina Cob of the Fourth. It took me months to collect any intelligence at all, and trust me, even then it was slim pickings,” I mutter, shaking my head. “My director was not happy with the results. He pulled me a few months into the operation, intending to send me back in much later to identify any leaks. See, that was the whole point at the start. We had identified a new threat with the emergence of four new cells stateside, and he wanted the leak. Unfortunately, we soon realized that we wouldn’t get anywhere by focusing on that aspect since the inside man was doing a bang-up job of covering his tracks.”
I don’t even want to look at Gunny as I say this because, dammit, I am so mad at him right now.
“You were on the job that whole time,” Jericho muses, and it makes me warm a little, seeing reluctant admiration shining in his eyes.
“Yes. I wasn’t fresh off the freaking turnip truck if that’s what you guys are thinking. I was second on the Rain Fire op down in Guatemala.”
Storm whistles long and low, and I see his lips twitch when I scowl at him.
“Don’t look at me that way, lady. I don’t doubt your skills. I’m just impressed is all. I heard talk that that mission was a cluster from the get-go, and yet you managed to keep things together long enough to track and capture your target.”
True, I think smiling gratefully. I was tasked with finding a double agent who’d been a spook himself. From intelligence gathered, he’d been heading down south to kill a very influential pro-U.S. big wig, high in the governmental hierarchy.
If that guy died, it would have spelled disaster for a few deals that were unknown to the public but also vital to counterintelligence at the time. So, they sent me in, and I got the job done despite, yes, the matter being worse than a cluster at the time.
That was all me, and no, I’m not going to play humble here. You got any idea what it’s like tracking a freaking specter through the jungle? Not fun, people. I’m a woman; I don’t like trench foot, creepy crawlies, or breaking my nails while scaling uneven terrain.
But I did it, and dammit, I did that last op, too. And I got my guy, something the state department and other “friendlies” still don’t know, because instead of doing my job I freaking fell in love and let my cooch do the thinking.
“Yeah. Anyway, I started in the Fourth as Cob, but it soon became clear that I wasn’t going to get anywhere. They pulled me out because even with the brunette locks, I wouldn’t have been concealable.”
Blaze grins at that, and I grin back because I know what he’s going to say.
“So, you became Rachel.”
“Yeah. My sister had been in an accident earlier that year, something that most people don’t know. She was paralyzed from the shoulders down at one point, but the doctors at the private clinic her fiancé took her to were hopeful she’d recover. She also wouldn’t leave anytime soon. She’s vain, you see, as much as I love her, and she was not budging until they fixed the burns on her face.”
“So, you stepped in…?” Lex asks.
I laugh at that and ignore the husky sound of Gunny’s laughter, keeping my gaze trained away from him.
“Not the way you think. She was not happy about it at first, but my plan killed two birds. I could do the job she was assigned to do—something that she’d been working hard for, for years—while also doing my job. Win, win. At least, that’s
what I thought. It was easier, if you can believe it, to gather intel as a nosy reporter who was there to help the military rescue their asses from a public lynching after that other shit went down and it was leaked to the press.”
They all nod thoughtfully because they know about that mission and the screwups that occurred there. Never believe that with all of our intelligence and skill that the U.S. government does not mess up. We’re just darn good at cleaning it up or setting up others to take the heat.
“I managed at one point to not only identify Zulu but also connect him to a source on base, one who was very deep. It was my job to identify him and then later Zulu, which I did. I just never reported back with what I discovered.”
“What? Why?” Blaze asks, his eyes boring into me.
“Because the leak was Zulu himself. At first, I was really afraid about the call I made. Believe me, guys. It’s not easy to have to convince yourself you made the right call when you’re plagued with doubt. It took me a long time to trust my instincts—”
“Because you were involved with a terrorist?”
I look up at Gunny then and see his smirk as he asks that question, his voice laced with derisive amusement and something I don’t even want to try to analyze.
His eyes, those jewels that have always managed to see right through me and mock me at the same time, are focused on me with such intensity I feel a frisson of trepidation run down my spine.
Because I know him and whatever he’s doing now, I don’t trust him one bit. On the surface, you’d see him giving me an easy out to get back into these men’s good graces, and I want to see that, too.
But it can be real. Not with him. This is the man who made me fall for him and then very neatly sacrificed me at the worst possible time. He’s the man who told me that it was okay to love another because he didn’t want me to love him.
As I look up at him, I don’t see the tender lover,the man who made me laugh. I don’t even see the stalwart soldier, who was unfailingly loyal to men he considered brothers.
All I see is heartbreak and emptiness.
“Because I loved a man who was a ghost,” I say quietly, dragging my eyes away to look back at the others. Men who are glaring at me with so much venom it’s a physical ache in me.
“Loved?” Lex asks softly, his eyes going tender, as he glances over at Gunny and then back to me.
“Yes. Until he betrayed me and left me to die.”
Gunny doesn’t even flinch when I say the words, but I feel him shift even without looking at him. I’ve always been attuned to him, conscious of him on every level. It pisses me off to realize that I still am even now.
“Rach— Jess. Explain,” Storm says wearily, scrubbing a hand down his face.
I want to. I will. Just…
“Let me explain something else first, because I know that once I say what I need to, you’ll be out of here without a thought. I have something I need to tell you all before you just go. I loved you all.”
I pause as emotions I can’t quite keep at bay choke me.
“Jess—”
“No, just let me say this, and then I’ll tell you everything you need to know. After Echo…I was destroyed. I lost something I needed, something I knew would destroy me eventually, but…I knew when you guys pulled me out of that hellhole that I was done in the agency. It had been my life up to that point, and after…after I was betrayed, it was all I had left.”
Jericho’s eyes go softer at those words. Not much, but enough that I see him lose the frown and sit forward. He would get this, I know, because for a long time before he met his wife the man lived for his job.
We all did. Too bad it took that fateful night to bring home to us that our entire lives were now gone as we knew them, and we were left to rebuild from the ashes of that destruction.
“But I knew. Once I went back, it was all over. So, I stayed with you, all of you, because you were it then. We’d become a family of sorts, and I…I needed something to cling to. You were so easy to love, Nick,” I say, smiling sadly at him, not taking his sneer to heart.
Not much anyway.
“Spare me.”
“Yeah. I get your anger, and trust me, I don’t blame you, but the truth is that I did love you. I did. You were honorable,” I say, throwing the dig at Gunny though I know the asshole won’t even flinch because he’s a heartless bastard. “You were kind and sexy and, dammit, don’t tell your wife I said this because I kind of have a thing for her, but you were a great lover, too. I adored you, and I would have happily stayed with you and had a family.”
“You couldn’t,” King says, his eyes closing in understanding.
“I was shell-shocked for a long time, and I convinced myself that I could just wait to tell you all everything. I mean…Rachel was still in therapy, and it didn’t look like she would…. I fooled myself because I didn’t want to lose what I had left. I had a good, happy life with you guys.”
Pausing to swallow, I look away to blink rapidly and shake my head.
“It was stupid and cruel—to you all and to me—because deep down I knew I’d have to face up to it eventually. When Rachel called me the day she had her last surgery and her husband yelled at me, I knew I had to choose. I couldn’t be here anymore. I couldn’t be the woman Nick Storm thought I was. All that was left was Jess, the same woman who’d fallen for a lie. I had to choose then.”
“Whether to betray this asshole, or lose us,” Storm hisses, his face going so hard I swear even Jericho cringes.
I see Gunny flinch then, and I’d feel bad for the man if not for the relief coursing through me that Storm just did my dirty work by clicking the pieces together so easily.
“Let me get this straight! You and Gunny? Jesus! Zulu?” he rages, jumping to his feet with so much anger and seething rage it’s a physical force in the room. “You? You…you’d better start talking right fucking now, or I swear to God, family, or to Gunny, I will fucking kill you myself!”
Chapter Five
Trace
If I wasn’t so controlled right now I’d flinch, I think mockingly, as blue eyes the color of rage blaze over at me, Storm’s jaw so tense I can see the tic jumping there.
Do I blame the guy for his anger? Hell no. If he’d pulled this shit on me after making me bury his ass, I’d have beat him to death myself. Which I find slightly amusing because as badass as I am, I have never been able to take that animal in a fair fight.
He’s the boss for a reason after all, and I haven’t forgotten exactly how vicious Storm can be when he considers you an enemy.
“Oh, come now, Storm. Surely you can lighten up on me a little. I did save your woman from death, you know,” I drawl, my lips twitching when he tenses and I see the visible effort he makes not to lunge at me.
It’s been just over a week since I went to Lex and he brought me back into the fold so that we could rescue Jess. The fact that Storm didn’t kill me the minute I told them who I was…was a fucking miracle.
But here I am now, with my family, people I have never been able to completely let go of—no matter how hard I tried. The irony is that even with the anger coming at me, I am at peace again for the first time in years.
So much so, that I’ve decided to let this all go. I need them, I can’t…dammit, I can’t go back to being that monster I was before I watched my woman being taken, knowing that if I didn’t go for her they’d kill her.
I couldn’t allow that to happen. I’d die before I let anyone hurt her. Because—
“Asshole.”
I grin at his muttered curses and feel a little part of myself relax when his lips twitch lightly and he groans.
“What the hell is going on, Gunny? This is way too much to take in, but I need to know.”
“It started a year before I was transferred to your unit. I was part of a joint CIA military task force that was tracking the shipment of chemical weapons out of Liberia into the European countries. At first, we thought there were planned attacks on key countri
es that had been targeted previously, but after months of following the smallest lead we got lucky and a certain little lady over here came back with a piece of information that sent us in the right direction.
“Her intel led us to cells operating out of France and Spain, connecting to a cell or cells in the U.S. We tried to get someone into one of them at first, but when we lost two operatives and they started scattering, we knew we were in trouble there.”
“So, you had to come up with a means…”
“To get to them without actually getting in. We called it operation Zulu, which at first was just me posing as an arms dealer but quickly became so much more. I convinced them that I could get into the military and be an inside man, but that it was my operation.”
“You became a terrorist.”
“Yes and no. I sold small arms but managed to only fake the sale of larger arms while also setting up my own cells stateside, my way of showing them that I was serious about doing business with them. I needed the lead: Fazir.”
***
Jess
The name sends shafts of horror through me because I remember this part. Fazir was part of a joint operation at one time. We went after him hard but were forced to back off when he executed twenty tourists who’d been taken hostage. He also disappeared, I think ruefully, so it’s not as if we could actually go after him.
That’s why, after I discovered who Gunny really was, it was a make or break for me. I wanted to go after Fazir, too. I wanted to be part of something that killed or at least captured that asshole. I couldn’t do it officially though, but hell, helping Zulu—my own mark—was my means to an end, especially when he proved to me that he was, in fact, not one of the bad guys.
At least not in that way.
“Okay, let me get this straight, you’ve been undercover for years searching for Fazir,” Storm says suspiciously.
Gunny grunts and shrugs, his mouth twitching with amusement.
“Yes and no. After Echo, I was airlifted to a private medical center in Germany and…” he indicates his face. “They decided that I was more suited to a slightly blacker version of my current operational status. I work for a group known as Shadow—ironic, right?—which is not at all as aboveboard as one may think. They’re just a means to an end at this point, something my commander doesn’t yet know.”
THE WATCHERS: 6 Military Romance Bundle Page 78