Sinking into my massage chair, I turn on the heat and set it for the gentlest setting, then slide the table over so I can access my laptop. Clementine immediately joins me and her purr helps take the edge off my nerves as I type his name into the search box.
Well, crap. That wasn’t hard. Graham Templeton has a one page website with his resume. Bartender. No. Mixologist. And there’s an email address.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. Since moving to Seattle, I haven’t taken a single risk. Haven’t talked to anyone outside my physical therapist, my psychiatrist, my housekeeper, and my brother.
And yet, I’m sending this stranger an email.
Graham,
You rescued my groceries, then bought me ice cream. No one’s that nice. No one I know, anyway. I just wanted to say thanks. Today kind of sucked, and you made it better.
Q
The bowl is empty and I’m still staring at the screen. At the send button. Wondering why.
When I find the answer, I almost throw the laptop across the room. But then I’d need to buy another one, and even in Seattle, I can’t get a system that meets my needs in under two days.
I’m lonely. So fucking lonely. One whole year of freedom, but outside of my shrink, I haven’t had an honest conversation with anyone. I can’t have one with Graham either. But the ice cream? This email? It’s a sliver of connection. Even if it only lasts until the rest of the pint is gone, I’ll take it.
Send.
Chapter Six
Graham
The scents of coffee, gun oil, and sweat are so familiar, they settle me every time I walk into Hidden Agenda’s home base in a warehouse south of downtown Seattle. I’m late. My extra errand last night only took me thirty minutes, but after that, I stared at the ceiling for two hours.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Quinton’s face. It’s been a long time since a guy has caught my attention simply by existing. But something in his expression…He’s haunted. Scared. Emotions I remember all too clearly.
Every moment of last night is burned into my brain.
Ryker McCabe, former Special Forces commander and my boss, never forgets a single fucking thing. Taught himself some shit about mind palaces and using mnemonics before he and his team were captured and tortured for fifteen months in a Taliban prison deep underground in the Hindu Kush. The man can remember the license plate number of the taxi cab that cut us off last year in Karachi, the exact layout of every single compound we’ve ever breached, and my best—and worst—time on the climbing wall.
And he’s taught all of us enough of those tricks that I know I’ll never forget Quinton’s face, his voice, or his smile.
“Nice of you to join us,” West drawls as he refills his coffee mug and snags a second from the cabinet for me. “You’re lucky Ry’s running late.”
“What?” I scan the warehouse, convinced the former Navy SEAL is fucking with me, but Ryker isn’t here. Inara’s working through some yoga poses on a mat across the room, earbuds firmly in place, but the man who brought us all together? He’s nowhere to be found. “Is he okay?”
West shrugs. “As far as I know. Saw him Thursday.”
Inara rises with the grace of a dancer and pads over to the little kitchenette. “He texted me last night and asked me if I knew of anyone else we could bring in to Hidden Agenda. Maybe he and Dax are finally making good on their plans to grow the business?”
West tosses her a bottle of water from the fridge and jerks his head towards the boxing ring. “Well, Ry or no Ry, we still need to train. Which one of you am I taking down first?”
At exactly 9:45 a.m., Ryker strides through the door, looking like he hasn’t slept in three days. I do a double-take, and West uses the opening to drive his shoulder into my abdomen, lunge, and flip me over his bent leg.
“Sloppy,” Ryker says, his voice more gravely than usual.
“And you ambling in forty-five minutes late isn’t?” I ask. I shake off West’s outstretched hand, slap my palms down on the mat, and swing my legs behind me to put a good two feet of distance between the two of us as I jump up.
“Not bad recovery.” West nods his approval, then ducks between the ropes. “Ry, what the fuck? The last time you were late anywhere…was never.”
“None of your goddamn business.” He slams his coffee cup down and braces his hands on the counter. “Fuck.”
West and Inara stand side-by-side, a united front, with me, the new guy—despite being here almost three years—well outside of the line of fire. Until West glances back at me with that one arched brow. I don’t know how the man does it. Do they teach that look in BUD/S? The one that says “Do what I say right the fuck now or I’ll kill you without breaking a sweat”?
I join them, and Inara elbows me in the side. “What?” I mouth until I see that she and West are mirror images of one another. Arms crossed over their chests, standing ramrod straight, twin expressions of resolve on their faces. Seriously? Is this some sort of intervention? Oh my God. This is an intervention. A legitimate serious-as-fuck intervention.
Ryker might be in charge of Hidden Agenda, but no one fucks with the SEAL. And Inara? She’s got more long-range kills than any man currently on active duty. So I follow orders, adopting the same stance and expression, and wait.
“Want to try that again?” West asks. “Because family doesn’t keep secrets and then claim it’s nobody’s fucking business.”
Ry scrubs his face with his hands, then slowly and deliberately reaches for the coffee pot. “Don’t ask. Just…give me some space with this.”
“The last time you needed ‘space’ with something, you disappeared, then called Inara from Russia. I postponed my wedding. Inara had to drive six hours from the middle of fucking Iowa to get to the nearest base with a transport plane. So, no. You don’t get ‘space’ to ‘figure shit out’ with us.”
Ryker turns, and his normally ruddy complexion is so pale, the scars that cover the left side of his face stand out even more than usual. The three of us have to stare up at him—the dude’s only a couple of inches short of seven feet tall, and shit. The look in his eyes is nothing but pure, unadulterated terror.
He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a small piece of paper, and stares at it like it’s in a foreign language—one of the seven he doesn’t speak. And then he thrusts it at West.
“Holy fuck.” The SEAL’s voice takes on a reverent tone, and Inara draws in a sharp breath. It takes me a full three seconds to process what’s in the photo.
“Wren’s…?” I can’t finish the sentence. Not when the man who’s never been afraid of a single fucking thing is standing in front of me like the whole world just fell out from beneath his feet.
“Nine weeks,” he says, nodding at the sonogram picture. “That’s…where I was. At the doctor.”
“Is she okay?” Inara asks. “It’s...she’s…healthy?” At West’s pointed glare, she rolls her eyes. “I don’t know anything about this shit. Do you? Either of you?”
I hold up my hands and take a step back. “I was halfway across the world when my sister was pregnant. Didn’t come back until her son was almost two.”
“The doc says Wren’s fine. The…um…” Ry stares down at the black and white picture again and shakes his head.
“Baby?” West supplies.
“Yeah. It’s…’tracking normally’?” Rubbing his bald head, he snorts. “I don’t know what the fuck that means. But there’s a heartbeat. And it was moving around.”
The man’s clearly in shock. I’ve never heard him so uncertain, so out of his element. Wren’s his whole world. So much so that before he met her, he didn’t think any of us should have lives outside of Hidden Agenda. Told me when I joined that I better not fall in love. Ever. Of course, less than a month later, Inara and Royce got together. West and Cam were a couple before West signed on to do this job, so Ry didn’t have a say in that.
We stand around in awkward silence until I clear my throat. “Congratulations, R
yker. Ry. Sir.”
Shit. Get it together, dude. This is your fucking boss.
Despite me sticking my foot in my mouth so deep I could kick my own ass—or maybe because of it—Ryker shakes off the mix of fear, wonder, and love that has him so bound up and laughs. “Jesus Fuck, Graham. You’re part of this family whether you like it or not. You can drop the ‘Sir’ bullshit.”
He doesn’t hug anyone. Or high-five. Or even smile. I’m not sure he knows how. But he’s lighter now. And when the photo’s safely tucked back in his wallet, he leans against the counter and takes a long drag of his coffee. “Whenever we go on mission, I write Wren a letter. Drop ‘em in the mail when we land. Easier, y’know? Then having that conversation?”
We all nod. Despite not having a serious relationship in…well…ever, I know what he means. The conversation about how we might not come home. About how what we do is dangerous as fuck. How no government in the world sanctions our work. How we could fail and every single one of us could just…disappear.
“When we went to get Trev…” He shakes his head again and stares up at the ceiling. “Of all the missions I’ve run—including every one the four of us have been on together—that was the least certain I’ve been that we’d make it back.”
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Ry talk this much at one time unless he was giving orders.
“I asked her if she wanted…if she’d ever wanted…” A shrug, and he swallows hard. “Only time I’ve ever been this scared in my life was in Russia. Hell doesn’t hold a fucking candle to this.”
Moving almost as a unit, the three of us take positions around our tough-as-nails leader. Even though Ry’s in charge, even though he’s the reason we’re all here, West is the glue that holds us together. Maybe it’s his position—logistics. Infil and exfil. Strategy. Maybe it’s his background as a SEAL team leader. Or maybe he’s just better at talking about his feelings than the rest of us.
Whatever it is, Inara and me? We follow his lead. So when he claps Ry on the shoulder, we do too. You’d think it’d be awkward, but the man’s shoulders are massive.
“You’re not alone, Ry,” West says, and under the reassuring tone, I think there’s a small measure of longing. “No one in this family is ever alone.”
Three hours later, I’m flat on the concrete floor, covered in sweat, watching Ryker decimate West on the obstacle course. I came damn close to beating Inara, which is a victory of epic proportions for me. I’m younger than the rest of them by at least five years, but West and Ry live for this shit, and Inara? Her past haunts her. The guy I replaced on the team, Coop, was captured on a mission where she hesitated. Just for a second, but that was long enough. Everyone thought he was dead until he kidnapped Inara’s husband, Royce, and almost killed him. So she pushes herself harder than any of us.
“Now who’s late, frogman?” Ry taunts from the other end of the massive building where he just crawled out of a makeshift tunnel so narrow, I was certain he’d get stuck.
“Not me.” West taps his stopwatch as he gets to his feet next to Ryker. “I was almost an hour into the workout when you showed up. This wasn’t a fair fight.”
“Life isn’t fair.” Grabbing a towel from the stack by the lockers, Ryker rubs the sweat from his bald head and drapes the white cloth around his neck. “Get used to it.”
West says something I can’t make out, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t repeat it in polite company.
After draining half a bottle of water, Ryker tells us to hit the showers and take an hour before we start the mental portion of today’s workout—a handful of new tactical challenges planning infil and exfil for locations generated at random by one of Wren’s algorithms.
Late September in Seattle brings changing leaves, but also one last heat wave, and the warehouse is like a fucking sauna. So I turn the water all the way to cold and step under the spray.
This day is unfolding like some twisted form of reality. Every time we took even a five minute break, my thoughts turned to Quinton. I’m fantasizing about the guy, despite seeing him for less than five minutes, and Ryker McCabe, the toughest, meanest son of a bitch ever to come out of this country’s army—or any other country’s army for that matter—is going to have a kid?
All I need now is for Inara to hug me and we’ll be in full-on bizarro world.
Despite the icy water, my dick still twitches to life as Quinton’s face flashes behind my eyes. This is ridiculous. I’m never going to see the guy again. For all I know, he’s not gay. Even if he were, I can’t have a serious relationship. I don’t want one.
I won’t subject anyone to my random panic attacks, the nightmares that haunt me when I get low, my complete inability to let a guy top me—ever.
The occasional Tinder hookup has to be it for me. And if I didn’t work for Hidden Agenda, I wouldn’t even have that. At least with the resources we have access to, I can run a background check on any guy I might swipe right on before we meet up.
The dates are all the same. Drinks, then back to his place or a hotel room for a quick fuck where I top—non-negotiable—and then an apology the next day. Bartending’s a hard job, no flexibility, grueling schedule, some shit like that. Once in a while, I try the truth: I’m not in a “relationship” sort of space right now and probably never will be, that sort of thing.
So why can’t I stop thinking about Quinton?
By the time I’m dressed in black jeans and a t-shirt, I’ve mostly put him out of my mind. Until I check my email. It doesn’t have my real name attached to it. Nor do the paychecks I get from the Unicorn. When I joined Hidden Agenda, I was new to Seattle, and Ryker insisted I let him set me up with a cover story. A whole public identity separate from my government-issued, had-since-birth name and social security number.
“Peck, what we do is both highly specialized and highly illegal. We get made, we’re on every single watch list around the world in under fifteen minutes. Trouble on a mission? No one comes to save us. You want in, there’s a price.”
“What price?” I ask. Ryker McCabe is a legend. He survived Hell because he was too stubborn to die. Too tough to kill. Too determined to make it back home. Working with him? It’s both unbelievably dangerous and the safest place I could ever be. Because based on the stories I’ve heard, he doesn’t let anyone mess with his team.
“In public, from now until the end of fucking time, you give up the name Peck. I know a guy who can set you up with a brand new identity and cover. Something simple. A job that lets you take off at a moment’s notice. Waiter. Substitute teacher. Because when someone needs us, we go. Middle of the night, Thanksgiving, Christmas…doesn’t matter.” He stares me down, his multi-hued eyes as hard as the rest of him. “I already have a SEAL and a former Ranger sniper who have ties to the community. If I could move this whole operation to London or Dubai and take them with me, I would. Start over. Give them new lives. But they won’t leave, and I can’t ask them to. You, however…you follow my rules. All of them. Including no relationships.” He practically sneers the last word, and I clench my hands on my thighs under the table. “That a problem?”
“No, sir. Got no interest in relationships. Do I get to pick the new name and the profession? Or is that all you?”
“That’s your only question?” His brows shoot up, and he sits back in his chair.
I shrug. “Waiting tables isn’t my thing. Been there, done that. But I can mix drinks that’ll knock your socks off.”
With a snort, Ryker shakes his head then offers me his hand. “Bartending it is. Welcome to the team.”
Becoming Graham Tempelton was ridiculously simple. A couple of photos taken against a white wall, a set of fingerprints, and a whole lot of cash, and in less than a week, I started looking for an apartment with my new name and applying for bartending gigs.
How the hell did Quinton find me?
I only told him my first name, and there are a lot of Grahams in this city. I’m halfway through a less than civil reply when I
remember the ice cream. And the credit card I used to purchase it. I don’t remember what I did with the receipt.
My second attempt at a message is a little less…intense. But I have to know if I compromised myself somehow. Or if Quinton—Q—is someone I should tell Ry and Wren about.
So, this is going to sound weird, but…how’d you find me?
Less than five minutes later, he replies.
You left the receipt in the bag. I Googled. Your website came right up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. You won’t hear from me again. - Q
Fuck.
Glancing around the warehouse, I check to make sure Ryker’s not standing over my shoulder about to pounce. I probably look guilty as fuck. But he’s on the phone, and I overhear him ask, “What do you need? West can run the drills—” And then a moment later, “I know it’s just morning sickness. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
I can’t wait to see him change a diaper.
Returning my focus to the screen, I try ten different replies before I settle on what I hope is the right one. I shouldn’t care. But Q looked so lost standing at his door last night, and the idea that I hurt him doesn’t sit well with me.
You said no one’s ever been that nice to you? If that’s the truth, you need better friends. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I was just surprised you tracked me down, that’s all. Did you get your groceries replaced?
-Graham
It’s nothing. A quick, light message with an apology. Because whatever his deal is? I don’t want to make it worse.
I rush to close down the browser as Ry strides over to the corner of the warehouse Wren and Ripper helped us turn into a tech hub, complete with workstations for each of us, a massive rack of servers, and a dedicated high-speed internet connection faster than anyone but the United States government.
But as the window disappears, another reply shows up, and the preview rattles me for reasons I can’t take the time to unpack right now.
Braving His Past: An Away From Keyboard Romantic Suspense Standalone Page 5