by KL Donn
“Ryder,” his friend barks, drawing everyone’s attention. “Leave it alone.”
“Fuck off, Nix. I’m not on Sam’s dime right now,” my hero bites back.
“Miss, do you care to make a statement?” one of the officers asks again. They want me to go to the station. To leave my home. I can’t. As much as I want to step outside this door… I just can’t.
His—Ryder’s—hands on my shoulders are comforting as I try to do what needs to be done. “I have nothing to add other than what I told you already. If you want me to sign something, fine, but I can’t leave.” I feel the dozen questions in his gaze.
The judgment in the others’.
It’s always the same. Everyone thinks I’m a freak. Weird. Not right in the head.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe there is something wrong with me. No, not maybe, I know there is. I’m ten thousand shades of screwed up. I have been for over two years now, and after tonight, I’m not sure I want that to change.
Except it might have to.
“How did he get in?” No one has keys to my house. I keep my doors and windows locked at all times. It’s not possible. Did I imagine it?
A shared look goes around the room, and I know exactly what they’re all thinking.
“Get out,” I hiss.
I didn’t make this up dammit.
“Ma’am, have you been drinking this evening?” The rude officer asks.
I stare. Completely dumbfounded. I don’t even know how to answer a question like that without slapping him across the face. “No.” I grit my teeth. “I don’t drink.”
“Drugs?”
Shaking my head, I fight the anger and fear burning me up inside. “No.”
“Look, if something happened, we need to know what you were on.”
“Her fucking pupils are fine. She isn’t slurring her words, and she’s not falling over drunk,” Ryder’s friend snaps. “Do your fucking jobs and find out how he got in!” The command in the man’s voice has all three officers standing taller.
“There was no forced entry. No marks on windows or door locks. The only conclusion is that someone had a key.” They all look to me.
“I’m the only person with any keys.”
“Have you ever left them unattended?” Ryder inquires.
“No.” I bite down my embarrassment. I hate my situation. The dark fears living in the back of my mind.
“Anyone been over recently?” his friend asks patiently.
I shake my head.
“Then I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t have much to go on,” the quietest officer says, sincere regret in his eyes.
“Thank you for coming out. Maybe I was wrong, and a shadow was playing on the walls or something.” Except it wasn’t. But I’m dealing with men who only operate in cold hard facts. Of which I have none.
Ryder’s friend escorts the officers to their cruisers while I fight back my tears and wonder why he’s still standing in my doorway.
I refuse to break first. I don’t know this man. I might have admired his sexy physique for weeks, but I don’t know him from Adam, and he doesn’t know me.
“What did you mean when you said I knew?” He breaks the silence while his eyes roam the inside of my house. My now shattered haven.
“Nothing.” I don’t want to get into this right now.
“Liar.” Our eyes clash, and I’m actually shocked that he’s calling me on my bullshit.
“Look, Mr. Morrison, it’s late. I’m tired. While I appreciate you coming over to check on me, I’d like you to leave now. Please.”
“That hurt, didn’t it?” He smirks like something’s funny.
“What hurt?”
“Saying please.”
As Ryder walks away, I don’t know whether to be insulted by his remark or laugh. He can’t understand how hard it is to have so many strangers in my house at one time. He’ll never know just how disjointed I am on the inside.
My fears run deeper than a black hole. Losing Lucas is the worst kind of pain a person can feel. Knowing how precious life is, how quickly it can be taken away, started me on a downward spiral that I haven’t been able to crawl out of.
After I was able to open my eyes from the grief, every fear I’ve ever had came flying to the surface and soon, I became afraid of my own shadow. It’s how I ended up where I am now. How I am now.
It’s still dark outside, the middle of the night, and I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to function in this house now that it’s been violated. I can no longer call it a safe place…my sanctuary. This house no longer holds the same meaning it used to.
Closing the door behind me, I count, “One, two, three,” as I turn the deadbolts one at a time. It helps soothe some of my anxiety but not much. I need more. I need comfort.
I need not be so damn broken.
Walking through the house, I do as one of the policemen had just done and make sure all the windows are locked as I turn on every overhead light and lamp I have. No shadows, no weird noises. No hiding. If he comes back, I’ll be ready.
Ryder
* * *
I listened as she locked her door, counted out loud with the click of each bolt, before leaving. I watched while walking back to my house as her lights turned on one by one, and I bet they won’t be going out anytime soon.
Nix is standing by his truck as I approach, shaking his head. “You want back on the team, you get your head in the game, Morrison.” The man is a hard son of a bitch, and he has to be for what we do. Doesn’t mean I want his shit right now.
“It is.”
“Not with her, it isn’t. She’s fucked up. She’ll get you killed quicker than a grenade.”
“I said I’m fine, Nix. Leave it the fuck alone.”
“Whatever, kid, but if you’re distracted, I’m pulling you without remorse. I won’t let some silly girl scared of her own shadow get my men killed, you got that?”
Ignoring him, I walk away. I’ve lived through enough shit to last me a lifetime. They can’t even fucking comprehend. Nix doesn’t fucking know just how much I went through before coming home. My pretty little neighbor certainly isn’t going to fuck my life up because I’m concerned.
Slamming my front door shut behind me, I jog up the stairs to my room. Stripping free of my shorts and shirt, I stand in front of the mirror, eyeing the damage done to me, facing the truth of where my hell took me. The guys think this was all my captors. They’d be ashamed to know the scars on my forearms are from me. They’d be astonished to know that after six months in hell, I gave up. I was ready to be done with the sheer agony brought on me day after day for information I wasn’t willing to give. Some of which, I didn’t even have.
They’d likely skin me alive if they knew that not only had I tried taking my own life, I failed in stopping another captive from successfully snuffing out his own. I handed him the glass I’d found and watched as he slit his throat, blood spurting across the walls of our caged cave. We had no reason to believe anyone was coming for us. I was an American on soil I wasn’t authorized to be on. He was a Brit in foreign territory when his troops were ambushed and killed. The single survivor. No one even knew he was still there.
What hope did we have other than a quick death?
The one thing we did do was tell each other our names and unit numbers. He was British intelligence. Like me, working a clandestine mission for Scotland Yard. It took three months after I had recovered enough to remember all that happened, and I was able to tell his commanding officer what had happened to him.
My chest is littered with scars from being their whipping boy. They used to make a game of torturing me. I don’t know when, but they realized I wasn’t going to talk, so I became their entertainment while they waited for their orders.
When my team found me, when they came barrel-assing into that fucking cave, I thought I had to have been hallucinating. I didn’t believe they were real. I actually hit Theo, my best friend, so hard in the face that I fractured h
is nose. When they started talking about Hayes, I broke. They knew she was the only thing in the world to bring me back from the edge. Foster had the picture of her I kept in my locker at headquarters. They knew they were coming for me, and they showed up prepared.
Understanding how pissed she still is at me, even though she welcomes me home with open arms each time, it fucking kills me. More than any of these scars, the nightmares, anything. I get her anger, though, and I think there’s more to it than just me taking so long to get in contact after I was found. She gets recovery better than most would. After all she’s been through, I’ll take her anger over silence.
Turning to the shower, I get it as warm as I can stand before dipping into the scalding water. Thoughts of Codie linger in my mind, and while I don’t know her or what she meant by her cryptic comment, I acknowledge that I want to learn more about her.
As skittish as she is, as defeated as she seems, I realize she’s going to mean something to me, and the more I think about it, the more I admit that I want her to mean something to me, too. I want her to be more than my fucked-up neighbor.
Getting through the shower quickly, I’m drying off when I hear loud thumping coming from my neighbor’s house. Looking out my window, I notice her in a room across from mine, lights blazing as she puts up a sheet of wood over the window. She’s boarding herself inside.
Confused doesn’t begin to describe how she makes me feel. Seeing that the time is after three in the morning, I know I need to get some shut-eye before I head down to headquarters and check my gear for this mission that we leave on in three days. I want to show Nix and the guys I’m ready to come back. I want to prove to Nix that Codie hasn’t fucked my mind six ways from Sunday, and she’s not a distraction.
Chapter 3
Ryder
After listening to Codie pound the night away, I’m up and leaving as dawn pushes the horizon into a mix of pinks, purples, and reds. I give her house one last look as I back my Toyota Tacoma out of the driveway and shake my head. Seeing that all her front windows are boarded up, as well, worries me.
The drive to Charleston’s warehouse district isn’t a long one, so I don’t get much time to think about my quirky neighbor before I’m exiting into one of the quietest parts of the city.
Observing the building from the outside, you’d never know it was a full tactical command center equipped with a massive gym, training center, and a vault filled with an intimidating weapons arsenal. Anything we could ever need is here, and anything we don’t have is one presidential call away.
With underground parking, it’s never revealed who is here until we pass through the facial scan and into the garage. Stealing myself for my first look into the newly renovated facility, I hold my breath as the bay door opens and lights flood the area in front of me.
Seeing Theo’s bike and Foster’s sports car, I feel relief that I won’t be facing the space empty and alone. After parking, I exit my truck and walk the short way to the elevator. As soon as the doors close, I step towards the wall panel for the retina scan. Theo used to joke that this place was tighter than the White House with security.
After everything that’s happened to me, I can’t laugh him off anymore. If the world comes under attack, this is the place I’d want to be.
The ascent to the main floor is quick, and as soon as the doors open, I hear the ruckus that is Foster and Theo as they play a game of pool in the main room. The most competitive bastards on the team, these games usually end in a brawl on the floor with the accusations of cheating from both.
They stop, and quiet descends as soon as they see me. A huge grin takes over Theo’s face as he walks forward. “Ryder! My man, good to see back here.” A hard clap on the back nearly knocks the breath from me. At just over six feet tall, Theo is large with the strength to match. His Greek ancestry shows through with his dark looks, too. People always think of him as intense because of it, along with the tattoos covering the majority of his body. Not really knowing him, they’d never expect he was one of the funniest—if not most morally corrupt—guys I know.
“Good to be back, man.” My eyes search the warehouse, assessing, regaining my familiarity for the changes as Foster comes forward and brings me in for a rough hug.
“Fucking good to see you here, bro.” His typically rough voice sounds slightly emotional, which doesn’t shock me. He’s always been the sensitive one of the team, even though he’s a complete psycho with explosives.
“Thanks, Chaos.” He earned the nickname after his first mission on the team. Nix asked him for a distraction as they were extracting some CEO from a hostage situation in Vietnam. This was before my time. He set a small explosion next to what he thought was cold food storage in the terrorist’s camp, but it turned out to be their own explosives shed. From the way they tell it, there’s likely still a hole big enough to fit three tankers.
Walking around the room, I get a feel again for the building that had become my life for so many years. Before being captured, I anticipated the next mission, needing them one after another. They were an addiction. I craved the adrenaline rush as much as the next guy. I felt invincible.
Until Syria.
Until I wasn’t.
“You okay, man?” Phantom asks. Theo is the one you never see coming. Top of his class in marksmanship, he’s a high valued asset for the United States government. He watches me now with assessing eyes as I wander around. “You ready to be back?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.” I may be finding my footing again, but I’m fucking raring to go. If being captured, and subsequently tortured, has taught me one thing, it’s that this world needs to be rid of these sons of bitches sooner rather than later.
“Good. I want you on the targets with Phantom.” I hear Nix speak from behind me, and I turn. His glare is cold. Everything about the man is stoic. Not many know that Nix ‘Knot’ Bishop hides his caring disposition behind the icy stares, though.
“You got it, boss.” I give him a mock salute as Theo nearly busts a gut laughing at the look on his face. “I see your sense of humor hasn’t made an appearance yet.” He never did get a joke.
“Nothing funny about knowing the men behind me have my back,” Nix states. Point made.
“Come on, man, before that vein in his neck bursts from the need to kill one of us.” Theo laughs as he walks away and into the hallway leading to the ammunitions bay.
As I stroll the building, I notice the little things that have changed while I’ve been gone. It’s subtle to a civilian’s gaze, but I see it. More security cameras in the corners. Thumbprint scanner to get through any doors other than storage and bathrooms. Even the locker room has one.
“Theo, what’s with all the extra security? We have a breach I don’t know about?” I’m only half kidding, but it’s always a possibility.
“Nah, Shaker got antsy when you were brought back. Put his time and frustration to good use around here.” Weston Green is our team medic and earned the name Shaker as a joke when he was in the Army because he never shakes with nerves. Always has a steady hand.
“So, it’s not needed then?”
“Not really, no. Knot thought it was a good idea afterwards, though, so he hasn’t complained. Much.”
After pressing a thumb to the fingerprint scanner, the door slides open and, first, reveals the ammunitions locker. Handguns line the wall in front of me with the automatic weapons to my left. An island sits in the middle of the room with drawers filled to capacity with different types of combat knives.
The wall on the right holds bulletproof vests, bags to store the weapons in, backpacks and straps to put whatever accessories we want on our bodies.
A secret door is hidden between the handguns and the storage wall leading to the target range running 100 meters out. Grabbing my favorite Berretta and protective gear, I head out. We have a bigger one on a piece of property where we plan missions and fly out with a helicopter, but this location is used mostly for training and strategy practice.
“Ready?” Phantom grins at me. The asshole knows he’s a better shot than I am, and he’ll take whatever chance he can to gloat.
Nodding, the sound of gunfire echoes around the room. Odd as it may be, it’s a soothing sound to me. Concentration is easier, and I find myself getting back into the groove of hitting center mass targets.
All too soon my chamber is empty, and the click of a useless trigger registers to my ears. With images of the men who captured me, I hit the button to bring my paper forward.
“Hot damn!” Theo cheers beside me. Looking to his target, I expect to see him pulling some sort of stunt and making an image with the bullets. He’s done it before. His artistic talent, he says. “I don’t think you’ve ever beat me, Tac.”
“What?” I look to the silhouette as it stops in front of my face, and sure enough, a cluster of holes sits in one spot. Center mass. Right on target. I’m not saying I’m a lousy shot, but I’m not on par with Theo, or even Nix. My expertise is technology. “Damn,” I mutter, pulling the paper down and staring.
“Looks like you’ve got a new muse, Morrison,” Nix says, coming up beside me. “I’m impressed.”
Nix? Impressed? Fuck. Shrugging, I say to him, “I’ve been on the range a lot lately.”
“I know. Camden has kept me in the loop.” Camden is a man who runs the metro police open range. He allows us to come in as often as we need. For the past eight months, I’ve been going in weekly.
Patting my shoulder, Nix leaves Theo and me again.
“Alright, hotshot, let’s try my baby this time. See if you outdo me again.” As disgruntled as he’s trying to act, I can tell he’s happy I’m back and better than ever before.
“Twenty minutes, guys!” Foster’s voice comes through the speaker.
Grabbing Theo’s gun of choice—an M17 Pistol—we make our way through three more targets each, with me keeping up with him every step of the way.