| |
They’d heard the bomb, even four buildings away, felt the shaking, saw the windows rattle. For a moment Elliot had been thrown back in time to another bomb, a car, and a little girl without the safety of multiple concrete walls between her and danger. That’s when the realization set in.
This couldn’t be a coincidence, not right now.
GFS personnel wouldn’t allow her team near the scene, wouldn’t tell them anything more than that Deacon and Fionn were alive. Dain relayed every word through Elliot’s earpiece. As much as she needed to see Deacon, to know he was safe, she refused to leave Sydney with anyone else. Deacon would want them together. Deacon would want...
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! She couldn’t imagine her life without him in it. Didn’t want to.
He’s fine.
But for how long? Her father had done this; she didn’t know how, but she knew it was the truth. And he’d failed, which meant it wouldn’t be long before he tried again, and again, until he either succeeded or died. How long would Deacon be safe? How could she keep him alive when her opponent was a phantom she couldn’t find?
The question consumed her, the tightness in her chest strangling her even more when Sydney came to snuggle in her lap. So trusting, so affectionate. Nothing would change that, nothing. Elliot vowed it even as fear grew in her mind.
A couple of hours after the explosion they were taken to a large conference room in the central building, the one where they’d met Amelia, the woman assigned to escort them on arrival. Elliot made herself look around, assess the location when all she really wanted to do was run to Deacon, touch him, assure herself that he truly was all right. She couldn’t, not now. If she did, there was no way she could hide the emotions breaking her apart inside, and there were too many people here watching. People who could read her too well.
And so she set Sydney on the ground and let her go instead. The child threw herself across the room. “Daddy!”
From the corner of her eye Elliot caught a glimpse of Deacon scooping his child into his arms, the slight grimace of pain he couldn’t quite control. The knot in her gut twisted even tighter.
“Going in?”
She moved to let Fionn by, her gaze traveling up his body. “Oh.”
“Mm.” Fionn’s grin was halfhearted and didn’t reach his green eyes. “Oh.”
New scrapes and bruises decorated what she could see of his skin. From the size of the bandage on his temple and the careful way he placed his feet as he entered, his concussion was likely worse as well. But it was his expression that worried her: not remote, not blank; more like a lid had been placed over a boiling pot of water and was tipping constantly to release small bursts of steam. Only the steam looked far more like fury in Fionn’s case.
A second man followed him into the room, walking almost as carefully as his teammate. Trapper. She recognized him from the initial intel on their case. Trapper’s scarring was significantly more horrific in person, the stiffness of his movements and the wary way he held his body—part afraid someone might bump into him and cause pain, part afraid his skin might not hold all of him together for much longer—bringing home the fact that this man had been tortured and somehow survived. Elliot reached a hand out to shake, refusing to flinch or baby him. He didn’t need that; he needed a warrior’s acceptance, and she gave it willingly.
Everyone gathered around the conference table: Dain, King, Saint, Mark’s team, Fionn, Trapper, Deacon, and Elliot. Sydney went happily with Amelia to the far end of the room to play. Elliot found herself sitting in a chair directly opposite Deacon, and when she glanced up, their eyes locked naturally, irrevocably into place. She stared, cataloging his bumps and bruises more closely than she had Fionn’s, searching for any hint of pain. All that stared back at her was...
No. It wasn’t love. She wouldn’t recognize love if it hit her in the face, and besides, it couldn’t be; it was too soon, too ridiculous, too...everything.
But the longer she looked, the more she realized she wanted desperately for it to be love. And in that moment, all the emotion she’d kept locked away, everything she couldn’t bring herself to say welled up in her eyes. She tried to stop it, tried to hide, but Deacon’s gaze wouldn’t let her; it bored into her, digging up everything, stripping her naked in a roomful of hardened soldiers—
None of whom mattered when Deacon gave her a soft smile. She hadn’t seen a smile like that since their shower together. No bitterness, no anger, no mistrust. Just...
Fuck. She couldn’t breathe.
Later, he mouthed and turned his head to look down the table, starting the meeting. But the sense of connection lingered, so foreign and yet exactly right, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
“The bomb appears to have been set by Lyse Sheppard,” Deacon announced. The words were quiet enough that Sydney couldn’t hear them at the other side of the room, but firm nonetheless.
“Did she build it?” Dain asked.
“Sheppard?” Trapper shook his head. “That girl knows computers, not bombs. She’s scared of her own shadow.”
“Computers have the Internet, which has plans for bombs. Most anyone can make one,” Dain argued.
“I have to agree with Trap in this case,” Deacon said. “I can’t see her actually making the bomb.”
“Just placing it,” Fionn said bitterly. The words—and the tone—shook away Elliot’s distraction.
“Fionn says you think I was the target?” Trapper flattened his scarred fingers out against the conference table, fisted them, spread them again. Stretching the too-tight skin, more than likely. “I don’t get it. Why go to the trouble?”
“We believe Mansa is here to finish the kill on Deacon in person,” Dain explained.
“But the other team members are expendable.” Fionn rubbed the back of his head near his stitches. “We’re now oh for two against.”
Elliot fought the instinct to hunch her shoulders, make herself small and unnoticeable. Trapper had been tortured, but Fionn had not—and they all knew why.
A tap on her arm. Elliot turned to accept the sheaf of papers being passed around. King added a wink to the pile. Of course he’d know how she was feeling in this moment.
She buried her face in the paperwork.
The file on Sheppard was thick. Elliot flipped to the back, to the employment contract and intake information. Typical family unit—mother, father, one brother, all normal. Sheppard was the same age as Elliot, but with a different expertise. GFS had scooped the woman up straight out of intelligence training, which she’d finished at eighteen. Sheppard wasn’t simply an intelligence expert; she was a fucking genius.
No flags on the background check. Nothing suspicious other than the speed with which she’d flown through her training. And yet the fresh-faced nerd staring back at Elliot from the profile image had jumped aboard the terrorist bandwagon?
Elliot wasn’t buying it.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Deacon was saying. “Why would Sheppard do this? What’s her motive?”
“Money?” Saint asked.
“The woman’s a hacker,” Elliot pointed out. “She could earn her weight in gold every year if she wanted to.” And if she had no scruples. Scruples had a hard time coinciding with the things terrorists would ask a hacker to do.
“Any signs of excess in her lifestyle, any debts, anything like that?” Dain asked.
Elliot flipped to the front of the file, but the last annual review was clear—and holy shit, the woman made a lot of money. That cleared up more than one thing, even while it left others murky. “No.”
“There has to be something,” Fionn argued. “Some reason.”
Elliot stared at the image of Sheppard. From all accounts shy and unassuming. Awkward. Why would a girl like that help a terrorist blow up the people she’d worked with for years?
Except she hadn’t, had she? The birthday party in the cafeteria had been her doing. She’d tried everything she could to clear the area, including leading Deacon and Fionn away. So...hurting people hadn’t been her goal. That put her at odds with the enemy, but she’d done their bidding. Why?
Because she’d been trying to protect someone. A friend? Or maybe family? No, her family was clean, according to the file. So who?
Elliot looked up, skimming Fionn before coming to rest on Deacon. Worry darkened the brown of his eyes as he stared at his friend. Of the two of them, Fionn seemed to be taking this harder, though Elliot wasn’t sure why. Some subtext she wasn’t privy to, obviously. Something Deacon hadn’t shared.
They all had secrets.
The door to the conference room opened, admitting Commander Alvarez. The rest of the table stood, so Elliot did as well.
“Gentlemen.” The commander nodded in Elliot’s direction. “Ma’am.”
Elliot frowned, sitting when the others sat.
“Anything from Sheppard yet, sir?” Deacon asked as the commander took an unoccupied seat.
Alvarez’s mouth tightened. “Not as yet. Hicks says she’s in and out of consciousness right now. I’ve called in a team to go through her office and computers, get what data we can.”
Another knock. “I ordered some lunch for you all,” Alvarez said as the door opened again. Outside, a line of wheeled carts stood at the ready. Alvarez gestured them in.
The team members staggered from their seats. Elliot was the last, her mind still turning over the information about Sheppard, needing to fill the voids and wrap the woman’s motives up nice and neat in a pretty little box. She wasn’t aware of Deacon until her arm brushed his hard stomach.
A glance up showed a question in his eyes. “Hmm?”
“Would you mind taking Syd a plate? She keeps eyeing you like you’re the last doughnut and she can’t wait to get you all to herself. I’d rather not show her cannibalistic tendencies here.”
It was stupid to feel special because he’d asked her to care for his daughter. He’d trusted her with Sydney over and over again, and yet every time it took her by surprise, filled her with this zing of pleasure. “Sure.”
She would’ve stepped past him, but Deacon moved into her path, the wide spread of his shoulders blocking out everything but him. Here. Alive. Right in front of her. She couldn’t resist the urge to lay her palm on his heavy muscles, spread her fingers wide to soak in every bit of his heat, feel the thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat beneath her touch.
Deacon covered her hand with his, pressed it hard against him. Their gazes locked.
I’m glad you’re okay. I almost lost my mind when I couldn’t see you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
The words ran through her mind, but she managed to keep them off her tongue. Deacon helped when he bent to take her mouth. The room dropped away—her teammates, the commander, Deacon’s friends—and it was just the two of them and the heat that flared to life as he delved between her lips.
If this isn’t love, I don’t think love is what I want. This, Deacon kissing her, holding her, feeling something for her, no matter what it was—this was everything.
This was what she would lose if her father succeeded.
Deacon lifted just enough to allow her to breathe. “If you don’t get that dazed look off your face,” he murmured against her mouth, “I might have to sweep you away and have you all to myself.”
“What?” She licked her lips.
Deacon chuckled. “Maybe that wasn’t the best threat I could come up with.”
She shook her head absently, arrested by the look in his eyes, the happiness. How could he look like that when life dealt him one blow after another? When his daughter was in danger and a madman threatened his life? He wasn’t like her, would never be. Their lives—hers chaotic and terrifying, his stable and supportive—had shaped them. She stared into his amused gaze and knew, suddenly and painfully, that she didn’t just want him, she needed him. Needed to understand him and, God help her, learn from him. She’d never wanted to hand that kind of control over, ever, to anyone, but with Deacon? He could teach her so much, about how to live instead of just surviving. How to love. How to be normal, a family.
Her heart clenched. She brought a hand up to rub her breastbone.
Deacon’s fingers curled around the hand he still held against him. “You okay?”
She couldn’t choke out words, just a nod. Her attempt at a smile was probably as pitiful as it felt, but she tried. Before he could read far more than she was comfortable revealing, she walked toward the food, leaving him behind.