Delta Force Defender

by Megan Crane

  But he preferred to state his case to the Caradine who sobbed in his arms. The one who moaned out his name. The one who fit so perfectly against his chest when she dropped her head there.

  The Caradine who sank to her knees and grinned up at him, her blue eyes sparkling as she took him in deep in her mouth. The Caradine who covered her face with her hands when he returned the favor, and not to hide this time. But to muffle her own screams.

  And in the morning, she was still there. Curled up with him in his bed, with Horatio at their feet, like a thousand dreams he’d never admitted he’d had.

  As if she were home, at last.

  He wasn’t suicidal enough to say that last part out loud. It was too early, and he thrived on very little sleep, but she . . . did not. Caradine was even grumpy in her sleep. It made him smile as he nuzzled her neck.

  “For God’s sake, no morning sex,” she muttered at him, burying her face in the pillow, but not before he’d seen that scowl. “I’m not an animal.”

  Obviously, he took that as a challenge.

  One he won.

  “I’m going out,” he told her when she was panting helplessly beside him, her face soft again and a smile he would categorize as dazed on her face. She was beautiful when she scowled. But when she smiled, she rearranged the world all around him. Maybe he should have been glad she did it so rarely. He rubbed at his chest. “Only for a little while. I expect you to still be here when I get back.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said grandly, still smiling. She waved a hand. “The famously revolting Alaska Force morning workout.”

  “You’re welcome to join us. Get your sweat on. Learn some things about yourself.”

  “I would rather die,” she said. She stopped smiling and focused on him. Isaac was smug enough to enjoy how long it took her to do that. “And in this case, I actually, one hundred percent, mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

  Isaac was still grinning when he headed out with Horatio a little while later. He got in a quick, vicious trail run before he made his way to the cabin on the beach that he liked to call his box of pain. Particularly when everyone else complained about it.

  Everyone not on active missions turned up in the mornings for the community workout, and Isaac enjoyed designing physical tests to challenge each and every one of them. Maybe a little too much. The grosser and more difficult the workout in Fool’s Cove, the more prepared they all were for the kinds of things they had to cope with in the field.

  And sure, on days like today when he found the way everyone was looking at him to be a little too smirky, he enjoyed making them pay.

  In sweat and tears and unfortunate comments about his parentage.

  “My parents were married, Blue,” he said sternly at one point. “As I think you know. Let’s do another round.”

  A solid hour later, he felt his honor had been sufficiently avenged when almost everyone was lying on the floor, groaning and spent.

  Everyone except Bethan, who was capping off the workout with some blisteringly fast sprints down by the waterline. Isaac stood in the rolled-open door of the gym and watched her, not really surprised that she was pushing herself further and harder than everyone else. Wasn’t that the story of women in her position? She’d spent her life preparing to fight but had been relegated to support positions until the ban on women in combat was lifted. He knew that was how she’d met Jonas, once upon a classified disaster neither one of them talked about. Bethan had gotten into Ranger School once it opened to female candidates. Then she’d distinguished herself even further as one of the few women who’d passed.

  But the army didn’t see her future the way she did, so she’d come to Alaska Force instead.

  Where Isaac had no qualms whatsoever about assigning her to the active, dangerous missions she’d trained for.

  No matter how curiously unsupportive Jonas seemed. When, asked directly, he’d had nothing but praise for her skills and abilities.

  When everyone could breathe and walk again, more or less, they started heading out to do their various duties, or tend to their personal lives, before reporting to the lodge for the daily briefing.

  Jonas hung back, likely to keep up his perpetual avoidance of Bethan. Isaac doubted his solitary friend would otherwise find himself seized with any sudden urge for Isaac’s company. They took the beach route back toward the lodge through the cool summer morning, wreathed in a thick fog that would likely burn off before noon. Horatio ran in big loops around them, not quite herding them.

  It was mornings like this that made Isaac the most nostalgic for his childhood here, even though everything had changed. He’d lost his parents. He’d spent those two years of black grief with his uncle Theo, who had never tried to comfort him. Isaac had learned to consider that a gift. Because instead, Uncle Theo had taught him how to become an unstoppable force in his own right. He’d given his grief-stricken nephew new tools and a new future to replace the kinder, gentler one that had been stolen from him.

  And all the while, there had been this. The enduring grandeur of Alaska. The simple communion of sea and shore, mountain and sky. Whales in the sound and moose in the woods.

  Home.

  Though he admitted it felt more like home today than usual, because Caradine was here. In Fool’s Cove, where he’d never let himself believe she would ever come. Unwillingly or otherwise.

  “I expected more fallout from that meeting yesterday,” Isaac observed as he and Jonas walked. Before he did something unforgivable, like break into song. “All I got were a few smug looks and a handful of smirks. I must be more intimidating than I thought.”

  “You’re the boss,” Jonas replied. “Your personal life is your business. That’s not intimidation, that’s a professional courtesy.”

  Isaac grinned. “Surely I’m a little intimidating.”

  Jonas did something with his chin that made it clear that he, at least, was not remotely intimidated.

  “You don’t count,” Isaac retorted.

  They walked the rest of the way in a companionable silence, the crunch of their feet in the wet sand and the waves against the beach much better than any song he might be compelled to sing. Jonas melted off into the woods when they neared Isaac’s cabin, and Isaac took the stairs that led up to his private walkway two at a time.

  It was only when he hit the top step that he admitted to himself that he didn’t expect Caradine to be there. He couldn’t believe she’d stayed the night. He’d woken this morning fully expecting that she would have snuck out to one of the cabins set aside for clients, to prove a point.

  When Isaac opened his cabin door, Horatio let out a happy bark. Isaac considered doing the same, because he could smell bacon.

  She was still here.

  She was still here.

  He swung by his office, not because he was a control freak, but because he needed to see if there was anything urgent. And he also needed to get a grip.

  When he’d checked in and taken a few calming breaths, he followed the sizzling sound of bacon back into the kitchen, where Caradine was moving around as if it were hers. One of his dish towels was tossed over her shoulder, like she was back in her café. She glanced over at him when he walked in, but she didn’t say anything. She moved the cast-iron pan she’d threatened him with last night off the heat, walked over to the far counter, and poured him a cup of coffee. Then handed it to him in the extremely loud silence that had been their only form of communication for months at a time.

  Then she returned to what she was doing. Isaac stood there, coffee, just the way he liked it, in his hands, his woman in his kitchen, and a pervasive sense of well-being that might have knocked him over if he’d had the slightest shred of hope that it could last.

  But he didn’t want to think about that, either.

  He knew what happened to happiness. He’d lived through it once already.
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br />   More important, he knew Caradine.

  The coffee was strong and nearly bitter, and he burned his tongue a little when he drank it. Good, he thought. Maybe pain would get his head on straight. When he regained his control, he moved over to the stove to see her pouring out what he suspected were the silver dollar pancakes she served him sometimes in her restaurant.

  Just like his mom used to make. His favorite.

  “Go shower,” she ordered him, with more scowl than usual when he hadn’t said anything. In case he was tempted to mention her true heart again, he figured. “It’ll be ready when you’re done.”

  He stole a piece of bacon, laughed at the even more ferocious scowl she aimed at him, and took himself off.

  Then he stood in the water and braced himself against the wall, ordering himself not to want things he couldn’t have.

  “Pancakes are love,” he announced when he walked back in, showered and dressed in his usual uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt.

  She was piling a stack of pancakes on a plate and only sniffed. “Not when I make them.”

  “I think you’ll find they’re always love, Caradine.”

  “My pancakes are made with spite and fury,” she retorted, not bothering to look at him. “And don’t kid yourself, Gentry. That’s why you like them. You’d choke on love.”

  He sat in his chair as she brought the food to the table. She plunked his plate down with unnecessary force, then went to fix her own coffee. Isaac watched her pour cream into her cup, realizing that he’d had no idea how she took it until now. Because she was always the one who made the coffee and handed it out.

  Knowing that she liked cream really shouldn’t have made him feel like he’d won a war.

  Her presence here shouldn’t have felt like a victory. And yet.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said in a rush when she finally sat down, poking at the pancakes she’d served herself.

  He sighed. “That bodes well.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed, but she didn’t snap at him for that. Which really didn’t bode well.

  “The plan my sister and I made never involved . . . well, you.” She gave up pretending to eat and crossed her arms instead. “We agreed that we would never track each other down, because that would re-create the exact situation that we separated to avoid. The both of us in the same place, easy to follow, if someone was following us. And even easier to pick off. Or cart back to Boston.”

  He switched into work mode all too easily. “What do you think the goal is here? To kill you?”

  She considered that. “Eventually, sure. I suppose it depends. We walked away from a life people don’t get to walk away from. It’s not hard to imagine there might be a lot of reasons the people still in that life might like to use us as examples of why no one else should attempt such a thing.”

  “But you disappeared. As far as most people know, you died. Why go to the trouble to hunt you down and drag you back, when it would be easier to claim that you really did die? To put it out there that anyone pretending to be Julia or Lindsay Sheeran was full of it?”

  Outside, the sun was starting to poke through the fog. A patch of light fell through the window, a wedge of a glare across the table his grandfather had made right here on mornings like this one, cool and bright in turn.

  “People who sell illegal weapons, arming hateful groups who then take great pleasure in murdering each other, probably aren’t rational.” She shrugged. “My father was obsessed with respect. I have to think that anyone who would chase us down would think that’s what this was. A matter of respect, that’s all.” Her mouth curved into something bitter. “Remember, Lindsay and I aren’t people to them. Our lives only matter if they can be leveraged.”

  Isaac felt that muscle in his jaw twitch.

  Caradine’s eyes gleamed, as if that sign of his temper pleased her. “What I was thinking was that I wouldn’t dare go by myself to see if Lindsay was okay. I’d be too afraid that someone could be following me, the way you were, and I’d never see it until it was too late, getting us both killed. Or worse. But you could go find her. You would know if anyone was tailing you.”

  Isaac actually laughed. “Was that a compliment? Wrapped up in there somewhere? Because it sounds a lot as if you’re suggesting that we might actually be good at what we do here. That I might be more than a weird guy on an Alaskan island who plays Rambo games for fun.”

  “Compliment is a strong word.” She pressed her lips together. “And I only said that a few times. In the early days.”

  He tried to imagine what she would do if he went over there and hauled her into a hug. And the imagining was almost as satisfying as the hug would have been, so he grinned at her instead. Especially when she frowned at him.

  “Yes, Caradine, we can certainly go places without being followed. We know how to identify tails and, better still, how to dislodge them. That’s part and parcel of the services we offer here. Speaking of which, we haven’t gotten around to discussing your payment plan.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, a little hotly. “I pay my bills.”

  “I’m not going to want your money, baby.”

  Isaac saw a flash of something on her face, but she looked down almost at once. He let it go, because he could see the way she was gripping her own arms as she sat across from him.

  And because it probably wasn’t the longing he’d wanted to see there.

  Or even if it was, she had no intention of giving in to it.

  “I think we should go find my sister,” she said into the tension.

  “We?” Isaac shook his head. “There’s no we, Caradine. I get that you spent years keeping yourself hidden and preparing for an attack, and it’s impressive. But it’s not the same thing as military training.”

  “All the military training in the world won’t make my sister talk to you when you find her,” Caradine replied coolly. “Only I can do that.”

  His jaw hurt again. “It’s out of the question.”

  Her gaze slammed into his, and all he could see was that blue, haunted straight through. Ghosts and secrets and too many lies across the years, even this morning after.

  And that was the trouble, wasn’t it? He didn’t just want to help her.

  He wanted to banish her ghosts, exorcise her demons. Fight her battles and win them all. And that was just for starters.

  But she would punch him if he tried.

  “I won’t risk you,” he said gruffly. “That’s unacceptable.”

  “We have to go and find her, Isaac,” Caradine said, with more urgency this time and what he realized was panic all over her face. “Before they do. Because they will. They found me. And Lindsay doesn’t have Alaska Force, does she?”

  Sixteen

  Three days later, an Alaska Force team flew out for Hawaii.

  Caradine went with them, fully aware that while everyone had agreed with her that she would be the key to any interactions with her sister, that didn’t make her any less of a liability. It was something they’d all discussed right in front of her during the briefings Isaac had grudgingly allowed her to attend.

  “That doesn’t look like your game face,” Bethan said in the middle of one briefing, while Isaac and Oz were called into a different room to handle an ongoing mission situation.

  “Weird. It’s my only face.” But she relented when Bethan grinned, because it was possible Caradine had a weakness for people who weren’t even remotely intimidated by her. Something she tucked away to look at . . . never. “I’m not exactly helpless.”

  “You’re tough,” Bethan replied with that same steady gaze they all seemed to have. And all knew how to use to make the unwary feel like they’d just been pulled over by flashing lights on the side of the road. “But you’re not trained. And that means whoever’s in the field with you has to make sure to protect you as well as do their
job.” She must have seen something on Caradine’s face, because she laughed. “That’s not a criticism, it’s a fact.”

  Caradine hadn’t been able to respond to that the way she’d wanted, because Isaac came back in, and it was back to contingency plans on a grand scale.

  Her own contingency plans involved things like run faster, use knife.

  Isaac’s involved attempts to narrow down what name Lindsay might have been using these days, the satellite imagery of what parts of the island she might be staying in, and transport options with backup plans.

  And, if all else failed, calling in the feds.

  “How many missions do you run a year?” she asked Isaac when he arrived home late one night. Not that she should be allowing herself to think of his cabin as her home, but that was another problem she planned to avoid addressing forever. Or at least until this plan of theirs worked.

  Or didn’t.

  God, she didn’t want to think about the ways this plan could fail to work, or what that would mean, or the potential body count it could have. She’d glared down at the stovetop in front of her instead. Caradine found herself cooking a lot, because she’d fallen into the habit of feeding Isaac whenever she saw him. Because she didn’t know what else to do.

  Maybe she’d never known what else to do.

  “We run as many missions as we want,” Isaac replied. He grinned when she turned her scowl on him. “I’m not being funny. Every time we try to put a cap on it, a mission comes up that we can’t refuse. So we make it work.”

  “But how do you—”

  “Caradine.”

  He was still grinning when he came in closer and hooked a hand around her neck, pulling her in for a kiss that made certain her food would get cold.

  Caradine knew it was dangerous to give in. To let what had always had to explode between them simmer instead. To let it feel normal. Possible. Sex was one thing, or so she’d always told herself. But this was playing house. Pretending to have a life, when she knew that wasn’t something that was on offer.

  Because she knew better. She had ten years of experience in running away, and there was no reason to think that would change now that Alaska Force was involved. She hoped, but she knew better than to hope. She knew that hope led straight to hurt.