by Trish Loye
Cassie’s voice broke through the crowd and he snapped his gaze to her. She spoke Korean and asked something of the envoy. Something that had the man and all of his security crew frowning.
The envoy waved a hand at her, obviously dismissing her and her question. She stood and said something else, her voice becoming demanding. He wished he knew what she was saying and so did everyone else. All the reporters and cameras now focused on her, making sure to capture her words and face.
All except the one cameraman kneeling on the ground.
Derrick frowned. His instincts prompted him to move forward. Jake saw him and stepped toward the envoy, ready for trouble. Jake wouldn’t be able to see the cameraman at the back.
The man stood, facing the envoy. Not Cassie. Derrick moved toward him, his senses on alert. The cameraman lifted his arm. Metal glinted in his hand.
“Gun!” Derrick barked and dove at the man.
Derrick hit the cameraman with his shoulder. The crack of a gunshot reverberated through the room. Derrick tackled the man to the ground, securing his gun-hand and twisting hard to break a bone in the wrist. The man gurgled a scream and dropped the weapon. Derrick was aware of screams around him as he put the man in a chokehold. The guy arched his back and clawed at Derrick’s arm. Derrick snugged his arm tighter, cutting off the blood supply to the brain.
The man went unconscious in seconds.
Most people had cleared the room. Jake stood by him as Derrick flipped the gunman onto his stomach and zip-tied his hands and feet. “Sitrep.”
“Dani is overseeing lockdown of the hotel. We’re moving all the journalists to another room for questioning by the RCMP. Gears is with the envoy. You good here?”
“Fucking peachy.” Derrick stood and looked down at the man. RCMP officers guarded both doorways and kept a lookout while the rest of the journalists filed past them.
The gunman on the floor began to groan.
Jake looked beyond him. “Excuse me, ma’am, but you’re going to have to go with the others.”
“Derrick?”
The voice from his past constricted his chest. It had been so long. A small, dark part of him wanted to stay facing away from her, but he wasn’t a coward. He turned to the woman he’d loved, one who’d gone and had a family without him.
“You’re alive,” she whispered. A smile touched her lips.
2
“Gun!” a man’s voice shouted.
Cassie’s heart stopped.
A cameraman pointed a gun at the envoy. Men on the dais surged toward the envoy, whose mouth had dropped open.
A dark-haired man leapt at the assassin.
Crack!
She gasped. The inhalation shock-started her heart to beat triple time. She jumped to her feet and hugged the wall while reporters streamed from the room. In the center, the tall, dark-haired soldier struggled with the gunman.
Where had the cameraman hid the gun? She calmed her breathing and watched, trying to take in everything, record every detail of what was happening. Even though her heart pounded like a race horse, she could detach her brain from her emotions.
Ever since she’d been a kid, she slowed down in a true emergency. Panic didn’t hit her until after. Her mother had always encouraged her to become an emergency doctor, but her math and science marks had discouraged that career path. Besides, she loved telling stories. Bringing stories and truth to the people who needed to hear it.
And as a reporter, the ability to stay calm and remember details, no matter what was going on, helped immensely, especially when she did pieces in war-torn regions or when disasters struck. It was how she’d made a name for herself as a reporter and then how she’d been offered a position at Global News.
Right now she watched the soldier—he had to be one, with his black uniform—tackle the assassin and expertly disarm him and put him in a chokehold. The soldier’s dark hair almost matched his black hat from behind. She narrowed her eyes, focused solely on the fight. The gunman reached frantically for the soldier’s face, his fingers hooked into claws. Her breath hitched but she didn’t waver in her focus. She should be evacuating, but something held her in place. Something about the soldier.
He reminded her of someone.
The assassin sagged in the soldier’s grip, who then flipped the unconscious man over and zip-tied his hands and feet. Another soldier dressed in the envoy’s security gray came to stand beside the two. They spoke and she heard.
She heard the dark-haired soldier’s voice.
It was his voice.
It was like having an out-of-body experience. Her skin felt numb, her body foreign and too heavy to move, her attention focused like a laser on the man with dark hair.
It was him.
She hadn’t heard his voice in years. She thought she’d forgotten it, but the low timbre of it struck her hard. Shivers ran down her back and the hairs rose on her arms. He’d died on a mission.
Or at least that’s what she’d told herself when he’d never come back. They hadn’t been married, so the military hadn’t thought to inform her of anything, and she’d had no way to track down a special ops soldier. She’d assumed the worst.
She touched the little gold pendant of a wolf she always wore, for strength. A gift from him the first summer they’d met.
She stepped forward. The other soldier said something to her, but she ignored him.
“Derrick?” The question came out whisper soft. He didn’t turn, but he stiffened.
She willed him to turn around. Was it really him?
He faced her.
The same dark hair, longer than it had been. His body as lean and tough as she remembered, matching the hard angles of his face. He had a bit of gray running through one temple, and new lines around his eyes. But those eyes…dark, a familiar brown-almost black that pierced her soul and flooded her with emotions. She gasped.
“You’re alive.”
He was alive. Joy suffused her. She’d wept when she’d realized he wasn’t coming home. She took a step toward him. She’d wept for days.
Days.
He was alive. Her whole body stilled on that one thought.
He was alive.
Her stomach turned.
“Cassie,” he said, in that voice she hadn’t heard for too many years.
She shook her head, holding off a remembered grief. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Colonel?” The other man stepped closer to her, as if he thought she might be dangerous.
He’d made colonel. He was still in the military then. Her jaw clenched. Derrick wasn’t dead. “Why aren’t you dead?”
Derrick’s mouth twisted into a half-smile, one that drove a spike into her chest and then twisted what little remained of her heart. “You want me dead?”
“You let me believe you were dead.”
Derrick held out a hand. “No, Cass, I never wanted that.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why would you do that?”
“I’m sorry, Cassie.” His eyes begged her for something. “I didn’t know you believed that.”
“What the hell was I supposed to think when you never came back?”
He moved toward her and she backed away, holding her hands up. She couldn’t have him near her. “I thought…” She laughed bitterly. “I thought you’d died a hero. I told—” She shook her head almost violently. “It doesn’t matter.”
He came close, standing in front of her. “It does matter. It matters to me.”
She made a derisive noise and dodged him, striding to the door. “Give me a freaking break. You made your choice when you never came back.”
Anger swept through her like a brush fire, burning all her emotions in searing heat and leaving ashes behind. She let the RCMP officer, the woman who’d felt her hair, lead her to the ballroom where everyone else waited. She sank onto one of the many plastic chairs around cloth-covered tables. Centerpieces of wilting daisies decorated the tables. Crumbs and a wine stain also littered hers. The se
tting mimicked how she felt. Dirty and discarded.
The other reporters had taken chairs as well. Most of them were on their phones or tablets, either trying to get a signal or writing up what they knew, ready to send when the signal was unjammed. She should be doing that, too, before the police rounded up their phones. She had a major scoop, but she couldn’t gather the energy to care.
That man had destroyed her heart twice. Once when she’d been a young twenty-two-year-old dreaming of becoming a reporter and he’d decided she couldn’t be trusted with his super-secret soldier career. And the second time, nine years ago when they’d decided to start a relationship again and then he’d gone on a mission and never come back.
She pulled out her tablet to start work on her story. It was time to truly forget Derrick Blackwell.
She would not let him into her heart a third time.
Derrick had royally fucked that up. He wanted to punch a wall, or take down the gunman again. Instead, he breathed deep and focused on the task at hand: discovering whether the gunman had acted alone. He didn’t have time to chase after a woman from his past.
“You okay, Hawk?” Jake asked, using Derrick’s code name.
Derrick gave a curt nod. “All good. Just…an old friend.”
Jake raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything else, which was a good thing because Derrick wasn’t sure he could have tolerated any questions.
He hadn’t realized Cassie would jump to the conclusion he’d died. He should have known that, should have guessed that would be her conclusion. But years ago, when he’d come back from a mission and found her with her happy family, he’d only thought about getting out and leaving her to it. A family wasn’t something he could have given her at the time. He’d been married to his career and he’d already proved it to her by being away for months at a time. His career came first. He was an elite soldier who lived from mission to mission. She’d shown that she couldn’t handle that life, couldn’t handle him.
And he’d seen her with a husband and child. He thought she’d moved on because he’d been gone so long.
Not because she thought he’d died.
“Sir?” Dani’s voice in his ear caught Derrick off guard. Jake stood in front of him, frowning in concern. Dammit. This was why he and Cassie hadn’t worked out. Even now, she distracted him too much.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Sir, Gears hasn’t found anything outside the hotel. The bomb squad’s dogs are sweeping this floor and the envoy’s rooms. Nothing yet. And I’m tracking down the man’s identity as we speak. Obviously, his press pass was a fake. The paper he represented has never heard of him, and the man they sent is missing.”
“Pull Gears inside and have him secure this floor,” Derrick ordered. “I need you to find out if the gunman is associated with a terrorist group or if this was a lone wolf effort. College and I will interview the rest of the reporters and the hotel staff present to see if we can find any accomplices.”
“Do you want me to call in any other Edge personnel?” Dani asked.
Derrick thought about it briefly, but the other teams were either out on ops or prepping for one. As the operations officer for Edge, he had to assess the best use of resources and personnel for each mission. His gut told him the danger had passed. “No. We’re good for now. Keep me apprised of your progress.”
“Wilco.”
He turned to Jake. “I’ll see to the reporters. You manage the hotel staff.”
“You sure about that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Even he heard the edge in his voice.
“I mean,” Jake said carefully. “That reporter lady had a pretty strong reaction to you. And honestly, I’ve never seen you react like that either.” He paused. “I’m just wondering if you should be near her in this situation.”
“I’m fine,” Derrick said. “We were done a long time ago. And she made it pretty clear how she feels about me.”
Jake snorted. “Yeah. Lima Charlie.”
Derrick clenched his hands into fists. Yes, it had been loud and clear. But it didn’t matter. He would manage the reporters, because he was in charge. It was his duty. That was the reason.
Yeah, right, when did you start lying to yourself?
He snarled silently. So what if he wanted to see her again?
Jake stepped back, obviously seeing something on his face. “Why don’t I go talk to the staff now?”
“You do that.” Derrick stalked out of the room.
He didn’t run from his troubles and he wasn’t a coward. He headed for the ballroom. It didn’t matter what Cassie thought. Their relationship had been over for a long time and she was in shock from the events.
He just had to be professional.
Cassie tapped her fingers on the cloth-covered table, every now and then flicking a crumb with her nail. The RCMP interviewed people on the far side of the room. The reporters circled like the sharp-toothed predators they were, trying to overhear more details, seeking to make their story better than anyone else’s. A female constable stood guard, keeping the sharks back.
Cassie had good details about the story. She’d already recorded everything and written up a short article, but nothing would be posted until they got the go-ahead from the RCMP.
National security trumped a hot story, apparently. Now she just had to wait. She sighed and flicked another crumb.
He was alive.
Flick.
Alive.
Flick.
What the hell? How could he not have told her he was alive? Even if he hadn’t wanted anything to do with her, what kind of person let someone else think they’re dead?
A chair scraped beside her.
She refused to look up. He wouldn’t dare.
A large body sank into the seat beside her.
He dared.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She snuck a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Why did he have to look so good? She wanted to throw herself in his arms, to feel them wrap around her, to hear his heart beat beneath her ear. He was alive. She wanted to cry with joy. But she wouldn’t.
He hadn’t bothered to come back to her. She had to remember that.
“Go away,” she said. Where was the hard edge in her voice? She sounded soft and sad. And she wasn’t that. She wasn’t sad. She was angry. Time to stir those embers and get the simmer going.
“I will,” he said. “But first I have to let you know. I didn’t realize you’d think I was dead.”
A full simmer now. Moving with exaggerated slowness, she turned her head. “Are you freaking serious? What else would I think when you never came back?”
“I did come back, but you were with your family and I knew I didn’t have a place there.”
She blinked. He’d seen her daughter. He had come back, and he’d seen them living with her mother. And then he’d decided he didn’t want any part of that? The simmer inside her flash-heated and boiled over. “You should have stopped when you were ahead,” she said, the edge sharp and hard in her voice. No one hurt her daughter. “I wouldn’t have believed you could be any more of a snake, but you just managed it.”
“That’s not fair—”
“You don’t get to decide what’s fair.” She stood. How could she have been so wrong about him? She had to get away.
He stood too. “Come with me.” He snapped the words like a whip.
Maybe his fierce scowl made his men obey orders, but it only pissed her off more. She crossed her arms. “Why should I?”
“Because you want answers and I can give them to you. And neither of us wants to be a news article.” He nodded at the sharks who’d stopped circling the interviewers and moved closer to her and Derrick.
“Oh right,” she said with a sneer. “I remember that about you. Everything is super-secret. So secret you can’t tell anyone you’re alive. How’s that working for you?”
“Come,” he repeated and strode away.
She wanted to hurl the vase of wilted daisies at his back. Her breathing turned harsh with her anger, but she controlled the urge to do violence and followed him. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she wanted to yell at him some more. It had nothing to do with the fact that she couldn’t stop looking at him, or that her stomach dropped at the thought of him leaving her behind.
Again.
Crap. She was in trouble.
He didn’t say anything but just spoke quietly to the officer at the door and then led her into the deserted hallway outside.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “You’ve made your position very clear. You chose your career. I hope you’re happy, Colonel.”
He faced her. “I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”
“I got that. You’re sorry. So what?”
He stepped closer. “Why didn’t you try to track me down if you were so worried?”
She wanted to hit him. Her hand vibrated with the need to do just that. She got close enough that she had to tilt her head to look up at him. She’d forgotten how tall he was compared to her. “I called everyone I could think of. Your uncle had died and you’d kept your life so secret from me that I had no idea who to call. The Canadian Forces denied any knowledge of you.”
She could feel the heat coming off him. She clenched her hands into fists. She wasn’t sure whether it was to stop from hitting him or touching him. She still couldn’t believe he stood in front of her.
“You knew my name. You’re a reporter. You pride yourself on finding things out. You got stopped by the PR officer?”
“Screw you,” she hissed. “Why is this my fault? You’re the one who should have come back.”
“I did come back.” He moved so close. “I came back for you.”
Anger surged out of her and she leaned her face toward him. “I. Don’t. Believe. You.”
Frustration twisted his features. “Believe this,” he growled and then kissed her.
The years fell away and she was twenty-two again and in the arms of the man she loved. Heat flushed her skin. His mouth crushed hers as if bracing for resistance.
