by Tawny Weber
Elijah had to talk himself down from fury to simple frustration. It wouldn’t help to react from anger. He knew it. Still, it took chanting that in his head a dozen or so times before he could speak.
Before he could say a word, though, Nic stepped into his space. “Are we friends?”
“Shit.”
“As a friend, I’ve stayed silent while you destroyed yourself over what happened. I stood at your side, never saying a word as you suffered, as you mourned. And if you choose to keep on feeding that particular monkey, I’ll still be there by your side.” Nic slapped a hand on Elijah’s shoulder and squeezed. “But as your commander, I can’t consider you in peak condition if you’re carrying that other crap. You can’t fully function as part of the team if you think your teammates are sliding you the side-eye.”
“And if you’re sliding it their way?”
“Really?” Nic arched one sharp brow. “Since when do you think I talk to hear the sound of my voice?”
Since never. Savino was known for being a man of few words. So Elijah shoveled the crap out of his head long enough to replay his commander’s words.
“You’re going to confront Lansky.” Just like he would have confronted Elijah if he actually suspected anything. The same confrontation they’d have, Elijah acknowledged, if Savino heard talk he thought Elijah needed to know about.
Because that’s what the man did.
He had his men’s backs.
“The minute Lansky reports to duty, he and I will be having a chat,” Savino confirmed. “After which any pertinent results will be disseminated among the team.”
In other words, if Savino determined that Lansky was dirty, he’d let the team know. But if the man was simply having personal issues, they’d remain confidential.
Stepping away from Savino, Elijah shoved both hands through his hair and stared out the window. Sunlight glistened off the treetops, shimmered off the vines visible in the distance. Wine in the making, heated by the sun and cured in the cool evenings.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he admitted quietly. “My head spins out of control too often to ignore. I see things, flashbacks, nonexistent threats, fucking boogeymen. I can’t control it. I can’t stop it.”
“Take this week. Deal with the old baggage—shake off that monkey,” Nic advised. “You can’t move forward until you do.”
“You think dealing with any unresolved feelings between me and Ava, discussing issues we buried with our son, will cure the PTSD?” Elijah scoffed.
“No. But I don’t think you can face those horrors and win the fight until you’re whole and healed.”
With that and a slap on the back, Nic walked out. Leaving Elijah to drown in the screaming silence of his own thoughts.
* * *
IF AVA HAD found anything in the last few years, it was the ability to channel everything—frustration, worry, doubts and fears—into physical release. Since sex had been off the table, she used various forms of fitness.
Yoga and Pilates to soothe and balance her thoughts.
Weights and strength training to weigh and consider options.
Taekwondo and kickboxing to release aggressions, work through fears and doubts.
One way or another, by the time she was through with her workout of choice, she was usually dripping sweat, with screaming muscles and a clearer mind. One session rarely gave her answers, but like fitness, it was a cumulative effort.
But right now, as she lay with her back pressed into the weight bench, pushing 110 pounds over her chest again, and again, and again, she desperately needed results.
“Working out some stress?”
Blinking the sting of sweat from her eyes, Ava glanced over. “Working through some decisions,” she told Mack.
“Such as?”
“Are you telling me you don’t know?” she huffed, the effort of pressing 110 and talking at the same time getting to her. “You’ve got a houseful of SEALs and all that oozing charm and you haven’t got the deets?”
“I know the guys are fighting a bad guy. One who used to wear the face of a friend. I know that nice woman and her little boy are in danger. And I know you can help.”
“No,” she snapped, dropping the weight bar back on its rack and sitting up to glare at her friend and mentor. “I can’t help. There’s nothing I can do.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“Then you heard wrong. Elijah’s the one who saves the world. Not me.” She just sat there, helpless, doing nothing.
“You’re not going with them?”
“Please? What use would I be?” Hadn’t she already proven she wasn’t cut out for keeping a child safe?
“For God’s sake, Ava, they need you. Don’t you see? You’ve turned yourself into a female version of Elijah.”
“What a crock.” Ava waved the idea away with a flick of her fingers. “That’s totally ridiculous.”
Mack gave her an intense look. Ava had seen it plenty of times in her life. More often than not, it made her cave and agree with whatever was said because she was afraid to hear the next painful volley.
But not this time. What’d she spend years building up her strength and endurance for if not to face a few heavy truths?
“Just say it,” she finally ordered, her muscles taut.
“Your entire life is a mission, Ava. You’re on a quest to prove you don’t need anyone, that you aren’t the woman you were in the past.”
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t strong enough to keep the sudden tears from burning her eyes. But not letting them fall had to count for something.
“I’m not.” She had to press her lips together for a moment to keep them from trembling, but her voice was strong when she continued. “I’m not the same woman I was. I don’t want the same things. I don’t need approval and I no longer believe in fairy tales.”
She didn’t believe in the myth of happily-ever-after.
“No. You channel your dreams now, call them goals as if that makes them more official and less fanciful.” Mack gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “And you turn those goals into missions, step-by-step plans, each with contingencies in place. You’ve devoted your life to being the best at what you do, and as a by-product, helping others. To teaching them to face their limits and push past them.”
“I sound amazing,” she scoffed. “So what’s your point?”
“My point is, maybe it’s time to give Elijah a real chance. Not just a wild ride.” His voice softened. “Maybe it’s time to let go of the past and open your heart, Ava.”
But an open heart was so easy to break. Ava took a shaky breath. Before she could respond, someone stepped into the room.
“Excuse me.”
Ava and Mack turned to the woman in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, but I was hoping for a word with Ava.” Looking every inch the lady in her stylish aqua skirt with its full pleats, a silk tank the color of strawberries and a pair of spiked sandals that Ava recognized as Giuseppe Zanotti, Harper Maclean smiled easily. She gave Mack’s arm a squeeze when he bussed her cheek on his way out the door.
“Looks like you and Mack got to know each other pretty well,” Ava observed, returning to her lifting as she pressed the weight in slow, measured moves. Up, breathe. Down, breathe. Three sets, twelve reps.
“He sat with me most of the evening, chatting until I got over my nerves.” Harper moved around the small room, sliding her fingers over the various pieces of equipment as if testing the texture.
“I guess someone told him I’m a decorator, so he pretended to need style advice for his apartment. As if he needed advice. His place is great. It suits him, don’t you think? Except maybe the headless statue.” The pretty blonde wrinkled her nose.
Unable to focus, Ava carefully settled the weigh
t bar back on the rack. Without taking her eyes off Harper, she angled herself into a sitting position.
“You said you wanted to chat,” Ava stated, feeling like something the cat dragged in as she wiped a towel over the rivulets of sweat dripping down her cheeks. “Since you haven’t seen my apartment, I doubt it’s any sort of decorating advice.”
“I’m happy to offer some if you’d like, but you seem like a woman who knows her own style,” Harper replied easily. “Mack said you’re the one responsible for a lot of the design decisions around the gym here. Did you choose the color scheme at the front desk?”
“Mmm.” Having spent years hearing her mother’s opinion of her style choices, Ava braced herself.
“It’s great.” Harper went on to point out the various things she liked, complimenting Ava’s design aesthetic for a few minutes while obviously getting her bearings. The woman seemed determined to be friendly and inoffensive. Ava wasn’t certain what to make of that.
Since she already had plenty of decisions to make, she decided not to add figuring out Harper’s intentions to the list. Instead she gave the woman a steady look. “I don’t think you came down here to discuss decorating decisions, or Mack’s taste.” She dropped onto the weight bench again, this time tucking her legs under her and resting her hands on her knees in meditation pose. “So why don’t you tell me what you’d like to know?”
“Mr. Savino—Lieutenant Commander Savino, I mean—he thinks Brandon is going to come after me. He said separating the two of us is the best way to keep Nathan safe, and to hopefully bring Brandon to justice.”
“Brandon is Ramsey, right? The one they say committed treason?”
“Yes.” Audibly swallowing to get past the knot in her throat, Harper nodded. “He betrayed the team. He faked his death on a mission by causing an explosion and is now in hiding. Living on the money he made selling classified information.”
An explosion? Ava’s heart stopped. “This man, Ramsey—he caused the explosion that hurt Elijah?” Her vision blurred, the edges misted with black as Ava tried to breathe. Her head filled with the memory of Elijah’s nightmares, the tortured sound of the moans that came through his sleep when he was most vulnerable. She could see, without closing her eyes, the vicious scars left by the fire that’d feasted on his flesh.
One of his own men had done that to him? A teammate?
Horror burned in her throat, stung her eyes. She clenched her fists against the urge to hit something. This was the man they were asking her to help stop. And this man was after the pretty woman next to her, and that sweet little boy.
Strength Ava hadn’t realized she had surged. “Let’s get a drink,” she suggested, gesturing to the door. She was desperate for something to cool her throat.
“The gym has a bar?” Harper exclaimed, looking impressed as she glanced around. “Is it like a juice bar? Is there wheatgrass? Nathan would get a kick out of hearing I’d drank something green made of grass.”
Harper’s easy laugh decimated the last of Ava’s reservations. The woman might look like a pampered princess, be set to marry a SEAL and be raising a darling little boy—everything Ava had been once—but she couldn’t hold that against her anymore.
Maybe it was the slight difference in ages—Nathan was a couple of years older than her little Dominic would be if he’d lived—but the thought of her son didn’t rip at her gut like it usually did. So she was able to smile as she led Harper across the gym.
“More like a smoothie bar and a break room,” Ava said as they followed the purple strip of carpet toward the door marked “Staff.” “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Honestly?” Harper’s smile flashed, her blue eyes dancing. “I’d be much happier with a bottle of water. The last thing I did to try to impress Nathan that I was a cool mom was go camping. I’m pretty sure I’d hate wheatgrass just as much.”
Ava laughed. The nasty tension that had gripped her since she’d walked in to see Harper napping finally dissipated, fading into a surreal calm.
They settled into the relative privacy of the small break room, with its hot-pink walls, framed black-and-white images of Mack competing, and white plastic furniture. They sat together on the narrow couch—one Ava was sure Mack had chosen to keep his staff from enjoying long breaks—each with a bottle of water and the bowl of salted-chocolate almonds between them that Ava had purloined from Chloe’s locker.
Harper told her about Nathan’s father. The man who’d walked out on her when she was a pregnant teenager. She described his perfidy, his lies, and—although they both knew her information was limited to what Poseidon had allowed her—she filled Ava in on the mission.
“So there will be two teams. One covering Diego and me as we try to draw Brandon out, the other in hiding somewhere that they aren’t telling me, protecting Nathan.” Harper’s smile was a little shaky at the corners when she touched Ava’s shoulder. “I’m grateful that you’ll be there with Nathan. He loves the guys on the team, but he’s used to having a mom around.”
Ava had to force herself to breathe around the pain stabbing in her gut at that comment. This wasn’t about her, she told herself. It was about national security and bad guys and, more important, the safety of one little boy. “Are you really okay with all of this? Not knowing where Nathan will be? With being bait to catch this guy?” she asked quietly, her eyes locked on her water bottle as she twisted it between her hands. “Are you afraid?”
“I don’t like not knowing Nathan’s location, but I understand the logic. I don’t like being away from him, but I know how Brandon’s mind works and agree that he’s more likely to come after me, thinking I have his money and can lead him to Nathan. It’s a smart plan. Still, Diego’s worried. He doesn’t say much, but I can tell that there’s a lot more going on. More than he’s told me. So, yes. I’m afraid.” She tilted her head back for a moment, staring at the ceiling as she blinked back tears, then met Ava’s gaze with clear eyes. “Brandon’s dangerous. He doesn’t hesitate to lie, to steal, to betray or to kill. If I can help stop any of that, I have to try.”
“He hurt you,” Ava said, reaching out to take Harper’s hand and give it a squeeze.
“He has to be stopped,” Harper stated, staring through the single window into the gym. “He has to pay for what he did. To Diego. To Elijah. To the team, all those people. To the innocents who were hurt because of his actions.”
“I can’t argue with that. But setting yourself up as bait, Harper? That’s dangerous.”
Harper rolled the bottle between her palms a couple of times before shrugging. “Sometimes we have to put it on the line, you know? I can’t do what Poseidon can. I’m not trained like they are. But I know Brandon. I know he’s a bad person and he needs to be brought to justice. I’m willing to do whatever I can to help.” Harper wet her lips and gave Ava a beseeching look. “But I can’t risk my son. I need to know he’s safe.”
“Are you asking me for some sort of promise to keep him safe?” She hadn’t been able to keep her own son safe—how could she make that kind of promise? “You’d do better to put your trust in Poseidon.”
“But you’re a mom,” Harper said patiently, her eyes fixed on Ava’s. The look in them, the overwhelming depths of compassion, told Ava that she knew about Dominic. That she understood the devastation. “They’ll do their best. But it’s not the same.”
Lips pressed tight to keep from crying, Ava thought back to Mack’s words, his comparison of her and Elijah. She had a thousand reasons to deny it, and she stood by every one of them. But now, right now?
She knew he was right.
She’d devoted her life to being the best she could be. Elijah was the best at what he did. She knew how to use her body and her mind to set goals, to break them into manageable steps and work toward each one. And she’d use that now.
Because she had a mission. Her miss
ion was to stand by Elijah’s side. To help protect Nathan. To make this Ramsey person pay.
For everything.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“WOW.”
Ava gazed around Nic’s trilevel getaway, hoping her jaw wasn’t scraping the marble floor. The rich wood inside echoed the forest of pine and fir outside the glistening floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the trees she could see Lake Tahoe in all its gorgeous invitation.
“Do you stay in places like this on all of your assignments?” she asked the men surrounding her.
“Hardly.” Elijah laughed. “Some digs, Commander. You’ve done some upgrades.”
“You’ve been here before?” Ava asked.
“Sure, a few years ago we powwowed here.” When she tilted her head in question, he explained, “A couple times a year, the team does an off-duty trip. Sometimes it’s remote, sometimes it’s wild. Nic rented this place once while we showed Reno what kind of damage Poseidon could do.”
“Team-building maneuvers,” Nic explained, mistaking her frown as confusion.
Gambling in Reno was a team-building maneuver? Something to ponder later, she concluded when her eyes were drawn back to Elijah.
He was different here. He still wore jeans and a tee, just as he had back in Napa. His demeanor was chill, his face scruffed with a sexy hint of a beard and his boots scarred and worn. But he wore an air of power that she’d never seen on him before. His moves were alert, his steps sure. His eyes searched, always watching, assessing. None of them carried weapons, but they spoke in Navy-speak, a sort of shorthand that used gestures as often as words.
Elijah looked to Nic for direction, but the rest looked to him as second-in-command.
Command looked good on him, she decided with a delicate shiver. She watched him give orders with just a word and gesture, sending Rengel and Ward to check the lower floors. Oh, baby, it was so sexy.
