Operation Alpha

by Justine Davis

  He ran a hand over his sandy hair, tousling it even further. Only then did she remember she’d done that herself, in the moments before he’d broken the kiss and pulled away, leaving her feeling strangely cold.

  “You’re smart,” he said, his tone sharp. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Thank you, and I’m not,” she said, earning her a sideways glance that nearly stopped her heart. He looked...desperate. She couldn’t think of any other word that described his expression.

  “That person you lost,” she began slowly, “are you saying you killed them?”

  “Might as well have.” His voice was tight, the words spoken with his jaw clenched.

  Ah. There it is.

  “Who was she?”

  “What makes you think it was a she?”

  “You have close male friends. It’s me you’re pulling away from, hence...”

  “Clever.”

  “Who was she?”

  He whirled on her then. And there was a world of bitter sarcasm in his voice when he asked, “Which one?”

  For the first time Ria felt a qualm. Not that she believed he was a killer, not for an instant, but something had obviously made him feel that way. Based on his words, more than once. She hesitated long enough that his expression became grim.

  “You think I’d feel this way if it was only one?”

  Suddenly she didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to know what could make cheerful, happy-go-lucky Liam Burnett look and sound like this. But she also knew that, as much as she didn’t want to hear it, he needed to say it. Because it was eating him alive.

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “You’ve gone this far,” she pointed out.

  “I’m not talking about this.”

  She ignored the words and listened to the pain. “Who was the first one?”

  “You’re too damn stubborn for your own good.”

  “If you mean I refuse to go away and leave someone hurting, then yes. Who was she?”

  He turned away, staring at the fireplace, into the flames. She wondered if he felt as if they were licking at him. Finally, without turning back, he said, “My best friend’s kid sister.”

  Ouch. More than one layer there.

  She waited. He didn’t turn. Shifted restlessly on his feet. But after a moment he kept going. “Jessica...had a crush on me in high school. Matt—my friend—told me, because he thought it was funny, the way she followed me around. I liked her, but she was just a kid.”

  She tried to imagine him at that age. He looked so young now that it was hard to picture him even younger. But she could certainly see why a girl would have a crush on him. Empathize, even. Wasn’t she sliding down the same slope?

  “What happened?”

  She heard him take in a deep breath. “One spring, Matt and I went out to the Guadalupe River. It had been raining hard for a couple of days, and it was running high and fast. We were playing a stupid game of chicken, where you tied a rope onto a tree, hung on and jumped in.”

  Ria’s stomach turned over. “She followed you?”

  He nodded. Still without turning, as if he couldn’t look at her and tell her. “We told her to go home. She wouldn’t. By my last go it was getting rougher, and I had a little trouble pulling myself out. She tried to help.”

  She knew where this was going now. “She drowned?”

  He turned then, sharply. “Yes. Trying to help me, she lost her footing and went in. They didn’t find her for two days.”

  She opened her mouth to ask why the girl’s decision was his fault, then stopped. She didn’t want to derail this, not now that he was talking. She worked to put all the calm she could manage into her voice.

  “Next?”

  He glanced at her then, and she saw surprise in his expression. She looked at him steadily. He turned back to the fire.

  “Heather. College girlfriend. Cancer. I wasn’t there when she died.”

  Well, that was concise, she thought, trying not to think of everything that kind of death entailed.

  “Is there more?”

  She thought she heard a low, bitter chuckle. “Oh, the prize of them all. Girl I planned to marry. I was crazy about Amanda. She wanted me to quit the hacking thing. Told her I would, but I had to finish something first.”

  He lifted his hands to brace them on the mantel above the hearth. Inner pain seemed visible to her in every line of his body. He who was so casually strong, so quick and graceful, who usually moved with such ease, was wire-tight with tension.

  “I was making some side money, hacking into school records and tweaking grade reports. I wanted to finish because when I did I’d have enough to get us started. Bad call.”

  “That’s when you got caught?”

  He nodded. He fell silent then, just looking at her. “Aren’t you going to ask?” he finally said.

  “I figured you were rolling now; you’d finish it on your own.”

  Something different flashed in his eyes then, something that she couldn’t put a name to. And when he did go on, his words were blunt, his voice harsh.

  “When she found out I’d been arrested, she drove to the jail to see me. Her sister said she was mad and crying at the same time.” He took a deep breath and finished it. “She was going fast, lost control on a turn and hit a lamp post. Died instantly.”

  She stared at him. She had no words for this. All she had was an aching heart and the tears that had welled up in her eyes.

  “No answer for that one, is there?” His voice was still harsh, and she realized then what she’d seen in his eyes before. Hatred. Directed inward. He hated himself for this. “You have no idea. You’ve had this perfect life, always knowing what you wanted, your family’s still intact, you said yourself you’ve never lost anyone.”

  She fought not to feel painfully stung, but she knew he was right—she had been lucky. Hadn’t she told him that, as well? But what she’d told him didn’t matter. Right at this moment her feelings didn’t matter.

  “I’m so sorry,” she managed to get out.

  “That night taught me that sorry doesn’t mean much, after it’s too late.”

  She knew he didn’t mean that to be a jab. Not at her, anyway. He was too busy castigating himself. She wanted to go to him, hug him, but she knew he wouldn’t accept it, not now, not when he was so deep into feeling the guilt. She tried to keep her voice even.

  “I won’t say you shouldn’t blame yourself. Because if you hadn’t, at least a little, you probably wouldn’t be where you are now.”

  “That’s thanks to Quinn.”

  She caught a movement on the edge of her vision. Cutter, watching, listening. She guessed he had been, but, bless the canny dog, he hadn’t intruded. As if he somehow knew the slightest interruption would stop the flow of something that simply had to come out.

  “So Foxworth’s guy found you’d been into their system?” she asked, both wanting to know and guessing he could use a breather. And she thought, when he turned to face her and spoke in a more even tone, that she’d been right.

  “The cops confiscated my computer. Eventually, they found where I’d gotten into the Foxworth system, but since I didn’t do anything but look, it was way down on their list. So all they did was notify Quinn.” His mouth quirked upward, but the effort faded quickly. “Never expected him to show up.”

  “I’ll bet. What did he say?”

  “Just that his guy—Ty—was one of the very best, and he wanted to know how I’d gotten in. I figured I couldn’t be in any more trouble than I was, so I told him. He went and talked to my family. All of them. I didn’t know that until later. But he came back and asked me if I wanted to straighten my life out.”

  “I gather your answer was yes.”

  He gr
imaced. “I was twenty, sitting in a jail cell, my fiancée dead because of me, kicked out of college, with everything my parents had ever warned about proven true. Yeah, I said yes.”

  “What did he do?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “He paid my fine, got them to release me to him on probation—Foxworth has an unmatched reputation in a lot of places—and gave me a plane ticket here. Told me if I showed up as promised, I’d have a job doing good things. If I didn’t, he’d hunt me down and make sure I ended up worse than where I started. I believed him.”

  “I would have, too,” she said. Quinn Foxworth was not a man who made idle threats. “I’m glad he gave you the chance to redeem yourself.”

  “There’s no redemption. Don’t try to defend me.”

  “I’m not. I’m just looking at it with the benefit of a step back and years later.”

  He laughed, the harshest sound yet. “Do you think Amanda’s family or Jessica’s family or even Heather’s have taken a step back just because some time has passed?”

  “No. But—”

  “There are no buts, Ria. You didn’t know them, know me, or you’d realize that.”

  She stood up. She searched for the right words, sensing that they could be the most important ones she ever said.

  “No, I didn’t know them. Any of them, or their families. I understand that means you think I have no right to an opinion.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  She cut him off. “So I’m not going to give you opinions. Just facts. Truth. That’s what Foxworth does, isn’t it?”

  He was staring at her now, his brow furrowed. She steadied herself and began, determined to get it all out quickly.

  “One, yes, playing in a flooding river was stupid, but your friend was just as responsible. More, in fact—she was his sister, and he should have been watching her. Two, you did not give that girl cancer, and it’s known that sometimes people wait until they’re alone to go. Three, while you were partially responsible for your fiancée’s emotional state, you were not responsible for her choice to drive in that state. So, yes, you should have some guilt. Some. But just as you’re responsible for some of it, you’re not responsible for all of it. And you’ve done the only thing it is humanly possible to do to make amends. You’ve changed your life, and you spend it now helping people who have nowhere else to turn. Maybe you can’t make it up to those people whose lives were changed for the worse, but you’re changing other lives for the better. That’s the best that can be done, and not many people do it. I won’t say, don’t feel guilty. I will say, keep using that guilt as fuel to do what you do—help. It’s the only thing that can help you live with what you can’t change.”

  For a long moment after her outpouring, he just stared at her. Then, slowly, he shook his head. Judging by his expression, it was in wonder as much as negation.

  “Why does it matter to you so much?” The wonder echoed in his voice, which was barely above a whisper.

  “Because...” She hesitated and then plunged ahead. “Because I care about you.”

  He went pale. And when he spoke, his voice was the coldest thing she’d ever heard.

  “Don’t. Don’t ever. Didn’t you hear me? Every female who’s ever risked really caring about me like that is dead. I don’t want you to join them.”

  He turned his back on her, strode to the door leading to the clearing and walked out.

  Chapter 25

  He felt scoured out, utterly hollow inside. He took long, deep breaths of air tinged with the chill of fall coming. Normally it invigorated him, but there was nothing normal about this.

  He felt a shiver go through him. Held out a hand in front of him, saw in the moonlight that his fingers were trembling. Wasn’t surprised. Not after what he’d just done.

  Something he had never done before.

  He’d never told anyone all of it. His parents knew a lot of it, by necessity, but not because he’d told them. Nor had he ever told his siblings. Quinn knew most of the facts, but only because his research was thorough and Liam hadn’t denied anything.

  But he’d never, not since Amanda died, put it into words all at once. Or admitted how he felt about it all. And now that he had, he felt...

  He wasn’t sure how he felt.

  Cutter nudged at his hand. He should have been startled—and worried—since he hadn’t heard or been aware of the dog’s approach. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure he could feel anything at the moment.

  Another nudge. He knew the dog had an almost miraculous way of comforting people in distress; he’d seen it in action enough times. But he doubted it would work for him. If it was distress he was feeling. He wasn’t even sure of that. But it was second nature for him to pet a dog who asked for it, so he did.

  After a moment he looked down at Cutter, his brow furrowed. His hand was resting on the statue-still dog’s head. Those amber-flecked dark eyes were fixed on him. Then the animal tilted his head and flicked his tongue over Liam’s fingers.

  He felt it. Not just the dog version of a kiss but more. Felt something, anyway. Not warmth, exactly, but an odd sort of comfort, an easing, a lessening of the pain. Enough to let his mind start to work again, albeit slowly, foggily.

  “So that’s what you do,” he murmured.

  He realized belatedly the animal had come out the same door he had. And that there was no opener on it.

  Ria. She must have let him out.

  Ria. He sucked in a breath. She would have been easier to dismiss if she’d absolved him of everything, but she hadn’t. She’d admitted—was too honest not to—that he should feel guilty.

  I won’t say, don’t feel guilty. I will say, keep using that guilt as fuel to do what you do—help. It’s the only thing that can help you live with what you can’t change.

  He stared out at the trees, dark sentinels against a sky lit by a nearly full moon. Over there was the barely discernable trail the deer used to slip in and out of the clearing where they frequently grazed. No doubt the local raccoons were out in force tonight, foraging. Out there in those woods, just beyond the low, wet spot that sprouted alder in a thick grove, was the eagle’s nest. He traversed those acres of trees regularly, keeping his tracking skills sharp, challenging himself on the terrain and vegetation that was so different than his native Texas.

  Images slammed through his mind again. Jessica’s sodden, river-battered body. Heather, wasted away to nearly nothing. And Amanda, mangled by steel and glass and concrete.

  What would happen to Ria? Sure, in his saner moments he told himself it was just circumstances, mere chance that had taken those three who had cared about him. Logic told him his mother and sisters were fine, weren’t they? But they were blood. Nothing had ever budged that sense of doom those deaths had instilled in him.

  Then Ria was there, beside him, and he hadn’t heard her coming either. She didn’t speak, just stopped beside him. Looked out into the night as he was doing. After a moment, she took his other hand. Still without speaking she simply held it, not even looking at him but still out at the trees. His mind ordered his hand to pull away, but he must have been foggy because it didn’t happen. And so he stood there, a dog with an eerie way of comforting on one side and a woman who apparently had the same knack on the other. He couldn’t deny what he was feeling. As if the burden was still there, but he wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.

  He wished he could freeze this moment. That he could freeze it and walk away, leaving it forever intact, never changing, never marred by some tragedy later on.

  Time and life didn’t work that way. At least his didn’t. Maybe Ria was right and Matt should have been watching his sister better, but he was the one who’d gotten in trouble and needed help. Maybe he hadn’t given Heather cancer, but he’d been off at some movie, desperate for a break, when she’d died. And Amanda...


  He might look young, might hide behind a carefree facade, but his heart and mind were old before their time and he had left fantasies far behind the day they’d told him Amanda was dead, killed rushing to his side as he sat stewing in a pot of trouble of his own making.

  Ria’s fingers tightened around his, as if somehow she’d realized he was still battering himself. As if she had that same kind of instinctive understanding that Cutter had, sensing pain. And the same urge to ease it.

  Unable to stop himself, he squeezed her hand in response. He owed her that much, he thought.

  I care about you...

  He hadn’t wanted that. He’d been trying to avoid it. But she’d said it, and if there was one thing he’d learned about Ria Connelly in the last couple of weeks—God, was it only two?—it was that she didn’t lie. She meant it. She cared about him.

  A shudder born of long-carried guilt went through him. Another woman who cared about him. What would happen to this one?

  He pulled his hand free. “Don’t,” he said again, hearing the near-hoarseness of his own voice.

  “Don’t what? Try and comfort someone in pain? Sorry, it’s hard-wired.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Don’t care about you? Too late. That ship already sailed.”

  Something about her light, almost cavalier tone made him look at her. “Ria—”

  “There’s only one thing you can say to call that ship back.”

  “What?” he asked, determined to do whatever it took to get out of this.

  She turned, looked at him straight on. “You have to kiss me again first.”

  Heat shot through him, driving away any touch of chill from the night air. On its heels came a spurt of anger. “Don’t play with this, Ria.”

  “Oh, I’m not playing, not in the least. But that has to come first.”

  “First?”

  “Then I’ll tell you how to make me go away.”

  His eyebrows lowered. He didn’t like the sound of that. Which was crazy, because it was exactly what he wanted. Wasn’t it?