Variations (Base Branch Series Book 9)

by Megan Mitcham

  Four months later…

  “How’s it going in there?” the clerk asked from the other side of the dressing room curtain.

  Elin slung the fabric wide, clad in no more than a bra, panties, and a hat she’d died for on the way back. And why shouldn’t she? When she propped a hand on her hip, her abs flexed. Her sister’s full breasts saluted the young saleswoman along with her taut butt. Elin looked like a movie star, an action one who enjoyed the crazy balance of ripped muscles and perfectly shaped brows.

  “These didn’t work.” She handed the clerk three dresses and then pointed at the shirts, skirts, pants, and dresses her sister had ordered into the large dressing room with a wave of her hand. “We’ll take all these.”

  “All of them?” Marina choked on the question, looking at the fashion show’s worth rack of garments. They hadn’t even made it to accessories, as Elin had threatened, and there was probably more than a thousand dollars’ worth of textiles in the room.

  “Yes, all of it.” Elin excused the woman with a smile and closed the curtain. “Look at you. Seriously, turn and look.” She strode across the room, grabbed Marina’s shoulders, and turned her to face the three brightly lit mirrors. “What do you see?”

  “A vibrant, kick-ass young woman with the world at her feet.” Marina blew her sister a kiss.

  “Look at yourself, Marina.” The soft playful tone slipped away, and a demanding bark took its place.

  “Fine.”

  Marina started at her hair, cut into long layers with fresh bronze highlights that warmed her face. Her brows had been waxed into pretty arches like Elin’s. Makeup tastefully emboldened her blue eyes and sharp cheeks. Gone were the dark circles. A floral skirt and white blouse combo accentuated her growing breasts and still narrow waist.

  “So what do you see?” Elin urged.

  Marina stared at a striking woman…that she didn’t quite fit inside. Sadness clouded her vision.

  “Mar, you’ve been eating so well and training. Your energy is up. Your skin is practically glowing. Would you look at those legs?” Her sister pointed at her bare feet and pale legs that actually had striation from muscles instead of starvation.

  She tugged on the hem of a skirt that bordered on inappropriate.

  “You look fabulous. You deserve these. And I deserve to see you in them.” Elin leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you tried on that teal maxi dress, you actually smiled a real genuine smile that had nothing to do with me.”

  “What?”

  “You smile all the time when you look at me. See? You’re doing it now.” Elin draped an arm over her shoulder and tossed a finger at the mirror.

  Two bright smiles reflected back because she’d been watching her sister—so put together, muscular, beautiful. She was the only thing that brought Marina joy in the last four months.

  “Okay. Okay. We’ll get them. Not that I have anyplace to wear them.”

  “Actually”—Elin scooped her original clothes off the floor and slipped into the outfit one article at a time—“you have someplace to wear that teal sundress.”

  “I know you’re spy training, but do you always have to speak in code?” Marina steeled herself, stripped from the to-be-purchased outfit, and grabbed her sister’s dress that’d been three sizes too big for her as many months ago.

  “Maybe.” The beautiful smile she’d missed for so long lit the room. “Absolument, mon cher.” She would use one of the four languages she’d learned while under the Strong’s tutelage. “Taylor is hosting a Welcome to America barbecue for you.”

  “I’ve been here for months.” Marina slipped into the dress that she filled out pretty well now.

  “You’ve been here recovering but not living or experiencing what this country has to offer.” Two thick brows waggled.

  Marina’s stomach flipped.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Elin sighed. “I meant you’ve been learning new languages with me—”

  “A language,” Marina corrected.

  “Now. You already have Spanish on lock, and you’ll have Mandarin in no time, and then we’ll move on to a Middle Eastern language.” She flapped a hand. “That’s beside the point. You need to meet people, create new memories. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. The past doesn’t exist. Let’s just move forward.” Elin stepped to her, opened her arms wide, and pulled her into a hug. “Just you and me.”

  Her sister’s happiness and her freedom were the only things she’d known to wish for. Marina squeezed her sister and breathed her in. She had her wishes and more, a spectacular little house she shared with Elin, safety, and stability. Yet the deadness still haunted her insides.

  Elin kissed her forehead and stepped back.

  “So who’s going to be at this party?”

  “The people I work with who aren't on a mission.” AKA Stronghold Tech and Securities outfit. “Levi will be there.” Elin stowed the smile that blossomed on her face at the mention of Levi.

  “Who’s that?”

  Her sister waved off the question. “Just the youngest of the Strong siblings.”

  Just? Yeah, right.

  “Vail Tucker, the director of the Base Branch, will be there with his family to welcome you. Some of their guys are coming.”

  Marina’s stomach bottomed out.

  “They hate me. Why are they coming?”

  “Nobody hates you.” Elin grabbed their purses and handed hers over.

  “He hates me.” She whispered the words, but even quiet, they hurt.

  “He hates himself, not you.”

  “That’s worse.” She snatched her purse, slung the thing over her shoulder, and headed out of the suffocating room.

  “From what I hear—”

  Marina stopped, and Elin slammed into her back.

  “You’ve heard stuff about him?” She snapped around so fast, her purse caught Elin in the stomach.

  “Geez, chill. Yes, I’ve heard things.”

  “And you’re just now spilling it?”

  “Trying to. I talked to Cord early this morning. Since he’s still at Base Branch for a few weeks, he has the goods.”

  “And?” Marina hadn’t heard from Oliver since he’d come to the hospital after the doctor had insisted on taking her from his bedside for an X-ray and then refused her visitation.

  “I’m getting to it.” Her sister drew a deep breath. “Okay, he’s fully recovered and cleared for work, but kind of like you, he’s just existing.”

  It was Marina’s turn to huff.

  “He doesn’t do anything except the job.”

  “Because I killed his friend.”

  “You did no such thing.”

  “He is dead because of me.”

  “He’s dead because he had a high-risk job that he loved, that fulfilled him. He knew it was dangerous.”

  “The same job you’ll have when Stronghold green lights you,” Marina breathed.

  “A job that will better the world for women like us. A job I will love. A job I’ll be trained to do as well as anyone. A job that makes a difference for others and me.”

  Marina needed to find her own way to give back that didn’t require shooting people or being shot. Maybe then, she wouldn’t obsess over Oliver, and she could move beyond her past.

  16

  Oliver sat on the bench in front of his garage-size locker in the Base Branch Armory. Half the contents of his go bag littered the ground while he repacked the thing for the third time in two days. Throughout the gun-and-ammo-laden room, his brothers in arms did the same, cleaning pristine weapons and counting, checking, and logging the gear they knew better than their own dicks. It was the usual pre-mission ceremony gone awry, the idiosyncratic madness that came from a holding pattern held for too damn long.

  “Hey man, I need to talk to you.” Boots infiltrated his view of grenades, first-aid kits, and MREs. Oliver didn’t have to look up to know who spoke.
/>   “I’m kinda busy.”

  “Tough shit.” Tyler Grace tossed down his duffle in front of his locker, two away from Oliver’s. Its impact reverberated like an explosion, sending shockwaves and mangled memories through Oliver’s body and brain because of the chasm between them. The locker that would never again be used, not by Hunter anyway.

  “I’ve read the schematics and memorized the terrain, weather patterns, escape routes, and plan of attack.”

  “Good for you. Get your ass over here, now.” Tyler turned heels and marched away.

  Oliver tossed his favorite assault rifle onto the duffle, something he would never normally do. He’d been doing a lot of shit he’d never normally do, like avoiding the fuck out of one of—no—his only remaining best friend. He lumbered through the stock of weapons and able-bodied men to the mouth of the empty gun range.

  “What is it?” Oliver groused.

  Tyler opened his arms wide and tackled him with a bear hug.

  It hurt worse than any attack he’d braved in his life. Visceral instinct ruled his reaction. He shoved at Tyler’s chest, a chest that until three months ago had been in recovery. Oliver shouldn’t push him. He shouldn’t do many things, like obsess over a girl so much that he got his best friend and partner killed.

  “Get off me, Tyler.”

  “Man, this isn’t just for you, you know. I lost him too.” Tyler’s emotion-thick voice rumbled in his ear, hurting all the more.

  “Because of me.” Oliver’s rebuttal came as a bellowed sob.

  “Fuck you. Hunter had a mind of his own. He made his own damn decisions. Always. No matter what any of us said about them.”

  “Fuck you.” The room caved in on Oliver, pressing in his lungs. He planted two hands between their bodies and shoved. The bulldogger had a way of clamping you down and not letting you go from years of wrestling cattle, damn him.

  Oliver’s emotions erupted in an ugly sob that wracked his body. A scream accompanied it, and then he couldn’t shore up either gushing dam. At some point, he quit pushing Tyler away and gripped his shoulders for dear life. He knew if he let go, he’d be torn down by the current of bitterness and rage and never again find the surface. He wept at his loss, at their loss.

  “I can’t fucking do it, Tyler. I don’t know what to do. I just can’t…”

  “You live, Oliver. You live for Hunter. It’s what he wanted.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck he wanted. You weren’t there.” Oliver released his friend. “He wanted to beat the shit out of me. The last thing I ever did to him was punch him.”

  Tyler held fast. “And how many times had he punched you before?”

  “This was different.”

  “The fuck it was. Hunter was Hunter, and you are still you.”

  Director Tucker whistled to get everyone’s attention as only he could. One long trill cut through the bullshit of twelve men shooting the breeze and continued through the silence until the man ran out of breath.

  Both men pushed off each other, scrubbed hands over their sopping faces, and hotfooted it into the room with a cache of weapons and mass of men ready for battle and ready for blood, Tor Royan’s blood. That DNA belonged solely to Oliver, and everyone knew it.

  “We have confirmation?” Tyler hollered from the back of the room, out of order and out of line, but clearly not giving any fucks.

  Tucker’s jaw flexed, and his dagger gaze flashed the get your shit together look but held his tongue. Everyone was on edge but had been since Oliver had gotten back…without one of their own.

  “Still no confirmation, but the tap on the Brödraskapet network is live and feeding new information by the minute. We have Oliver and Hunter to thank for that.”

  Everyone in the room turned to him and gave an approving nod. Like he deserved it. Hunter wasn’t there to take his credit. Oliver deserved nothing, but he’d say a big thank-you to the guy upstairs if a chasm would open up beneath his feet and swallow him whole.

  “We’re getting closer,” Tucker continued. “Cord Strong and his army of Branch trainees are shoveling through the miles of intel. As soon as anyone confirms anything, we roll. Until then, I don’t want to see any of your ugly mugs in this place.”

  Rumbles and curses erupted. Oliver’s skin stretched taut over his muscles and bones.

  “Sir?” He couldn’t keep the desperation or slicing boom out of his question.

  “You heard me. You guys have been stinking this place up for the last week.” Because he’d restricted missions to critical only. The call grounded most everyone to keep forces rested and ready for Tor, and boy were they. “I’m ordering everyone to the Stronghold Compound for a friendly barbecue. We could all use the camaraderie. All are to attend unless you’re on skeleton staff.”

  The rumbles built again.

  “Polluting the air in here isn’t going to make us move any faster or fight any harder. You need to remember what we’re fighting for because it isn’t vengeance.”

  The fuck it wasn’t.

  “Tor Royan and his men have had this coming a long time before.” He didn’t have to say before they killed one of our guys, but the words echoed in Oliver’s head.

  As anxious as everyone had been to get on a mission, the mention of food and beer caused the tension in the room to shift to friendly banter, and soon, the operatives filtered out, save for Tyler and Tucker. It was at times like these that Hunter’s absence hurt the worst. Hunter would never make another stupid joke about an Uh-Oh-Oreo or slap him on the back of the head for saying something stupid.

  “So I’ve got to go pick up some beer.” Tyler shoved his bag into the locker and closed it. “See you at the party?”

  “Yeah, man.” Oliver nodded and held his breath, waiting for him to leave.

  “You’re not coming, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “One day, it won’t hurt so much.”

  “On that day, I’ll be dead.”

  “Keep it up and you will be.”

  That was the idea.

  “It’s no way to honor his memory.” Tyler’s parting shot caught Oliver in the jaw, the scarred, tender jaw. “Later, man.” He nodded at Vail Tucker and slipped through the vault door.

  Tucker propped a hip on the bank of lockers that used to house his, Hunter’s, and Tyler’s gear. Son of a bitch, some of Hunter’s stuff still haunted the metal frame.

  “Did I hear correct…you’re defying an open order?”

  “It’s no order.” Oliver wiped his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Came out of my mouth, didn’t it? Sounded like an order to me.” Authority bled from the man’s tone and dense frame, defying the graying hair and the faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. One titanic shoulder bobbed. “I even said specifically, ‘This is an order,’ didn’t I?”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  “But you don’t get me.” Tucker’s head canted and a dark brow arched in a dare.

  “No, you don’t get it.” Oliver closed the distance between them, itching for a fight to dull his senses or renew his physical pain. Shouldn’t the two match? “You don’t get it at all. Hunter is dead because of me.”

  “Yep.”

  Tucker’s blunt and honest answer stopped Oliver cold. Mouth hanging open, he stared at the man.

  “Some fucked-up shit, being responsible for the death of someone you love.” Tucker ticked off the wall and balled two fists at his sides. Oliver needed those fists crashing into his sides, his face.

  “Try two.” He tossed the question like a grenade, only he had nowhere to hide and wouldn’t if he could.

  “I did.”

  Oliver’s need to be pummeled took a backseat as, once again, the fearless leader who’d led him into and out of some of the darkest places on earth shocked the hell out of him. For the first time since the incident, probably and certainly, since the man had walked into the room, Oliver looked at him.

  A deep rooted and buried sorrow rose to th
e surface. Oliver recognized the guilt, anger, and sadness because he’d lived with it nearly his entire life. How had the man hidden it so well?

  “It sucks, worse than anyone can imagine. My baby girl was protected inside her mother’s belly, and still, she felt the horrors of the world. I never got to hold her, to rock her to sleep, or even to see her pretty face. I watched my wife’s face as she realized she’d been shot in the stomach and that her baby would never be born. I watched the life drain from my wife’s body.”

  Oliver’s guts twisted into hideous balloon animals. He scraped both hands over the short hair on his head and dragged them over his patchy beard.

  “How’d you live through it?”

  “For a long time, I didn’t. The job was everything and nothing. I was a robot, living for one thing.”

  “Vengeance.”

  “Revenge drove me.” Tucker gave a weak smile. “It’s not as sweet as you’d expect.”

  He’d decide that for himself, thank you very much.

  “Do yourself a favor and figure out what it took me nearly thirty years to. Life isn’t worth living alone. Don’t push away the people who love you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You coming to the party?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What if I said you couldn’t go on a mission unless you went?”

  “I’d say kill me now.”

  Oliver had heard about the party. Cord had been talking about it for a few days, and he knew exactly who the party honored. And that, he just couldn’t do.

  Base Branch Headquarters had never been so quiet. Tucker had fallen out hours ago. Still, Oliver sat in front of Hunter’s locker staring at the placard across the top. Masters. The man had been a master of many, many things. He still couldn’t accept that he was gone.

  They’d been back to the scene twice, combing the site for his remains, but both trips had turned up zilch. No evidence of human remains or that Hunter had even been there. For two days, they’d searched the surrounding area and towns, talking to informants and even going door to door, looking for any hint that he might be alive.

  Instead, they found nothing. Just like there was nothing here. Just like his staring would accomplish nothing.