by Megan Crane
“Sorry,” Everly muttered. Though she wasn’t. He was lucky she wasn’t sobbing herself into a puddle at his feet.
“Third, I already told you I was going to help you, and when I make promises, I keep them.”
That felt like a vow and, more, as if he were still holding on to her. When he wasn’t. Everly felt something too much like giddy and told herself that it was the brightness all around her when it should have been dark. The road still inside her, messing her up after all those hundreds and thousands of miles.
That it had nothing to do with her pulse. Her heart. Her disbelief that she’d finally found him and that he was this. His own personal army. The only person in the world—she was sure of it—who could help her.
“I’m taking you into town because you can’t stay here,” he was saying. “This isn’t a public place.”
That was a perfect opportunity to wrench her gaze away from the tractor beam of his. To take a few breaths and try to compose herself. She blinked at the cabin behind them and the lodge farther down, which was really just a sprawling series of interconnected cabins a lot like this one, rambling along the rocky shore. She could see smoke coming from deeper in the forest, higher up the side of the mountain, suggesting there were even more cabins tucked away, out of sight.
As secret bat caves for mysterious superheroes went, she had to admit that Fool’s Cove was pretty spectacular. Remote, inaccessible, and stunning all at once.
“Exactly what kind of place is this?”
His mouth curved, and it made her warm. “You don’t ask questions. I do.” Blue jerked his chin toward the cabin, but he was still giving her that half smile, and Everly had the dazed thought that she would follow him anywhere if he asked. Or even if he didn’t. “Get your shoes, Cinderella. It’s time to go.”
Five
She had cried.
Blue could defend himself against all comers, and had. Often. A knife. A gun. A guerrilla attack. This or that army in any given hellhole, whatever. He’d been there, done that. He had a collection of medals no sane man wanted to earn and a whole lot more scars for his trouble, and he was pretty much fine with that.
He was a hard man to rattle.
But let a few tears roll down Everly Campbell’s pretty face in the middle of a dark blue Alaskan summer night and he was at a loss, apparently. Blue did not appreciate uncertainty. That was not how he operated. That was not who he was. Uncertainty veered a little too close to helplessness, and he didn’t tolerate that crap. In the world he’d tried his best to save upon occasion, sure, but not in himself. Not ever.
And yet she’d cried, and worse, it had been obvious it wasn’t any kind of game. It was real. Real emotion. Real panic. Real desperation, written all over her, right there in front of him.
He hadn’t known what to do, and he’d really hated that. It made him edgy. Restless.
It left him feeling grumpy and out of sorts, which annoyed him even further, since he’d built an entire military career on his composure. His ability to remain calm and unflappable no matter what.
Blue wasn’t a big fan of the notion that a ghost from his past could careen over a mountain pass and lodge herself beneath his skin. And yet there was no denying Everly had done exactly that.
To say it bothered the hell out of him was an understatement.
He sprawled at his usual table in the corner of the Water’s Edge Café, in the ragtag handful of brightly painted storefronts that constituted downtown Grizzly Harbor, trying to keep his mood off his face, because he didn’t want to explain it to the other men at the table.
He trusted his brothers-in-arms with his life, but he also knew them. They would torture him endlessly over any and all perceived weaknesses—a favor he would have happily returned tenfold if the shoe had been on the other foot.
It had already been a long morning. He’d taken Everly into town on one of the skiffs they kept tied up at the docks in Fool’s Cove. Isaac had long ago made arrangements with one of the largely seasonal so-called inns here in town for situations just like this one, so it hadn’t been any trouble to settle his once-upon-a-time neighbor into one of the rooms, even at such a weird hour. He’d gone back home and grabbed a few hours of sleep himself, then had dragged himself to the 0700 daily community workout in the cabin down on the beach, which Isaac had converted into a stark, unwelcoming, dark box of pain that functioned as Alaska Force’s gym.
Pain is growth, Isaac liked to bark out while they were all lifting impossibly heavy things, running like madmen up and down the steepest inclines out back, or doing entirely too many soul-killing burpees at the cold water’s edge to allow any complaining. Or much breathing.
Because the truth about Isaac Gentry, Blue had learned over the past six months as much in the gym as in the field, was that the man was, at heart, a sadistic bastard. That was the only possible way an actual human— instead of, say, a cyborg—could stay in such fantastic shape outside active duty.
The daily workout wasn’t mandatory. It wasn’t boot camp, and there were no drill sergeants roaming around Fool’s Cove, for which Blue was eternally grateful. But miss the 0700 sweat and a man could expect the entirety of Alaska Force up in his face.
Hard. Freaking. Pass.
After a typically brutal hour of suffering and struggle, which Isaac cheerfully claimed would make them all better men, because he was one hundred percent the demon from hell Griffin liked to call him in three or four glacially precise languages every morning, Blue and Templeton had transported Everly’s rental car back into town. By boat, not that hair-raising suicide-by-mountain road he couldn’t believe she’d managed to drive over.
Templeton had loped off to get an extra trail run in, because he hadn’t had enough abuse for the day, apparently. Blue had gone to get food. Now he just needed to drink enough of the rocket fuel masquerading as coffee in the Water’s Edge Café to feel like himself again, or so he kept telling himself. He was well into his third cup, and so far, no luck. There was far too much Everly and her tearstained face messing around with his head, not to mention the feel of her arms beneath his hands when she’d catapulted herself at him.
Blue still didn’t like the fact he’d wanted to let her crash into him. That he almost hadn’t caught her, just so he could see how a ghost felt in his arms.
But this was definitely not the time to be thinking about things like that, because two of his Alaska Force brothers sat across from him in the deceptively cheerful restaurant, both as well trained in reading a man’s secrets, no matter how hard he tried to keep them hidden, as Blue was himself. If not better.
“You get any more clarity on why your girl passed out like that?” Isaac asked, cupping his palms around the thick, sturdy coffee mug in front of him. It was huge and his fourth, but even the high-octane caffeine served here couldn’t make the leader of Alaska Force jittery. As far as anyone knew, nothing could.
“Tired,” Blue said with a shrug. “It’s a long drive from Chicago.”
“Not to mention over Hard-Ass Pass,” Isaac agreed, though the look on his face was too studiously blank to be believable. As was his attempt at chitchat.
Still, Blue didn’t really want to think about Everly up on that narrow, winding, eroded mountain pass. There was still snow and ice up there, even though it was the height of summer. This was Alaska. The mountains were as crotchety and randomly lethal as the bears. Not to mention all the locals.
And the fact that it bothered him that she’d put herself at risk like that made him even more irritated with himself.
Directly across the table from him, Jonas Crow—special ops designation still too highly classified to mention, though the way he hummed with barely leashed power offered a few clues if a man knew where to look—watched Blue balefully.
That was his usual expression. Today it looked more intense than normal.
“She’s trouble,�
�� Jonas said, through the beard that made him look particularly ferocious, long and black and as grim as the expression he always wore.
“Because she’s a woman or because she’s the first person who’s ever dared show up at our front door without going through the proper Internet channels to get herself an invitation?” Isaac asked. His mouth twitched behind the beard that, unlike Jonas’s, made him seem more approachable and less fierce. Without the beard, he looked too much like what he was. A sharpened blade, ready to strike. With the beard, the unobservant might mistake him for a good ol’ boy. “I agree, of course.”
Blue glared at Jonas, who blended in maybe too easily with all the rest of the local Alaskan survivalists around here who lived out in the bush and made it into town only when it was necessary and the weather permitted. He was dressed all in camo, his black hair straight and long, and wearing the scowl he preferred during tourist season—on the off chance anyone visiting from the vast and distant south might look at his usual thunderclap expression and imagine he was cuddly. “You think everyone is trouble.”
“That’s because everyone is trouble.” That Jonas could talk through a scowl so ferocious remained an enduring mystery, but he was good at defying expectations. “If I liked people, I’d live where they swarmed over everything like ants. Which is everywhere else, as far as I can tell.”
“You think Kodiak, population maybe six thousand at a stretch, is clogged and crowded.”
Jonas made a low sound that Blue thought was his version of a laugh. “I’m sure it would be a great place to live. If they lost about six thousand people.”
Blue switched his glare to Isaac. “And you know better than to encourage his antisocial crap.”
Isaac’s laugh didn’t require interpretation. “The difference between Jonas and me is that I like trouble.”
Blue rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the particularly potent mix of tired and amped that he knew from long experience meant that he was bordering on too agitated for his own good. Or anyone else’s.
Because he was tired, he told himself. Just tired, and the workout this morning had kicked his butt. It had nothing to do with a woman he barely remembered and the tears she’d wiped away right there in front of him, making him feel like the worst kind of jackass for letting her think he was going to let her wrestle with her situation alone.
Not that he owed her anything. His old life was gone. Until she’d shown up yesterday, he’d have said those days were forgotten, too.
The kid he’d been back then had died a long time ago.
But today that felt hollow.
“Did she tell you her deal?” Jonas asked. He was a ruthless man with a soldier’s cool, harsh gaze, and his years out of the service hadn’t tempered that at all. Blue doubted he was interested in tempering. The story he’d heard was that Isaac had tracked Jonas down out in the vast, impenetrable Alaskan interior and had found the other man living by his wits alone in a hut that had redefined rustic. And isolated. “Or did she sleep through that, too?”
The fact that Blue wanted to punch Jonas and/or demand he alter his tone when he talked about Everly was . . . not good. He did neither.
Instead, Blue relayed Everly’s account of what had happened to her that night, point by point. Both Isaac and Jonas listened in intent silence as he talked, letting him get out all the details before they asked any questions.
“Do you believe her?” Jonas asked when he was done.
Blue nodded. “I do.”
“You say you don’t really know this girl. She could be the psycho the police think she is.”
“I knew her when she was a kid.” Blue shrugged. “But she doesn’t feel crazy to me.”
Jonas studied him as if he’d given something away. “Your call, brother,” he muttered.
“What’s your take on her story?” Isaac asked, cool and easy, like he knew Blue was entirely too tense. Blue ordered himself to relax.
“If it was one asswipe, I’d think it was an accident,” Blue said after a moment and another attempt to clear his head with a swig of dark, rich coffee. “The roommate’s boyfriend Everly didn’t know about and a fight that got out of hand or something. Four separate asswipes sounds too organized to be a domestic squabble or even a visit from the local bookie gone wrong.”
Isaac looked intrigued. “I’m not opposed to getting my Eliot Ness on with some gangsters, if that’s the kind of ‘organized’ you mean.”
“Because that usually ends well,” Jonas said, rolling his eyes. “Most organized-crime idiots are known for making reasonable, rational decisions, like backing down when challenged.”
“They don’t have to be reasonable,” Blue retorted. “They just have to leave Everly alone.”
It wasn’t until the words were out that he realized there was too much heat in them. Jonas sighed but said nothing. A minute later he pushed back from the table, muttered something about hitting the head, and stalked off toward the back of the café. Other people might throw out a good-bye, but not Jonas, who preferred to simply disappear at will.
Another moment or two chugged by. There was the familiar sound of a screen door opening and closing in the back of the restaurant—which meant Jonas was using his departure as a message, since he made noise only when he felt like it.
Blue met his leader’s eyes blandly. “Don’t say it.”
“What am I going to say?” Isaac asked, sounding wounded and innocent, neither of which Blue thought he’d ever been in his life. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you play hero before. It’s cute.”
Blue made an anatomically impossible suggestion, politely enough, and Isaac laughed again. Louder. Longer.
“If you’re going to keep disturbing the other customers like this, I’m going to need you to leave.”
Blue looked away from Isaac to the woman who stood at their table then, making no attempt to conceal her usual impatient dislike of pretty much everything on earth—but especially of one Isaac Gentry.
Caradine Scott was the owner, only waitress, and head cook at the Water’s Edge Café. Her cooking was unpretentious, sized for the appetites of big, tough men who worked with their hands out there in the unforgiving Alaskan climate, and so good that on busy summer afternoons when the ferry came in, there could be a line of tourists out the door and halfway down the street—assuming she didn’t get annoyed and close the place down because she didn’t feel like cooking that day.
The cheerful decor of the café—bright colors and cute drawings on the walls by local kids, mismatched mugs and plates to create a charmingly eccentric feel—was a lie. Or not necessarily a lie—if Blue was feeling more charitable—but certainly aspirational. Caradine was not in any way cheerful. She was the most prickly female Blue had ever met in his life, which was saying something in a state that celebrated a kind of independent stubbornness that made most Alaskans too much for folks from other, softer, more contained places—the places people here referred to as “outside.”
Caradine cooked only what she wanted, when she wanted to cook it. She didn’t have a menu, which meant you ate what you were served or she kicked you out. Today she was wearing her usual uniform of battered old jeans, a stained apron wrapped around her narrow hips, and a loose T-shirt that failed entirely to disguise the shape of her body or the fact that she kept herself in excellent shape. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, her fingernails bore chipped black polish, and she had a smudge of flour on one high cheekbone, though no one would dare point that out to her and potentially lose a finger and/or get banned.
“You have one other customer,” Blue pointed out. Maybe with a touch of that edginess he was pretending he didn’t feel eating at him. “And Ernie’s deaf.”
Ernie Tatlelik was deaf, half-blind, and of indeterminate age. Weathered enough to be eighty but spry enough to be in his fifties. None of which kept him from being the bes
t fisherman in Grizzly Harbor—or the luckiest, depending on who was telling the story and how jealous they were of his latest catch.
More immediately relevant was the fact that he was sitting in the corner of the restaurant with his gaze trained out the window in front of him while he ate, like he expected the pier to get up and amble off into the wilderness. Blue doubted the old man had the slightest idea anyone else was in the café at all.
“Okay. If you keep disturbing me,” Caradine amended, smirking the way she liked to do, “I’ll ban you.”
“You’re not going to ban us,” Isaac said then, sounding amused though he didn’t quite look it. There was something too sharp in his gaze. “You like money too much and we’re your best customers.”
And then it was Blue’s opportunity to read some faces, because everything shifted when Caradine looked at Isaac. The way it always did. Something dark and electric seethed in the air between them, but Isaac only smiled. As if he liked that kind of trouble, too.
Or wanted Caradine to think he did, anyway.
“It’s a good thing you have such a high opinion of yourself, Gentry,” Caradine said, her voice sweet. Which, given that she was about as sweet as a mouthful of the bitter coffee she brewed, was nothing short of alarming. “Someone should.”
Blue could have given his friend and leader some crap about the way he watched Caradine walk away, but he didn’t. Because he was just that much of a better person than Isaac was, he told himself piously.
Or, if he was more honest, because he didn’t want to hear what Isaac might say in return if Blue jumped in and mentioned the thing no one ever mentioned. That being the mutual dislike that Blue thought Isaac and Caradine needed to work out in a locked room. As long as that locked room contained a very sturdy bed.
“I’m assuming you want to take point on this,” Isaac said, as if there had been no interruption. “Since our uninvited guest is all yours.”
Blue didn’t take the bait and issue denials that would make the leader of Alaska Force howl with laughter. “I don’t think we need a full tactical team. Not yet, anyway. No need to pull resources away from other projects. I’ll do a little recon first.”
