Off the Grid

by Monica McCarty

  John nodded. For once it seemed they were on the same page. Well, at least he and her boss were on the same page. But if it kept her from putting out more of those stories, that was fine by him.

  She opened the door, and he felt the strangest urge to stop her again. To not let her walk away. But he was in hiding, supposedly dead, and he had to keep it that way.

  She turned. He assumed it was to tell him good-bye. But he should have known better. She had to get in one last parting shot.

  “Brandon was your best friend. How can you let them do this? How can you let them sweep this under the rug and allow his death—his sacrifice—to go unacknowledged?”

  His muscles went rigid, his fists curling into tight balls at his sides. “I don’t have a choice. If Brand were here, he would be the first one to agree.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I have no way of knowing that, as he’s not here to disagree, is he?”

  John didn’t say anything. What could he say? It was the goddamned truth—no matter how much he wished it were different.

  “I used to wonder if there was anything you really cared about,” she said. “I guess I know the answer.”

  Ironically, Brandon had said something similar to him once. John had thought it might be true. But when the door closed behind her, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Seven

  Colt Wesson was drinking whiskey and shooting pool at McNally’s Last Chance Saloon. This place had been his favorite hangout between deployments, when he’d been on this coast to see his then wife, who was CIA. At the time he’d been stationed in Honolulu with Team Nine. Ironically, living in different time zones had been the least of their marital problems.

  He’d had bars like this in every city when he’d been on the Teams, although this one in DC held some particularly bad memories.

  Not much had changed around here. McNally’s had the same red vinyl booths, dark “mood” lighting, ancient jukebox playing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and other depressing country classics, peanut shells on the floor that only seemed to enhance the stale-beer-and-smoke smell—management apparently hadn’t gotten the message that you couldn’t smoke in bars anymore—and local barflies occupying the stools in front of the wooden bar from midmorning until last call.

  The hard-living-looking regulars had given Colt the usual “Who the fuck are you?” stare when he’d walked in, but something about his expression had them turning back to their drinks quick enough.

  Either that or they remembered him. He’d occupied one of those stools quite a few times in the dark days around the breakup of his marriage a few years ago. It had been the only place he could escape, though from what he didn’t know. Himself maybe? For that “last chance” the name promised?

  He supposed he’d gotten both. But not without a lot of whiskey and one-night stands.

  McNally’s was a good place for the latter as well, as the gritty dive-bar atmosphere attracted a certain kind of female clientele. Tough, no-nonsense women who had been around the block a few times and were happy with exactly what he had to offer: a good, hard fuck. Which is why when he wanted to get drunk and laid—preferably in that order—before shipping out tomorrow, he’d found himself at his old haunt. Screw the memories.

  He was already halfway toward his first goal when a decent prospect for the second sauntered her way toward him. Sadie was about thirty, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and had a smoking body that looked good in the skimpy clothes she wore to show it off. She had on a tight and very low-cut shirt that gave him a nice view of a pretty killer rack. Yep, he had to say that so far he liked what he saw.

  She clearly did, too, as she’d taken the first opportunity after he’d lost at pool—twenty bucks, but he’d been distracted—to console him by planting herself in his lap.

  They would have been off to a very promising start if she hadn’t ruined it.

  “So, what do you do, Colt?” she asked, taking a swig of her Miller Light.

  The questionable taste in beer didn’t bother him. It was the conversation. “Government hit man.”

  She laughed, assuming he was kidding. “What do you really do?”

  He liked the way she nestled her bottom against his growing erection enough to answer. “Sanitation.”

  Same difference—getting rid of the trash.

  She looked mildly disappointed, which struck him as odd, given their present location. Sanitation was a good, steady union job. There weren’t many working-class neighborhoods left in the DC area, but this neighborhood near the old rail yard was one of them. Although if the new housing development he’d noticed going up nearby was an indication, it wasn’t going to stay that way for long. Hipsters were the new yuppies of gentrification.

  “I thought you might be military,” she said.

  Off-the-books military, but he was surprised she’d guessed. “What made you think that? My clean-cut, all-American good looks?”

  She laughed as he’d intended. He was about as far from that description as you could get. Long-haired, scruffy, and dark—except for the light eyes—with some kind of ethnic mixed in there somewhere. Kate had always thought one of his grandparents or parents must have been Italian, but as Colt didn’t have any of them to ask, he could be Mexican or Middle Eastern for all he knew—or cared. His looks had never been a problem. It was everything else. The black cloud, the mean temper, the surly attitude, and the lack of a heart, to name a few, according to his ex.

  Why the hell was he thinking about Kate?

  He knew why. Because he’d seen her last week for the first time in three years, and he’d been on edge ever since.

  Which pissed him off. That ship had sailed—and sunk in spectacular fashion. She’d cheated on him with someone he considered a close friend. As he didn’t have many of those, it was a big deal. The fact that Colt had pushed her to it, or that they’d barely been married at the time, didn’t matter. Even if he were the forgiving kind—which he wasn’t—that kind of betrayal was unforgivable.

  Sadie was looking at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know. When I saw you, you reminded me of a Ranger I dated once.”

  Well, nothing killed the mood like being mistaken for an army boy.

  She shrugged. “With all the bases around here, we sometimes get military guys in here.”

  Colt had lost interest and would have eased her off his lap to resume playing pool if he hadn’t looked across the room and seen something that made his entire body—and everything inside it—still.

  Fuck me.

  He must have said it aloud, as the woman on his lap laughed and said something that sounded like “you sure don’t waste time,” but he wasn’t really paying attention. His focus was on the woman who’d just walked into the bar and was standing there staring at him, completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the bar was doing the same thing to her.

  But Kate had always been oblivious to the effect she had on those around her—especially men. It had been part of her charm. And part of what had drawn him to her, since God knew she was pretty much the opposite of the kind of woman he’d ever thought to marry. Not that he’d really ever thought he’d marry.

  She couldn’t have looked more out of place if she tried. The first time he’d seen her he’d had the same thought as he had right then: What the hell is she doing here?

  Before he’d moved to the “Special Assignments” department of Task Force Tier One—the secret unit within JSOC that was nicknamed CAD (as in control alt delete)—he’d been chief of SEAL Team Nine. They’d been downrange at a shithole forward operating base in Khost, Afghanistan. He and the guys were sitting around shooting the shit while waiting for a CIA briefing from some new hotshot analyst, and in walks this icy blonde in a fucking skirt and heels, looking sexy as hell and pretty much like a girlie tropical frozen drink to a bunch of guys who’d been dying of thirst in a desert. He was sure he wasn’t the only
one fighting off wood just looking at her.

  To defuse the tension, he’d made some comment to the guys that she’d overheard. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but it had been along the lines of what the fuck was CIA Barbie doing here? He’d never forget her reply—or the way those icy blue eyes had looked down at him. “Trying to help you do your job, Chief, as you sure as heck haven’t gotten it done so far.”

  Heck? With the rest of the team trying not to bust out into laughter, Colt had met that cool gaze with a raised eyebrow and a “Yes, ma’am.”

  But that was the moment he knew he had to have her. Game fucking on. And it was a game at first. A challenge. An opposite-side-of-the-tracks thing. Bringing the ice bitch down to his level for a while—preferably under him, although if she wanted to be on top, he wouldn’t put up much of an argument.

  If only it had stayed that way. But the ice bitch hadn’t been a bitch at all. She’d been sweet and kind of shy, and had a heart of gold. She’d seen through his shit with alarming speed.

  She also hadn’t been icy. She’d been hot. Sizzling hot. And he’d been the one to melt.

  For a while. She’d almost had him convinced about love and happily ever after. But eventually reality had caught up with them both. He had too many sins to erase, too many demons to tame, and too much baggage to carry.

  He’d warned her. But she thought she could change him. Instead, he’d changed her. The woman he married never would have cheated on him. But after four years as Mrs. Colt Wesson, Kate had found refuge in the bed of their mutual friend Lieutenant Commander Scott Taylor, although he’d been only a lieutenant back then. Colt had trained Taylor since he was a junior officer. He’d been like a younger brother to him.

  Ironically, it was Taylor’s death that had brought Kate back into his life. Taylor had been the officer in charge of Retiarius Platoon when it had gone missing in Russia. Colt had reached out to Kate to put him in touch with her godfather, General Thomas Murray, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who could get Colt access to the information he needed to find out what had gone wrong and who was responsible. To that end, Colt was going to Russia tomorrow to trace the path of the platoon.

  It was just the kind of solo operation he did for Uncle Sam as an operative for CAD, although this was actually unauthorized as opposed to “unauthorized if you get caught.” The end result was the same. If he found trouble, he was on his own and no one was going to claim him. But he wouldn’t be taken alive.

  For a minute he thought Kate might turn around and leave. He didn’t need to ask why. Sadie was making herself nice and comfortable, snuggling into his lap and looping her arms around his neck. He wasn’t encouraging her, but neither was he discouraging. He let her do what she wanted, which at the moment was kissing his neck, as his ex-wife swallowed her distaste and made her way toward him.

  Distaste—not hurt or pain. Those days were long gone. Kate was engaged to someone else now. Someone worthy of her, as her godfather had pointed out.

  The dull tap of her heels stopped a few feet away from him. Kate wore her usual uniform of a short suit skirt that looked as if it had been made for her—because undoubtedly it had—silk blouse, and matching suit jacket. This one was in a light khaki, but she probably had one in every color.

  Kate was a skirt-and-dress kind of girl. She rarely wore pants. Colt had offered her money to see her in jeans just once, but she’d just laughed and rolled her eyes. With legs like hers, skirts were a good choice, but male admiration wasn’t why she wore them. Kate didn’t do casual. She hadn’t been brought up that way. She was always dressed properly because that was what was expected. She was always on. Always polished to a glossy shine. Dirtying her up a little had been part of the appeal.

  Colt was hit by the familiar whiff of perfume. Even the faint floral scent smelled like rich girl. Everything about her screamed privilege, wealth, and genteel refinement. He’d originally thought the scent was roses. But he’d found out later it was peony. A flower he hadn’t even known existed before he met Kate.

  They were her favorite. Once, after a particularly ugly argument early in their marriage, he’d spent two hundred bucks to have them delivered to her in December. It was probably the only romantic thing he’d ever done in his life. She’d burst into tears with happiness, and he’d never done it again. Making her that happy had scared him; he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up. He had to keep the bar low.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  Colt guessed why, and it pissed him off. If she had tracked him down, it probably had something to do with Retiarius and, more specifically, Taylor. When she’d agreed to put him in touch with the general, it hadn’t been for Colt’s sake; it had been for the man who’d ended their marriage and fathered the baby that should have been Colt’s.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was like stepping back in time—and not in a good way.

  When Kate walked into the bar and saw her ex-husband sitting on a stool by the pool table with a woman draped all over him, she’d felt a stab of pain so deep it seemed to cut her in half. It might have been three years ago in Hawaii, when she’d flown in to surprise him and tell him the news that she hoped would bring him back to her and resuscitate the last dying breath of their marriage.

  Instead it had been like a knife in her heart and the beginning of the end. Or maybe, more accurately, the end of the end. Their marriage had been in trouble for a long time before she’d seen him with the woman draped all over him in the bar.

  Three years ago in Honolulu, Kate had turned on her heels and fled the bar in tears. Colt had come after her, but only to accuse her of spying on him. Checking up on him because she didn’t trust him. How could he blame her after what she’d seen? He’d claimed it was nothing, but Kate had been crushed. Her last hope destroyed.

  She’d told him that she was tired of being the only person fighting for their marriage. If he wanted her, he knew where to find her. She’d flown back to Virginia without telling him about the baby.

  She didn’t hear from him for two months. By the time she finally did, it hadn’t mattered.

  But there weren’t any tears this time. Kate had loved Colt Wesson with every inch of her heart. But he’d been right when he’d warned her that he wasn’t capable of that kind of love—giving or receiving. She’d thought she had enough for them both. But his self-fulfilling prophecy had come true, and eventually the love she’d had for him had turned to hate. When he’d walked away from her that last time, she’d honestly despised him.

  Maybe she still did.

  She thought Colt was out of her life for good, but Scott needed her to do this, and after all he’d done for her, she couldn’t refuse. Even if it meant having to face old demons.

  And Colt certainly qualified. But he was still a goodlooking devil with that belligerent bad-boy thing he’d perfected. Sexy as sin, drop-dead gorgeous, dark brown, almost black hair that was always too long and scruffy for regulation, with piercing green eyes, he looked like he belonged in an old Western movie. Tough, mean, and a little dangerous. Check that. A lot dangerous.

  None of it was a facade.

  She eyed him coolly and asked her question, not surprised when he refused.

  “It’s not a good time,” he said. “As you can see, I’m busy.”

  Kate knew he was just being provocative for the sake of being provocative—not because he thought he could get to her. It was just his nature to be a dick.

  She smiled tightly. “I’m sure that Miss . . . ?”

  She turned to the woman on his lap, who was taking everything in with a wide-eyed look on her face. The woman quickly filled in “Sadie.”

  Kate gave her a genuine smile of thanks before turning back to Colt. “Miss Sadie wouldn’t mind if you step away for a few minutes.” She gave the woman another smile. “I promise to send him right
back.”

  As soon as she could, as a matter of fact.

  “I don’t mind,” Sadie said, getting off his lap. “You his wife?”

  From the way she asked the question, Kate could tell she thought it unlikely.

  Kate gave a small laugh, as if agreeing that the concept was inconceivable. “No.”

  “Ex-wife,” Colt interjected.

  His tone gave nothing away, but Kate knew him too well. She could see from the slight tightness around his mouth that her laugh had bothered him.

  He’d always assumed that she thought the worst of him; why was he surprised now that she did?

  He’d clearly shocked Sadie with his announcement—and everyone else close enough to hear. She understood the reaction. They appeared utter opposites. Were this the ’50s, they could have been Sandy and Danny from Grease. At one time she thought it didn’t matter. But four years of marriage had taught her differently.

  “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?” she asked, aware of the people listening to their conversation.

  He unfolded himself from the stool with some effort and obvious reluctance. Her request appeared to be a serious hardship. But he led her past the bathrooms to a back door that led into an alley where the Dumpsters were located.

  The smell hit her immediately. Nothing like rotting garbage on a warm summer DC night. She didn’t react, but he’d always been good at reading her mind—about the unimportant things at least.

  “Sorry for the smell, but I figured this was better than the bathroom. There’s a private office, but I don’t know the bartender well enough anymore to ask.”

  But he had at one time. And she could guess why he would have wanted to use the private office—it wouldn’t have been for talking. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of wondering whether he’d used that office while they were married. At this point, what did it matter?

  “Careful not to brush up against anything,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you to mess up that fancy suit of yours.”