by Tawny Weber
“Maybe.” Why did he suddenly hope so? “The training never ends, because the threats always change. So I learn, I adapt, I grow.”
And didn’t he sound like a total geek? He tried to shrug it off with a self-conscious laugh. “Apparently I obsess, too.”
“But that’s what makes it work—don’t you think? Because you define yourself by your career, or obsess as you say, you continue to push yourself to be the best you can. That’s something Nathan and I talk about sometimes when we discuss his favorite superheroes. That it doesn’t matter where a person comes from. What matters is what they make of themselves.”
Diego wasn’t often stumped, but he didn’t know what to say to that. Not when so many emotions he couldn’t recognize were battering at him.
“It sounds like you’d fit right into one of those chats,” she said. Her smile flashed before she leaned forward to brush a kiss over his cheek. It wasn’t a sexual move, but Diego felt it deep inside.
Damn.
Now he recognized those emotions. Or at least a few of them. Admiration and gratification, a bashful sort of pride in himself. And something else. Something deeper that he wasn’t willing to acknowledge right now.
“You’re a lot like my mom,” he realized aloud. “You do what it takes to give your kid a good home. You do the right thing because you want him to do the same. What changed was that I figured I’d better live up to what she’d given me.”
Her smile flashed again, full of bright surprise, as she spooned fruit from the bowl onto her plate. Diego felt something warm—too warm—in his chest. Remember what you’re here for, he reminded himself. Time to shift gears.
“I suppose I feel a connection with Nathan,” he said, choosing what he hoped was the right gear. “For instance, we’ve got great moms in common.”
“And lousy fathers,” she murmured, stepping right where he’d hoped she would. “Of course, Brandon didn’t stick around long enough to leave an impression like your dad did.”
Telling himself the feeling in his gut was triumph and not self-disgust, Diego put on a curious expression.
“Brandon? That’s Nathan’s father?” he asked, forcing himself to resume eating as if everything were perfectly normal.
After a long moment studying his face as if she were trying to decide if she wanted to discuss a previous lover with the man she’d spent the night melting sheets with, Harper finally lifted her own fork and cut into her single waffle.
“I suppose that’s what he’d be called,” she said before taking her own bite. Her tone was offhand, but he could see the bitter pain in her eyes. “He wasn’t really around long enough to deserve the title.”
Always the same song and dance. How many times had he heard guys he served with lamenting one version or another of it? Diego shoved in another forkful of waffle to keep from sighing. He wasn’t a fan of Ramsey by any means, but the guy had been in the service when she’d hooked up with him. She had to know he’d be deployed, that he’d be gone a lot.
“Guess it was rough doing the parent thing on your own a lot of the time” was all he said.
“Try all of the time,” Harper replied, focused on her strawberries. Her discomfort with the topic was as obvious as her waffles were delicious. “He’s never been part of Nathan’s life.”
What the fuck? “You mean he wasn’t around as much as you wanted?”
Her expression closed, Harper grabbed her plate and carried it to the sink.
“He was never around. He’s never met Nathan, never seen him. Brandon never had visitation, never spent time with him.”
That wasn’t right. Ramsey had bragged about his son all the time. He had pictures of the kid, knew where he went to school, everything.
“So what’s the deal? You kept him out of your kid’s life?”
“Kept him?” Her laugh dripped scorn. “I begged him to be a part of it. But he didn’t need the responsibility, didn’t want the expense or the commitment and was damned if I’d ruin the trajectory of his perfect life by trying to foist a kid on him.”
Shit. “I’m sorry,” Diego muttered with a grimace. His gut said she was telling the truth. His stomach tightened with self-disgust at the pain his words clearly caused.
Harper gave him a long look as if trying to see into his soul and decide if he was worthy of forgiving. Then she sighed and gave a tiny shrug that sent her robe in a tempting slide over her chest. Diego’s mouth went dry when she sat, the robe draping open over one smooth thigh.
But her words distracted him enough to keep his lust at bay. Focus on breakfast, he told himself. He could have dessert later.
“Brandon was my first, and, despite thinking I knew everything there was to know, I was actually pretty naive. You know, knight in shining armor, naive.” Laughing a little at herself, she shook her head. “I got over that pretty fast when he decided he didn’t want anything to do with the baby, or me once I told him I was pregnant. He handed me a check to deal with the problem, as he called it.”
Asshole. That was the only clear word Diego could pull from his racing thoughts as he tried to reconcile what she was saying with the facts as he knew them.
“And when you didn’t ‘deal’ with it?” he asked carefully, not wanting to push her into a painful conversation—or worse, call her a liar—but needing to find the truth. “How’d he take that?”
“I don’t know. That was the last time I saw him.” Harper shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Her eyes were bleak. As he wondered if she knew her hand was shaking as she rubbed it back and forth over the smooth surface of the table, Diego’s mind raced, trying to connect all the pieces. With the things Ramsey had said.
“So yeah, to the original question, it was rough at times. But being a parent pushed me to do better, for myself and for Nathan. Because I had a baby, I worked harder to get away from where and how I’d grown up. Wanting to be a good mom means I work harder than I would if it were just me. I wouldn’t be where I am, what I am, if not for Nathan. He changed everything. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to me that he have the best life I can give him, a happy childhood, every advantage that he’d have had if—”
Suddenly, cheeks bright red, she snapped her teeth together as if trying to bite off the words. “Sorry.” Waving her palm in the air as if erasing her words, Harper shook her head. “I sound like an evangelist or one of those born-again vegans. And just a little over the top.”
“I’d say you’ve got every right,” Diego observed, making a show of looking around the high-end kitchen. “It’s obvious that your kid means a lot to you. It’s just as obvious that you’ve done right by him.”
He didn’t doubt her devotion to her son, but the rest? It went against all of the intel. Ramsey’s finances had shown child support payments. So either he was lying or Harper was.
And they already knew Ramsey was a liar.
He wanted to push. To find the truth. It wouldn’t take much, for all the doubts they had about Ramsey, Harper was a soft touch.
But he couldn’t bring himself to interrogate her further. Not when he could see that she was already damaged by Ramsey’s actions. All that’d do was open those wounds, soak them in salt.
As a SEAL Diego had long ago learned to juggle any discomfort he felt over some of the more heinous orders he’d sworn to follow.
But right now? This minute? He just couldn’t do it.
Instead, he reached out to pull her onto his lap.
“What’re you doing?” she asked with a laugh.
“Enjoying dessert.”
* * *
FOURTEEN HOURS LATER, Diego wondered if a man could become addicted to dessert. The way he was feeling right now, loose and satisfied, he was pretty sure he could keep nibbling at that treat and never have enough.
Time to get his ass to work, he
decided. The faster he did, the sooner he’d be out of here and back where he belonged. With that in mind, he settled into his makeshift office in the rental’s kitchen and opened up his security system.
Two hours later, he wished he’d stuck with loose and satisfied.
It beat the hell out of frustrated hopelessness.
The encrypted drive Savino had sent contained footage of the mission compiled from spliced-together video he or Lansky must have gotten from the small cameras equipped in each SEAL’s helmet.
Seated at the kitchen banquette, surveillance screens open on one monitor, Diego watched the footage for what seemed like the thousandth time on his laptop. Night vision technology gave gritty black-and-white images a green cast, and the footage was spliced together from six different cameras, giving it a shambling jerkiness.
Sort of like watching Frankenstein in combat gear.
Monsters aside, as far as he could see the mission had been solid. He’d watched the footage enough to note the seamless teamwork, the perfect choreography of Operation Hammerhead playing out on the screen.
He watched Prescott and Ramsey infiltrating the low-slung bunker that housed the computer lab. Loudon and Ward were covering them. Diego watched himself go head-to-head with the guard on duty. It was a good fight, a vicious blend of street fighting and martial arts. When a spinning hook kick to the head had put the man down, Diego left him out cold and zip-tied for the cleanup team to deal with.
Two fingers moved into view.
“Hostage in hand,” Ward said, his words a murmur through the comm built into their helmets. “Heading to rendezvous point now.”
“Electronics?”
“T minus thirty seconds” came Ramsey’s reply.
Extraction and electronics had been carefully timed to occur within a minute of each other. Hostage first. The concern wasn’t getting him out without sounding an alarm. That was a given. But a civilian couldn’t move as easily, as fast, as a SEAL. Since frying the electronics tended to trigger alarms, they carefully timed it so that the hostage was out, covered and moving for the rendezvous point when they blew the electronics.
T minus thirty seconds. A confirmation that Ramsey had installed the electronic virus and it was scheduled to take down the system in thirty seconds. Timed, perfectly, for him to meet the rest of the team at the rendezvous point when it blew, getting them all out at the same time.
Diego watched the team move as one toward the wall. Except Prescott, whose job it was to cover Ramsey. On the screen and in his mind’s eye, Diego saw the scene. Saw himself turning toward the wall, watching his men surround the hostage, covering his ascent with the protection of their bodies.
He saw himself look back toward Prescott. He and Ramsey should be making their move.
Saw the man take one step, as if about to run back into the building.
Then Diego watched as the screen exploded. The cameras shook as the team raced. Diego didn’t have to close his eyes to remember the heat, the bone-melting intensity of it, as the building gave itself over to the greedy inferno. He shuddered at the memory of Prescott on fire, flames licking their way up his body, engulfing his leg. Heard again the screams, the roaring hunger of the fire as three of them searched for a way into the building, tried to find a way to rescue Ramsey. But the building was gone. Simply blown to hell.
There’d been no way in.
As militant reinforcements started pouring into view like ants scurrying to a picnic it was clear that within moments, there wouldn’t have been a way out, either. With Prescott injured, and Ramsey lost, Diego had made the call to retreat.
It hadn’t been an easy choice.
It didn’t get any easier to see it on-screen for the hundredth time, either. Nor did it get him any closer to an answer.
Diego pressed his fingers to his eyes, but he couldn’t rub away the bone-deep exhaustion. He’d figure it out. He just needed a break. He slapped the monitor closed and pushed to his feet, ignoring the gritty burn in his eyes. A few hours of shut-eye, a workout session or two to clear his head, and he’d go through it all again.
Heroes didn’t lie.
Nathan’s words came back to haunt him as Diego slipped into bed.
Lies. Even in sleep, Diego frowned.
He jackknifed, sending the too-soft pillow flying out from under his head. Fury pounding almost as hard as his heart, Diego scrubbed his hands over his face.
T minus thirty seconds.
Sonovabitch.
Flopping back on the bed, he threw his arm over his eyes and breathed deep. Long, slow breaths in. Easy, relaxed breaths out. He emptied his mind, regulated his heart rate.
He counted backward from sixty. By the time he’d reached zero, he’d leveled out. Then, and only then, did he replay the thought that’d woken him.
T minus thirty seconds.
He grabbed his phone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SCOWLING, SAVINO STRODE through the smudged glass doors of the truck stop, ignoring the scent of burned coffee, fried grease and overripe bodies. Harder to ignore was the burning in his gut, but only because it was warring with the pain throbbing in his left temple. He was proud of the fact that he’d managed to hold the headache there, in just one spot.
It didn’t take long to scan the restaurant. The place boasted only a dozen tables and counter service for four. Most of the tables were empty. Three or four were filled with what looked to be truckers and travelers. And, Savino narrowed his eyes, a gangbanger in disguise.
Shaking his head, he made his way toward the back corner where Torres sat. He wore a black bandanna as a do-rag under a gray hoodie. The denim jacket and wraparound sunglasses added to the badass look. As disguises went, Savino figured it was okay. The dozen or so people in here seemed as if they were too intimidated to look at Torres long enough to actually see him.
But while he appreciated the precaution, that didn’t justify this meet.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation when he reached the table.
“Eating,” Diego said, slicing through the stack of fluffy pancakes, then scooping up a forkful. He shoveled the syrup-drenched bite into his mouth, then gestured with his fork. “You outta get some. Place doesn’t suck as bad as it looks.”
Middle-of-the-night calls to duty didn’t usually irritate Savino, but these weren’t usual circumstances. His team, his reputation and, yes, the man sitting there slurping up pancakes were all teetering on a razor-sharp edge, and everything he’d seen assured him that the fall was going to be ugly.
“Coffee?”
Giving in, Savino nodded to the pink-clad waitress, then slid into the chair opposite Torres. He sat silently while she filled his cup and handed him a laminated menu, waiting until she wandered back behind the counter before inclining his head.
“You called, said it was important. I assume you have something other than pancakes on your mind.”
“Didn’t figure you wanted a report over the phone.”
He hadn’t wanted to get up at one in the morning to drive all this way to get it, either. But he knew Torres wouldn’t have contacted him unless he thought it was a solid reason.
Before he could find out what it was, the waitress returned.
“Ya want food?” she asked, pulling a pen from behind her ear and giving Savino an impatient look.
“Whatever he’s having is fine.”
He waited until she’d clomped back to the kitchen before raising his brows in question.
“You found something on that footage?”
The CIA and NI had gone over it with a fine-tooth comb. A handpicked team of cryptologists watched it forward, backward and sideways. He and Lansky had done all of that and even tried watching it at half speed, double speed and frame by fr
ame.
“T minus thirty seconds.”
It wasn’t standard terminology, but it wasn’t unusual, either.
Savino waited as the waitress set a huge plate in front of him heaped high with pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage. Realizing he didn’t have an appetite, Savino pushed the food toward Torres.
“So?”
“Practice runs, training sessions, every other time, he used the words mark thirty to acknowledge the time.” Torres knocked back the rest of his coffee, then arched one brow. “Every. Other. Time.”
Savino narrowed his eyes.
“It’s code,” he realized in an icy tone meant to disguise the fury churning in his gut. From the startled look the waitress sent over her shoulder, the effort failed.
“It’s code,” Torres agreed, shoving one syrup-smeared plate aside as he pulled Savino’s toward him. “While it confirms that he’s dirty, it also lends credence to the idea that he’s alive and in the wind.”
“He knew what he was doing.”
“He knew exactly what he was doing,” Torres confirmed with a scowl as he started digging into Savino’s untouched food.
As Savino processed that new piece of information, worked through the steps and stages of who to inform and how to tap into the right resources, he had to shake his head.
“I can’t decide if I’m awed or disgusted. How the hell can you eat all of that?”
“Metabolism.” Torres gulped down coffee, then lifted the cup for a refill. “Sitting around suburbia is driving me insane.”
Which meant, Savino knew, that Torres was exercising like a madman. That’s how he handled stress.
“Lansky’s accessed Ramsey’s email accounts, his computer files, all of his electronics. So far we’ve found extensive records on Ms. Maclean, what appears to be surveillance on her and a private investigator’s report dating back eight years.”
That slowed Torres enough to put down his fork.
“Child support payments?”
