“Jay seems a little foolhardy.” She didn’t know the man well, but Jay’s attitude was enough to put her off and Adam had already expressed a possibility of personal bias against him.
She wouldn’t choose a man like that for a team she would be leading. She didn’t prefer to lead anything larger than a fire team in any case, preferring to contribute the way she had fit into Gabe’s fire team in Centurion Corporation before they’d all become Safeguard.
But just because Jay was a bit of a dick didn’t mean he was a danger to their client. “You know him better.”
Adam’s lips pressed into a straight line. “Yeah. My history with him was under strain. I wouldn’t say I know him well though. His people skills haven’t gotten better, but I mentioned that to you earlier. I definitely haven’t kept in touch with him in recent years. He doesn’t seem to have changed much over the time.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Is that good or bad?”
“It’s not quite right,” he admitted. “All of us grow and change over the course of years, or so I’d like to think. Maybe it’s wishful thinking for me personally. But Jay has the same attitude, same expressions, same rough edges as I remember from years ago. He’s a man full grown, and he doesn’t seem to have matured at all from the young people we were when we were active-duty. I could relate to him back then. Now, I don’t trust him. It’s awkward for me to say, but there it is.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I’ll admit I find it entertaining to hear you say another man hasn’t matured.”
He shrugged. “I like to have fun as much as the next person. A little fun can be immature, sure. Jay, though, it’s the way he seems to expect things to fall into place for him. Everything. From the small things in day-to-day life, like lunch, and the bigger things—”
“Like better pay, a better job, better opportunities.” Victoria tapped her fingers on the shaft of her paddle. “He has a hungry look about him, like he’s aiming for those things.”
And the man got angry when he saw someone else with what he thought he himself should have. Jay looked at Adam that way. It had nothing to do with Victoria and everything to do with the way Adam walked in and out of a meeting. Adam was Safeguard. He had a position with the satellite company of one of the best organizations in the private sector.
As compared, Jay was no one and he wasn’t going anywhere nearly as fast.
“But that’s not all it is, is it?” She studied Adam. Confidence, a good helping of arrogance, both covering old scars somewhere deep inside him. She hadn’t asked before because there’d been no reason to. People like Adam and her always had history. They’d both admitted it. “What happened where you and Jay came out of the same thing and ended up in different places?”
* * *
It had to have come up eventually. Adam had recognized the inevitable as soon as he’d seen Jay the first day they’d arrived. He’d delayed though because he wasn’t particularly certain where he and Jay stood at this point either. In his mind, Jay was an old acquaintance. Jay’s behavior since had been yet another thing about this entire situation that’d been not quite on target. Adam had hoped to pin down whatever the hell was going on with Jay, but the man hadn’t been around to talk to one-on-one.
“Jay and I served together as Marines.” Basic information was always a good place to start.
As far as he knew, Victoria hadn’t served in the US military, so he’d start simple and get to the complicated part quickly.
Victoria nodded. “Your history as a Marine rifleman is mostly in your personnel file. It’s not detailed.”
It wouldn’t be, at least not the end of his career. The beginning of his service record had been a solid start, something to remember with pride.
“We were in the same unit toward the end. Closer then, all of us were.” He and his fellow riflemen had to be, in order to survive. They’d become a close-knit team. “On our last mission, there were some bad decisions made.”
He swallowed bile. To this day, he wouldn’t throw anyone under the bus.
“Do those decisions need to be discussed for this mission?” Victoria’s tone was gentle, with an edge.
“No.” His own answer sounded rough in his ears. “What matters is what came after. We lost lives but most of us got out of there. There was an investigation. I was cleared, so was Jay. So were the rest of my team. But we were all given honorable discharges. Our military careers were over. What you need to know here and now is that not all of us took the discharges well.”
He’d had a future ahead of him and suddenly it was gone. Ended. It could’ve been much worse and he’d tried to be thankful, but at the time he’d been so bitter. He’d wallowed in it.
“Ah.” There was understanding in the one word. Victoria tucked stray strands of golden hair behind her ear. “Our Jay wasn’t happy with his lot. He should’ve had better?”
Adam nodded. “I was slotted to be a Raider, but I never went to MARSOC. I was discharged. Jay was aiming for one of those slots too.”
It would’ve meant assignment to special operations. Victoria didn’t show any puzzlement over the acronym and Adam was glad he didn’t have to explain to her. He’d gathered from the level of her experience and the respect she had from her colleagues that she had a strong history too. Not every professional had to have a military career to build the skills needed for this one.
“But he was never even selected, was he?” She’d made a shrewd observation.
Adam hadn’t wanted to think about it back then because it hadn’t mattered. None of them would go through the assessment and selection. “Neither was I.”
Her gaze turned to him and grabbed him, her quiet calm holding him steady out there on the bay. “There is a difference. You may want to forget it but he hasn’t. You’ve made your peace with what happened. I’m guessing part of his grating attitude is because he’s carrying a load of resentment. That is important. It makes him less likely to be loyal and more open to opportunities, regardless of the ethics involved. Since then, you went your own way, and he knows nothing of who you’ve remade yourself into, does he?”
“Probably not.” He couldn’t be sure. Of course, someone particularly interested could’ve followed his next steps. He hadn’t particularly tried to drop off the map. “I came home to my family here in the States. But I struggled to adjust. Everywhere I looked was the pride in who I wasn’t allowed to be anymore. They tried to be supportive, but they didn’t know how to handle what had happened, and I couldn’t completely explain it for them.”
Some of it, he’d never discuss in full with anyone. What he was allowed to say, he didn’t want to go into. It was like trying to paint a picture for someone, but having to do it without using primary colors.
“They all knew I’d wanted to go career. They’d known I was slotted to be a Raider. Then suddenly, I had an honorable discharge and a complete change of plans. Or to be honest, I had no plans.” Even now, he couldn’t look Victoria or anyone else in the eye. He’d committed to this back then, but he’d lost faith in why he’d sacrificed his future for the good of the team.
“What did you decide to do?” Her question wasn’t particularly relevant to their current problem. Or maybe it was.
A part of him, way in the back of his mind, came to attention at the curiosity in her tone. She was asking about him, the real him, past the surface of what he could do as part of this mission. If he was going to let her keep him at a distance, as a partner, then he’d give her the bare minimum of details. If he wanted more...
“My father’s family is from New Zealand. I still have strong ties to his tribe, and since I needed a complete change, I went to spend time with his whānau.” It’d saved him. He looked out over the waters of the bay, drawing peace from the waves and the smell of seawater.
“Whānau?”
He grinned. “Wh
ānau means extended family. Maori people have a wider concept of family than Western European or US folks. Aunties, cousins, and uncles can be as important as brothers and sisters. The ties are strong, and they welcomed me without putting pressure on me to be someone I wasn’t anymore.”
Victoria’s lips curved in a gentle smile. “It sounds amazing.”
He huffed out a laugh. “It was. It took a while to appreciate them all though. I arrived and acted like a tourist for weeks. Maybe I was still in denial. Or maybe nothing is a quick fix. But I finally got my head out of my ass. The way of life, the culture, it helped me decide how to redefine myself.”
Tension through his shoulders and chest eased as he talked. She was good at waiting, not needing to fill the silence between them or push with a question before he was ready to talk further.
“I learned new skills.” He patted the paddles in his lap. “The Maori people have a powerful tradition of whaka, huge ocean-going canoes. Going out in those cleared my head, gave me something to focus on learning, and gave me an appreciation for the peace you can find out on the waves.”
He lifted a chin toward the mouth of the bay where it opened to the Puget Sound. It would be good to explore the area. Maybe he could coax her out on the Sound after this mission was complete. There were otters and sea lions to be found here, maybe orca if they were in the right place at the right time of year.
“You mentioned I’d made my peace.” He met her gaze, calm and open. “I did. I remade myself.”
“Your tattoo?” Her gaze fell to his chest, and not for the first time, his skin ached with the memory of her fingertips brushing over his ta moko.
“Part of deciding who I am going to be moving forward. I had it done once I decided to become someone new. Then I stayed long enough to regain my balance. Applying for new positions was part of it.” He’d researched the private organizations and corporations carefully before applying. “Centurion Corporation had several positions, but it was Safeguard’s objectives I felt most drawn to. So here I am.”
Her lips curved in an enigmatic smile. “You know why you’re a part of Safeguard and I do not.”
Her admission hit him in the chest. “Seriously?”
“I went with the flow when my fire team spun off from Centurion Corporation to Safeguard as a satellite organization. My husband filed for divorce just before the change in my career, and I’ve been working my way through that mess.” She met his gaze, her cheeks pink with the cool sea air. “I’ve been in transition this entire time. Then my partner was injured a few months ago and here we are. I was going to work with you through your probation period and decide what to do next. I have options.”
“Don’t we all?” He took in the woman next to him. The two of them were a pair, in kayaks, floating on a bay with the option to go in any direction. The poetic aspect of it all wasn’t lost on him. “When I was a rifleman, I wouldn’t have appreciated all of this.”
He swept one arm out to indicate the bay around them, the sky above them.
“But I like where I am right now, here. I very much enjoy your company.” He leaned toward her slightly, enough to be within her personal space without overturning his kayak. “I haven’t forgotten how much I enjoy being inside you.”
Her gaze didn’t waver from his and the color in her cheeks intensified, but the heat in her eyes burned. “Let’s get through this mission and consider our options then.”
“I’d like that.” He wasn’t sure he was going to wait quite that long though. “I’ll be honest. Patience isn’t my virtue. It never has been.”
He thought about her too much for patience. He remembered the softness of her breasts in his palms and the taste of her skin under his tongue. He wanted the strength of her grip on his arms as she held on to him.
“I thought you were remaking yourself.” Her eyebrow raised in a graceful challenge.
“I choose how I’m shaping myself moving forward.” He gave her his most charming leer and waggled his own eyebrows, making her laugh. He liked her laugh. “Some mischief is good for the both of us, so you’ll have to forgive me for being ill-behaved once in a while.”
“I might forgive you. Maybe.” Her smile didn’t fade and it made him stupid happy to see. “On a case-by-case basis.”
“All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll have to make it good for you every time then.”
Chapter Twelve
“I am both surprised and not surprised that we were able to get this many components at the electronics stores in this small town.” Victoria hefted her backpack.
They’d split their acquisitions evenly. Small electronics packed fairly efficiently, and they both had dry bags in their kayaks to wrap around their packs for added waterproofing for the trip back across the bay. All in all, they’d only been gone a couple of hours thus far.
She’d had...fun, actually. Adam was impressively creative when it came to assembling components for the less conventional aspects of their security enhancements. His delight in gathering electric tape and duct tape to hold together his other finds reminded her of a combination of MacGyver and The A-Team. He was younger than her, but he’d recognized the TV-show references. At least their age difference wasn’t so great that reruns couldn’t bridge the gap.
“People living on the island have to do for themselves in bad weather.” He walked at her side companionably, exchanging nods with the occasional local as they made their way back to the marina where they’d left their kayaks. “It’s not surprising that small electronics and hardware would be well stocked.”
“Maybe, but who’d have thought we’d find high-end surveillance equipment?” She had done a double take when they’d spotted those items. The price markup had been irritating, but the convenience of having them in hand immediately versus waiting on an order to be delivered had outweighed the cost difference.
“There’s a fair number of affluent people living here.” He shrugged. “Eclectic people with the funds to indulge in any number of hobbies, including spying over their neighbor’s wall. It’s not too hard to imagine.”
“Point taken.” She chuckled. “Safeguard could probably fulfill any number of small contracts optimizing security for private homes around here.”
Roland’s property had the advantage of large easements to give him added privacy. His land bordered a park on one side. The other property didn’t currently have an owner in residence. The situation afforded Roland with much more peace and quiet than many of the other homes on the island. The thought of all the neighbors peering at each other through the trees between their yards was both entertaining and just a little bit creepy.
“Before we head back, let’s have us a feed.” Adam pointed at a tiny cabin set at the edge of the water.
“There were any number of cafes and restaurants up on Winslow Way and Madison Ave.” She wasn’t sure why she was protesting except the little building looked more like a refurbished shack than an establishment for fine food. Besides, there’d been local wine to taste at some of the other restaurants.
“Aw now, don’t you ever look for the veritable hole-in-the-wall?” He turned toward her with a mock frown. “Any person who appreciates good food—not fancy, but good food—has to acknowledge that the hole-in-the-wall is the best place to go. Look at all the locals sitting out on the patio. It’s got to be worth it.”
She paused. He was right. In her travels, enjoyment of food was not the priority. Her mission and survival were. But a person couldn’t enjoy life without tasting a bit of the city or town or village if there was even a small chance to stop and enjoy a simple bite to eat. Somewhere in the mess of her divorce and the aftermath of losing her former partner too, she’d forgotten.
“All right, then. We’ll have missed lunch anyway.”
Minutes later, the two of them were seated at a picnic table outside the shack
. A huge helping of fresh clams still in the shell, steamed in a light and savory broth of onions and fennel, butter and white wine, had been piled into a fresh-baked bread bowl. Victoria eschewed her spoon for the moment and nipped up a clam by the shell to taste her plump prize.
“Oh.” She sighed happily.
Adam had torn a chunk off the edge of his bread bowl to dip into his broth. “Mmm.”
The flavors danced over her tongue, the subtle flavor of the clam going well with the rich, buttery wine broth. The clam had been steamed just so, not too far, as many restaurants tended to do. The result was tender shellfish, not rubbery or chewy in any way. Her bread bowl had a thick, crispy crust and a soft, chewy center that readily soaked up the broth. The restaurant had even provided a tiny container of crushed red pepper flakes, dried by the owner, to add heat to the dish if she desired. Once she’d gotten halfway through her clams, leaving the discarded shells in an empty bowl provided for the purpose, she did sprinkle the pepper over the rest for a wonderful change of taste.
“You like spice?” Adam asked as he did the same, albeit over a smaller portion of his clams.
“I like variety.” She took her first clam with red peppers and sucked slowly at the shell to enjoy the added facet of spice to the flavors. “Spice is fun in the right amounts.”
He chuckled. “Agreed. Though I’ve learned to dial back my spice intake for practical reasons.”
She paused. “Oh?”
“Well...” His lips spread in a wicked grin and his gaze blazed. “I’ve found some pepper lingers on the palette, so to speak. While the aftertaste can be enjoyable, the heat can transfer to delicate parts of a partner. If I have hopes to apply my tongue to other tasting adventures, I try not to take on too much burning spice.”
The bastard had the gall to wink at her.
She stared at him for a moment, and the image of him looking up at her from between her thighs came back to her. The memory of it had her wet. He was very, very clever with his tongue.
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