“Too late,” he murmured. “I already did, and you took care of that in the most amazing way.” His voice was low, teasing, rich with meaning. “Don’t play with me.”
Outside, the rain whispered softly against the windows. Inside, two warriors lay wrapped in quiet, tangled limbs and the slow exhalation of shared purpose.
Not quite healed.
But hope settled in her like dawn on still water. They were finally getting proactive about getting into the region where Taryn’s trail went cold. She was in a unique position to bring her cousin home. That would allow her to give closure not only to her whole family but maybe take her on a different path.
She smiled faintly. “I love you, Dakota Locklear, and I think you know that very well.”
The briefing room sat deep in the secure wing of the DEA’s Rio steel-lined, chilled, windowless annex. The kind of place designed to hold facts, not feelings. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, throwing pale light across the long conference table and the wall-mounted board where the mission was already mapped in tactical layers of satellite overlays, recon feeds, field notes in red.
Bear sat in the first chair, Flint silent at his side like a shadow forged in black. Joker, Gator, Professor, Blitz, Buck, D-Day, and Zorro filtered in behind him. Familiar weight. Familiar rhythm. Eyes steady, focus strong with sharpened, pre-mission tension that hummed in their bones. Everyone moved with discipline. No one joked.
Only one man in the room didn’t belong.
The FBI liaison, Vincent Sayers, dark hair, smooth suit, vowels polished by East Coast schools. He looked like he should be behind a desk, not stepping foot into the Verde.
Bear knew appearances could be deceiving. He would hold his judgment until he saw how the guy covered their backs.
His attention drifted.
Not to the map. Not to the mission.
To her.
Bailee stood at the head of the room, already locked in, her black field gear sleek and functional, hair pulled back, eyes on the data, and so aware of him it thrummed in his bones. The screen’s glow silvered the edges of her hair, casting her in light she didn’t even seem to notice.
Fuck she was beautiful, this woman who had been leading them for some time, and there had always been that sense that she would be important to him if he could get past the silence that kept him mute in everything that was personal to him. Finding his voice, that had been her gift, one that she hadn’t even consciously demanded. No, she had become much too important for silence.
When she glanced at him, her gaze caught, just for a second, and his chest tightened with everything that he felt for her.
That second was enough.
It gutted him. The memory of her words, and the way she had taken him, but this time with her sweet mouth, a homage to him, honoring him with strokes and suction. It was the best head of his life, not because of the fucking intense pleasure, but because it was her way of showing him that her words weren’t just sound.
She’d said I love you this morning. Whispered it into his mouth like a vow, not a plea. No expectations. No pressure. Just truth, stripped bare and given to him like a gift he didn’t deserve.
He hadn’t said it back. Not because he didn’t feel it. Great Spirit, he felt it.
But he’d wanted to hold it. To savor it. Not echo it like a reflex. Not throw it back in the air like it was just another phrase passed between people who hadn’t bled for each other. This time, he gave into his selfish need. He wanted to mean it in the way his people meant things with presence, with gravity, with the silence that wrapped around something sacred.
He wanted her to know it was real. He would say it. He would carve it into time when he found the moment it was right.
Now the bones of the past were rising again. They were walking into danger to recover not just their own, but the women who had been taken, silenced, buried. Bones that belonged to more than victims. They belonged to tribes. To names. To unanswered prayers.
Bailee turned back to the screen, and her voice cut clean through the quiet. “We’ve got two confirmed missing Americans. FBI Forensic Examiner Ethan Voss who was embedded in Bolivia with special clearance to examine skeletal remains discovered after my helo crash. Mara Duran, CIA contractor, former agency colleague, traveling with him off-book in a dual capacity as intelligence gatherer and asset protection.”
Bear frowned. He’d heard Mara’s name before. Sharp. Off-grid. The kind of operative who didn’t exist unless the mission went sideways.
“There’s something strange going on in that jungle. Local informants and recovered drone footage show something else.” She changed the feed.
Tree trunks, carved. The ground etched with spirals, blood-colored markings, almost tribal but not. “These markings were found along a remote perimeter near the site. Repeated. Geometric. Not tagged by any known cartel or insurgent group.”
Gator scowled. “Ritual?”
Bailee hesitated. “There are whispers. Local Indigenous sources call the area Tierra Susurrante. Whispering Earth. It's protected territory, part of an old burial ground, and believed to be haunted. The myth goes back generations. They say the women who vanish here become part of the land. Their spirits call others to them.”
Bear’s pulse ticked harder.
