“Not for long,” Kawan growled.
“There’s the turn. See it?” Specs asked.
“Got it.” At the last second, he yanked the wheel right and blasted down a narrow gravel service road. The SUV jolted over potholes, but he held steady.
“Thor, move your vehicle off to the right, particularly into the grass,” Jupiter said. “Do it now.” He popped the hatch and lobbed a flash charge behind them. There was a metallic pop—then a whoosh of air as tires on the sedan blew.
The pursuing sedan swerved to the right, then to the left, spinning and skidding until it slammed into the metal railing, dust billowing like a cloud of smoke. Two men jumped from the vehicle, weapons raised, unloading more gunfire.
Kawan pressed his foot to the floor. A couple of bullets grazed the side of the SUV, while others sailed on by. He glanced in the rearview as he took a quick bend, and the sedan disappeared.
The silence that followed was deafening.
“Nice toss,” Lark said, breathless.
“I aim to please,” Jupiter replied.
“That stopped them and gave them something to talk about.” Thor’s voice crackled over the comms. “We’re clear. Rendezvous at our personal safety net.”
Kawan exhaled hard, knuckles white on the wheel.
He glanced at Lark.
She looked at him with something fierce in her eyes. Respect. Maybe something more. If it was, it had to do with the job… It’s all she really valued. It’s what had created the woman she’d become. He understood that. The military had given him so much. A career—something he was proud of. But it wasn’t the sum of who he was. He’d become a man on that damn farm back in Central New York. There,he’d learned about life, love, and heartbreak.
But mostly, he’d learned what it meant to be part of a family. To have a role. To understand the meaning of that role. To live up to it. To respect it. And most importantly, to accept the responsibility of what it means to be part of something bigger than yourself.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “What’s the safety net?”
“A place in New Mexico.”
“You mean that place you told me about? The one you said put you back together again after…”
He met her gaze and nodded. The memories of the single worst day in his life flooded his brain. It hadn’t been a mission that broke him. The battlefield. The carnage that war brought—he could cope with that.
What he hadn’t been prepared for was life—and the simple cruelties of it.
But this wasn’t about him. He’d come a long way since that day. He wasn’t a broken man anymore. Not only had The Refuge stitched him up… but so had his team. They hadn’t given up on him. They stood by him in his darkest hour.
That’s what family did.
“Yeah. That place.” Where broken people went to find their way back. Where he'd found his.
“I don’t need to sit around and talk about my feelings.” She turned and stared out the window. “What I need is to find out who betrayed me—more importantly, this country—and bring them to justice. That’s the job. That’s who I am.”
“We’ve all been in impossible situations. Thor spent nearly a month losing his mind when Danni had been kidnapped. Shay was held at gunpoint by her own biological father. Talk about a mind fuck.” Kawan gripped the steering wheel. “And we know what I went through. Sometimes, we need to take a moment and just breathe through it. You never give yourself a break.”
“I can’t afford to,” she said. “My team's deaths will not be in vain.”
Kawan reached out and took her hand. She jerked it away.
“Me and the guys are not going to stop looking into this. My injury has… let's say… given us time off to do things in our backyard that the government wouldn’t normally allow. I’m not exactly sure what our commanding officer told Thor, but we’ve got permission to get our hands dirty.”
“I appreciate that. I really do.” She faced him. “But I’m not going to some funny farm to sit around and get all emotional. That’s not going to bring these bastards to justice.”
“If not for yourself. Do it for Specs.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Look at her. She’s not doing well. She hasn’t slept. She can’t stop pounding on that keyboard, and Jupiter says sometimes she’s not doing anything but rehashing the same data points. She’s not built the same way you and I are.”
Slowly, Lark shifted. She reached out, tapping her finger on Specs’ leg.
