Ford huffed out an annoyed breath. At himself, at his efficient brother and his black ops guys. “Don’t even know where she is. What name she’s using.”
A seagull landed on a metal railing and eyed them before squawking. Another responded.
“I know where she is.” Eric smiled.
Hope sprang up inside him, big enough to stretch the patchwork of stitches on his body. Oxygen, after suffocating for so long.
“I know that look. Hold on.” Eric used his big brother voice. “You can’t go after a woman like that without a plan.”
“Yougot a plan?”
“Bro, you’re the one with the huge brain. Why don’t you use it to…brainstormsomething.” Eric compressed his lips, as if holding in a smile, then sniffed. “So, we on or what?”
Ford blinked. “What?”
Eric rolled his eyes. “This. Polaris. You with us? You part of the team?” He lifted his chin, squinting at Ford, looking…insecure maybe? The expression was so unfamiliar on his brother’s face that he turned away to cover his surprise, looked at the rig, the ocean, the island, the big, cloud-dotted sky expanding as far as his eye could see, but nowhere near as big as he was used to.
“Better ask Angel what she wants first.”
Eric released a humor-laced sigh. “Good answer.”
“Yeah?”
“I believe in you.” Eric smirked and thumped him on the arm before leading him to the helicopter pad.
Now if he could just convince Angel to believe in him, too.
Chapter 53
Antrim Soup Kitchen, San Diego, California—10 Days Later
“Hey, Abs!” Betty’s gravelly smoker’s voice called from the dining room. “Got a visitor.”
Angel’s hand stilled midscrub.They’ve found meshot through her head and body and soul before she shook it off, realizing how unlikely it was.
No one would look for her here. Some fancy restaurant maybe, or the farm-to-table type of place she’d thought she wanted. Not this rundown soup kitchen catering to the poorest of the poor.
And if they had truly found her, they sure wouldn’t announce their presence.
“Coming!” She shut off the water, wiped her hands on her apron, and turned, grabbing her knives out of habit. They were all new. The old ones were still in the rubble of Volkov.
And then, inevitably, she thought of the fate of her favorite boning knife. If only she could rid her body of thatfeeling, the sense memory of steel piercing protective layers of fabric to slide deep into human flesh. She stopped halfway to the kitchen door, swallowed back the familiar rush of bile, closed her eyes, and breathed.
Only rather than running recipes through her mind or picturing a perfectly rising dough, she saw white. Eternal white, marred only by a single red dot, solid and sure and more real than anything she’d ever touched in her life.
How long would it take to stop missing that place?
Right. Like it’s the place I miss.
With an internal eye-roll, she strode on, craving cool weather like a thirst she couldn’t quench. She pushed open the door, stepped through, and froze, barely missing getting hit as it swung closed.
Ford.
He was bigger in this enclosed place than he’d been in the open. His face was pale, as if he’d spent the past couple weeks indoors. Which was likely, given his injuries. And his eyes—they held her captive: crushed ice, melting, dragging her into their depths.
She didn’t move, just watched his face, took in that expression, so different from how he’d looked before. Not the harsh, set lines of the person she’d first met, nor the hungry and slightly shell-shocked look he’d worn in their hut, not even the deep, flattering concentration of a man making love. Right now, he looked…totally unsure of himself.
Which softened her up a little, made her protective.
