I meet his dark gaze. “All part of the job. Pretty sure you saved my ass out there too.” After a quick glance at my watch and altimeter, I shove to my feet. “You’re sure your intel’ssolid?”
“Ernesto’s in the center of a ten acre compound. Eleven total men, five highly trained, the rest grunts. My contact tells me they’ll make another video at 14:00. If we don’t get him before they transfer him from his cell to the interrogation room, our chances of him making it out in one piece go down dramatically.” Ryker offers me a tablet, but I waveitaway.
“I studied the layout all night.I’mgood.”
“You better be.” Inara straps her ammo pack to her left thigh. The diminutive sharpshooter carries her kills in the depths of her brown eyes. All business, her hair tightly braided under her helmet, she checks her own wrist unit. “Five minutestodrop.”
As I stagger to the back of the plane where the bay doors reveal nothing but open sky over what feels like an endless ocean, I remember the way Cam’s fingers stroked down my chest, her arms around me as I woke in the throes of a nightmare, her laughter as we decimated a horde of foes inGearsofWar.
When I’m back, when lives don’t depend on my every move, we’ll finish that fight, and then I’ll walk away. My heart seizes as I imagine life without her.Focus, Sampson. Put it away. She doesn’t want you.I squeeze my eyes shut as I picture the drop zone. The plane banks, and when I pull down my goggles and let myself see once more, she’s gone, only the mission in frontofme.
* * *
Cam
Crumbs from the world’s worst brownie litter my desk. You’d think after West slammed the door last night, I’d have abandoned my obsession with the damn recipe and gone after him. You’d bewrong.
Shame—at losing my shit, at failing Lucas, at driving away three people in less than a week—kept me frozen for too long, and then I slipped on the puddle of egg and went down hard. My right butt cheek is four shades of purple now, and I broke down and took a rare morning Vicodin. Sitting in my chair is pure torture, but what choice doIhave?
“You’re hereearly.”
Royce’s deep voice startles me, and I drop the dusty, chocolate brick, sending more detritus onto my desk. “Dammit.” As I turn the keyboard upside down and shake it, Royce heads for the coffeemachine.
“You’re not actually drinkingofficecoffee, are you?” He holds the half-full pot aloft. I meet his gaze, and his eyes widen. “Whathappened?”
Great. So Idolook as terrible as I feel. “You mean besides Lucas quitting andsomethingfucking up the code so we almost lose the Coana job? Isn’t that enough for one week?” I clench my hands into fists as the tension holding my head in a vise squeezes harder. “I’ve got to check every one of the subroutines to make sure whatever happened didn’t cause any other issues, and Oversight is still crashing every time I try to load the biometricmodule.”
Royce takes a step back in surrender. “Orion will be here in an hour. Put himtowork.”
I shove an unruly curl behind my ear. “He’s never touched Oversight’s code, and he’s not certified in Python yet. He can analyze the performance monitors, but the rest? It’s all on me. The success of this whole damn project, of everything I’ve worked for this past year, it’s all my responsibility. You want to help me? Leave me the hell alone.”Because you’re so damn good at itremainsunsaid.
We stare at one another until he sighs and returns his focus to his coffee, and suddenly I’m back in the hospital, my leg immobilized with rods and pins sticking out at all angles, two surgeries in, with another six ahead of me.Stop. Don’t go,my wounded soul screams. But the only words I can force out barely make any sense. “Can you evenseeme?”
His shoulders hike up to his ears as he sets the sugar container back on the counter and then takes a long time stirring his coffee. When he sets the spoon aside, a weariness stiffens hismovements.
“I see you.” Royce brings me a fresh cup of coffee as a peace offering. “I’m trying to help you.” When he rests a hand on my shoulder, I’m tempted to lean in, but my angerflares.
“‘Help me’? You’re working so damn hard because you can’t stand to look at me. To see what happened to me anddealwith it. I got hurt, Royce. No one’s to blame, but I still spent a year in the hospital and rehab, and another nine months before I could do much more than stand up without assistance. I don’t need your help. I got by without it when things were a hell of a lot harder than they are right now. So go hide in your office and continue to ignore me. It’s what you’re best at,afterall.”
When did I start crying? The air conditioner cools the wet tracks on my cheeks, and I swipe at the offending tears with as much anger as I can muster. Until Royce flees to his office. The door slams, and I’m back in my kitchen as West walked outonme.
With no one around, I let myself break. The sobs start as I sink into my chair, then turn to hiccups after the fourth tissue. I sound like someone’s strangling a frog, and the thought helps me claw my way up from the pit of overwhelming emotion I’vefalleninto.
The brownie is now a salty mess, tears turning the chocolate into—well, something that resembles a kid’s mud pie. The scent of Aqua Velva from my first ever boyfriend wraps around me, and I’m sitting at the counter in my parents’ kitchen with Mama’s arm around me, my teenage sobs ruining another brownie—this one made with loveandcare.
“Stop it.” I pinch my arm as hard as I can, using the pain to focus until my breathing returns to normal. Luckily, no one else chose to show up early today so I can take a few minutes to compose myself. My little makeup bag saves me, and soon, other than my red-rimmed and puffy eyes, you’d never know anything waswrong.
Bringing up Oversight’s control panel, I give the computer my sternest glare. “You are going to behave, or I’ll dismantle you line by line until you’re begging formercy.”
* * *
By the endof the day, I’m ready to throw my computer off a tall building and move to a tropical island with no internet access. I could work as a bartender at a cushy resort. Somewhere no one knows my history, and I can start over. Somewhere I’ll never see Lucas, Royce, or Westagain.
At least Oversight appears stable. I haven’t found a single bug in the past four hours, and when I sent Orion over to the Coana Hotel to upload her new code, the system hummed alongperfectly.
As I sweep my sandwich wrapper and soda cup into the trash, my eyes start to water again. My silent phone taunts me. A dozen times today, I tried to find the words to reach out to West, but how do you apologize for completely irrational behavior? I couldn’t even manage to give him a coherent answer to why making those brownies was so damnimportant.
Royce’s door bangs open, and he fills the narrow space as he scans the office. I’m the only one left, and I know for damn sure he doesn’t want to talk to me. The feeling’smutual.
