Again she hesitated. She wasn’t exactly in a social mood.But the lure of a wreck dive was tempting—especially theStassa. It was one of the “must do” dives she’d hoped to find time to do while she was here.
“Come on,” Marie said. “It will be fun.”
Annie hadn’t had a lot of that. The stay on Tiree had been painfully brief. Besides, she could use the distraction.
She nodded, and both Marie and Martin looked pleased.
Thirty-three
The hairs at the back of Dean’s neck were buzzing as he made his way through the terminal.There’s nothing to worry about,he told himself. He’d done everything he could. Jean Paul was dead. Annie wasn’t in danger.
Move on. Focus.He had a job to do—which included watching his own skin. He needed to calm down and stop looking like a meth addict crawling the walls for a fix or he was going to draw attention to himself.
An airport in the twenty-first century was not the place to act suspicious. Normally Dean avoided them because of the heightened security, preferring softer border checkpoints—or no border checkpoints. But as he didn’t have access to a boat anymore, and it wasn’t an international flight (Northern Ireland being part of the UK), he decided to take his chances rather than traveling three hours to the south of Scotland to catch a ferry that would take another few hours.
He got himself under control, and his new British passport passed the ID check without comment.
Everything was fine until he got in line to board the budget airline for the 1345 to Belfast and the buzzing intensified. His spidey senses weren’t just flaring; they were going crazy, telling him to turn back. That something wasn’t right.
He’d stayed alive for almost fourteen years by knowingwhen to listen to his instincts, and he wasn’t going to start ignoring them now.
He stepped out of line and found an empty gate where he could make the call.
“That was fast,” the LC said after they’d exchanged the code.
Dean paused. “I’m still in Glasgow.”
There was a return pause, where Dean was pretty sure Taylor was fighting to stay calm. “What’s the holdup?”
In other words, he’d sent him the text a few hours ago, and he should be on his way to Belfast by now. They might operate on a four-hour string in Honolulu, but the LC had expected him to be wheels up in more like one.
“I can’t go.”
That apparently exhausted the limits of the LC’s stay-calm reserves. “What the hell do you mean, you can’t go? Blake’s damned not-so-estranged sister just published another story, and I need someone to shut her up.”
“Donovan will have to take care of it.” Dynomite and Blake had been BUD/S buddies. If anyone could take care of Blake’s sister, it should be him.
“He’s occupied.”
“So am I.” He bit back some of his anger and tried to explain. “I can’t stand down on this, Ace. Something’s wrong—or it feels like something is wrong—and I can’t go until I’m sure Annie is okay. Hasn’t anyone ever...?”Gotten under your skin? Made you lose your head?“Fuck, I don’t expect you to understand, but I can’t let this go.”
He couldn’t lethergo.
There was a long enough silence where Dean wondered whether maybe the LC did understand. Was it Kate? Or maybe this other woman who’d warned them?
Eventually Taylor responded, “You can’t stand down on a lot of things.”
His tone was more wry than sarcastic, but Dean immediately stiffened. “Go ahead and say it.”
“What?”
“What you’ve been wanting to say for over two months. Itwas my fault the kid was killed. If I’d followed your orders, Brian would still be alive, and you and the others wouldn’t have been almost killed pulling me out of there.”
“The kid wasn’t a kid—he was a twenty-four-year-old highly trained, elite operative. He made his own decision to follow you. His death isn’t on you.” The LC’s voice was so tight and angry that it sounded as if he was gritting his teeth. “I’m only going to say this once, so put down that whip for a few minutes and listen up. You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want to do or wouldn’t have done if I were in your position. Damn it, do you think I wanted to leave them there? I wanted to try to warn White’s squad every bit as badly as you did, but as the officer in charge I was responsible for the mission and saving the lives of the men I could. But you go with your gut. You act when most people are still sitting around, trying to figure out what to do. That’s what makes you so good.”
Dean was shocked. He didn’t know what to say.
But a whip? Was that what he’d been doing?
