Scott nodded grimly, anger and humiliation curdling in his gut. He couldn’t believe he’d let Natalie convince him that he could trust her. That she wasn’t lying to him again. Deceiving him. Fucking him for...
He couldn’t even go there. And he’d bought it all, hook, line, and sinker.
He didn’t want to think she’d been playing him again, but what else could he think? She’d run the first time that he’d left her alone.
He didn’t know whether to put his fist through the wall or sit down on the couch and put his head in his hands. He was devastated enough to do both. Aside from the personal knife through the heart, he was keenly aware that she might have taken the answers for avenging his men with her.
But aware of his sister and his former chief watching him, Scott forced himself to calm down and think rationally. Or try to think rationally, which was damned hard when the woman he’d risked everything for had just left him.
He drew a deep breath and sat on the couch. The past week replayed in his head over and over. What had he missed? Where had he gone wrong?
She’d seemed so in earnest, so genuine. So terrified. He would have sworn she was telling the truth. Could his judgment really be that off?
He shook his head. He didn’t think so. Shehadbeen telling the truth. He’d bet his life on it.
The fist that had been wrapped around his insides released a little. There had to be another explanation. But what could have made her leave like that?
“Where would she go?” Colt asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think she is still working with them?” Kate asked.
Scott didn’t like what his sister was implying even if he’d just had a similar thought himself. Did Natalie know who was behind this and was she trying to protect them?
He thought back through what she’d told him over the past week. Looked at it from every angle and tried to put aside his personal feelings.
He knew what would make her leave.
“No,” Scott said with sudden certainty. “Natalie was telling the truth. If she ran, it’s because they got to her. They must have threatened her with something.”
It wasn’t hard to guess what. There was one thing that he knew would send her running. Her family.
But why hadn’t she called him? The anger started to build again. He told her he would protect her and her family. He thought she trusted him. She should trust him, damn it. He’d put everything on the line for her. What more did he have to do?
“Maybe she’s trying to protect you,” Kate said.
That took him aback. “What are you talking about?”
Kate shrugged. “If I were her, I’d worry about you getting in trouble from helping me.” Both Colt and Scott looked at her as if she were crazy. “What?” Kate said. “Are men the only ones capable of protecting the people they love?”
“Yes,” Colt and Scott said at the same time.
She shook her head. “You are both cavemen. Women are perfectly capable of being stupidly overprotective, too.”
Colt didn’t seem to like that any better than Scott did, but wisely he didn’t say anything.
Scott swore. It made a perverse kind of sense and sounded like something Natalie would do.
God damn it, hadn’t she heard him when he said heloved her? If she got herself killed to try to save him from losing his career, he’d never forgive himself. She was the most important thing in the world to him.
The unhesitating realization of that even shocked him a little. For as long as he could remember the job and his career had always come first. He’d never seen a wife and family in his future. Although he supposed he’d never seen himself falling in love with a Russian spy and going AWOL after having over half his platoon wiped out by a missile strike in Russia, either.
When the rug had been pulled out from him about his father, it had felt like he’d lost his family. But Natalie had given him that back.
He was probably still a little too much “my way or the highway,” but she’d helped him see gray in situations where he’d previously only seen black-and-white. Right and wrong weren’t always clear-cut. People made mistakes. He might not be all that tolerant in his professional life where mistakes got people killed, but that rigidity didn’t need to extend to his personal life.
“What should I do?” he asked Kate.
