Page 6 of Deep Cover

Her driver didn’t speak, which suited her. She was too deep in thought to manage chitchat. Before long, she’d arrived at the airport and boarded her plane for Portland, Oregon. Bound for a place that required the kind of security clearance she didn’t have.

At least not yet.

She’d spent the last few years of her life making herself indispensable, learning everything from cryptology to several new languages. Extended self-defense training made her into a force to be reckoned with…and proved she could take care of herself.

Her dark musings didn’t make the flight feel any faster, and she settled her laptop on the drop-down tray and entered a passcode into the secure system. As she cruised at high altitude toward Portland, she searched keywords: black ops, military and the Pacific Northwest.

She turned up nothing. Not a single hit.

Wherever she was going didn’t exist in any database she had access to, and that unsettled her more than the hood Doyle warned her about.

The jet touched down, and she looked through the small window at another cloudy, gray day. Quickly, she gathered her belongings and made her way off the plane.

When she stepped onto the tarmac, something dark came down over her head before she’d taken three steps.

“Don’t worry. I’m your ride.”

She bit off a cry, then a hand gripped her upper arm and guided her several more steps. A second hand landed on top of her head, and she ducked in time to be bundled into a vehicle.

Questions rose to her lips, along with a litany of demands. She dragged the suitcase awkwardly through the door, onto the seat. The door slammed and a second later the car began to move.

Caryssa threw out her senses, taking in the smell of leather and the whir of tires on asphalt. They took one turn, then another. The engine whined as they accelerated, but that didn’t give her any indication of where she was, who she was with—or why this person handling her hadn’t thought it important to tell her a damn thing.

“You could have at least carried my bag for me,” she muttered, voice muffled behind the hood. She blinked into the all-encompassing darkness.

Nobody answered. Not that she expected them to.

She forced her breathing to slow and counted the turns. The highway’s steady thrum faded, replaced by rougher terrain.

The hood pressed warm and close against her face with every breath, and she made herself think past the black cloth and the disorientation it was designed to create. Instead she focused on the one thing she still had control over—her emotions.

Despite the heavy thud of her heart, she wasn’t afraid. Fear required something to lose, and she’d made peace with emptiness years back, right around the time she’d stopped hoping anyone would ever bring her flowers and call her Ryss again.

If this was the end of the road for her, she found with a hint of surprise, that she wasn’t sorry for a single thing.

Her one regret she’d already lived through years ago, the day she watched Reid walk out the door and didn’t stop him.

Everything since had just been filling time.

TWO

After weeks of rehab, evaluations and fighting his way back to Sierra, Rivers had expected this to feel better.

The war room door shut behind him, cutting off the voices of the team he’d missed like hell. Cannon’s grip, Rome’s crooked smile, the welcome from the others—he’d gotten his life back.

But he wasn’t in the clear until two people who mattered just as much received the apology they deserved from him.

When he neared the common room, he listened for voices inside. He stepped up to the entrance and peeked in, but it was empty. Continuing on, he checked the gym next but the room was dark.

He finally found Jolie and Stina, their first and only guests on Sierra base, in the kitchen. They perched on stools, sipping mugs of coffee with a splash of some sweet syrup on the counter in front of them.

Rivers’s shoulders knotted, but he forced them to lower as he crossed the threshold. As soon as the ladies looked up, they jumped off their stools and rushed to him, stopping short of flinging their arms around him.

Jolie looked him over. “You’re back? You’re healed? Can we hug you?”

After what he let them go through, they shouldn’t be worrying about him.

As soon as he nodded, they threw themselves at him. Four arms banded around him tight, and he issued a short laugh of surprise while awkwardly patting them in return. God, they were okay—no thanks to him, but okay.