Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (9 page)

“I didn’t dump you. It had to happen and you know it. I had months of training and then a new unit, and you were on your way to Harvard,” Evan said, his voice dropping cold.

“And you forgot where Harvard is? Or where Dad’s house is? You ran scared from an eighteen-year-old girl. Maybe because you couldn’t look me in the eye when you were through with me.”

“Maybe because you
were
eighteen and I’d already done damage.”

“Damage? Is that how you look back on us? I remember it being a helluva lot sweeter. Chocolate Häagen-Dazs sweet, if memory serves. Too bad Spec Ops pounded all that out of you.” She flashed him a look that perched between pain and anger. “I was devastated when you left, but it wasn’t just because you slinked out of my life without a word. It was because I knew the guy I’d spent a few unforgettable weeks with—my first lover, Evan—would never come back.”

“I came back.”

“Completely changed. I knew I’d never see that version of you again.”

He stalked away from her. His legs were stiff as he marched into the living room. “If you don’t mind,” he called over his shoulder, “I have a task to see to.”

“Of course you do. Namely dodging what I’m saying.” Kat followed. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Laurie never had many family pictures. But there’s got to be something that will…that will make his parents happy.”

She leaned against the original polished cherry wood of the doorway. Even with a year of dust covering everything, the place had once been well taken care of. Laurie’s home had original built-in cabinets, a radiator in a corner and cozy little rooms. If she didn’t know better, Kat would have thought he’d transported the flat straight from his homeland in England.

Through the open doorway to the kitchen, she could even see a teacup that had been upended over a drying rack.

“Maybe you don’t have a soul after all,” she said softly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Evan looked up from where he’d been flicking through a short bookshelf, maybe searching for books with personal inscriptions.

“You don’t understand. You and Dad and all the rest who head out into God knows where—you’ll
never
understand. There is nothing that will make his mother happy except Laurie coming home. And you won’t find that here.”

Chapter Eight

Evan couldn’t stay in that house much longer. The ghost of Lawrence Madigan was in his mind and heart, if not roaming those tiny rooms.

He turned away from the blaze of Katsu’s anger and ran his gloved finger across a few more book spines. His throat was filled with chips of granite. “Do you think this is any easier for me, Kat? He was my friend.”

“So you raid his apartment? That’s the best-case scenario?”

No longer able to keep his feelings bottled up, he stood and quickly closed the distance between them. She stepped back a pace. “Do you think Laurie left without sound reasons when he infiltrated—” He cut his words short. “The only choice we make in CFA is whether or not to do our duty, and we live with the consequences—including helplessness. The last time I saw him, he was climbing into a Blackhawk on his way north. Even I didn’t know where his ultimate destination was. Now he’s gone.”

“He was bound for Nova Scotia. Then Minsk.”

Evan couldn’t have been more surprised had she kneed him in the crotch. “What did you say?”

Kat’s naturally tan skin was still capable of a blush when she was really pushed. Like now. “That’s not what you mean, is it? You want to know how I found out.”

“Yes.”

“I got tired of Dad lying to me. You started following him around like a puppy, and new people were coming into his life. People like Laurie and Fletch. Even Dr. Bascombe came by the house, when I was home for a weekend visit. They talked in Dad’s study for hours. I thought they’d never stop, but when we sat down to dinner, they made out like there was absolutely nothing going on.” She looked down to the hands that were knotted into tiny fists. “A few months ago, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I broke into Dad’s safe.”

“It has a retina scan.”

“You know damn well what can be used to get around that. I didn’t like deceiving him, but he totally stonewalled me. ‘Just another mission, Katsu-chan,’ he’d say. Like a damn parrot.” Kat kept her head high while she spoke. Evan should’ve been able to admire how she’d kept sane, but he was too stone-cold numb inside. “So I broke in and found files on Command Force Alpha. That included you, Fletch, Snow, Dr. Bascombe—everyone. As of nine months ago, Laurie’s file was marked MIA.”

“Jesus, Kat. Do you have any idea what this means?”

Maybe the anger in his voice and the sheer, terrified disbelief made her eyes go wide. She shook her head, mouth closed up tight.

“Have you been trained in anti-interrogation techniques?” He grabbed her upper arms. The grip was too strong. He knew it, even as she winced. “Could you keep information a secret if you were captured? If you were tortured? No!”

“I didn’t…” The realization of what she’d done was dawning over her righteous, perfectly shaped features. Her lips plumped when she frowned. “I just wanted to know what was going on! You said you get to do your duty or blow it off, but you chose this life. Even my mother had more agency than me. She married a Marine, knowing all that could entail. I was simply
born
. I got to say goodbye to Mom before the cancer got too bad. That seems like a blessing now. Hell, having Dad in a hospital, busted all to bits, is better than not knowing. Even though you knew it could be heartbreaking, you’ve been searching for him, haven’t you? You wanted answers just like anyone else.”

The stakes had been high enough. Now they were stratospheric. He had to keep her safe, and her safety meant the future of CFA. “I’ve killed people for security breaches of less magnitude.”

“Do it, then. You’re a killer, Evan Sommers. You’re a lace curtain senator’s son who thought he’d play soldier for a few years, and wow, did you take to it like a fish to water.”

“Lace curtain? Are you serious?”

“Let’s see,” she said, her voice gratingly singsong. “You lived with your daddy and his trophy wife up in a mansion in Brighton somewhere. All the finer things in life. Then you slummed it with the rest of us Southies when visitation forced it on you. So yeah, when you grow up putting a pretty face on a shitty world, I’m gonna call you on it.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“But it doesn’t really matter now. Get rid of me out there in Mystic River. I’m sure your people would be able to magic it away. Katsu? She was killed by a drunk driver or
whatever
.”

“Stop.”

With Evan’s single word, she froze. Animate…then inanimate.

“Don’t move from that spot. See, the problem with places like this…or mine…or even yours? They’re never private. Not entirely. That code I deactivated behind the painting will have notified HQ and turned on the cameras. They’re probably watching us right now. And if we’re lucky, watching the exterior is all they’re doing. Once Laurie went missing, Fletcher’s team did a hard sweep for clues then installed interior security to watch whoever came nosing around. Unless you’d like Fletcher to know how much
you
know?”

He loomed over her as he continued. “Maybe, finally, the seriousness of our situation is getting through your thick skull. You’re a Marine Corps Colonel’s daughter, raised with the specter of Special Operations behind your back at every turn. I get that. But you’ve only scratched the surface of what’s at stake. Nicky Stafford is your sole focus. God, Kat, you’ve got to see beyond individuals, or you’ll get yourself killed and blow the cover of more than a dozen teams around the world.”

“Then why are we here, Evan?” She touched his arm. Tension sparked like electricity between them. “If Laurie’s dead and mysterious cleaners could erase him from the planet any day soon, why are you
really
here? Who’s failing to see beyond individuals now?”

He gritted his back teeth together. “We’re leaving in two minutes. And I mean it, Katsu. Don’t. Move.”

She flinched, then bowed her head. Damn, he was a mess because that pose did really inappropriate things to his thought process.

He quickly returned to the bookcase and snagged a slim paperback from between the collected works of Poe and Shakespeare. It was
Silk
by Alessandro Baricco in the original Italian—a book about a man whose travels become his life’s obsession.

Evan was smart. The colonel was smarter. Laurie Madigan had been a genius.

Silk
was the only book Evan had ever heard him mention more than once. Knowing time was ticking by, Evan flipped through well-worn pages. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he’d recognize it if he saw it…

But he didn’t find a thing. It was just a well-loved edition of a strange little novel. There was no blinking sign to provide him more information than Fletch’s team had already dug up, which had been damn little. Being Laurie’s friend didn’t mean Evan could will him back to life, or dig forever through the underbelly of the former Eastern Bloc to learn what had happened.

He shoved the book back on the shelf before scanning the duplex for something…meaningful. How could he know what might be special to the man’s parents? He didn’t tear through the small, mostly barren rooms, but he moved quickly, eyes examining every surface. In a makeshift office, he found what Evan would keep for himself—a snapshot of him, Laurie, detonations expert Jeremy Crandall, and fellow operatives Gabe Perrine and Alice “Snow” Weissbourd. They all held Gemma Calloway, a PhD in psychology, on her side like a pinup posing with a posse of male admirers. Her thin, caramel-colored features were in profile, as was her spiky tousle of kinky black hair. They’d been in Swindon, where the colonel had just worked his magic to recruit her as the team’s head profiler.

The colonel had taken the picture, but no one on the team had used his title that day—not because of any need for security, but because they’d been enjoying an afternoon of sightseeing after a mission had ended well ahead of schedule. Swindon didn’t offer much of anything by way of sights. It hadn’t mattered. They’d gone grocery shopping in Tesco’s, laughed through most of the new
Red Dawn
at a huge cinema and went bowling. Gabe had won every match.

They looked happy.

Rare and precious.

Evan unpinned the Polaroid from its corkboard and tucked it into the folds of his coat.

Then he found what else he needed. Same corkboard. A different kind of rare and precious. It was a postcard.
Greetings from Mauritius
was printed in gold foil on the front, layered over a montage of images from the glorious island far off the coast of east Africa. He turned it over and read the neat, tiny script. “You go on your adventures and always will. We finally get to go on ours. Being clean for ten years deserves a reward! Be safe, son.”

The return of such a postcard… That would say what they needed to know, wouldn’t it?

A warm, small hand closed over his shoulder. Evan flinched and cussed under his breath.

“It’s perfect,” Kat whispered.

“I told you not to move.”

“Sometimes I disobey.”

“I know it. Let’s go.”

Only on the way out did he notice a place on a side table in the dining room. A three-inch circle of oak was free of the dust that covered the rest of the table’s surface. Kat stopped beside him. “Someone else has broken in? Is that dangerous?”

Goose bumps traveled down Evan’s skin where she gripped his upper arm. “No, I don’t think so. He kept a snow globe there. From Ecuador.”

“Huh?”

“A mission in Ecuador. It had snowed the whole time. On the equator. It became this thing. Alex had a snow globe made up, with Quito doused in snow.” Evan exhaled heavily. “I’m not the only one who’s been here to take a memento.”

They exited the way they’d entered. Daylight pierced Evan’s eyes before he could fish his sunglasses out of his coat pocket. September was unpredictable in New England. Sunshine and bathing suits by day. Coats and fireplaces by night. There by the Mystic River, a sharp breeze took the heat from his bones.

“This isn’t done yet,” came Kat’s tremulous voice.

“How do you mean?”

She stood beside him, not touching him, not looking at him. The sobriety of their visit had taken its toll on Evan. He couldn’t imagine what this was doing to Kat’s frayed nerves. They simply watched the Mystic flow beneath the late-afternoon sunshine. “You said a few days, but with Dad still so… And with whatever happened to you guys… Can I go home yet? I don’t understand the point of all this.”

A crew of men were working their brains out at HQ, trying to figure out how much information had leaked and where. They might be the ones to answer nagging, critical questions. CFA had probed intel leads for months, finally earning the trust of the Bokun family Laurie had infiltrated. They had identified him as a Western agent, believing him active duty SAS. But what happened to him during the months of his disappearance? Why had the Bokuns been so stupid as to shoot the colonel and their own representative, blowing any chance to exchange Laurie’s remains for leniency in the region? Was there any chance Laurie had given away the colonel’s identity? The colonel’s Russian was flawless, even down to the Belarusian accent.