Unbreakable

Could she have misjudged this so badly? Or was he that freaked out by what had happened?

God, she felt stupid. Humiliated. And maybe she’d ruined any chance of him working for S8.

Would you really want to work with him if you couldn’t have him?

She wasn’t exactly in the headspace to answer that question. Maybe after coffee, which she smelled brewing. Maybe it was a peace offering.

It was just after seven in the morning. Sleeping in—or much at all—wasn’t happening these days. She was about to cut around the corner to the kitchen when she saw the note propped up on his favorite tattooing chair, her name written on it.

She went over to it, noting how quiet the shop seemed. She ripped the envelope open and found a note in his handwriting telling her that the shop and the surrounding building and garage had been sold. And that she needed to vacate within a month’s time.

She wavered between hurt and anger. The anger won out at first. She slammed one of his tattoo guns against the wall, watching it break in half.

You have a month to vacate.

Well, thanks for that. She’d take about a minute.

Although it didn’t work like that, because after the initial anger wore off, she realized that leaving Gunner would be like wrenching her heart from her body. Was it that easy for him?

She couldn’t bear to think that it was.

He had to have been planning this. His rejection of her last night made sense in light of that. She read through the note again, focusing on his last lines.

I can’t be a part of S8. I can’t be who you want me to be. Key’s a good guy. He’s good for you.

“He’s kidding me, right?” she asked out loud. He’d left her, the shop. The team. He’d waited until it had been just her here. The lease, the note, it was all for her.

And that’s why he rejected you last night. That’s why he’d been acting so oddly. This had been in the works for weeks. Maybe from the second they’d stepped foot back in Louisiana.

She wondered if it was because there had been blowback she didn’t know about, stemming from the murder of Richard Powell, an ex-CIA spy who nearly ruined all of their lives. But she knew Jem was still monitoring the situation. They all were. If something big had come up, vacation or no vacation, they would have gotten in touch.

Which meant Gunner chose to walk out of her life, wanted to get away from Section 8, and from her. This was a major statement and one she wasn’t taking too well.

And then she went into every single nook and cranny of the place, looking for clues. He’d left a lot of his stuff behind, presumably for the new owner to simply throw out.

She knew she’d neatly pack up his clothes. His books. The framed pictures of his tattoos. She’d put them all in storage for when he came back. But for right now, she sat in the quiet of Gunner’s shop, unable to stop thinking on the strange, sometimes miraculous and equally heartbreaking turns her life had taken in under a year’s time.

It started out with Avery and Dare trying to save themselves from a man named Richard Powell and ended up with them finding a new group who felt like family.

Section 8 had been assembled in the eighties, comprised of seven men and one woman who’d gotten dishonorably discharged from the military for many different reasons. Typically, for not being leadable enough, and one of those men was Avery and Dare’s father, Darius O’Rourke. S8 was charged with doing black ops missions for a handler they’d never met, and after one mission gone wrong, the original S8 was disbanded. But when their handler called them back together, disaster stuck and the original team, save for Darius and Adele, were killed.

After Darius and Adele discovered their mysterious handler was Richard Powell, they helped his stepdaughter, Grace, escape from his island. Powell in turn hunted down anyone and everyone who was ever associated with S8 and tried to kill them.

Unfortunately for Powell, he’d underestimated Darius’s children and Grace herself. Together with Dare, Grace, Jem, Key and Gunner, they’d taken down Powell.

Or rather, Gunner had. The fact that Gunner’s father was Richard Powell, who was also Grace’s stepfather and the man behind Section 8, was a twist none of them had seen coming. So Avery and Dare were legacies. The rest were guilty, as it were, by association with S8. And so the new Section 8 was born. At least until Avery took the practical measure of reminding them what they’d all been through, and how a future in such a group would not be easy. She was telling military men this, and Grace, a survivor in her own right, but it needed to be said. Coming off the high of a completed mission, coupled with the low of Darius’s death and learning Gunner’s secret, things were complicated, to say the least.

Six months, Avery told all of them when they’d gotten back to Gunner’s shop after burying her and Dare’s father, Darius. Six months to decide if they were truly in or out of the new S8.

She’d thought more than once about asking Dare what really had happened on the island when Powell was killed by his own men, but she’d stopped herself. It was more Gunner’s story than Dare’s, and she would wait for him to make the reveal.

She had a feeling she’d be waiting a long time, at this rate, anyway. She was haunted that she missed Gunner’s leaving, possibly by mere minutes. Gunner had been pulling away faster than any of them had been able to reel him in. And now he was running.

When Avery first met Gunner, she’d been running too, first from the police and then from the men Richard Powell sent to kill her.

Richard Powell, who’d been responsible for the deaths of both her mother and her father.

Richard Powell, the biological father of the man she’d fallen in love with.

Trying to reconcile Gunner to that monster who’d made sure she’d only met her father long enough to hold his hand while he died . . . it was impossible.

Grace was adopted by Richard Powell, but Gunner was his blood.

God, what a complicated mess, hampered by the fact that she was more worried about Gunner and what all of this had done to him. She knew he was nothing like Powell. She had a feeling he wasn’t as sure, and it was breaking her heart.

They’d grown close in a very short period of time. Danger and proximity often did that to people, but what happened between them was more than that. She’d never felt this way about any man before him. And she felt closer to understanding many of her mother’s decisions because of that.

Everything was in limbo, with all of them deciding whether they were ready to take this on. And they all needed time to tie up loose ends, get their heads together. Because once they started working, downtime wasn’t going to be as free.

If they decided to be a part of the new Section 8. She’d known there might be hesitancy, but she hadn’t figured any of them would quit outright. Not like this.

Dare had taken Grace to the Seychelles. Key hadn’t mentioned where he was going, but knew he’d stay in touch with his brother, Jem, who was spending time in Texas.

She didn’t bother to ask why. With Jem, it wasn’t so much why, but rather why not?

Jem, who’d been the most reluctant to leave her behind. “Worried about you, kid,” he’d told her a couple of nights ago.

“Who’re you calling kid?”

He’d laughed, then handed her a phone.

“What’s this?”

“A phone.”

“Jem, I have a phone.”

“Not like this, you don’t. You call me, any fucking time. Got it?”

“You’re worried.”

“Very.” He’d glanced toward Gunner, who’d been on the computer, not talking to any of them, not joining in their conversation. There, but not there, the way he’d been the entire month. “Something’s up.”