Killing Time

the terrace rail they ached, yet he couldn’t let go. Consumed by rage, he was afraid he might grab the first thing he could put his hands on and heave it over the side. Potted plants, furniture, he didn’t care. He wanted to throw something. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to destroy something.

His entire life had been kicked to the curb because of Lawson. For eight years, he’d told himself to forget what happened. Tried to “nut up” and carry on.

But he finally wanted his life back. He wanted payback. First, though, he needed answers.

They had to find out what Lawson had been doing in Afghanistan. Had he been gunrunning even then? The village had lit up like a bomb site when that ammo had started cooking off. Had the One-Eyed Jacks team stumbled onto one of Lawson’s weapons caches? Had he needed them all dead to keep from being discovered? Was that why he’d needed a fall guy when he’d found out there’d been witnesses—Mike, Taggart, and Cooper?

If that was the case, then Lawson had to have a pipeline directly to someone in the military to pull it off. Someone with clout. Someone who had been on board and on his payroll, who had driven the locomotive that ran Mike out of the service.

His mind spun in circles trying to figure it out. Maybe it had been something even bigger than an ammo dump or weapons cache. Their FOB in the Pashtun Helmand Province had been within a hundred kilometers of the epicenter of Afghanistan’s poppy and opium pipeline. Had Lawson been cashing in on the rampant opium trade? Had he been supplying the Taliban with weapons in exchange for the opium? Was he still supplying them, in addition to dealing with the Mexican drug cartel?

They’d get their answers eventually—including answers about who Lawson was in league with and had helped him with the cover-up.

Yeah. Now that they knew where to start, they would find out. Gabe had headed inside to his office over an hour ago and alerted the BOI team. All their resources were now invested in digging up every piece of intel that existed on Joseph Lawson and his known associates, and in finding out who leaked the OSD information to Eva, and why someone wanted her dead because of it.

He breathed deep. Willed his fingers to unclamp from the rail. He needed to chill. Needed to level himself out. This was far from over. It was just beginning, and this was about more than his own personal vendetta. Another deep breath.

Boom Boom Taggart and Hondo Cooper hadn’t merely been his OEJ teammates. They’d been his friends. His brothers. Like the Black Ops team were brothers.

He hadn’t allowed himself to miss them.

But he missed them tonight. Missed their trash talk. Missed them having his back, and him having theirs. He wanted desperately for them to know he hadn’t sold them out to save his own neck. Wanted things back to the way they had been between them.

Right. He might as well wish for world peace. Neither was going to happen.

“You okay?”

He hadn’t heard Eva step out onto the terrace. So he guessed that would be a no. No, he was not okay.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “You should turn in. Tomorrow’s bound to be a long day.”

Tomorrow they’d have enough intel to decide how to proceed. Mike already knew the basic game plan: Get Lawson. The man’s thin, ferret face and beady eyes had haunted him for too damn long. When he found him, Mike intended to make him squeal like a stuck pig, bleed him for information, then tear him limb from limb.

Eva joined him at the terrace rail. He should warn her away. Right here, right now, was not a good place for her to be. Not when he felt this raw and achy, in need of something to release the emotions that had built up inside him like white-hot steam.

But one look at her face and he knew he couldn’t send her away. He’d known her for… what? A little over twenty-four hours? And yet he could tell she was troubled.

She had something she wanted to say.

Exercising more patience than he thought he had left in him, he waited. Let her take her time.

“Lawson… knowing who he is, knowing he was in Afghanistan.” She glanced at him, then looked away again. “It’s a game changer for you.”

He pushed out a breath that sounded a little like a laugh, a lot like a groan. As understatements went, that was Guinness World Record–worthy. “Little bit, yeah.”

“I can’t…” She stopped and the emotion that clogged her voice made him turn toward her again. “I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”

Her dark eyes glittered with tears that made it clear she could imagine the tumult of emotions inside him. This changed things for her, too. She now had a name and a face of the man who’d had a hand in her husband’s death.

Don’t do it, he warned himself. Do not touch her. Do not comfort her. Not unless you’re prepared to start something that she’s not going to want to finish.

He was so close to the edge right now, it was all he could do to keep himself together, to keep from howling at the moon, beating his chest and demanding the entire world look at him, listen to him, believe him. I did nothing wrong.

“I’m so, so sorry for what this has cost you.” The compassion in her voice rattled him.

She rattled him. He’d seen the way she’d been watching him since they’d connected Lawson to Afghanistan. She was worried about him. When had she started caring? And man, she shouldn’t. She had her own adjustments to make. Thinking her husband died on a mission was one thing. Knowing her husband had been betrayed by another American… that was no easy weight to bear. Not to mention, someone wanted her dead.

Do not touch her.

But he couldn’t stop himself. He lifted a hand, made the slightest contact with her shoulder. “Eva—”

And she moved into him.

18

Mike held his breath, finally giving in and drawing her against him. To comfort her. That’s all.

The breath left her in a sigh as her arms wrapped around his waist. She pressed her cheek against his chest and nestled against him, and God, oh, God, she felt small and fragile and so uncharacteristically vulnerable, it made his chest hurt.

“For years, I thought Ramon died because of his own careless mistake. He was a warrior. You’re a warrior. You understand. It wasn’t how he would have wanted to go out. And then I find out I was lied to. And lied to again.”

She stopped, worked at composing herself, and Mike wished he could feel something other than contempt for Ramon Salinas. She didn’t deserve what he’d done to her, and Salinas did not deserve Eva’s grief.

“But none of that is going to bring him back.” She lifted her head, tipped her face to his. “For you, though… everything changes for you. I lured you back here on the promise of a chance to clear your name, but I never really believed it was going to happen. I used you to get to the truth.”

He knew too much about feeling guilty. About how it made you feel about yourself, about how demoralizing it was. “Everybody uses, Eva. It’s the way of the world.”

A sad smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “Spoken like a man jaded by life.”

“Jaded? Resigned? Fine line. And it doesn’t matter how you got me here. I don’t care. The end result is that because of you I might get my life back. Whatever that might look like.”

He’d seen his brother, Ty, last year when he’d tagged him to help with Joe’s problem. He hadn’t seen his mom and dad in years, though. Talked to them, yes; he kept in touch and kept tabs on them, made sure they were all right. But he’d been too ashamed to face them.

“You didn’t deserve what happened to you.” The regret and compassion in her voice joined forces with the look in her eyes and completely undid him.