Jaden ran his finger along a scar on her forearm. “She did this to you?”
“It’s nothing.” She sounded embarrassed for sharing.
“That’s not true and I’m sorry.” No one had been able to break down Jaden’s iron walls or reach the core of him. But Lauren, beautiful, sweet, innocent Lauren kept hammering at the casing.
Jaden went to the small fridge filled with emergency supplies and brought back more bottled water, pain relievers, and canned fruit.
“These should help with your shoulder,” he said, placing a couple ibuprofen in her hand. He had no such magic for the bruises on her insides. The thought roiled his gut. Was that why she didn’t trust him? Men? His fingers clenched around the water bottle. He forced them to relax. He wouldn’t let another man hurt her. She was safe. Safe and brave and beautiful.
“Why own a flower shop?” he asked.
“I specialize in native and wildflower arrangements. I guess after my childhood I wanted to surround myself with as much beauty as I could.” She looked down. “My mother used to refer to herself as being wild. I always thought of that as a bad thing. That’s what I came from so maybe I was wild, too. And then I stood in front of a field of Bluebonnets in the spring. I must’ve been around sixteen, still in high school. I’d never seen so much beauty. And then I realized they were wild, too.”
Her golden gaze pierced into him.
Jaden’s heart squeezed.
“Your friend back on the beach. Were you two close?” She turned the tables.
“As close as two people can be when they work in this business.” It was a copout. He knew it and hoped she didn’t pick up on it.
He checked progress on the computer. Nothing yet.
Her gaze locked onto his when he glanced up. “You like working alone all the time?”
Damn. She did.
“It never bothered me before. Besides, we don’t completely work alone. We usually have a couple guys on the job at a time. We don’t interface much except for work.”
“Sounds lonely. You don’t know who you’ll work with beforehand? When you’re walking into a situation? How do you separate the good guys from the bad? How do you know not to shoot one of your own?” She clasped her hands together.
“First of all, you don’t walk in shooting unless you have to. Second, you look them in the eyes. Third, sometimes we’re told in advance. We focus on the objective, not each other.” It sounded cold and lonely when he heard himself talk about his work. It used to provide and adrenaline rush but that had been ebbing lately.
“The black in that guy’s eyes back at the condo. I saw pure evil when he looked at me. It was the same with the guy on the beach,” she said.
“You can’t fake true wickedness. And you can’t fake good. It’s either there, or it isn’t.” Did she see black when you looked in his eyes when they’d first met?
With her background, he figured she saw black in most people’s eyes.
“Why do they trust you? Your agency train you how to convince them you’re bad, too?” she continued.
“You can’t train evil. It might be fleeting, but it’s there or it isn’t,” he said.
“Why don’t they make you guys?”
Make? Did her ideas of his work come from the movies? “It’s not like that. Not at all like the movies make it out to be.”
“Then how?” She fisted the knot on her blanket.
“I have to be better at my job than they are at theirs. I have to convince them I’m on their side.” He wanted to open up to her, tell her things he didn’t normally tell anyone. But how could he?
“And your friend on the beach? What about him?” she asked.
“Look. I had history with Bryce running all the way back to our days in the military. We were as close as any two guys can be who work in jobs like ours. He’s dead now. End of story.” He was the closest thing to a friend Jaden had. The two of them had never even been out for a casual beer. It had always been all too easy for Jaden to close himself off from the rest of the world, to use his job as an excuse as to why he did. His excuses seemed flimsy when he talked to Lauren.
“But are you okay?” she asked, her concern bringing out the copper tone in her golden eyes.
There she was, asking that question again. Who was really every okay? What did okay even mean?
“I’ll survive.” He heard the hollowness in his own words. He didn’t like it.
“For how long, Jaden?”
Hell if he knew. He didn’t answer.
“How did you get that bullet hole in your shoulder?” The knot became suddenly interesting to her.
“I trusted the wrong person.”
“Is that why you’re so cautious now?” Her gaze didn’t falter even though his heart did.
A piercing shriek sounded from one of the laptops.
Jaden hopped up and moved to the screen.
“Gunner’s here.”
A thin man, average height, who looked to be early forties with white-streaked hair slipped in.
Jaden stepped forward and offered a handshake. “I’ve been worried about you.”
Green eyes framed by thick black glasses scanned Lauren. He nodded, shaking water from his soaked clothes. “I could say the same.”
“Me? Nah. I seem to have the unique ability to be the only one who walks away from a gunfight. Where the hell have you been?” Jaden asked.
Blood stained Gunner’s overcoat. His expression weary. His head shook. “We lost another soldier today. We were ambushed while trying to get to the condo.”
“What happened?” Jaden asked, concerned he’d done the wrong thing in bringing Lauren here.
“Someone’s been a step behind me everywhere I go.” Gunner glanced around
