“Dani, that’s normal.”
“But that ego. That stupidity. It’s why he caught me off guard. I didn’t realize it was him when he first got in, and even when I did, my warning bells still didn’t go off. I’d never felt physically threatened by him before, even though he was a big man. When he turned and stepped toward me, I was even more foolish because I took a step back to get out of his circle of influence, and it put me in the corner. I knew better. Dad taught me enough…”
She choked on her thoughts, and my whole being lurched. I didn’t want her to have to talk about it. I didn’t want her to have to relive it. I hated every damn moment when I relived the worst day of my life. The nightmares. The jumping at sharp sounds. I hated that she was going through it, too.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” I grunted out, and she acted as if I hadn’t even spoken.
“The worst part isn’t the shit that went down inside the elevator. It isn’t feeling his hands on my body, or the disgusting words he spoke, or remembering the pain from every part of me that he hurt. The worst part is the fear that comes from thoughts of what would have happened if I hadn’t been able to get the elevator door opened.”
My heart clenched tighter than it had ever been before. Visions of Dani like I never wanted to see her, with that goddamn excuse of a man hovering over her. I wasn’t sure I could take it, and it wasn’t even me reliving it.
When she finally looked up at me, her eyes were full of self-condemnation. It made me want to kill Fenway, and the unknown Fiona, and anyone else who could take this smart, sassy, confident woman and make her crack a little.
“I’m no Navy SEAL,” she said, her voice harsh with the hate she normally directed at me being directed at herself instead. “I wouldn’t have lasted a day at BUD/S. One little confrontation in an elevator, and I fall apart for the rest of my life.”
I was shaking my head. “No. It’s different.”
“What? You didn’t get tortured? Or almost drowned? Or slammed with impossible task after impossible task? Please, I don’t even know half of what you guys go through, and it doesn’t break you.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “It does. It breaks us, but we do it anyway. We go through it because we’re willing to sacrifice parts of ourselves to become what our country needs. The rips…the wounds our training makes…they’re irreversible. They’re scars we keep forever.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she closed her lids to prevent them from falling, scrubbing at them as if she could wipe it all away. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I pulled her against my chest, wrapped my arms around her, and she let me this time.
I didn’t want her to have scars written on her inner walls as I did. I didn’t want her to have lost pieces of herself she’d never get back, and yet, it was already too late. It had happened before I’d been able to keep her safe, but I vowed I would do just that from here on out. Screw Brady O’Neil. My eyes were going to be on Dani.
She pulled away and opened the door with a wave of her key.
“Do you want me to come in?” I asked. It was a dangerous proposition because I wasn’t sure I could prevent myself from holding her in an embrace that would be much more intimate than the sex we’d engaged in before.
She shook her head. “No. I’m okay. Really.”
I stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“You’re not. But you will be,” I said. It was a promise I wanted to be true, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. I didn’t know if the traumas we’d lived through would ever ease their hold on us.
She slipped into the room with a quiet goodnight. I stared at the closed door for too long before I made my way back to my room with a new fire burning through me.
I sent Lee and Garner a text and demanded the full file on Fiona. What they sent me didn’t make any sense. There was still a piece I was struggling with that my sixth sense was telling me I had to find—and find fast. Fiona Ross was from a small Oklahoma town. A blue-collar family who’d struggled to make ends meet, but she’d put herself through college with grants and student loans before winding up in Nashville. She’d worked for several management companies. Nothing had been flagged in her records anywhere.
She looked, on paper, to be perfectly normal.
But someone didn’t just flip a switch one day and become obsessed and unhinged. She’d let herself into Brady’s room and crept into his bed. Taken pictures as if she were going to blackmail him. Maybe she would have if she hadn’t gotten caught stealing first. All I knew was there was something still missing.
♫ ♫ ♫
I was outside Dani’s door at four-thirty in the morning when it cracked open. She put a hand on her heart when she saw me. “Holy hell. You really have to stop doing that. What are you doing here?”
I was in my workout gear just like she was in hers. It was pretty obvious why I was there. I’d had a feeling she wouldn’t be sleeping in, wallowing in her misery from the night before. It wasn’t Dani’s style. The self-reproach she’d felt after losing it with me in the elevator was about the closest she’d get to letting it stop her.
“Yesterday, you said you weren’t the one who needed protection. Things have changed. You shouldn’t be doing anything without at least one of the detail.”
She rolled her eyes, and I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’m serious, Athena. Goddess or not, you need someone looking
