Page 103 of Delta Force Defender

He pushed through the heavy door, certain that a long pour from his favorite bartender would get his head on straight. Things would get back to normal soon enough. He would do his job. Life would go on.

Because that was always the hardest part. Life went on whether he was finished mourning or not. Life went on no matter how he grieved, no matter what he’d lost, no matter how broken he felt.

Life went on. All Isaac had to do was live it.

He stepped into the familiar, dim embrace of the best dive bar on the planet, and his gaze went almost instantly to the bar.

More specifically, to the once again dark-haired woman who sat at the bar with his dog at her feet. The woman who looked like she’d been engaged in conversation with the man to her left, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Isaac’s hermit of an uncle.

But even as he thought that, she turned. As if his entrance had been magnetic and her eyes were pulled straight to him, against her will.

The way it had been five years ago.

Caradine.

Here.

And this time, Isaac was the one who walked to the bar, his gaze locked on to hers.

When he got there, she turned around on her bar seat and leaned back lazily. It was a fair representation of how he had greeted her all those years back.

Horatio whined at him, but as he’d clearly chosen sides, Isaac did, too.

Caradine. Here.

He couldn’t look at anything or anyone but her.

“Good Lord, Gentry,” she drawled, sharp and spiky, the way he liked her best. “What took you so long?”

Twenty-six

Caradine had never been normal.

Deciding she was going to live like a normal person now that she wasn’t dead, and might in fact live a long and happy life, was easy in theory. In practice, however, it was... harder.

There had been the publicity she’d thrown herself into, theorizing that the best defense was a calculated offense—and the more noise she made about being the last remaining Sheeran, the less anyone would even think of looking for Lindsay. Or be tempted to come after her.

But all that had come to a screeching halt when Jimmy died.

She’d been surprised to find that his death made her more emotional than she would have imagined. Not because she mourned him, specifically. She didn’t. But because, with his death, she could finally mourn what had happened ten years ago. Because she didn’t have to run anymore.

We’re free,she’d told Lindsay when she’d gone aheadand called her. On a regular phone, no codes or protocols.You don’t have to be dead if you don’t want to.

Like we know how to be alive, Lindsay had replied, sounding shell-shocked and possibly happy and, like Caradine, maybe swamped with too many conflicting feelings about all the things they’d been too busy surviving to process.

Julia had laid down one last trail, just in case.

Then Caradine had taken all her conflicted feelings home. Where she belonged.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked, looking brooding and beautiful, and maddening, all at once.

And he was still the only thing she could see when he walked into a room.

“I’ve decided to stay here,” she said, the way she’d imagined saying it to him approximately nine million times. Casually. Not coldly, but not warmly, either. Just a simple statement of fact. “Turns out, I like it here. I like being Caradine Scott.”

“Does that mean you like hiding from the FBI?”

“The FBI didn’t know where I was for maybe twenty-four hours. But they’re the FBI. They found me.” She saw his jaw tighten, but she was getting to the main point. “In exchange for Julia Sheeran’s testimony when necessary, they’re going to issue me documents making me... me. Legally.”

---