Page 15 of Delta Force Defender

She laughed, and it was a hard, bitter sound. “I would rather die.”

“You say that about everything, Caradine, and then do it anyway. You would rather die than open the café at whatever hour, but you do. You would rather die than admit you have friends. Or that they care about you. Or that you’re a part of the community, except you are.”

“You mean like you? The one who pretends to be a part of things when it suits him while living out there in his secret fortress in the woods?”

He didn’t like that, but he held her gaze. “You would rather die than ever touch me again, until you do. And you always do.”

“I’m dead inside, believe me, and this conversation isn’t exactly bringing me back to life.”

“Fine.” Isaac folded his own arms over his chest and reminded himself that she wasn’t the only one who’d been pretending to be something other than who she was. He’d been putting on the same approachable, harmless mask since he’d moved back to Alaska. “Youwant to act like this is an interrogation? We can do that, too.”

“Oh, goody. Role-play.”

“You wish.” And he smiled a little when he saw her flush. “I haven’t pushed too hard on the question of your real identity because I figured you probably had your reasons for keeping it private.”

“Weird. I still do.”

“But that was before your café took a bomb through the window and I thought you were dead.”

Her shrug was too sharp to come off as indifference. “I didn’t throw it.”

“Someone’s after you, and they found you. Your response was to run, then spend a week zigzagging around the country. Whatever secret you’ve been keeping all this time isn’t yours any longer. It’s in smoldering ruins in Grizzly Harbor, making it my business whether you like it or not.”

“Because you’re the self-appointed savior of Grizzly Harbor, who nobody actually wants racing in and saving them. Is that what you mean?”

“What it means is that I’m going to find out who you are. Whether you tell me or not.”

Her blue eyes flashed. “Is that what we’re going with? You’re threatening to dig around in my private life when you know I don’t want you tobecause of the town?”

“I should have done it a long time ago. Maybe if I had I could have stopped this from happening.”

Caradine rolled her eyes. “I have no interest in being one of the reasons you martyr yourself, Isaac.”

He glared at her, then reeled himself in. “I’m happy to say I have no idea what that means.”

“It means you can climb on down from your cross, though we both know you like it up there. You didn’t investigate me the way I’m sure you do everyone else because you’re afraid to look. Afraid it might turn out that Captain America has been sleeping with theenemy.” Caradine made a tsking sound. “What if I’m a criminal? One of the lowlifes you like to put away? Can you pretend to save the world when you might be in bed with the thing you hate?”

“Do you really think I don’t have your fingerprints on file?” he asked, almost idly, though he could feel the tension in his body. And he didn’t care if she could see it. “Or that Oz isn’t sitting there at his computer, ready to turn all that genius on you the minute I give the order? He’ll find out what you had for breakfast on the morning of your fifth birthday, and fast. I’m not afraid of who you are, Caradine. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me yourself.”

He thought she looked a little shaken at that, but she hid it. The way she hid everything. She was the most frustrating woman he’d ever met in his life, and the only woman he would ever have spent a week tracking—to make sure she was safe and maybe find out what was going on with her, not to run her down.

If all he’d wanted was to catch her, he would have handled her in Juneau. Within minutes of her exiting that first ferry.

“Great,” she said after a moment, her voice flat and her blue eyes glittering. “You’re in total control of all things and the biggest and baddest there ever was, blah blah blah. Must be nice to have your very own collection of mercenaries to back up all these threats.”

“That is not what Alaska Force is.”

But if she heard his chilly tone, she certainly didn’t heed it.

“My favorite part is that you came all this way and broke into my hotel room to tell me how you could know everything there is to know about me in two secondsif you wanted, but you thought a week of hard driving sounded like more fun somehow.” He was familiar with the challenging look she threw his way. “Go ahead and dig up all my skeletons, Isaac. Knock yourselfout. But you can do that back in Alaska. Why are youhere?”

“You know why,” he gritted out, but she gave him nothing. She only glared back at him like he was a stranger. And all the weapons he had at his disposal couldn’t help him with that. They never had. “You don’t want to tell me your story? I can’t make you. But, Caradine. For God’s sake.I thought you were dead.Tell me who’s trying to kill you before they catch up and finish the job.”

Four

And the crazy thing was that Caradine wanted to tell him.

She’d wanted to tell him for years. It had been there, on the tip of her tongue, too many times to count. Because in her few and far between moments of wild optimism—usually when he was grinning at her when they were alone and she was seduced by thepossibilities—she couldn’t help but think that if anyone could help her, it was Isaac.

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