Page 27 of Delta Force Defender

It was only when Isaac shifted that gray gaze of his tohers again that she realized that the man in the chair was unconscious.

“What did you do to him?” she asked, and was too unsettled to care that her voice was uneven.

Isaac wasn’t smiling any longer. “I’m not in the mood to play twenty questions with a dirtbag.”

He shoved his gun in the back waistband of his cargo pants, then set about fastening the man to the chair itself with more of the handy zip ties he apparently carried around with him. Something she felt she should have known about him. But hadn’t.

When he straightened again, Caradine must have had some sort of look on her face, because his brows rose.

“Problem?”

“You have a lot of zip ties on hand,” she pointed out. “I’m sure that’s totally normal. For a psychopath.”

His mouth curved into something that had nothing in common with that genial smile of his. “They have a lot of uses.”

And to her horror, she felt the tug of that, everywhere. Worse, she felt herself flush.

She jerked her eyes away from his, back down to the gun in her hands. She kept staring at it as he made a call, muttering out instructions to what she assumed was yet another combat team, though he wanted this one for cleanup.

Caradine figured she knew what that meant.

And no matter that it was over and she was supposedly safe now, she could still feel the panic surging through her. The fear like a solid weight. Wooden boats and red canoes, and trying to fight off images of the worst-case scenario.

She hated how close she’d come to breaking here, and worse, how much of that he’d seen.

And he might have neutralized one guy in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t over. It was never over.

“Trash collection is scheduled,” Isaac told her whenhe finished his call. He shoved his phone into his pocket. “But we’re not going to wait around.”

“Aren’t we?” she heard herself ask.

And without meaning to, really, without fully understanding what she was doing—or maybe she understood all too well that it had always been coming to this—Caradine raised her gun and pointed it straight at him.

Again.

“This time, with feeling,” she said quietly.

But Isaac only laughed.

Seven

“I don’t know why you’re laughing,” Caradine snapped at him, her usual scowl on her face. And that gun aimed at his head. Her version of a love letter, Isaac thought—and that notion only made him laugh harder. “I’m not kidding around.”

“Whatever you think is about to happen here,” Isaac said when he could contain the laughter, “it’s not.”

“You think I won’t shoot you, but I will.”

“Okay,” he said blandly. “Right in the face? Are you going to kill me, Caradine? Because if not—if you’re thinking you’ll wound me to slow me down—you should probably aim for a knee. And make sure you take it out with the first shot. Otherwise, chances are, you’re only going to piss me off.”

She dropped her gaze to his knee, and that scowl turned to more of a study. It should have curdled his blood, but it was Caradine. A big, loud, consistent bark, but no bite. Or not a deep bite, anyway.

Then again, she didn’t lower the muzzle of the gun.

“You say that like I wouldn’t happily wound you, Isaac.” Her blue eyes gleamed. “With great pleasure. Joy, even. Maybe a song or two.”

“Joy and singing are great, obviously,” he pointed out, still not entirely finished laughing, but trying hard to keep it off his face. Unsuccessfully, if her expression was any guide. “But I’m a better shot than you, and I don’t know that I’d be waving that gun around this tiny kitchen. Just throwing that out there.”

“You don’t know what kind of shot I am. Because I’ve always thought it was in my best interests to keep that to myself.”

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