Page 30 of Delta Force Defender

The way he would have kept his parents safe, if he could have. If he’d had that chance.

Isaac had never regretted his choices. Sometimes he told himself that his parents would have been proud, the way his grandmother in Anchorage was. Even Amy had come around—especially when he’d finally come out of the service, more or less in one piece.

I’m glad you’re home,she’d told him, fiercely, on his first Christmas as a civilian. She’d been making up his grandmother’s pullout couch for him like he was still a kid, and he’d let her, because he figured she needed to feel useful. She’d taken a break from fluffing up the spare pillows—something he really didn’t need, given some of the places he’d slept—to hug him. Hard.But please, Isaac, whatever youdo—don’t end up like Uncle Theo.

Admittedly, the fact that their uncle lived out there in his remote cabin, off the grid, like the wild-eyed mountain man he’d always been in Isaac’s memory, weighed on him. Uncle Theo had been an army man, and he didn’t like to talk about that part of his life. He didn’t like to talk at all. If Isaac squinted, it wasn’t hard to see that Uncle Theo might just be his future.

That was why Amy had gifted Isaac with a puppy he absolutely hadn’t wanted when he’d settled down in Fool’s Cove, corralled Templeton and Jonas into starting Alaska Force with him, and started repairing the old family fishing lodge.

It’s great that you still want to save the world,she’d said.But if you can’t actually take care of anothercreature, maybe try that first.

Isaac hadn’t wanted totake careof anything, including himself. But Horatio as a puppy had been irresistible—and it helped that he was the smartest dog Isaac had ever encountered.

But taking all of that together, he thought on the drive to Portland and the long flight back to Alaska, it made sense that the woman who got under his skin was the one who had shot at him.Merrily.Because when had Isaac ever done anything the easy way?

Anormalperson would have washed his hands of Caradine a long time ago. Isaac had always liked an intelligent, smart-mouthed woman, because there was usually sweetness buried inside all that surliness and attitude. If he’d believed at any point that Caradine really meant the things she said to him, he would have bailed five years ago. After the first time she’d tossed him out of her bed.

Meaning, after that first night.

Instead, he persisted in believing that if he gave her enough time, she’d come around. She’d finally admit what was so obvious to him that there was no point even talking about it.

I had no idea you were such an optimist,Jonas had said in his stark way on one of the very few times he’d actually mentioned Isaac and Caradine’s thing, which otherwise only Templeton dared to do. To his face.I would have said we left all that crap behind when we left the service.

Isaac would have thought so, too.

Optimism was imagining he could save anything in this world, including himself. Optimism was holding on to a person who’d repeatedly peeled his fingers off and shoved him away. There were other words for that kind of optimism, and one of them wasfoolishness.

And as the private jet hit cruising altitude and headed west, Isaac found himself staring out the window as the world slipped by beneath him. But he wasn’t seeing the clouds, the sky, the hints of the earth far below him. He was thinking about her.

He was always thinking about her.

Caradine had marched on board the plane and wrapped herself in a pile of blankets that covered her from head to foot so she could hide all the way back to Alaska. He couldn’t even see her beneath the lump of fabric that made her reclined seat into a cocoon.

He knew that if she had it her way, she would hide like that forever.

Maybe it was time to accept that the fact she’d unloaded her weaponat himmeant exactly the same thing it would have meant if anyone else had done it. That the bullet hole he’d left in the wall of the cottage told him things he should pay attention to—things he should have been paying attention to all this time.

She wasn’t going to tell him anything. Not of her own volition.

She wasn’t going to wake up from her angry, pointed nap on this plane in a sharing mood.

She didn’t do sharing moods.

When given the opportunity, she’d matched action to her intentions. If he hadn’t moved, she would have shot him.

When people show you who they are, believe them, went the famous quote. His uncle Theo had carved it into the door of that hard-to-reach cabin of his.

But it wasn’t until they switched planes in Juneau, going from the private jet that traveled long distances to the much smaller seaplane that would take them to Fool’s Cove, that Isaac pulled a trigger of his own.

Or faced reality, at last.

“You ready to go home?” he asked Caradine as they walked across the tarmac.

“I don’t have a home,” Caradine replied stiffly, and maybe she really was forcing herself to sound that unfriendly, the way he thought she was. Like it was a mask she had to remind herself to wear.Or maybe she’s actually unfriendly,he snapped at himself,like when sheshot at youwithout hesitation. “You dragging me back to Grizzly Harbor isn’t going to change that.”

“Maybe it’s time you started talking, then. The sooner you do, the sooner we’ll figure out where your home is.”

She glared at him, as always. “Hard pass.”

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