Page 31 of Delta Force Defender

“Caradine.” He said her name like a warning. But he couldn’t have said which one of them he was warning.

“You know full well that’s not my name, Isaac.”

“Whatever your name is, you’re staying with me.”

Her glare deepened into a scowl, its natural progression. “You mean in one of the little guest cabins? Rumor has it you have a lot of them out there.”

“I mean, with me,” he said. “Because you’re not a client, remember?”

She stopped walking when they reached the smaller plane. And she stared at him, doing that thing that made her blue eyes seem remote. Even when she was right there in front of him.

“I know you’re the mighty Isaac Gentry, lord of all you survey,” she said, ice-cold all the way through. “But has it really never crossed your mind that I’m maybe... just not that into you?”

He studied her grimly. “No.”

Her eyes flashed with something he couldn’t read. “Maybe it should. At the very least it would cut down on all the kidnapping.”

That was what stuck with him when she stalked away from him, climbing into the plane and strapping herself into her seat. It was a moody summer morning in Alaska. The mountains were draped in clouds, and the water looked dark and brooding.

Isaac kept thinking about that bullet. The look on her face when she’d taken aim. And her words echoed around and around inside of him, drowning out the activity on the tarmac and the kick of the wind.

He still didn’t believe her. Or he didn’twantto believe her. But there was only one way to end this game, and it wasn’t waiting for her to see reason. Or to trust him. He’d already tried that.

He pulled out his phone and called Oz.

“Local law enforcement is already handling the situation in Maine,” Oz reported when he picked up. “And when they run your new friend’s prints, they’re going to get all kinds of bells and whistles, so that should keep him occupied for a while.”

Isaac knew it was only a matter of time before his buddy with the Boston accent reported back to his employers with information about Caradine, who he certainly hadn’t believed was a rug. And information about him to go with it—like that he existed. That Maine officials had taken the man into custody meant the clock was already ticking toward that inevitable end. He needed to be ready.

But that wasn’t why he’d called.

He needed something else first.

“Speaking of prints,” he said, staring at the small plane Caradine had already boarded and wondering why this felt like a betrayal of her. When it shouldn’t have. Surely it shouldn’t have, when she was the one who’d denied him to his face, gleefully. And, more important, had tried to shoot him. “Run Caradine’s. It’s high time we knew what we were dealing with.”

Eight

Caradine had never actually been to Fool’s Cove.

She liked to refer to the hard-to-reach fishing camp as a secret hideout, or clubhouse—because she liked to minimize Alaska Force whenever possible. Particularlytoanyone involved with Alaska Force. She’d seen pictures of the lodge that the Gentry family had run for several generations, because historical pictures of Grizzly Harbor and the rest of the island were impossible to avoid, hung up as they were in places like the post office and the general store.

But she’d never had occasion to poke around on the back side of the island. Not when there was absolutely no possibility that a person could wander that way without Alaska Force knowing it. She’d become Caradine Scott, moved in, and taken over the restaurant before she’d understood what was happening on the island. Or exactly what the men in fantastic shape with those calm—sometimes cold—eyes did for a living. If she’d known about them, she would never have come here.

By the time she understood, thanks to Isaac and the epic mistake of that first night, it was too late. It would have been much harder, and more conspicuous, to leave.

She had hunkered down and ridden out her first Alaskan winter. Then four more. And she could have tried to drive or hike over what all the locals called Hard Ass Pass—the only so-called road that went over the mountain and wound down and around into Fool’s Cove, which was rarely passable—but she’d never done it. She’d never wanted to do it, because she wasn’t suicidal.

And because the less she knew about Alaska Force—and Isaac—the better.

As the plane flew in that morning, the summer sun was kicking its way through the clouds, and Caradine hated that the hideaway she’d mocked all this time was... pretty.

Though that was a small word for so much Alaskan splendor.

She’d wanted it to look shoddy. Even though nothing Alaska Force did was anything but first-rate, she’d secretly hoped their headquarters would run more toward the dilapidated side of the scale. She’d envisioned a scary hunting cabin aesthetic, off-putting and dire.

The historic fishing lodge seemed promisingly decrepit from the air. But as the seaplane went in for a landing, skidding across the water of the cove, she could see all too well that while the lodge sprawled there along the rocky shore like many Alaskan waterfront dwellings, it wasn’t ramshackle at all. It looked like what it was—the base of a private security firm that lacked for neither money nor clientele. There was a main part, two stories high there on the steep hill, and a lot of wooden walkways to connecting cabins. And there were hints of smoke in the trees, alerting her to the fact that other cabins sat farther back in the thick woods that climbed up the side of the steep mountainside. Onthe East Coast, people liked to build giant mansions on the waterline, but that wasn’t the Alaskan way. The lodge here looked unpretentious and serviceable—until she looked closer.

Isaac led her down a dock, then up a steep set of stairs. It was impossible not to notice the quality of the wood, everywhere. At the top of the stairs, she saw that the walkways and many decks overlooking the water were in far better condition than the public boardwalks in Grizzly Harbor. The windows were clear, and the roofs all looked tight and snug. The attention to detail made what should have been a broken-down, gloomy sort of off-grid compound into something that exuded a quiet, rustic elegance.

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