Page 61 of Delta Force Defender

“You’re tough,” Bethan replied with that same steady gaze they all seemed to have. And all knew how to use to make the unwary feel like they’d just been pulled overby flashing lights on the side of the road. “But you’re not trained. And that means whoever’s in the field with you has to make sure to protect you as well as do their job.” She must have seen something on Caradine’s face, because she laughed. “That’s not a criticism, it’s a fact.”

Caradine hadn’t been able to respond to that the way she’d wanted, because Isaac came back in, and it was back to contingency plans on a grand scale.

Her own contingency plans involved things likerun faster, use knife.

Isaac’s involved attempts to narrow down what name Lindsay might have been using these days, the satellite imagery of what parts of the island she might be staying in, and transport options with backup plans.

And, if all else failed, calling in the feds.

“How many missions do you run a year?” she asked Isaac when he arrived home late one night. Not that she should be allowing herself to think of his cabin as herhome, but that was another problem she planned to avoid addressing forever. Or at least until this plan of theirs worked.

Or didn’t.

God, she didn’t want to think about the ways this plan could fail to work, or what that would mean, or the potential body count it could have. She’d glared down at the stovetop in front of her instead. Caradine found herself cooking a lot, because she’d fallen into the habit of feeding Isaac whenever she saw him. Because she didn’t know what else to do.

Maybe she’d never known what else to do.

“We run as many missions as we want,” Isaac replied. He grinned when she turned her scowl on him. “I’m not being funny. Every time we try to put a cap on it, a mission comes up that we can’t refuse. So we make it work.”

“But how do you—”

“Caradine.”

He was still grinning when he came in closer andhooked a hand around her neck, pulling her in for a kiss that made certain her food would get cold.

Caradine knew it was dangerous to give in. To let what had always had to explode between them simmer instead. To let it feel normal. Possible. Sex was one thing, or so she’d always told herself. But this was playing house. Pretending to have a life, when she knew that wasn’t something that was on offer.

Because she knew better. She had ten years of experience in running away, and there was no reason to think that would change now that Alaska Force was involved. Shehoped, but she knew better than to hope. She knew that hope led straight to hurt.

She resolved to lock up the hope inside her, where it couldn’t poison anything, and proceed as normal. Because she knew that chances to run were split-second opportunities, never to be repeated, and she had to stay ready.

No matter what life she was leaving behind this time.

Having a life, she thought now from her seat on the Alaska Force jet, was something a person did when they didn’t have to focus on staying alive.

She would do things differently next time. She wouldn’t choose thehalf-in, half-outlife she’d accidentally built for herself in Grizzly Harbor. It was too tempting to fall into routines. To become a character in other people’s stories instead of leaving no trace. To make friends when she didn’t intend to, no matter how she tried to pretend otherwise.

Friends who could get killed when the next bomb went off.

That was bad enough. But Caradine knew that the worst mistake she’d made by far was thinking that anything with Isaac Gentry could be casual.

You will be very different in your next life,she assured herself now.You will call yourself something forgettable, and you will become beige in all things. You will be soboring and mousy you will be mistaken for wallpaper and will be able to hide in plain sight until you die of boredom in your old age.

And she would never see Isaac again. Ever.

Assuming he lived through whatever happened now.

“We’ll be landing soon,” said the man himself, as if summoned.

He dropped into the seat across from her. And that dark, direct look he leveled on her made her feel in no way beige or mousy.

There was a little table between them in this part of the plane, and she found herself thinking of the wooden burls in the one his grandfather had made. She traced them on the tabletop before her, though they weren’t there.

What a fool you are,she thought in despair.Looking for connection when you should be looking for an escape route.

“Good,” she said out loud, hoping she sounded filled with a sober sense of purpose, the way everyone else on the plane seemed to be.

That had been the strangest part so far. These men she knew, and would even have said she knew fairly well, changed when they were in work mode. Or battle mode, she supposed she could call it. She’d seen glimpses of it before, but it was something else entirely to watch them plot out the details of their mission and then set off to undertake it. It made her realize that they’d been the ones hiding in plain sight all this time. Fooling the unwary—like her.

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