Page 67 of Delta Force Defender

Ants or no ants.

She kept walking until the door she was heading toward cracked open.

And then her legs stopped dead without bothering to consult with the rest of her.

Her heart was pounding so loud it was threatening to give her a headache. She tried to calculate angles, because she trusted Isaac but she was standing close enough to that door that if the person who came out wasn’t Lindsay, but another thug like the one who’d found her in Maine, she would be dead. Instantly, if that was what he wanted.

I don’t want to die, she thought, the way she had ten years ago when the world had ended, but she’d lived.

“You won’t,” Isaac gritted out from behind her.

And it was a welcome distraction to think about how she’d said that out loud when she hadn’t realized it.

Then the door opened farther still, and there was no distracting herself from that.

She realized she had no idea what she expected to see, and that made her stomach cramp up all over again.

It was shadowy inside the house, so it took a moment for Caradine to decide that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. There really was someone there.

Her trained, capable response was to hold her breath like a kid.

A woman stepped out of the doorway, into the shade cast by the upper level of the house, and Caradine felt her stomach drop.

Knots and all.

Because it was Lindsay... and it wasn’t.

The girl from five years ago was gone. This Lindsay was rounded. Fleshed out. Gone were the sharp edges and angles, the waifish pixie with visible hip bones and razors for cheekbones whom she’d called her little sister.

This was a woman.

And not just any woman.

Caradine couldn’t seem to do anything but stare.

“I know,” Lindsay said, and her voice was familiar, even if the rest of her had changed. Sharp and wry, like the slap of home. “Can you believe it? Talk about adding insult to injury. I freaking look like Mom.”

Eighteen

Lindsay didn’t invite them in.

Caradine couldn’t tell if that was an abundance of caution on her sister’s part or that same dislocation she felt herself. Or, it occurred to her, it was possible Lindsay blamed her and suspected her in turn. Either way, Lindsay ushered them to the seating area there in the shade cast by the upper level, calling it a lanai, and the three of them sat there.

In what felt to Caradine like a tortured, fraught silence.

“Before we start this conversation,” Isaac said, with that affable grin of his and the body language of a lazy good ol’ boy, “are you going to invite your friend inside to come out and join us?”

It was difficult to find the Lindsay she recognized in the woman before her, but Caradine recognized the expression that moved over her sister’s face then. The flicker of temper, then something darker.

“I don’t know that I will.” Lindsay nodded atCaradine. “You’re not supposed to be here. And you came with a friend. I think I’ll leave my friend where he is until I feel more comfortable with the situation. You understand.”

Caradine understood completely.

“Of course.” Isaac’s grin widened. “But I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m going to take a more strategic position while we wait to see whose friend is more trustworthy.”

Lindsay smirked, another thing Caradine recognized. “You do you.”

And Caradine took perhaps more satisfaction than she should have in the way Isaac moved. There one moment, gone the next, melting off into the tropics.

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