Page 68 of Delta Force Defender

But then he was gone. And it was just Caradine and her sister, catching up.

“So,” Lindsay said, after a long moment dragged by. Painfully.

“So,” Caradine agreed.

“What are you doing here, Julia?” Lindsay asked softly, though her gaze was hard. “And who is that guy?”

“I’ve been compromised,” Caradine said, ignoring the jolt it gave her to hear her sister say her name. When it no longer felt like a name that belonged to her anymore, much less uttered in a familiar voice.

It had been a long time since she’d felt like she had a sister. Or was one.

“You were compromised and you camehere?” Lindsay’s eyes widened. “We made a promise!”

“I know what we promised. But someone found me.” Caradine searched her sister’s face, but all she saw were too many unhappy Sheeran family memories wrapped up in the way Lindsay held her lips too tight. “I still don’t know how. They firebombed my restaurant.”

“I feel for you. I do.” Lindsay clearly didn’t, and she scowled to underscore that. “But you thought... what, exactly? You should bring that mess to my doorstep?”

“I ran, of course,” Caradine said placidly, as if Lindsay hadn’t spoken. “But my friend happens to be a man of many interesting skill sets. He tracked me down.”

Lindsay’s eyes widened. “That’s... not better.”

“I called Sharkey’s,” Caradine said.

Her sister paled a little, beneath the golden tan that likely came with living here. The way potential frostbite came with a move to Alaska. “Why the... why would you do that? Do you have a death wish?”

Sometimes Caradine asked herself the same question. “I wanted to see who would show up.”

It was what she’d told Isaac. And it was true. But it was different, saying that to Lindsay, when they both knew what that could mean. She watched her sister flinch, then look away.

“Is that why you came?” Lindsay asked when she looked back again, and her scowl had disappeared. But her voice was harsher. “To tell me who came after you in person?”

“I wanted—” Caradine began.

“Was it Francis?”

And for the first time since she’d come here, Caradine fully recognized her sister. It was the way she asked that question, the terror so obvious in her voice. That sheen of panic in her eyes.

Caradine knew all of that, intimately. She’d been the one who’d woken up to Lindsay’s screams after they’d left Boston. She’d been the one who’d soothed her sister’s nightmares away with empty promises that Francis must have died that night.

Another hope that had hurt them both after Phoenix. Because maybe it hadn’t been Lindsay’s nasty, vicious ex-fiancé who had killed those people. But maybe it had.

“It wasn’t Francis,” Caradine assured her. “I didn’t recognize the guy who showed up. I don’t know who he worked for.”

Lindsay blew out a ragged sort of breath, and whenshe crossed her arms over her chest, Caradine realized she was looking at that same defensive gesture she made all the time herself.

Ouch.

“I still don’t understand why you’re breaking our promise,” Lindsay said, traces of fear in her voice.

“Because I brought help. I didn’t come all this way to tell you something I could have told you when you picked up my message. My friend—” And she remembered as she said that word, again, that though she hadn’t been given a comm unit like the rest of the team, they’d put a recording device on her. Meaning they were all listening to her talk about Isaac. They were listening to her use the wordfriend, and of all the things that had happened, were happening, and were likely to happen still, it was ridiculous that she should get caught up on something like that. Still, it seemed to bang inside her chest like a gong. “My friend runs a business.”

“He looks like a mercenary,” Lindsay said flatly.

“His business is all about finding creative solutions for tricky problems.” Caradine parroted something she’d heard any number of Alaska Force members say over the past five years, usually when they were meeting new clients in her café. “And they all have special ops experience, if you want to know the kind of solutions I’m talking about. Can you think of anyone who has a bigger problem than we do?”

Her sister’s eyes darted around, as if she were looking for a way out. “What I’m not tracking is why you would bring our favorite problem directly to me.”

“If they found me, they’re going to find you. It’s only a matter of time.”

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